Asura : a being of the mentalised vital plane; the intellectualised but unregenerate Ego. It is the sixth type from below of the ten forms of consciousness in the evolutionary scale of man. He is mind concentrated on the Būddhi.
... term "asura" leaves not an inch of ground for any human association: "These generous Ahgirases in another form, sons of the sky, heroes of the asura, giving gifts to Viśvāmitra in the thousandfold soma pressing cross forth to long life." Hale 540 reflects on the verse: "The asura is ... not named. The proximity of the phrases 'sons of the sky' and 'heroes of the asura' suggests that the asura here... Rudra "who in the Rgveda is called an Asura (5,42,11) or 'the great Asura of heaven' (2,1,6)...." 402 Rudra too, for Parpola, has his source in a separate cult of Asura deities, but the theme is not pursued further in the same context. Before examining Parpola's argument it will be useful to focus the basic meaning of the term "Asura", primarily from the Rigveda's own use of it. Wash Edward Hale... in 2,27,10: tvám víśvesām varuṇāsi rắjā yé ca devắ asura yé ca mártāh. Hale 403 translates: "You, O Varuṇa, are king of all, both who are gods and who are mortals, O asura." Griffith's translation 404 is: "Thou over all, O Varuṇa, art Sovran, be they Gods, Asura! or be they mortals." Evidently, being an Asura involves rulership: one is lord and master, one wields supreme power ...
... the domain of the Asura. The outer field, the gross vehicle —body and life and mind—all this is constituted by Ignorance and Falsehood; so the Asura can always establish Page 122 there his influence and hold sway and has actually done so. Man becomes easily an instrument of the Asura, though often unwittingly; the earth is naturally in the firm grasp of the Asura. For the gods to... have stood against the Asura does not mean that one has become sura, divine or godlike; but to be able to remain human, human instruments of the Divine, however frail, is sufficient for the purpose, that ensures safety from the great calamity. The rule of life of the Asura implies the end of progress, the arrest of all evolution; it means even a reversal for man. The Asura is a fixed type of being... life of a blind helpless slave under the clutches of the Asura or even altogether lose his soul and become the legendary demon who carries no head but only a decapitated trunk? We believe that the war of today is a war between the Asura and men, human instruments of the gods. Man certainly is a weaker vessel in comparison with the Asura—on this material plane of ours; but in man dwells the Divine— ...
... the Page 12 Asura. The outer field, the gross vehicle— body and life and mind--all this is constituted by Ignorance and Falsehood; so the Asura can always establish there his influence and hold sway and has actually done so. Man becomes easily an instrument of the Asura, though often unwittingly; the earth is naturally in the firm grasp of the Asura. For the gods to conquer the earth... have stood against the Asura does not mean that one has become sura, divine or godlike; but to be able to remain human, human instruments of the Divine, however frail, is sufficient for the purpose, that ensures safety from the great calamity. The rule of life of the Asura implies the end of progress, the arrest of all evolution; it means even a reversal for man. The Asura is a fixed type of being... life of a blind helpless slave under the clutches of the Asura or even altogether lose his soul and become the legendary demon who carries no head but only a decapitated trunk? We believe that the war of today is a war between the Asura and men, human instruments of the gods. Man certainly is a weaker vessel in comparison with the, Asura—on this material platae of ours; but in man dwells the ...
... have stood against the Asura does not mean that one has become sura, divine or godlike; but to be able to remain human, human instruments of the Divine, however frail, is sufficient for the purpose, that ensures safety from the great calamity. The rule of life of the Asura implies the end of progress, the arrest of all evolution; it means even a reversal for man. The Asura is a fixed type of being... vehicle – body and life and mind – all this is constituted by Ignorance and Falsehood; so the Asura can always establish there his influence and hold sway and has actually done so. Man becomes easily an instrument of the Asura, though often unwittingly; the earth is naturally in the firm grasp of the Asura. For the gods to conquer the earth, to establish their rule in the earth consciousness requires... of a blind helpless slave under the clutches of I the Asura or even altogether lose his soul and become the legendary demon who carries no head but only a decapitated trunk? We believe that the war of today is a war between the Asura and men, human instruments of the gods. Man certainly is a weaker vessel in comparison with the Asura – on this material plane of ours; but in man dwells the ...
... sensational & emotional Rakshasa-Asura is Ravana, so the type of the more mightily balanced Asura Rakshasa of the Asura type is Hiranyakashipu. In the eighth Manwantara this Asura Rakshasa evolves into the pure Asura who serves his intellectual ego & subordinates to it all the other faculties. That type reigns with the ninth Manu & evolves into the Asuradeva of the Asura mould & in the tenth Manvantara... the manas itself; the Asura is mind concentrated on the buddhi & in the Asura Rakshasa making it serve the manas & chitta; the Deva is mind concentrated in vijnanam, exceeding itself, but in the Asura Deva or Devasura it makes the vijnana serve the buddhi. The others raise mind successively to the Ananda, Tapas & Sat & are, respectively, the supreme Rakshasa, the supreme Asura, the supreme Deva. We... present. It follows that even these savages cannot be pure Pashus, but Asuras or Asura Rakshasas starting from the Pashu stage, so far as the Asura can go back to that stage, and fulfilling the possibilities of a sort of Pashu-Asura before evolving his Asurahood in the higher types & arriving & shooting beyond the pure Asura. This is an important modification. It follows that each type of the Dasha-gavas ...
... instance of an Asura Siddha on the Supramental plane ? Sri Aurobindo : No. Disciple : You had indicated in a list of classified beings the "Asura" as one type. Sri Aurobindo : I meant there "Asura" in the Vedic sense. The mental Asura is a mistranslation of something in the Supermind and in the original puissance. Pure Page 260 power is called "Asura". It is the... the Vedic Asura and not the Puranic 'Asura'. In the Veda "Asura" is a title applied to all the gods – , in many places Indra is called "Asura". It was later that the derivation from Sura was found and A-sura became the titan. Originally, "Asura" indicates the highest puissance. It is perhaps in the tenth Mandala that it is used in the Puranic sense. 9-12-1925 Talk turned on X's demand on... not to become an Asura. That is to say, the course of human evolution is not from the animal Page 267 to the vital being and then to the Asura. Asuric life is regarded as a fall for man. If you got converted Asuric nature then you lose the chance of your evolution. Disciple : How should one protect oneself against the attacks and influence of the Asura? Sri Aurobindo ...
... While Rāma and Śrī Krsna were thus tending cattle in that forest, an Asura named Pralamba, disguised as a Gopa, Page 65 came there with a view to abduct them. 18. Śrī Krsna from whose observation nothing could escape noticed the Asura in the group of cowherd boys. Devising a strategy to kill him, he approached the Asura and cultivated his friendship. 19. Śrī Krsna, who knew many games... irresistible, the Asura Pralamba wanted to be away from his sight and therefore ran with Balarāma on his shoulder beyond the spot where he was to drop him. 26. Carrying Balarāma, who was weighty like a mountain, the Asura's speed slackened and he resumed his hidden Asura form. With the numerous golden ornaments on his body and the fair-complexioned Rāma on his shoulder, the Asura looked like a cloud... and mind full of evil, the Asura, intent on pleasing Karhsa, approached, sending the cow-herd settlement of Nanda into shivers. 3. The Asura, who was thus frightening all in Go-kula with his roar, driving away the clouds by the waving of his tail, and searching everywhere for his enemy, was now confronted by the Lord who appeared before him and beckoned him. The Asura retorted with a wild challenging ...
... forms of existence. As the Mother once told, the Asura of Darkness, who was the original incarnation of Light, Lucifer, has been converted. In the years of her intense occult activity in the beginning of the century, he agreed that she would give him a vital body, and since then he has been cooperating for the general Transformation. The Asura of Suffering, on the contrary, has been dissolved... beings, who remain active independently and who may go on existing for a long time to come.) Max Théon, the teacher of Mirra Alfassa, was a humanly incarnated emanation of the Asura of Death and Paul Richard of the Asura of Falsehood. As Sri Aurobindo himself remarked, Paul Richard has even written an unpublished book entitled Le Seigneur des Nations (The Lord of the Nations), in which he accurately... side. This was dangerous, for these ‘misguided patriots’ formed unwittingly a channel by which the Asura could directly hit out at the heart of his true target. ‘If this Asuric influence acting through Hitler is being cast on the Ashram too, it is dangerous,’ 26 Sri Aurobindo cautioned. ‘The Asura is more concerned with us than with anything else. He is inventing new situations so that we may fall ...
... remaining chapters of the Gita. But first it prefaces the consideration of this enlightening movement by a distinction between two kinds of being, the Deva and the Asura; for the Deva is capable of a high self-transforming sattwic action, the Asura incapable. We must see what is the object of this preface and the precise bearing of this distinction. The general nature of all human beings is the same, it... The Supreme Secret Essays on the Gita XVII Deva and Asura The practical difficulty of the change from the ignorant and shackled normal nature of man to the dynamic freedom of a divine and spiritual being will be apparent if we ask ourselves, more narrowly, how the transition can be effected from the fettered embarrassed functioning of the three... turned to these things. Arjuna, says the Teacher, is of the Deva nature. He need not grieve with the thought that by acceptance of battle and slaughter he will be yielding to the impulses of the Asura. The action on which all turns, the battle which Arjuna has to fight with the incarnate Godhead as his charioteer at the bidding of Page 470 the Master of the world in the form of the T ...
... therefore to meet, it could not avoid, the conflict with the working of the hostile Powers in the human being. (4) That you did not allow any hostile being in the Asrama, except one converted Asura, and that no Asura owing allegiance to you had turned hostile. We did not call any. The converted one too came but did not remain, so he too does not count. (5) Outside the Asrama some Lords of the vital... from above or other wise may at any time open to its own world and source in its darker aspects and then become the cause of much disturbance in the sadhana. That does not apply to a converted Asura. The others are not driven—wherever sadhana is going on, they come to disturb it—a fact known to the Yogis and Rishis from early times. Forced opening by a vital or a hostile force means a forced... way. When did the hostile forces begin their work of perversion—at the time of mental, vital or physical manifestation? As soon as Life was to appear, they intervened in it. A converted Asura, i.e. one who has consented to be God's ally and undergo transformation, may easily change colour and become hostile. In fact, the Mother writes in her Prayers of some Asuras who promised to be God's ...
... 250 Asthana, Shashi, 225, 231, 248, 249, 250 astronomical observations in the Rigveda, 158 asura/ Asuras (see also ahura/asura ), 295, 298-9, 366, 367-83, 390, 391-5, 410, 413, 416, 419 as human beings, 406-17 asuraship (asuratvam/aSūryam), 393, 394, 404-6 asura-han- 369 asva, 267, 411 Asvamedha, 410-11 Aśvinā/Asvins (see also Nasatyas), 213, 251... 336-8, 341-4, 348-9, 359-61, 369, 370, 372-3, 381, 383, 394-5, 404-6, 408, 411, 413, 417 as asura, 382-3, 394-5, 404, 405 hymns to, in the Rigveda, 213, 377, 394, 399 agnipura, 299-300 ahavanaya, 230 ahi, 187, 329 Ahicchatra, 212, 242 ahura/asura, 166, 267, 368-9, 379, 403 Ahura Mazda, 166, 282, 321, 400-403, 419 Aila... Equus caballus, 215, 216, 219, 230, 248, 250, 266 Equus hemionus, 248, 249 Eratosthenes, 206 etymology, 206-8, 210, 293-7, 375-80, 407 anasah, 349-50 asura, 367-9, 375-6, 379 dasa, 206-7, 346-9, 362 dasyu, 207 Haumavarga, 209, 318-19 maya, 384-5, 388 pant, 207, 291-3, 346-9 Rasā/Ranhā ...
... Germany was unable to fight a war on two fronts and who were proved right in the end. Sri Aurobindo had said earlier that he had never seen a person who followed the dictates of the Asura as faithfully as Hitler. Had the Asura made a mistake in this case? The occult fact is that on a certain occasion the Mother took the place of the Lord of Falsehood and persuaded a hesitant Hitler – the plans for Operation... at Berchtesgaden, in the Alps, called by his biographer John Toland ‘Hitler’s place of inspiration.’ Hitler was a tool of the ‘Lord of the Nations,’ who, in fact, is the Lord of Falsehood. This Asura, whom the Mother failed to convert in the person of Paul Richard, is already known to us. The important role he played throughout her life and that of Sri Aurobindo, and throughout the history of the... and makes me wish for British victory. And if I want that England should win, it is not for the Empire’s own sake but because the world under Hitler will be much worse.’ 34 He also said: ‘The Asura is more concerned with us than anything else. He is inventing new situations so that we may fall into difficulty.’ 35 The seriousness of the situation made Sri Aurobindo and the Mother publicly ...
... aeons ago – would be reversed, and the manifestation could continue in its Godward evolution. Mirra met the Asura of Light (actually the Asura of the dark Inconscient) on her occult explorations under Théon’s guidance during her first stay at Tlemcen. In the Semitic traditions this Asura of Light is called Lucifer or Satan. He agreed to her request to collaborate and consented to be ‘clothed in a... born of human parents, which is the only way to get a material body. Théon wanted to keep the converted Asura in his power, for the master occultist felt perfectly at home in the vital also. Mirra, well knowing who Théon really was, pretended she had not understood him and let the converted Asura freely choose the way in which he wanted to collaborate. ‘He said that he was going to set in motion the... a child, was overthrown in 1911 by the revolutionaries led by Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925). ‘That,’ the Asura said, ‘will be the beginning, the first terrestrial movement heralding … the new world upon Earth.’ But then, who was Théon? The Mother has said repeatedly that he was an emanation of the Asura of Death. This explains his great powers, his fearlessness, and his combative character. It also explains ...
... Devil!") The game of the Asura is always the same, throughout all of human spiritual history: it catches a bit of the Truth, and with the very force of the Truth it has swallowed, it develops its Falsehood. The danger of the Falsehood is not Falsehood, if I dare say, but the portion of Truth that has been swallowed and that helps strengthen the Falsehood. The true Asura is not the "devil" whom... is the world of Finance and Armaments which runs the affairs, in other words, the Asura. I never understood why they dismissed Kissinger (and Nixon), since they are carrying out his policies. If you want I can tell you what I really think or perceive: when I turn to Russia, I don't feel, I cannot sense the Asura there (though he is everywhere, in fact, but he is not active there). I feel the Russians... Around all their acts, there is a kind of muted threat, gluey and insidious, which has no human origin and makes up all its "occult" force. Fear, threat and blackmail are the instruments of the Asura. For four years now, I continually see this vibration playing on all sides and doing its damage. When Barun + Counouma wrote to Laffont, it literally created panic and confusion in the whole publishing ...
... god higher than himself; that god may, of course, be an Asura, but... I have a sort of memory—the memory of a very ancient story no one ever told me... in which the first Asura challenged the supreme Lord and told him, "I am as great as You!" And the answer was, "I wish you would become greater than I, because then there will be no more Asura." This memory is very living, somewhere.... If you become... heard what I told you [the story of the Asura], and that's really my way of seeing the thing. But there was a time when I might have said, "No religion has done more evil in the world than this one." But I am not so sure now. It's one ASPECT of that religion. It's yet too human a vision of things. I prefer—I prefer the vision of the Lord telling the Asura, "Go ahead, keep on growing and growing... become the Whole, it's finished—you see, the Asura's ambition is to be greater than the supreme Lord: "Become greater than I, then there will be no more Asura." On a very small scale, it's the same thing on the earth. ( silence ) In a certain state of consciousness, it becomes absolutely impossible to worry about what may happen 2 ; everything becomes visibly, obviously , the work of one ...
... simply. Then, naturally, Light became darkness, Life became death, Bliss became suffering and Truth became falsehood. And these are the four great Asuras: the Asura of Inconscience, the Asura of Falsehood, the Asura of Suffering and the Asura of Death. Once this had occurred, the divine Consciousness turned towards the Supreme and said (Mother laughs): 'Well, here's what has happened. What's... narrated much later in 1961, Theon was an emanation or a vibhuti of the Asura of Death. In fact, as Mother explained: It was not by choice that I met all the four Asuras— it was a decision of the Supreme. The first one, whom religions call Satan, the Asura of Consciousness, was converted and is still at work. The second [the Asura of Suffering] annulled himself in the Supreme. The third was the Lord... Lord of Death (that was Theon). And the fourth, the Master of the world, was the Lord of Falsehood; Richard was an emanation, a vibhuti, as they say in India, of this Asura. Theon was the vibhuti of the Lord of Death. It's a wonderful story, a real novel, which will perhaps be told one day... when there are no more Asuras. Then it can be told.² ___________________ ¹ Ibid., pp. ...
... work. All the great creators have been men who felt powerfully God within them, whether they were Daivic, of the Olympian type like Shankara, or Asuric, of the Titanic type like Napoleon; only the Asura, his Jnana being limited and muddied, is always confusing the Eternal with the grosser & temporary manifestations of Prakriti such as his own vital passions of lust & ambition; the Deva, being sattwic... their Creator, Disposer & Destroyer. Thou canst break them if thou wilt and thou canst rescue them from their griefs and miseries if thou wilt, for power infinite is within thee. Thou wilt not be the Asura to injure thyself in others? Be then the Deva to help thy Self in others. Learn the sorrows of those who live near thee and remove them; thou wilt soon feel what a joy has been so long lost to thee... Church, with which has been confounded the Christian religion which the Church professed with its lips & attempted to strangle with its hands; inwardly it was the ancient struggle between Deva and Asura, sattwa & tamas. Now Religion is sattwic with a natural impulse towards light, it cannot be tamasic, it can have no dealings with the enemies of the Devas; and if something calling itself religion, ...
... founded in a non-evolving immutable mould. Three kinds of beings dwell in the hideous harmony of those worlds. The Indian terms are: Asura, Rakshasa, Pishacha. In English they may be translated: Titan, Giant, Demon. Each has his special function. The Asura is a being who comes with great powers of thought, not a beautiful and systematic turn but a formidable vehemence of it. He has also... of corpses. He is pure greed run amok. The Pishacha fouls and pollutes all things, he is the wallower in dirt and the necrophage, the inventor of obscene tortures, the mutilating maniac. The Asura is the General, the Führer of the army of darkness; the Rakshasa is the lieutenant, the henchman; the Pishacha is the private, the storm-trooper. They are no symbols or imaginary figures by... the life-drama, indispensable art-elements of the cosmic scheme. But man's love of the base and the torturesome becomes not just one part of his nature but almost his whole being when the Asura, with his attendant Rakshasa and Pishacha, so clutches human nature that it becomes one with that occult and rigid reality. Then we have an incarnation of adverse forces, the dark deities, and they ...
... first one, whom religions call Satan, the Asura of Consciousness, was converted and is still at work. The second [the Asura of Suffering] annulled himself in the Supreme. The third was the Lord of Death (that was Theon). And the fourth, the Master of the world, was the Lord of Falsehood; Richard was an emanation, a vibhuti , 1 as they say in India, of this Asura. Theon was the vibhuti of the Lord... (for he was perfectly aware of who I was): 'But after all,' he would tell me, 'since you are the eternal Mother, why have you chosen Aurobindo as Avatar? Choose me! You must choose me—me!' It was the Asura speaking through him. I would smile and not discuss it. 'That's not how it's done!' I would tell him ( laughing ). Then one day he said, 'Ah, so you don't want to.... ( gesture to the throat ) Well... occasion I substituted myself for him, became Hitler's god and advised him to attack Russia. Two days later he attacked Russia. But upon leaving the 'meeting' I encountered the other one [the real Asura] just as he was arriving! He was furious and asked me why I had done that. 'It's none of your business,' I said, 'it's what had to be done.' 'You will see,' he replied, 'I KNOW, I know you will destroy ...
... 12 About Pipru they declare: "Mentioned as possessing forts, he is called a Dāsa as well as an Asura... It is uncertain whether he was a demon, according to Roth's view, which is favoured by the use of the word Asura, or a human foe, as Ludwig, Oldenberg and Hille-brandt believe." 13 On the word "Asura" we may quote Pusalker: "It is indeed difficult to identify the Asuras with any of the ancient peoples... II, p. 355. 11. Ibid., I, p. 358. 12. Ibid., p. 262. 13. Ibid., p. 532. Page 110 nonhuman." 14 Now, the word "Asura" which strongly suggests demonhood is also associated with Varchin. 15 And the association of Pipru the Asura with all the others who are his likes casts on them too the Asuric hue. So the very individuals who are specifically named - including the son... or 'the countryside' and perhaps serving earlier as a tribal name." In answer we need only quote Pusalker's comments on those three tribal names in India's early literature, Rigvedic or other: Asura, Raksha, Piśācha. We have already cited him to the effect that it is very difficult to identify the Asuras with any ancient people and that Sten Konow thinks them to be non-human. As we have seen, ...
... and violent expression, in the asura – Asura, the mentalised vital being. The Asura or the Titan stands where consciousness descends Page 45 from the Mind into the Vital or Life – Force. He is the personification of ambition and authority and arrogance, he is the intolerant and absolute self-seeker – he is Daitya, the son of division. The Asura belongs to what we call the Higher... wholly of unmixed life impulses, appear beings that are still less luminous, less controlled, more passionate, vehement and violent in their self-regarding appetite. They are the Rakshasas. If the Asura is perverse power, the Rakshasa is insatiate hunger. All the ancient legends about a principle-and a personality – of Denial and Ignorance, of an Everlasting Nay – refer to this fact of a descending... there are beings even here that have succeeded in maintaining it as a memory or an aspiration, although in a general way the living reality of the oneness is absent. It is significant that the term asura which came to mean in classical and mythological ages a + sura, not – god, the Titan, had originally a different connotation and etymology, asu + ra, one having force or strength, and was used as a ...
... Mother summed up, "the only thing required is to abolish all limits." She loved to tell the story of "the first-born Asura, who challenged the Supreme Lord. The Asura said, 'I am as great as Thou!' The reply was, 'I wish you would become greater than I, then there will be no more Asura.' " 1. The persecution of the Bahais in Iran continues unabated to this day, in the form of denial of... taken right up to the main altar where, generally, people are not allowed to enter. And what do 1 see there? An Asura 1 - oh, not very high-ranking, a Kakshasa 2 rather- but such a monster! Hideous. So then 1 went wham! (Mother gives a slap) I expected something to 1. Asura: Titan. 2. Rakshasa: Giant, ogre, or the devourer of the world. Page 141 happen. . ... nor the story, nor about her head sticking out she wanted me to pull her out of there." These beings sense the atmosphere; but what they understand best is vital power. We can take the case of the Asura in a math (a monastery with attached temple) in Mailam, a village not far from Pondicherry, who trembled on his pedestal when Mother entered the temple's sanctum. Mother once visited this math ...
... is that man is at present the Asura Rakshasa & seeks from the buddhi the satisfaction of the heart & senses. Therefore this particular nodus is so hard to unloose; because it is always this Asura Rakshasa who has to be liberated & fulfilled & the difficulty cannot be solved by casting him out & rising entirely into a higher principle. The Devasura variety of the Asura Rakshasa has to be established... desire as Page 400 it acquires the Mahadbhav; may I taste all (fruits & enjoyments) throughout all the waters of being. This sortilege gives full sanction to the ideal of the liberated Asura Rakshasa. 2) मूल्यं सार्धो रूप्यकः ie the value of the siddhi of knowledge is now the full faculty of jnana & half the fullness (8 a[nna]s) of trikaldrishti. This is an exact description of the ordinary... man but as a boy. Symbolic of the process of conversion from the Asuro-Rakshasic mind to the divine balabhava by the embrace of Kali. The visitation of Kali seems to be intended to save him from his Asura environment now turned hostile to him as to Prahlada. Qy. [Query] Was it in this way that the legends of the Puranas were formed? Jyotirmay Images. 2) Image of the Pashu-raid. A woman more mature ...
... God and delivers and harmonises. Thus the old legend tells us that the Deva and the Asura laboured together to churn the ocean of life for the supreme draught of immortality, but, once it had been won, Vishnu kept it for the God and defrauded the fiercer and more violent worker. And this seems unjust; for the Asura has the heavier and less grateful portion of the burden. He begins and leads; he goes... within may confront us either with the clear, joyous and radiant countenance of the God or the stern convulsed visage of the Titan. Nietzsche hymned the Olympian but presented him with the aspect of the Asura. His hostile preoccupation with the Christ-idea of the crucified God and its consequences was perhaps responsible for this distortion, as much as his subjection to the imperfect ideas of the Greeks... out of the unavoidable line of the evolution can that emerge in the bosom of a humanity long tested, ripened and purified by the fire of egoistic and altruistic suffering. God and Titan, Deva and Asura, are indeed close kin in their differences; nor could either have been spared in the evolution. Yet do they inhabit opposite poles of a common existence and common nature. The one descends from the ...
... vehemence, subtle, dominating, a sublimation at once of the mental and vital ego, is the type of the Asura. But earth has had enough of this kind in her past and its repetition can only prolong the old lines; she can get no true profit for her future, no power of self-exceeding, from the Titan, the Asura: even a great or supernormal power in it could only carry her on larger circles of her old orbit.... a return to barbaric strength and ruthlessness and force: but this would be no evolution, it would be a reversion to an old strenuous barbarism. Or it might signify the emergence of the Rakshasa or Asura out of a tense effort of humanity to surpass and transcend itself, but in the wrong direction. A violent and turbulent exaggerated vital ego satisfying itself with a supreme tyrannous or anarchic strength... fronts, day and night Sri Aurobindo was in the thick of the battle against Nazism. And Mother, too. As she said in the Agenda: During the last war [World War II] I had some dealings with him [the Asura of Falsehood, who called himself The Lord of Nations'] again, but not through Richard—directly. The being who used to appear to Hitler was the Lord of Nations. An incredible story!... And I knew when ...
... game. Man by actual nature is asuric: it is through aspiration that he is trying to be godly but it seems he is now out of breath with his aspiration and has fallen back on his normal nature of the Asura.¹ Man enshrines in him the individualised Godhead, the personal Divine: the possibility of the incarnation of the Divine lies in him alone. Hence the struggle between Gods and Asuras for the possession... Then only, consequent on the self-annihilation of the ¹ Sri Aurobindo in one of his private notes discloses that most of his disciples were Asuras, the bigger the disciple the greater the Asura. Perhaps they, impelled by a higher Call, came of themselves in order to surrender and be converted to the new life. It may be that that urge wore off in the end and had to be postponed for its fulfilment... anityam asukham lokam imam prapya bhajasva mam. ...mamekam saranam vraja aham tva sarvapapebhyo moksayiviimi mil suca.¹ (2) A god is a single undivided being, even as an Asura is a single undivided being. But man is a divided dual being; on one side he is a soul, on the other he is predominantly a body complex. By his soul he is akin to the gods, by his external being he ...
... Some fires were extinguished while some could not be blown out. This Asura turned his ferocious gaze all around and looked horrible. At this time, the atmosphere became very gloomy and disturbed. But none of the persons stirred from their places, not even our little children; they all continued their meditation. The Asura was feasting his eyes on the tiny creatures and was evidently very happy... Visions of Champaklal Visions of Champaklal Conquest of the Asura on Mahasamadhi Day 1979-12-09 It was on 9th December 1979, one of our unique, elevating and auspicious days. I saw the Samadhi courtyard a little bigger than what it is at present. The Rosary House (the building on the southern side of the Samadhi) was not there. I remember the Mother... were rising up. Some mounted very high—each one had a different height. This also was a marvellous sight to see. All of a sudden, I saw in the middle of the Samadhi courtyard, in space, a very tall Asura. His colour was brown but slowly he began to change his colour which became very dark and turned into black like coal tar. It was shining. His eyeballs were big and round and frightful. His very long ...
... Naturally! Then, when the Divine fights the Asura, what does the Divine in the Asura do? He goes back into the Divine. But you know the story? He is re-absorbed by the Divine, as in the Ramayana; that story is quite true in this sense. If the Divine were to withdraw from the Asura, the Asura would dissolve, wouldn't he?—the Divine who is in the Asura? I know people who have rejected their... the highest terrestrial force manifests. As for taking a human body for conversion, that indeed is quite... the answer is quite simple. It is because in man there is a psychic being and there is no Asura who can eternally resist the influence of the psychic being, even were he to refuse as much as he could to surrender and bind himself closely. That's exactly the contradiction of their existence. ...
... greater devil — or thunderstroke of God. How did Hitler come to meet a greater devil? What made him commit this colossal blunder? We human beings are no match for an Asura. Only an Asura can "tear the guts out of another Asura". In one other talks, the Mother was asked, "If Russia had been on Hitler's side, would things have been better?" She replied, "Oh, no! Then there would have been no hope... emphatically and clearly that all who by their thoughts and wishes are supporting and calling for the victory of the Nazis are by that very fact collaborating with the Asura against the Divine and helping to bring about the victory of the Asura." Here I may quote a fellow-sadhak's report on the Mother's pro-Allies attitude: "P reported to the Mother my reactions to Sri Aurobindo's recent contribution... Divine Work to be done, for the spiritual Truth for which we stand to establish itself on the earth. Those who fight for this cause are fighting for the Divine and against the threatened reign of the Asura." In a talk in 1940, Sri Aurobindo said: "There are forces which are trying to destroy the British and their empire — forces above and here in this world, I mean inner forces. I myself had wished ...
... extreme and violent expression, in the asura— Asura, the mentalised vital being. The Asura or the Titan stands where consciousness descends Page 44 from the Mind into the Vital or Life-Force. He is the personification of ambition and authority and arrogance, he is the intolerant and absolute self-seeker—he is Daitya, the son of division. The Asura belongs to what we call the Higher... wholly of unmixed life impulses, appear beings that are still less luminous, less controlled, more passionate, vehement and. violent in their self-regarding appetite. They are the Rakshasas. If the Asura is perverse power, the Rakshasa is insatiate hunger. All the ancient legends about a principle—and a personality —of Denial and Ignorance, of an Everlasting Nay—refer to this fact of a descending... there are beings even here that have succeeded in maintaining it as a memory or an aspiration, although in a general way the living reality of the oneness is absent. It is significant that the term asura which came to mean in classical and mythological ages a + sura, not-god, the Titan, had originally a different connotation and etymology, asu + ra, one having force or strength, and was used ...
... as its extreme and violent expression, in the Asura —Asura, the mentalised vital being. The Asura or the Titan stands where consciousness descends from the Mind into the Vital or Life-Force. He is the personification of ambition and authority and arrogance, he is the intolerant and absolute self-seeker—he is Daitya, the son of division. The Asura belongs to what we call the Higher Vital; but... wholly of unmixed life impulses, appear beings that are still less luminous, less controlled, more passionate, vehement and violent in their self-regarding appetite. They are the Rakshasas. If the Asura is perverse power, the Rakshasa is insatiate hunger. All the ancient legends about a principle— and a personality—of Denial and Ignorance, of an Everlasting Nay—refer to this fact of a descending... there are beings even here that have succeeded in maintaining it as a memory or an aspiration, although in a general way the living reality of the oneness is absent. It is significant that the term asura which came to mean in classical and mythological ages a+sura, not-god, the Titan, had orginally a different connotation and etymology, asu+ra, one having force or strength, and was used as a general ...
... looking at us: he had never seen that. Now, he is off again, alone. He is all alone and despoiled. The Ashram is the last refuge of the Asura. Nava is only a rakshasa and protects us, in fact, from the direct intervention of the Page 260 Asura. 77 Should the Ashram begin to infiltrate Auroville by “opening its arms,” it would be a disaster and a danger far worse than this rakshasa... have alerted Chancel and also Edgar Faure. Will they hear? Can you inform Robert Laffont? He is a good-hearted man, whom I love very much. August 25, 1977 (Note written by Satprem) The Asura is committing desperate acts because he knows that he is lost. These are his last bursts of energy. * (Letter to Edgar Faure) Page 249 Mr President, I took the liberty of... anymore. I am no longer able to answer, it strangles me — I’d rather put my head on the block. And the atmosphere is swarming with all that, it is like a perpetual tribunal: let’s see, are you not the Asura? Seriously. And like an idiot, I wrote to all these people, so as to provide them with all the weapons against me. I trusted, I trusted everything and everyone, like a complete cretin. If I add up ...
... It is not only pro-Ally sympathy but sympathy for humanity that they are jeering at. 27 On 20 May 1940, Sri Aurobindo said that Hitler was actually possessed by the Asura, or perhaps was an incarnation of the Asura: "The Vital World has descended upon the physical. That is why the intellectuals are getting perplexed at the destruction of their civilisation, of all the values they had made... emphatically and clearly that all who by their thoughts and wishes are supporting and calling for the victory of the Nazis are by that very fact collaborating with the Asura against the Divine and helping to bring about the victory of the Asura. Already on 19 September 1940, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had made a contribution to the Viceroy's War Purposes Fund, and jointly signed a letter to... Aurobindo said simply: You may tell him that God's Front is the Spiritual front, which is still lagging behind. Hitler's Germany is not God's Front. It is the Asuric Front, through which the Asura aims at world-domination. It is the descent of the Asuric world upon the human to establish its own power on the earth. 28 Presently the "epic of Dunkirk" was enacted, the Germans reached ...
... That is where, therefore, the disease of the earth must be focused. It is in the order of things that the last Asura should come and die at the feet of the Mother. But India, supposed to embody the forces of truth, is herself prey to the same Falsehood as is the rest of the earth. The Asura is also Page 187 in India, perhaps more dangerous there as it is masked behind a veil of false truth... a sort of very clear intuition that the conflict, if there is to be one, that is to decide the fate of civilization, can only be played out in India ... Yes. Because this is where the last Asura [demon] must symbolically come and die. It isn't being played out anywhere else. 2 ( Mother remains silent ) ( A month later, a disciple sent Mother the following letter, in English,... grain of truth that time will reveal, and above all because it is obviously influenced by Mother's vision. Thus it is not so much an exercise in prediction as food for thought. ) THE END OF THE ASURA If, as Sri Aurobindo announced, the supramental Power is to enter a realizing phase in 1967 and if, as Mother said, the fate of the present civilization is to be settled in 1967, it is clear that ...
... Supermind? Sri Aurobindo : Oh yes. There are Asuric forces that are very calm. Do you think that the Asura is a fool ? Sometimes, Tapasya is his chief weapon. Hiranya Kashipu and Ravana were great Tapaswis. Doing good to humanity is one of the favourite weapons of the Asura. Of course, he seeks to do it in his own Asuric way. The Asuri Maya can take up any garb : even the pursuit of... themselves, but they produce an influence by the power you put into them. In the case of incense, by the power of Agni a psychic influence is produced which these vital beings do not like, but a powerful Asura would not be influenced by sound. 11-6-1926 On Einstein's Theory : Disciple : According to Einstein's theory, although there is a formed independent Reality, it is quite... that man has inherited from the animal ? Sri Aurobindo: Man has been abusing the animal for nothing. The infra-rational is not merely the animal, – the Pashu,-it includes the Rakshasa and the Asura, the Titan. Man has been always speaking of the animal in a superior way. But take for instance, the dog. Faithfulness and love are quite universal among dogs. But even when those qualities are found ...
... childhood." However, when Mirra read Anatole France she was also greatly interested, because she was struck by the similarity between his view and Théon's idea on the Jewish-Christian God. "He was an Asura who wanted to be the 'one and only God,' that's why he became the most Page 180 terrible despot imaginable," Mother said quoting Theon. "That's what Anatole France said too. I now... earth for any length of time?" "No, never." "Never?" "He stopped at the subtle physical —he himself refused to go any further." She now disclosed his identity. "It was Satan, the Asura of Light, who, in cutting himself off from the Supreme, fell into Unconsciousness and Darkness —I have told the story many times. But anyway, when I was with Theon, I called that Being up and asked... news about these four great Asuras. As always, her explanation to Satprem was fuller than her hint to the children some years before. "The first one," she said, "whom religions call Satan, the Asura of Consciousness, was converted and has worked —is still working. The second" —Love and Ananda — "annulled himself in the Supreme." That leaves two. In occultism one of them is designated as the ...
... forth in the place of darkness, beauty in the place of ugliness, goodness instead of evil, that power man possesses, the Asura does not. Therefore it is man who will do that work, it is he who will change, it is he who will transform his earth and it is he who will compel the Asura to flee into other worlds or to dissolve. After that, all will be quiet. There you are. Any questions? You have said... before...." For one that is destroyed, there are always ten ready to come in. That's how it is, it is a strange task! You know the story of Durga, don't you? Durga who every year has to destroy her asura; and always she is compelled to Page 96 begin again. It goes on in this way till the end of the reign allotted to the titans. When they will be banished from this world, it will not be thus... not the least intention to change! Even now, among the beings who are concerned with the earth, the asuric beings, the greatest of the asuras who is still busy with the earth at present, who is the asura of falsehood and calls himself the "Lord of the Nations"—he has taken a beautiful name, he is Lord of the Nations—it is he, wherever there is something going wrong, you may be sure it is he or a re ...
... they are spoken of in the Hindu scriptures as the former or earlier gods; these can be converted and their conversion is indeed necessary for the ultimate purposes of the universe. But the ordinary Asura is not of this character, is not an evolutionary but a typal being and represents a fixed principle of the creation which does not evolve or change and is not intended to do so. These Asuras, as also... and oppose the divine intention and the evolutionary purpose in the human being; they don't change the purpose in them for which they exist which is evil, but have to be destroyed like the evil. The Asura has no soul, no psychic being which has to evolve to a higher state; he has only an ego and usually a very powerful ego; he has a mind, sometimes even a highly intellectualised mind; but the basis of... of Ignorance, for they have only to persuade people to follow the established bent of their lower nature, while the Divine calls always for a change of nature. It is not to be wondered at that the Asura has an easier task and more momentary success in his combinations. But that temporary success does not bind the future. It is the movements of the lower nature that get purified. The Asuras ...
... vehemence, subtle, dominating, a sublimation at once of the mental and vital ego, is the type of the Asura. But earth has had enough of this kind in her past and its repetition can only prolong the old lines; she can get no true profit for her future, no power of self-exceeding, from the Titan, the Asura: even a great or supernormal power in it could only carry her on larger circles of her old orbit.... vital force and desire in us must grow into a form of that godhead before our life can be divine in that inferior sense, the life of the infraspiritual superman, mental demi-god or vital Titan, Deva or Asura. This inner life once created, to convert our whole surface being, our thought, feeling, action in the world, into a perfect power of that inner life, must be our other preoccupation. Only if we live... a return to barbaric strength and ruthlessness and force: but this would be no evolution, it would be a reversion to an old strenuous barbarism. Or it might signify the emergence of the Rakshasa or Asura out of a tense effort of humanity to surpass and transcend itself, but in the wrong direction. A violent and turbulent exaggerated vital ego satisfying itself with a supreme tyrannous or anarchic strength ...
... simply. Then, naturally, Light became darkness, Life became death, Bliss became suffering and Truth became falsehood. And these are the four great Asuras: the Asura of Inconscience, the Asura of Falsehood, the Asura of Suffering and the Asura of Death. Once this had occurred, the divine Consciousness turned towards the Supreme and said ( Mother laughs ): 'Well, here's what has happened. What's to ...
... amplified. Exponents of evil are being exalted as heroes. Yesterday is long ago, today is a spasm of self-gratification, tomorrow is for afterwards. The Asura of Falsehood, alias the Lord of Nations, knows that his hour has struck. ‘The Asura is unleashing all his fury, just like somebody who expects that he will disappear.’ 8 He has prepared an ideal terrain for himself: colossal problems caused... in recent times we owe the continuation of our world to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the only Power that was able to counteract the human and material instruments of the destructive designs of the Asura. The miracle is not for tomorrow: it is happening NOW . Those who have eyes can see it, those who have ears can hear it. Those who have a living soul can experience it. We have already witnessed... is active everywhere. Sri Aurobindo’s fifth indication was ‘the rise of persons who wield tremendous vital influence over large numbers of people,’ the emissaries, directly or indirectly, of the Asura of Falsehood. When Sri Aurobindo said this, the world had not yet seen the hordes of khaki shirts and black shirts parading before their Leader (Führer, Duce, Caudillo, Netaji), with the symbols of ...
... said: 'DerMensch ist Etwas das ueberwunden werden soll. '* But as Sri Aurobindo points out, this ultimate self-transcendence cannot be achieved if man unwarily sides with the power-addict Demon (Asura) in himself to the exclusion of the love-inebriate God — so sings Narad, the protagonist of Divine Aspiration: __________________________ * Among the Great (American Edition), p. 221 where... him out of his mortality. In the Gita we find a description of the salient features of the Asura's character. But Sri Aurobindo's description gives us a much fuller view (because the modem Asura, even as the modem human, has become a much more complex and sophisticated being): A monopolist of the world-energy, He dominates the life of common men, His pain and others' pain... conscious he is of being strong; and in that sense of strength lies his whole satisfaction in life." Nietzsche's Overman is synonymous with Russell's Dictator, Sri Aurobindo's Titan and Sri Krishna's Asura. In other words, though each of these has a different outlook on the world, they all diagnose the same type of evil and its dreadful tendency. Studying this type, we realise that the time-old lust ...
... the shift of sense in the Vedic word Asura came, as you know, in the later hymns. In the earlier ones, the word is not the privative of "sura": it comes from the root as implying "force". The Gods in their aspect of power rather than of light or knowledge were Asuras rather than Dev'as. The supreme divinity, the One who manifests as the Many, is both Asura and Deva. There is an interesting mixture... human fathers but also as heavenly seers, sons of the Gods, sons of heaven and heroes or powers of the Asura, the mighty Lord, devas putraso asurasva virah (III..53.7). Zoroastrianism has throughout a demonic meaning for Deva and a deitic significance for Page 333 Ahura (=Asura). But all the rest of the Vedic cult continues in it and should be susceptible of elucidation if one applies ...
... Aurobindo and the Mother discerned a phenomenon not merely of possession but of incarnation, a vital being born in a human form and not just employing that form as its medium — and here was the Asura-aspect. The Asura is an all-gripping "Titan" who is even more destructive than a "Giant" but with a cold cunning intelligence which conceals its subversive policy under a mask of high ideals like economic... obsessed with a defiling and mutilating mania: he is utter foulness and ugliness personified. The Pisacha Page 167 always puts himself slavishly at the service of the Rakshasa and Asura. The characteristic mark of all these denizens of the vital plane is that the force they express is "typal" and not, like the earth's, "evolutionary". The sign of a typal force is a drive... heinous devilry against himself had the Mother's occult goad behind it? The Mother knew exactly what Vital Being was egging Hitler on. She has dubbed him "The Lord of Falsehood", a Rakshasa and Asura in one, as it were, who arrogates to himself the title: "The Lord of the Nations." Finding Hitler going from strength to strength, she resolved to imitate the special form in which the Lord of Falsehood ...
... of superman really signifies what is contained in the Indian concepts of the Rakshasa or Asura. The Rakshasa and the Asura symbolize a tense effort of humanity to surpass and transcend itself, but in the wrong direction. In India, a specific distinction is made between the Rakshasa and the Asura. The., Rakshasa is centred in the violence and turbulence of the exaggerated vital ego satisfying... satisfying itself with the supreme tyrannical or anarchic strength of self-fulfilment; he is the giant, the ogre or devourer of the world. In the Asura, we find a mighty exhibition of an overpowering force, a self-possessed, self-held, even, it may be, an ascetically self-restrained mind-capacity and life power; he is strong, calm or cold or formidable in collected vehemence, subtle, dominating; he ...
... way. The Asura or the anti-divine he does not kill with one blow nor even with many blows of his thunderbolt or burn away with his red wrath. The image of Zeus or Jehovah is a human figuration: it depicts the human way of dealing with one's enemies. The Divine deals with the undivine in the divine way, Page 76 for the undivine too is not something outside the Divine. The Asura also has... takes it away so that it can no longer be appropriated and deformed by the Asura who now losing the secret support of his truth automatically crumbles to pieces as mere husk and chaff. If there is something more than the merely human in the image of Durga, the Goddess transfixing her lance right into the heart of the Asura may be taken as indicative of this occult truth. There is then this singular ...
... in the same way. The Asura or the anti-divine he does not kill with one blow nor even with many blows of his thunderbolt or burn away with his red wrath. The image of Zeus or Jehovah is a human figuration: it depicts the human way of dealing with one's enemies. The Divine deals with the undivine in the divine way, for the undivine too is not something outside the Divine. The Asura also ha<; his truth... takes it away so that it can no longer be appropriated and deformed by the Asura who now losing the secret support of his truth automatically crumbles to pieces as mere husk and chaff. If there is something more than the merely human in the image of Durga, the Goddess transfixing her lance right into the heart of the Asura may be taken as indicative of this occult truth. There is then this singular ...
... them for a short while with complete consternation, the faithful in both blocs dapperly toed the party line again. Sri Aurobindo will observe that “Hitler is getting remarkable inspiration from his Asura. He doesn’t go by reason but only by the voice. He considers all possibilities and when he fixes on something he goes ahead. Only, he did not foresee the British and French intervention on behalf of... about England’s probable reaction. Ribbentrop answered quietly: ‘I assume that the French will hand in a similar ultimatum within the hour’.” 1115 “Yes, he is getting remarkable guidance from his Asura”, said Sri Aurobindo on another occasion. “Sometimes the Asuras have an extraordinary foresight that comes true with perfect precision both on the vital and subtle-vital planes, just like that which... invasion of France Sri Aurobindo had already said in passing: “England is quite unreliable under her present leadership” 1129, and that he and the Mother were looking for a suitable person. If the Asura had his instrument in one camp, the White Forces needed theirs in the opposite camp once their decision had been taken to actively engage in the battle. It is now mostly forgotten what a chancy affair ...
... Civilization and also shows how utterly wrong Parpola is in setting in opposition the Asura and the Deva, for in the Rigveda the Deva does not cease to be the Asura, except in some very late compositions. Sethna's acute perception points out basic errors in Parpola's data such as Indra never being referred to as Asura except in the late Book Ten. Page 337 Sethna finds... between Panini and Patanjali, but closer to the former on account of the reference to the prevalence of worship of the Nasatya and the bracketing of an evil spirit Krishna with Kamsa recalling the asura Krishna of the Veda, which indicates a period prior to that of the Vasudeva cult recorded by Megasthenes. On this basis, the original Arthashastra is assigned by Sethna to c. 500 B.C., having ...
... feelings, false actions and persuading people that they are right is the chief instrument of the Asura and its prevalence and success a sign of the growth of darkness on the earth. Fortunately the intensity of the peril is over, however long the struggle may still last. Other perils and manoeuvres of the Asura may follow afterwards; so it is good to discourage firmly the tendency so that it may not do... Divine Work to be done, for the spiritual Truth for which we stand to establish itself on the earth. Those who fight for this cause are fighting for the Divine and against the threatened reign of the Asura. 2 29 July 1942 I just received a long letter from Krishnaprem. He evidently wants to qualify his statement about violence. For myself I have no doubt as you who know have said so. Only one... inventions and falsehoods are most improper in the mouth of a sadhaka and the habit must be a great obstacle to any progress. But here the wish behind, whether they are conscious of it or not, is that the Asura shall prevail against the Divine. That means a most dangerous giving of oneself to the Falsehood that is seeking to prolong its hold on the world and establish definitely the reign of Evil over the ...
... subtle, dominating, a sublimation at once of the mental and vital ego, is the type of the Asura. But the earth has had enough of this kind in her past and its repetition can only prolong the old lines; she can get no true profit for her future, no power of Page 87 self-exceeding, from the Titan, the Asura: even a great or supernormal power in it could only carry her on larger circles of her... Rakshasic character. In recent times, Nietzsche has spoken of supermanhood, but when we examine the stuff and the qualities that characterize his idea of supermanhood, one feels in it the marks of the Asura or the Rakshasa. And Sri Aurobindo takes a special care to Page 86 distinguish the Nietzschean idea of supermanhood from his own idea of the divine supermanhood. Sri Aurobindo, while explaining... beast, a return to barbaric strength and ruthlessness and force: but this would be no evolution, it would be a reversion to an old strenuous barbarism. Or might signify the emergence of the Rakshasa or Asura out of a tense effort of humanity to surpass and transcend itself, but in the wrong direction. A violent and turbulent exaggerated vital ego satisfying itself with a supreme tyrannous or anarchic strength ...
... is to be taken into consideration. For in the supreme and ultimate view the world or creation is not divided between God and Asura : the Asura cannot be outside God's infinity, he is there because permitted by him, indeed forms part of him and serves the divine purpose. Asura represents the hard dark passage through which the ignorant human soul cuts out its forward march: it is the crucible in which... they are in the domain of the hostiles and therefore need special protection. The Divine extends that protection, but under conditions – for his rule in the material field is not yet absolute. The Asura too extends his protection to his agents, and his protection appears sometimes, if not often, more effective; for the present world is under his domination and all forces and beings obey him; God ...
... is asuric: it is Page 51 through aspiration that he is trying to be godly, but it seems he is now out of breath with his aspiration and has fallen back on his normal nature of the Asura. Man enshrines in himself the individualised Godhead, the personal Divine: the possibility of the incarnation of the Divine lies in him alone. Hence the struggle between the Gods and the Asuras... bhajasva m ā u. ... m ā mekam ś aranam vraja aham tv ā sanvap ā pebhyo mok ṣ ayi ṣ y ā mi m ā ś ucah. Gita 9.33; 18.66 2 A god is a single undivided being, even as an Asura is a single undivided being. But man is a divided dual being; on one side he is a soul, on the other he is predominantly a body complex. By his soul he is akin to the Gods, by his external being he... is an "emergence" out of earth, a being of evolution; he is also an "immergence", a descent into earth from heaven: one part in him is godly, the other asuric. As the Divine he is Brahman, as the Asura, Aham. So man occupies a central place in the scheme of the universe. Above him are stationed the Gods in the region of the higher mind and the heart; below him upon the earth rule the Asuras ...
... for the early end of the War unleashed by the Asura. VII While there was all this solemn resolve to mobilise the flowers of Light against the forces of Darkness, the outer life of the Ashram was not seriously affected by the constraints and anxieties of the War. The Yoga was in its dynamic stage of giving a relentless fight to the Asura, the Lord of Falsehood, the Lord of the Nations... with that of the Allies and he is working night and day for it. ... If Hitler or Stalin wins, spirituality is doomed. 14 On 20 May, Sri Aurobindo said that Hitler was really possessed by the Asura: Human beings by themselves are no match for the Asuras .... Here in Hitler's case it is not an influence but a possession, even perhaps an incarnation. The case of Stalin is similar. The Vital... well as in the inspiration they receive so ignorantly, they would be invincible because the divine forces themselves are invincible. It is the mixture in the outward expression that gives to the Asura the right to defeat them. To be a successful instrument for the Asuric forces is easy, because they take all the movements of your lower nature and make use of them, so that you have no spiritual ...
... the universe. Yet has she more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn... tempestuous action; she is there for swiftness, for the immediately effective process, the rapid and direct stroke, the frontal assault that carries everything before it. Terrible is her face to the Asura, dangerous and ruthless her mood against the haters of the Divine; for she is the Warrior of the Worlds who never shrinks from the battle. Intolerant of imperfection, she deals roughly with all in man... imprisoned and suffering physical nature. There are conditions that have been laid down by a Supreme Will, there are many tangled knots that have to be loosened and cannot be cut abruptly asunder. The Asura and Rakshasa hold this evolving earthly nature and have to be met and conquered on their own terms in their own long-conquered fief and province; the human in us has to be led and prepared to transcend ...
... method. The Divine Force and the Adverse Force Do you not know the story of the Elephant Brahman? All is Brahman, but in action you have to treat the elephant as the Elephant Brahman and the Asura as the Asura Brahman and neither as merely Brahman pure and simple. One has either to avoid the Rakshasa or overcome him; otherwise the Rakshasa may eat up the man, all Brahman though both be. The Brahman... Rakshasa is not prudent, as the Rakshasa is impervious to that kind of thing—he will take advantage of it to farther his own purpose. Your description of the "Golden One" was the description of an Asura—how can that be the Divine?—"efficiently cruel" etc. etc. And, taken in that way, submission to such a Power so conceived would justify a yielding to anything coming with sufficient force from the lower ...
... imagining more than seeing.... You're tiring your eyes, leave it. ( Mother reads on: ) "...is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace...." All this passage. I am sorry, my eyes have... has she more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Page 21 Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha 6 and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or... × Cent. Ed., XXV. 26 ff . × Asura, Rakshasa : demons of the mental and vital planes; Pisacha : depraved beings. ...
... very much drawn to the Ashram.” The War The war began and Sri Aurobindo and the Mother took a keen interest in it. “All wars”, said Sri Aurobindo, “are begun by the asura.” The Second World War was an effort by the asura to destroy the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother for the earth’s evolution toward the Supramental Light. Sri Aurobindo began to work occultly behind the scenes for the war... he must do it. He wanted his children to work for the war effort. Sri Aurobindo told him this was not a war between the nations and people but a war between the Divine Forces and the forces of the asura. Udar took his family out of Pondicherry and worked for the government successfully for one year and was happy in New Delhi and so was Mona. Little Gauri, however, at three years of age very much missed ...
... (Illumined Mind), pink (Psychic Love), golden (Light of Divine Truth). The Asura represents the evil forces that are at work even in the premises of the Ashram; they even want to destroy the samadhi and the Symbolic Yajnavedi (sacrificial fire). Significantly, none of the persons in meditation is disturbed by the Asura. He is finally vanquished by the descent of brilliant, white light (The Mother's... Visions of Champaklal Visions of Champaklal Conquest of the Asura on Mahasamadhi Day 1979-12-09 This is a vision of how Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are protecting everyone against evil forces. The Service Tree over the Samadhi is not ordinary, it does not cover only the Samadhi, but also the whole universe. It might represent here the transformed ...
... of the great Asura—he's not that. He is less dangerous than that. Not like Hitler—who knew, of course. Hitler asserted that Falsehood should govern the world and that it was governing it. And he was very conscious of being the instrument Page 280 of the Asura who had himself called "the Lord of Nations," who is precisely the present, current representation of the Asura of Falsehood (the ...
... Durga Satyendra showed a picture of Durga to Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo said, “Durga and the Asura both look very happy and pleased. The Asura is looking at the whole affair happily. A very living image, very spirited. It is full of life; especially the lion biting the hand of the Asura is very living and also the posture of the Goddess. That was one quality about the Indian sculptors: they ...
... oust this Asura, as you say, out of Suradham. But then this whole world is full of it—why pick out one unfortunate ? Commence by turning out my brother-in-law Shankar first out of his corporeal tabernacle—that would be a better thing to start with, what ? For do you know my sister writes he has become "a devotee”, thanks to this Bharati Maharaja Saint! It looks very much like an Asura in the saintly... from Prithwisingh, earnest money for the sale of the house to the Brahmana Sabha. The sale is dependent on vacating by December 12 th . I shall have to send along a terrific whiff of power to get the Asura out of Suradham; the Brahman Sabha is trying to wheedle him out of it and think he might listen because he is himself a Brahmin— a Banerji, what!! I suspect it will take much more than a Brahmanic ...
... vehemence, subtle, dominating, a sublimation at once of the mental and vital ego, is the type of the Asura. But earth has had enough of this kind in her past and its repetition can only prolong the old lines; she can get no true profit for her future, no power of self-exceeding, from the Titan, the Asura: even a great or supernormal power in it could only carry her on larger circles of her old orbit.... a return to barbaric strength and ruthlessness and force: but this would be no evolution, it would be a reversion to an old strenuous barbarism. Or it might signify the emergence of the Rakshasa or Asura out of a tense effort of humanity to surpass and transcend itself, but in the wrong direction. A violent and turbulent exaggerated vital ego satisfying itself with a supreme tyrannous or anarchic strength ...
... evolve, and an aeon he may rule; but at last he will be superceded by the Asura, and he too will one day be surpassed by another, by greater Man who will see God in himself and not himself in God, and who will see in existence more than life and body - who will see in it the dimensions of mind and Spirit as well. The Rakshasa, the Asura, and the mental man - these would be the necessary steps on the steep... The Rakshasas is another daring exercise in poetic speculation. The prefatory note explains that the Rakshasa is the "violent kinetic ego" that displaces the animal soul, and antecedent to the Asura who is the "controlled and intellectualised but unregenerated Ego". But every type and level of consciousness, however crude or imperfect it may be, nevertheless "sees the Divine in its own image". ...
... emphatically and clearly that all who by their thoughts and wishes are supporting and calling for the victory of the Nazis are by that very fact collaborating with the Asura against the Divine and helping to bring about the victory of the Asura. . .. 4 She wrote again, on 25 May, with a sense of extreme urgency: The world situation is critical today. India's fate too is hanging in the balance... have been averted. And so Sri Aurobindo concluded his letter with the forthright declaration: Those who fight for this cause are fighting for the Divine and against the threatened reign of the Asura. 17 VII While the War raged with undiminished fury on the several fronts notably on the Russian, where the Germans were advancing towards the Caucasus - Sri Aurobindo's seventieth ...
... own thoughts and has the same national cast of mind, nature & conscience. His ideals will therefore be a corrective not only to our own faults but to the dangers of that attractive but unwholesome Asura civilisation which has invaded us, especially its morbid animalism and its neurotic tendency to abandon itself to its own desires. But this does not say all. Vyasa too beyond the essential universality... epically the human divine and the human anarchic so as to bring idealisms of the conflicting moral types into line with the daily emotions and imaginations of men. The sharp distinction between Deva & Asura is one of the three distinct & peculiar contributions to ethical thought which India has to offer. The legend of Indra & Virochana is one of its fundamental legends. Both of them came to Vrihaspati... all things were God, since nothing existed but the One. If he was the one God, so was his enemy; the very feelings of separateness and enmity were no permanent reality but transient phenomena. The Asura therefore is he who is profoundly conscious of his own separate individuality & yet would impose it on the world as the sole individuality; he is thus blown along on the hurricane of his desires & ambitions ...
... false [notions] and persuading people that they are right is the chief instrument of the Asura and its prevalence and success a sign of the growth of darkness on the earth. Fortunately the intensity of the peril is over, however long the struggle may still last. Other perils and manoeuvres of the Asura may follow afterwards; so it is good to discourage firmly the tendency so that it may not... falsehoods are most improper in the mouth of a sadhak and the habit must be a great obstacle to any progress. But here there is doubt behind, whether they are conscious of it or not, in that the Asura shall prevail against the Divine. That means a most dangerous giving of oneself to the Falsehood that is seeking to prolong its hold on the world and establish definitely the reign of Evil over the ...
... broken his right thigh. He will even install a loudspeaker connected with an outside radio in his room to hear the BBC-news directly for himself. “I have not seen any other person who has followed the Asura with such extraordinary fidelity”, he said about Hitler after his invasion of France. “He never considers possibilities. Possibilities don’t matter. This is how he goes against all the generals … All... n and he has gone ahead depending on luck … He has a most original mind because it is not his own mind.” 976 Hitler was, according to the Mother, “very conscious of being the instrument” of the asura. We read in a letter to her son André written in October 1938, after the fate of Czechoslovakia was sealed at Munich: “Speaking of recent events, you ask me whether it was ‘a dangerous bluff’ or whether... necessary to come into contact with his ‘guide’ and receive from him the inspirations which afterwards he carried out very faithfully. This being, which Hitler took for the Supreme, was quite simply an asura , the one who is called ‘the Lord of Falsehood’ in occultism, and who has proclaimed himself ‘the Lord of the Nations’. His appearance was resplendent, he could mislead anybody except those who had ...
... it while in this universe. This Nothing is merely a something beyond positive conception. Asura —the strong or mighty one, Titan; a hostile being or force of the vital mental plane, known in traditional Indian legends as the dark Titan or demon; see also Adversary. Asuric —of the nature of the Asura. Atman —Self; Spirit; the original and essential nature of Existence or Being. Augustine... have generally been given in Sri Aurobindo's own words. the Adversary —anti-divine Force that is in revolt against the Divine, against the Truth and Light, and opposed to the yoga; see also Asura . Ananda —bliss, delight, beatitude, spiritual ecstasy; the essential principle of delight: a self-delight which is the very nature of the transcendent and infinite existence. annamaya puruṣa ...
... there in quite an unusual way—a highly respected person introduced me as a 'great saint'! They led me up to the main altar where people are not usually allowed to go, and what did I see there!... An asura (oh, not a very high-ranking one, more like a rakshasa 4 ), but such a monster! Hideous.... So I went wham! ( gesture of giving a blow ) I thought something was going to happen.... But this being... They 'feel' the atmosphere. They are aware—they may not be conscious on higher planes, but they are conscious on vital planes, aware of vital power and the vital force it represents.... It's like this asura from M.: when I came in he suddenly seemed to tremble on his pedestal; then he left his idol and came to seek my alliance. But it's strange.... ( silence ) In churches, I don't know.... I haven't... is the creator and Shiva the destroyer. × Rakshasa : demon of the vital plane, as opposed to an asura, a demon of the mental world. × Math : monastery. ...
... Upanishad as a scholar who composed a hymn and as a pupil of the sage Ghora Āngirasa. Another Krishna is a rishi, the son of Viśvaka, while yet another Krishna was a 'loud-yelling' non-Aryan asura chieftain of the Jamnā region who led a 'godless legion' of ten thousand followers and committed great havoc until he was defeated and skinned by Indra. One Krishna was also a Dravidian god of youth... might leave no issue. There is evidence to suggest that he was 'a hater of the Brāhmīnic faith' who declared T will surely cause the worship of cows, through force if need be'." Very plausibly an Asura Krishna like the "loud-yelling" chieftain is the associate of Kamsa in the Arthaśāstra. 1. Ibid., p. 586. 2. Apte, loc. cit., p. 451. 3. Hindu World: An Enclyclopedic Survey of... Veda is in the paragraph in Kangle just preceding our context: "I bow to Bali, the son of Virochana, to Śambara of the hundred guiles, to Nikumbha, to Naraka, to Kumbha, to Tantukaccha, the great Asura." Śambara, who at once rivets our gaze with the power of trickery and magic attributed to him, gets from Walker 1 the note: "Śambara in the Vedas is a demon, and appears like Vritra to be a perso ...
... to the Asura. The Asura is the incarnation of conscious egotism, the will to dominate, to be the sole master and monarch; he is the self-aggrandising ‘vaulting ambition’. He does not seek to possess things for their own sake, not so much to enjoy them as to hold them as symbols of his royalty, of his personal worth and majesty. In Macbeth we have the world of the Asura-a creation ...
... sex —that have the strongest attraction for the human ego and the Asura and are most generally missed and misused by those who retain them. The seekers or keepers of wealth are more often possessed rather than its possessors; few escape entirely a certain distorting influence stamped on it by its long seizure and perversion by the Asura.”¹ We learn from the above quotation that money is a universal... Proper Use of Money Once money has been won from the hands of the vital forces whom it serves, it has to be diverted into the developing channels of the divine work. Not to the animal or the Asura in man, but to the Divine Shakti, the supreme Creative Force alone has it to be offered; for, it belongs to Her and has been created by Her for the purpose of Her work in the material world. "In your ...
... God with passionless, intelligent, blissful Will in himself; the spiritual man by identifying God with the All in whom everything abides. The first is the Rakshasa or the Asura of the lower order; the second is the Deva or the Asura of the higher order; the third is the Siddha or Siddha Purusha, the perfect being. The pure Hathayoga is the means of the fulfilment through the body. Its processes are ...
... impartiality and equality of soul—samam hi Brahma. To the type of each individual being this Universal Might adapts himself & seems to take upon himself their image. He is Haya to the Gods, Arvan to the Asura, Vajin to the Gandharvas, Aswa to men. Ye yatha mam prapadyante tans tathaiva bhajamyaham, mama vartmanuvartante manushyah Partha sarvashah. In reality, they are made in his image, not He in theirs... constantly indicates. We can now discover the true force of Arvan,—it is the strong one in command, it is the stallion, or the bull, i.e. master of the herd, the leader, master or fighter. The word Asura also means the strong or mighty one. The Gandharvas are cited here briefly, so as to suit the rapidity of the passage, as the type of a particular class of beings, Gandharvas, Yakshas, Kinnaras ...
... Page 506 × The cosmic order comes into question, because the triumph of the Asura in humanity means to that extent the triumph of the Asura in the balance of the world-forces. × dhṛti. ...
... "The evil-doers attain not to me," says the Purushottama, "souls bewildered, low in the human scale; for their knowledge is reft away from them by Maya and they resort to the nature of being of the Asura." This bewilderment is a befooling of the soul in Nature by the deceptive ego. The evil-doer cannot attain to the Supreme because he is for ever trying to satisfy the idol ego on the lowest scale of... of ego and desire and serves only ego and desire. To serve ego and desire without aspiration Page 280 to a higher nature and a higher law is to have the mind and the temperament of the Asura. A first necessary step upward is to aspire to a higher nature and a higher law, to obey a better rule than the rule of desire, to perceive and worship a nobler godhead than the ego or than any magnified ...
... Asuras, but there are all those who have come out of them, and who are beings of an inferior kind. An Asura is generally a conscious being and he knows he has an end. He knows that the attitude he has taken up in the universe is bound to destroy him after a certain time. Naturally, the time of an Asura is extremely long if we compare it with the lifetime of man. But still, he knows there is an end, because ...
... sex—that have the strongest attraction for the human ego and the Asura and are most generally misheld and misused by those who retain them. The seekers or keepers of wealth are more often possessed rather than its possessors; few escape entirely a certain distorting influence stamped on it by its long seizure and perversion by the Asura. For this reason most spiritual disciplines insist on a complete ...
... other. Whereas you are always with me, so how can there be any quarrel with you? I recognise, of course, my arrogance, egoism and pride in this matter. If you listen to the inspirations of the Asura against the Mother that brings a quarrel with me—just as if you did anything against me, it will land you in a quarrel with her. It is precisely Page 110 this arrogance, egoism and pride... If all that you write against us is correct, there is only one logical conclusion possible that the Mother and myself are a queer combination of impotent imbecile and selfish mean-minded oppressive Asura. Perhaps we are, though I am not yet persuaded to recognise myself or the Mother in the picture. But why do you want to be docile and devoted to such people? The other conclusion to be gathered from ...
... it must be like that. But in my small consciousness, I find it astounding that such a ridiculous, insignificant being as this piddling woman could have had such power! But there was a great Asura behind her! 1 There were the adverse forces behind. The woman herself was nothing, but she was very receptive to those forces. And he didn't want to break her? Oh, he didn't want to. He... never said anything. ( silence ) The small human individualities act as instruments, that's nothing. But by yielding (because in a way he yielded), did he win a greater victory over that Asura? Oh, yes, infinitely greater. That's what eludes me. Infinitely greater. And he didn't leave the work, you understand; he has never left me, never left the work. The amount of supramental ...
... determine his action. The Buddhi is for thought and the Chitta for emotion. Neither of them have anything to do with action in the shuddha state. The intellectual Asura determines his actions by his reason or his ideal, the emotional Asura by his feelings. But the shuddha determines them by the higher inspiration proceeding from the divine existence in the Vijnana. That is what people often call the ...
... unrolling series of vicissitudes of change and new formation and is evolutionary in its process. Page 218 The typal worlds do not change. In his own world a god is always a god, the Asura always an Asura, the demon always a demon. To change they must either migrate into an evolutionary body or else die entirely to themselves that they may be new born into other Nature. 45 All that ...
... that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposite Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable.” 26 Considering the origin of the Avatars, as above narrated by the Mother and confirmed by Sri Aurobindo, one could argue that the whole... tempestuous action; she is there for swiftness, for the immediately effective process, the rapid and direct stroke, the frontal assault that carries everything before it. Terrible is her face to the Asura, dangerous and ruthless her mood against the haters of the Divine; for she is the Warrior of the Worlds who never shrinks from the battle.” 54 In the Agenda of 1962 there is a telling part ...
... incarnates at times of crisis. The crisis necessitates the coming of the Avatar, as well as his coming causes the crisis. Rama, the Avatar of the rational mind, fought his great battle with the ten-headed asura Ravana, king of Lanka. 17 Krishna incarnated at the time of the Mahabharata war, when the world of the peoples who participated in that war was in peril of perdition because of the Kauravas. The... the Mother also took some of the most powerful embodiments of the evolutionary resistance into their proximity, in order to work directly upon them and through them upon the whole of humanity. (The Asura and Rakshasa are there in all of us.) All were her children, the Mother said, the anshas 24 of the Gods as well as the anshas of the Asuras, and the conversion of the latter formed an essential ...
... intellect and of one idea, which he applies with strong force and violence. He has no control over his emotions. He hesitates in his policies – which some call caution. And all his power comes from the Asura by whom he is possessed and guided while Napoleon was a normal human being acting through the power of his brain, which reached the highest development possible in a human being.” 1042 Far other... scope of Hitler’s plans. “Hitlerism is the greatest menace the world has ever met”, he said; and “the destiny of the world depends on one man… His aim is clearly world-empire.” Or rather it was “the Asura who aims at world-domination. It is the descent of the Asuric world upon the human to maintain its own power on the earth.” 1053 A Titan Power supports this pigmy man, The crude dwarf instrument ...
... of the end of the Balkans, because Bulgaria won’t resist. Greece will be at its wits’ end without Turkey’s help, and what can Turkey do alone? So Hitler comes to Asia Minor and that means India. The Asura is up to his tricks again. Now Hitler’s moves are quite clear. He will try to move towards the Mediterranean, taking possession of the Suez [Canal] and then Egypt … “ 1157 Around the same time Sri Aurobindo... world-domination. “His aim is clearly a world-empire … God’s front is the spiritual front, which is still lagging much behind. Hitler’s Germany is not God’s front. It is the Asuric front through which the Asura aims at world-domination. It is the descent of the Asuric world upon the human to establish its own power on the earth.” 1159 Moreover, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother India occupies a special ...
... emphatically and clearly that all who by their thoughts and wishes are supporting and calling for the victory of the Nazis are by that very fact collaborating with the Asura against the Divine and helping to bring about the victory of the Asura. The Asuric power that is acting with Hitler as instrument and seeking through him domination of the world is the same power that has been opposing Sri Aurobindo’s ...
... separation was especially painful. She knew that her place was with Sri Aurobindo, but she had promised herself that she would convert Paul Richard who, like Max Théon, was the incarnation of a great Asura ; this was particularly important in these times of transition and it was the true reason for her marriage with Richard. The moment of her full collaboration with Sri Aurobindo had not yet arrived.... rigidity of the people, about her encounters with persons of all kinds, Rabindranath Tagore and the son of Leo Tolstoy among them. But she was silent about her intimate but fierce struggle with the Asura who was her companion, except that at the end of those four years she had not won the battle and therefore had been unable to fulfil her promise. When one day she had to face the fact, the Supreme ...
... seemed just like a bunch of marshmallows! It's not that they had no power—they had a lot of power, but they lacked that psychic flame. And to Theon, the God of the Jews and Christians was an Asura. This Asura wanted to be unique; and so he became the most terrible despot imaginable. Anatole France said the same thing (I now know that Anatole France had never read Theon's story, but I can't imagine ...
... evolution. And it was natural that this power of evolution would make them taste the fruit of knowledge. Page 62 Now, according to Theon, Jehovah was the chief of the Asuras , 6 the supreme Asura, the egoistic God who wanted to dominate everything and keep everything under his control. And of course this act made him furious, for it enabled mankind to become gods through the power of an evolution... × Tapasya : ascetic or yogic discipline. × Asura : demon of the mental plane embodying the forces of division and darkness. × Tlemcen: a town in northern ...
... long enough to come into contact with his 'guide' and receive inspirations from him which he would afterwards carry out very faithfully. That being whom Hitler took for the Supreme was quite simply an Asura, the one called in occultism 'the Lord of Falsehood,' and he Page 16 proclaimed himself to be 'the Lord of Nations.' He had a resplendent appearance and could pull the wool over anyone's... We never told this, of course, but it was perfectly precise. But I knew that being, I had already seen him in Japan—he called himself "the Lord of Nations." And he really was a form of the Asura of Falsehood, that is, of Truth which became Falsehood: the first Emanation of Truth, who became Falsehood. And he hasn't been destroyed yet. Then Mother prepares the aphorism for the next ...
... Sri Aurobindo but an Asura, replied, "I surrender to the Lord. This body has been given over to His Supreme Will." It may be surmised that the pretending being started his hostile work against her and that Sri Aurobindo fought with him and saved her. The Mother remarked that the fight had been a crucial one in the course of the Integral Yoga. A report has it that the same Asura in the shape of Sri ...
... of Ignorance, for they have only to persuade people to follow the established bent of their lower nature, while the Divine calls always for a change of Nature. It is not to be wondered at that the Asura has an easier task and more momentary success in his combinations. But that temporary success does not bind the future. ____________________ 1. A collection of poems by D. H. Lawrence (1929)... what it seems to be on the surface. The surface meaning cannot be ignored—I have never ignored it and the Mother has never ignored it—the riddle, the obscurity, the suffering, the tight hold of the Asura,—but that is neither the whole nor the ultimate truth of existence. It is that one must bend one's whole effort to get at and not dwell always in the aspects of the surface. I must remind you that ...
... of his own genius. A mighty vital selfhood obscures his consciousness and he sees nothing else, understands nothing else beyond the reach of that limited vision. This is the Rakshasa, this is the Asura in man. Here is his philosophy of life: I climb, a claimant to the throne of heaven. The last born of the earth, I stand the first.. I am God still unevolved in human form; Even... hushed within, Its lion-roar that claims the world as food, All shall be might and bliss and happy force. 3 In his body man is the beast, in the vital he is the Rakshasa and the Asura, he rises now into the mind. And in the mind 1 Book VII: Canto 4: p. 579. 2-Book VII: Canto 4: pp. 580-2. 3Book VII: Canto 4: p. 583. Page 270 'he is the human being ...
... AUROBINDO: Omnipotent and omniveridical? Then, as he says himself, has Providence guided him and given him sucess? I have not seen any other person who has followed the Asura with such extraordinary fidelity. Three things of the Asura he adopts strictly: first, if you go on telling lies long enough with assurance, people will believe you; second, you must adopt treachery and appeal to the basest passions ...
... Grace of his own genius. A mighty vital selfhood obscures his consciousness and he sees nothing else, understands nothing else beyond the reach of that limited vision. This is the Rakshasa, this is the Asura in man. Here is his philosophy of life: I climb, a claimant to the throne of heaven. The last born of the earth, I stand the first. . I am God still unevolved in human form; Even if... shall be hushed within, Its lion-roar that claims the world as food, All shall be might and bliss and happy force.³ In his body man is the beast, in the vital he is the Rakshasa and the Asura, he rises now into the mind. And in the mind ¹ Book VII: Canto 4: p. 579. ² Book VII: Canto 4: pp. 580-2. ³ Book VII: Canto 4: p. 583. Page 250 he is the human being proper ...
... evil, anything irrevocably and eternally condemned to perdition. Even the Asura, the anti-Divine is viewed, in the last analysis of things, also as an aspect, a formation of the Divine himself. Diti and Aditi are sisters, twin aspects of the same Supreme Being. All the legends in narrating the life history of the Asura describe his end as a submission to the Divine Will and a merging in Him. An ...
... the service of the Divine. In one of his Evening Talks in 1926, Sri Aurobindo had referred to two movements of the money force (which is basically a vital force): a lower, controlled by Mammon or the Asura, and a higher movement inspired by Mahalakshmi (or the Divine). The people who follow the lower movement are the amassers of wealth by fair means or foul, and such are either misers, or they use money... politics are the principal sources of resistance to the triumph of the new dispensation. Politics is dominated by the Lord of Falsehood, the Lord of the Nations, and money is monopolised by Mammon the Asura. How is global unity to be promoted and established if currency restrictions congeal the arteries of finance: It has become almost impossible to have the least relation with other countries, and ...
... can say, history it repeating itself because Greco-Roman culture was destroyed by German Nordic hordes and to-day it is again the Germans who are trying to destroy the centre of European culture. The Asura working behind Hitler has been giving him very correct and remarkably accurate guidance. He knows what is possible. That is why Hitler has never been listening to reason. He only waits for the voice... Yes, they have. Vision is not only on the spiritual level. It can be on the vital and on the subtle physical level, and can be very accurate. Page 268 The question was whether the Asura can see his own end. Sri Aurobindo : No. Disciple : It is like the astrologers who can't predict their own end. Sri Aurobindo : No, they can predict accurately. There are ...
... sex —that have the strongest attraction for the human ego and the Asura and are most generally misheld and misused by those who retain them. The seekers or keepers of wealth are more often possessed rather than its possessors; few escape entirely a certain distorting influence stamped on it by its long seizure and perversion by the Asura." It is for this reason that some spiritual disciplines put a ban ...
... say that there are Asuric forces that can imitate the calm of the Supermind. "Do you think," he asked a disciple bitingly, "that the Asura is a fool? Sometimes, Tapasya is his chief weapon____ Doing good to humanity is one of the favourite weapons of the Asura. Of course, he seeks to do it in his own way. The Asuric Maya can take up any garb: even the pursuit of an ideal or sacrifice for some ...
... (The Rakshasa, the violent kinetic Ego, establishes his claim to mastery of the world replacing the animal Soul,—to be followed by controlled and intellectualised but unregenerated Ego, the Asura. Each such type and level of consciousness sees the Divine in its own image and its level in Nature is sustained by a differing form of the World-Mother.) "Glory and greatness and the joy of life... and pride." "So let it be," She answered. "Shall it be eternal then?" Rávan demanded and she thundered, "No! For neither thou nor I are best nor last. The Asurí shall rise to fill my place, The Asura thy children shall dethrone. An aeon thou hast taken to evolve, An aeon thou shalt rule. But since thy wish I have denied, ask yet another boon." "Let this be mine, that when at last I sink, Nor ...
... a similar Indo-Irānian or what Thieme terms Proto-Aryan form. The Avesta has "Mithra-Ahura". As the Rigveda also has "Asura" as counterpart of the Avestan "Ahura" and uses it at times together with "Mitra" (and "Varuṇa"), the Proto-Aryan combination would logically be "Mitra-Asura". The Mitanni document's combination is therefore strictly Rigvedic. (2)The Rigvedic adjective vrtrahan which is ...
... Would you describe your darshans with Mother and Sri Aurobindo and any remembrances that you have of the Mother? Once Mother asked me to dance and in the story I had to conquer the asura [evil power]. The asura was attracted to me and he wanted to conquer me. I found this to be so difficult. Nothing seemed right in the way of dance movements. Usually I hear a sound within my head indicating the ...
... the struggle between powers of Light and powers of Darkness, powers of truth and powers of falsehood is continued in these epics and takes the figure of a story. It is the old struggle of Deva and Asura, God and Titan, but represented in terms of human life.] The Ramayana is a work of the same essential kind as the Mahabharata; it differs only by a greater simplicity of plan, a more delicate... rare power of inspiration and vision that it succeeds in making the rare experience concrete to our minds. The Ramayana hints at the suprarational and openly speaks of the Divine as against the Asura and the Rakshasa — the Titanic force. But there it remains something mystical and therefore unknown. Savitri deals with the suprarational but makes it a natural part of its vision of man and deals ...
... of his own genius. A mighty vital selfhood obscures his consciousness and he sees nothing else, understands nothing else beyond the reach of that limited vision. This is the Rakshasa, this is the Asura in man. Here is his philosophy of life: I climb, a claimant to the throne of heaven. The last bom of the earth I stand the first... I am God still unevolved in human form; Even... hushed within, Its lion roar that claims the world as food, All shall be might and bliss and happy force. 28 In his body man is the beast, in the vital he is the Rakshasa and the Asura, he rises now into the mind. And in the mind he is the human being proper, he has attained his own humanity. Here he has received the light of knowledge, a wider and deeper consciousness, he has ...
... bring down the Supermind. The whole process can be followed almost step by step in Nirodbaran’s Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo . Hidden behind Nazism and causing its success was the action of the Asura of Falsehood who calls himself “the Lord of the Nations” 83 : In 1938, when the descent of the Supermind seemed imminent, Sri Aurobindo was directly attacked and broke his thigh. That the Second World... p. 171. × Sri Aurobindo alludes here, among other things, to the Second World War, in which the Asura who possessed Hitler had to be defeated. See the chapters on the Second World War in Georges Van Vrekhem’s Beyond Man and The Mother (HarperCollins India). ...
... came and brought everything to a standstill, completely. For if we had gone on with the Work personally, we would not have been sure that there was enough time to finish it before ‘the other one’ [the Asura of Falsehood, “Hitler’s God”] had made a mess of the world, and the whole affair would have been postponed for centuries. This had to be stopped first of all: the action of the Lord of Nations – the... The situation was “as clear as a pike-staff” to Sri Aurobindo’s yogic knowledge and insight. “There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed certain that a black yoke of the Asura would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule?” However: “Other blacknesses threaten to overshadow or even engulf mankind …” 26 May Aurobindians bear these ...
... 1939. Then the war came and stopped everything, completely. For if we personally had gone on with the Work, we would not have been sure that we had the time to finish it before ‘the other one’ [the Asura of Falsehood behind Hitler] had made a mess of the world, and the whole affair would have been postponed for centuries. That had to be stopped first of all: that action of the Lord of Nations – the... In June 1946, less than a year after the unconditional surrender of Japan, Sri Aurobindo wrote: “There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed certain that a black yoke of the Asura would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule? Berlin and Nuremberg [where the trial of the top Nazi criminals was taking place] have marked the end of that dreadful ...
... Order in which there would no longer be a place for the old laws and their Masters. Not only would humanity, archconservative in its ignorance (and malicious selfishness), refuse to allow this, the Asura of Falsehood, the Lord of the existing Order, would not stand it and launch his legions to hold on to his empire. Without a powerful occult protection the ‘cradle of the New World’ would never be able... yogi, in the swindler and in the secretary-general, in the just and in the sinner, in the somewhat clarified human being and in the distorted, crooked, suffering one. How could she, who said of the Asura of Falsehood: ‘After all, he is my son’, ever have been able to turn her back on a temporarily errant or stultified youth? Every soul is her child. And she spoke those unforgettable words: ‘Do not ...
... who he was and I decided I would convert him. That is the thing. The whole story revolves about that.’ 21 She had immediately recognized Richard as an emanation of the third Asura we have met in the former chapter: the Asura of Falsehood who had originally been the Angel of Truth, and who now called (and calls) himself ‘Lord of the Nations.’ His conversion was an immense task undertook, and the story ...
... origins, i, 2, 77, 82 Aryans, ii, iv, 17, 20, 61 Aryo-Dravidianism, ii Arzawiya, 32 Ashvins, Aśvinā, 31, 35 Asikni, 126 Askabad, 70 Asura, 110, 111. 116 Atharvaveda, 56, 85, 87, 116 Aurobindo, Sri, i, iii, iv, 18-19, 24-26, 29, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43. 44, 65, 77-83, 104, 106, 107-121, 133 Austria-Hungary, 1 ... 103 Mehi, 38 Mesopotamia, 32, 35, 54, 68, 73, 74 Mirza, Hormazdyer K., 83 Mitanni, 2, 31, 32, 84, 85, 88 Mithra, Mithro, 86 "Mithra-Ahura", 34 "Mitra-Asura", 34 "Mitra-Varuṇa", 34 Mitra, 34, 86 Moghul Ghundai, 4 Mohenjo-dāro, 6, 49, 61, 63, 70, 71, 95-7 Mongoloid races, 118 Mookerji, R.K., 14, 15, 86, 111, 127 ...
... will, the worshipper of power without any other ideal or higher purpose, the selfish, dominant personality, the aggressive violent rajasic man, Page 744 the grandiose egoist, the Titan, Asura, Rakshasa. But the soul-powers to which this type of nature opens on its higher grades are as necessary as those of the Brahmana to the perfection of our human nature. The high fearlessness which no... being. The man of power must illumine and uplift and govern his force and strength by knowledge, light of reason or religion or the spirit, otherwise he becomes the mere forceful Page 748 Asura,—must have the skill which will help him best to use and administer and regulate his strength and make it creative and fruitful and adapted to his relations with others, otherwise it becomes a mere ...
... the manifester, producer. Sy. We become increasers of the fine strength and placers swiftly of the shining thunderbolt in thy two arms. Thou increasing & bright, O Indra, overcome the destroying Asura nations with the Sun for impeller of thy weapon. White & bright thy strength that we increase, white & bright thy lightning that we place in the two arms of our strength; white & bright increasing... it is Indra as the human being who slays Vritra. अस्मे.अस्मासु & never as Sy. takes it = अस्माकं. 5) अपीवृतं । तिरोहितं ।। अहिं । असुरं मेघं वा ।। वीर्येण । सामर्थ्यभूतेन वज्रेण ।। Sy. The Asura placed in a cave, secret, hidden, concealed, illusive, Page 396 dwelling & also stopping the waters & heaven, thou, O destroyer of thy foes, hast slain by thy power, the thunderbolt. ...
... Lords of Light The Secret of the Veda Hymn to Varuna [In this hymn there is throughout a sustained double sense. In the exoteric Varuna is hymned as the Asura, omniscient and omnipotent lord and creator, the Godhead in his creative wisdom and might forming the world and maintaining the law of things in the earth and mid-air and heavens. In the esoteric, in... the gnosis into it and measures it out, that is, shapes and plans out our earth-existence in the measures of the Truth by means of the mind enlightened by the sun of gnosis: he takes his stand as the Asura in our vital plane, the link between mental and physical, there to receive the light and pass it on to the earth as a creative and determining force. ...
... id. Suddha—Nirguna—Siddha. = 84 worlds. with 7 below, nine above = 100 7 below. Gandharva (beauty). Yaksha (pleasure). Kinnara (fantasy). Aghora (samata). Swadhina (freedom). Deva (love). Asura (might & glory) from lowest to highest 9 above. Vaikuntha, Goloka, Brahmaloka, Meruloka, Visva-devaloka (Karmadevatas), Ganaloka, Jnanaloka from top to bottom Page 1280 [ . . . ] = Suryaloka... Suryaloka. Swar—Chandraloka & Swarga. Jana, Tapah & Satya above Swar—Chandraloka—Pitriloka; Kailas above, between 7 tiers of 14 worlds, according to types—Pashu, Pisacha, Pramatha, Rakshasa, Asura, Deva, Siddha— Swarga—7—Kama, Yuddha, Prema, Manas, Jnana, Nishkama & Bhagavata Naraka—offences of or against Kama, Prema, Satya, Ishwara, [?Devata], Jnana, Atma— 12 hells in each Notes - VIII ...
... possession compatible with the suggestions of other vanis always automatically distinguishable from the central Word. Farther progress in rupa. Tapas is assuming a progressive strength & the Asura & Rakshasa begin to take their places. The force of ritam begins to increase. Enthusiastic faith is increasing its ground. But the chief result has been the final rout of the Dwayavins... 2, were not accepted because of tapasic doubt. All these results (1. 3. & more) are in accordance with previous Will—exercised from the beginning of the war as an aid or instrument to active Asura powers against Rakshasa powers—until a month ago. Utthapana Arms 2 hours with 3 interruptions, of 20 minutes, 2 minutes & 5 minutes, two of them for correcting proofs. Entire absence of ...
... transform them into the terms of the central unity. That I believe is yours. (P.R) To define your case is difficult. A Deva above, a strong Jnana Deva able to communicate with the higher planes, an Asura below representing the development of many lives, a Rakshasa force behind constantly weakened and fading, but not yet cast away by the drawing up of the vital being by the others, also several other... certain kind of thought deva who responds with a limited light but a great abundance of curious thought formations to the greater Idea that comes from the supramental level. Maurya represents an Asura who has stopped short on the way to Devahood, a being of aggressive thought force and great vital vehemence, but of a very limited power in the true sense of the word, who has associated himself with ...
... best way to become spiritual. It is the rajasic man with his fierce ego and violent passions who is the true sadhak of the Divine. 2) The Asura is the best bhakta. The Gita is quite wrong in holding up the Deva nature as the condition of realisation and the Asura nature as contrary to it. It is the other way round. 3) Ravana, Hiranyakashipu, Shishupala were the greatest devotees of the Divine because ...
... and acts. But to profit by our help you will have to do what you have never yet really done, at least in your external being. You will have in your physical nature itself resolutely to turn from the Asura and his ways and refuse to indulge him on any pretext in any thought, feeling, speech or action which would help him still to possess your instruments and determine or influence your attitude and your... makes the result quick and easy—otherwise it takes time and more labour and struggle. Dissolution You can dissolve a thought formation which is made of subtle mental stuff—why not then a mental Asura? There are Asuras Page 792 who are predominantly mental—who live in the false Idea and can even be vitally ascetic and appear to men as great Tapaswis. All the same there is a stern and ...
... as well as in the inspiration they receive so ignorantly they would be invincible, because the divine forces themselves are invincible. It is the mixture in the outward expression that gives to the Asura the right to defeat them. 123 September 19, 1940 (A message to the Governor of Madras, accompanied by a contribution. This declaration was Sri Aurobindo's first public intervention... speaking of personal things—which did not eventually happen even after delay, defeat or even disaster. There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed certain that a black yoke of the Asura would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule? Berlin and Nuremberg have marked the end of that dreadful chapter in human history. Other black nesses threaten to ...
... as well as in the inspiration they receive so ignorantly they would be invincible, because the divine forces themselves are invincible. It is the mixture in the outward expression that gives to the Asura the right to defeat them. To be a successful instrument for the Asuric forces is easy, because they take all the movements of your lower nature and make use of them, so that you have no spiritual... Divine Work to be done, for the spiritual Truth for which we stand to establish itself on the earth. Those who fight for this cause are fighting for the Divine and against the threatened reign of the Asura. 29-7-1942 * 2 What we say is not that the Allies have not done wrong things, but that they stand on the side of the evolutionary forces. I have not said that at random ...
... of image used by Sri Aurobindo, that the charity and generosity of a converted Asura are infinitely more effective than those of an innocent angel. 11 December 1969 × Rama was an avatar or incarnation of Vishnu; Ravana was a Titan (Asura), mortal enemy of Rama. ...
... weapons of the Asura at work when you are taught to shun beauty. It has been the ruin of India. The Divine manifests in the psychic as love, in the mind as Page 372 knowledge, in the vital as power and in the physical as beauty. If you discard beauty it means that you are depriving the Divine of this manifestation in the material and you hand over that part to the Asura. 8 From ...
... dominate the life of nations was stopped cold. I have had other similar experiences—on Durga's day, for instance, when Sri Aurobindo was still here (you know, that's the day when Durga masters an asura; she doesn't kill him, she masters him). Well, each year one particular type of thing was undermined (and my experiences were never mental: the experience would suddenly come, and AFTERWARDS I would... uprooted from the world. Whatever has already spread out keeps going and follows its karma, but the SOURCE is dried up. That's Page 305 also what happened (it was in 1904, I believe) when the Asura of Consciousness and Darkness made his surrender and was converted; he told me, "I have millions and millions of emanations, and these will keep on living, but their source has now run dry." 4 How ...
... girl in my entourage who was absorbed by him. He follows me like a shadow, and each time there is the least little opening in someone near me, he is there. The power of this Titan comes from an Asura. There are four Asuras. Two have already been converted, and the other two, the Lord of Death and the Lord of Falsehood, made an attempt at conversion by taking on a physical body—they have been intimately... relationship. For after all, you see ( laughing ), I am his mother! One day he told me, 'I know you will destroy me, but meanwhile, I will create all the havoc possible.' Page 288 This Asura of Falsehood is the one who delegated the Titan that is always near me. He chose the most powerful Titan there is on earth and sent him specially to attack this body. So even if one manages to enchain ...
... But that vital being who was given a body—did it live on earth for any length of time? No, never. Never? He stopped at the subtle physical—he refused to go any farther. It was Satan, the Asura 1 of Light who, in cutting himself off from the Supreme, fell into Unconsciousness and Darkness (I've told the story many times). But anyway, when I was with Théon, I summoned that being and asked... suspected the value of those papers—for most people they had no interest at all. Well—au revoir, mon petit. × Asura : demon of the mental plane embodying the forces of division and darkness. × The reader will remember ...
... emphatically and clearly that all who by their thoughts and wishes are supporting and calling for the victory of the Nazis are by that very fact collaborating with the Asura against the Divine and helping to bring about the victory of the Asura.... Those, therefore, who wish for the victory of the Nazis and their associates should now understand that it is a wish for the destruction of our work and an act ...
... Satan, it was the symbol of evolution (Theon was entirely pro-evolution), the spiral path of evolution, and that the earthly paradise, on the contrary, was under the domination of Jehovah, the great Asura who claimed to be unique, who wanted to be the only God. For Theon, there is no such thing as a one and only God: there is the Unthinkable. It's not a "God." But to me this seems to come from his... It's going to be very hard. I don't know why, but every time I come into contact with a Christian thought, it fills me with anger. Oh, I understand! Because it's true, you know, that an Asura is behind it all—not Christ! Sri Aurobindo considered Christ an Avatar (a minor form of Avatar). One emanation of the Divine's aspect of Love, he always said. But what people have made of him!... Besides ...
... the whole world outside America. August 15 was meant to be the end of World War II, with a decisive victory of the forces intent on putting the clock back and establishing on earth the reign of the Asura, the Titan, over the evolving God in humanity. But instead of a resounding Page 103 triumph, August 15 found Britain still full of fight and on that day the largest toll so far was... offering is done and in that gesture lies the seed of man's birth into integral Godhead. Hence the birthday of Sri Aurobindo is the supreme festival of progressive humanity, the portent which the Asura dreads most and would strive most to nullify. It gives to the occasion of India's celebration of her Independence and to the strange occurrence of this date at more than one critical juncture of modern ...
... tiger. And the son of Kunti then girded up his loins to the great delight of the spectators. And Bhima then summoned to the combat that athlete known by the name of Jimuta who was like unto the Asura Vrita whose prowess was widely known. And both of them were possessed of great courage, and both were endued with terrible prowess. And they were like a couple of infuriate and huge-bodied elephants... physical and mental energy, to the infinite delight of the con course of spectators. And all people... took deep interest in that encounter of those powerful wrestlers who fought like Indra and the Asura Vritra. And they cheered both of them with loud acclamations of applause. And the broad-chested and long-armed experts in wrestling then pulled and pressed and whirled and hurled down each ...
... of Paris. Hitler is getting remarkable inspiration from his Asura. He doesn't go by reason but only by the voice. He considers all possibilities and when he fixes on something he goes ahead. Only, he did not foresee the British and French intervention on behalf of Poland. SATYENDRA: Ordinary people won't believe that it is the Asura guiding him. SRI AUROBINDO: No, they won't. NIRODBARAN: ...
... way Hitler has said that he will enter Paris on the 15th. He may have meant the army. NIRODBARAN: By Jove, how remarkably precise! SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, he is getting remarkable guidance from his Asura. Sometimes the Asuras have an extraordinary foresight that comes true with perfect precision both on the vital and subtle-physical planes, just like that which is possible on the spiritual planes. Of... infallible. But Hitler committed only one mistake: when attacking Poland he thought that the Allies wouldn't intervene. (Smiling) Napoleon did not have such guidance. NIRODBARAN: Had Hitler's Asura anything to do with your accident? SRI AUROBINDO: I don't think so. NIRODBARAN: Do the Asuras know about their own destruction? SRI AUROBINDO: No. NIRODBARAN: That's like the astrologers ...
... way to become spiritual. It is the rajasic man with his fierce ego and violent passions who is the true sadhak of the Divine. 2)The Asura is the best bhakta. The Gita is quite wrong in holding up the Deva nature as the condition of realisation and the Asura nature as contrary to it. It is the other way round. 3)Ravana, Hiranyakashipu, Sishupala were the greatest devotees of the Divine because ...
... essentially evil, anything irrevocably and eternally condemned to perdition. Even the Asura, the anti-Divine is viewed, in the last analysis of things, also as an aspect, a formation of the Divine himself. Did and Aditi are sisters, twin aspects of the same Supreme Being. All the legends in narrating the life-history of the Asura describe his end as a submission to the Divine Will and a merging in Him. An entire ...
... Grace of his own genius. A mighty vital selfhood obscures bis consciousness and he sees nothing else, understands nothing else beyond the reach of that limited vision. This is the Rakshasa, this is the Asura in man. Here is his philosophy of life: "I climb, a claimant to the throne of heaven. The last born of the earth, I stand the first... I am God still unevolved in human form; Even... and bliss and happy force. 2 1 Bk. VII: Canto 4: P.580-2. 2 Bk. VII: Canto 4: P.583. Page 113 In his body man is the beast, in the vital he is the Rak-shasa and the Asura, he rises now into the mind. And in the mind he is the human being proper, he has attained his own humanity. Here he has received the light of knowledge, a wider and deeper consciousness, he has unveiled ...
... essentially evil, anything irrevocably and eternally condemned to perdition. Even the Asura, the anti-Divine is viewed, in the last analysis of things, also as an aspect, a formation of the Divine himself. Diti and Aditi are sisters, twin aspects of the same Supreme Being. All the legends in narrating the life-history of the Asura describe his end Page 165 as a submission to the Divine Will ...
... , a one-pointed devotion and determination, courage and spirit, and go through our day to day life, showing at every step that success, fulfilment and prosperity are not the exclusive gifts of the Asura; the Divine also has that power. What is more, the scope, extent and variety of that power is even wider and higher. We will not suffer the field of life and its richnesses to pass into the asuric... faith, an attitude of divided loyalty. The Divine alone is the Sovereign; He has no partner in this domain. 'I, thy Lord, am a jealous God'. There can therefore be no compromise or friendship with the Asura, with the untruth. Neither is it wise to avoid or bypass him. No, not that. We have to look the opponent in the face; we have to refuse his demand and impose ours on him. Strong in the strength of our ...
... Grace of his own genius. A mighty vital selfhood obscures his consciousness and he sees nothing else, understands nothing else beyond the reach of that limited vision. This is the Rakshasa, this is the Asura in man. Here is his philosophy of life: I climb, a claimant to the throne of heaven. The last-born of the earth I stand the first... I am God still unevolved in human form; ... within, Its lion-roar that claims the world as food, All shall be might and bliss and happy force. 26 In his body man is the beast, in the vital he is the Rakshasa and the Asura, he rises now into the mind. And in the mind he is the human being proper, he has attained his own humanity. Here he has received the light of knowledge, a wider and deeper consciousness, he has unveiled ...
... the struggle between powers of Light and powers of Darkness, powers of truth and powers of falsehood is continued in these epics and takes the figure of a story. It is the old struggle of Deva and Asura, God and Titan, but represented in terms of human life. The R ā m ā yana is a work of the same essential kind as the M ā h ā bh ā rata; it differs only by a greater simplicity of plan, a more... rare power of inspiration and vision that it succeeds in making the rare experience concrete to our minds. The R ā m ā yana hints at the supra-rational and openly speaks of the Divine as against the Asura and the Rakshasa—the Titanic force. But there it remains something mystical and therefore unknown. Sāvitrī deals with the suprarational but makes it a natural part of its vision of man and deals with ...
... excitement we felt that day! The Mother Herself telling us about Her own battles! The Mother told us in the class: You know the story of Durga, don’t you? Durga who every year has to destroy her asura; and she is always compelled to begin again. It goes on in this way till the end of the reign allotted to the titans. When they are banished from this world, things will not be the same. But till then... shall no longer cast thee away; we shall bind thee to us with the tie of love and devotion. Come, Mother, manifest thyself in our mind and life and body. * A day shall come when not a single asura will remain. That day is not far. ...
... forth in the place of darkness, beauty in the place of ugliness, goodness instead of evil, that power man possesses, the Asura does not. Therefore it is man who will do that work, it is he who will change, it is he who will transform his earth and it is he who will compel the Asura to flee into other worlds or to dissolve. 25 VI There is, indeed, no end to the play of versatility, ...
... It was the Yatudhani and the Rakshasi who sent their hoarse cry over France, adding to the luminous mantra, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the stern and terrible addition "or Death." Death to the Asura, death to all who oppose God's evolution, that was the meaning. With these two terrible Shaktis Kali did Her work. She veiled Her divine knowledge with the darkness of wrath and passion, She drank blood ...
... uniting warring races and substituting for the ambitious arrogance of kings and aristocratic clans the supremacy, the calm and peace of a just and humane empire. It is the old struggle of Deva and Asura, God and Titan, but represented in the terms of human life. The way in which this double form is worked out and the presentation of the movement of individual lives and of the national life first ...
... much as the other. Not so much as the Mahabharata. But there are differences. There is one tradition which says that Ravana died deliberately, that it was deliberately he chose the role of the Asura and that he died willingly in order to shorten his "stay" outside the Divine. He dissolved into Rama when he died, saying that thus he had succeeded sooner in uniting with him definitively. Which version ...
... destruction. I am not speaking of bombs and the destruction of a city or a people, I am speaking of destruction as it is spoken about in the Gita, you see, when it Page 302 is said that the Asura goes to his own destruction. That's what happens, and this is a very great misfortune, because it is always better to be able to save, illumine, transform, than to have to destroy brutally. And it is ...
... speaking of personal things—which did not eventually happen even after delay, defeat or even disaster. There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed certain that a black yoke of the Asura would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule? Berlin and Nuremberg have marked the end of that dreadful chapter in human history. Other blacknesses threaten to ...
... Brahman, the One Self, but in the personal way "I am God, the Parameshwara". It is as in the Puranic story in which the knowledge was given both to Indra and Virochana and the God understood but the Asura concluded that he the ego was the Divine and therefore went about trying to impose his ego on the universe. * "...if the mental is strongly developed, then the mental being can remain; ...
... it was necessary to come into contact with his “guide” and receive from him inspirations which he carried out later very faithfully. This being which Hitler took for the Supreme was quite plainly an Asura, one who is called the “Lord of Falsehood” in occultism, but who proclaimed himself the “Lord of the Nations”. He had a shining appearance, he could mislead anybody except one who really had occult ...
... government of the life of man;—this was the significance of the contest between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other,—invisible ...
... it was necessary to come into contact with his "guide" and receive from him inspirations which he carried out later very faithfully. This being which Hitler took for the Supreme was quite plainly an Asura, one who is called the "Lord Page 185 of Falsehood" in occultism, but who proclaimed himself the "Lord of the Nations". He had a shining appearance, he could mislead anybody except one who ...
... thy influence may we become fit for the great work, for the great Ideal. Mother, destroy our smallness, our selfishness, our fear. "Mother Durga! Thou art Kali... sword in hand, thou slayest the Asura. Goddess, do thou slay with thy pitiless cry the enemies who dwell within us, may none remain alive there, not one. May we become pure and spotless, this is our prayer, O Mother, make thyself manifest ...
... by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds Page 449 all evolving formations here. There is and can be no psychic being in a non-evolutionary creature like the Asura; there can be none in a God who does not need one for his existence. But what the God has is a Purusha and a Prakriti or Energy of nature of that Purusha. If any being of the typal worlds wants to evolve ...
... ordinarily the average man,—when he follows a false light to his spiritual ruin. She had mistaken her vital ego for herself; she had sought for her soul and found only her force. For she had said, like the Asura, "I am my body, my life, my mind, my temperament," and become attached with a Titanic force to these; especially she had said, "I am my life and body," and than that there can be no greater mistake ...
... good in thy steeds, good in thy chariot, good in thy delight, bear hither to men good in their offerings. 5) Gomán Agne avimán a sh wí yajno, nṛivatsakhá sadam id apramṛishyah; Iḷáván esho asura prajáván, dírgho rayih pṛithubudhnah sabháván; Rich in the cows of light, in the flocks of sight, in the horses of strength the Sacrifice is like a human friend ever inviolable; long (or long-enduring) ...
... unfooted vasts of the infinite. He is hymned also as the punisher of sin and the deliverer from sin—Kritam chid enah pra mumugdhi asmat. “And loose from us the sin we have done”. Kshayann asmabhyam Asura prachetá rájann enánsi sisrathah kritáni, “Dwelling in us, O Mighty One, O King, in conscious knowledge, cleave from us the sins of our doing.” Page 66 Now in the 18th hymn, a hymn of Medhatithi ...
... distinguish spiritual truth from pseudo-spiritual imitations of it or substitutes for it set up by the mind and by vital desire. A power to distinguish between truth of the Divine and the lies of the Asura is a cardinal necessity for Yoga. The question is whether that can best be done by the negative and destructive method of doubt, which often kills falsehood but rejects truth too with the same impartial ...
... to a rise. Sortileg. एकतमस्तु जरच्छबरस्तस्मात्पुलिन्दवृन्दादनासादितहरिणपिशितः पिशिताशन इव विकृतदर्शनः पिशितार्थी तस्मिन्नेव तरुतले मुहू्र्तमिव व्यलंबत A description of the self-indulgent Asura in S. [Saurin] which is in its nature a jarat shabara & still remains under the tree of the Yoga, pishitarthi, in search of material enjoyments and indulgences. It is his influence & vyapti which prevents ...
... also an incipient movement of more complete ritam. The bhava in the Ishwara is entirely confirmed; it is now being perfected in the Balaram-Aniruddha type, preparatory to the Sri Krishna-Rudra (the Asura). The habit of relapse in the Krishnadarshana is being attacked. Kamananda these two days has been constant with intermittences, but not continuous. This evening it has once more the tendency ...
... divine part—so a psychisation will not carry one beyond the present evolution but will make the being ready to respond to all that comes from the Divine or Higher Nature and unwilling to respond to the Asura, Rakshasa, Pishacha or Animal in the being or to any insistence of the lower nature which stands in the way of the divine change. It is not the psychic but the mind that gets raised and transformed ...
... physical-vital and vital-material force. The lion is the attribute of the Goddess Durga, the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother. The Death's Head is the symbol of the Asura (the adversary of the gods) vanquished and killed by the Divine Power. Ganesh It is according to the need or else the condition of the consciousness that these figures [ of the Gods ] appear in ...
... equivalent of anger in the higher nature ] is a rudra power of severity and indignation (in the deepest sense of the word) against what should not be—the warrior force of Mahakali in combating the Asura. Yes, certainly. Infinite peace, universal love can remove anger—if they are complete and stable. Anger Comes from Outside The fact that the anger comes with such force is itself enough ...
... You may be sure that we shall not desert you and that we would never dream of doing so. You say truly that what drives you Page 99 into these moods is the Asuric Maya or a goad from the Asura—it is what we speak of as the hostile Force. What answers to it is a part of the human vital that has an attraction or habit of response to suffering, self-torment, depression and despair. But in itself ...
... well can be and we are apt by the nature of our ethical mind to see the world, at any rate in its moral aspect, as a struggle and tug of war between these eternal opposites, God and devil, Deva and Asura, Ahuramazda, Angrya Mainyu. We hope always that on some as yet hardly conceivable day the one will perish and the other triumph and be convinced of eternity; but actually they are so intertangled that ...
... Knowledge, Power and Delight. × Asuryam , the god-power, the mastering force of the Lord, the divine "Asura" in us. × Or, attainment. × ...
... Indra, lord of the three luminous realms of Swar, the Divine Mind; Tryaruna Trasadasyu is the half-god, man turned into the Indra type; therefore he is described by all the usual epithets of Indra, "Asura", "Satpati", "Maghavan". The triple dawn is the dawn of these three realms on the human mentality. × ...
... × Maya, the creative knowledge-will of the Deva. × Asura, a word used in the Veda as in the Avesta for the Deva (Ahuramazda), but also for the gods. His manifestations; it is only in a few hymns that it is used for the dark Titans, by another and fictitious ...
... in its iridescent quagmires, the divinities themselves become common and muddy and hardly escape from being dragged downwards into its perversions and disastrously assimilated to the demon and the Asura. A principle of dark and dull inertia is at its base; all are tied down by the body and its needs and desires to a trivial mind, petty desires and emotions, an insignificant repetition of small worthless ...
... a scene in my being, the play of its processes as a movement of forms and souls and forces in my cosmic spirit; I meet myself and none else everywhere. Not, be it well noted, with the error of the Asura, the Titan, who lives in his own inordinately magnified shadow, mistakes ego for the self and spirit and tries to impose his fragmentary personality as the one dominant existence upon all his surroundings ...
... into a dynamic movement of that Will; enjoyment must be replaced by the play of a pure spiritual Ananda. All personal will is either a temporary delegation from on high or a usurpation by the ignorant Asura. The social law, that second term of our progress, is a means to which the ego is subjected in order that it may learn discipline by subordination to a wider collective ego. This law may be quite ...
... limitations or attended by saving complexities—and without rising beyond these things, without climbing to a supra-vital height from which they can be used, purified, uplifted, he becomes the lower type of Asura or Titan, a Rakshasa in nature, a soul of sheer power and life-energy, magnified or racked by a force of unlimited desire and passion, hunted and driven by an active capacity and colossal rajasic ego ...
... Hitler, welcome him and thereby Page 230 melt his heart. He had no insight into the Rakshasik Force that was making Hitler its instrument. As all occultists know, the Rakshasa, the Asura, the Pisacha, by their "typal", non-evolutionary nature, cannot be mended: they have to be ended. The British in India, for all their superior airs and occasional brutality, were manifesting human traits ...
... quite understood how they reconcile that with their God, who moreover is Unthinkable and must not be named... but who, seen from the standpoint of a vaster truth, seems (I am not sure), seems to be an Asura. Because it's an almighty and UNIQUE God, foreign to the world—the world (as far as I know) and he are two completely different things. It's the same with Catholicism. Yet, if I remember correctly ...
... In June 1946, less than a year after the unconditional surrender of Japan, Sri Aurobindo wrote: “There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed certain that a black yoke of the Asura would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule? Berlin and Nuremberg [where in those days German top Nazis stood trial] have marked the end of that dreadful chapter ...
... remember. She, who took everything into herself, had apparently to swallow more poison than nectar. Each time her life was in danger, she would point out an attack of black magic as the cause. The Asura, using human persons, was at his tricks maybe more than ever, as the avataric Yoga approached the stage where the first supramental body was in the process of formation. Secondly, this phase of the ...
... burning London, of the sea of flames in Warsaw, of exploding convoys, and the rapture with which he watched those films.” 1088 Sri Aurobindo saw Hitler’s fascination with fire as “the real sign of the Asura” and expected from him more “works of devilish ingenuity”. Henriette von Schirach had known Hitler from nearby for many years, for she was the daughter of Hitler’s photographer and the wife of the ...
... “Before the invasion of France Sri Aurobindo had already said in passing: ‘England is quite unreliable under her present leadership,’ and that he and the Mother were looking for a suitable person. If the Asura had his instrument in one camp [Adolf Hitler], the White Forces needed theirs in the opposite camp once their decision had been made to engage actively in the battle. It is now mostly forgotten what ...
... of personal things – which did not eventually happen even after delay, defeat or even disaster. There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed certain that a black yoke of the Asura would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule? Berlin and Nuremberg have marked the end of that dreadful chapter in human history. Other blacknesses threaten to ...
... personal things – which did not eventually happen even after delay, defeat or even disaster. There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed certain that a black yoke of the Asura would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule? Berlin and Nuremberg have marked the end of that dreadful chapter in human history. Other blacknesses threaten ...
... impossible, but I have seen it with my own eyes. The lightning has hit a tree a little further on.’ Yes, Théon was ‘a formidable fighter, and this is a matter of course, for he was an incarnation of an Asura.’ Asuras are titans, the dark opponents of the gods. The significance of these words of the Mother will become clear to us later on. ‘He was terrible, that man, he had terrible power. But outwardly ...
... urgency, that the times were serious and that he wanted to finish his main work. Serious the times certainly were, even after the elimination of Adolf Hitler, instrument of the Lord of Falsehood. But the Asura had other instruments on Earth. In the first place there was Stalin, considered by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to be an even greater evil than the Führer. The Cold War was at a high pitch, with the ...
... ‘who is practically an Indian in belief, in personal culture, in sympathies and aspirations, one of the Nivedita type.’ Did Aurobindo know who Richard essentially was, namely an incarnation of the Asura of Falsehood? Given his advanced yogic capabilities there can be no doubt that he did; also, the relationship between Mirra and Richard must soon have become clear, if it had not already been disclosed ...
... was very qualified on the subject of hostile forces and the workings of all that 'resists' the divine influence, and he was a great fighter—as you might imagine! He himself was an incarnation of an asura, so he knew how to tackle these things!); he was always saying, If you make a VERY SMALL concession or suffer a minor defeat, it gives you the right to a very great victory.' It's a very good trick ...
... of having, something light years beyond him; and it gave him an appalling ambition, totally spoiling everything. From this point of view, it's a great blessing for him; even if he becomes a dreadful Asura, it will come to a good end! It doesn't matter, it's not important. That's why this morning, even when I heard what X said about Z, it was the same thing: this great Light of the supreme Mother going ...
... can have a conscious contact with her, a contact more and more concrete. Life is immortal. It is only the body that dissolves. 10 March 1969 Why do we call Death a god? Is he not an Asura like the Lord of Falsehood? It is in the consciousness of man that he became a god and that is why it is so difficult to transform him. 29 October 1972 ...
... how Indian spiritual insight has distinguished human ambitions and fighting urges from preternatural forces that seek to act through human beings and even to possess them - forces distinguished as Asura (Titan), Rakshasa (Giant), Pishacha (Demon). Sri Aurobindo knew the distinction and declared his whole-hearted support to a nation against which he had once led a vigorous many-sided opposition in ...
... her side and not stuck in their follies and obscurities. The dreadful aspect is only for those who are enemies of the Divine within and without. "Terrible," writes Sri Aurobindo, "is her face to the Asura." (10.9.1991) According to the ancient Indian wisdom, our non-spiritual condition, our delusive ignorance consists essentially in being locked up in ourselves, being exclusive of our ...
... border: ) X wrote N. to announce—in precise and almost violent terms—that it was the beginning of a general upheaval, a catastrophic world war. Page 413 I know it's the will of that Asura I've mentioned to you several times, the Lord of Falsehood who was born the Lord of Truth, and who knows that his hour is at hand ("at hand" relative to that world there) and has declared he will cause ...
... master-clue to the real character of Dasyus 114-115 The total situation, according to Sri Aurobindo, deciding Rigvedic exegesis 115 Earlier and later meanings of "Asura, Raksha, Piśācha" 115-117 Only one possible objection and Sri Aurobindo's answer 117 The Rigveda's specific implication against presence of human enemies ...
... own thoughts and has the same national cast of mind, nature and conscience. His ideals will therefore be a corrective not only to our own faults but to the dangers of that attractive but unwholesome Asura civilisation which has invaded us, especially its morbid animalism and its neurotic tendency to abandon itself to its own desires. But this does not say all. Vyasa too, beyond the essential universality ...
... passage of the second canto in which Kalidasa depicts the gods complaining to Brahma about the atrocities committed by the demon Taraka. These deities have been terribly harassed and humiliated by the Asura; they feel totally helpless and there they stand, in front of Brahma, crestfallen and resembling faded flowers: Varuna's noose droops in his hand, Yama aimlessly scrapes the ground with his rod as if ...
... burns, doesn't it? Similarly here, his stomach lining just got burnt away, and it began to bleed. So the queer fancy he took brought about the beginning of a disease. That is why I used to call him 'Asura! That is the asuric power. How could any sane man think of taking a strong liquor, just out of fancy to taste it ? So it ended in an ulcer! I told you earlier that he was a 'petook' - you ...
... of Darkness; for our waking, dream and deep sleep are no other than states of Ignorance and Darkness. It is this state of superconscient Being that is the true Immortality and Fearlessness. The Asura had remained contented with the first steps of the true Knowledge. Their strength is the strength of the body, to them the strength of arms is the one source of strength. Quick is their gain and early ...
... pressure and working out of its self-rule an absolute reversal of man's nature. It is the Asuras who are now holding sway over humanity, for man has allowed himself so long to be built in the image of the Asura; to dislodge the Asuras, the Gods in their Page 32 sovereign might have to be forged in the human being and brought into play. It is a stupendous task, some would say impossible; ...
... 12 Amrita, 38, 192, 194 Andamans, the, II Androgyne, 296-7 Anu, 71n Arabia (L'Arabie), 1I8 Arcturus, 297 Arjuna, 38, 68, 112 Asura, 148,272 Aswins, the, 144 Ashram (Sri Aurobindo), Iin., 63, 70-1 BACH, Richard, 82n. –Jonathan Livingston Seagull, 82n. Bajula, 280 Bali ...
... significant thing about it is that the gods alone do not dwell there: all beings, all creatures crowd there, even the ungodly and the undivine. The Pashu (the animal), the Pisacha (the demon), the Asura, (the Titan) and the Deva (the god) all find comfortable lodging in it—there are many chambers indeed in this mansion of the Lord. Man was made Page 37 after the image of God and yet ...
... alone. I shall make you triumph. We shall see if you can bear the blow" To the Asuras too the Divine gives what they ask for. Generally it is in that way that their end comes all the sooner. An Asura is a conscious being. He knows that he has an end. He knows that the attitude he has taken in this universe will necessarily destroy him after a time. Of course the Asura's time is much longer than ...
... other hand, to deify the vital man. According to him the superman is he who has (1) the supreme sense of the ego, (2) the sovereign will to power and (3) who lives dangerously. All this means an Asura, that is to say, one who has, it may be, dominion over his animal and vital impulsions in order, of course, that he may best gratify them—but who has not purified them. Purification does not necessarily ...
... Divine Work to be done, for the spiritual truth for which we stand to establish itself on the earth. Those who fight for this cause are fighting for the Divine and against the threatened reign of the Asura. SRI AUROBINDO Page 143 ...
... Asuric world which is a world of force, violent and hard – a world of self - aggrandisement, self-mortification and self-immolation. Harmony there is not. It moves by conflict, struggle, strife. The Asura increases his power by suffering, by what Gita calls' "Asuric Tapas" – by violent means and self-torture, and thus tries to approach the power of the Gods. Disciple : Humanity is badly off between ...
... instance, such a man gets tremendous power and generally has an ego-centric nature. Even Ravana was a great yogi. One having a great control over the vital plane only is generally known as a Rakshasa, The Asura controls his mind and his vital being. There is a great possibility of committing a blunder in the Dattatraya path. Disciple : In the Avadhuta Gita, attributed to Datta, great stress is laid ...
... America. PURANI: America, of course, and America won't come in unless a variety of odd incidents happen: for instance, the sinking of an American ship. SRI AUROBINDO: Hitler will never do that. The Asura who guides him knows very well what would happen then. ...
... prepared to sacrifice one million men against the Maginot Line. (After a while) Paris has been the centre of human civilisation for three centuries. Now he will destroy it. That is the sign of the Asura. History is repeating itself. The Graeco-Roman civilisation was also destroyed by Germany. NIRODBARAN: But if France does not defend Paris? SRI AUROBINDO: Then he will not destroy it immediately ...
... puzzled. SRI AUROBINDO: You may tell him that God's Front is the Spiritual Front, which is still lagging much behind. Hitler's Germany is not God's Front. It is the Asuric Front, through which the Asura aims at world-domination. It is the descent of the Asuric world upon the human to establish its own power on the earth. NIRODBARAN: It seems Hitler says that by the end of June he will proclaim a ...
... does happen, when some special work has to be done. A god sometimes literally descends into a man, takes up the human soul within himself and becomes the man, transformed and transfigured, even as an Asura also may do the same thing. And human beings too on high altitudes of spiritual growth, major souls, can combine and fuse together to form a single soul-such may be the demand of their individual lines ...
... pressure and working out of its self-rule an absolute reversal of man's nature. It is the Asuras who are now holding sway over humanity, for man has allowed himself so long to be built in the image of the Asura; to dislodge the Asuras, the Gods in their sovereign might have to be forged in the human being and brought into play. It is a stupendous task, some would say impossible; but it is very far removed ...
... by the infra-rational all that man has inherited from the animal? SRI AUROBINDO: Not only that. Man has accused the animal for nothing. In the infrarational are also included the Rakshasa and the Asura. Man has always been speaking of the animal, the Pashu in a superior way. But take the dog's faithfulness and affection. These qualities are universal among dogs. But even when they are found among ...
... through both, in and through their ignorant and perverse wills, it is His Will that works itself out and finds fulfilment in the end. Whether one is for or against the Divine, whether one is a God or an Asura, each in his own way contributes to the progressive realisation of ------------------------------- * Hamlet, Act v, Sc. ii Page 386 the Cosmic Purpose. From a certain ...
... capacity to tear off the. veil over what once was considered not worth the while or decent to uncover. A strange recklessness and shamelessness, an unhealthy and perverse curiosity, characteristic of the Asura and the Pisacha, of the beings of the underworld, mark the movement of the modernist. But I forget. The Modernist is not always an anarchist, for he too seeks to establish a New Order; indeed he arrogates ...
... its wit's end without Turkey's help and what can Turkey do all alone? So Hitler comes to Asia Minor and that means India. This is what I thought, long before, that Hitler might do in the Balkans. The Asura is up to his tricks again. Now Hitler's moves are quite clear. He will try to move towards the Mediterranean, taking possession of the Suez and then Egypt with a simultaneous movement into Spain for ...
... other hand, to deify the vital man. According to him the superman is he who has (I) the supreme sense of the ego, (2) the sovereign will to power and (3) who lives dangerously. All this means an Asura. that is to say, one who has, it may be, dominion over his animal and vital impulsions in order, of course, that he may best gratify them - but who has not purified them. Purification does not necessarily ...
... against to feel and affirm itself but it will come from a higher personal self which is one with the cosmic soul and therefore with other personal souls. The Asura, in spite of, or rather, because of his aggressive vehemence betrays a lack of the sovereign power that is calm and at ease and self-sufficient. The Devic power does not ...
... all dharmas", becomes the principle. But there if you leave out the last portion of the sloka—"Mamekam saranam vraja", "Take refuge in me"—then you follow your ego and you fall; you become either an Asura or a lunatic or an animal. Even the animals have some sense right and wrong. That is very well shown in Kipling's Jungle Book. Have you read it? NIRODBARAN: No. SRI AUROBINDO: Kipling shows how ...
... occult influence behind the Allies as there is behind Hitler? SRI AUROBINDO: No, they are all ordinary persons without any such influence pushing them. NIRODBARAN: Ordinary persons against an Asura? A bad look-out! SRI AUROBINDO: There is nobody among them who can receive the Divine Force to counteract the Asuras. The Mother has not found anyone. EVENING PURANI: Weygand seems to be hopeful ...
... position will be bad, If a Catholic government takes control, then our Ashram won't be allowed to exist. NIRODBARAN: All moves seem to fall on us in some way or other. SRI AUROBINDO: Of course. The Asura is more concerned with us than anything else. He is inventing new situations so that we may fall into difficulty. Nazis, Fascists and communists are all against us and we are safe under none of them ...
... alone. I shall make you triumph. We shall see if you can bear the blow!" To the Asuras too the Divine gives what they ask for. Generally it is in that way that their end comes all the sooner. An Asura is a conscious being. He knows that he has an end. He knows that the attitude he has taken in this universe will necessarily destroy him after a time. Of course the Asura's time is much longer than ...
... with no intellect, which he applies with strong force and violence; he has no control over his emotions. He hesitates in his policies which some call cautiousness. And all his power comes from the Asura by whom he is possessed and guided while Napoleon was a normal human being acting through the power of his brain which reached the highest development possible in a human being. DR. MANILAL: Napoleon ...
... 221,280,327,371 Ahriman, 287 Akbar, 196 Algeria, 141 Amrita, 29 Arjuna, 206, 350 Aryama, 330 Ashram, the, 57, 118-9, 161, 269, 270, 390 Ashwapati, 237-41, 243, 246, 274 Asura, 250, 287, 368 Atris, 372 BEATRICE, 284 Beethoven, 273 Bharati, 189 Bible, the, 121, 305, 345n – Book of Job, 305n – St. John , 345n Borman, 316 Brahma, 256 ...
... Page 147 The digits of your hands are like rose petals but the nails at the end are like some strange horns, and these have ripped open the body of the Asura, as through the body of a bee. Lo, the Lord has assumed the body of a Man-Lion. Victory to the Lord! Victory to the Master of the World! A strange Dwarf, you duped Bali ...
... Churchill's Government, 698; 'The Children of Wotan', 699ff, 707; on Nazi rule, 700, 707; on the resignation of the Congress ministries, 701; on ashramites' pro-Hitler feelings, 702; on Hitler as the Asura, 702-3; support to allied cause, 704; support to Cripps' Proposals, 706, 728; allied war as dharma yuddha, 708H; message to Congress leaders, 711; Independence Day message, 7128"; birthplace as 'Mujib ...
... to be fulfilled... it will continue... if it has to be dissolved, then humanity will pass through a critical time' - for with the help of those who 'have taken only the side of power and force' that Asura will create 'a new religion or thought, perhaps cruel and merciless, in the name of the Supramental Realisation'. - Apr 12 'Suddenly in the night... the Supreme Love was manifesting through big ...
... world's tragic destiny is brewing, or its last-minute burst of hope into a new world of Truth and Light, for it is said that the deepest darkness lies nearest the most luminous light. The last Asura must die at the feet of the Eternal Mother. It was at this time of heightening tension heading towards yet another Hour of God that the Mother sent through Udar Pinto this power-charged passage ...
... and requesting acceptance of the offer. July 29 : Sri Aurobindo's letter to a disciple 'affirming most strongly' that it was 'Mother's war' 'against the threatened reign of the Asura, the forces of Darkness represented by the Axis Powres. December 2: The Ashram School started. The threat of war coming closer over India, a number of disciples ...
... with little white arabesques, his eyes half-closed or wide open, while they played. He gazed at the wall. There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed that a black yoke of the Asura [the Devil] would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule? Berlin and Nuremberg have marked the end of that dreadful chapter in human history... . But Sri Aurobindo ...
... intestine struggle between the Old that will not die and the New that is as yet powerless to be born, between the entrenched layers of Darkness and the invading rays of Light, between the unyielding Asura and the uncompromising Divine. As the Mother said in her talk on "Knowledge by Unity with the Divine": Life is a battlefield in which the Divine succeeds in detail only when the lower nature ...
... blackest darkness there lies for one who is a divine instrument the light of God's victory.... There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed certain that a black yoke of the Asura would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule? Berlin and Nuremberg have marked the end of that dreadful chapter in human history. Other blacknesses threaten to ...
... of personal things – which did not eventually happen even after delay, defeat or even disaster. There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed certain that a black yoke of the Asura would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule?³ 20-10-1946 ¹ Sri Aurobindo, On Himself , pp. 169-70. ² Ibid., p. 188. ³ Ibid., pp. 168-69. ...
... of evolution or that they contradict something fundamental in human nature? Sri Aurobindo : ( kept silent for some time and then said) There is no such general law. The thing is that the Asura can't keep balance. The law that demands balance then strikes. (Then Sri Aurobindo became silent). After sometime looking at a disciple he said : "Is your cosmic problem solved? (in reference ...
... approach you, even a little.” Father had given such a vivid description of this devil of depression that it was impossible to let myself slip into despair or gloom. I would always feel that this asura was going to grab me. This was in April 1945. Father brought mother, my brothers and sisters to the Ashram for good. The Mother Herself enrolled Arati and Manoj in the school. The Mother had already ...
... cudgel, lance, sword, shield, conch, bell, wine-cup, trident, noose and the discus Sudarsana , She has a complexion of coral and is seated on a lotus. I worship here that Mahalaxmi, the vanquisher of asura, Mahisha. (Translation by Shankaranarayanan) Glory of the Divine Mother , p.153. ...
... that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura force. The progression is striking and unmistakable." The ancient Hindu "envisages this progression as an enormous movement covering more ages than we can easily count. He believes that Nature ...
... scientific knowledge and the mastery of gross and subtle nature, using the elements as his servants and the world as his footstool, but undeveloped in heart and spirit, becomes only an inferior kind of Asura using the powers of a demigod to satisfy the nature of an animal. According to dim traditions and memories of the old world, of such a nature was the civilisation of old Atlantis, submerged beneath ...
... that this is not so much the Nadir of history; unconsciously perhaps the artist has given a quiet but effective delineation of the Scourge of God, the man who is rather a force than a human being, the Asura with a mission who has come to do God's work of destruction and help on the evolution by carnage and ruin. The soul within is not that of a human being. Some powerful Yogin of a Lemurian race has incarnated ...
... Rendering—Offer perfectly to Rudra, rainer of the fruit, the protective sacrificial food, O light in anger (priests); I praise theMaruts in the two firmaments & the driver out from heaven of the Asura with his heroes by means of the quiver. (2) Suggestions रघुमन्यवो—रघु = swift मन्यु = ϴνμóς, mind, passion, soul. मीळ्हुषे = kindly, friendly अस्तोषि = I stood firm, was established. Bring ...
... karmadeha were [ ] 1 farther eliminated & weakened. On the other hand, the new tejas has increased & grows on the buddhi which is admitting the subjective conditions of the adeshasiddhi, eg the Asura & Rakshasa bhavas of Mahakali, but not the probability of the siddhi itself in this life. Kamananda though it comes, has not overcome the opposition to its intensity & permanence. The higher material ...
... goal which we are seeking. If we realise the Ishwara as the Atman, our Self, without realising Him as the Brahman we run, unless our souls have first become purified, another peril, the peril of the Asura who misapplies the mighty formula So Aham & identifies God with his own unregenerated ignorant Ego,—extending the Inhabitant only to some transient circumstances of the movement in which He dwells. ...
... Pramatha or aesthetic, curious animal; and from these levels climbed to the condition of the Rakshasa or animalgod who satisfies egoism through his sensational and emotional impulses; he is now the Asura, Titan or demi-god satisfying in the heart & buddhi his emotional and intellectual egoism. He has eventually to become the whole god; he must learn to satisfy himself without egoism through ideal knowledge ...
... articulating, with whatever falsehood and stammering, its secret sense that it is the Lord of the universe, yet must it deny & transform itself, if it is to effect its grandiose object. The mighty Asura, Hiranyakashipu or Ravana, Attila, Alexander, Napoleon or Jenghiz, reaching out to possess the whole world physically as the not-self, is the Godhead in man aiming at self-realisation, but a godhead ...
... if we can see in it, when lived on a grand scale, a certain perverse greatness, still a colossal egoism indulgent of the sole life of the mind and the senses was regarded by her as the nature of the Asura and Rakshasa. It is the Titanic, gigantic or demoniac type of spirit, permitted in its own plane, but not the proper law for a human life. Another power claims man and overtops desire and self-interest ...
... satisfaction of desire, of the glorification of mere force and strength, of the worship of the ego and its vehement acquisitive self-will and tireless self-regarding intellect is the gospel of the Asura and it can lead only to some gigantic ruin and perdition. The vital and material man must accept for his government a religious and social and ideal dharma by which, while satisfying desire and interest ...
... The Secret Splendour The Asura Yoga by force of the titanic will. The mind caught mercilessly and made still— Fenced with barbed nerves electrified by fear Of the free world, the ascetic heart beats clear Of all the flushed variety of time— Lonely and lean, tortured by one sublime Mania of world-loss and self-sacrifice ...
... earth and life — by bringing the new message of the Supramental Descent — Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are more specifically evolutionary in their mission and more openly opposed to the rule of the Asura and the Rakshasa in the world. Sri Aurobindo did not hesitate to take part in revolutionary politics in the days before he came to Pondicherry. His work meant risk of life both to himself and his ...
... was held behind the Dupleix statue (now, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s statue has displaced Dupleix). One of the items was a dance drama, “Mahisha-sura-Mardini”. Anu-ben was Durga, Togo her lion and the asura was who — but Kameshwar (I think he had on two horns). On one of the 1st December Programmes (School’s Anniversary) there was a 6-hour programme titled “The Spiritual Evolution of India”. One of ...
... personal things — which did not eventually happen even after delay, defeat or even disaster. There was a time when Hitler was victorious every where and it seemed certain that the black yoke of the Asura would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule? Berlin and Nurenberg have marked the end of that dreadful chapter in human History. Other blacknesses threaten to ...
... Divine Work to be done, for the spiritual Truth for which we stand to establish itself on the earth. Those who fight for this cause are fighting for the Divine and against the threatened reign of the Asura.” 964 ...
... organizing what she had or thought she had gained.” Then what went wrong? “[Germany] had taken her vital ego for herself; she had sought for her soul and found only her force. For she had said, like the Asura, ‘I am my body, my life, my mind, my temperament’, and became attached with a Titanic force to these; especially she had said, ‘I am my life and body’, and than that there can be no greater mistake ...
... before them. The tantric yogi who had been Satprem’s guru, Panditji, wrote to the Mother to announce that a new world war and a global catastrophe had been revealed to him. The Mother knew that the Asura of Falsehood, alias the Lord of the Nations, was doing his utmost to bring about an apocalyptic destruction. According to the tantric yogi, the Indo-Chinese War would be the occasion that would initiate ...
... ‘the tangible sign of the Victory over the hostile forces,’ the Mother would later write about herself. She has not expanded on the meaning of these words, but Paul Richard, an incarnation of the Asura of Falsehood, whom she had been unable to convert despite her promise, certainly had something to do with it. The few times she mentioned in passing their stay in Japan and their last months together ...
... three categories. At the top are the Asuras , (a word usually written with a capital letter by Sri Aurobindo) already known to us, and their nearest emanations still big enough also to be called ‘Asura’. They belong to the mental and the higher vital levels. All Asuras are radically against the work of the divine evolution and do everything possible to thwart it, on the one hand out of pure s ...
... emanations lead independent lives. (This is the reason, for instance, that whole ‘cascades’ — emanations in stepwise gradations — of two of the four great Asuras are still active, while the one Asura has converted himself and the other has been dissolved into his Origin.) Mother Nature, though being an emanation of the Creatrix, has her own character and will. What vexed the embodied Mother ...
... inside him, by being him and doing, through a direct identification, his yoga of conversion – a conversion difficult to perform for any ordinary human being but near to impossible in the case of an Asura. She had vowed that even if she had to descend into hell, she would do so. Though the pages of her diary hardly tell us about it, her stay in Japan was ‘a perpetual battle with the adverse forces’ – ...
... October 18, 1934 You may be sure that we shall not desert you and that we would never dream of doing so. You say truly that what drives you into these moods is the Asuric Maya or a goad from the Asura—it is what we speak of as the hostile Force. What answers to it is a part of the human vital that has an attraction or habit of response to suffering, self-torment, depression and despair. But in itself ...
... distinguish spiritual truth from pseudo-spiritual imitations of it or substitutes for it set up by the mind and the vital desire. The power to distinguish between truth of the Divine and the lies of the Asura is a cardinal necessity for Yoga. The question is whether that can best be done by the negative and destructive method of doubt, which often kills falsehood but rejects truth 190 with the same impartial ...
... personal things — which did not eventually happen even after delay, defeat or even disaster. There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed certain that the black yoke of the Asura would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule? Berlin and Nuremberg have marked the end of that dreadful chapter in human history. Other blacknesses threaten to ...
... anxiety, listlessness, etc. (Complete Wordfmder, Reader's Digest Oxford, 1996). 86. Shanta: a Gujarati lady disciple. 87. Narasimha: the manlion incarnation of Vishnu. Hiranyakashipu, the Asura king, persecuted his son Prahlada who adored Vishnu, his sworn enemy. So Narasihma finally held Hiranyakashipu and with his nails cut open his stomach and pulled out his entrails. 88. Meherwan ...
... Persian form of the ancient Aryan word "Rakshasa", meaning "Giant" and denoting a type of what Sri Aurobindo would call a Vital Being. The Rakshasa is the violent devourer as distinguished from the Asura who is the cold-blooded scheming destroyer and dictator, as well as from the Pishacha, who is the foul-minded perverted filth-fiend and torturer. Ruksh in the Rustum-legend would represent the gigantic ...
... Sanskrit Series, Varanasi, 1971). Gupta, "Two Urbanizations in India: a side study in their social structure", in Puratattva no. 7 (1974) [cited by S. Asthana]. Hale, Wash Edward, Asura in Early Vedic Religion (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1986). Page 437 Hastings, James ed., Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics Vol. I (T. & T. Clarke, Edinburgh, 1925) ...
... side and not stuck in their follies and obscurities. The dreadful aspect is only for those who are enemies of the Divine within and without. "Terrible," writes Sri Aurobindo, "is her face to the Asura." Page 326 Referring to Savitri as "a wide ocean" and your feeling that you "can touch a drop only", you quote a sloka from the Gita; ''Even a little of this ...
... Vrichīvants the foes of Indra? The connection with Varchin, which Wheeler proposes, is borrowed from Macdonell and Keith. 8 But, even if it holds, have we not seen these scholars interpreting the term "Asura" as indicating a demon and noting its association with Varchin? To be connected with Varchin does not automatically create "a non-Aryan tribe". But actually the Vrichīvants, like the Turvasas and the ...
... disciples. In this connection some of Roy's questions and Sri Aurobindo's answers are of the utmost value at present when the world seems so gloomed over with terrible possibilities and the Asura or Titan is on the march and Sri Aurobindo has withdrawn from his physical body. Apropos a couple of letters in which the Master had written that he was not in the least discouraged by the steady ...
... insistent Rudra that the unseen Power meets us there, the Master of the evolution, the Lord of Karma, the King of justice and judgment, who is easily placated with sacrifice and effort, for even to the Asura and Rakshasa, the Titan and the giant he gives the fruit of their tapasyā , but who is swift also to wrath and every time that man offends against the law, even though it be in ignorance, or stands ...
... that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable. As for the lives in between the Avatar lives, it must be remembered that Krishna speaks of many lives in the past, not only a few supreme ones ...
... rajas is kinetic force, energy, activity, the power that creates and acts and can overcome; but it moves in the wrong lights or the half-lights of the Ignorance and it is perverted by the touch of the Asura, Rakshasa and Pishacha. The arrogant ignorance of the human mind and its self-satisfied perversions and presumptuous errors, the pride and vanity and ambition, the cruelty and tyranny and beast wrath ...
... enormous strength, may instead of waiting for it to be purified and transformed throw itself out in a violent and impure action and even turn us for a time or partially into the selfish and arrogant Asura using the strength given him for his own and not for the divine purpose: but on that way lies, in the Page 766 end, if it is persisted in, spiritual perdition and material ruin. And even ...
... first place, the Angirases are not merely the deified human fathers, they are also brought before us as heavenly seers, sons of the gods, sons Page 159 of heaven and heroes or powers of the Asura, the mighty Lord, divas putrāso asurasya vīrāḥ (III.53.7), an expression which, their number being seven, reminds us strongly, though perhaps only fortuitously, of the seven Angels of Ahura Mazda ...
... naishturyam & krauryam are now well-developed; they have yet to be harmonised . The Pashu, Pishacha, Pramatha, Rakshasa have all now taken their seat; they have to be harmonised & subjected to the Deva-Asura who will give them the bali . The Ananda of defeat is now right in temperament and well-established. The doubts of the Mahasaraswati vibhuti have not yet been set at rest; they persist and find their ...
... action through Prakriti assisting these or by itself or using these. That is definite your—steady tapas is the instrument—faith will come with truth & success. Impure still, all three of them, but the Asura is broken—only in him, it rises occasionally. सं परीति प्सरणा ककलयति कव्यमनग्नन् सं जवनं पुरु हीति सपज्जनः । आर्यति राथेः ।। Something definite & forceful must again be attempted by the combined ...
... physical brain is so disturbed by the shock from above as to lead to madness, but this is only in entirely unfit & impure adharas or when Kali descends angrily & violently avenging the attempt of the Asura to seize on her and force her to serve his foul & impure desires. Ordinarily, the incapacity of the body, the nervous system and the physical brain shows itself in slowness of progress, in slight d ...
... windowframe, of (a) a head, half Rakshasa, half animal with the Pisacha & Pramatha bhavas, one tusk (ekadanti), over the eyes sealed in meditation, is written "God". (b) another, half Rakshasa, half-Asura, with a headdress half Egyptian half Semitic, of an intellectual and formidable type; over the eyes half-open on the world, is written "God". I take it that in the former type God fulfils Himself, with ...
... Nimittamātraṁ bhava savyasācin . He will not cherish personal enmity, anger, hatred, egoistic desire and passion, will not hasten towards strife or lust after violence and destruction like the fierce Asura, but he will do his work, lokasaṅgrahāya . Page 386 Beyond the action he will look towards that to which it leads, that for which he is warring. For God the Time-Spirit does not destroy ...
... we speak is a metamorphosis, not a mere growth into some kind of superhumanity, but a change from the falsehood of our ignorant nature into the truth of God-nature. The mental or vital demigod, the Asura, Rakshasa and Pishacha,—Titan, vital giant and demon,—are superhuman in the pitch and force and movement and in the make of their characteristic nature, but these are not divine and those not supremely ...
... multitude of those rays”. × Vritrahâ . S. says Vritra may mean either the Coverer or cloud, the Asura Vritra or simply the human enemy. The fixed epithet Vritraha must surely have always the same meaning; it refers always to the Serpent, Ahi Vritra. The battles spoken of in the hymn are those between ...
... Brahman, the One Self, but in the personal way "I am God, the Parameshwara". It is as in the Puranic story in which the knowledge was given both to Indra and Virochana and the God understood but the Asura concluded that he the ego was the Divine and therefore went about trying to impose his ego on the universe. 26 November 1935 "The ego ... does not cease with the body" [pp. 16-17]. Does this ...
... pressure on them (this is the contact) that the habit of forgetfulness disappears. 25 January 1935 How is it that the Mother cannot or will not move the hostile forces to action, since even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha are her children? As for the Asuric forces, their movement is part of the ordinary cosmic movement in the Ignorance, but Mother is not here to encourage that movement, but ...
... Divine Work to be done, for the spiritual Truth for which we stand to establish itself on the earth. Those who fight for this cause are fighting for the Divine and against the threatened reign of the Asura. July 29th, 1942. Sri Aurobindo [2] What we say is not that the Allies have not done wrong things, but that they stand on the side of the evolutionary forces. 1 I have not said that ...
... of disorder between whom and the Hindu Olympians there was ever warfare. Yet their hostility did not preclude occasional unions. Sachi herself, the Queen of Heaven, was a Titaness, daughter of the Asura, Puloman; Yayati, ally of the Gods, took to himself a Daitya maiden Surmishtha, child of imperial Vrishopurvan (for the Asuras or Daityas, on the [terrestrial] 3 plane, signified the adversaries ...
... been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here. There is and can be no psychic being in a non-evolutionary creature like the Asura; there can be none in a god who does not need one for his existence. But what the god has is a Purusha and a Prakriti or Energy of nature of that Purusha. If any being of the typal worlds wants to ...
... the uses of the ego or held by Asuric influences and perverted to their purpose. This is indeed one of the three forces—power, wealth, sex—that have the strongest attraction for the human ego and the Asura and are most generally misheld and misused by those who retain them.... For this reason most spiritual disciplines... proclaim poverty and bareness of life as the only spiritual condition. But this ...
... the power of evolution, and of course it was the power of evolution that had made them taste of the fruit of knowledge. And so, according to him, Jehovah was the chief of the Asuras, the supreme Asura, the egoistic god who wanted to Page 92 dominate everything and have everything under his control. And once he had taken the position of supreme lord in relation to earthly realisation, ...
... as well as in the inspiration they receive so ignorantly, they would be invincible because the divine forces themselves are invincible. It is the mixture in the outward expression that gives to the Asura the right to defeat them. To be a successful instrument for the Asuric forces is easy, because they take all the movements of your lower nature and make use of them, so that you have no spiritual ...
... knowledge and the mastery of the gross and subtle nature, using the elements as his servants and the world as his footstool, but underdeveloped in heart and spirit, becomes only an inferior kind of asura using the powers of a demigod to satisfy the nature of an animal. Page 65 December 11, 1909 Between them music, art and poetry are a perfect education for the soul; they make ...
... somebody says, 'I no longer want to rely on anything but Him. I want to close my eyes and rest in Him alone,' this comfortable 'Him,' which is exactly what you want him to be, is the ego—or a formidable Asura, or a Titan (depending on each one's capacity). They're all over the earth, the earth is their domain. So the first thing to do is to pocket your ego—not preserve it, but get rid of it as soon as possible ...
... incident: during her work in trance, Mother discovered the location of the 'mantra of life'—the mantra that has the power to create life (and to withdraw it, as well). Theon, an incarnation of the Asura of Death, was of course quite interested and told Mother to repeat this mantra to him. Mother refused. Theon became violently angry and the link was cut (the link that connected Mother to her body) ...
... body has a will of its own is a new experience for me. When the body is converted, it knows how to collaborate. 29 November 1967 Which came first in the manifestation, the god or the Asura? The oldest tradition says that the first four emanations of the Mahashakti—Consciousness, Love, Truth and Life—cut themselves off (separated themselves) from their Supreme Origin and became Un ...
... Aurobindo and that long work. As though it had served to trigger one of the movements of transformation of the earth. There are landmarks of that kind.... I had told you, you remember, how that great Asura (who in fact was the first born; it's for him that I had built a subtle body) had said he was going to China and that China's revolution (a long time ago!) would signal the beginning of the work of ...
... definitive. Lord, give us the strength to reject falsehood and emerge in Thy truth, pure and worthy of Thy victory. This is no question of general theory; it belongs to the actuality of things. The Asura is the force of falsehood, antidivine, which reigns as sovereign over the physical world; his influence is felt everywhere, it is in everything in Matter. But the time has now come when the separation ...
... years. Entire civilizations to rebuild. No, "one" isn't in favor of that. It's a seething of something very dark, very dark. It reminds me of the words of the "Lord of Nations," the great Asura, when he told me, "I know that my power is drawing to its close, but you may be sure that before disappearing I will destroy everything I can." That's it, that's exactly it. And unfortunately ...
... these Aphorisms: "It means that gentleness without strength and goodness without power are incomplete and cannot entirely express the Divine. I might say that the charity and generosity of a converted Asura are infinitely more effective than those of an innocent angel." × When Satprem later published this ...
... itself in into the earth consciousness, there will be no more chance of any success or survival for the Asuric Maya." ( On Himself , 26.472 ) October 18, 1934 It's interesting because the Asura is now thrashing about just like someone who expects to disappear. That's interesting .... × 230—"Courage and love ...
... receptive but was in fact completely shut in in its own structure. That's right. And the next day she wrote me a letter. And when I read that letter I felt I had put my finger on the Falsehood, the Asura. The REAL Falsehood, you know, that is, the one that has caught hold of the light and turned it into a falsehood. Yes, exactly. Really I said, "This is the Falsehood." And I had a very strange ...
... September 29, 1971 ( Last day of the Durga festivals, Vijaya dashami, marking the Victory of the Universal Mother over an Asura. ) Do you want a [blessing] packet? You had Sujata give me one yesterday. Another one! If you like! It's not the same! It was clear, very clear today, a sort of Pressure to say: ...
... the world's tragic destiny is brewing, or its last-minute burst of hope into a new world of Truth and Light, for it is said that the deepest darkness lies nearest the most luminous light. The last Asura must die at the feet of the Eternal Mother. A lover of India × The article appears at the end of this conversation ...
... of his disciples. In this connection some of Roy's questions and Sri Aurobindo's answers are of the utmost value at present when the world seems so gloomed over with terrible possibilities and the Asura or Titan is on the march and Sri Aurobindo has withdrawn from his physical body. Apropos a couple of letters in which the Master had written that he was not in the least discouraged by the steady trend ...
... History has the bookishness of Hegel's tidy schema, Spirit fulfilling its schedule of progress with no problem whatever. But history is fatefully open-ended, for man can abuse his freedom to become an Asura and wreck himself too thereby. Man can regress to a cannibal, Bhima drinking Duhsasana's blood. Man may commit race-suicide, as nearly happened in Kurukshetra where only nine men survived out of 18 ...
... divine part—so a psychisation will not carry one beyond the present evolution but will make the being ready to respond to all that comes from the Divine or Higher Nature and unwilling to respond to the Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha or Animal in the being or to any resistance of the lower nature which stands in the way of the divine change. You have said that the psychic being is at this stage a flame not ...
... AUROBINDO: Yes. NIRODBARAN: In that case, Dilip says, he is worse than a case of possession. How does he allow dancing, music, etc. in Russia? SRI AUROBINDO: That he can do. He is an intellectual Asura. All such things are a device to keep the people contented. But if they do go against the State they are shot. And what sort of music? Folk songs? Communism is a means for keeping power in his hands ...
... 19 Calling the Souls In the hush of the soul listening, A deafening crash of cymbals announced The Apocalyptic fall and final demise Of the moribund Asura, blind lord of this world matter. Riotous winds whipped up the sea, a thousand violins In ecstasy, presto, crescendo, ripped the veil to ribbons Between the devotee and the dazzling ...
... the British leave and he was no less a patriot than anyone else. EVENING SATYENDRA: What is this flame-throwing business the Germans have started? SRI AUROBINDO: That is a real sign of the Asura. Hitler has many devilish things in store, it seems—works of devilish ingenuity. NIRODBARAN ( addressing Satyendra ): Your Indian Express prints in headlines that the Germans are only seventy miles ...
... NIRODBARAN: The world is already getting darker and darker. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but that has been foreseen. SATYENDRA: Foreseen by whom? SRI AUROBINDO: Foreseen since the age of the Bible that the Asura will dominate the world for a time. (After a while) Gandhi's interview with the Viceroy seems to be the same old story. There is likely to be no change in Simla's attitude. Poor Gandhi, he was in ...
... when the larger vital impulses come into play man becomes the Rakshasa, the demon. Egoistic hunger for possession, enjoyment, enlarged and increased appetite are his characteristics. Next came the Asura, the Titan, the egoistic mental man in his earlier avatar seeking to emerge out of the purely vital nature. Ambition and pride are his guiding spirit. Prometheus is his prototype. There are still two ...
... Arjuna, 60, 188-9,384-5, 391 Arminius, 88 Arnold, Matthew, 68, 192, 240, 272 Artemis, 195 Asia, 16, 48, 70, 101, 148, 152-3, 240, 245 Asoka,93,195 Asura, 18, 69-74, 186, 201, 234, 267, 272, 291, 376, 382-3, 386 Aswatthama, 298 Aswins, 9 Athena, 222 Atlantic, 210 Atlantis, 223 Augustan Age, 205, 212 ...
... supraphysical worlds differ widely in different religious traditions. Some of these names are: Page 52 deva, gana, upadeva, parsad, siddha, gandharva, vidyadhara, yaksha, raksha, daitya, asura, - all in the Indian tradition; fresta, jin, pari, iblish, saitan, in the Islamic tradition; and in the Christian tradition nine types of angels are grouped in three different classes; ...
... earthly immortality. Thus, Trishanku 3 was balked in his attempt at a physical ascension to heaven, and the vessel of amṛta or the life-giving nectar is carefully shielded from the eager grasp of Asura-consciousness (amṛtam sunihitameva cakrire surāḥ). 4 A flaming sword that turns every way is indeed keeping the way of the tree of life 5 so that its fruit may not be undeservedly usurped by ...
... dharma of Sattvic guna. Rajsic guna and Tamsic guna; it describes the nature and dharma of the "ashvattha tree" as symbolic of the world, samsara; it describes the nature and dharma of the Deva and the Asura; it describes the nature of Dharma, of Shraddha; it distinguishes three components of Kartavyam Karma and speaks of the characteristics of sacrifices, austerities and gifts; it presents a concrete idea ...
... Divine Work to be done, for the spiritual Truth for which we stand to establish itself on the earth. Those who fight for this cause are fighting for the Divine and against the threatened reign of the Asura. July 29th, 1942. Sri Aurobindo 2. What we say is not that the Allies have not done wrong things, but that they stand on the side of the evolutionary forces .5 ...
... ego which requires an object outside and against to feel and affirm itself—but it will come from a higher personal self which is one with the cosmic soul and therefore with other personal souls. The Asura, in spite of, or rather, because of his aggressive vehemence betrays a lack of the sovereign power that is calm and at ease and self-sufficient. The Devic power does not assert but simply accomplishes; ...
... vision to see the inner truth? The human form is a unique thing. We have said that God makes it His own abode. But all kinds of non-divine existences too may appear in it. The Pishacha or Rakshasa or Asura can become manifest in the human form; so may the Gods. In man exist all the worlds and all the elements of these worlds. Therefore any being from any world may possess him and through him can establish ...
... the, 66 America, 133,214,421 Aniruddha, 44, 207-8 Apollo, 47 Ardhanarishwara, 84 Arjuna,9, 14,76-8,93, 112n., 116, 161 Arnold, Matthew, 92, 119 Aryaman, 208 Asia, 272 Asura, 19,45-6,80,98, 162,208-9,226, 253, 334, 349, 379 Axis Powers, the, 66 BABYLON, 199 Bach, 393,424,427 Ba1arama, 44, 207-8 Bankim (Chandra Chatterjee), 21 Beatrice, 203 Beethoven, 393-5 ...
... rhythms and stresses, lines and shades germaneto it that bar the free flow of the Supreme Breath. But the instrument remains and the arms and the weapons-they are cleansed and sanctified: instead of the Asura wielding them, it is now the gods, the Divine Himself who possess and use them. ¹Kena Upanishad,I.1 Page 162 ...
... expanse (parame vyoman). Now applying the parable to the situation today and the modern quest we can say that Science like Bhrigu is at the first step – and, for some, stuck there contented like the Asura Virochana of another Upanishadic parable, although it has become fidgety and somewhat uncertain in recent times: some others – the "vitalist" scientists and philosophers – are in the second stage. And ...
... rhythms and stresses, lines and shades germane to it that bar the free flow of the Supreme Breath. But the instrument remains and the arms and the weapons—they are cleansed and sanctified: instead of the Asura wielding them, it is now the gods, the Divine Himself who possess and use them. Page 72 ...
... Or else even in this violent act you could recognise your dearest friend, Recognise Krishna. You .understand Radha, Him you did not understand. Whenever he sees the Earth besieged by the Asura, He always comes down shaking the unshakeable; He turns round his spear and hurls it head foremost into the hidden bottom of the ocean. You understand the Flute, you understand Vrindavan ...
... Darkness; for our waking, dream and deep sleep are no other than states of Ignorance and Darkness. It is this state of superconscient Being that is the true Immortality and Fearlessness. The Asura had remained contented with the first steps of the true Knowledge. Their strength is the strength of the body, to them the strength of arms is the one source of strength. Quick is their gain and early ...
... principle. Sharanam Vraja becomes the principle. But there if you leave the last portion, "mamekam Saranam Vraja" "take refuge in Me alone" – then you follow your ego and you fall and became either an Asura, or a lunatic or an animal. But even the animals have a sense of right and wrong. It is very well shown in Kipling's Jungle Book. Have you read it? Disciple : No. Sri Aurobindo : There ...
... Page 279 Disciple : Now Hitler is giving bread to German workers. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, he says the German workers are without food and he is going to feed them. It is the Asura spreading his influence like that. He promises that he will bring peace and world-order etc. The new order would be that the British should declare dominion status and pass some parts to Germany ...
... was not purely a formation. I suddenly remembered these lines from Sri Aurobindo’s Durga-stotra: Mother Durga! Thou art Kali, naked, garlanded with human heads, sword in hand, thou slayest the Asura. The next question put to the Mother was: “What does that black Kali do?” The Mother replied: Well, I believe she does fairly bad things! It is obvious that she takes a great pleasure in ...
... senses. A certain M. Valiant, an Indian French citizen working at Karikal, met Sri Aurobindo. 24 April. Talk on the book Eyeless Sight by Joules Remain. 8 May. Talk on Gandhism and on Deva and Asura. 20 May. M. Valiant met Sri Aurobindo and asked his guidance in connection with the French elections, which were approaching. Talk on non-violence and on "Sapta-chatushtaya". 7 June. Talk on ...
... higher race of men and not through individual salvation of individual men", their respective images of the coming Superman were very different: What Nietzsche means by a Superman is a Titan or Asura and not a god. It is quite otherwise, however, with Sri Aurobindo, whose Superman is the God-Man who excels man not in physical strength or in the power to rule and to conquer, but in things of the ...
... Nations', and guided Hitler in his seemingly uncanny decisions. 20 On 10 June 1953, the Mother returned to this subject and referred to this Being and his spiritually destructive work. This particular Asura "wherever there is something going wrong", there he - or his representative - is active. Coming back to the question on 16 June 1954, the Mother said the first original emanations from the Supreme - ...
... necessary to come into contact with his "guide" and receive from him :inspirations which he carried out later very faithfully. This being which Hitler took for the Supreme was quite plainly an Asura, one who is called the "Lord of Falsehood" in occultism, but who proclaimed himself the "Lord of the Nations" .... Generally he used to appear to Hitler wearing a silver cuirass and helmet; a ...
... once to call into play forces entirely favourable to the fruition of one's deepest aspiration, and then "the victory is ultimately certain". Once the election "I want only You" has been made, neither Asura nor man, neither the sophistries and half-lights of Falsehood nor the follies and duplicities of man, nor whatever tendency towards insincerity may lurk in oneself, Page 594 can stand ...
... 'Serpent' wasn't at all Satan, but the symbol of evolution—Theon was wholly pro-evolution —evolution in a spiral; and the earthly Paradise, on the contrary, was under the domination of Jehovah, the great Asura who claimed to be unique —who wanted to be the only God. For Theon, there is no one and only God, there is the Unthinkable. It's not a 'God'." Then Mother said in a slow thoughtful voice, "But ...
... scientific knowledge and the mastery of gross and subtle nature, using the elements as his servants and the world as his footstool, but undeveloped in heart and spirit, becomes only an inferior kind of asura [demon] using the powers of a demigod to satisfy the nature of an animal. According to dim traditions and memories of the old world, of such a nature was the civilisation of old Atlantis, submerged ...
... conch, the discus, the club and the lotus in Thy hands, the Goddess Mahalakshmi, salutations to Thee. O the rider on Garuda (The bird who is the Vehicle of Vishnu), the who strikes fear in Kola the Asura, the deliverer from all sins, the Goddess Mahalakshmi, salutations to Thee. O the Terrible in the gross and the subtle, the most powerful, the most prosperous, the deliverer from all sins, Mahalakshmi ...
... recounts in detail the whole horrible episode. When recently I reviewed the above text, written two or three years ago, it was Durga Puja. Durga, as you know, comes each year to destroy one Asura. An ardent prayer rose in me, imploring her. "Mother, annihilate all the cruel forces. Never, ever, may any act of cruelty occur in this world." Page 163 later Ananda Ranga Pillai ...
... greater than themselves. PURANI: The fight between the Devas and the Asuras is graphically described in the Puranas. Just as the Asuras are against the human race, there must be other Beings who help the human race. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. Human beings by themselves are no match for the Asuras. If it is only an influence from the Asuras or other Beings, the result may depend on that influence. Here in ...
... also proper to each domain. The earliest, the first among them are the Asuras, rather the original Asuras—the first quaternary (some memory of them seemed to linger in the Greek legend of Chronos and his brood). For they embody the powers of division, of Inconscience: they are the Affirmations of the Negation. Against the Asuras there came and ranged—at the first line of division, on the one side ...
... Mahalakshmi was Light Ganguly, Mahasaraswati was Jhumur and Mahakali was myself. In addition, there were three Asuras: Shumbha, Nishumbha and Raktabeej, played respectively by Mona, Vishweshwar and Niranjan, if I recall correctly. I don't quite recollect who had selected the actors for the Asuras, the Mother or Anu-ben. The story was the well-known traditional one. The dance choreography and direction... slay the Asuras Shumbha and Nishumbha. Even before the goddess had slain them, they were covered in blood. One of them was hurt in the neck, the other one in the arm. I concluded it must have been caused by my broken sword. Just then, such a power came down into my body that I could not be bothered about anything or anyone. I began moving with tremendous power and elan as I slew the Asuras. At the end... into his ken, his music invariably had a distinct originality which was most enchanting. Anu-ben's dance choreography was ready and we had begun rehearsing with Sunil-da's music. As the slaying of the Asuras was the central theme of the drama, my dance was the longest. I had to appear in several scenes. Each day, during the rehearsals, I was face to face with a feeling that I could not quite describe or ...
... consciousness is illuminating, "terrifying not only to the Asuras, but to the sadhaks". And yet it was only a limited and particular force—the Durga power! Others did not go so far as that, but they found her high, far-away, aloof, severe—asked what was the cause of her displeasure against them. And that comes to the same—to be severe against the Asuras is also to be severe against the sadhaks. A few struck... external material because she has to Page 69 keep on a level with the sadhaks. And what then? If she is not to be allowed to protect herself, the work, the sadhaks, against the attacks of the Asuras on the physical plane—for it is there that there is the whole question,—then what is to be done? what can be done? Nothing. We can only wait for the supramental descent—and that descent is methodical ...
... their domain on earth and attack any aspiration in the human soul towards a goal that surpasses them and attempts to eliminate them. According to the Indian tradition there are in descending order the asuras , the great hostiles of the vital-mental plane, sometimes compared to the Titans of Greek mythology; then there are the rakshasas, the ugly ogres of the vital plane, which are nevertheless perfectly... became Falsehood; Consciousness ( chit ) became Darkness and Ignorance; Life ( tapas , the power of chit ) turned into Death; Bliss and Love ( ananda ) changed into Suffering. They are the four great asuras, the Lords of Falsehood, Darkness, Death and Suffering – the four powers at the basis of our evolutionary universe, capable of multiplying themselves in cascades of lesser emanations, of lesser demons... Dictators”. 989 They are also the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the four powers of hell. Obviously something had gone wrong with this creation: the Supreme Being had turned into its contrary. And as asuras are absolute, implacable egos, this creation would remain forever a world of falsehood, ignorance, suffering and death. Who was responsible for the “accident”? The creative Power of the Supreme Being ...
... also proper to each domain. The earliest, the first among them are the Asuras, rather the original Asuras – the first quaternary (some memory of them seemed to linger in the Greek legend of Chronos and his brood). For they embody the powers of division, of Inconscience: they are the Affirmations of the Negation. Against the Asuras there came and ranged-at the first line of division, on the one side of ...
... fights of the Asuras—I am telling Nirod as he may not have read it. So many times the Asuras attack the Mother. At the last moment, they are defeated. SRI AUROBINDO: That is the Indian tradition: up to the last moment the Asuras are victorious; and that is the general tradition as well. At the last moment, some miracle happens. SATYENDRA: They also say that Shiva supports the Asuras, gives them... NIRODBARAN: He says that perhaps it is necessary that the Allies should go through hardships and sufferings at the beginning. He got strength from the Mother's message in which she has said that the Asuras can't be victorious eternally against the Divine. The hour of Hitler's downfall must come. SRI AUROBINDO: That doesn't mean it will come by the Allies. (Laughter) SATYENDRA: No, but don't tell ...
... incarnation, as in the case of Hitler, then it is a different matter. Disciple : That makes the conflict between the Gods and the Asuras represented in the Puranas very realistic even for our times, because, generally the Gods used to get beaten by Asuras and run for protection either to Mahakali or to Rudra or to Vishnu. Sri Aurobindo : It is the intervention of the Divine that can ...
... see in the mythological legends the gods very often worsted at the hands of the Asuras, Indra hiding under the sea, Zeus threatened often with defeat and disaster. It is only an intervention from the Supreme (the Greeks called it Fate) that saved them in the end and restored the balance. However, the Asuras came to think better of the game and consented to use their freedom on the side of ...
... darkness in the whole of creation. The Asuras were running wild. The gods (signifying divine aspiration) went to Vishnu who told them: “You won’t be able to battle with the Asuras. The Asuras are very powerful. You have to become strong. Drink amrita (the nectar of immortality). Churn amrita out. This churning can happen only when you join all the oceans. Take the Asuras along.” Mother, give to our... halahal is removed, the spiritual Shakti will awaken. From the Inconscient the Mother will re-emerge carrying the pot of amrita (the nectar of immortality). This pot of amrita is immortality. The asuras cannot gain immortality. Only the gods can get amrita or immortality. Man will get his part too. That was why the Mother plunged into the Inconscience. Now it is no more in the subtle world. It is ...
... A Roman poet says something like, "The giants fall by their own mass." There is a similar idea in India: "The Asuras are too heavy for the earth to bear." But I must say some Asuras are clever enough to escape and flourish in spite of proverbs! PURANI: Can it be affirmed that the Asuras by their action meddle too much in the law of evolution or that they contradict the very fundamental urge of humanity... humanity? SRI AUROBINDO (after keeping silent for a time) : There is no such general law. The thing is that the Asuras can't keep a balance. The law that demands balance then strikes. A long silence followed. Nirodbaran, after some hesitation, blurted out a question that had been revolving in his mind. NIRODBARAN: Somebody has asked: Did Vivekananda bring into Ramakrishna's work a spirit not ...
... why we see in the mythological legends the gods very often worsted at the hands of the Asuras: Indra hiding under the sea, Zeus threatened often with defeat and disaster. It is only an intervention from the Supreme (the Greeks called it Fate) that saved them in the end and restored the balance. However, the Asuras came to think better of the game and consented to use their freedom on the side of the ...
... millions of them. And between them they got into a certain habit and have the logic of persevering in it; and they keep on not wanting any other rule than their own to govern. In India, they are called 'Asuras,' the beings of darkness. It is logic that makes them so. They began by going wrong, they continue." However, she added happily, "Now, I must say that there are some that are changing their minds... Matter. According to Theon, the world as we know it is the result of that. And that was the Supreme himself in his first manifestation." Therein lies the power, the force of the first burns, the Asuras. "And once the world has become like that, become the vital world in all its darkness, and they from this vital world have created Matter, the supreme Mother sees," sparks of merriment danced... birth. Otherwise they remain unchanged in their typal worlds. Incidentally, the Puranic gods, though not as meek as a nun's hen, do tend to be ninnies. The slightest setback at the hands of the Asuras, and they run to Grandfather Brahma to be pulled out of their predicament. Mother's reference to the Puranas may be puzzling to those unfamiliar with Indian mythology. There are eighteen major ...
... ordinary forms seen through the vital; the real Mahakali form whose origin is in the Overmind is not black or dark or terrible, but golden of colour and full of beauty, even when formidable to the Asuras. 10 February 1934 Sometimes I see the Mother in the form of Mahakali or as the Transcendent and Universal Mother. But I see her in a white colour. I know that Kali is called Shyama because her ...
... creates authority, and fear follows authority — so where is love? Yes, it is like that in the vital world, which is the domain of the adverse forces — despotism and fear are the great tools of the Asuras. But that has nothing to do with the divine world. Indeed, it is the negation of the divine world, it is the falsehood that Truth must destroy and replace with compassion and love. 8 September ...
... Agenda 1968 May 25, 1968 ( Regarding an old Playground Talk of June 10, 1953. ) What is it about? Page 147 Attacks by adverse forces and Asuras. Oh!... ( Laughing ) That's a convenient way of putting the blame on others! Do you think we should publish it? Certainly. It's helpful. When now people tell me about attacks by adverse ...
... the Sri Aurobindo Medical Association in Cuttack. Here is the piece for your reading: "Since time immemorial man has tried to conquer death. We read in the Puranas that the Rishis and even the asuras were doing great Tapasya to become immortal. In medieval Europe kings kept alchemists to find out the process by which man could prolong his youth and life, as well as other things like discovering ...
... total surrender to the Divine and say to the Lord in all sincerity, "Let Thy will be done." 13 July 1960 × Of the Asuras, hostile beings of the mentalised vital plane. ...
... involved (I don't say universal, but in any case terrestrial), when it is something involving the earth, it must be complete; there cannot be any approximations. Therefore, it's an affair between the asuras and the human species. To transform itself is the only solution left to the human species—in other words, to tear from the asuric forces the power of ruling over the human species. You see, the... where, on the first of each month, Mother distributed to the disciples their needs for the month. × Asuras : the demons or dark forces of the mental plane. × The experience of Nature's collaboration (November... × In effect, according to tradition, the first divine forces that emanated for the creation were the Asuras, who turned into demons. The gods were created later to repair the disorder engendered by the demons. × ...
... s stopped; if they came they didn't last. The progress is exceedingly slow. One rises, falls; rises again and falls again, Page 326 constantly meeting with the suggestions of the Vedic Asuras, 'You can't do anything, you are bound to fail.' "You have to go on working and working year after year, point after point, till you come to a central point in the subconscient which has to be conquered ...
... "plus haute origine", they must belong to the higher worlds. Does this mean that the hostiles exist in the higher worlds up to the Supramental? I believe the Mother was referring to the mental Asuras as opposed to the vital hostiles. There are no hostiles above the mind and cannot be, for it is with the mind that the opposition begins. When the Conversations were translated, Mother made certain ...
... celestial hymns; of whom the Samavedins sing with vedas, vedangas, padas, kramas and the upanishads; whom the yogins see in samadhi with one pointed concentration, whose limits neither the devas nor the asuras know, salutations to that God. Srimadbhagatam - Bhagabat Pranam ॐ वरद चरणयोस्ते वाक्यपुष्पोपहारम् प्रमहसि पदे निस्वैगुण्ये श्रीअरविन्दाय नमः। om varada caraṇayoste vākyapuṣpopahāram ...
... with the psychic being—the surest link. ( Silence ) That’s all? Sweet Mother, does something aspire even in the most nasty people? In the most nasty people?… yes, my child—even in the Asuras, even in the Adversaries, even in the monsters, there is something. There is always a corner, a kind of rift, a sensitive point, which is usually called a weakness. But this actually is the strength ...
... God. Shiva would have been easy to satisfy. PURANI: Yes, he doesn't care for consequences. Krishna has to come afterwards to save the situation. DR. MANILAL: Shiva seems to give boons to the Asuras, sometimes to both the opposite parties in the fight, sometimes boons which are contradictory to former ones. SRI AUROBINDO: He says, "This fellow has done some Tapasya, let me give him something ...
... their march to world-domination, he used his spiritual powers to stop their victories and turn them into defeat and disaster. This is the inner history of how the world was saved from domination by the Asuras. Likewise the Mother used her spiritual powers in making the Chinese withdraw from the Indian plains in the 1962 war. To the ordinary unenlightened human mind entrenched in ego, ignorance and ...
... have to try and give them a little self-confidence. But that's nothing. While with those others you can do something, but ... oh, they become furious with you! The contact with the great Asuras, the first Asuras, is like that: the full consciousness of their formidable power, their marvellous capacities—they forget one thing, it's that they deserve no credit for it, it's not their exclusive property ...
... August 1914 , the Mother refers to "chacun des grands êtres Asouriques qui ont résolu d'être Tes serviteurs" [p. 244]. How is it that the Asuras have determined to be the servants of the Divine? Is it exploitation or a "coup de diplomatie"? It was in reference to Asuras who had taken birth in human bodies—a thing they usually avoid if they can, for they prefer to possess human beings without taking ...
... do not need to intensify, rectify your sincerity a—total refusal to deceive the Divine. The first thing is not to deceive oneself. One knows one cannot deceive the Divine; even the cleverest of the Asuras cannot deceive the Divine. But even when one has understood that, one sees that quite often in one's life, in the course of the day, one tries to deceive oneself without even knowing it, spontaneously ...
... vibrating force moves the body. It is just natural and it is a delight too, there is no strain in anything. And all this process is connected with X (Janina's helper). In Europe we would talk about asuras and forces and try fervently to remain positive. Here, Mother has given me X that I may give myself more and more to her as if she were Mother Herself. All these orders I get during Darshan. And X ...
... vary and they are more or less powerful depending on their respective fields of activity. Some are Asuras of a very high order. The Mahabharata calls them 'p ū rve dev ā h', the 'former gods'. They were godly in nature at one time but subsequently revolted against the Divine and became Asuras. The Asuras are generally found on the mental plane. Rakshasas and Pishachas function in the lower vital. A ...
... successful people of this sort are always Indians. Though there was Steiner who had much power over his disciples, but in his case, it was without doubt an adverse force with all the power of the Asuras. Page 58 × Mahesh Yogi, whose disciples included the Beatles and a few Hollywood stars. ...
... offered to kill her. Mother replied, "Killing is no solution. The force behind her will then take possession of someone else." Page 63 Now, on Asuras, there is another anecdote. When a disciple requested Mother to finish off the asuras, she said, "But they also are my children playing around." And then, after a pause, she added with a light heart, "I can twist their tails any time." ...
... life, not an hour, not even a minute when you have not got to rectify or intensify your sincerity. I do not say that you deceive the Divine. None can deceive the Divine, not even the greatest of the Asuras. When you have understood that, still then you will always find moments in your everyday life when you try to deceive yourself. Almost automatically you bring forward reasons in favour of whatever ...
... life, not an hour, not even a minute when you have not got to rectify or intensify your sincerity. I do not say that you deceive the Divine. None can deceive the divine, not even the greatest of the Asuras. When you have understood that, still then you will always find moments in your everyday life when you try Page 379 to deceive yourself. Almost automatically you bring forward ...
... a tradition which seems to have been at the origin of these two known traditions, in which it is said that when, as a result of the action of the adverse forces—known in the Hindu tradition as the Asuras—the world, instead of developing according to its law of Light and inherent consciousness, was plunged into the darkness, inconscience and ignorance that we know, the Creative Power implored the Supreme ...
... A Agni 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 13, 31, 72 Aldous Huxley 33 Antigone 40 Aphrodite 34 Apollo 34 Aristotelian 49 Arnold 43 Arya 90, 92 Ashram 92 Asuras 5 Athens 47 Atri 8 Atul Gupta 102 Auchathya 8 Avatara 27 B Bacchus 34 Balaka 92 Bamardo 23, 24 Baudelaire 72 Bauls 84 Beethoven 9 ...
... Powers that stand above the world and transmit the divine workings. It is the physical mind which believes only in what is physical that denies them. There are also beings of other worlds—gods and Asuras etc. There are Gods everywhere on all the planes. The Gods are in the universal Self—if identified with the universal Self one can feel their presence there. While the Gods cannot ...
... kingdom of the Dharma, are the sons of the Gods, their powers in human form, their adversaries are incarnations of the Titanic powers, they are Asuras. This outer struggle too the Avatar comes to aid, directly or indirectly, to destroy the reign of the Asuras, the evil-doers, and in them depress the power they represent and to restore the oppressed ideals of the Dharma. He comes to bring nearer the kingdom ...
... in various ways, she breathes, she moves. May the wide Earth establish us in Light and in the Matter. (5) Here in ancient days our ancient fathers did their deeds. Here the Gods routed the Asuras. This is the home of kine and horses and birds. May the Earth bestow upon us enjoyments and splendours. (6) She contains all things. She holds the very Substance. She is the Foundation. G ...
... Night The hierarchy of the ordered Powers, The high changeless values, the peaked eminences... 19 So that is Durga, the Slayer of the Asuras. She is there on the cosmic battlefield, engaged in the continuous fight between the Gods and the Asuras, between the armies of Light and the armies of Darkness. Revealing herself, she speaks in a voice "like a war-cry" or "a pilgrim chant": ... missed: they too are safe; A Mother's eyes are on them and her arms Stretched out in love desire her rebel sons. 3 What had the white gods missed? The Mother: The conversion of the Asuras. Looking at the push being given to me by the Mother towards transformation and at my banality and mediocrity, I am reminded of this line of Savitri: All can be done if the God-touch ...
... ess unconsciousness or the inconscient, Truth became falsehood and Knowledge ignorance, Life became death and finally Love and Delight became suffering and hatred. These are the fallen angels, the Asuras that deny their divine essence and now rule the world. They have possessed mankind and are controlling earthly existence. They too have their emanations, forces and beings that are born out of them... supreme status, the Super-mind; next come the first emanations, the true or pure gods in the Overmind. Thence or simultaneously there is the line of deformation, that of the false gods and godheads, the Asuras and Titans. These too extend in a series of emanations down to the subtle physical; except when they themselves incarnate on the earth in an earthly body. Man, the soul, we said, comes direct from ...
... supposed to have been written about the 3rd or the 4th century A. D. Sri Aurobindo : Most probably. In the Vishnu Purana Buddha is regarded as one of the Avatars of Vishnu who came to deceive the Asuras. He is not referred to by name but is called "Maya-moha". Reference to Budha is very clear; it repeats "Budyaswa! Budhyaswa." It is a fine work. Disciple : It is said that the Tantras are derived ...
... and her arms Stretched out in love desire her rebel sons. " 2 What had the white gods missed? The conversion of the Asuras. 1 Savitri (1972), p. 606. 2 Ibid, p. 613. 24.6.1968 Page 48 Isn't the power of the Asuras as boundless as the power of the gods ? The vibrations of evil are in truth less powerful than the vibrations of good. 26.6.1968... when man does not accept the Divine, it is more out of ignorance than out of wickedness? Isn't it so? It is undoubtedly out of ignorance and fear of what he doesn't know. It is only the Asuras and a few great hostile beings who refuse or oppose the Divine even though they know what He is. 21.11.1968 Your child Shyam Sundar must accomplish the three "S": Sincerity, Surrender and ...
... the abyss is very deep, "I can climb very high." It is the same from the universal point of view; to use the Hindu terminology so familiar to you, it is the greatest Asuras who are the greatest beings of Light. And the day these Asuras are converted, they will be the supreme beings of the creation. This is not to encourage you to be asuric, you know, but it is like that—this will widen your minds a ...
... to Hatred and Suffering and finally, instead of Life and Immortality there appeared Death. That was how separation, "the disobedience" of the Bible, caused the distortion that turned the gods into Asuras, that was how Lucifer became Satan. And that was how Paradise was lost. But the story of Paradise Regained is yet more marvellous. When the Divine Mother, Page 267 the creative... separate, more or less immiscible entities, as it were; greater stress is laid here upon their individual functioning and fulfilment than upon their solidarity. Even if they have not the egoism of the Asuras that sets itself in revolt and antagonism to the Divine, still they have to the fullest extent the sense of a separate mission that each has to fulfil, which none else can fulfil and so each is bound ...
... that the Olympian gods – Zeus and his company – were a younger generation that replaced, after of course a bloody warfare, their ancestors, the more ancient race of Kronos, the Titans. Titans were the Asuras and Rakshasas who reigned upon earth before the advent of the mental – sattwic – human being, Manu, as referred here. Page 159 Now, here 1 give you the original text in translation: ...
... ess unconsciousness or the inconscient, Truth became falsehood and Knowledge ignorance, Life became death and finally Love and Delight became suffering and hatred. These are the fallen angels, the Asuras that deny their divine essence and now rule the world. They have possessed mankind and are controlling earthly existence.They too have their emanations, forces and beings that are born out of them... supreme status, the Supermind; next come the first emanations, the true or pure gods in the Overmind. Thence or simultaneously there is the line of deformation, that of the false gods and godheads, the Asuras and Titans. These too extend in a series of emanations down to the subtle physical; except when they themselves incarnate on the earth in an earthly body. Man, the soul, we said, comes direct ...
... In the same book you say "her hands are outstretched to strike and to succour". [ p. 19 ] What do you mean by "strike" here? It expresses her general action in the world. She strikes at the Asuras, she strikes also at everything that has to be got rid of Page 210 or destroyed, at the obstacles to the sadhana etc. I may say that the Mother never uses the Mahakali power in your case ...
... between the two. That is terrible. That absolutely has to stop. For with that idea, the earth and men will NEVER be able to change. This is why I have often said that this idea is the work of the Asuras , 10 and with it they have ruled the earth. Whereas whatever the effort, whatever the difficulty, whatever time it takes, whatever number of lives, you must know that all this doesn't matter:... × Tapasya : asceticism, austerities, severe discipline. × Asuras : demons of the mental plane. ...
... that the Olympian gods—Zeus and his company—were a younger generation that replaced, after of course a bloody warfare, their ancestors, the more ancient race of Kronos, the Titans. Titans were the Asuras and Rakshasas who reigned upon earth before the advent of the mental— sattwic—human being, Manu, as referred here. Page 332 Now, here I give you the original text in translation: ...
... and his company—were a younger generation that replaced, after of course a bloody warfare, their ancestors, the more ancient race of Kronos, the Titans. Titans were the Page 4 Asuras and Rakshasas who reigned upon earth before the advent of the mental—sattwic—human being, Manu, as referred here. Now, here I give you the original text in translation: The Colloquy of Agni ...
... yes, that's it. They have given many names. There, then. Sweet Mother, in the old traditions they always speak of the wives of the gods who are troubled by the asuras. What, the wives of the gods who were troubled by the asuras? Yes! They too are closer to the material world? Is it in the vital world or in... It is in the vital world. (Pavitra) Mother, in the mind also, there are ...
... smoothly and confidently on one track? B did not open all of a sudden. He had from the first a violent Asuric strain in his nature, as he himself knew and he was always trying to incarnate new Asuras in the plea of offering their mighty strength and power for the Divine Work. I don't believe that at any time in his life he went "smoothly and confidently on one track"—it was from the beginning all ...
... with the psychic being—the surest link. ( Silence ) That's all? Sweet Mother, does something aspire even in the most nasty people? In the most nasty people?... yes, my child—even in the Asuras, even in the Adversaries, even in the monsters, there is something. There is always a corner, a kind of rift, a sensitive point, which is usually called a weakness. But this actually is the strength ...
... but not the kind of evil that human will shows in the perverse human mental. I believe it is the human mind under the direct influence of vital beings that begins to work in the perverse way. Titans, Asuras are the beings of ill-will, they belong totally to the vital world and when they manifest themselves in this world of ours, they mean mischief, they do evil for the sake of doing evil, they destroy ...
... strength the vital impulses go out by the strength, in case of weakness they go out because they cannot be checked. Self-control, or samyama, does not necessarily require one to be a yogi or a divine man. Asuras exercise control over their vital impulses to conserve energy for great enjoyment. Those who do not give indulgence to their impulses through weakness or fear of society may be respectable, but ...
... disciple: "She is extremely nervous and excited. I told her to take sedatives, I told her her whole trouble was physical—she says she is the victim of terrible Asuras! It's ridiculous! It's a physical disturbance and she need not go and trouble the Asuras!" × But when the hour of the Divine draws near, The ...
... course, when he firmly asserts that the whole issue of Devas and Dasyus, the recurring theme in the Rgveda of Aryas versus "black-skinned, snub-nosed, phallic-worshipping" Dāsas, and the monstrous Asuras, is merely allegorical - not something which was a dramatization of events actually occurring and situations actually obtaining, but only something which went on solely in the minds of the wise Rishis... reality but a product mainly of philosophical Page 165 fantasy. It can be postulated, equally satisfactorily, and more concretely, that two related tribes - the Ahuras (Sanskrit: Asuras) and the Devas - engaged in internecine conflict in what is today Iran, the Devas getting the worse of it (though the confrontation was probably pyrrhic), resulting in their migration eastwards into... While the Irānians characterized their forefathers (Ahuras) as godly (Ahura-mazda) and their hostile cousins (Devas) as demoniac (Devils), the Vedics did the exact opposite, telling of the monstrous Asuras and the Divine Devas. (Incidentally, in the Graeco-Latin Christian tradition we have the paradoxical fact of the words for God 'Deus' and 'Devil' coming from the same Aryan root!) To come back: ...
... it is the true and natural one. It is no use saying that you are unfit and cannot take it; you have to come to it, if your need is true and entire. The misery of the world or the activity of the Asuras is also irrelevant. Nobody has ever contended that this is a happy and perfect world, nobody in India at least, or the best possible world or put that forth as a proof of the Divine Existence. It is ...
... disappeared, the experiences stopped; if they came they didn't last. The progress is exceedingly slow. One rises, falls, rises again and falls again, constantly meeting with the suggestions of the Vedic Asuras, "You can't do anything, you are bound to fail." You have to go on working year after year, point after point, till you come to a central point in the subconscient which has to be conquered and ...
... spontaneously prayed to You to strike with lightning all that is hostile in me, as Durga kills the Assures. (Mother underlined the last three words and wrote.) Durga does not kill the Asuras; she dominates them and makes it impossible for them to destroy. In the essence all is the Supreme Lord and has to return to the Supreme Lord for an ultimate transformation. Death is only... experience for me that even the body has a will of its own. When the body is converted, it knows how to collaborate. 29.11.1967 Who emerged first in the manifestation, the Gods or the Asuras? The oldest tradition says that the first four emanations of the Mahashakti—Consciousness, Love, Truth and Life—cut themselves off (separated themselves) from their Supreme Origin and became ...
... PURANI: They are supposed to have been written about the third or fourth century A. D. SRI AUROBINDO: Probably. In the Vishnu Purana Buddha is regarded as an Avatar of Vishnu who came to deceive the Asuras. He is not referred to by his own name but called Mayamoha. The Purana says, "Buddhasya, Buddhasya", which evidently refers to Buddha. The principle of Tantra may be as old as the Vedas, but the ...
... belong to the same category of immutability: they are each an eternal reality, an unchangeable norm, an ideal petrified so to say. They are not inconstant and fickle and ever-changing as mortals are. Asuras also have the same character. All these typal beings have to be broken before they can be moulded into another pattern. If any of them wishes to change or evolve into something else he has to come ...
... thousandfold more prolific in resources, weapons and instruments than ever before in recorded history. Everywhere the Mother is at work; from Her mighty and shaping hands enormous forms of Rakshasas, Asuras, Devas are leaping forth into the arena of the world. We have seen the slow but mighty rise of great empires in the West, we have seen the swift, irresistible and impetuous bounding into life of Japan ...
... yourself in Ayodhya. Wrestle with Kali, if you will, she loves a good wrestler; but wrestle not with her unlovingly, or in mere disgust & hate; for her displeasure is terrible and though she loves the Asuras, she destroys them. Rather go through her & under her protection, go with a right understanding of her and with a true & unfaltering Will; she will lead you on with whatever circlings, yet surely & ...
... of psychological sense of Soma. Indra is to protect Soma in a battle, a Soma that itself fights. 9 जनेषु पंचसु इंद्रियाणि या ते. The five worlds: according to Sayana Gandharvas, Fathers, Gods, Asuras, Rakshasas or the five castes. 10 अगत्. गच्छतु S. Can it not be past sense? उत् तिरामसि Meaning of तृ not to increase as Sayana, but Page 480 pass through in the battle. [11] उ लोकः ...
... light too dazzling for his eyes so long accustomed to darkness; perhaps there were deeper necessities of fate and secret reasons. But man failed, man refused the help and rebelled against it; like the Asuras of ancient folklore, man wanted to use the new consciousness to serve his human ends; his human self refused to obey the Divine truth. So man rejected the offer. The time was over. Sri Aurobindo ...
... be duped by the ideal, the romantic or the emotional or anything that is higher than the reason walking by the light of the senses. The Asuras of the past were after all often rather big beings; the trouble about the present ones is that they are not really Asuras, but beings of the lower vital world, violent, brutal and ignoble, but above all narrow-minded, ignorant and obscure. But this kind of cynical... tenderness in art: "I fail to see any further need for human beings either as creators or enjoyers of such 'art'; perhaps in an Asuric civilisation, men are anyhow superfluous and only 'incarnated Asuras' are required?"—Ed. × Mother India, a journal published in Mumbai at that time.—Ed. ...
... the most active instruments against the divine life, against the divine realisation. Well, to some extent, they were loyal to their own ideal and very sincere in their... 1 These beings are called Asuras, but as I have just said, they were sincere in relation to their own ideal. So sincerity is not enough? I didn't say they had an absolute sincerity. I simply said that they were very sincere ...
... which is... ( long silence Mother goes off into that Light, her eyes closed ) I will say what it is later. But at any rate, that is the force Durga wields. And that force is INVINCIBLE for Asuras—it's a fact. What it is... we will know later. ( silence ) But it isn't total Victory, no. It isn't the power of transformation. The other day, I told you, I think, that one of my present activities ...
... to reign on the earth? Are they not individualised? Some are — but often the Forces play of themselves. I suppose by the Gods you mean the vital beings. But they are not Gods — they are Asuras, Rak-shasas or other undivine Powers. I am again feeling depressed; I can't understand the reason for it. Often waves of depression come from the general Nature — the mind finds ...
... -Aphrodite, 182 Apollo, 180, 182 Aragon, 88 Aristotle, 89, 248 Arjuna, 254 Arnold, Matthew, 71, 189,234 -Essays in Criticism, 234n Arya, the, 131,227-8 Asia, 284 Asuras, 159 Aswins, 45 Atri, 162 Auden,88 Aurelius, 70 BACCHUS, 182 Bacon, 108 Banerji, Sanat Kumar, 230n Banquo, 171 Barnardo, 173-5 Baudelaire, 66, 78, 94, 96, ...
... its formation from the most etheric or subtle regions to the most material regions. They are a descent of the divine creative Spirit that came to repair the mischief... in short, to repair what the Asuras had done. The first makers created disorder and darkness, an unconsciousness, and then it is said that there was a second 'lineage' of makers to repair that evil, and the gods gradually descended through ...
... fighting battles of life. As the Veda is an account of the inner battle of life with Vritra Vala and Panis, even so Puranas give an account of the battle between Gods, Devas and their enemies Asuras, Rakshasas and Pishachas. As the Veda speaks of immortality as the goal, even so Puranas speak of the conquest of the elixir of life and attainment of undying celestial joy. In spite of the ...
... But Vashishta refused to resist. So the Cow asked him to allow her to resist Vishwamitra. Vashishta said : "You can do whatever you like." She called upon the psychical powers to resist and the Asuras came on account of the spiritual power of Vashishta. Because one saves himself from the act of killing, his responsibility is not less on that account. The question is whether one resists or not. If ...
... conscious planning and creation, art, poetry, philosophy in this savage shambling creature? An animal cannot evolve powers and activities which have never been possessed except by the gods and the Asuras. How can this material animal organism ever be capable of such a [ incomplete ] Page 264 × The preceding ...
... him by circumstances and the will in things to help by their opposition the march of destiny. Against them he can have no wrath or hatred; for wrath and hatred are foreign to the divine nature. The Asura's desire to break and slay what opposes him, the Rakshasa's grim lust of slaughter are impossible to his calm and peace and his all-embracing sympathy and understanding. He has no wish to injure, but ...
... place. Such cases have been known. And these beings are demons. In life they become veritable demons. There are not many of them. There are beings of the vital, but of a higher kind, emanations of Asuras, for example, who have decided for one reason or another that they would try to be converted, not to be anti-divine, and manage to enter into relation with the Divine. They know that the best way is ...
... is these who have formed between themselves a certain habit and have the logic to preserve it and persist in not wanting any other rule than theirs to govern. These are what are called in India the Asuras, the beings of darkness. It is through a sort of logic that they are like that. They began by going wrong, they continue. Now, I must say, there are some among them who change their mind. But this ...
... sanguinary strife between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. This 'brother against brother' theme appears with numberless variations in the course of the epic. In the Adi Parva itself, the warring Devas and Asuras — both offspring of Prajapati — chum the ocean to secure amṛta or the elixir of immortality. The snakes and Garuda — natural enemies — are the offspring respectively of the sisters, Kadru and Vinata;... of egoism, of sin — is death, always death. Where is the armour against death? How shall we make Death itself die? Anything external like amṛta could prove to be a mockery, as it became to the Asuras and the snakes. All boons for self-preservation, all mechanical paraphernalia of security, all cunning contrivances and edifices of self-deception, all must fail — as fail they did with Hiranyakasipu... Hiranyakasipu, Parikshit of Jayadratha. Fear and terror and hate and violence and vindictiveness — like lechery — only hasten the end. But love — the power of love — has an utter sovereignty. The Asuras and the snakes seek amrta out of fear, — the fear of death. Even after quaffing amrta, the Devas are constantly "afraid". Parikshit desperately tries to keep out the emissary of Death. Jayadratha seeks ...
... immortality. × Consciousness or Light, Life, Love or Bliss, and Truth, which then became the first four asuras or demons. × See Thoughts and Glimpses : 'What then was the commencement of the whole matter? Existence ...
... language so familiar to Indian thought, the country was getting enveloped more and more in "tāmasic ignorance and rājasic impulsion". 14 It was an Asuric age, native Asuras fought among themselves and fought the foreign Asuras, forced the sāttvic men into obscurity and brought about the reign of tamas. At the time of the Muslim advent, the widespread knowledge had already begun to shrink ...
... because of the difficulty otherwise of expressing & perfecting them in a world which did not properly belong to them but to quite other movements. This was the basis of the idea of Devas, Daityas, Asuras, Rakshasas, Pisachas, Gandharvas etc, with which the Veda, Upanishad & Itihasa have familiarised our minds. There is no reason to suppose that all worlds of this material system are the home of living ...
... suggestions of the cosmic dance are brought out by this device in a way which would not be as possible with a two-armed figure. The same truth holds as to the Durga with her eighteen arms slaying the Asuras or the Shivas of the great Pallava creations where the lyrical beauty of the Natarajas is absent, but there is instead a great epical rhythm and grandeur. Art justifies its own means and here it does ...
... believed by most critics that only the first eight cantos are from Kalidasa, the poem contains seventeen cantos and describes the birth of Kumara (also named Karttikeya) and his fight against the asuras. We give here a summary of the last nine cantos, so that the reader gets a glimpse of the totality of the story. Canto 9: While Shiva was savouring the pleasures of love, a pigeon who was no other ...
... sanguinary strife between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. This 'brother against brother' theme appears with numberless variations in the course of the epic. In the Adi Parva itself, the warring Devas and Asuras - both offspring of Prajapati - chum the ocean to secure amrta or the elixir of immortality. The snakes and Garuda - natural enemies - are the offspring respectively of the sisters, Kadru and Vinata;... of egoism, of sin - is death, always death. Where is the armour against death? HOW shall we make Death itself die? Anything external like amrta could prove to be a mockery, as it became to the Asuras and the snakes. All boons for self-preservation, all mechanical paraphernalia of security, all cunning contrivances and edifices of self-deception, all must fail - as fail they did with Hiranyakasipu... Hiranyakasipu, Parikshit or Jayadratha. Fear and terror and hate and violence and vindictiveness - like lechery - only hasten the end. But love - the power of love - has an utter sovereignty. The Asuras and the snakes seek amrta out of fear, - the fear of death. Even after quaffing amrta, the Devas are constantly "afraid". Parikshit desperately tries to Keep out the emissary of Death. Jayadratha ...
... from the work of one of the greatest Italian masters to satisfy myself with some "barbaric" Indian painting or statue, some calm unfathomable Buddha, bronze Shiva or eighteen-armed Durga slaying the Asuras. But the cause of my failure is there, that I am seeking for something which was not meant in the spirit of this art and which I ought not to expect from its characteristic creation. And if I had steeped ...
... eternal and infinite bliss. So too the figure of Kali which is so terrible to European eyes is, as we know, the Mother of the universe accepting this fierce aspect of destruction in order to slay the Asuras, the powers of evil in man and the world. There are other strands in this feeling in the Western mind which seem to spring from a dislike of anything uplifted far beyond the human measure and others ...
... paralysis of the will and hence were unable to give the right lead to the country at the time of the war, Sri Aurobindo saw it at its deepest level as the struggle between the devas (the gods) and the asuras (the demons) and would have liked India to throw her weight whole-heartedly on the side of the Allies. Failing in his private attempt to persuade the Congress leaders, he contented himself with exerting ...
... wanders about in the jungle of his own imaginations without any discrimination or critical sense or among a play of confused forces he is unable to understand or master. Forces can come anywhere. The Asuras have their forces, but without peace, light or love—only they are forces of darkness. The man there [ in the correspondent's dream ] symbolises that ego-tendency in the human nature which makes ...
... selves but as an outer part that has to be worked upon quietly until it is what it should be. The Good and the Evil Persona Every man has a double nature except those who are born (not unborn) Asuras, Rakshasas or Pishachas and even they have a psychic being concealed somewhere by virtue of their latent humanity. But a double being (or a double nature in the special sense) refers to those who have ...
... impossible. You have undertaken a work which will raise the mightiest enemies whom the earth can bring forward. As in the ancient time, when the Avatars came, there were also born the mightiest Daityas and Asuras to face the Avatars, so it always is. You may be sure that if you embrace this religion of Nationalism, you will have to meet such tremendous forces as no mere material power can resist. The hour of ...
... and everything it contains — a fact of which her greatest offspring, the positive forces called gods, are the most conscious, as are also the negative forces, the whole fiendish and devilish brood: Asuras, rakshasas and pishachas. One generally assumes that Sri Aurobindo withdrew in seclusion on that very day of 24 November 1926, but this does not agree with Purani’s testimony in the Evening ...
... soul and in the Avatars, which in the course of the ages has brought movement and Life into the stagnant “bottomless Zero” at the beginning of the slow climb upwards. If one talks of evil and the Asuras who are its personalized powers, one should remember that in the beginning all was Darkness and Ignorance in the most absolute sense. From that Inconscient the Subconscient and Matter have emerged ...
... Page 188 All-love is a different matter—it has sometimes a powerful effect, very powerful, in conciliating automatically men, animals, Nature itself. The only beings who do not respond are the Asuras and Rakshasas. 11 March 1934 Someone was speaking to me about Gandhi's seven-day fast. I said: "Is it to create an earthquake for the sake of the Harijans? At least his own earth (body) will ...
... complete form: the four attributes of the Divine – truth, light, life and bliss – in their boundless egoistic pride deemed themselves equal to be the very Divine and therefore turned into the great Asuras: the Lords of Falsehood, Darkness, Suffering and Death. (In one of his sonnets Sri Aurobindo called them “the iron Dictators”. They are also known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.) The “special ...
... were not known. But I find this very interesting: there is an analogy in the Indian tradition which is very remarkable. The gods wanted to become immortal and did not want to share the elixir with the asuras, who, in fact, were very powerful. Then, a great battle followed for the control over the ‘Amrita’ — one who tastes this elixir becomes immortal — which the gods had hidden. Commonly it is known as ...
... collective problem; in fact, it is a cosmic problem. Very often it is seen that the ignorance of the collectivity is far more dangerous than that of the individual. The Indian Puranas speak of the Asuras and Rakshasas, the titans, who symbolise the inordinate ignorance of the collectivities. The abnormal ambition of an individual may harm himself and a few persons around him but a nation outstripping ...
... have sent anything. It is because the Asuras refuse to enter into any harmonious expression; they are too jagged and discordant altogether. There are also the worlds of Mind and the Mind is always a cause of Page 265 trouble. But I haven't got so far yet. As soon as I have traversed this gulf I shall resume. 27 November 1936 Are the "Asuras" ready? Not yet—the first part of them... latter half has still gaps to be filled etc. etc. and the whole thing has to be given its final revision. 5 December 1936 As for what awaits you on your return, I mean the typing work—Hell and the Asuras have been dealt with in a sort of way, I am now labouring in the mental worlds and trying to negotiate a passage through the psychic regions—beyond that things are more easy. 22 December 1936 ...
... intrusion of the strange and such other things that are irrelevent to his artistic aim. For illustrations of this method in art, one may look at the forms of God and Goddessess and those of the Titans— Asuras and Rākṣasas —that eastern art has created. They do not observe the rules of human anatomy— for, as Dr. Coomaraswamy said "they are not expected to function biologically", but they do give us an ...
... Good that depresses us. The "Power greater than that of Evil" has thus to be also a power more effective than that of Good. In the past, there had been the seesaw between Evil and Good, between the Asuras and the Gods, now this side winning, now the other side; but if there is to be, not just another transient victory but the victory - an enduring and final victory - we need a new Power altogether ...
... Chaldean and constituting their origin. Explaining this tradition she¹ recounts: "... it is said that when, as a result of the action of the adverse forces — known in the Hindu tradition as the Asuras — the world, instead of developing according to its law of Light and inherent consciousness, was plunged into the darkness, inconscience and ignorance that we know, the Creative Power implored ...
... the Veda you find the great story of the forces of Light and the forces of Darkness. The forces of Light are called the Gods. The forces of Darkness are called Dasyus, Panis, Pishachas, Rakshasas, Asuras. There is a great battle between the two. If you want to fight the battle, this battle can be fought, and it can be fought systematically. This is the yoga of the Veda: the mystic discipline by which ...
... life are psychic representations or do they present facts that occurred during his lifetime ? Sri Aurobindo : What do you mean by that ? Disciple : For instance, the killing of the Asuras – the Titans. Sri Aurobindo : From the reading of the description itself you can know whether the act of killing is a physical fact or not. You can't take everything physically. There is a ...
... struggle of life is a warring of Gods and Titans, Gods and Giants, Indra and Python, Aryan and the Dasyu. In the Puranas and Tantras also life is conceived as a struggle and battle between Devas and Asuras, Devas and Rakshasas, armies of Gods and Goddesses and those of Asuric, Rakshasic and Paishacik adversaries. The Vedic goal of achieving immortality recurs also in the Puranas and Tantras, where we ...
... same? Is it, as you say, aiming high and aiming low simultaneously? In that case I am afraid most of us have it more or less! Every man has a double nature except those who are born (not unborn) Asuras, Rakshasas, Pisachas 27 and even they have a psychic being concealed somewhere by virtue of their latent humanity. But a double being (or a double nature in the special sense) refers to those who ...
... struggle of life is a warring of Gods and Titans Gods and Giants Indra and Python, Aryan and the Dasyu. In the Puranas and Tantras also life is conceived as a struggle and battle between Devas and Asuras, Devas and Rakshasas' between the armies of Gods and God- desses and the armies of Asuric, Rakshasic and Paishachik adversaries. The vedic goal of achieving immortality recurs also in the Puranas and ...
... to the old Rishis who established an Asana, a place and a fixed position, where they would sit till Page 197 they got siddhi—but if the Asana got successfully disturbed by wrong forces (Asuras, Apsaras etc.), they left it and sought for a new one.) Moreover, your meditation is lacking in quietude, you meditate with a striving mind—but it is in the quiet mind that the experience comes, as ...
... worlds, and are dominating the earth in its present state. This dominion they want to keep, and as their nature is sheer ego, their methods and actions are ruthless. Compared with the great hostiles, Asuras for instance, the popular idea of the devil in Christianity is but a grotesque caricature. Hostile beings influence our lives constantly, unseen and unawares, and are the cause of all evil, corruption ...
... compassion. Did Buddha preach absolute Ahimsa? I thought it was a Jain teaching. What Buddha taught was compassion. And compassion—well, is it not written that Durga is full of compassion for the Asuras when she is exterminating them? Now, even if he be an Avatar of impersonal Truth, how can a doctrine descend from a Truth-plane to an Avatar, which could be set aside by the later Avatar? The same ...
... Sri Aurobindo Medical Association in Cuttack. Here is the piece for your reading: "Since time immemorial man has tried to conquer death. We read in the Puranas that the rishis and even the asuras were doing great tapasya to become immortal. In medieval Europe kings kept alchemists to find out the process by which man could prolong his youth and life, as well as other things like discovering ...
... SUKTA 13 प्राग्नये विश्वशुचे धियंधेऽसुरघ्ने मन्म धीतिं भरध्वम् । भरे हविर्न बर्हिषि प्रीणानो वैश्वानराय यतये मतीनाम् ॥१॥ 1) To Fire all-illumining, founder of the thought, slayer of the Asuras, bring your thinking and the thought formed; glad I bring to our sacrificial seat the offering for the universal godhead who has mastery over minds. त्वमग्ने शोचिषा शोशुचान आ रोदसी अपृणा जायमानः ...
... journey. It was the centre of a battle between the Gods aided by Aryan men on one side and the Titans or destroyers on the opposite faction, Dasyus, Vritras, Panis, Rakshasas, later called Daityas and Asuras, between the powers of the Truth or Light and the powers of falsehood, division, darkness. It was a journey, because the sacrifice travelled from earth to the gods in their heaven, but also because ...
... and hides them in the underground darkness. No spiritual realisation can come and stay unless this nibbling enemy is tracked and brought to light. The Veda gives a similar image. The panis, the dark Asuras seize even the sun and store it away in their secret caverns. Indra, the lord of the Divine Mind, has to come and with his fulgurating thunderbolt pierce the hills – the earth-built consciousnes and ...
... burning smouldered by the black Demon or is he accosted by Kumbhanda, the goblin, or is he slain by Vritra, the terrible Enemy? Is it not true that the potency of the Yajna is exploited even by the Asuras to battle against the Gods? Did not Indrajit, the son of the demon king Ravan, hide himself in a 41 Savitri, p. 279. Page 121 secret cave and initiate the fearsome sacrifice ...
... charming, that is not where death is: it lies in those countless “trifles" which fill our daily lives, invisible beneath our pretty words and puffed-up ideals. And the wearisome voice of the Vedic Asuras—titans and demons—keeps droning in your ears: “You won’t succeed, it’s a hopeless endeavor, it's doomed to failure, you’re wasting your time.... Go on, soar into the cosmic consciousness!” On and on ...
... analogous, but his was quite opposite. He considered himself as the holder of the supramental Truth whom all ought to approach for the Truth, but that this was an Asram peopled by Asuras who refused to recognise him and all these Asuras were supported against him at every step by the Mother and me. He gave me the ultimatum that in this we must support him against the others and give him his proper position ...
... also describe this as bringing the Soma of Mahar Loka into the genetic matrix of physical matter. Of course the Asuras would try to prevent this as much as possible as this would mean the end of them." 35 But with the descent of Mahar itself in the earth-consciousness this cannot happen. Asuras are helpless against it. That was the truth seen by Sri Aurobindo and he worked towards it and firmly established ...
... Life in the world is, indeed, a Kurukshetra, a battle field where the forces of darkness are in constant war with the forces of Light. This is the perennial fight between the Gods and the Asuras, as described in the Veda. It is no use hiding our faces, ostritch-like, in the sand, and saying with Browning : "Gods in His heaven, and All's right with world." All is not right. Things have ...
... point yet to the real world of the Gods. These Gods have their Ganas, the hierarchical beings. Then comes the lower universe and with it the Devas and Asuras - the Devas or Gods leading the manifestation towards its goal, and the Asuras or Demons obstructing it. It is their interaction that is described in the Puranas as the battle between the powers of Light and Darkness. The Ganas ...
... aware of it, in this invisible, extended and very strong presence that enabled the ‘place of Realization’ to survive and develop. There are many stories in ancient Indian writings about attacks by Asuras , Rakshasas and Pishachas on the sacred fires and on the ashrams of Rishis and other holy men. Far from being nothing but imagination, they refer to an occult fact all spiritual endeavours have ...
... her in order to make her concentrate fully on the physical and its transformation. It may be appropriate here to remind one briefly what the psychic being is. After the fall of the four original Asuras , the Supreme, at the intervention of the Universal Mother, poured out his Love into the Night of the Manifestation in order that that Night should no longer remain an eternal, coagulated darkness ...
... the business—that is to say postpone the possibility for another millennium because A or U gets shaky or many others look homeward? Will that postponement change the lower nature or get rid of the Asuras? What's the idea? What's the occult secret? You promised to give me some lessons in Occultism—here is an occasion. Please expatiate, and pacify my nervous shocks. Otherwise I have to close down ...
... swarajyam & samrajyam, immortality, self-rule & mastery of the world. It is this evolution which the Vedic hymns are intended to assist. (7) In his progress man is helped by the gods, resisted by the Asuras & Rakshasas. For the worlds behind have their own inhabitants, who, the whole universe being inextricably one, affect & are affected by the activities of mankind. The Bhuvar is the great place of struggle ...
... of Poseidon; Pallas Athene is pitted against Poseidon (Olympians though both of them are) - it is Wisdom against brute Force; one might almost say, the Devas are waging a bitter war against the Asuras! Sri Aurobindo thus conceives the conflict as being somewhat in the nature of a Hegelian dialectic. Man shall progress indeed, as he has already progressed so much along the corridors of the ...
... D'Arcy : "Without struggle... the ascent of Man is almost impossible." (The Pain of this World and the Providence of God, 1935). 15. The Puranic story is that when the devas (Gods) and the asuras (Demons) churned the ocean of milk, poison came first and then came nectar. 16. Savitri, p. 15. 17. ibid., p. 15 . 18. ibid., ...
... resources, weapons and instruments Page 67 than ever before in recorded history. Everywhere the Mother is at work; from Her mighty and shaping hands enormous forms of Rakshasas, Asuras, Devas are leaping forth into the arena of the world. We have seen the slow but mighty rise of great empires in the West, we have seen the swift, irresistible and impetuous bounding into life ...
... when he read out to us his masterly analysis on the values at stake in this War and the real issue: it is his comparing this war to Kurukshetra implying (when he identified Hitler’s cause with the Asura’s) that the Allies were here the Pandavas which is exactly what troubles Krishnaprem. You know I had never, from the very beginning, doubted the wisdom of having all our efforts (the entire humanity’s) ...
... of the mother-country, and realises The Universal Mother; here the earth becomes the fire-chariot For the descended Rudrani in the victory celebration of her children In their battle against the asuras, the land where the Mahashakti treads; I want that land, I want Integral India. [68] On 5 December 1950 Sri Aurobindo left his body. His unexpected departure came as a bolt-from-the blue to all ...
... the vital plane, when conditions are favourable, can very easily materialise: they have a sufficient mastery over matter to do this. Of course they must be given these conditions. But if the Asuras can do this, cannot the Suras do so ? Evidently, but they do it much less frequently; they are not at all in haste to impose their guidance. And then very strict special conditions are necessary—one ...
... is the true and natural one. I1 is no use saying that you are unfit and cannot take it; you have to come to it, if your need is true and entire. The misery of the world or the activity of the Asuras is also irrelevant. Nobody has ever contended that this is a happy and perfect world, nobody in India at least, or the best possible world or put that forth as a proof of the Divine existence. It is... to the old Rishis who established Asana, a place and a fixed position, where they would sit Page 263 till they got siddhi—but if the Asana got successfully disturbed by wrong forces (Asuras, Apsaras, etc.), they left it and sought for a new one. Moreover, your meditation is lacking in quietude, you meditate with a striving mind—but it is in the quiet mind that the experience comes, as ...
... and sacrifice. During those times, Soma is also regarded, in the earliest reference to the origin of kingship (Aitareya Brahmana, I, 14), as the god whom the other gods, seeking to fight the titans (Asuras) effectively, elected as their king after having lived without a king so far. In the Śatapatha Brahmana (V.3.3.12; 4.2.3; XIII.6.2.18; 7.1.13) the Brāhmīns speak of Soma as their king while common ...
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