... That is one problem. And then, is the present determination of the world final? People say that it is human nature, and by saying it is human nature they think that they are explaining everything. It doesn't explain anything. It means that it is a mystery. You say that this is human nature, but why is it so? Is it final? The determinism at present obtaining in Nature, the process, the laws that... You don't do the transformation in one stage. Human nature is mental nature, vital nature, physical nature. When it first changes, the first stage that it reaches is psychicization. The second stage it reaches is universalization or spiritualization. And the third stage it reaches is supramentalization or divine Nature. You see that from human nature to the divine the stages are one, two and three... and he was able to ascend and descend. With every descent some element of the divine power enters into human nature - more peace, more control, more detachment, more purity. Every time one goes to the higher consciousness, one comes down with some element of the divine Nature in the human nature, so the divine element goes on increasing. The process is not achieved by human endeavour, it is achieved ...
... integration and transformation of human nature in view. The adventure of the Tantric Yoga was large and amazingly bold, but less profound,—its union with Light was not so sure as its polarity to Force. The other Yogas did not bother about this ideal. Their object being to help the soul pass out of the meshes of Nature, they took hold of any one part or principle of human nature, and used it as a gate of exit... Nowhere, at no period of the spiritual history of mankind, has there ever been such a vast and powerful attempt at a synthesis, at a mighty gathering up of the distinct and divergent elements of human nature into a living and fruitful unity. Sânkhyayoga, Karmayoga, Jnânayoga, Bhaktiyoga, Hathayoga, Râjayoga, Mantrayoga, each was given a place and a definite function in that manifold synthesis, and... culture, not indeed apparent on the surface, but implicit in the grain of its thought and active in the unfolding rhythm of its movement," was evolved for the purification and sublimation of the human nature and its transference from the floundering ignorance of the ego into the luminous freedom and bliss of the Divine. Works, knowledge and love, cured of their trenchant, separative tendencies, were ...
... self-perfection which is the indispensable prerequisite of divine manifestation. Transformation means a radical change and conversion of human nature, its thorough transmutation and transfiguration. Let us try to understand what it really amounts to. Human nature in its unperfected state is composed of a mind of ignorance seeking for knowledge, a life of desires and passions and dogging discontent... world. A certain inherent imperfection of human nature has been taken for granted and put up with. It is only a few dynamic Yogas, such as the Vedic and the Tantric in India, and the most illumined of the ancient mystery cults in the West, that sought to cross the Rubicon and achieve something like a thorough purification and mastery of human nature. But mastery is not transformation. And, besides... In the Mother's Light Transformation IF a perfect manifestation of the Divine in material life is the end of evolution, transformation of human nature is the principal means of achieving it. Man in his unregenerate state manifests not the Divine but the animal from which he has emerged and upon which he stands in his endeavour to transcend himself. His inherent ...
... enough to embrace the complex totality of human nature; second, the secret of transformation was sought for elsewhere than where it naturally belongs—the power that was employed for the work was not the supreme divine Power which alone can transmute,. without coercing or crippling, the teeming elements and. Page 411 energies of human nature; third, the time was not ripe for such a global... for a radical conquest and perfection in life. Transformation, as it is understood in the Integral Yoga, is not moral or spiritual purification; it is a radical and integral transmutation of human nature. It implies, as Sri Aurobindo says in categoric terms, "another power of knowledge, another kind of will, another luminous nature of emotion and aesthesis, another constitution of the physical ... creative principle and power of. knowledge marking a decisive advance in his evolution. It is true that a somewhat similar attempt was made by the Vedic Rishis, but it was confined to some parts of human. nature, and undertaken on an individual, and not a collective scale. The Tântrics also laboured towards some such- objective, but with nothing better than very partial and precarious, though often spectacular ...
... Gita XVI The Process of Avatarhood We see that the mystery of the divine Incarnation in man, the assumption by the Godhead of the human type and the human nature, is in the view of the Gita only the other side of the eternal mystery of human birth itself which is always in its essence, though not in its phenomenal appearance, even such a miraculous assumption... coating; the mark of the seal is there only for form, the vision is that of the secret Godhead, the power of the life is that of the secret Godhead, and it breaks through the seals of the assumed human nature; the sign of the Godhead, an inner soul-sign, not outward, not physical, stands out legible for all to read who care to see or who can see; for the Asuric nature is always blind to these things... the ordinary human birth the Nature-aspect of the universal Divine assuming humanity prevails; in the incarnation the God-aspect of the same phenomenon takes its place. In the one he allows the human nature to take possession of his partial being and to dominate it; in the other he takes possession of his partial type of being and its nature and divinely dominates it. Not by evolution or ascent like ...
... base and a definitive triumph over the ignorance and inertia of the material part of human nature. Significantly enough, both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo started their spiritual careers with a clear perception of the Subconscient and the Inconscient and their immense hold on the motor springs of human nature; and they resolved to make them the targets of their most determined and sustained assaults... plaster hiding a sore it can never cure". It understands too something of religious fervour in which the fire of Godward emotions burns up some of the dross of human nature. But it has no idea of the elemental forces that go to constitute human nature, and does not know from what murky depths they emerge into overt play. When it sees falsehood, corruption, dishonesty and cruelty running rampant in civilised... a clumsy practical compromise, such as is fondly advocated by the modern idealists. They met to help man live in God and God in man; to convert human life into a vehicle of the divine Light, and human nature into divine nature. They met to declare that Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth, the One and the many are essentially one, and that their oneness can be dynamically expressed in every movement ...
... humanity at once; still it will act as a potent force for turning human nature towards it. It was because of the difficulty of changing human nature, which Vivekananda calls the "dog's tail", that the ascetic path advocated flying away from Nature as the only remedy. Those people could not think it possible to change human nature, so they said, "Drop it." One can see how necessary it is to keep... might reflect the Infinite but to rise above the mind. Besides, it adds the process of Descent of the Supramental consciousness, into Page 94 human nature which necessitates a complete transformation of the ignorant human nature into the divine : it transforms the aparā prakrti into the parā ) Sri Aurobindo : The aim of Patanjali was to rise to a higher consciousness... a spiritual solution which I propose; but it aims at changing the whole basis of human nature. It is not a question of carrying on a movement nor is it a question of a few years. It cannot be done unless you establish spirituality as the basis of life. It is clear that Mind has not been able to change human nature radically. You can go on changing human institutions infinitely and yet the imperfection ...
... my letter. I feel that the greatest hope for the future can be built only on children and youth. If we really want unity of mankind, and if we want not only ordinary change of human nature, but spiritual change of human nature, then we must address ourselves to the children and youths of the world. I intend, therefore, to build up an international union of children and youths during the next year. I... learn about her as I grew closer to her. At the breakfast table, the conversation was led by my Chairman, and the Princess and I listened to him with rapt attention. His main question was : Can human nature be changed? I knew this was his pet subject, since his life had been a series of disillusionments and he had come to the conclusion that the world would be better off if ruled by innocent animals... animals than human beings who are incorrigibly unkind, egoistic and selfish. The discussion did not last long as the Princess was called away in the midst of an argument when I was making a point that human nature can be changed and must be changed. Princess had come as the leader of her country's delegation to the UNESCO Conference, and she was to address the Conference that morning. Late in the ...
... conceives and pursues spiritual idealism and even spiritual perfection. The road is long; the labour involved in arriving at reconciliation of conflicting elements of human nature is arduous. On this long and arduous road of human nature, everyone finds enough room for debate in favour of one solution or the other. These debates, when examined, leave us in some kind of inconclusiveness. It is easy to... denied that the collectivistic idealism and higher forms of altruism, too, have their own roots in human nature. The law of competition, which is rooted in the egoistic psychology, is not the only possible law for organizing the life of the individual and of society; cooperation, too, is rooted in human nature, and co-operation is not necessarily an offshoot of egoism. It is true that in the early phases... -08_Criteria of Ethical Perfection and Integration of Total Being.htm 7 Criteria of Ethical Perfection and Integration of Total Being of Total Being: An Exploration Human nature is complex and it is at once egoistic, collectivistic, moralistic and idealistic. In its pursuits of idealism, it is not limited merely to ethical idealism; it conceives and pursues rationalistic ...
... tic idealism and true altruism have their own roots in human nature, which are independent of that aspect of human nature which, in the words of Hobbes, is nasty and brutish. The law of competition, which is rooted in the egoistic psychology is not the only possible law for organising human society; cooperation, too, is rooted in human nature, and cooperation is not necessarily an offshoot of egoism... not alone in the world; that is the rub for the egoist; that is the comfort and solace to the collectivist; that is the problem for the moralist; and that is the enigma that inspires the idealist; Human nature is complex and it is at once egoistic, collectivistic, moralistic and idealistic. It is easy to dwell upon one of the elements of this complexity, and emphasise it against the others; but the emphasis... doctrines intended to be prescribed uniformly for all people, but if we take human individual and human collectivity to be evolutionary in character, and if we take elements of the complexity of human nature in an ascending order rising from the infra-rational to the rational and from the rational to the supra-rational, we may be able to gain insights into an evolutionary mode of reconciling conflicting ...
... there is a wide-spread attempt to press depression on the sadhaks, for depression is the obstacle natural to this stage of the struggle with the subconscient Ignorance out of which the external human nature is a for- mation and the roots of' its unwillingness to change are there. But you speak of the depression as if it were not only definitive and absolute but universal ("the other sadhaks"). If so... assertions of mental belief leading to a great vehement assertion of one's creed and goal because they are one's own and must therefore be greater than those of others—an attitude which is universal in human nature. Even the atheist is not tolerant, but declares his credo of Nature and Matter as the only truth and on all who disbelieve it or believe in other things he pours scorn as unenlightened morons and... what the story of the Ramayana meant, appreciate Valmiki's presentation of his chief characters (they are none of them copy-book examples, but great men and women with the defects and merits of human nature, as all men even the greatest are), and show also how the Godhead, which was behind the frontal and instrumental personality we call Rama, worked out every incident of his life as a necessary step ...
... experience. August 27, 1931 The calumnies don't really matter. What Tagore says about gossip and rumours is quite right, not only of Bengal, but everywhere. It is part of average human nature (the lower vital again!) to take pleasure in scandal, nind ā [criticism], believing and reporting anything against people, and ____________________ 1. In his well-known letter of 7 April... book. September 1,1931 Your surprise at your cousin H. L. Roy's behaviour shows as did your dealings with your Toku Mama that you do not yet know what kind of thing is the average human nature. Did you never hear of the answer of Vidyasagar when he was told that a certain man was abusing him,—"Why does ____________________ 1. Nandalal Bose (3 February 1883 -16 August 1966), the... forbidden to use powers from mere vital motives, to make an Asuric ostentation of them or to turn them into a support for arrogance, conceit, ambition or any other of the amiable weaknesses to which human nature is prone. It is because half-baked yogins so often fall into these traps of the hostile forces that the use of yogic powers is sometimes discouraged as harmful to the user. But it is mostly people ...
... Human nature and the character of the individual are a formation that has arisen in and out of the inconscience of the material world and can never get entirely free from the pressure of that Inconscience. As consciousness grows in the being born into this material world, it takes the form of an Ignorance slowly admitting or striving with difficulty after knowledge and human nature is made... between my former statements about the sunlit path and what I have said about the difficult and unpleasant passages which the yoga has to pass through in its normal development in the way of human nature. The sunlit path can be followed by those who are able to practise surrender, first a central surrender and afterwards a more complete self-giving in all the parts of the being. If they can achieve... understand his action. But all have not this nature, most are very far from it, and the complete or even the central surrender is not easy to get, and to keep it always is hard enough for our human nature. When these things are not there, the liberty of the soul is not attained and we have instead to undergo the law or fulfil a hard and difficult discipline. That law is imposed on us by ...
... dualities, weaknesses, ignorance of human nature as you do and a great deal more. The idea that the Mother or I are spiritually great but ignorant of everything practical seems to be common in the Asram. It is an error to suppose that to be on a high spiritual plane makes one ignorant or unobservant of the world or of human nature. If I know nothing of human nature or do not consider it, I am obviously... Letters on the Mother Their Knowledge of Human Nature Sometimes we feel that your answers (not so much the Mother's) come from such a high plane that they seem to have no connection with our lives and do not consider the dualities, weaknesses, ignorance, etc. of human nature. Is it because it is a plane or planes of eternal and infinite Light, Power, Ananda... obviously unfit to be anybody's guide in the work of transformation, for nobody can transform human nature if he does not know what human nature is, does not see its workings or, even if he sees, does not take them into consideration at all. If I think that the human plane is like the plane or planes of infinite Light, Power, Ananda, infallible Will-Force, then I must be either a stark lunatic or a gibbering ...
... who has not transcended one's own nature, which comes to the same thing as transcending human nature, cannot command a full and clear view of it; and it is not by the normal mental faculties, but by an inner identification that this study can be made to bear perfect fruit. The whole subtle machinery of human nature can best be studied by taking a stable poise beyond it, either behind or above, and projecting... their spiritual equivalents. We shall have to consider some of the important details of this change in the subsequent chapters, when we follow the purification of the different parts of human nature. THE INCANDESCENT BACKGROUND OF PURIFICATION In the Integral Yoga, the urge to purification is not ethical or idealistic. It is not a practice of virtue that is sought in it, nor... for it gives him a rare vantage ground, a secure poise, from where he can observe and deal with even the least movements of his nature. The Page 212 psycho-analyst tries to study human nature from within it himself a part of it, and helplessly subject to its shifting modes. It is, as it were, a study of the sea by one who is himself buffeting with its waves,—a fruitless endeavour. But ...
... universalisation of the human consciousness, the widening and illumination of human nature, the bridging up of the chasm between the human mind and the higher realms of the Spirit, the direct and dynamic contact with the cosmic forces, the union and communion with the cosmic Divine—cannot transform the whole human nature into the Supernature. To the mind that considers spiritual values and realisations... obscured, diminished and diluted by the lower energies of human nature. The ¹ The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo. Page 433 second reason is, that the powers of the higher ranges of the spiritual mind, were it even possible for them to work here in their own purity and force, could not achieve a radical conversion of human nature, for, they are not the supreme creative powers of the... and degrees, the achievements of the spiritual transformation may appear as exceptionally high and rare. But they are inadequate to the fulfilment of the ideal Sri Aurobindo has placed before us. Human nature is a complex manifold, shot through with the threads of the ego, and the light and power of the higher planes that come down to illumine and transform it cannot completely prevail against its tangled ...
... base and a definitive triumph over the ignorance and inertia of the material part of human nature. Significantly enough, both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo started their spiritual careers with a clear perception of the Subconscient and the Inconscient and their immense hold on the motor springs of human nature; and they resolved to make them the targets of their most determined and sustained... hiding a sore it can never cure". It understands too something of religious fervour in which the fire of Godward emotions bums up some of the dross of human nature. But it has no idea of the elemental forces that go to constitute human nature, and does not know from what murky depths they emerge into overt play. When it sees falsehood, corruption, dishonesty and cruelty running rampant in civilised... compromise, such as is fondly advocated by the modem idealists. They met to help man live in God and God in man; to convert human life into a vehicle of the divine Light, and human nature into divine nature. They met to declare that Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth, the One and the many are essentially one, and that their oneness can be dynamically expressed in every movement ...
... transformation of the animal-human nature, and divinize the ignorant and self-centred human .life. This double process of sadhana was a journey to be performed with a return-ticket, in a most natural and normal way. This sadhana was not for personal gain, not for personal moksha , but for establishing the Divine life upon earth, by transforming the triple human nature of mind, life and body. In short... spiritual seekers from all sides, especially from Gujarat and Bengal, began to flow towards the beaconlight of the Ashram, for guidance and help in their strivings to break the bondage of animal-human nature and to find a way to change the present ignorant, self-centred, imperfect human life into a higher life. But in those days, as the general masses were quite ignorant about the new ideal and teachings... the Ashram and by 1935 it rose up to nearly 150. My parents too came to the Ashram in 1933 to take their son back from the Ashram, to save him from what they regarded as a vain effort to change human nature. They stopped almost a year in a rented house opposite to the present 'Cosy House'. They tried their best to understand the new ideal of Sri Aurobindo. When they found it difficult, almost impossible ...
... Difficulties of the Path Letters on Yoga - IV Chapter III Imperfections and Periods of Arrest Imperfections and Progress towards Perfection Human nature is always full of impurities and imperfections and of itself cannot reach the Divine. It is by the descent of the higher consciousness from above that all that can change; but you must not expect... who have too, very often, or have had the greatest imperfections. You know, I suppose, the comment of Socrates on his own character; that could be said by many great Yogins of their own initial human nature. Also, self-expression in some form of art does not preclude serious imperfections and, of itself, does not cure them. Here again my experience is that men of this kind have great qualities, but... s of bright and dark periods are almost a universal experience of Yogins, and the exceptions are very rare. If one enquires into the reasons of this phenomenon,—very unpleasant to our impatient human nature,—it will be found, I think, that they are in the main two. The first is that the human consciousness either cannot bear a constant descent of the Light or Power or Ananda, or cannot at once receive ...
... The Basis of Social Reconstruction ANY real reconstruction of society, any permanent reformation of the world presupposes a real reconstruction, a permanent reformation of human nature. Otherwise any amount of casting and recasting the mere machineries would not bring about any appreciable result, but leave the thing as it is. Change the laws as much as you like, but if you do... nature of man, the world will not change. For it is man that makes laws and not laws that make man. Laws express at best the demand which man feels within himself. A truth must realise itself in human nature before it can be codified. You may certainly legalise an ideal, but that does not necessarily mean realising it. The realisation must come first in nature and character, then it is naturally translated... enough of creeds and dogmas, of sermons and mantras, of churches and temples - and yet human life and society do not seem to be any the more worthy for it. Are we then to say that human nature is irrevocably vitiated by an original sin and that all our efforts at reformation and regeneration are, as the Indian saying goes, like trying to straighten out the crooked tail of a dog? ...
... The Basis of Social Reconstruction ANY real reconstruction of society, any permanent reformation of the world presupposes a real reconstruction, a permanent reformation of human nature. Otherwise any amount of casting and recasting the mere machineries would not bring about any appreciable result, but leave the thing as it is-. Change the laws as much as you like, but if you do... nature of man, the world will not change. For it is man that makes laws and not laws that make man. Laws express at best the demand which man feels within himself. A truth must realise itself in human nature before it can be codified. You may certainly legalise an ideal, but that does not necessarily mean realising it. The realisation must come first in nature and character, then it is naturally translated... world—we have enough of creeds and dogmas, of sermons and mantras, of churches and temples—and yet human life and society do not seem to be any the more worthy for it. Are we then to say that human nature is irrevocably vitiated by an original sin and that all our efforts at reformation and regeneration are, as the Indian saying goes, like trying to straighten out the crooked tail of a dog ? ...
... acceptance of the present forms in ordinary human nature is another. Page 485 The reason given for indulging the sex-action is not at all imperative. It is only a minority that is called to the strict Yogic life and there will be always plenty of people who will continue the race. Certainly, the Yogi has no contempt or aversion for human nature; he understands it and the place given to each... in human nature. Mind wants the supramental state to be a confirmation of its own cherished ideas and preconceptions; the vital wants it to be a glorification of its own desires; the physical wants it to be a rich prolongation of its own comforts and pleasures and habits. If it were to be that, it would be only an exaggerated and highly magnified consummation of the animal and the human nature, not... otherwise be undertaken by the Yogin, such as war and the destruction which accompanies war. But a too light resort to such a rule might easily be converted into a pretext for indulging the ordinary human nature. Sex a Movement of General Nature All movements are in the mass movements of Nature's cosmic forces—they are movements of universal Nature. The individual receives something of them, a wave ...
... It was a strange mistake to seek it in sexuality ; it was also a great mistake to seek it at the wrong end of the nature. What you say about the discovery of the defects of human nature is no doubt true. Human nature is full of defects and cannot be otherwise, but there are other elements and possibilities in it which, although never quite unmixed, have to be seen to get a whole view. But the... the title of sursāgar [ocean of melody]) and read his or rather their unanimous tribute. There is an elite of modern musical circle—so conclude what logic allows you to conclude and pardon my human nature which obeying its human logic can't be a little joyous. So, that's that Well, even the Bible which is a spiritual book [exclaims], "Shout aloud, O mountains, and skip, you little hills... It is a white flame, not a red one; but white heat is not inferior to the red variety in its ardour. It is true that the psychic love does not usually get its full play in human relations and human nature, it finds the fullness of its fire and ecstasy more easily when it is lifted towards the Divine. In the human relation the psychic love gets mixed up with other elements which seek at once to ...
... that you write, nor anything inexplicable in his actions or motives. I am quite aware of the alternate adoring and bowing of which you speak, and always have been—it is a fairly common thing in human nature. I am not frightened by the prospect—for my motives in dealing with people are not those of the ego. Besides, from the first I knew that Harin would either rise very high or fall very low or do... says—well, things ignorant and quite incompatible with all that wisdom. X is not insincere when he does that—he is simply giving voice to two parts of his nature. Nobody can understand himself or human nature if he does not perceive the multi-personality of the human being. To get all parts into harmony, that is the difficult thing. As for the lack of response, well, can't you see that you are in... the invasion of the general Nature and the resurgence of its own old response. 147 [These things I have repeated hundreds of times. Your idea that my difficulties were different from those of human nature is a mental construction or inference without any real basis. If I were ignorant of human difficulties and therefore intolerant of them, how is it that I am so patient with them as I think you cannot ...
... Difficulties of the Path Letters on Yoga - IV Chapter II The Difficulties of Human Nature Obstacles of Human Nature There are only three fundamental obstacles that can stand in the way: (1) Absence of faith or insufficient faith. (2) Egoism—the mind clinging to its own ideas, the vital preferring its own desires to a true surrender, the physical... says—well, things ignorant and quite incompatible with all that wisdom. X is not insincere when he does that—he is simply giving voice to two parts of his nature. Nobody can understand himself or human nature if he does not perceive the multipersonality of the human being. To get all parts into harmony, that is the difficult thing. As for the lack of response,—well, can't you see that you are in the... struggles, and "the unconquerable aspiration for the light" of which you speak is the outward sign that it will intervene. As for the two natures, it is only one form of the perpetual duality in human nature from which nobody escapes, so universal that many systems recognise it as a standing feature to be taken account of in their discipline, the two Personae, one bright, one dark, in every human being ...
... argumentativeness with me, so much so that he almost seemed like taking my cussedness seriously as it were. Not that he did not know or that there were any lacunae in his understanding of our human nature. He knew very well how oddly it acted especially when it was, as it had to be, lured off the track by its perverse moods. He came down to us merely because he had felt a simple impulse of generosity... always being brought back into it either by its own habit or by the invasion of the general Nature and the resurgence of its old response. Your idea that my difficulties were different from those of human nature is a mental construction or inference without any real basis. If I were ignorant of human difficulties ad therefore intolerant of them how is it that I am so patient with them as you cannot deny... fracas and resistance and obloquy and hard criticism from the sadhakas, why were we so patient with men like B and H and others if we had no understanding and no sympathy with the difficulties of human nature? Is it because I press always for faith and discourage doubt as a means of approach to the spiritual realisation? But what spiritual guide with a respect for truth could do otherwise?" Then ...
... overcome in a short span of time all possible difficulties of ordinary human nature is never an easy proposition for a sadhak in the Ashram; and this is so not because he is always negligent about his weaknesses but in spite of his repeated Page 44 efforts to conquer them. The reason is not far to seek. Our normal human nature has been mostly moulded by the forces of the Inconscience and to... Aurobindo's writings will explain the rationale behind the manifestation of many kinds of psychological difficulties encountered amongst the inmates here: (1) "The Ashram is an epitome of the human nature that has to be changed ... outside people put as much as possible a mask of social manners and other pretences over Page 41 the rottenness - what Christ called in the case of the Pharisees... it is not so possible -contacts are inevitable. Wherever humans are obliged to associate closely, what I saw described the other day as 'the astonishing meannesses and caddishnesses inherent in human nature' come quickly out. I have seen that in Ashrams, in political work, in social attempts at united living, everywhere in fact where it gets a chance." (Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo ...
... dualities, weaknesses, ignorance of human nature as you do and a good deal more. The idea that the Mother or I are spiritually great but ignorant of everything practical seems to be common in the Ashram. It is an error to suppose that to be on a high spiritual plane makes one ignorant or unobservant of the world or of human nature. If I know nothing of human nature or do not consider it, I am obviously... obviously unfit to be anybody's guide in the work of transformation, for nobody can transform human nature if he does not know what human nature is, does not see its workings or, even if he sees, does not take them into consideration at all. If I think that the human plane is like the plane or planes of infinite Light, Power, Ananda, infallible Will Force, then I must be either a stark lunatic or a gibbering... Yoga and must go away. He was in fact a constant victim of the going away illness and immediate siddhi demand illness from which Z also was a sufferer. If I said only things that human nature finds easy and natural, that would certainly be very comfortable for the disciples, but there would be no room for spiritual aim or endeavour. Spiritual aims and methods are not easy or natural ...
... victim has been the living soul of the faithful. The Eastern ‘sects’ which are now attracting so many people in the West can only fulfil their true mission if they know how to escape the snares of human nature in group formation, and if they keep pointing, beyond themselves, to ‘the one thing needful’ of which every soul is a part and grows into the living image, and that eventually must lead to the ... was no small work either. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have mastered, if not all the details, all the essence of the traditional yogas. ‘Will, knowledge and love are the three divine powers in human nature and the life of man, and they point to the three paths by which the human soul rises to the Divine. Their integrality, the union of man with God in all the three, must therefore … be the foundation... the Supreme and his manifesting power to embody in evolution something superhuman, a divine species succeeding the existing human species, then the only way to collaborate was to open inadequate human nature totally and unconditionally to the new Divine Action, to surrender to it. ‘Surrender’, the total giving of oneself, is the keyword in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s yoga — also called the Integral ...
... weaknesses, ignorance of human nature as you do and a great deal more,’ he wrote to a disciple. ‘The idea that the Mother or I are spiritually great but ignorant of everything practical seems to be common in the Ashram. It is an error to suppose that to be on a high spiritual plane makes one ignorant or unobservant of the world or of human nature. If I know nothing of human nature or do not consider it... it, I am obviously unfit to be anybody’s guide in the work of transformation, for nobody can transform human nature if he does not know what human nature is, does not see its workings or even if he sees, does not take them into consideration at all. If I think that the human plane is like the plane or planes of infinite Light, Power, Ananda, infallible Will Force, then I must be either a stark lunatic ...
... less clue to the know-how, that is, how to make use of them when such powers are given to us — as they occasionally are — before we have achieved some real insight into the mysterious springs of human nature in action. Sri Aurobindo gave me a pregnant hint of this deep difficulty in 1924, when he said that he had come to realise through his Yogic knowledge that "to help humanity out, it is not enough... he had intended to say 'lawyers,' but his pronunciation gave his remark a deep force of philosophic observation and generalisation which he had not intended! But it seems to me the last word on human nature. Only the lying is sometimes intentional, sometimes vaguely half-intentional, sometimes quite unintentional, momentary and unconscious. So there you are!" "O Guru," I confided, "Mr. Cocksure... of mental belief leading to a vehement vindication of one's mental creed and goal because they are one's own and must therefore be greater than those of others — an attitude which is universal in human nature. Even the atheist is not tolerant but declares his credo of Nature and Matter as the only truth and on all who disbelieve it or believe in other things he pours scorn a» unenlightened morons ...
... change. Human nature and the character of the individual are a formation that has arisen in and out of the inconscience of the material world and can never get entirely free from the pressure of that Inconscience. As consciousness grows in the being born into this material world, it takes the form of an Ignorance slowly admitting or striving with difficulty after knowledge and human nature is made... and, as a result, even when the effort is made, a constant readiness to doubt, to despond and despair, to give up, renounce the aim and the endeavour, collapse. Fortunately, there is also in human nature a sattwic element which turns towards light and a rajasic or kinetic element which desires and needs to act and can be made to desire not only change but constant progress. But these too, owing... ignorance and the obstructions of the fundamental inconscience, suffer from pettiness and division and can resist as well as assist the spiritual endeavour. The spiritual change which Yoga demands from human nature and individual character is, therefore, full of difficulties, one may almost say that it is the most difficult of all human aspirations and efforts. In so far as it can get the sattwic and the rajasic ...
... transcendence of our normal human nature, a transcendence of our mental, vital and physical being, has the appearance of an endeavour too high and difficult and at present, for man as he is, impossible. Even if it were so, it would still remain the sole possibility for the transmutation of life; for to hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual... grouping to a remote future; for it presupposes that no machinery invented by man's reason can perfect either the individual or the collective man. And who will deny that the inner change needed in human nature to achieve this goal of dual perfection is something too difficult to be ever achieved except by a microscopic minority? Page 53 But, whether we agree with this misgiving or not,... recall in this connection a passage from The Life Divine which makes the issue in all its aspects absolutely and unambiguously clear: Page 54 "What is demanded by this change [of human nature] is not something altogether distant, alien to our existence and radically impossible; for what has to be developed is there in our being and not something outside it: what evolutionary Nature presses ...
... take place. These lines strike the key- note of the dynamic spirituality that was developing in Sri Aurobindo, and the integral Yoga he was to practise and teach for the radical transformation of human nature and the birth of the supramental race on earth. An outline of Sri Aurobindo's political views seems to be called for at this point. There has been a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding... as a part of a gospel of Non- violence or pacific idealism. Peace is a part of the highest ideal, but it must be spiritual or at the very least psychological in its basis; without a change in human nature it cannot come with any finality. 137 If it is attempted on any other basis (moral principle or gospel of Ahimsa or any other), it will fail and even may leave things worse than before. He... he did not approve of the dacoities, much less authorise them, if for nothing else, simply on the score of their being practically useless for political purposes. But looking to differences in human nature and the varying processes of evolution, suited to different temperaments, he did not condemn them openly." — Reminiscences about Lokamanya Tilak By Bapat. Here was the perspicacious exponent ...
... needed is a change in human nature. In truth, it is not so much a change in India's pocketbook that is needed as a change in human nature. If you don't change human nature, you always end up with failure. In other words, it is not an economic problem. Towarnicki: Or perhaps it's both. He thinks that, short of an economic solution, all attempts to ameliorate human nature – the "quality of mankind... Sri Aurobindo has a certain answer to that. And an answer in matter. A true materialism. Perhaps a "divine materialism"? Page 191 J.R.D. Tata and Auroville, Changing Human Nature Towarnicki: And how do you explain J.R.D. Tata's helping Auroville? Ah, that is something else. Towarnicki: Can one talk about it? Of course, one can. Towarnicki: Do you ...
... that pain and suffering and struggle and excesses of despair are natural—though not inevitable—on the way,—not because they are helps, but because they are imposed on us by the darkness of this human nature out of which we have to struggle into the Light. I do not suppose Ramakrishna or Vivekananda would have recommended the incidents you allude to as an example for others to follow—they would surely... " And he began dancing and singing in a renewed ecstasy. Then Narada said, "Thou hast attained. Today thou shalt see the Lord!" Well, you may say, "What an extravagant story and how contrary to human nature!" Not so contrary as all that and in any case hardly more extravagant than the stories of Harishchandra and Shivi. Still I do not hold up the Bhakta as an example, for I myself insist on the realisation... of the spiritual consciousness with the vital, but my experience and all experience shows that this leads to nothing definite and final,—it ends where it began, midway between the two poles of human nature. An association is not enough, a transformation is indispensable. The tradition of later Vaishnava bhakti is an attempt to sublimate the vital impulses through love by turning human love towards ...
... of the general Nature Page 198 and the resurgence of its own old response. These things I have repeated hundreds of times. Your idea that my difficulties were different from those of human nature is a mental construction or inference without any real basis. If I am ignorant of human difficulties and therefore intolerant of them, how is it that I am so patient with them as you cannot deny... and resistance and obloquy and harsh criticism from the sadhaks, why were we so patient with men like X and Y and others, if we had no understanding and no sympathy with the difficulties of human nature? It is because I press always on faith and discourage doubt as a means of approach to the spiritual realisation. What spiritual guide with a respect for truth can do otherwise? And if I encourage... that there is something in the vital which likes suffering and clings to it for the sake of the drama; it is something below the surface, not on the surface, but it is strong, almost universal in human nature and difficult to eradicate unless one recognises it and gets inwardly away from it. The mind and the physical of man do not like suffering for if they did it would not be suffering any longer, but ...
... underwent not only a spiritual but also a physical transformation, as the Spirit began to take possession of human nature, so that Jesus was born 'not of blood or of the will of the flesh but of God'. In other words, the Virgin Birth was a sign of the eventual transformation of human nature by which we shall all undergo that experience of being 'born of God'. If you Page 257 ... Mother give confirmation. To me the witness of Sri Aurobindo has come as an extraordinary support to the basic truth of the Christian faith. His understanding of the fact that the physical basis of human nature had to be changed and that this would have an effect on the whole universe is an extremely profound insight. I am not surprised that Sri Aurobindo could find no support for his Yoga in the Vedic... Thirdly, there is the Spiritual Reality behind the physical and psychological appearance, namely a divine revelation in which the action of God in the history of the world was revealed, showing how human nature is to be transformed by the action of the Holy Spirit. Obviously it is this spiritual component which is of supreme importance. Second to this is the psychological experience of Mary, ...
... the credit of the latter. What, after all, is the basis of the system? It is a recognition of the non-uniformity of human nature rooted in the multi-aspectedness of the Divine's being and action and an attempt to make the non-uniformity work with the utmost efficiency. Human nature falls into four main functions: the seeking of knowledge , inner and outer, and the giving of form and body to the... banker to an East Side huckster, or a white man to a negro, or a European to an Asiatic?" What is clear from Durant's question is Page 77 that there is a deplorable tendency in human nature towards unjust discrimination. And a social structure with Buddhism as the religious ingredient of it is as likely as a Hindu or a Christian society to become gradually stratified and to develop... Hindu! Not that there is in Hinduism a welter of doctrines: there is only a recognition of the infinite possibilities of the omnipotent divine nature and the extreme multiplicity of frail aspiring human nature. All that Hinduism asks is: Can you in any manner realise the Supreme Page 83 Being who is at once transcendent, universal and individual and whose modes of manifestation are ...
... had intended to say "Lawyers," but his pronunciation gave his remark a deep force of philosophic observation and generalisation which he had not intended! But it seems to me the last word in human nature. Only the lying is sometimes intentional, sometimes vaguely half-intentional, sometimes quite unintentional, momentary and unconscious. So there you are! 1933? No, certainly not... consciousness into the earthly Mind and Matter? Your other argument is that the work of the Yoga itself is difficult, not easy, not a happy canter to the goal. Of course it is, because the world and human nature are what they are. I never said it was easy or that there were not obstinate difficulties in the way of the endeavour. Again, I do not understand your point about raising up a new race by my going... the attacks upon him?—it is a thing every rising genius has to face at one time or another, in one form or another. He should remain calm and live down the jealousy and enmity that well up from human nature around an increasing fame. February 28, 1933 1 Your wail does not seem to me to have strong grounds for existence. You were beginning to go on very well with a turn towards ...
... Active Parts of Human Nature The second element of perfection relates to all the active parts of the human nature. First of all, these active parts consist of active instruments such as the body, life and mind or the activities of understanding, activities of the heart, activities of life-force and activities of the body and its organs. Another element of active part in the human nature consists of... other words, the methods of the integral yoga include the methods of total transformation of human nature into divine nature. Organic Unity of the Integral Yoga The foundation of the integral yoga implies integrality of will, knowledge and love, which are the three divine powers in human nature and all these three powers which are at work in the life of man need to be integrated, and the ...
... that must inevitably take place. If this means a change in human nature, well, it is high time we worked for it; what must surely change is certain political attitudes and habits man has."* As a matter of fact, almost from the beginning of our present century, themes of the ideal of human unity and of the necessity of change of human nature, had seized the movements of the resurgence of Asia and... only if human unity can come to be built up. The second imperative that seems to have asserted itself is to impress upon human kind that unity, peace and lasting welfare can come about only if human nature can be radically changed. What exactly this would mean or entail is a matter of research and experimentation, but there is a growing feeling that, at the minimum level, human way of feeling, thinking... to equality and independence and they had behind them centuries of inner culture and discovery of spiritual knowledge which, if applied to life, could serve as effective means of the change of human nature. In Europe, the contest between Capital and Labour had entered into a crucial phase, and the Great First World War became memorable for the Russian Revolution that burst out even when that war was ...
... writing, and arithmetic. They are not! My purpose does not stop here but probes deeply into the very essence of higher intellectual and moral education and into the most thorough investigations of human nature itself. The "method" was a philosophical concept,, an ultimate value, which can perhaps best be defined as "the ideal method of developing a child's personality and It capacities to the full... its own sake as a virtue: Page 274 It is in no way my intention to stress any one of my points of view because it is new; I hold fast to my system because I believe it consistent with human nature, and I am convinced that educational theory in all aspects in which it is fully developed, corresponds to that which is true in my system. I am convinced that every good educationist was more or... the strong influence of the senses and from intellectual life, he broke with Herculean strength the chains of the mind, and gave the child back to himself and education back to the child and to human nature. Pestalozzi took over the concept that education must harmonize with nature. However simple such a plan might seem when one bears in mind the rigid, stultified system of the time, Pestalozzi ...
... world, humanity will gradually turn towards it. It was because of the difficulty of changing human nature—the crooked human nature which Vivekananda called "the dog's curled tail"—that the ascetic path advocated flying from the world as the only remedy. No one thought it possible to change human nature and so everybody said, "Drop it." SATYENDRA: There is an idea among some people here that even... accept the non-attached? And how will the non-attached men get their decisions accepted and carried out by the attached? It is all a solution by the mind. The mind has not been able to change human nature fundamentally. It cannot succeed so long as it works on its own principles. It accepts an ideal and tries to work it out but it is not a sovereign consciousness. You can go on changing human in... So the spiritual power must be such that it can not only resist but overcome that pull. This is the solution that I propose. It is a spiritual solution that aims at changing the whole basis of human nature. But it is not a question of a moment or a few years. There can be no real solution unless you establish spirituality as the whole basis of life. SATYENDRA: So the Truth-Consciousness will take ...
... you are two people, one is called mind, the other life. The third person inside you, may intervene in the quarrel and say that it will obey neither; instead it may prefer to fall asleep. Such is human nature. It's as if it were China, Russia, America, all in one. (Laughter) "If you can bring together all these bickering beings within you, harmonising them in the light of your soul, then your life... did not hinder me in my studies." Rohit said softly, "But you are...." "Different? Have you too learnt to speak like the old people here? It is not true. There is such a thing as human Page 40 nature, and I had it too. But it can be changed. Do you think I started performing miracles from the day I was born? It will surprise you to hear that I had faults in my nature too. At the age... straightaway, then, I'm afraid, we will not do so. I have just explained why. Secondly, we too are subject to the Divine Law, a Law which our whim or desire may not break or alter. Thirdly, there is the human nature that is full of impurities like jealousy and anger, restlessness, desires, fears and inertia. This nature has to be gradually cleansed of all these. Otherwise, if the light and power and joy were ...
... preferred to reject this dangerous zone altogether, allowing only the expression of so-called religious emotions and strongly advising the neophyte to reject everything else. Everyone seems to agree: human nature is unchangeable. But this kind of moral surgery, 57 as Sri Aurobindo calls it, has two drawbacks: first, it does not bring about any real purification, because the higher emotions, however... works, everything can change, because we can choose not to respond , using silence to dissolve the troublesome vibrations and tuning in elsewhere, as we please. Hence, contrary to all the old saws, human nature can be changed. Nothing in our consciousness or nature is fixed once and for all; everything is a play of forces or vibrations, which gives the illusion of "natural" necessity by virtue of repetition... stone, how would He have come to be in man, through what miraculous intervention? We are the result of an evolution, not of a sequence of arbitrary miracles. All the earth-past is there in [our human nature]... the very nature of the human being presupposes a material and a vital stage which prepare his emergence into mind and an animal past which moulded a first element of his complex humanity. And ...
... detaches itself more and more from the surges of life and the impulsions of desire. It learns to watch, distinguish between the good and the bad, the beneficial and the harmful elements and energies of human nature, and strives to acquire a deciding and determining voice in the complex play of the forces. This part of his consciousness tries to know and understand, to rescue his being from the helpless goad... attractions and repulsions, you cannot give up reason without falling into an unbalance.”² There is another point to consider in this connection. Those who have gone far in the study of human nature and acquired an insight into the working of the subtle forces of the supra- physical worlds surrounding our material existence, know that influences and suggestions are always streaming into... influences of the lower nature. Those who swear by reason and extol it as the highest possible faculty of man, capable of guiding him to his ultimate destiny, betray an ignorance of the complexity of human nature and the constitutional incompetence of reason to deal with the problems of the heart and life. Reason usually imposes stringent rules, represses and desiccates our feelings and emotions, and coerces ...
... her head a crown of twelve stars" of the Book of Revelation. If Sri Aurobindo has thus unveiled her face to us so early in our quest, it is because without some glimpse of this divine potential in human nature, without some intimation of the love that only She inspires, we might lack the courage and motivating force to face the "darkness in terrestrial things," and the unknown beyond them. Savitri... Power" 22 conceived in that Darkness are a terrible reminder of how easily our frail defences against the World of Falsehood can be breached, and how easily the Mother of Evil can take possession of human nature. Only were safe who kept God in their hearts: Courage their armour, faith their sword... The hostile powers are terrible when their attack takes an outward form and tragedy strikes... Page 135 a gulf of dream." 27 From now on the darkness has no power over him. He steps out of the shadow into Paradise. Does the seeker now repose in bliss? Not yet. His human nature must be reborn to sustain a delight that is more than the body can bear. This Paradise of the Life Gods is familiar in appearance to our world, but wondrously changed; transposed to a higher key ...
... by purification and perfection to their full power and Ananda. And that means the raising of the whole of earthly life to its full power and Ananda. 3. If there were not a resistance in vital human nature, a pressure of forces adverse to the change, forces which delight in imperfection and even in perversion, this change would effect itself without difficulty by a natural and painless flowering—as... n of the spiritual consciousness with the vital, but my experience and all experience show that this leads to nothing definite and final,—it ends where it began, midway between the two poles of human nature. An association is not enough, a transformation is indispensable. The tradition of later Vaishnava bhakti is an attempt to sublimate the vital impulses through love by turning human love... all that has gone before. But that cannot be called drawing a moral. Yes, it is a profound truth that you have expressed here—the supreme difficulty which stands in the way of the vital in human nature opening to its own longed for privilege of full joy and force and Ananda. Harin's poetry, I find, is always beautiful and striking in its images, but sometimes ... [incomplete], ...
... good and his evil evil. It is these notions, this idea of the moral law, of righteousness and justice as a thing in itself imperative, but still needing to be enforced by bribe and menace on our human nature,—which would seem to show that at least for that nature they are not altogether imperative,—this insistence on reward and punishment because morality struggling with our first unregenerate being... favourable circumstances not so much on gratitude and return in kind as on their support and favour. But this good and this evil are both of them movements of the ego and on the mixed egoism of human nature there can be no safe or Page 410 positive reliance. An egoistic selfish strength, if it knows what to do and where to stop, even a certain measure of violence and injustice, if it is... than in the animal's with the animal, and on the other hand the doer of good who counts on a return or reward finds himself as often as not disappointed of his bargained recompense. The weakness of human nature worships the power that tramples on it, does homage to successful strength, can return to every kind of strong or skilful imposition belief, acceptance, obedience: it can crouch and fawn and admire ...
... big or small, good or bad. Even humility and what is called altruism is with most people only a form of ego. It does not depend on having something to be proud of. It is so with everybody. Human nature is shot through in all its stuff with the threads of the ego. Even when one tries to get away from it, it is in front or walks behind all the thoughts and actions like one's shadow. To see that... seeking for the Divine for which you came here and make that your chief preoccupation. It is not in meditation alone, but in life and thought and act and feeling that that has to be done. Human nature has always been egoistic in its basis and so it brings in the ego motive into the work for the Divine also. That can only be overcome slowly, for what is ingrained in the human vital nature and... ego—there are ten thousand others. Every action of man is full of ego—the good ones as well as the bad, his humility as much as his pride, his virtues as much as his vices. To get the ego out of the human nature is not so simple as that. If one is free from ego, does nothing with reference to himself or for his own sake but only for the Divine and all his thoughts and feelings are for the Divine, then he ...
... that pain and suffering and struggle and excesses of despair are natural—though not inevitable—on the way,—not because they are helps, but because they are imposed on us by the darkness of this human nature out of which we have to struggle into the Light.... The dark path is there and there are many who make like the Christians a gospel of spiritual suffering; many hold it to be the unavoidable... Page 684 sun and not in the shadow. I don't think I am more patient than a guru ought to be. Anyone who is a guru at all ought to be patient, first because he knows the difficulty of human nature and, secondly, because he knows how the Yoga force works, in so many contrary ways, open or subterranean, slow or swift, volcanic or coralline,—passing even from one to the other—and he does not... on between my former statements about the sunlit path and what I have said about the difficult and unpleasant passages which the Yoga has to pass through in its normal development in the way of human nature. The sunlit path can be followed by those who are able to practise surrender, first a central surrender and afterwards a more complete self-giving in all the parts of the being. If they can achieve ...
... and pretensions of the lowest part of the being, commonly justified under the name of human nature." Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga , p. 1310 Everybody knows this; those who do not want to change their way of doing things or their way of being always say, "Oh! What do you expect, it is human nature." This is what is called a "wilful indulgence". That is to say, instead of becoming conscious... conscious that these are weaknesses and difficulties on the way, one justifies these things, saying, "Oh! It can't be helped, it is human nature." One wants to continue to do what one is doing, without changing, one is full of a wilful indulgence of one's demands. For the lower nature of man always demands things; it says, "These are necessities, these are needs, I can't do without them." Then, the... all these justifications of the old ways of being: those who fly into a temper and say, "What do you expect, Page 331 it can't be helped", and everything one does saying, "Oh! It is human nature", everything one justifies saying, "What can be done, people are like that, there is nothing to be done about it." It is the old idea that we are born with a particular nature and must get adjusted ...
... lost the shining beauty which had warmed the heart and vitalised the body. Evil triumphed often enough, but what was far worse was the coarsening and distortion of what had seemed so right. Was human nature so essentially bad that it would take ages of training, through suffering and misfortune, before it could behave reasonably and raise man above that creature of lust and violence and deceit that... inseparably, acting and. reacting on each other, the wrong means distorting and sometimes even destroying the end in view? But the right means might well be beyond the capacity of infirm and selfish human nature. What then was one to do? Not to act was a complete confession of failure and a submission to evil, with all the untoward consequences that such compromises result in. My early approach... science. There was an element of magic about it, an uncritical credulousness, a reliance on the supernatural. Yet it was obvious that religion had supplied some deeply felt inner need of human nature, and that the vast majority of people all over the world could not do without some form of religious belief. It had produced many fine types of men and women, as well as bigoted, narrow-minded ...
... conditions of life and labour, there was no doubt an amelioration in the social relations. But human nature has not changed to any appreciable extent. What has happened in the world in the last fifty years is sufficient proof of this obduracy. It is this apparent unchangeableness of human nature which is the radical obstacle to a wholesome and harmonious progress. Egoism and greed have always... not lost its actual interest, as can be seen from a recent statement by U Thant at the United Nations, which has been reported under the caption: U Thant Thinks It Is High Time to Change Human Nature United Nations, 10.4.67 - The fact that a fraction of the money the world is going to spend for armaments in 1967 could suffice to finance in a hitherto unimaginable measure economic and... only if we stop being afraid of one another, harrying one another and if, together, we accept, welcome and prepare the changes that have inevitably to take place. If that means a change of human nature, well, it is high time to work at it; what has certainly to change is certain political attitudes and habits of man.19 According to some writers of the "Prospective" movement,20 there is ...
... in the social relations, still human nature had not changed to any appreciable extent. Egoism and greed have always tried to divert any new discovery or improvement for the benefit of a few individuals or for a group - class or nation. Even the goodwill of men and their spirit of sacrifice have been exploited in this way. It is this apparent obduracy of human nature which is the radical obstacle... lack of genuine guidance and help them to surmount the confusion in which so many flounder? In this connection two points are of cardinal importance. The first springs from a true insight into human nature and constitution, and this will determine the attitude that the teacher should take towards the growing child. The second concerns the future of man, of man the individual and humanity the collective... the ominous trend in education evinced the world over. No human collective life is possible without discipline, but it ought to be a discipline taking into account as much the diversity of human nature as the unity of the soul, the deeper consciousness in man. Only a discipline of this kind is freely acceptable as it does not interfere with the subtle action of the soul. Once such a discipline ...
... co-ordinating and controlling capacity. It becomes then a mere construction of the human mind. And this explains the incompetence of ethics to deal successfully with the obstinate, ancestral elements of human nature—either it represses and strangles them or, which is more frequent, makes a com- promise with them and rests content with a mere veneer and a make-believe. If it wants to be strictly logical and... and the embarrassing recurrence of the very passions and propensities it tries to get rid of. This happens because the reason of man has little knowledge of the working of the complex elements of human nature and less power to cope with them. Its characteristic way of dealing with them is to fix upon one or two or a few of them at a time, give them an exclusive and exaggerated importance and strive to... single principle is sometimes deified as the central truth of life and hammered into a mutilated nature. This narrow rigidity of ethics stands in the way of the flexible? many-sided movement of human nature, and results in a sort of hot-house growth and a lop-sided development. It is, moreover, usually, attended with a settled gloom or sombreness of ¹ Words of the Mother. Page 244 ...
... general predisposition to suffering, fears, passions and restless desires are the normal constituents of the surface human nature, and all this is derived from the Subconscient and the Inconscient. The Mother's main work is a complete transformation of this subterranean base of human nature, so that a divine race of supermen may reveal God's glory and fulfil His Will in the material world. The present... nt and the Inconscient will ¹Prayers and Meditations of the Mother; February 9, 1914, Page 182 mean the conquest of material life and nature, and the conversion of human nature into divine nature. The Mother says that the majority of beings, even of human beings, live constantly in the Subconscient, "few, emerge from it,” and she affirms that "this is the conquest that... there may be no traceable cause. To get rid of this fear we have to root it out from the Subconscient. In the integral Yoga which means to effect a radical conversion and transformation of human nature into the divine, a complete conquest of the Subconscient and the Inconscient, as we have insisted above, is indispensable; otherwise half of our being will gleam in the light of the Spirit and the ...
... efficiency or integral perfection of the whole, as well as individual perfection of the several parts: A supreme perfection, a total perfection is possible only by a transformation of our lower or human nature, a transformation of the mind into a thing of light, our life into a thing of power, an instrument of right action, right use for all its forces.... There must be equally a transforming change of... hoping to translate that dream into reality, but her expectations hadn't been fulfilled. They had achieved comradeship, but that great love had eluded them; perhaps, for such love to materialise, "human nature would have to change so much"! Mutual respect had kept the marriage going somehow, but She couldn't avoid a poignant sense of separative isolation. As a cure, She was desperately trying to lose... perceive it, he finds it difficult to bear not only to contain it, but be able to tolerate it... for its power in its purity, its intensity in its purity, are of too strong a kind to be endured by human nature.... ...a human being, unless he raises himself to the divine heights, is incapable of receiving, appreciating and knowing what divine Love is. 21 But the ascent of aspiration can always ...
... take a very dominant outer form. With innate sense of her own Divinity, love and sympathy for all men she found that human nature by which she was surrounded not only did not like to realise the divinity but it was averse to the action of the Divine on itself. The fallen human nature murmurs and protests against the operation of anything that savours of the Divine. In the words of the poet ... spiritual awakening "Humanity framed his movements less and less". It was no longer possible for him to allow the human elements in him to govern his life, and to accept as final the limitations of human nature. He awoke in himself latent powers, faculties that lay dormant in him—powers of pure perception, intimate vision, and also of spiritual experience. He could know the motives, ideas and wishes in... and his life upon the Eternal. When he looked at the world from his new spiritual poise he saw that the world was only "A small result of a stupendous force". But the ordinary instruments of human nature are incapable of supporting these higher states of being. They hanker after their normal littleness, they want to go back to their petty activities. The gravitational pull of the lower consciousness ...
... except a few have this difficulty of the external consciousness denying or standing in the way of the inner experience and trying to cling to its old ways, ideas, habits and desires. This division in human nature is a universal fact and one should not make too much of it. Once the Peace and Power are there, it is best to trust to that to remove in time the opposition and enlighten and occupy the external... It is without the mind knowing it the soul within that brought them here. In your case it was that and the relation your soul had with the Mother. Once here the force of the Divine works upon the human nature till a way is opened for the soul within to come out from the veil. The conscious seeking for the Divine does not by itself prevent the struggle with the ignorance of the nature; it is only self-giving... as if they were not there would have been to leave the problem unsolved and the work undone. The sadhaks of the Asram are not spotless Saints or perfect born Yogis but men who carry in them their human nature and typify each in his own way what is in the world and what has to be changed. The influence of the hostile Forces was on them as on all human beings in a less or greater degree, and so long as ...
... two subtly connect up with the preceding pair by intimating with paradoxical felicity how the keenly felt divine presence within is able to manifest its glory despite the faults and frailties of human nature: we are reminded of Plato's famous rejoinder to Diogenes — "Your pride peeps out through the holes of your raggedness", but here it is the high and rare splendour of the spirit taking by surprise... salt tears corrode my chains, the heartbreak fling wide open a door to the All-Beautiful." He even regards pain as an indispensable means for attaining the godhead, since the sum of impurity in human nature is so massive that a burning sacrifice alone can destroy it to the full. A characteristic expression of this mood is in these twelve lines: O pain, I love the lonely wine-red gleam Within... suffusing Nature, haunting the kingdom of thought, sweeping down strange curves of world on unfamiliar world other than this; what he has not awakened to is the Divine as a person, an archetype of the human nature — face and lips and hands and feet that are perfect and at the same time like ours by a close warmth. ''Shelley and Yeats mix the ideal and the real in a manner that is mystic by imagination ...
... self-defender is not precisely actuated by feelings of holy sweetness towards his assailant, but to expect so much from human nature is impracticable. Certain religions demand it, but they have never been practised to the letter by their followers. Hinduism recognizes human nature and makes no such impossible demand. It sets one ideal for the saint, another for the man of action, a third for the... of mankind and not with individuals. To ask masses of mankind to act as saints, to rise to the height of divine love and practise it in relation to their adversaries or oppressors, is to ignore human nature. It is to set a premium on injustice and violence by paralysing the hand of the deliverer when raised to strike. The Gita is the best answer to those who shrink from battle as a sin and aggression... 1119 His ends through the evil as well as through the good. Let us discharge our minds of hate, but let us not deprecate a great and necessary movement because in the inevitable course of human nature, it has engendered feelings of hostility and hatred. If hatred came, it was necessary that it should come as a stimulus, as a means of awakening. When tamas , inertia, torpor have benumbed a nation ...
... is evident that present structures of society and human nature as they are today are incapable of taking us to the road to fulfilment. And it seems obvious that the systems and structures cannot be changed if human nature cannot be changed. And when we speak of the change of human nature, we speak of radical operations of the maladies of human nature. We need to create human beings who will feel spontaneous ...
... and harmony can triumph and science and technology can be used to abolish poverty and deprivation, precisely at that time, the forces of violence and gravitational pulls of impulses of the lower human nature are pressing forward on a global scale. Rationality, in which humanity has placed great trust for arriving at the fulfilment of its ideals of true knowledge and comprehensive knowledge, appears... implies meaning or meaningful-ness. The ideal life must be meaningful. In the Catholic and broad spectrum of Indian values kama also finds a place of honour. The psychosomatic integrality of human nature has been duly recognized here. If body suffers starvation, illness or injury, it cannot extend its supportive role to the self for realization its highest reaches. Somatic starvation, non-fulfilment... the Vedanta or Nyaya are emotivist or attributivist in their approach to value. On the contrary they favour an approach which affirms that sense of value can be evoked in the rightly developed human nature, provided the concerned values have appropriate and objective properties in them. In other words, the primacy of ontology in axiological theories of India Page 56 is widespread. The ...
... longer in the vital or conscious physical that the resistance is massed together." This triple resistance brought into full play the three most obstinate and insistent minds at work in human nature: the physical mind, the mechanical mind and the subconscient mind. They often worked in conjunction, sometimes in two's and sometimes singly, but in such a powerful and complicated way that it was... the reactions in the physical, since they are separate from it? In human consciousness they are not — they are usually all mixed up in their activities. That is the reason why the human nature is full of confusion and ignorance. If you can catch the wrong parts that assent to the tamas and cling to it and persuade them to change their preference, that would be very effective... against the inertia in spite of our knowledge and will. We have got to accept this as a stage (though not a pleasant one), because we are dealing with the physical, the most degraded part of the human nature. And yet the spirit of confrontation must be kept alive. The period of no-effort is usually when the physical consciousness is uppermost — for the nature of that is ...
... Mahasaraswati – were originally men, men who. have laboured into godhood. Human nature knows to wait, wait infinitely, as it has all the eternity before it and can afford and is prepared to continue and persist life after life. I do not say that all men can do it and are of this nature; but there is this essential capacity in human nature. The gods, who are usually described as the very embodiment of calmness... solitude of the thoughts of God. ³ and Unmoved by cry of revolt and ignorant prayer They reckon not our virtue and our sin, They bend not to the voices that implore. 4 Human nature, human movement, is, however, different. Man, the terrestrial creature, has developed as the result of a slow growth, through struggle and suffering, the sturm und drang of an arduous ascent... its elemental blind momentum. The gods know not of this division in their nature, this schizophrenia, as the malady is termed nowadays, which is the source of the eternal strain of melancholy in human nature of which Matthew Arnold speaks, of the Shelleyan saddest thoughts: Nietzsche need not have gone elsewhere in his quest for the origin and birth Page 272 of Tragedy. A Socrates discontented ...
... Every part of human nature, every characteristic turn of its action was given a place in the system; each was suitably surrounded with the spiritual idea and a religious influence, each provided with steps by which it might rise towards its own spiritual possibility and significance. The highest spiritual meaning of life was set on the summits of each evolving power of the human nature. The intelligence... hostile critic directs with a misleading exaggeration his missiles. But the principle of it and the main lines of the application embody a remarkable wisdom, knowledge and careful observation of human nature and an assured insight into the things of the spirit which none can question who has considered deeply and flexibly these difficult matters or had any close experience of the obstacles and pote ...
... dies, his personal existence ceases. His body returns to the dust and his 'shade' - a vague double of his former self - goes to Sheol, the land of darkness and death. Consistent with this view of human nature, if man is to have a future life there must be a new miracle, a re-creation. God must raise up the body from death, reanimate it with his life-giving Spirit, and restore man to the God-... to his followers the "Good News" he was mystically chosen to preach, telling how the man Jesus was revealed to be the Divine incarnate: "This news is about the Son of God who, according to the human nature he took, was a descendant of David: it is about Jesus Christ our Lord who, in the order of the spirit, the spirit of holiness that was in him, was proclaimed Son of God in all his power through... the sacrificial role he was working out. In our citation of Romans 1:3-4, although he "was proclaimed Son of God" through his Resurrection, he was still God's Son, however secretly, when he took "human nature" and "was a descendant of David". As such, for all the impoverishment, kenosis and most humble condition accepted by him, even to the extent of "death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8), he could not ...
... overstressed that the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is a radical, revolutionary effort to change human nature. As it is “integral,” it takes up the essence and many processes of the old yogas, but it is new in its aim (the transformation and divinization of human nature); its standpoint (if all is the Brahman, the world and the body in which we are incarnated is also the Brahman; instead... familiar traditional ways. Referring to the quotations from Sri Aurobindo, such an attitude cannot agree with the Integral Yoga because Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s Yoga is about changing the human nature, which is such a difficult undertaking that formerly no spiritual path, and certainly no religious one, has even tried to attempt it. As every aspirant is soon to find out: “This yoga is a spiritual ...
... by the amphetamine of ambition” 15 ). We find this attitude of his confirmed by the editors of Alas Poor Darwin : “Edward Wilson and other scientists have promoted the sociobiological model of human nature in popular books and magazines with missionary fervour, aiming to convert the unenlightened. … Their claims, their language and their style have striking religious overtones.” 16 There is... their lives.” 68 At last the world re-educators have come, but that “gently, firmly” may make some feel uneasy. “Edward Wilson and other scientists have promoted [the sociobiological] model of human nature in popular books and magazines with missionary fervour, aiming to convert the unenlightened. … Their claims, their language and their style have striking religious overtones. Some sociobiologists... And they project an idea of genetic essentialism, suggesting that by deciphering and decoding the molecular text they will be able to reconstruct the essence of human beings, unlock the key of human nature. … Such images fuel popular narratives of genetic essentialism – a picture of the gene as the essence of the person, the locus of good and evil, the key to ‘the secret of life’.” 70 But sometimes ...
... what is known as the Atma. The vital as the desire-soul and desire-nature controls the consciousness to a large extent in most men because men are governed by desire. But even in the surface human nature the proper ruler of the consciousness is the mental being, the manomayaḥ puruṣaḥ prāṇa-śarīra-netā of the Upanishad. The psychic influences the consciousness from behind, but one has to go out... and expressing itself through it, so there is a growing psychic being supported on the psychic and expressing itself through the soul-nature. But, hang it all, the psychic is part of the human nature or of ordinary nature,—it has been there even before the human began. The Form of the Psychic Being Formed souls enter only into formed organisms—in the protoplasm etc. it is only the spark... condition you describe is not that Yoga should not be done but that you have to go on steadily healing the rift between the two parts of the being. The division is very usual, almost universal in human nature, and the following of the lower impulse in spite of the contrary will in the higher parts happens to almost everybody. It is the phenomenon noted by Arjuna in his question to Krishna, "Why does ...
... this union with the Beloved that it finds its highest point and consummation. All our instincts and the movements of our being begin by supporting themselves on the ordinary motives of our lower human nature,—mixed and egoistic motives at first, but afterwards they purify and elevate themselves, they become an intense and special need of our higher nature quite apart from the results our actions bring... veneration and adoration which one feels for that which is higher in its nature or its perfection than ourselves. For, even while preserving largely the idea of a God endowed with the qualities of human nature, there still grows up along with it, mixed up with it or superadded, the conception of an omniscience, an omnipotence and a mysterious perfection quite other than our nature. A confused mixture... not incapable of personality; finally, that when we approach him by our human emotions, we receive a response in kind. This does not mean that the nature of the Divine is precisely the same as our human nature though upon a larger scale, or that it is that nature pure of certain perversions and God a magnified or else an ideal Man. God is not and cannot be an ego limited by his qualities as we are in ...
... that this excellent theory, quite as much as the individualist theory that ran before it, is sure to stumble over a discrepancy between its set ideas and the actual facts Page 209 of human nature; for it ignores the complexity of man's being and all that that complexity means. And especially it ignores the soul of man and its supreme need of freedom, of the control also of his lower members... of man, enlightened, will claim freedom for itself, but will equally recognise the same right in others. A just equation will of itself emerge on the ground of a true, self-found and unperverted human nature. This might conceivably be sufficient, although hardly without a considerable change and progress in man's mental powers, if the life of the individual could be lived in a predominant isolation... to a far-off date in the future evolution of the race. For it means that no machinery invented by the reason can perfect either the individual or the collective man; an inner change is needed in human nature, a change too difficult to be ever effected except by the few. This is not certain; but in any case, if this is not the solution, then there is no solution, if this is not the way, then there is ...
... self-sacrifice is not a painful and terrible struggle but a glorious outpouring of the nature, a passionate delight. "It is only human nature," we say indulgently of any act of selfishness. But that is an error and thrice an error. It is not human nature, but animal nature; human nature is divine & selfless and the average selfish man is selfish not because of his humanity, but because his humanity is as yet ...
... lower turbid nature is to it the one thing familiar and palpable. Nor is this lower satisfaction in itself a thing evil and unprofitable; it is rather the condition for the upward evolution of our human nature out of the tamasic ignorance and inertia to which its material being is most subject; it is the rajasic stage of the graded ascent of man towards the supreme self-knowledge, power and bliss. But... it is yet in its incipience by a resort to one or other of the three that the movement must begin. The beginning of equality may be sattwic, rajasic or tamasic; for there is a possibility in the human nature of a tamasic equality. It may be purely tamasic, the heavy equability of a vital temperament rendered inertly irresponsive to the shocks of existence by a sort of dull insensibility undesirous of... the sattwic vision of knowledge, at its root the aim at self-realisation and in its steps the ascent to the divine Nature. A Stoic discipline which merely crushed down the common affections of our human nature,—although less dangerous than a tamasic weariness of life, unfruitful pessimism and sterile inertia, because it would at least increase the power and self-mastery of the soul,—would still be no ...
... irreconcilable hatred, is the straight way and the triumphant means modern man has found for the establishment of universal peace! That consummation, too, founded not upon any fundamental change in human nature, but upon intellectual notions, economic convenience, vital and sentimental shrinkings from the loss of life, discomfort and horror of war, effected by nothing better than political adjustments... The rest of the community was in every way guarded from slaughter and outrage; their life and occupations were as little interfered with as possible and the combative and destructive tendencies of human nature were given a restricted field, confined in a sort of lists so as to do the minimum amount of harm to the general life of the race, while at the same time by being subjected to high ethical ideals... quality most dominant in his nature. There are, according to the Sankhya philosophy accepted in this respect by the Gita, three essential qualities or modes of the world-energy and therefore also of human nature, sattva , the mode of poise, knowledge and satisfaction, rajas , the mode of passion, action and struggling emotion, tamas , the mode of ignorance and inertia. Dominated by tamas , man does ...
... to those that others have felt and yet conquered them, others who were not stronger than you. All that has happened is that by this descent into the physical consciousness, the ordinary external human nature has come to the front with its elementary imperfections and subconscient unsatisfied impulses and it is to these that the contrary force is appealing. The mind and the higher vital have put away... especially if strongly surrendered to the Mother, who escape the invasion or attacks of the hostile Forces on the mind and vital. That does not mean that they escape the difficulties of the lower human nature or of the sadhana, but these are not complicated by the effective support given to them by the hostiles. It is not that there is no point in them that might be pressed upon by the hostiles but in... suggestions, not to admit them as the truth or as one's own thoughts, to see them for what they are and keep oneself separate. Obstacles have to be looked at as something wrong in the machinery of human nature which has to be changed—they should not be regarded Page 798 as sins or wrongdoings which make one despair of oneself and of the sadhana. You ask whether the adverse Force is ...
... its own crude and egoistic ideas, desires, fancies, impulses or convenience whenever it chooses. It claims, secretly or in so many words, the right to follow its nature,—its average unregenerate human nature, the right to be itself,—its natural, original, unchanged self with all the falsehood, ignorance and incoherence proper to this part of the being. And it claims or, if it does not claim in theory... is a petulant self-assertion of the ideas of the human mind or wilful indulgence of the demands and instincts and pretensions of the lowest part of the being, commonly justified under the name of human nature. It cannot be done if you insist on identifying these lowest things of the Ignorance with the divine Truth or even the lesser truth permissible on the way. It cannot be done if you cling to your... alone that a control can be established over these lower workings. Ananda and the Lower Vital It is indeed in the lower vital that there is the main difficulty for the spiritual change of human nature. If that were not there, the rest could be more easily dealt with and there would be no long resistance. The vital pleasure is not a true Ananda, but only a pleasant excitement which cannot abide—that ...
... This is the reaction of disappointed desire in the vital. It is a movement that should be rejected completely whenever it comes. Why do these things arise? They are brought by the ordinary human nature as obstacles to the sadhana. Who has put them in me and why? How can I get rid of these disappointing things? You must reject them when they come and try to replace them by a complete faith... the Mother's child and the work is there only because it is a part of the sadhana. Also this feeling of jealousy and other doubts and difficulties are not peculiar to you alone, they are common to human nature and most here have them or have had them and found it difficult to be free. So there is no reason to suppose because of their presence that you are unfit or will not be able to do the sadhana. The... unseeing or wilfully blind to the defects of her favourites. But the Mother is not blind; she knows very well the nature of all the sadhaks, their faults as well as their merits; she knows too what human nature is and how these things come and that the human way of dealing with them is not the true way and changes nothing. It is why she has patience and love and charity for all, not for some alone, who ...
... or falsehood cannot help. They must be as real as the struggles and sufferings of men themselves—the Divine bears them and at the same time shows the way out of them. Otherwise his assumption of human nature has no meaning and no utility and no value. It is strange that you cannot understand or refuse to admit so simple and crucial a point. What is the use of admitting Avatarhood if you take all the... coating; the mark of the seal is there only for form, the vision is that of the secret Godhead, the power of the life is that of the secret God head, and it breaks through the seals of the assumed human nature ..." [Essays on the Gita, pp. 158-59 ]. Does it follow that the breaking through had not to be done or was a mere trifling impediment? The power of the form can be Page 421 exceedingly... you are trying to foist on the truth of things. The Divine also comes down into the cycle of rebirths, makes the great holocaust, endures shame and obloquy, torture and crucifixion, the burden of human nature, sex and passion and sorrow and suffering, manifests many births before he reveals the Avatar. And when he does reveal it? Well, read the lives of the Avatars and try to understand and see. Nobody ...
... says, if, for that, HUMAN NATURE HAS TO CHANGE, it's high time it changed and we must all work for that to happen. I am extremely happy to hear this. Here is a man who has caught the true thing. 2 And it's beginning to spread. In Korea, too, there is someone who says the same thing and who is known to thousands of people. They are all asking for the change in [human] nature, a "new consciousness... This, however, is possible only if we stop fearing and harassing one another and if together we accept, welcome and prepare the changes that must inevitably take place. If this means a change in human nature, well, it is high time we worked for it; what must surely change is certain political attitudes and habits man has." La Suisse , Geneva, April 10, 1967, translated from the French. ...
... the Buddha, non-violence has been preached. The emperor Asoka banned all wars and killings in his dominion but human nature has not changed. The frantic efforts made by statesmen and politicians after the First World War did not in the least succeed in bringing about any change of human nature in the direction of peace, amity, concord and harmony. If anything, the conditions deteriorated to such an extent... present half-enlightened mental consciousness into a spiritual and supramental Truth-consciousness or All-knowledge, All-power, All-bliss. A change of consciousness alone can bring about a change of human nature—from the ignorant separative .consciousness of the mind to the illumined Unitarian consciousness of the Spirit. If the phenomena of life have to be seriously probed, we have to go deep down ...
... of individuals is the greatness of the eternal Energy within." (Aurobindo, 1974). Page 344 The perennial Indian quest in leadership has been a quest for the highest principle in human nature rather than a search for the highest personality. Swami Vivekananda states this unequivocally in one of his writings: 'The masses will always have the person; the higher ones the principle... responsible for the guilt of another; to every person belongs (the merit or demerit of) what he has wrought," says the Holy Quran. (53:38-39) Islamic ethics believes that it is ingrained in human nature to look at things from the perspective of their being good or bad. Man either likes or dislikes things that he comes across. Moreover, man's perception of good and evil is strikingly similar. It... responsible for the guilt of another; to every person belongs (the merit or demerit of) what he has wrought," says the Holy Quran. (53:38-39) Islamic ethics believes that it is ingrained in human nature to look at things from the perspective of their being good or bad. Man either likes or dislikes things that he comes across. Moreover, man's perception of good and evil is strikingly similar. It ...
... that they would prefer to follow it rather than their accustomed round of pain and pleasure. Many deliberately prefer that and say the other thing is too high for human nature—which is true, because you have to want to grow out of human nature before you can have the Ananda. Many struggle towards the Ananda but cannot reach it because though the soul and even the thinking mind and the higher vital... human into higher spiritual consciousness—..." Evidently then, you speak of two transformations—one psychic, and the other human into something else. But, hang it all, the psychic is part of the human nature or of ordinary nature,—it has been there even before the human began. So your plea does not stand for a moment. By that accursed phrase making us "great sadhaks overnight", as I said, I didn't ...
... coating; the mark of the seal is there only for form, the vision is that of the secret Godhead, the power of the life is that of the secret Godhead, and it breaks through the seals of the assumed human nature " 70 Does it follow that the breaking through had not to be done, or was a mere trifling impediment? The power of the form can be exceedingly great as every thinker and observer of life... you are trying to foist on the truth of things. The Divine also comes down into the cycle of rebirths, makes the great holocaust, endures shame and obloquy, torture and crucifixion, the burden of human nature, sex and passion and sorrow and suffering, manifests many births before he reveals the Avatar. And when he does reveal it? Well, read the lives of the Avatars and try to understand and see. Nobody... or falsehood cannot help. They must be as real as the struggles and sufferings of men themselves—the Divine bears them and at the same time shows the way out of them. Otherwise his assumption of human nature has no meaning and no utility and no value. It is strange that you cannot understand or refuse to admit so simple and crucial a point. What is the use of admitting Avatarhood if you take all the ...
... soul's consciousness, although perhaps more often from behind the veil, that once inspired and enlivened human nature in its youth; and life was after all a thing of beauty and joy – for the soul is the one Rasa of existence. We have deposed the Divine King; an anarchy now reigns in human nature which has become the battle-ground of qualities and forces that are, if not always more crude, at least... but know not the joy of life. We lay an inordinate stress upon the body, upon what is external and superficial, upon the matter of life, and suffer from a simultaneous recoil and disgust for it. Human nature has been rent in twain and life has lost its unity of rhythm. The old-world had no experience of this self-division. It had a frank and full joy in things of life, even in their most ...
... This Crisis THAT the world has now pushed itself into the grip of a tremendous crisis admits of no doubt. And difficult it is to fathom the depth of deformation and depravity in which human nature and human society have sunk. The scriptures speak of the darkest days of Kali when even the last traces of religion would be wiped out; man would become irreligious to the last degree; even in... pretence, cleverness, deceit, harshness, cruelty, rudeness, crookedness – all these seem to have become a universally approved state of things and accepted as the human way, as human temperament and human nature. If anyhow there occurs an exception anywhere to the general rule, it gives rise to surprise and suspicion. Leave aside worldly men. And look at the youth on whom the burden of the world has... everywhere how rude and arrogant have become the students of these days. From men's life has passed away the sense of restraint, politeness of heart, gracefulness. It is not that want has impoverished human nature to such a miserable extent. Even where there is no want we find the same play of desire and impulse. It seems that some black force from somewhere has possessed man, which tempts him into mean ways ...
... Towards this end, every human nature, every characteristic turn of its action was given a place in the system; each was suitably surrounded with the spiritual idea and a religious influence, each provided with steps by which it might rise towards its own spiritual possibility and significance. The highest spiritual meaning was set on the summits of each evolving power of the human nature. It has, therefore... striving to be actualised in the life of collectivities. In is necessary to emphasise that the goal sought after by Hinduism encouraged and inspired multisided development of all aspects of human nature and all parts of the being. In order to reach this goal, Hinduism has permitted bold and adventurous experiments, and it has shown that the Infinite can only be reached in fullness if we have grown ...
... is the transformation of human nature. Experiments with human life. Nobody has ever done this kind of work with human life. That is why our Ashram has a distinctive contribution, a special place. We have to get the government to grant us a special status so that we can do our work unimpeded outside the pale public or private trust. We have to transform human nature and make it entirely divine... commercial business activities. We should organise ourselves in such a way that we can focus on our real work, on the real goal and ideal of the Ashram. Our real work is the transformation of human nature. To experiment with human Me. Nobody has ever done this kind of work. That is why our Ashram has a unique status and importance. And it is for this that we should get the Page 114 ...
... alive at the time, would have easily appreciated it. The intuitive insight of Rabindranath Tagore, Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya, and Sister Nivedita clearly perceived it. Page 172 Human nature is too complex and diverse, the path of its evolution too mazy and meandering, and the world-forces too tangled and conflicting to permit of a single rigid line of thought and action to lead to... .." Here we have at once a prescience and a prophecy of the colossal work that was to rear its edifice on the secure foundation of political freedom 35. The integral Yoga was to transform human nature into Divine Nature and human life into Divine Life 36. 34. From the Bande Mataram, 23.2.1908. 35. "The true aim of the nationalist movement is to restore the spiritual greatness... rigid principle in politics. He knew that politics being the business of the Kshatriya and concerned not with saints but with erring, mortal men, subject to the natural reactions of their common human nature, could not and should not bind itself to any inflexible ethical rule of conduct when faced with the destructive forces of an autocratic Government. As Dr. Radhakrishnan says 100: 100. ...
... It means that the subconsciousness has in it certain gathered powers which impose themselves on the human being. Disciple : How to transform or change this human nature? Sri Aurobindo : In order to change human nature you have to work from level to level; you reject a thing from Page 103 the mind, it comes to the vital. When you reject it from the vital, then it comes... mean when they say "It is nature". They mostly allow it to run its course and when the body drops, it also drops; but, it is not transformation. That is what Vivekananda meant when he said that "human nature cannot be changed, that it was like a dog's tail, you can straighten it if you like, but as soon as you leave it, it is curved again." Disciple : What is really meant by this "nature"? ...
... In India, where spirituality has been the very life-breath of the people, many forms of spiritual culture, many Yogas, have been propounded and practised since the dim ages of pre-history. Human nature has been systematically and vigorously explored to discover what it is made of, how many chambers it contains, what is the purpose of its creation and action, and what avenues it affords to the... some forms of spiritual self-discipline. But nowhere, as in India, has there been such a wide and varied spread of spiritual culture, such a passionate approach to the Eternal from every part of human nature, and such an abundant harvest of experiences reduced to a rich diversity of mystical sciences, each representing a special approach and a special result, though all having a general community... finale of the synthetic Yoga of the Gitâ; but by what definite culminating steps will this consummation be attained, by what process of transmutation and transfiguration of this base metal of human nature, and what will be the status and active poise of the individual in that victorious apotheosis, and the purpose and influence of his Page 28 presence in the world, have been left ...
... desires and wants of the life-soul. A philosophy which is born of the mere intellect is either an abstraction or a specious justification of the socialised instincts and tendencies of the ignorant human nature. In the former case, it is unrelated Page 2 to life, in the latter, it is an apologist for life, an advocate of what is and has been, rather than a guide to what should be... use one part of the being of man as a lever, and lead his consciousness through it to the Infinite. Some attempt a greater sweep and a wider approach, working through the complex elements of human nature, loosening many a knot, straightening out many a twist, and releasing into expression something of the splendour of the Infinite upon earth. I propose to deal with this subject of the varieties... life—the freedom and immortality of the Eternal and Infinite. The times are full of the promise of a generalisation of Yoga in humanity. On the one hand, degeneracy has progressed far in human nature; the noble ideals, the Page 11 higher spiritual values of human life have receded into the background, leaving only the animal appetites to rage and riot on the surface. On ...
... have found out, that our present servitude to conventions which are the machinery of thought and action, is principally due to weaknesses forming a large element in human nature. Our lives ought not to be lived in accordance with human nature which can nowhere be found apart from the disturbing element of reason, but according to nature at large where we find the principle of harmony pure and undefiled... true, that life ought to be lived in accordance with nature and not in Page 40 accordance with convention. The error we impute to them was that they failed to keep nature distinct from human nature and forgot that the latter was complicated by the presence of that fallible reason, of which conventions are the natural children. Thus men of genius like Rousseau reverted to the savage for a model ...
... "psychic" relationship with others—very usually covering a vital mixture which distracts them from the one aim—is a persistently common feature. There is no difference here between Western and Eastern human nature. Only the teaching in India is of old standing that all must be turned towards the Divine and everything else either sacrificed or changed into a subordinate and ancillary movement or made by s... difficulties,—you have not seen those, equally great, that have long troubled or are still troubling others. Neither to Indian nor to European can the path of Yoga be smooth and easy; their common human nature is there to see to that. To each his own difficulties seem enormous and radical and even incurable by their continuity and persistence and induce long periods of despondency and crises of despair... and consciousness. All can pass who are drawn to that Truth, whether they are from India or elsewhere, from the East or from the West. All may find great difficulties in their personal or common human nature; but it is not their physical origin or their racial temperament that can be an insuperable obstacle to their deliverance. I am not sure about the last matter. 1 After all India with her ...
... relations can be very different from what he is in the actual fact or in other relations or on another side of his nature. To be absolutely sincere, straightforward, open, is not an easy achievement for human nature. It is only by spiritual endeavour that one can realise it—and to do it needs a severity of introspective self-vision, an unsparing scrutiny of self-observation of which many sadhaks or Yogins even... man trained by the education and society of Europe—the latter, even as a minister or priest, has never been called upon to practise what he preached in entire earnest. But it is difficult for the human nature anywhere to think, feel and act from one centre of true faith, belief or vision. The average Hindu considers the spiritual life the highest, reveres the Sannyasi, is moved by the Bhakta; but if... reasoning mind as an accomplice. That is why we insist so much on sincerity in the Yoga—and that means to have all the being consciously turned towards the one Truth, the one Divine. But that for human nature is one of the most difficult of tasks, much more difficult than a rigid asceticism or a fervent piety. Religion itself does not give this complete harmonised sincerity—it is only the psychic being ...
... Sadhana And first about human love in the sadhana. The soul's turning through love to the Divine must be through a love that is essentially divine, but as the instrument of expression at first is a human nature, it takes the forms of human love and bhakti. It is only as the consciousness deepens, heightens and changes that that greater eternal love can grow in it and openly transform the human into the... and inertia, or revolt or hostility, or some gross desire, that they are out of place and can have a contrary effect. But there is another way of vital love which is more usually the way of human nature and that is a way of ego and desire. It is full of vital craving, desire and demand; its continuance depends upon the satisfaction of its demands; if it does not get what it Page 342 ... Human love is made up of emotion, passion and desire,—all of them vital movements, therefore bound to the disabilities of the human vital nature. Emotion is an excellent and indispensable thing in human nature, in spite of all its shortcomings and dangers,—just as mental ideas are excellent and indispensable things in their own field in the human stage. But our aim is to go beyond mental ideas into the ...
... justification of such a tutelage would be to civilise, that is to say, to Europeanise the less developed races. Practically, we know that it would mean their exploitation, since in the course of human nature the benevolent but forceful guardian would feel himself justified in making the best profit out of his advantageous situation, always of course in the interest at once of his own development and... man has been able to organise for himself becomes a step backward, whatever immediate gain it may bring; and every organisation of oppression or repression beyond what the imperfect conditions of human nature and society render inevitable, becomes, no matter where or by whom it is practised, a blow to the progress of the whole race. If, on the other hand, the formal unification of the race is effectuated... eventual dissolution in a larger principle of aggregation. Group-units there must always be in any human unity, even the most entire, intolerant and uniform, for that is the very principle not only of human nature, but of life and of every aggregation; we strike here on a fundamental law of universal existence, on the fundamental mathematics and physics of creation. But Page 411 it does not follow ...
... not enough to open the doors of the Spirit. In the ordinary life, people accept the vital movements, anger, desire, greed, sex etc. as natural, allowable and legitimate things, part of the human nature. Only so far as society discourages them or wishes to keep them within fixed limits or subject to a decent restraint or measure, people try to control them so as to conform to the social standard... assertions of a mental belief leading to a great vehement assertion of one's creed and god because they are one's own and must therefore be greater than those of others—an attitude which is universal in human nature. Even the atheist is not tolerant, but declares his credo of Nature and Matter as the only truth and on all who disbelieve it or believe in other things he pours scorn as unenlightened morons and... African colonies. Japan needs an outlet for her overabundant population and safe economic markets nearby. Each is pushed by forces that use the minds of rulers and peoples to fulfil themselves—unless human nature changes no amount of moralising will prevent it. Page 436 There has been almost continuous war in the world—it is as in the history of the Roman Republic when the gates of the temple ...
... the suggestions, then things begin to appear like that. These suggestions are natural to the ignorant physical or body consciousness in human nature, just as suggestions of vital passion and disturbance are natural to the ignorant vital consciousness in human nature. You had vital reactions but you did not allow them to overcome you or make you think yourself unfit for the Yoga, because you relied upon... part which has to change. It is tamasic and does not want to change, does not want to believe unless it can be done by reassuring the vital ego. But there is nothing new in all that—it is part of human nature and has always been there, hampering and limiting the sadhana. Its existence is no reason for despair—everyone has it and the sadhana has to be done in spite of it, in spite of the mixture it brings ...
... you out of hell? Say not that this love does not exist and that all here is based on appetite, vanity, interest or selfish pleasure, that Rama & Sita, Ruru & Savitri are but dreams & imaginations. Human nature conscious of its divinity throws back the libel in scorn, and poetry blesses & history confirms its verdict. That Love is nothing but the Self recognizing the Self dimly or clearly and therefore... weighing good Page 148 & evil. It did good in its time, but it was not true, and could not last. THE STUDENT In what is it not true? THE GURU It is not true, because it is not in human nature; no human being ever made or ever will make an arithmetical calculation of the pain & pleasure to result from an action and the numbers of the people diversely affected by them, before doing the... the passionless observation, classification and correlation of facts we may follow Science without distrust or fear of stumbling; but whenever it tries to theorize from what it has observed about human nature, human affairs & spiritual development, Science is always tumbling into the pits of the lower selves; in attempting to range things above the material level under the law of the material self, it ...
... latter is the first object of all practical ethics religious or non-religious. The first requisite to this end is a true knowledge of human nature and its psychology; for if an ethical system is psychologically untrue, if it is seriously mistaken in its view of human nature or fails to discern and reach his highest and noblest instincts, it will either be ineffective or possibly even do as much harm as... liberation from that bondage, and it demands a far higher standard of perfection in these qualities than any other creed or system of ethics. What to many moralists is the highest effort of feeble human nature is to Vedanta only the first imperfect manifestation of the divine self in humanity. Vedanta embraces, harmonizes and yet overtops and exceeds all other moralities; as Vedic religion is the eternal ...
... those even to whom all cult and form are for this reason suspect and offensive; but few can dispense with the support of outward symbols and, even, a certain divine element Page 163 in human nature demands them always for the completeness of its spiritual satisfaction. Always the symbol is legitimate in so far as it is true, sincere, beautiful and delightful, and even one may say that a spiritual... heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once... exercised over his own being as over the environing human existence. The difficulty is great; for their hold is so strong, so apparently invincible that it justifies the disdainful dictum which compares human nature to a dog's tail,—for, straighten it never so much by force of ethics, religion, reason or any other redemptive effort, it returns in the end always to the crooked curl of Nature. And so great is ...
... integral Yoga, a question arises full of many perplexities but of great dynamic importance. How are we to deal with life and works as they now are, with the activities proper to our still unchanged human nature? An ascension towards a greater consciousness, an occupation of our mind, life and body by its powers has been accepted as the outstanding object of the Yoga: but still life here, not some other... compromise or compact of mutual concessions for mutual Page 152 support between a religious urge which seeks to get a closer hold on earth by taking into itself the higher turns of ordinary human nature and an ethical urge which hopes to elevate itself out of its own mental hardness and dryness by some touch of a religious fervour. In making this compact religion lowers itself to the mental level... tenderness, goodwill, compassion, benevolence, on all beauty and gentleness and fineness and light and strength and courage, on all that can help to refine and purify the grossness and commonness of human nature; but it knows how mixed are these human movements at their best and at their worst how fallen and stamped with the mark of ego and self-deceptive sentimental falsehood and the lower self profiting ...
... transcendence of our normal human nature, a transcendence of our mental, vital and physical being, has the appearance of an endeavour too high and difficult and at present, for man as he is, impossible. Even if it were so, it would still remain the sole possibility for the transmutation of life; for to hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual... not admitted as possible. But there would be nothing supernatural or miraculous in such an evolution, except in so far as it would be a supernature or superior nature to ours just as human Page 1078 nature is a supernature or superior nature to that of animal or plant or material objects. Our mind and its powers, our use of reason, our mental intuition and insight, speech, possibilities ...
... transform our lives, cannot find here their physical body. Ideals touch and pass, mankind remains the same; after religions, ideals, moralities without end we keep always the same ignorant and imperfect human nature. Moral rules and ideals are a harness for the ignorant soul, bridle and bit for the passions, reins that compel it to an assigned road, yoke and poles and traces that bind it to be faithful to... each in its own demand and in conflict with one another; neither mind nor life knows the means either of their complete or their harmonised fulfilment. The mind labours through the centuries but human nature remains faithful to its imperfections and man's life amid its changes always the same. Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that... total surrender to the Supreme are the successive steps of this preliminary change. Only after all this has been done, can we live securely in an infinite consciousness not bound like our mental human nature. And only then can we receive the Light, know perfectly the will of the Supreme, attune all our movements to the rhythm of its Truth and execute perfectly from moment to moment its imperative c ...
... the great Jeweller who transforms the crude metal of the human soul into a perfect ornament. The poet admits the frailty of human nature and its reluctance to reflect a multi-faceted sparkle. God alone can create the necessary conditions for inner perfection since human nature has the tendency to slacken its pace of progress:. Not every hour can glow a perfect gem: Pallor of glass mingles... cannot meet therefore God need not meet with human fate. At the same time man does not wish to alter his destiny. In the poem "Giant Wheel" Sethna repeats the same image of smoky shades of human nature with greater intensity: "the dream-mystery of gold and grey." In the nebulous impressions of dream sequences gold and grey merge together. Is there a suggestion that at the level of the subconscient ...
... life is a great thing. Without freedom to take risks and commit mistakes, there can be no progress.’ 27 The Relation with the Sadhaks The Mother, with her profound occult knowledge of human nature, must certainly have been aware of the scope of the task she took on her shoulders, or rather in her heart, from the beginning. This included the petty side of the human character which becomes... About the communal life Sri Aurobindo wrote: ‘Wherever human beings are obliged to associate closely, what I saw described the other day as “the astonishing meannesses and caddishnesses inherent in human nature” come quickly out. I have seen that in the Ashram, in political work, in social attempts at united living, everywhere in fact where it gets a chance. But when one tries to do Yoga, one cannot fail... instance, in the Mother’s letters to Huta, published in White Roses and other collections, in their correspondence with Nirodbaran and K.D. Sethna, and in many other letters. They knew full well what human nature consisted of and consequently what they had taken upon them in their yoga of the collectivity. They also knew that they could expect little in return from human beings, even from the sadhaks of ...
... says, well, things ignorant and incompatible with all that wisdom. X is not insincere when he does that — he is simply giving voice to two parts of his nature. Nobody can understand himself or human nature if he does not perceive the multi-personality of the human being. To get all parts into harmony, that is the difficult thing. "As for the lack of response, well, can't you see that you are in... man trained by the education and society of Europe — the latter, even as a minister or priest, has never been called upon to practise what he preached in entire earnest. But it is difficult for human nature anywhere to think, I feel and act from one centre of true faith, belief or vision. The? average Hindu considers the spiritual life the highest, reveres the sannyasi, is moved by the bhakta; ... as an accomplice. "That is why we insist so much on sincerity in the Yoga — and that means to have all the being consciously turned towards the one Truth — the. one Divine. But that is, for human nature one of the most difficult of tasks, much more difficult than a rigid asceticism or a fervent piety. Religion itself does not give this complete harmonised sincerity — it is only the psychic being ...
... ly immense and organic (at least a trillion galaxies each almost certainly containing Life and Thought...). Christianity can only survive (and super-live), I feel, by sub-distinguishing in the 'human nature' of the Incarnate Word a 'terrestrial' nature and a cosmic nature. Otherwise, our Faith and our Charity no longer cover the Phenomenon. Teilhard makes five emphatic points, from... express myself brutally (but expressively) I cannot see any noble and constructive issue to the situation outside of the sub-distinction for the theologians of a new Nicaea to work out in the human nature of Christ, between a terrestrial nature and a cosmic nature, - What do you think of it?... In any case, one tiling seems evident, more and more so: and it is that only a trans- (or ultra-) ... physical influence on every cosmic reality without exception." 42 "Since Christ is Omega, the universe is physically impregnated to the very core of its matter by the influence of his super-human nature." 43 "The pressure of facts is now such that it is time to return to a form of Christology' which is more organic and takes more account of physics. A Christ who dominates the history of ...
... of human nature and the way to its transformation] in a scientific psychology with a materialistic basis which assumes that the body and the biological and physiological factors of our nature are not only the starting-point but the whole real foundation and regards human mind as only a subtle development from the life and the body. That may be the actual truth of the animal side of human nature and... the humanistic movement in psychology, has attempted to develop a comprehensive view of human potentials which encompass, in the words of one of the titles of his books, "the farther reaches of human nature", including the attainment of "peak experiences" -states which are generally associated with mystical or semi-mystical experiences. Maslow thus comes close to voicing what has been stated by Sri ...
... question whether the human nature can be changed and whether we should not plan new education which would aim at the change of human nature. PR stated that very important experiments in education are currently being conducted in the West and that these experiments aim at creative development of talents of children. She said that it is by emphasising creativity that human nature can be changed in ...
... evil acts such as murder, lying, stealing, etc. are sinful acts. Sinful acts are to be avoided. But considering human nature, can a human being live a truly sinless life? According to Christianity, the human cannot. Throughout life, the human will sin according to the demands of human nature. Therefore, God sacrificed Himself in the person of Jesus on the Cross to redeem" the sins pf the human, and most... even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. [John 13:35] By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Yet Jesus knows that human nature is still weak, and he warns the disciple, Simon-Peter. [John 13:36] Simon-Peter said to him, "Lord, where are you going?" Jesus answered, "Where I am going you cannot follow me now; but ...
... with other persons and confrontation with diverse events and situations of life. But, so far as our sadhana is concerned, we have fixed for our goal the divine transformation of our present human nature and a victory over the forces of life. For, as Sri Aurobindo has reminded us: "The Divine that we adore is not only a remote extracosmic Reality, but a half-veiled Manifestation present and... instincts, known and unknown, overt or covert, will be provoked almost at every step to act and react in unspiritual way, for that is its present svadharma. All the dark elements inherent in present human nature will come out of their lairs at the contact of life and surge up and invade our outer dynamic existence seeking an unbridled manifestation there. At any point of time, especially in moments... its undesirability through actual experience which will surely purify me by effective purging." But this method does not work at all; for the theory is not based on psychological facts of human nature. Instead of being purified, one gets still more engrossed in the impulse and weakness, making a future deliverance much more difficult. No, instead of indulging in the weakness even for once ...
... of man, enlightened, will claim freedom for itself, but will equally recognise the same right in others. A just equation will of itself emerge on the ground of a true, self-found and unperfected human nature. This might conceivably be sufficient, although hardly without a considerable change and progress in man's mental powers, if the life of the individual could be lived in a predominant isolation... labour and acquisitions will be used or given by him without demur for the common good under a natural co-operative impulse." Discrepancy between the ideas of Anarchism and the actual facts of Human Nature "The severest school of anarchism rejects all compromise with communism. It is difficult to see how a Stateless Communism which is supposed to be the final goal of the Russian ideal can operate... the future evolution of the race. For it means that no machinery invented by the reason can perfect either the Page 27 individual or the collective man; an inner change is needed in human nature, a change too difficult to be ever effected except by the few. This is not certain; but in any case, if this is not the solution, then there is no solution, if this is not the way, then there is ...
... practical actuality, precisely because it is no human agency that has undertaken it but the Divine himself in his supreme potency and wisdom and love. The descent of the Divine into the ordinary human nature in order to purify and transform it and be lodged there is the whole secret of the sadhana in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. The sadhaka has only to be quiet and silent, calmly aspiring, open and acquiescent... sublimation into the consciousness of the Spirit and its fusion and dissolution there in the end. The descent of the Divine Consciousness to prepare its definitive home in the dynamic and pragmatic human nature, if considered at all, was not the main theme of the past efforts and achievements. Furthermore, the descent Page 4 spoken of here is the descent, not of a divine consciousness—for... form and figure of the Light supernal. The Divine in his descending Grace is the Master-Architect who is building slowly and surely the many-chambered and many-storied edifice that is human nature and human life into the mould of the Divine Truth in its perfect play and supreme expression. But this is a matter which can be closely considered when one is already well within the mystery of ...
... remains yet to be discovered: it is still under discussion, at least. As a matter of fact, the goal itself is none too clear and definite: sometimes we think of a saintly transformation of human nature, sometimes the growing power of Intuition, very vaguely and variously defined, replacing or supplementing intellect and thus adding a new asset to man's life and consciousness. The crucial... must be reached first by a few individuals, it cannot be attained by 'mass action. Others declare that personal effort will not lead very far; if there is to be a great or fundamental change in human nature, it is the Divine Grace alone that can bring it about. The surpassing of man is a miracle and only the supreme magician as an Avatara can do it. Others, again, are not prone to believe in a physical... because Matter in its essence, in its true reality is spiritual energy, is the Spirit itself. That is the great secret Sri Aurobindo has brought to light. The ideals in the past for the reclamation of human nature and reformation of human society were tackled with mental and moral powers which were not adequate to the task. Even when the spiritual power was invoked, it was of the static category which is ...
... practical actuality, precisely because it is no human agency that has undertaken it but the Divine himself in his supreme potency and wisdom and love. The descent of the Divine into the ordinary human nature in order to purify and transform it and be lodged there is the whole secret of the sadhana in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. The sadhaka has only to be quiet and silent, calmly aspiring, open and acquiescent... sublimation into the consciousness of the Spirit and its fusion and dissolution there in the end. The descent of the Divine Consciousness to prepare its definitive home in the dynamic and pragmatic human nature, if considered at all, was not the main theme Page 4 of the past efforts and achievements. Furthermore, the descent spoken of here is the descent, not of a divine consciousness – for... the very form and figure of the Light supernal. The Divine in his descending Grace is the Master-Architect who is building slowly and surely the many-chambered and many-storeyed edifice that is human nature and human life into the mould of the Divine Truth in its perfect play and supreme expression. But this is a matter which can be closely considered when one is already well within the mystery of ...
... from there that a new world has to be recreated, a new humanity reshaped. The very stuff of human nature has to be changed, not only what is considered as bad in it but what is valued as good also. For beyond good and evil is Nature Divine. Man has to find out this divine nature and dissolve his human nature into that, remould it, reshape it in that pattern. So long as human consciousness remains too... the classical culture. On the other hand, modern collectivism tends towards a uniform levelling down of all individual eccentricity. But dangers apart, the truth of either conception, ingrained in human nature, has to be recognised and accepted. A humanity, composed of developed and formed individuals living in broad commonalty – that is the highest achievement the present author holds before mankind ...
... order to realize immortality for him. Immortality is another word for divine consciousness. Then she overcomes death? Yes, death on earth. This possibility of change of the whole human nature from its present condition into a more perfect divine nature has not been visualized by any seer before. That is the special contribution Sri Aurobindo has given to mankind. If it had been given... understood it. First, the necessity of transformation; second, the process of transformation - how to do it. Its possibility was not known before. This is the way in which it is now given to mankind; human nature as well as human consciousness is capable of liberation and perfection, and that perfection consists in a transformation of nature, not a rejection of nature but a transformation, not a control... type of behaviour according to ethics and morality, but a free expression of the Divine in man with the divine nature. The Divine has the divine nature which man can also acquire by replacing his human nature by the elements of the divine Page 81 nature within him. That is how the Kingdom has to come. The idea of the Kingdom was there. The process of the Kingdom was not ...
... nirahankāra. It promises to its follower an abiding God-union in and through life's manifold activities. But how that is to be accomplished, by what supreme transmutation of the basic stuff of human nature, it does not explain. It confines itself to the synthetic teaching that by the elimination of all desires and an integral self-giving to the Divine alone through knowledge, works and love, one... nature, but also the subconscient and the inconscient can be thoroughly cleansed of even the last, lingering vestiges of the ego and transferred to the sole charge of the Divine ? Can the lower human nature of the three shackling qualitative modes, guṇas, be raised and converted into the divine Nature, parā prakṛti ? Can man become wholly divine, not only in his inner, but also in his outermost... repose, but a vast, thrilled channel of the supreme creative Will and its lightning energies. In the Prayer of the 17th April, 1914, the Mother makes it abundantly clear that no part of the human nature has to be coerced or repressed or weakened, each has its distinct place and function proper to it and indispensable to the harmonious working of the organic whole. What is to be totally expunged ...
... difficulties and failures in the spiritual life can be safely attributed to a lack of knowledge, and to the perfervid precipitancy and summary methods of our Page 124 aspiring ignorance. Human nature is bafflingly intricate, and it is only by a patient and perspicacious dealing with, it under the direct guidance of the divine Light that we can hope to purify it in all its parts and workings... spiritual liberation is a far cry, let alone the Divine Life, which is the aim of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. THE TENTACLES OF THE EGO The tentacles of the ego are spread out in every part of human nature. They pervade our body, our life parts, our sensations, our heart of emotions, our understanding and intellect, and determine and direct every action and reaction of our complex organism. It is... fulfilment of man in life, and not in the heavens beyond or in the supracosmic Silence; and for that dynamic fulfilment what is of primary importance is an extirpation of the ego from every part of human nature. A quiet, unfailing opening to the Mother's Force supplemented by a surrender of the whole being and a ruthless detection and rejection of the ego will go a long way towards the realisation of that ...
... congealed inertia of Inconscience. This peace is the recurring refrain of many of the hymns and incantations of the world's scriptures, because without it here can be no steady purification of human nature, and no creative play of any beneficent power in life. It is the principle of preservation and conservation, stability and security, repose and equilibrium. It is the infallible healer of all... anger of hatred." The pacifists who think that a mere physical abstention from violence will save the modern world from ruin and bring about the cherished millennium are either ignorant of human nature, or infatuated with an impossible Utopian dream. Violence will continue to disturb or disrupt human society and shatter the naive hopes of the pacifists so long as any of the lower lusts of man... the mental and assume the concentrated intensity of a mental violence. The remedy lies not in the imposition of a moral principle or the adoption of a mental rule, but in the spiritualisation of human nature including even the subconscient; for it is often seen that when violence is completely expelled from the normal waking consciousness, it sinks into the sub-conscient and re-emerges from there in ...
... spiritual reality. The issues involved are so great and serious —in fact dangerous and of cosmic import, and all the protagonists in it are conscious about them. The queen, representing the ordinary human nature, questions Narad, "the man divine", about the why and wherefore of pain. This question raises the problem of reconciling a God all-knowing, merciful, and also Omnipotent with the creation, existence... Might, the power of Right, maintaining the reign of Law in the world, the Mother of Light, —the power of mental or intellecutal—knowledge. Each of these had a deformation of its working reflected in human nature. Each of these powers declared to Savitri that she herself was her secret Soul. Savitri, on her part, accepted the identity but partially. She saw that each of them fulfilled an important function... of the Absolute, the Perfect, and the Immune,—the Immune being the Divine immanent in each being and object untouched by the imperfections of nature. He saw that it is the Divine that has assumed human nature and the purpose of man's life is to put on the Divine Nature. This work cannot be done by man alone; a higher Power must come, or must be brought down. The effort to bring down such a Power ...
... endeavour. Its aim must be not only to raise to inaccessible heights the few elect, but to draw all men and all life and the whole human being upward, to spiritualise life and in the end to divinise human nature. Not only must it be able to lay hold on his deepest individual being but to inspire too his communal Page 197 existence. It must turn by a spiritual change all the members of his ignorance... luminous and vivid of the later movements of India's vast religious cycle. It is the secret of the most powerful forms of Vaishnavism and Tantra and Yoga. The labour of ascent from our half-animal human nature into the fresh purity of the spiritual consciousness needed to be followed and supplemented by a descent of the light and force of the spirit into man's members and the attempt to transform human ...
... in the power with which it did this work, the profound wisdom and high and subtle skill with which it based society and ordered the individual life, and encouraged and guided the propensities of human nature and finally turned them all towards the realisation of its master idea. The mind it was training, while not called away from its immediate aims, was never allowed to lose sight of the use of life... conception, although that element might predominate; it was also intellectual, religious, social, aesthetic, the flowering of the whole ideal Page 163 man, the perfection of the total human nature. The most varied qualities met in the Indian conception of the best, śreṣṭha , the good and noble man, ārya . In the heart benevolence, beneficence, love, compassion, altruism, long-suffering ...
... effective patterns of the highest Indian manhood and womanhood, are much too virtuous for his taste. Rama is too saintly for human nature. I do not know in fact that Rama is more saintly than Christ or St. Francis, yet I had always thought they were within the pale of human nature; but perhaps this critic will reply that, if not beyond that Page 102 pale, their excessive virtues are at least ...
... by mental laws, and thus are based on duality, we will not know the peace to which we aspire to raise the world and will continue to be haunted by its elusiveness. Peace is not inherent to human nature because it is not a part of universal Nature. This our reason must accept if we really want to know peace and find the path leading to it. We must discover the quality of another nature in ourselves... disappeared, or have been purified, and the thought to which they will give voice will possess an irresistible brilliance. Their understanding of the social world and of the sidereal universe, as of human nature and what fetters it, of its powers and its aim, will be more complete. Being more intuitive, this thought will have no need to undergo the scrutiny of reason. It will encompass a larger number of ...
... Aurobindo's Yoga. His Yoga was meant to be a process and a progression of the evolutionary method: it aimed not at a bewildering superimposition of divine qualities which still left the grain of human nature unchanged, but at a spiritually organic luminous growth, an assimilation by nature of supernature, a marvellous and yet no freakish transfiguration, an intense working out within a life-time of... Inconscience, the dark basis of the submerged Divine from which evolution seems to issue. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, taking upon themselves as representative pioneers the agelong difficulties of all human nature, have been striking against this bed-rock for the last decade and a half. "No, it is not with the Empyrean that I am busy," wrote Sri Aurobindo in 1936 to a disciple and added: "I wish it were. ...
... to such a transformation [conversion of the human into a likeness of and a fundamental oneness with the divine nature] we must form some sufficient working idea of the complex thing that this human nature at present is in the confused interminglings of its various principles, so that we may see the precise nature of the conversion each part of it must undergo and the most effective means for the... are not only the starting-point but the whole real foundation and regards human mind as only a subtle development from the life and the body. That may be the actual truth of the animal side of human nature and of the human mind in so far as it is limited and conditioned by the physical part of our being. But the whole difference between man and the animal is that the animal mind, as we know it, ...
... because to be normal is to be divine." 1 The Mother Since, as Sri Aurobindo has stated, "Yoga is nothing but practical psychology", 2 resolving the psychological problems inherent in human nature is the crux of the practice of yoga. As such, yoga necessarily deals with psychological disturbances - the subject-matter of clinical psychology and psychiatry. The purpose of this essay is to explain... prolong it, not to wish to let it go, to return to it even when the cause of disturbance is past and could be forgotten, always to remember and bring it up when it can. This is a common trait of the human nature and a quite customary movement." 20 Disturbances Associated with the Physical The most prominent characteristic of physical consciousness is inertia or Tamas. Therefore an individual ...
... the suggestions, then things begin to appear like that. These suggestions are natural to the ignorant physical or body consciousness in human nature, just as suggestions of vital passion and disturbance are natural to the ignorant vital consciousness in human nature. You had vital reactions but you did not allow them to overcome you or make you think yourself unfit for the Yoga, because you relied upon ...
... themselves; if they put themselves on the right side, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose in spite of all defects, errors, wrong movements and actions which are common to human nature and all human collectivities. The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the other side (the Axis) would drag back humanity, degrade... 75. Page 262 presumption — I go on till I conquer or perish. This is the spirit in which I seek the Supermind, no hunting for greatness for myself or others." Unfortunately, human nature has a penchant for sectarianism which seems to be all but ineradicable. That is why even so soul-stirring and unexceptionable a letter was misinterpreted by some who accused him of belittling Krishna's ...
... Aurobindo came to Me CHAPTER VII Guru, The Transformer The more I brooded over man's utter helplessness when he is at odds with his own human nature, the less hopeful I felt about my prospective ability to make good in such a difficult undertaking as Yoga, that is, to effect a junction with the Divine Grace to be able to surmount Destiny. At... themselves as they did because they had accepted the nishkama karma of the Gita, fully conscious of the hurdles they would have to negotiate to translate the ideal into practice; for otherwise, human nature being what it is, it would have been humanly impossible for them to have gone on so bravely as they did with the dull routine of unremitting work which could hardly have been congenial to any of ...
... Patterns of the Present 7: The Future of Humanity To hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition; it is to ask for something unnatural and unreal, an impossible miracle. 1 – Sri Aurobindo Some specimens of homo sapiens will, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother... clear idea of humanity’s constitution, which is much more complex than generally supposed. (The basic shortcoming in the socialist and Marxist systems, for instance, was that they totally misjudged human nature.) All human beings may be equal before the law, but they are far from equal in their development and potential. “Inferior mankind gravitates downward from mind towards life and body; average ...
... the nature ? I don't suppose so. Never did it yet. I didn't mean that literature can transform people. We may have progressed in literature, but the outer human nature remains almost the same. Outer human nature can only change either by an intense psychic development or a strong and all-pervading influence from above. It is the inner being that has to change first—a change which ...
... putting his and the Mother’s work in perspective: ‘The Divine also comes down into the cycle of rebirths, makes the great holocaust, endures shame and obloquy, torture and crucifixion, the burden of human nature, sex and passion and sorrow and suffering, manifests many births before he reveals the Avatar’ 7 – as was the case now. Such were the leaders of the impossible enterprise. But if the Avatar... about Mother’s not smiling as a sign of absence of her grace or love is a device and suggestion of the Adversary.’ 53 Ashram life was very strict in the beginning, but the Mother knew human nature well enough to see to it that it had also its relaxed, more colourful moments. She even played games with the disciples, but always in view of the progress of the yoga and according to basic spiritual ...
... in 1956, the evolution of the New World in the future by the Supermind's entrance into the gross-material is certain. But evolution is a slow, zigzag, back-and-forth, up-and-down process, and human nature is difficult to change without the Incarnate Divine's pioneering Page 87 sadhana concretely proceeding amidst us and gathering us up into its own movement with its constant... the same fundamental goal as the Ashram, even though immediate self-consecration to Yoga is not insisted upon in so integral a way and more concessions are made to the common difficulties of human nature. page - 88 ...
... What should I expect a friend to be like? The immediate answer was: "Nothing." To make a formation and then try to fit people into it is folly. Human affairs are all the time in a flux because human nature itself is a constant movement, changing from minute to minute. However, there is a background of continuity, uniformity, constancy - the feeling that the same person persists behind all the variations... from which arises our sense of responsibility for our actions. And it is the influence of the watcher hovering, as it were, over the surface of the heaving and plunging career of our fluctuant human nature, that made my friend behave the next day with the usual warm intimacy as if nothing had happened the night earlier. It was a case of the thoughtful "\" getting the better of the impulsive "ego" ...
... care a damn whether he was called an Avatar or not. He was interested in making the Supermind a permanent state of wide-awake consciousness in the embodied human and in converting every part of human nature into a form of its own divine perfection which pre-exists archetypally in the Supermind. He was interested also in establishing the Supermind as not only an individual consciousness but as a part... Aurobindo's own view of the process and purpose of Avatarhood as not a mere divine freak but a divine demonstration to man of how evolution is to be accomplished and human difficulties overcome and human nature divinised. Of course every Yogi cannot be an Avatar by the mere fact of his demonstrating something or other of the process of spiritual growth. But the Avatar, for all his special position, is ...
... and work of sages and kings and religious teachers, without any actual incarnation. The Avatar comes as the manifestation of the divine nature in the human nature, the apocalypse of its Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood, in order that the human nature may by moulding its principle, thought, feeling, action, being on the lines of that Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood transfigure itself into the divine ...
... modern tendency, often crude and superficial though it may be, to equalise the sexes; for, behind it is a pressure towards climbing beyond the outward differentiations, since the fundamental human nature is the same and escapes the sex-limits and holds every sort of potentiality and commands the power of a varied function. In essence this pressure is a highly evolutionary factor. We tend overmuch... relation to the single Godhead they have to evolve side by side and co-operatively on earth. Transcendent of the sex-differentiations and of the physical-vital-mental formula is the more-than-human nature they bring as their basis: Considered in the light of that nature, their finest development would appear to lie in a large equality of status and function, with yet a subtle variety of tone ...
... deeper than mind, of the soul within him, and of what is above the mind, of supermind, of spirit, capable of opening to it, admitting it, rising towards it, taking hold of it. It is in his human nature, in all human nature, to exceed itself by conscious evolution, to climb beyond what he is. Not individuals only, but in time the race also, in a general rule of being and living if not in all its members, ...
... and of human nature justifies this view of a birth of the individual soul from form to form until it reaches the human level of manifested consciousness which is its instrument for rising to yet higher levels. We see that Nature develops from stage to stage and in each stage takes up its past Page 790 and transforms it into stuff of its new development. We see too that human nature is of ...
... that all the rest gives the transcendental values in the composition of Savitri's being, while here there is a departure to show how this transcendental greatness contacts the psychic demand of human nature in its weakness and responds to it and acts upon it. That was the purpose of the new passage and it is difficult to accomplish it without bringing in a normal psychic instead of a transcendental... fall back from a position gained or to one's original position); but it is specially used for withdrawing from a contract, agreement, previous statement. It is therefore quite the just word here. Human nature has assented to Nature's terms and been kept by her to them, but now Aswapati resiles from the contract and the assent to it made by humanity to which he belonged. Resiled, resilient, resilience ...
... can transform people? Literary people are often the most impossible on the face of the earth. 10 November 1936 We may have progressed in literature, but the outer human nature remains almost the same. Outer human nature can only change either by an intense psychic development or a strong and all-pervading influence from above. It is the inner being that has to change first—a change which ...
... way. It was a strange mistake to seek it in sexuality; it was also a great mistake to seek it at the wrong end of the nature. What you say about the discovery of the defects of human nature is no doubt true. Human nature is full of defects and can not Page 545 be otherwise, but there are other elements and possibilities in it which, although never quite unmixed, have to be seen to get ...
... the general nescience which is blind to it and hostile, or it is forced to circumscribe its range of cosmic application. A full action in harmony with a new law of the being is always difficult in human nature; for in the substance of the Inconscience there is a self-protective law of blind imperative Necessity which limits the play of the possibilities that emerge from it or enter into it and prevents... for none of them have in their mental or vital Page 996 play the divine power to replace this dark original principle and organise a totally new world-order. A transformation of human nature can only be achieved when the substance of the being is so steeped in the spiritual principle that all its movements are a spontaneous dynamism and a harmonised process of the spirit. But even when ...
... of the Self, its claim to have room and the one primary condition for its natural self-unfolding. Individual man belongs not only to humanity in general, his nature is not only a variation of human nature in general, but he belongs also to his race-type, his class-type, his mental, vital, physical, spiritual type in which he resembles some, differs from others. According to these affinities he tends... The truth deformed into this error is the same with the community as with the individual. The nation or community is an aggregate life that expresses the Self according to the general law of human nature and aids and partially fulfils the development and the destiny of mankind by its own development and the pursuit of its own destiny according to the law of its being and the nature of its corporate ...
... perceive what form and place it will take in an integral Yoga. Yoga is in essence the union of the soul with the immortal being and consciousness and delight of the Divine, effected through the human nature with a result of development into the divine nature of being, whatever that may be, so far as we can conceive it in mind and realise it in spiritual activity. Whatever we see of this Divine and... near and possible consummation. The aim of this synthetic or integral Yoga which we are considering, is union with the being, consciousness and delight of the Divine through every part of our human nature separately or simultaneously, but all in the long end harmonised and unified, so that the whole may be transformed into a divine nature of being. Nothing less than this can satisfy the integral ...
... fought out on the field, to follow it up by a commercial struggle between the belligerent nations. The men who wrote these books were capable thinkers but they ignored the one thing that matters, human nature. The present war has justified to a certain extent the Russian writer though by developments he did not foresee; scientific warfare Page 609 has brought military movement to a standstill... of the waste of human life and energy and the harm and extravagance are not permanent factors; they last only while the lesson is fresh. Afterwards, there is forgetfulness; Page 610 human nature recuperates itself and recovers the instincts that were temporarily dominated. A long peace, even a certain organisation of peace may conceivably result, but so long as the heart of man remains ...
... prevented at any cost. There is no other way for mankind than this, unless indeed a greater way is laid open to it by the Power that guides through some delivering turn or change in human will or human nature or some sudden evolutionary progress, a not easily foreseeable leap, saltus , which will make another and greater solution of our human destiny feasible. In the first idea and form of a beginning... of peace and harmony and even a free room for the realisation of the highest human dreams, for the perfectibility of the race, a perfect society, a higher upward evolution of the human soul and human nature. It is for the men of our day and, at the most, of tomorrow to give the answer. For, too long a postponement or too continued a failure will open the way to a series of increasing catastrophes which ...
... entire seclusion in Pondicherry? There are living men and women around you and human nature is in full play here as much as in the biggest city—only one has to have an eye to see what is within them and the imagination that takes a few bricks and can make out of them a great edifice—one must be able to see that human nature is one everywhere and pick out of it the essential things or the interesting ...
... of sadhana there is no room for vital relations—they are a stumbling block preventing the wholesale turning of the nature towards the Divine. The phenomenon of which you speak is normal to human nature. People are drawn together or one is drawn to another Page 299 by a certain feeling of affinity, of agreement or of attraction between some part of one's own nature and some part of... embraces. It is a white flame, not a red one; but white heat is not inferior to the red variety in its ardour. It is true that the psychic love does not usually get its full play in human relations and human nature, it finds the fullness of its fire and ecstasy more easily when it is lifted towards the Divine. In the human relation the psychic love gets mixed up with other elements which seek at Page 307 ...
... same mistakes themselves. Often indeed one sees easily in others faults which are there in oneself but which one fails to see. These and other defects such as the last you mention are common to human nature and few escape them. The human mind is not really conscious of itself—that is why in Yoga one has always to look and see what is in oneself and become more and more conscious. In ordinary... oned) criticism can be helpful by some aspect of it, if one can look at it without being affected by the unfairness. Naturally, praise and blame may have that effect 2 (the human Page 352 nature is more sensitive to these than to almost anything else, more even than to real benefit or injury), unless either equanimity has been established or else there is so entire a confidence ...
... cooperation is complete, then the progress can be rapid enough; but the sadhak should not grudge the time and labour needed to make that cooperation fully possible to the blindness and weakness of human nature and effective. All the call for faith, sincerity, surrender is only an invitation to make that cooperation more easily possible. If the physical mind ceases to judge all things including those... withdrawn inwardly, difficult especially for the physical mind and consciousness with which you are now in contact. But that is not peculiar to you,—as in the other things, it is a general difficulty of human nature. The instability of which you speak is also a usual characteristic of the external mind and vital. But you have the capacity to do it as recent experiences have shown; the capacity will grow, for ...
... people outside? Some people think that the Asram is a "rotten" place with jealousy and hatred rampant among the sadhaks. Outside there are just the same things. The Asram is an epitome of the human nature that has to be changed—but outside people put as much as possible a mask of social manners and other pretences over the rottenness—what Christ called in the case of the Pharisees the "whited sepulchre"... possible—contacts are inevitable. Wherever humans are obliged to associate closely, what I saw described the other day as "the astonishing Page 740 meannesses and caddishnesses inherent in human nature" come quickly out. I have seen that in Asrams, in political work, in social attempts at united living, everywhere in fact where it gets a chance. But when one tries to do Yoga, one cannot fail to ...
... substance; they become capable for a moment of forgetting themselves, for a moment its divine touch awakens and magnifies all that is fine and beautiful. But afterwards there comes to the surface the human nature, full of its impure demands, asking for something in exchange, bartering what it gives, clamouring for its own inferior satisfactions, distorting and soiling what was divine. To manifest the... with this large, pure and true Divine love, if you have felt it even for a short time and in its smallest form, you will realise what an abject thing human desire has made of it. It has become in human nature something low, brutal, selfish, violent, ugly, or else it is something weak and sentimental, made up of the pettiest feeling, brittle, superficial, exacting. And this baseness and brutality or this ...
... wars. Page 238 the right side, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose in spite of all defects, errors, wrong movements and actions which are common to human nature and all human collectivities. The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly... not as a part of a gospel of Non-violence or pacifist idealism. Peace is a part of the highest ideal, but it must be spiritual or at the very least psychological in its basis; without a change in human nature it cannot come with any finality. If it is attempted on any other basis (moral principle or gospel of Ahimsa or any other), it will fail and even may leave things worse than before. Sri Aurobindo's ...
... once make themselves Page 26 instruments of the Divine purpose in spite of all defects, errors, wrong movements and actions which are common to human nature and all human collectivities. The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly... sections of the human family and even oppose them to each other; but, for myself I rather be disposed to dwell on oneness and unity than on division and difference. East and West have the same human nature, a common human destiny, the same aspiration after a greater perfection, the same seeking after something higher than itself, something towards which inwardly and even outwardly we move. There has ...
... of doing things or their way of being always say, "Oh! what do you expect, it is human nature." This is what is called a "wilful indulgence". That is to say, instead of becoming conscious that these are weaknesses and difficulties on the way, one justifies these things, saying, "Oh! it can't be helped, it is human nature." One wants to continue to do what one is doing, without changing, one is full of ...
... character, genius, dynamic force, saintliness, love, purity or perfection. Supermind is something beyond mental man and his limits; it is a greater consciousness than the highest consciousness proper to human nature. Man in himself is little more than an ambitious nothing. He is a littleness that reaches to a wideness and a grandeur that are beyond him, a dwarf enamoured of the heights. His mind is a dark... African colonies. Japan needs an outlet for her over-abundant population and safe economic markets nearby. Each is pushed by forces that use the minds of rulers and peoples to fulfil themselves—unless human nature changes no amount of moralizing will prevent it. 111 September 10, 1935 There is no connection between the spiritual truth and knowledge in which I live and Mahatma Gandhi's ideals ...
... else and you are not informed—that I cannot say—it is one of the mysteries of human nature, and I am quite sure that many things happen without my being informed of them at all. But it is not a reason for being upset about it. There is only to remain quite cool and to do our best within the limits that human nature ascribes to us. Page 212 After all the whole, entire responsibility ...
... Brother, friend or lover, etc? All the relationships are good in principle and each one expresses a mode of the Eternal. But each can be perverted and become bad due to the selfish falsehood of human nature which prevents the vibrations of love from manifesting in their purity. 4 June 1963 Sweet Mother About the hero of the film Reach for the Sky, I said that nothing could ever discourage... nobility of the human character or an idea that we are here to establish mental and moral and social Truth and justice on human and egoistic lines. I have never promised to do anything of the kind. Human nature is made up of imperfections, even its righteousness and virtue are pretensions, imperfections and prancings of self-approbatory egoism.... What is aimed at by us is a spiritual truth as the basis ...
... the human nature. Mind wants the supramental state to be a confirmation of its own cherished ideas and preconceptions; the vital wants it to be a glorification of its own desires; the physical wants it to be a rich prolongation of its own comforts and pleasures and habits. If it were to be that, it would be only an exaggerated and highly magnified consummation of the animal and the human nature, not ...
... themselves had a trying time with the poet. One of his wives is reported to have run away from him. He was not exactly an amiable person. He had the typical Puritan's low opinion of human nature (other people's human nature) and the censorious lip and even the heavy hand. He was a lifelong believer in the birch for young people. Enjambment and the feminine ending have taken us a little off the track ...
... Divine's will. Let us put ourselves deliberately and exclusively on the side of the Divine and the victory is ultimately certain. The Mother Page 150 Strange how human nature resists that. Ordinary human nature is such that it prefers defeat on its own terms to victory in another way. I am making amazing discoveries these days—just amazing. Human stupidity is abysmal. Abysmal. It's ...
... Aurobindo's Yoga. His Yoga was meant to be a process and a progression of the evolutionary method: it aimed not at a bewildering superimposition of divine qualities which still left the gram of human nature unchanged, but at a spiritually organic luminous growth, an assimilation by nature of supernature, a marvellous and yet no freakish transfiguration, an intense working out within a life-time of... Inconscience, the dark basis of the submerged Divine from which evolution seems to issue. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, taking upon themselves as representative pioneers the agelong difficulties of all human nature, have been striking against Page 125 this bed-rock for the last decade and a half. "No, it is not with the Empyrean that I am busy," wrote Sri Aurobindo in 1936 to a disciple ...
... the modern tendency, often crude and superficial though it may be, to equalise the sexes; for, behind it is a pressure towards climbing beyond the outward differentiations, since the fundamental human nature is the same and escape the sex limits and holds every sort of potentiality and commands the power of a varied function. In essence this pressure is a highly evolutionary factor. We tend overmuch... in relation to the single Godhead they have to evolve side by side and co-operatively on earth. Transcendent of the sex-differentiations and of the physical-vital-mental formula is the more-than-human nature they bring as their basis: considered in the light of that nature, their finest development would appear to lie in a large equality of status and function, with yet a subtle variety of tone and ...
... the great Sītā and Rāma towards whom it was so very intolerant beyond any reasonable explanation. "It is a fundamental truth of human nature", says Kierkeggard, "that man is incapable of remaining permanently on the heights, of continuing to admire anything. Human nature needs variety. Even in the most enthusiastic ages people have always liked to joke enviously about their superiors. That is perfectly ...
... bring any result, poetry won't come—this is the state of affairs. Present Discontents, what! Fed up, fed up, damnably fed up! Work of the Spirit as complex as human nature! Of course it must be, because it is in human nature that it works. You call, you open, you don't call, you open, you call, you don't open—no profounder mystery can there be than these phrases of yours! Not at all ...
... domain? Can't say very well; but it was distinctive enough. I didn't mean that literature can transform people. We may have progressed in literature, but the outer human nature remains almost the same. Outer human nature can only change either by an intense psychic development or a strong And all-pervading influence from above. It is the inner being that has to change first—a change which ...
... the younger ideal has to transcend or avoid or even to destroy, so that it may find itself and live its own life. To the philistine too the mere biological man is a taboo, but he seeks to confine human nature into a scheme of codes and maxims and lifeless injunctions and prohibitions. He is also the man of Reason but without the higher inflatus, the living and creative Something More – the poetry, the... o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire" is none other than" a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.”¹ All the wisdom and culture and virtue and apparent beauty in human nature cannot prevent a man from becoming an arrant knave and a woman from being a whore, even if she were one's own mother. This disillusionment is the crisis at which the soul has arrived-this ...
... which is again preparatory for a still higher stage of development. And this process is a long and ever progressive curve moving upwards and downwards, proceeding from stage to stage until our human nature is supramentalised, culminating in rapid and blissful divine progression. In the following passage from Sri Aurobindo, we have a brief description of this entire process: First, there must... mental preparations for our entry into the true and absolute self-existent wide equal one-ness of the spirit.² The second necessity of perfection is to raise all the active parts of the human nature to that higher condition of working pitch of their power and capacity (shakti) on which they become capable of being divinised into true instruments of the free, perfect, spiritual and divine ...
... of theories, advices and good resolutions." But why do many sadhakas forget about their true goal in life after some lapse of time? The reason lies in the basic imperfection of the present human nature. The Mother has lucidly analysed the situation in her commentary on Sri Aurobindo' s Thoughts and Aphorisms. (Vide M C W Vol. 10, pp. 200-201) The following para- Page 15 ... its substance from that commentary: 'Many come to the Path, attracted by the True Thing, but after some time one lets oneself go. When everything is easy and peaceful, one falls asleep. The human nature is still so crude that it becomes difficult for many to keep the inner attitude unmixed for a long time and to hold firm in one's original position of ardent aspiration. Almost inevitably laziness ...
... must no longer have an ego. As far as the supramental consciousness is concerned, the Mother pointed out that: The supramental education will result no longer in a progressive form of human nature and an increasing development of its latent faculties, but in a transformation of the nature itself, a transfiguration of the being in its entirety, a new ascent of the species above and beyond... IX It is often asked whether having invented a new framework, a new way of free progress education, it can be sustained and replicated. The answer is in the affirmative, but considering that human nature tends to lapse into set routine, into mechanical processes, which can be easily be repeated, into artificial standardisation, what is needed is persistent determination on the part of the partners ...
... application may be regarded as its greatest power. Consciousness of the godheads can be built, according to the Vedic teaching, within man, and affirmation of these powers leads to the conversion of human nature into universality of divine nature. Gods are the guardians and increasers of the Truth, the powers of the Immortal, the sons of the Infinite Mother, Aditi. Man arrives at immortality by calling... inaccessible heights the few elect, but to draw all human beings and all life and all the parts and planes of the human personality upward, to spiritualise life and in the end to divinise the human nature. Indian spirituality as seen in the Veda, recognised both the spiritual and physical poles of existence, and sought the experience and realisation of higher planes of the Spirit even ...
... and purified from their inner contradictions and from their gross seekings of satisfaction in terms of physical enjoyment, and vital play of unending demands in human relationships, there arise in human nature higher levels of sensitivity and subtlety and joy that prohibit the exploitation of the objects of love and beauty for any gross satisfaction or crude mishandling or unjust profit. The natural ... obedience, holiness, joy of companionship and love that does not demand but is earnest to offer, to sacrifice and even to be melted in the object of love. Based on this psychological movement of human nature. Yoga of devotion aims at refining all emotions and proposes the various methods by which emotions can be turned and concentrated Page 45 on the Divine Being. Human life is marked ...
... consciousness was created and 1 began to look for ways and means by which my lost equilibrium could be regained. "One important question that occupied me at this stage was: What is the nature of human nature? What is mind? What are states of consciousness and how do they alternate? Page 165 "Since my boyhood I had noticed what I used to call "rhythms" of stages of development. These "rhythms"... earlier about the highest state of realisation as the state of sadharmya. Let me explain. "It is well known that the Gita speaks of three gunas of nature, sattvic, rajasic and tamasic. Even human nature is a mixture of these three gunas. It is a mixture of the state of knowledge and happiness (sattwa), a state of restless activity, struggle and impulsion (rajas), and a state of inertia and ignorance ...
... deeper than mind, of the soul within him, and of what is above the mind, of supermind, of spirit, capable of opening to it, admitting it, rising towards it, taking hold of it. It is in his human nature, in all human nature, to exceed itself by conscious evolution, to climb beyond what he is. And where is the limit of effectuation in the evolutionary being's self-becoming by self-exceeding? A spiritual ...
... entire seclusion in Pondicherry? There are living men and women around you and human nature is in full play here as well as in the biggest city—only one has to have an eye to see what is within them and an imagination that takes a few bricks and can make out of them a great edifice—one must be able to see that human nature is one everywhere and pick out of it the essential things or the interesting things ...
... answers I now deduce that I have been misusing the terms "lower forces" and "hostile forces". What exactly is the difference between the two? There are natural movements of the ordinary human nature in the material consciousness which take time to get rid of. Of course we call them forces of the lower nature but one must not regard them as hostile, but only ordinary. They have to be changed... experienced and even realised so many deep and high things. All that appears to be doubtful, for a realised thing becomes a fact of life that will bring a permanent change in at least some part of the human nature, which we never noticed in him. He had genuine experiences received directly from the Mother; but they were always in the higher mind and affected his mind and vital mainly by influence ...
... progressed or how long it will take until the true consciousness begins to work and drive it out. At times the vital opens itself to the Mother and at other times to the ordinary human nature. Like this it goes on for long. It is two parts of the vital. One becomes quiescent when the other is offering itself up. Looking back, I may say that the higher working... I was under the impression that when my vital opened to the Divine Mother it would bring in heroism, enthusiasm, intensity and total and passionate self-giving, not only of itself but of all my human nature. And that it would no longer remain a mere witness as now, and let the outer being act through it. The higher vital can be that. but only when the true vital manifests itself—always ...
... this disease that the atheist, the wiseacre foolishly say, "God incurs cancer! What a helpless and poor God!"¹ But herein lies the real mystery. God has become man; that means he has assumed the human nature and has accepted the human weakness not only in word or allegorically but in fact, in actual practice. That is why we see this human weakness in Christ on the last day of his life when he asks God... remove the vessel of deadly poison from his lips, so that he may not have to drink of it any more. God having become a man shows by example how one can rise to a godly or divine nature from a human nature. God reveals this sadhana through his human life. Man knows himself as sinful, afflicted, weak and helpless. To him the spiritual realisation, the divine Life, the divine Consciousness may seem ...
... with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in -two directions. First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-world poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it does... conditions, two potentials of the same entity. Baudelaire, who can be considered as the first of the real moderns in many ways, saw and experienced this intimate polarity or identity of opposites in human nature and consciousness. What is Evil, who is the Evil One: 1 W. B. Yeats: "The Lover tells of the Rose in his Heart"— The Wind among the Reeds. Page 322 Une Idee, une Forme ...
... love, From all the links that bind us, So turn our hearts as on we rove, To those we've left behind us. THIS is not merely children's homesickness; it is a fundamental note of the human nature as it is at present constituted. We always look backward, we always are tied to our roots and it is with great difficulty and much effort that we advance and go forward or upward away from our origins... This is translated in the consciousness as an attachment to the past, to what man has been familiar with. Conservation is the term in respect of physical Nature and atavism is its expression in human nature. It is so difficult for man to leave the beaten track, for that means risk and danger; our thoughts and movements are all shaped in the mould of the past, we carry out what old habits have instructed ...
... doctrines intended to be prescribed uniformly for all people, but .if we take human individual and human collectivity to be evolutionary in character, and if we take elements of the complexity of human nature in an ascending order rising from the infra-rational to the rational and from the rational to the supra-rational, we may be able to gain insights into an evolutionary mode of reconciling conflicting... culture and would thus stimulate students to practise in their own life the lessons of human culture. Illumination, Heroism and Harmony can easily be discerned as the powers of the sublimation of human nature and the root cause of humanity's upward march. It can also be seen that human aspiration, right from early stages when humanity began to cultivate awakened thought, has manifested itself in the ...
... experience in the integral yoga is that of Ananda Brahman (Blissful Divine), which is the principal contribution of the path of the Divine Love. Will, knowledge and love are the three divine powers in human nature and in the life of man, and they point to the three paths by which the human soul rises to the Divine. When these three paths are united and when the union of the individual with the Supreme is... the presence of the Self and Master of our being and the stream of its out flowing can be the pure joy of his Lila." 47 Page 56 Effects of Spiritual Experiences on Evolutionary Human Nature The experiences of the Spirit can be acquired through the mind or the heart or life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; as Sri Aurobindo points out, if the inner doors are flung ...
... was not a purely moral or ethical conception, although that element pre-dominated; it was also intellectual, social, aesthetic, the flowering of the whole ideal man, the perfection of the total human nature. We meet in the Indian conception of best, shreshtha, the most varied qualities. In the heart benevolence, beneficence, love, compassion, altruism, long-suffering, liberality, kindliness, patience;... drama. There is, rather, restrained charm, joy and beauty. Other accounts, too, such as those in the Ramavana and the Mahabharata, describe the color and warmth of the interplay of the forces of human nature, and give examples of how the teacher dealt with this interplay with gentle firmness guided by mature experience and wisdom* The teacher, the Rishi, was the seer who had lived the fullness ...
... this application may be regarded as its greatest power. Power of the godheads can be built, according to the Vedic teaching, within man, and affirmation of these powers leads to the conversion of human nature into universality of divine nature. The gods are the guardians and increasers of the Truth, the powers of the Immortal, the sons of the Infinite Mother, Aditi. Man arrives at immortality by calling... that the aim pursued was not only to raise to inaccessible heights the few elect, but to draw all men and all life and the whole human being upward, to spiritualise life and in the end to divinise human nature. Indian spirituality, as seen in the Veda recognised both the spiritual and physical poles of existence, and sought the experiences and realisation of higher planes of the Spirit even in physical ...
... which is again preparatory for a still higher stage of development. And this process is a long and ever progressive curve moving upwards and downwards, proceeding from stage to stage until our human nature is supramentalised, culminating in rapid and blissful divine progression. In the following passage from Sri Aurobindo, we have a brief description of this entire process: 'First, there must... imperfect mental preparations for our entry into the true and absolute self-existent wide equal one-ness of the spirit.'20 The second necessity of perfection is to raise all the active of the human nature to that higher condition of working pitch of their power and capacity (shaktī) on which they become capable of being divinised into true instruments of the free, perfect, spiritual and divine ...
... is a typal domain, one may say, there is no room here for sudden unforseen variation or growth or evolution. Is it so in fact? For, if one admits and accepts the evolutionary character of human nature and consciousness, the outlook becomes somewhat different. According to this view, human civihsation is seen as moving through progressive stages: man at the outset was centrally lodged in and occupied... The veil has not been rent precisely because the very highest spiritual potential has not been reached and brought into play. The call of the present age is just to do away with this veil, make of human nature a unified, a streamlined entity, Page 59 a complete incarnation of the spiritual consciousness in the fullness of its own nature at its source and origin. Page 60 ...
... being he is. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have told us that if man wants to get out of the present condition and consciousness he has to transform his nature and his consciousness. Over the human nature, the human consciousness, there is the Divine Nature, the Divine Consciousness. It is only in the light of this Divine Consciousness that life can be changed and transformed. But for that man... consent to come down into human life. The transformation of human life depends on this conjunction of the aspiration from below and the consent from above. But then until the transformation of human nature takes place, are we to just sit and twirl our thumbs? No, how can that be? Man has to first believe in this Truth with his mind and life. Then keeping this Truth in front he has to educate himself ...
... and the latter's transformation into the divine nature or Page 370 Para Prakriti. When the transformation is complete—it is only the supramental Force that can radically transform human nature—the whole being of man will be ready for a perfect manifestation of the Divine in life, which is the ultimate end of evolution. This evolutionary aspect of Manifestation has to be taken fully into... outward forms of life, in every feeling, in every thought, in every act.” Her insistence has always been on the perfection of the most outer, the most physical part Page 374 of human nature. And we have the same ideal stressed time and again in the writings of Sri Aurobindo : "...Its (of his Yoga) aim is not only to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world- consciousness into the ...
... Strength he sought that was not yet on earth, Help from a Power too great for mortal will, The Light of a Truth now only seen afar". Page 233 Looking to the constitution of human nature he felt a great resistance from the inconscience and "The stubborn mute rejection in Life's depths, The ignorant No in the origin of things." There was silence above which appeared... inconscience and its purpose. It was "To share the labour of an errant Power Which by division hopes to find the One." Such a self-finding would bring about a transformation in human nature so that all the elements of its imperfection would attain their corresponding divine elements of perfection. So, Aswapathy became conscious of two states of his own— "Two beings he was, ...
... The human being then flies into the mental plane "in imagination's car" and is able to conceive "ideals". But this mental being is not the true Self of man; true Self is hidden and lives within. Human nature holds within itself both the divine and the undivine powers: "Careless guardian of his nature's powers". "Man harbours dangerous forces in his house". These lower powers "can... when the Divine "puts on mortal ignorance" that he "can help man to grow into the God". Alan is the disguise of the cosmic Divine. Savitri is asked to accept human limitations so as to transform human nature. In her journey towards her soul Savitri separated herself from the body and looked at the inner depths of her being. She found that the dim portal was barred. She knocked and pressed against ...
... kind and of every instant”. This teaching coincides with the Gita's gospel of work except for the enthralling glimpse it affords of the glory of the final achievement—the divinization of the whole human nature and the revelation of Sachchidananda through it. By action is it to be freed. The actions performed for the sake of oneself, for the satisfaction of one's egoistic desires and for personal profit... possible only when the whole human ¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, December 2, 1912, Page 294 consciousness rests in the supreme Consciousness and the whole human nature is possessed and moved by it. We have seen what is the ideal state of integral Union in which the divine Will expresses itself in its native purity and omnipotence. There are two other states ...
... even its healthy instincts and natural capacities, and reducing it to a limp bundle of battered nerves, as if the poor "brother ass" were solely responsible for all the ills and infirmities of human nature. Countless spiritual seekers have lost themselves in the labyrinth of ascetic practices and never emerged from them to reach the goal of their pursuit; and among the few who have been fortunate... the senses full play and moving freely in the midst of their objects of desire. In fact, in all forms of ascetic extremism we find, if we probe into their roots, a lack of the right knowledge of human nature, an ignorance of the source and character of the frailties and impurities which hamper our spiritual progress, and an impatient haste born of ignorance and weakness. It can be said that ascetic ...
... felicity in a remote Vaikuntha or Paradise in a vague hereafter but seeking it here and now. Sri Aurobindo affirmed, indeed, that an integral transformation a divinisation, of human nature and earth-nature is a thing "decreed and inevitable". 59 He even laid down the main lines of this progressive transformation in his treatise, The Synthesis of Yoga and hinted at the nature of... new age in man's and earth's history. Savitri and Satyavan are the "firstborn of a new supernal race"; they are the Supreme's dual power—she the Force, he the Soul-—set in the world to refashion human nature and earth-nature. The promise is given: Mortality's bond-slaves shall unloose their bonds, Mere men into spiritual beings grow And see awake the dumb divinity ...
... psychic being to come to the front. And I have told you also, so many times, that the more your psychic being comes to the fore, the less difficult will become the task of transformation of the human nature into its divine absolute. That is why I have always enjoined on you to follow this path – the path of devotion, service and work – since it is easier for your nature to follow this path than... Many people hold high ideals of humanity, brotherhood, etc. It does not follow that they derive these ideas from one another. The fact only shows that there is a permanent pull towards idealism in human nature. 10. Girija calls Sri Aurobindo the "private secretary" of H. H. the Gaekwar. He was never a private secretary except for a few months during the Kashmir tour in 1903. 11. Girija speaks ...
... guidelines to become conscious participants in this adventure of the new Consciousness, how to transform our old human nature in order to manifest the new. This has been the primary focus of the Mother's workings in us. And the work IS continuing: the transformation of our human nature, the expression of this new way of being in our day-to-day activities at every moment, this new way of looking at ...
... developing the right consciousness and placing total trust in the Divine. As regards the avatar, for example Savitri who is the incarnation of the Divine Mother since she has come to partake of human nature, she - even she - needs must seem to accept her full share of human sorrow and pain: If she remained in her supreme consciousness where there is no suffering... she could not have any contact... beings.... Only, she does not forget: she has adopted their consciousness but she remains in relation with her own real, supreme consciousness.... By taking the human body, one is obliged to take on human nature, partially. Only, instead of losing one's consciousness and losing contact with the Truth, one keeps this consciousness and this Truth, and it is by joining the two that one can create exactly this ...
... transformation of character has in fact been realised by means of a clear-sighted discipline and a perseverance so obstinate that nothing, not even the most persistent failures, can discourage it. Human nature, it is known, is a knot of opposing pulls, "like the light and shadow of the same thing". The divine and the asuric are constantly at variance with each other reducing life to a battlefield or an... downwards, its influence spreading from one state of being to another until at last the physical is reached.... ...the supramental education will result no longer in a progressive formation of human nature and an increasing development of its latent faculties, but in a transformation of the nature itself, a transfiguration of the being in its entirety, a new ascent of the species above and beyond ...
... of the complex human nature by a synthetic self- discipline through knowledge, love and works in a growing attitude of self-surrender; and, next, the transformation of them all by the descent of the authentic supramental Force and a raising of the whole integrated nature into the Supernature. We shall now proceed to consider the elaborate work of the purification of human nature as it is done in ...
... of our being to invoke and Page 442 sustain the action of the divine Power. A fundamental active equality supporting the play of the gnosis or the supramental Light-Force in the human nature is the best condition for the divine perfection we seek. "The gnosis once effectively called into action will progressively take up all the terms of intelligence, will, sense-mind, heart, the... being, it will be the bursting out of the splendour of a divine spring, a carnival of apocalyptic revelation. Ānanda is the supreme creative Force, and its direct and unhindered action in the human nature is the guarantee of the highest divine perfection. The preliminary fourfold perfection of the body is the development of the qualities of mahattwa, bala, laghutā and dhārana-sāmarthya ...
... is to put on Brahmanhood, and con- front the world with the calm regard of the Eternal. But it is not easy to have equality all at once in the beginning of one's Yoga. The whole play of the human nature is based on an inveterate and manifold inequality. The prâna or vital is a whirlpool of desires and passions, it hungers and strains after objects that attract and turn away from those that repel... lies simply in resolutely willing and compassing its own abdication, its utter effacement, in favour of the true individual, the soul, and its eternal Master, the Divine. Each part of the complex human nature, each movement of its thought and feeling and emotion and sensation. and action, has to be surrendered and offered at every moment of life, so that disinherited and dispossessed the ego may disappear ...
... successful in love. Was then Kalidasa at fault in his knowledge of the world and of human nature? Such a solution would be inconsistent with all we know of the poet's genius as shown in his other work. The truth is that Kalidasa simply gives us the other side of the shield. It is not an invariable law of human nature that the poetic temperament should be by its nature absolutely unfitted for practical ...
... itself into the form of the Congress rose for some time with noise and a triumphant surging impetus until like a wave as it culminates breaking upon rocks, it dashed itself against the hard facts of human nature & the elementary conditions of successful political action which the Congress leaders had never grasped or had chosen to ignore; there it stopped and now there is throughout the country the languor... first necessity is to understand the career of our predecessor, the principle of its life and the source of its weakness. I have said that the Congress movement broke itself on the hard facts of human nature [ incomplete ] Page 66 ...
... the four types and their functions is more open to dispute. It may be said that it is too simple and positive, that it takes no sufficient account of the complexity of life and the plasticity of human nature, and, whatever the theory or its intrinsic merits, the outward social application must lead precisely to that tyranny of a mechanical rule which is the flat contradiction of all law of Swadharma... brings thought, reflection, the seeking for truth and an intelligent or at the highest a spiritual rule into life and illumines by it his conception and mode of existence. There is always in human nature something of all these four personalities developed or undeveloped, wide or narrow, suppressed or rising to the surface, but in most men one or the other tends to predominate and seems to take up ...
... some ideal of our human nature in its action can alone satisfy the human being; he must have something that he can seek in the workings of his mind and life and body. For that is his nature, his dharma , and how can he be fulfilled in something outside his nature? For to his nature each being is bound and within it he must seek for his perfection. According to our human nature must be our human ...
... wrong way, by comparison with others, instead of living fully in the close relation of your heart and soul with the Mother. It is the same in your relation with X. But this is a defect common in human nature and many here have it. It is not a thing that cannot be removed from the nature. Indeed since your heart and soul want to be free from it, it cannot but go. Do not be discouraged therefore when... it occupies the outer being also and renders these things impossible. What I have written to you about these things and the attitude to be taken is the knowledge that we have and the truth of the human nature and of sadhana confirmed by our and by all spiritual experience. It is your outer being that has these reactions and not your inner nature. You have only to trust in the Mother and follow what I ...
... knows why he is busy with "trifles" and small details and what is their place in the fullness of his labour. December 1936 You say certain things that human nature does not find so easy or natural. If I said only things that human nature finds easy and natural, that would certainly be very comfortable for the disciples, but there would be no room for any spiritual aim or endeavour. Page ...
... It is true that there is in most people here this running after those who come from outside especially if they are well-known or distinguished. It is a common weakness of human nature and, like other weaknesses of human nature, the sadhaks seem not inclined to get rid of it. It is because they do not live sufficiently within, so the vital gets excited or attracted when something important or somebody ...
... fact that acts perhaps but so slowly that when there is this effort to make the world progress, make it go forward more rapidly, well, it is necessary to take on human nature. By taking the human body, one is obliged to take on human nature, partially. Only, instead of losing one's consciousness and losing contact with the Truth, one keeps this consciousness and this Truth, and it is by joining the ...
... unfolding? This means that all is possible. Now, one must have a sufficient aspiration and a prayer that's sufficiently intense. But that has been given to human nature. It is one of the marvellous gifts of grace given to human nature; only, one does not know how to make use of it. This comes to saying that in spite of the most absolute determinisms in the horizontal line, if one knows how ...
... 191 As for imperialism, that is no new thing—it is as old as the human vital; there was never a time in known human history when it was not in existence. To get rid of it means to change human nature or at least to curb it by a superior power. Our work is not to fight these things but to bring down a higher nature and a Truth-creation which will make spiritual Light and Power the chief force... field in which people fix their eyes on the thing to be achieved and soon become careless about the character of the means, while ambition, ego and self-interest come pouring in to aid the process. Human nature is prone enough to crookedness as it is, but here the ordinary restraints put upon it fail to be at all effective. That however is general: in a particular case one can't pronounce without knowing ...
... view this is true; but unfortunately this recognition has served as an excuse for importing a whole class of things which are nothing else than the flowering of all that is vulgar, crude and low in human nature. The most ignoble instincts, the most depraved taste find in this recognition a good excuse to display and impose themselves as inevitable necessities. However it is not so; one can relax oneself... who are for hastening the movement, who, in other words, aspire to follow another line of movement, more direct and more swift, an exceptional movement that will liberate them from the ordinary human nature and its endless journey, enabling them to take part in the spiritual progress which will lead them along the quickest path towards the creation of the new race, the race that will express the s ...
... spiritual solution which I propose; but it aims at changing the whole basis of human nature. It is not a question of carrying on a movement, nor is it a question of a few years: there can be no real solution unless you establish spirituality as the basis of life. It is clear that Mind has not been able to change human nature radically. You can go on changing human institutions infinitely and yet the ...
... transcendence of our normal human nature, a transcendence of our mental, vital and physical being, has the appearance of an endeavour too high and difficult and at present, for man as he is, impossible. Even if it were so, it would still remain the sole possibility for the transmutation of life; for to hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual ...
... done takes a thousand years or only a year according to the human computation, does not matter at all, if you are one with the Divine Consciousness; for then you leave outside you the things of the human nature and you enter into the infinity and eternity of the Divine Nature. Then you escape from this feeling of a great eagerness of hurry with which men are obsessed, because they want to see things done... change things. It is merely taking a cup and beating the water in it; the water is moved about, but it is not changed for all your beating. This illusion of action is one of the greatest illusions of human nature. It hurts progress because it brings on you the necessity of rushing always into some excited movement. If you could only perceive the illusion and see how useless it all is, how it changes nothing ...
... linear point is no longer enough. One must include everything and contain everything in one's consciousness. Naturally, that is much more difficult. Mother, what is this "divine element in human nature" which always demands symbols for the completeness of its spiritual satisfaction? What? Which demands a form, an expression in form. Oh! what I have just read to you today? 2 ... altogether. There are those even to whom all cult and form are for this reason suspect and offensive; but few can dispense with the support of outward symbols and even a certain divine element in human nature demands them always for the completeness of its spiritual satisfaction. Always the symbol is legitimate in so far as it is true, sincere, beautiful and delightful, and even one may say that a spiritual ...
... able to tolerate it, I might say, for its power in its purity, its intensity in its purity, are of too strong a kind to be endured by human nature. It is only when it is diluted, deformed, attenuated and obscured, so to say, that it becomes acceptable to human nature. It is only when it moves away from its true nature and essential quality that man accepts it, and even ( smiling ) approves of it and ...
... for the aspirants this happy future―I don't think I wrote it in this way, but that doesn't matter―this happy future will materialise for them in spite of all the obstacles that the unregenerate human nature may put up against it. I continue to hope that it will be like this! But now that person, who is perhaps a bit impatient, tells me this: "Why have the difficulties increased for quite a large... are a little troubled because it is not always very pretty? But what can I do? And this person concludes: "Doesn't the supramental Force work here in spite of all the obstacles the unregenerate human nature puts up against it?" Truly, I hope it does! for otherwise, nothing could be done, the world would never be regenerated. But I have explained to you why it seems more difficult to you. It is because ...
... the Divine's will. "Let us put ourselves deliberately and exclusively on the side of the Divine and the victory is ultimately certain." The Mother It is strange how human nature resists that. Ordinary human nature is such that it prefers defeat through its own will to victory gained otherwise. I am discovering things... incredible—incredible. The depth of human stupidity is incredible ...
... Page 385 perfection to their full power and Ananda. And that means the raising of the whole of earthly life to its full power and Ananda. 3) If there were not a resistance in vital human nature, a pressure of forces adverse to the change, forces which delight in imperfection and even in perversion, this change would effect itself without difficulty by a natural and painless flowering—as... when the vital begins to lose the joy of life but complains that it is getting nothing in its place. Nobody chooses such movements; they come independently of the mind as habitual reactions of the human nature. To replace these things by detachment, an increasing quiet aspiration, a pure bhakti, an ardent surrender to the Divine, was what I suggested as the true forward movement. Page 390 ...
... 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 a man, when some realisation comes, to think how great a realisation is this and how great a sadhak am I and to call others to see and admire—perhaps he thinks like the man in the dream... that you may find it easier to throw them Page 31 out, to recognise them when they come in the waking state and refuse them entrance. These things are not in yourself only but in all human nature; they are the things one has to get rid of or else to guard against so that one's consecration to the Divine may be complete, selfless, true and pure. Purification and Preparation of the Nature ...
... it, or by a right consciousness which brings with it right ideas, right feeling, right action and right everything else. Or else it must come by a spiritual and mental humility which is rare in human nature—especially the mental, for the mind is always apt to think its own ideas, true or false, are the right ideas. Eventually it is the psychic growth that makes this surrender too possible and that... to get through the difficulties without discouragement or falling into depression—they give an impetus for a rapid development. But the difficulties come all the same because they are inherent in human nature. Even the best sadhaks have these periods of suspension of the sadhana, of nothing happening, of the absence of the urge of the inner being. It is when some difficulty arises in the physical nature ...
... will come about naturally, not, as now it seems likely to be, by catastrophic means, but by the demand of the human mind, and will be held secure by an essential need of our perfected and developed human nature. But this is the question whether a purely intellectual and sentimental religion of humanity will be sufficient to bring about so great a change in our psychology. The weakness of the intellectual... help in an equal association. But though these aims are of great importance in their own field, they are not the central thing; they can only be secure when founded upon a change of the inner human nature and inner way of living; they are themselves of importance only as means for giving a greater scope and a better field for man's development towards that change and, when it is once achieved, as ...
... prolong it, not to wish to let it go, to return to it even when the cause of disturbance is past and could be forgotten, always to remember it and bring it up when it can. This is a common trait of human nature and a quite customary movement. The new consciousness on the contrary Page 140 does not want these things and when they happen throws them off as quickly as possible. When the new c... depressed or discouraged and, even in the moment of attack, affirm the certainty of eventual victory, the victory itself will come much more easily and sooner. All these things are there in human nature, habitual movements, which show their true nature only when the light of the higher consciousness is turned on them. Even after they have been rejected the possibility of a response to such suggestions ...
... able to comprehend and grasp the true attitude necessary Page 736 for the sadhana. But, as I have said, one must not be distressed or depressed by perceiving the weaknesses inherent in human nature and the difficulty of getting them out. The difficulty is natural, for they have been there for thousands of lives and are the very nature of man's vital and mental ignorance. It is not surprising... that it changes and its defects begin to disappear. Mistakes of action and thought and feeling naturally bring these outward reactions [ of regret and sorrow ]; they are an obstinate part of human nature, but one has to outgrow them steadily. If they recur, one must not get upset and brood over them; the aim must be to keep quiet and recover as quickly as possible—so that the Force can at once resume ...
... attachments, depressions, revolts, egoistic insistences on its own ways and freedom to follow its inclinations and fancies, the physical's tamas, want of faith, inertia. These things are parts of human nature. The Force comes to change them, but if the sadhak accepts these things, justifies them, or simply allows them to hold his consciousness without reacting, then their resistance which is always there... consciousness into earthly Mind and Matter? Your other argument is that the work of the Yoga itself is difficult, not easy, not a happy canter to the goal. Of course it is, because the world and human nature are what they are. I never said it was easy or that there were not obstinate difficulties in the way of the endeavour. Again I do not understand your point about raising up a new race by writing ...
... lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divinest Life and even now supports from Page 23 its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe. But human nature bounded, egoistic and obscure is inapt to receive these great Presences or to support their mighty action. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed... they rise in her to their supramental godheads, then is the Mother revealed as the supramental Mahashakti and brings pouring down her luminous transcendences from their ineffable ether. Then can human nature change into dynamic divine nature because all the elemental lines of the supramental Truth-consciousness and Truth-force are strung together and the harp of life is fitted for the rhythms of the ...
... weakness or depression or negligence and without excitement, impatience or violence. Page 763 No, [ the vital ego is ] certainly not [ a hostile power ]—it is part of the ordinary human nature, everybody has it. It has to be purified and transformed, the ego being replaced by the true vital being of which it is a distorted shadow. The forces of the lower nature are often rebellious and... jealousy, sexuality etc. A complete surrender from the beginning does protect—suggestions may come, but they have no power to develop into a crisis. There is a natural movement of the ordinary human nature in the material consciousness which takes time to get rid of. Of course we call them forces of the lower nature but one must not regard them as hostile, but only ordinary. They have to be changed ...
... work in them; if there is any difference, it is their own nature that makes it. 6 February 1933 Page 194 This restless mind and unquiet vital are not peculiar to you; they are the human nature from which every sadhak starts. What you have to get is the Mother's force and grace bringing with it deliverance, peace and Ananda which you say you from time to time experience. That in the beginning... Perhaps it was a broken drum, for no one expected any music to come from it, but as I went on playing, fine music was coming out. It is a symbol of the harmony that can be brought out of the human nature in spite of its present imperfection when one gives it the true touch, that is, puts it under the true psychic influence. People around me were charmed by the music. I was very happy and played ...
... into the infinite variety of the general order. But this plasticity sought to support itself on a fixed religio social system, which it permeated with the principle of a graded working out of the human nature turned at its height towards a supreme spiritual endeavour; this social fixity, which was perhaps necessary at one time for unity of life if not also as a settled and secure basis for the spiritual... must be an order, but a growing order. Nevertheless, the principle of this great and many-sided religious and spiritual evolution was sound, and by taking up in itself the whole of life and of human nature, by encouraging the growth of intellect and never opposing it or putting bounds to its freedom, but rather calling it in to the aid of the spiritual seeking, it prevented the conflict or the undue ...
... with the supreme, universal and indwelling Divine. To perceive and have a right view of our way to such a transformation we must form some sufficient working idea of the complex thing that this human nature at present is in the confused interminglings of its various principles, so that we may see the precise nature of the conversion each part of it must undergo and the most effective means for the... starting-point but the whole real foundation and regards human mind as only a subtle development from the life and the body. That may be the actual truth of the Page 623 animal side of human nature and of the human mind in so far as it is limited and conditioned by the physical part of our being. But the whole difference between man and the animal is that the animal mind, as we know it, cannot ...
... the one unique point of view. It was for this reason that the Buddha abstained from all such and merely emphasised the conditions we must develop in ourselves to see the truth for ourselves. But human nature craves a "view" of some kind and so views are forthcoming — but, naturally, they are all relative. The Page 155 absolute Truth must be found and experienced by each seeker for himself... schemes of other Masters or Mahatmas. I am afraid Krishna Prem has somehow missed these obligations in his reading of Sri Aurobindo — and the central obligation is the integral transformation of human nature. All Yogis talk of transformation or, to employ Krishna Prem's version, "transmutation", but they do not mean what Sri Aurobindo means, and to show what he means he has spent the last forty years ...
... of all who do not acknowledge Maurya & Kutthumi. These are not mere fantastic speculations. The history of humanity & the peculiar capacities of that apparently incalculable & erratic thing, human nature, ought to warn us of their possibility—or at least that they are not entirely impossible, in spite of the printing press, in spite of the clarities of Science. No doubt the old philosophers [thought]... cannot live without a struggle and a difficulty in breathing. They Page 82 both demand from man that he shall sacrifice his heart & his imagination to his intellect, shall deny his full human nature and live coldly & dryly. You might just as well ask him to live without free breathing. The mental world in which we are asked to live, resembles what the life of humanity would be if the warmth ...
... perception that all its values for the world being false, perhaps it is because there is no true value or only a true value not conceivable to the mind, and from this idea it is easy for our impatient human nature to stride to the conclusion that so it is & all existence or all world-existence at least is illusory, a sensation born of nothingness, a play of zeros. Hence Buddhism, the sensational Agnostic... march of Nature. From this it is natural & right to come to vairagya or dissatisfaction with a life of false valuations and very easy to stride forward, again in the impatience of our imperfect human nature, to the consummation of an entire vairagya, not only dissatisfaction with a false moral life, but disgust with life of any sort & the conclusion of the vanity of world-existence. We have a mental ...
... consciousness of the divine Knower and Creator. When in the process of unfolding of an always greater force of the one Existence, some delegation of this power shall descend into our limited human nature, then and then only can man exceed himself and know divinely and divinely act and create; he will have become at last a conscious portion of the Eternal. The superman will be born, not a magnified... character, genius, dynamic force, saintliness, love, purity or perfection. Supermind is something beyond mental man and his limits, a greater consciousness than the highest consciousness proper to human nature. Man is a being from the mental worlds whose mentality works here involved, obscure and degraded in a physical brain, shut off from its own divinest powers and impotent to change life beyond ...
... falsehood cannot help. They must be as real as the struggles and sufferings of men themselves – the Divine bears them and at the same time shows the way out of them. Otherwise his assumption of human nature has no meaning and no utility and no value. What is the use of admitting Avatarhood if you take all the meaning out of it?” 14 If an Avatar did only seem to take upon himself the struggles... embodied ‘the power of these two vast ways of her existence’?” Sri Aurobindo answered again with one word: “Yes.” And he explained: “The Divine puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to be the Divine. It is a manifestation that takes place, a manifestation of a growing divine consciousness, not human ...
... the vital begins to lose the joy of life but complains that it is getting nothing in its place. Nobody chooses such movements; they come independently of the mind as habitual reactions of the human nature. To refuse these things by detachment, an increasing quiet aspiration, a pure bhakti, an ardent surrender to the Divine, was what I suggested as the true forward movement. . * ... once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose in spite of all defects, errors, wrong movements and actions (past or present or possible backsliding in the future) which are common to human nature and to all human collectivities. The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces; the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly ...
... missioned to set the process going, to take the first basic, transformative steps and secure the transition into a new world. They were not naïve, for their life experience, their insight into human nature and their spiritual explorations had been too thorough for that. And although they may have underestimated the difficulty of some aspects of the enormously complex process of transformation, they... direct incarnation of the Divine in his manifestation to make the next higher step in evolution possible. “The Divine”, wrote Sri Aurobindo, “puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to be the Divine. It is a manifestation that takes place, a manifestation of a growing divine consciousness, not human ...
... is our mind. Just as Gray’s Anatomy laid bare the human frame, so Darwinian scientists are beginning to write the owner-occupier’s manual to that hitherto most recondite of mysteries: human nature. Yes, human nature does exist and it is universal. Our minds and brains, just like our bodies, have been honed by natural selection to solve the problems faced by our ancestors over the past two million years ...
... delivered out of our ignorance into knowledge, and out of our suffering into bliss." To that Sri Aurobindo replied categorically: "The Divine puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to be the 'Divine". It is a manifestation that takes place, manifestation of a growing Divine consciousness, not human... I thus appealed to his adjudication as against hers. I make mention of this to stress not only her leniency and tolerance but also her understanding of the deep streak of perversity, inherent in human nature, which remains one of the greatest hurdles our aspiration has to cross -— a task we could never have achieved had she not forgiven our lapses and misdemeanours again and again. I have hinted ...
... world, they all diagnose the same type of evil and its dreadful tendency. Studying this type, we realise that the time-old lust in humanity for dominating others is as difficult to eradicate from human nature as it is deleterious to the nature itself. When I Page 56 first came to the Ashram, I well remember how I walked its grounds with jaunty steps with this complacent idea that I was... "on the Divine becoming human and remaining in the human consciousness" and withal protested "against any attempt to make the human divine". And that is why this "bleeding piece of earth", human nature, has bled stanchlessly since the dawn of time and God on high has to wait on, in seeming helplessness till the blood shed may come to fertilise the life of the common man, because unless that happens ...
... well that pain and suffering and struggle and despair are natural – though not inevitable – on the way – not because they are helps, but because they are imposed on us by the darkness of this human nature out of which we have to struggle into the Light. I do not suppose Ramakrishna or Vivekananda would have recommended the incidents you allude to as an example for others to follow – they would... And he began dancing and singing in a renewed ecstasy. Then Narad said, “Thou hast attained. Today thou shalt see the Lord!” Well, you may say, “What an extravagant story and how contrary to human nature!” Not so contrary as all that and in any case hardly more extravagant than the stories of Harischandra and Shivi. Still I do not hold up the bhakta as an example for I myself insist on the r ...
... intellectual explanation to him again and again of spiritual motives and truths, assurance of a steady unconditional love for him at all moments and, throughout, a sustaining insight into his groping human nature on the one hand and on the other into his secret soul growing towards divinity within that nature's complex terms — it is thus that Sri Aurobindo with his towering spiritual realisations and with... and for whom he had laboured to bring down a new and perfect life. The sense of that poignant "as if is at work in the background of Roy's many-aspected presentation of his guru's dealing with human nature. And it is also active indirectly behind his account of his relationship with one who now stands alone to the outer eyes as bearer of the Life Divine and is therefore precious in the extreme to ...
... terribly depressed because I am getting used to you." Getting used to the marvel of marvels that is the Avatar's existence amongst us may be adjudged the saddest, the most deplorable fact about human nature. The Divine no longer calls forth from us the ecstatic inner cry. We look at a body like our own, at movements such as we ourselves make, and we forget that here is the Supreme in a Page... "permissive" society was very far from her dream of the future humanity. Surely such an existence would be out of the question in an Ashram explicitly concentrating on the transcendence of common human nature and on the invocation of its divine counterpart. It would have no place, either, in a less demanding mode of inner progress like Auroville where unity with one's fellow is put more in front than ...
... transformation are absolutely complete. 126 In the ordinary life people accept the vital movements, anger, desire, greed, sex, etc., as natural, allowable and legitimate things, part of the human nature. Only so far as society discourages them or insists to keep them within fixed limits or subject to a decent restraint or measure, people try to control them so as to conform to the social standard... characteristics of our nature and the patterns of our reactions. There is very little that is personal about it all, says Eckhart; what we see in us is not our own personal nature but mostly collective human nature. The Gita calls it Prakriti or universal Nature-Force. This insight into the extraneous nature of the forces that operate in our surface being is a powerful tool in overcoming desire—the ...
... same time, there are no convincing answers to the deeper questions as to how science can be induced to avoid these undesirable things. What is the alchemy, it has been pertinently asked, by which human nature can be changed? This question becomes much more agonising when we realise that neither ethics nor religion does provide us with adequate answers. This has, therefore, brought us sharply to the theme... aid to o-our contemporary need to relate science with spirituality. In the harmonisation of these two great movements we can hope to find the solution of the difficult problem of how to change human nature, the problem that seems to be so central for human survival and fulfilment. (b) Apart from science, another important possession of our times is individualism. Modern science itself was a ...
... tends to veil the integral Reality and to bind human nature to the imperatives of the laws of the body, life and mental operations, while the spirit is self-luminous and its increasing light reveals luminously various facets of Reality and opens up the gates, even the flood-gates, of the vision of the integral Reality, and it liberates human nature progressively and more and more fully from the i ...
... things are being advocated, but the voice of this advocacy is rather shrill and it is hardly heard by those who matter. The real difficulty is that these three things demand a radical change in human nature, and humanity does not seem to be prepared to respond to the demands of this change. In 1967, U Thant the then Secretary-General of the United Nations Organisation had stated the need for this... possible if we stop fearing and harassing one another and if together we accept, welcome and prepare the changes that Page 491 must inevitably take place. If this means a change in human nature, well, it is high time we worked for it; what must surely change is certain political attitudes and habits man has. It will be evident that the issue is spiritual; the issue is that of ...
... Sri Aurobindo speaks of three principles of teaching, and when implemented, they provide a sound basis of a system of natural organisation of the highest processes and the movements of which the human nature is capable. They also form the basis of the theory and practice of integral education, which has been propounded in detail in Sri Aurobindo's book, "The Synthesis of Yoga" and the Mother's book... have an ego. 6 As far as the supramental education is concerned, the Mother pointed out that: ...the supramental education will result no longer in a progressive formation of human nature and an increasing development of its latent faculties, but in a transformation of the nature itself, a transfiguration of the being in its entirety, a new ascent of the species above and beyond ...
... impulse of man as soon as he has made place for himself in the physical and vital world of earth and has a little leisure to consider his farther possibilities.... It is in his human nature, Page 36 in all human nature, to exceed itself by conscious evolution, to climb beyond what he is. Not individual only, but in time the race also, in a general rule of being and living if not in all its ...
... not much like God either. In contrast, the kneeling tax collector recognized the vast gulf between God and himself and, consequently, "went down to his house justified." Because of prideful ego in human nature, __________ * self-righteous: someone convinced that only he is right while intolerant of other views. ** tithe: Christianity, a tenth part of produce, personal income, or profits... Page 40 it is difficult to be humble. Yet it is plain that Jesus wants those who Love God to be aware of the blindness to others that their own pride causes. Overcoming pride will elevate human nature so that self-righteousness no longer has any place. Jesus wants humanity to aspire and open both inner and outer eyes while humbly pursuing Truth. (c) The Good Samaritan The title of ...
... ideal was not a purely moral or ethical conception, although that element predominated; it was also intellectual, social, aesthetic, the flowering of the whole ideal man, the perfection of the total human nature. We meet in the Indian conception of best, shreshtha, the most varied qualities. In the heart benevolence, beneficence, love, compassion, altruism, long- suffering, liberality, kindliness, patience;... There is, rather, restrained charm, joy and beauty. Other accounts, too, such as those in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata , describe the colour and warmth of the interplay of the forces of human nature, and give examples of how the teacher dealt with this interplay with gentle firmness guided by mature experience and wisdom.' The teacher, the Rishi, was the seer who had lived the fullness ...
... forbearance without end... that always flowed from the illumined and blissful depths of his being." 1 Here is what Dilip Kumar writes: (1) "As he [Sri Aurobindo] knew to his cost what human nature was and how liable to be heading for disaster in its cussed moods, he always tried to efface promptly the aftermath of a froissement which even a gentle correction often brought in its train.... that the croakers are wrong. But if so, will you kindly assure me in umambiguous terms that such statements are, indeed, mischievous rumours? It is high time too that you spoke out, for you know human nature too well to deny that an allegation, however silly and incredible, is quickly accepted as gospel truth by the multitude, if and when it is echoed often and loudly enough in chorus. And shall I tell ...
... of Nature and of human nature justifies this view of a birth of the individual soul from form to form until it reaches the human level of manifested consciousness which is its instrument for rising to yet higher levels. We see that Nature develops from stage to stage and in each stage takes up its past and transforms it into stuff of its new development. We see too that human nature is of the same make; ...
... them to the belittlement of the other two is bound to create some sort of an internecine war in his being. The reconciling equation can be found if we recognise the purport of our whole complex human nature in its right place in the total cosmic movement, and confer its just and legitimate value to each part of our complex being and many-sided aspiration. The Yoga-Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo... legitimate place of his triple attraction, to earth, to heaven and to the supreme Reality." 2 In fact, the required solution of the problem of harmonisation of the threefold demand of human nature lies in the recognition of the fact that "the lower consciousness of mind, life and body cannot arrive at its full meaning until it is taken up, restated, transformed by the light and power and ...
... its knowledge, its science, its ethics, its art, its economical and political structure." (SABCL, Vol. 15, p. 240) But how to fulfil this aim? Surely not by any external manipulation of human nature or through the artifice of externally contrived education and social machinery. No social machinery can possibly cut human mind and life into perfection, for mind and life are only instruments of... conception." (Ibid., p. 28) Will the elite of today pay any heed to these words of Sri Aurobindo? Most probably not. Because the ideas may seem to them too outlandish and the hope of changing human nature by this inner means too chimerical a dream. But whether they believe it or not, Sri Aurobindo assures us that what is demanded of us is not something altogether distant, alien to our existence and ...
... little separate ego." Discrepancy between the ideas of Socialism and actual facts of Human Nature "The pity of it is that this excellent theory, quite as much as the individualist theory that ran before it, is sure to stumble over a discrepancy between its set ideas and the actual facts of human nature; for it ignores the complexity of man's being and all that that complexity means. And especially ...
... 64 nobler, he finds to his utter consternation that human nature is basically incorrigible: it may admit of some cosmetic whitewashing but will never shed its unholy spots. We may recall in this connection the famous simile given by Vivekananda to carry home the point of impossibility of the transformation of human nature. It was the simile of a dog's tail: alas, straighten it as much as ...
... people outside? Some persons think that the Asram is a "rotten" place with jealousy and hatred rampant among the sadhaks. Outside there are just the same things—The Asram is an epitome of the human nature that has to be changed—but outside people put as much as possible a mask of social manners and other pretences over the rottenness—What Christ called in the case of the Pharisees the "whited sepulchre"... Asram it is not so possible—contacts are inevitable. Wherever humans are obliged to associate closely, what I saw described the other day as "the astonishing meannesses and caddishnesses inherent in human nature" come quickly out. I have seen that in Asrams, in political work, in social attempts at united living, everywhere in fact where it gets a chance. But when one tries to do Yoga, one cannot fail to ...
... consciousness and thus release an unhealthy tension, restore a balance in the individual's system. Modern psychology lays great stress upon the integration of personality. Most of the ills that human nature suffers from, they say, are due to this division or schism in it, a suppressed subconsciousness and an expressed consciousness seeking to express a negation of that subconsciousness. Modern psychology... conscious envisaging of the conflicting forces, a calm survey of the submerged or side-tracked "libidos" in their true nature, a voluntary acceptance of these dark elements as a part of normal human nature, does not automatically make for their sublimation and purification or transformation. The tiling is possible only through another force and on another level, by the intervention and interfusion ...
... the front from behind the veil that it can now lead and mould his external consciousness. It is also the channel through which the Divine Consciousness can flow down into the inferior levels of human nature. It is the "being no bigger than the thumb ever seated within the heart", spoken of in the Upanishads. It is likewise the basis of true individuality and personal identity. It is again the reflection... transfiguration into a perfect body of the Truth-consciousness—in a word, its divinisation. This then is the secret of, not the renunciation and annulment, but the transformation of the ordinary human nature:-—fifst of all, its psychicisation, that is to say, making it move and live and be in communion and identification with the light of the psychic being, and, secondly, through the soul and the ...
... all the links that bind us, So turn our hearts as on we rove, To those we've left behind us. This is not merely children's homesickness; it is a fundamental note of the human nature as it is at present constituted. We always look backward, we always are tied to our roots and it is with great difficulty and much effort that we advance and go forward or upward away from our origins... This is translated in the consciousness as an attachment to the past, to what man has been familiar with. Conservation is the term in respect of physical Nature and atavism is its expression in human nature. It is so difficult for man to leave the beaten track, for that means risk and danger; our thoughts and movements are all shaped in the mould of the past, we carry out what old habits ...
... the front from behind the veil that it can now lead and mould his external consciousness. It is also the channel through which the Divine Consciousness can flow down into the inferior levels of human nature. It is the "being no bigger than the thumb ever seated within the heart", spoken of in the Upanishads. It is likewise the basis of true individuality and personal identity. It is again the reflection... ion into a perfect body of the Truth-consciousness—in a word, its divinisation. This then is the supreme secret, not the renunciation and annulment, but the transformation of the ordinary human nature:—first of all, its psychicisation, that is to say, making it move and live and be in communion' and identification with the light of the psychic being, and, secondly, through the soul and the ...
... Page 37 after the image of God and yet Lucifer had access into that tabernacle and all his host with him. This duality of the divine and the un-divine, the characteristic mark of human nature as it is, presents a field and a labour through which man's progress has to be worked out. The soul, the divine flame, has been placed in Ignorance, that is to say, what is apparent Ignorance, the... This is man's great privilege that, unlike the animal, he can surpass himself (the capacity, we may note, upon which the whole Nietzschean conception of humanity was based). Man is not bound to his human nature, to las anthropomorphism, he can rise above and beyond it, become what is (apparently) non-human. Therefore the Gita teaches: By thy self upraise thy self, lower not thy self by thy self. Indeed ...
... consciousness and thus release an unhealthy tension, restore a balance in the individual's system. Modern psychology lays great stress upon the integration of personality. Most of the ills that human nature suffers from, they say, are due to this division or schism in it, a suppressed subconsciousness and an expressed consciousness seeking to express a negation of that subconsciousness. Modern psychology... of the conflicting forces, a calm survey of the submerged or side-tracked libidos in their true nature, a voluntary acceptance Page 65 of these dark elements as a part of normal human nature, does not automatically make for their sublimation and purification or transformation. The thing is possible only through another force and on another level, by the intervention and interfusion ...
... is a typal domain, one may say, there is no room here for sudden unforeseen variation or growth or evolution. Is it so in fact ? For, if one admits and accepts the evolutionary character of human nature and consciousness, the outlook becomes somewhat different. According to this view, human civilisation is seen as moving through progressive stages: man at the outset was centrally lodged in and... precisely because the very highest spiritual potential has not been reached and brought into play. The call of the present age is just to do away with this Page 57 veil, make of human nature a unified, a streamlined entity, a complete incarnation of the spiritual consciousness in the fullness of its own nature at its source and origin. Page 58 ...
... there Capital seems to have largely succeeded. (The topic was changed by a question from a Disciple .) Disciple : You said yesterday that realisation of God is not sufficient to change human nature. Disciple : The question arose from a conversation which we had about the Christian mystics. They have an idea that once they realise the Divine Consciousness there is nothing else to be... realisation of God is not sufficient I meant that such a realisation is not; sufficient to bring about a permanent change of consciousness. It needs the working of the dynamic Power of God to change human nature. Disciple : It so happens in their case because even the first glimpse of the Divine Consciousness is so over-powering, that -it is too much for them ! They are satisfied with the experience ...
... consciousness and thus release an unhealthy tension, restore a balance in the individual's system. Modern psychology lays great stress upon the integration of personality. Most .of the ills that human nature suffers from, they say, are due to this division or schism in it, a suppressed subconsciousness and an expressed consciousness seeking to express a negation of that subconsciousness. Modern psychology... conflcting forces, a calm survey of the submerged or side-tracked libidos in their true nature, a voluntary acceptance, Page 147 of these dark elements as a part of normal human nature, does not automatically make for their sublimation and purification or transformation. The thing is possible only through another force and on another level, by the intervention and interfusion ...
... spiritual is a typal domain, one may say, there is no room here for sudden unforeseen variation or growth or evolution. Is it so in fact? For, if one admits and accepts the evolutionary character of human nature and consciousness, the outlook becomes somewhat different. According to this view, human civilisation is seen as moving through progressive stages: man at the outset was centrally lodged in and... precisely because the very highest spiritual potential has not been reached and brought into play. The call of the present age is just to do away with this Page 154 veil, make of human nature a unified, a streamlined entity, a complete incarnation of the spiritual consciousness in the fullness of its own nature at its source and origin. Page 155 ...
... the front from behind the veil that it can now lead and mould his external consciousness. It is also the channel through which the Divine Consciousness can flow down into the inferior levels of human nature. It is the "being no bigger than the thumb ever seated within the heart", spoken of in the Upanishads. It is likewise the basis of true individuality and personal identity. It is again the reflection... tion into a perfect body of the Truth-consciousness – in a word, its divinisation. This then is the supreme secret, not the renunciation and annulment, but the transformation of the ordinary human nature :– first of all, its psychicisation , that is to say, making it move and live and be in communion and identification with the light of the psychic being, and, secondly, through the soul and the ...
... Lord. Man was made after the image of God and yet Lucifer had access into that tabernacle and all his entire host with him. This duality of the divine and the undivine, the characteristic mark of human nature as it is, presents a field and a labour through which man's progress has to be worked out. The soul, the divine flame, has, been placed in Ignorance, that is to say, what is apparent Ignorance,... This is man's great privilege that, unlike the animal, he can surpass himself (the capacity, we may note, upon which the whole Nietzschean conception of humanity was based). Man is not bound to his human nature, to his anthropomorphism, he can rise above and beyond it, become what is (apparently) non-human. Therefore the Gita teaches: By thy self upraise thy self, lower not thy self by thy self. Indeed ...
... the Press. Naturally, many difficulties cropped up; quarrels, disharmony, complaints — human conflicts instead of natural calamities. The Mother was certainly prepared for them, for she knows our human nature, also that it is through work that it has to be changed, not through the escape-gate of inaction. We heard from time to time the Mother reporting about these troubles to Sri Aurobindo. With his... struggle to keep the right attitude, doggedness to stick to my self-will and a host of other psychological complexes. At last the relentless silent pressure won and I gave up tennis. This is our human nature. When it is evident that the Divine wants to do something for my good, I refuse either out of attachment, self-justification or sheer disobedience. Change of nature is such an uphill job. It is ...
... is a type domain, one may say, there is no room here for sudden unforeseen variation or growth or evolution. Is it so in fact? For if one admits and accepts the evolutionary character of human nature and consciousness, the outlook becomes somewhat different. According to this view, human civilisation is seen as moving through progressive stages: man at the outset was centrally lodged in and... The veil has not been rent precisely because the very highest spiritual potential has not been reached and brought into play. The call of the present age is just to do away with this veil, make of human nature a unified, a streamlined entity, a complete incarnation of the spiritual consciousness in the fullness of its own nature at its source and origin. Page 250 ...
... with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions. First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-world poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it does... conditions, two potentials of the same entity. Baudelaire, who can be considered as the first of the real moderns in many ways, saw and experienced this intimate polarity or identity of opposites in human nature and consciousness. What is Evil, who is the Evil One: ¹ W. B. Yeats: "The Lover tells of the Rose in his Heart"-The Wind among the Reeds. Page 94 Une Idée, une Forme, Un ...
... cries, "why didn't you teach me this?" The ynius of Moliere lies partly in this ability to manifest the complexity of a human being even while caricaturing him. Moliere was a master observer of human nature. A contemporary writer once wryly labeled him "The Contemplator". What was Moliere contemplating? His was the world of theatre, a world of theatere, a world of fiction. Yet from the seventeenth... truly possess all the complexity of living beings. "It is not incompatible, " he wrote, "that a person be ridiculous in certain things and an honest man in others. " Such a wide understanding of human nature has created a tender bond between Moliere and his audiences. Moliere never judges. Rather there is a deep compassion in his acute observation of man and society and a sorrow that humanity is as ...
... substance of which they are built and upon the environment in which they live. .. .the supramental education will result no longer in a progressive formation Page 767 of human nature and an increasing development of its latent faculties, but in a transformation of the nature itself, a transfiguration of the being in its entirety, a new ascent of the species above and beyond... to look beyond the moment in a mood of faith and collaborate with the forces working obscurely - yet also irresistibly - for a radical, even a revolutionary, change in earth nature and of course human nature. In its externals, "Sri Aurobindo's Action" is a movement generated from Sri Aurobindo Ashram since mid-1970, a Society With office-bearers, rules and subscriptions - even as a human being ...
... half-animal being he is. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have told us that if man wants to get out of the present condition and consciousness he has to transform his nature and consciousness. Over the human nature, the human consciousness, there is less the Divine Nature, the Divine Consciousness. It is only in the Light of this Divine Consciousness that life can be changed and transformed. But for that... consent to come down into human life. The transformation of human life depends on this conjunction of the aspiration from below and the consent from above. But then until the transformation of human nature takes place, are we to just sit and twirl our thumbs? No, how can that be? Man has to first believe in this Truth with his mind and life. Then keeping this Truth in front he has to educate himself ...
... not as a part of a gospel of Non-violence or pacific idealism. Peace is a part of the highest ideal, but it must be spiritual or at the very least psychological in its basis; without a change in human nature it cannot come with any finality. If it is attempted on any other basis (moral principle or gospel of Ahimsa or any other), it will fail and even may leave things worse than before. He is in favour... of the spiritual consciousness with the vital, but my experience and all experience show that this leads to nothing definite and final, – it ends where it began, midway between the two poles of human nature. An association is not enough, a transformation is indispensable. ³ 14-1-1932 In any case, my object is a realisation on the physical plane and I cannot consent merely to repeat Ramakrishna ...
... to its subtler and subtest parts and planes; and it is only when this process is complete, that is to say, when one can "manifest Thee on all the planes, in all the states of the being," that the human nature can be said to be transformed and ripe for the fulfilment of the Will and the manifestation of the Divine. And this manifestation, as the Mother indicates, is not the triumph of the individual in... in this new manifestation ”.¹ But are not the forces of darkness rampant in the world ? Do we not see greed and violence, hate and ill-will, lust and cruelty, falsehood and hypocrisy swaying human nature ? The Mother does not deny it, but her inspiring message comes as a breath of the mountain breeze : "On the surface is the storm, the sea is in turmoil, waves clash and leap one on another and ...
... of the integral nature of man—physical, vital and mental—by the Light-Force of the Supermind, and (3) the perfect manifestation of Sachchidananda on earth through the transformed and divinised human nature. Sri Aurobindo does not subscribe to the world-shunning asceticism of the old schools of spiritual discipline, nor does he advocate the hedonistic enjoyment of life lived in the Ignorance and... though it is somewhat Page 4 contradicted by the experiences of a few mystics here and there. Regarding the descent of the supernal Light and the consequent transformation of human nature, it has always been a doubtful and mystified issue. True it is that the Orphic Mysteries aimed at some kind of trans-formation or deification, but what they meant by trans-formation and how they ...
... of the integral nature of man—physical, vital and mental,—by the Light- Force of the Supermind, and (3) the perfect manifestation of Sachchidananda on earth through the transformed and divinised human nature. Sri Aurobindo does not subscribe to the world-shunning asceticism of the old schools of spiritual discipline, nor does he advocate the hedonistic enjoyment of life lived in the Ignorance and in... divine union or contemplation, though it is somewhat contradicted by the experiences of a few mystics here and there. Regarding the descent of the supernal Light and the consequent transformation of human nature, it has always been a doubtful and mystified issue. True it is that the Orphic Mysteries aimed at some kind of transformation or deification, but what they meant by transformation and how they proposed ...
... the Supernature. The graded emergence, development and integration of the various parts and faculties of human nature confirm this perfectionist view of life; but it must be understood that it is a divine perfection that is meant, and not merely an ethical one. But the obscurity of human nature is great, and the entanglement of its parts, faculties and energies is wellnigh baffling. Evidently, no ...
... into the nature of man and the latter's transformation into the divine nature or Para Prakriti. When the transformation is complete,—it is only the supramental Force that can radically transform human nature—the whole being of man will be ready for a "perfect manifestation of the Divine in life, which is the ultimate end of evolution. This evolutionary aspect of Manifestation has to be taken fully... manifest itself "in the most outward forms of life, in every feeling, in every thought, in every act." Her insistence has always been on the perfection of the most outer, the most physical part of human nature. And we have the same ideal stressed time and again in the writings of Sri Aurobindo:"...Its (of his Yoga) aim is not only to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine ...
... synthetic spiritual vision, the all-reconciling comprehensive outlook, the happy fusion of the ideals of the East and the West, and, above all, the authentic, divine dynamism, capable of transforming human nature and creating a new world order, which alone can lift mankind from the morass of degeneracy into which it has sunk. May humanity turn more and more to the delivering Light! 3rd... fhe psychic being, which is the mainspring of ail spiritual endeavour. Then I have described the two natures, the higher and the lower, and gone into a detailed analysis of the different parts of human nature, and the means prescribed by Sri Aurobindo for their radical purification and transformation. The main difficulties of the practice of this Yoga Page ix have been thoroughly ...
... Brahmacharya sought to "raise up the physical to the spiritual"; it gradually perfected the instruments of knowledge; it led to the heightening and ultimate perfection of the sattwic elements in human nature; it created, as it were, an infallible engine of universal knowledge within. But Sri Aurobindo was also careful to add that such a feat of mobilisation and perfect deployment of one's faculties... match iron by steel, meet sword by sharper sword, counter specious argument and hypothetical formulation by clear logic and reference to the indisputable facts of history or the quiddities of human nature. He had to be ready for every move, he needed every weapon in his armoury, and he had an endless call on his battery of wit, humour, satire, sarcasm, ridicule and invective. Between Calcutta (1906) ...
... Page 283 while peace was part of the highest ideal of individual and collective life, it must be spiritual or at the very least psychological in its basis; without a change in human nature - the supersession of egocentric thought and action by something far more widely based and sustained - real peace couldn't come with any finality. If attempted on any other basis like a mental... he did not approve of the dacoities, much less authorise them, if for nothing else, simply on the score of their being practically useless for political purposes. But looking to differences in human nature and the varying processes of evolution, suited to different temperaments, he did not condemn them openly. 6 Sri Aurobindo too didn't approve those deviations and perversions of the revolutionary ...
... growth and decline of civilisations; and Arnold Toynbee has likewise seen the historical process as a succession of challenges and responses. A theory is but a theory, a formula is but a formula; and human nature comprises too many imponderables, too many unexpected spurts of chance, too many intricate chain-reactions of fission or fusion. When we fasten on the externals of a situation, things seem easy... establish a just social order, and this meant - at least for a time - the fulfilment and triumph of the individualistic age of human society. But the application of a rigid scientific method to probe human nature and prescribe human needs has only succeeded in discovering the truth and law of the "collectivity, the pack, the mass". In the modern omnicompetent State (in the "god-state" of the Duce, the Fuehrer ...
... be at a loss however strange the inquiry." "I am glad to hear it, and I hope you will answer and tell me why you have ignored the qualities that are native neither to Page 79 our human nature nor to our personality but to a more subtle part of us." "I see;" he replied with a smile "you shy at the spectre of heredity. Well, we will lay the spectre." "And a spectre it is, or rather ...
... pure mathematics, which stands on a footing of its own, knowledge may be divided into two great heads, the knowledge of things & the knowledge of men, i.e. to say of human thought, human actions, human nature and human creations as recorded, preserved or pictured in literature, history, philosophy & art. The latter is covered in the term humanities or humane letters, and the idea of a liberal education ...
... rate the hot French nature, impatient and incapable of endurance, found it impossible to continue the experiment. Perhaps passive resistance is in itself too much not only for French nature but for human nature generally; perhaps it is always bound to pass into active resistance. But this cannot be decided until it is given a fair trial by a more politic, patient and enduring race than the Frenchmen of ...
... have always held that British justice as between Indians and Europeans or in cases in which the bureaucracy was judge, jury and accuser, must obviously and inevitably be a farce unless and until human nature ceases to have any resemblance to its present self. Neither had we any of that enthusiastic admiration for British law and its administration which was not so very long ago the fashion among Indians ...
... at once the tragedy and the triumph of life—tragedy, because it means the passing away of those spirits whom the world can ill spare, triumph, because it demonstrates the innate superiority of human nature to death, because it brings the human mind face to face with its immortal spirit that transcends more the agonies of the mortal flesh. The sight of the man who makes light of sufferings, even of ...
... shatter their might. Men had once deemed of England that she was not as other peoples and that the lessons of history would be reversed by the unselfish glories of her rule, and the weakness of human nature would be belied by the splendour of her generosity and the candour of her enthusiasm. For the English are a great and wonderful people. It is true that her statesmen and soldiers slew and murdered ...
... venture hugely like a gambler for huge ends ever arrived at freedom, none who has not been prodigal of his best has ever risen to greatness, and what has been in the past will be in the future; for human nature and the laws of human action remain the same, and cannot be new-shaped in Colootola. Politics is for the Kshatriya and in the Kshatriya spirit alone can freedom and greatness be attained, not by ...
... of managing our own affairs, that we are being trained in that direction and that our benign English Government will extend Swaraj to us by degrees. But they do not understand that it is against human nature—Indians excepted. The English value the importance of India. Its possession gives them status. If they once allow India to slip from their grasp, they will become a nonentity. Under such circumstances ...
... present with pointing out that the Bengalee 's answer to us is neither objective nor self-consistent. We have tried to establish our position by definite arguments and appeals to well-known facts of human nature and human experience; the Bengalee simply denies our conclusions in general terms without advancing a single definite argument. We can only conclude that our contemporary has no definite arguments ...
... and cunning, or you are unwilling Page 1058 to meet any plain risks in His service. To serve God under a cover is easy, to stipulate for safety in doing the work is natural to frail human nature, to sympathise and applaud is cheap; but the work demands sterner stuff in the men who will do it and insists on complete service, fearless service and honest service. The waverer must make up his ...
... prefer the foreign to the indigenous production. On these lines we believe a rational and workable meaning could be put on the proviso "as far as possible" which would not put too great a strain on human nature and could yet form the basis of an effective and practical protection of Indian Page 400 industry. A similar concession would have to be made in the case of Swadeshi articles which are ...
... it in the temperament, we cannot have the impulse to be other than ourselves or the force to do anything so difficult as the transcending of our own ingrained and possessing Page 115 human nature. The prophets have spoken & the Avatars have descended always for the one purpose, to call us to God, to inspire us to this great call on our upward straining energies or else to prepare something ...
... & ever new changes to an increasing perfection, but rather of the alternately triumphant forces of progress and regression, a toiling forward and a sliding backward,—the continual revolution of human nature upon itself which yet undoubtedly has but conceals & seems not to have its secret of definite aim and ultimate exultant victory. In certain respects the old Vedantic thinkers anticipate us; they ...
... towards the spiritual change and open itself to the workings of the Power which shall transform it. A supreme perfection, a total perfection is possible only by a transformation of our lower or human nature, a transformation of the mind into a thing of light, our life into a thing of power, an instrument of right action, right use for all its forces, of a happy elevation of its being Page 522 ...
... rising in attainment strives as the spiritual man for a higher peace, joy and harmony. These are the five Aryan types, each of them a great people occupying its own province or state of the total human nature. But there is also the absolute Aryan who would conquer and pass beyond these states to the transcendental harmony of them all. It is the supramental Truth that is the instrument of this great ...
... superior intelligence the silly persons who find sublimity in the Veda, tells us that it is full of childish, silly, even monstrous conceptions, that it is tedious, low, commonplace, that it represents human nature on a low level of selfishness and worldliness and that only here and there are a few rare sentiments that come from the depths of the soul. It may be made so if we put our own mental conceptions ...
... In addition to this special function and training there were the general accomplishments, sciences, arts, graces of life, those which satisfy the intellectual, aesthetic and hedonistic powers of human nature. These in ancient India were many and various, were taught with minuteness, thoroughness and subtlety and were available to all men of culture. But while there was provision for all these things ...
... Europe and Asia remains an unabolished factor. Spirituality is not the monopoly of India; however it may hide submerged in intellectualism or hid in other concealing veils, it is a necessary part of human nature. But the difference is between spirituality made the Page 64 leading motive and the determining power of both the inner and the outer life and spirituality suppressed, allowed only under ...
... oneness towards a relationless unmanifest Absolute find in the end the same Eternal. But this is a less direct and more arduous way; it is not the full and natural movement of the spiritualised human nature. And it must not be thought that because it is more arduous, therefore it is a higher and more effective process. The easier way of the Gita leads more rapidly, naturally and normally to ...
... life, at least a harmless thing which scarcely hinders the soul's growth towards God. Originally these attempts were a reaction to the hypocrisy of the medieval monks. Seeing how contorted became human nature under a celibate regime, the Protestants deemed sex uncontrollable except by the few gifted geniuses of chastity. They made their peace with it and openly established marriage for the clergy. An ...
... the Ashram has to decide upon the definite course of sending him away. You seem to think that it is only fits of anger and tantrums that are involved. Surely a system of Yoga which tries to change human nature is full of understanding of human failings. The Ashram would never think of sending anyone out for anything short of dangerous violence. You have yourself said in your letter that you and the ...
... of both the value and defect the poetic expression and poetic response in life have for a scientific-minded literary critic. Richards has a genuine concern for the general health and balance of human nature. He makes no denial of the richness poetry brings us. A most apt remark of his runs: "To live reasonably is not to live by reason alone - the mistake is easy and, if carried far, disastrous — but ...
... earth's earthiness. After the first flaming, love becomes divided by many moods, sullied by diverse imperfections. It is not potent enough to change character permanently - all the little flaws of human nature come up to distort the dream one had of the grand passion. Love yields to self-will, to vanity, to a bitter urge of giving hurt: it becomes also one with a strange hate, a resentment of the sur ...
... plane. That self-experience lives most strongly in the second and fourth lines: a powerful pulsing away of mind and heart into the Divine's depth, a quiet plucking and largening out of them from human nature into the Divine's height. When these lines are made resonant by the voice, the concrete suggestions of words like "into" and "breast" and "seated" and "above" are perceived as no poetic devices ...
... do you have anything to say? The others have someone or the other to support and console them, but who is for her? Because I take care of this mad woman others behave properly with her. That is human nature. In a family, we have to sacrifice something for every individual. I am not as blind to my wife's shortcomings as they think, I can see very well who is at fault and who is not. Tell me, do you ...
... And the gold Hawk can cross the skies no more. 21 The slothfulness of the dark Inconscient is contrasted against the swift and brilliant hunting bird of heaven, the gold Hawk. Human nature forever alternates between earthly pleasures and spiritual freedom: In this gold dome on a black dragon base, The conscious Force that acts in Nature's breast... Hampered, enveloped ...
... leaving the earth to her fate, but to invoke His light here below for all. But this does not mean that the lure is an imaginary one: the lure of escapism. It would be idle to deny that, human nature being what it is, man generally prefers to travel light. Also, the knot of egoism is fastened so tight in him that he cannot possibly cut it at one trenchant stroke even when he does aspire to ...
... control and self- improvement are confronted with this difficulty. And here again it is not the Yoga or the effort after perfection that creates this condition; there are contradictory elements in human nature and in every human being through which he is made to act in a way which his better mind disapproves. This happens to everybody, to the most ordinary men in the most ordinary life. It only becomes ...
... greatest exponent. The Divine, the sense of that living Reality, the need of bringing the influence and the presence of the Divine in all human activities and the consequent transformation of human nature and life into an expression of the Divine, — these are some of the fundamental concepts of his great vision of man's future. In the words of K.D. Sethna: "Philosophical statement lending logical ...
... mine, And thou shalt see the face of the Absolute. Then shall the holy marriage be achieved, Then shall the divine family be bom. 32 -6- To the inconscient ignorant human nature, Savitri, the Divine's delegate presents the powers and personalities that are behind man's present infirmities — these broken images of true realities lying scattered about in the front of existence ...
... union with the Divine and the conscious seeking for this union. Yoga is in essence the union of the soul with the immortal being and consciousness and bliss of the Divine, effected through the human nature with a result of development into the divine nature of the being. Yoga is a generic name for any discipline by which one attempts to pass out of the limits of one's ordinary mental consciousness ...
... including the Page 390 highest visions, goals and aspirations of human beings. 4 (Institute of Transpersonal Psychology) Transpersonal psychology is the study of human nature and development that proceeds on the assumption that human beings possess potentialities that surpass the limits of the normally developed ego. It is an enquiry that presupposes that the ego ...
... In the process of sadhana or spiritual practice. (Ed.) × Vivekananda said that human nature cannot be changed just as a dog's crooked tail can never be made straight. (Ed.) × "Video meliora ...
... only in last two years that the last shadow of doubt, not latterly of its theoretical feasibility, but of the practical certainty of its achievement in the present state of the world and of the human nature entirely left me. The same thing can be said of the egoistic poise, the almost all strong egoistic poise. But I do not think judging from the photograph but it is of the same half bull and half ...
... Sincerity or Discipline and one automatically attained it! They felt a certain satisfaction in having done something and went on to spend the rest of the day as they pleased. Perhaps it is human nature. Take my own case. On one of my birthdays, in the beginning, I took the flower Unselfishness , and started going to Mother. Then I added one by one Gratitude, Surrender, Humility, Purity, Devotion ...
... nothing to those that others have felt and yet conquered, others who were not stronger than you. All that has happened is that by this descent into the physical conscious ness, the ordinary external human nature has come to the Page 39 front with its elemental imperfections and subconscient unsatisfied impulses and it is to these that the contrary force is appealing. The mind and the higher ...
... people came to know Sri Aurobindo's beautiful human side and personality through these letters. I conclude with a prayer that Sri Aurobindo's vision of the great descent will come true and our human nature change as foretold by the great sage. 'To raise the world to God in deathless light... To change the earthly life to life divine." Savitri XI.I.692 Or in the words of Sri ...
... last state; even, once seen and rejected, they may automatically fall away and disappear; but for most the process takes time. These things are not peculiar to you; they are parts of universal human nature; but they can, do and will disappear. About X’s music lessons, you can certainly stop them if you find that by doing so you can help your concentration or your inner purification. But ...
... his human way of offering it that prevailed in the Page 42 end and induced me to comply with his invitation to attempt what seemed to me all but impossible: the radical change of human nature and its reactions. Otherwise I should have given up long ago. What I mean by this is not easy to put in words, for often, when I try to portray what I felt then, I find that I tend to sound dramatic ...
... forbidden to use powers from mere vital motives, to make an Asuric ostentation of them or to turn them into a support for arrogance, conceit, ambition or any other of the amiable weakness to which human nature is prone. It is because half-baked Yogis so often fall into these traps of the hostile forces that the use of the Yogic powers is sometimes discouraged as harmful to the user. "But it is ...
... haziest notions. Once, in the 'thirties', I had a long talk with the late Upendranath Banerji, a quondam disciple of Gurudev. I remember his deep misgivings about the feasibility of transforming human nature. He said to me that he had definitely "experienced" that Yoga could bring into play forces which not only made a difference but sometimes even bordered upon the miraculous. But for all that, he ...
... today", writes Dilip, "that even my wrongest moods did serve a two-fold purpose: first objectively, because they brought into relief his (Sri Aurobindo's) great understanding of and compassion for human nature... and then, subjectively, because it can hardly be gain-said that had I been by nature less intractable than I was, I might indeed, have been richer today in Yogic experience, but should I not ...
... family [East and West] and even to oppose them to each other; but for myself I would rather be disposed to dwell on oneness and unity than on division and difference. East and West have the same human nature, a common human destiny, the same aspiration after a greater perfection, the same seeking after something higher than itself, something towards which inwardly and even outwardly we move. There has ...
... bishops blamed the fire [in London] on his atheism. Parliament investigated him for blasphemy for two years … He escaped being charged as a heretic, but he was forbidden to write ever again about human nature. … Locke worried that his writings might get him hanged.” 1 Darwin knew of more recent cases and therefore “hid his materialism, as he secretly scribbled away in his notebooks working out ...
... subject, as we will see in the third part of this book. First some statements by Sri Aurobindo. About the Avatar in general: ‘The Divine puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to be the Divine.’ 39 About the contacts of the Mother with others, in particular the disciples: ‘You must remember ...
... Mother, there are such beings somewhere above; may they come down and serve You and manifest Your Love and Consciousness. If they took a body, they would at the same time take upon them the human nature and all its difficulties. 27 November 1934 ...
... with Dyuman) Dyuman's Correspondence with The Mother 18 June 1935 My dear Mother, May the entire Ashram rise above, high above the ordinary human nature, may it consecrate itself to the Divine Will and live for the Divine alone. The Divine is the Supreme Reality for the Ashram. So may it be! Always with you to give you strength and peace ...
... most fanciful social prescriptions. These were the social utopias of Enfantin, Fourier, Blanqui, Blanc, Proudhon and others. All contained a grain of truth, yet all lacked realistic insight into human nature and its ways. Marx had a larger view, even presenting it as ‘scientific.’ And there were the anarchists, impetuous and not less utopian than the others, who, wanting to force an immediate change ...
... their psychic development, but the general mass will remain in the same state of misery.’ 53 There is a saying that a dog’s tail cannot be straightened, meaning that a person’s character or human nature cannot be changed. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother disagreed, for otherwise transformation would make no sense. ‘We know by experience,’ the Mother went on in the same talk, ‘that if we go down into ...
... all time, rooted in God — took shape a quarter century after I had originally stepped into the Ashram. Not that the unending God-rootedness has put a finis to every defect of human nature. It may even seem that — to adapt Scott's couplet — The way is long, the wind is cold, The minstrel is infirm and old. Yes, many are the shortcomings to be got ...
... sincere friends are liable to harp on these tributes, forgetting that, although the words of praise were most apt at the time of their utterance and indicate a permanent potentiality in the being, human nature is very complicated and there could be on the part of the complimented individual even a play of cunning, vindictiveness, dishonesty and various deviations from the Integral Yoga. On the other ...
... "whiteness" to the pigeons that seem to know their way by an infallible inner feeling can bring for us a quality of sheer truth-vision unclouded or unweakened by any tinge of complex and confused human nature. Mysterious phanopoeic poetry of the kind we are illustrating can crystallise also by presenting clearly an unknown figure instead of vaguely a known one. This figure differs from the shapes ...
... Aurobindo and his gracious co-worker whom his disciples hailed as the Divine Mother incarnate. Page 212 Such intimate knowledge of the world-process, such illumined understanding of human nature, such evocation of the inmost soul to suffuse the commonest activity, such invocation of a supreme Light and Love from a transcendent Reality to awaken that Reality's own hidden counterpart in ignorant ...
... dissolving or submerging them the Unity reigned. And, after all, the intuition of such Unity is at the back of all our thinkings and doings. Do we not regard all men as partaking of a common essence of human nature? Do we not regard even an individual as somehow integrating a thousand different things into a single-toned essential being? Even a work of art is never appreciated unless a basic all-unifying ...
... Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's, a greatness born of their Grace but not covering up the fact that this figure has still feet of clay and a head not yet radically changed from its common all-too-human nature. Within this variously composite structure is, of course, the soul that has chosen to be a child of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, a basic primal entity away from all that greatness no less than ...
... do this with some aim in view -for instance, getting rid of a particular difficulty in your nature - or else simply as a gesture of love and self-consecration. In this way you put your imperfect human nature into contact with a nature which is calm, pure, compassionate, unlimited, unerring, unegoistic. It is best for you to figure this superhuman Consciousness as a Perfect Supreme Person. Next ...
... to "a moment's thought" a la Yeats. Now to my point about us as Aurobindonians. There is no single path for them to the goal, for the goal marks the convergence of all possible movements of human nature towards an all-fulfilling transfiguration. But there is a path which Sri Aurobindo names "sunlit". The naming reminds me of the closing lines of my poem "Psyche": A flame that is All, Yet ...
... things and events spiritual and esoteric as well as scientific, an interpreter of dreams and, very happily, a warm humorist and wit with a rich and robust sense of life and understanding of human nature, stands again in front of us in pure gleaming colours that are deeply satisfying - because they all come from the very quality of his soul that is perfectly Aurobindonian. PR's note itself ...
... to penetrate to certain fundamentals of an Avatarhood like the Mother's or Sri Aurobindo's. We have to remember that the Mother was an Evolutionary Avatar: she represented all Nature, including human nature, in one part of her being, and assumed the problems and difficulties of the entire evolving earth. Times there could be, for such an Avatar, to pass through phases of mind and body which mirror ...
... condition you describe is not that Yoga should not be done but that you have to go steadily healing the rift between the two parts of the being. The division is very usual, almost universal in human nature, and the following of the lower impulse in spite of the contrary will in the higher parts happens to almost everybody. It is the phenomenon noted by Arjuna in his question to Krishna, 'Why does ...
... Enlightenment had already been questioned by the Romantic movement at the beginning of the century. Now a powerful wave of vitalism and intuitionalism restated the rights of the emotional components of human nature. This change was initiated in the arts, foremost by the Impressionist “light explosion”. In quick succession Nietzsche, Freud, Bergson and Proust – to name only a few of the important innovators ...
... Eckart, who copied it from their admired philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The phrase is, in fact, perfectly applicable to Hitler himself. He had an instinct to sense and play on the weaknesses of human nature, of the mass as well as of the individual, and he had learned how to brashly mislead, distort and lie, something so obvious in Mein Kampf that it may be another reason why he regretted having ...
... the words of another American biologist, David Baltimore, the starting point of the post-genomic studies which will reveal to us the foundations of life, and also give us the understanding of our human nature. How to explain such a rapid change?” 34 Walter Gilbert, prominent promoter of the HGP, the human genome project, is quoted as saying that, when the genome would be known, one would be able ...
... petty love of gossip and the pleasure in small talk and scandal and fault-finding and the rest that are responsible. These are activities that, I believe, are generally supposed to be part of the "human nature," but do not adorn it and certainly quite foreign to sadhana and Yoga. Obviously, curiosity and gossip and wrong movement cannot be helpful to sadhana. The messages are not meant as food for ...
... have revolutionized and reformed human life into Divine life and transformed the old face and outlook of Indian spirituality. They are the pioneers of a new ideal, namely that of transformation of human nature and divinization of human life. This was the first time in the spiritual history of the whole universe that two mighty spiritual giants joined to become one spiritually though maintaining two ...
... harmonious Consciousness . I felt strongly that my vision of the Golden World was a glimpse which the Mother had given me—and that actually she had taken my consciousness there. But according to our human nature, I thought that the vision might be some kind of mental formation by myself; it could be simply a dream. I wrote to the Mother in order to make sure, because what I had seen had the look of a living ...
... human consciousness were bound to the sense of imperfection and the acceptance of it as the law of our life and the very character of our existence,—a reasoned acceptance that could answer in our human nature to the blind animal acceptance of the animal nature,—then we might say that what we are marks the limit of the divine self-expression in us; we might believe too that our imperfections and sufferings ...
... what the story of the Ramayana meant, appreciate Valmiki's presentation of his chief characters (they are none of them copy-book examples, but great men and women with the defects and merits of human nature, as all men, even the greatest, are), and show also how the Godhead, which was behind the frontal and instrumental personality we call Rama, worked out every incident of his life as a necessary ...
... or falsehood cannot help. They must be as real as the struggles and sufferings of men themselves—the Divine bears them and at the same time shows the way out of them. Otherwise his assumption of human nature has no meaning and no utility and no value. It is strange that you cannot understand or refuse to admit so simple and crucial a point. What is the use of admitting Avatarhood if you take all the ...
... imaginative thinking ] is the ordinary activity of the vital mind which is always imagining and thinking and planning what to do about this and how to arrange about that. It has obviously its utility in human nature and human action, but acts in a random and excessive way without discipline, economy of its powers or concentration on the things that have really to be done. The things which come to you ...
... Every being is in essence one with the Divine and in his individual being a portion of the Divine, so there is no insuperable bar to his becoming supramental. It is no doubt impossible for the human nature being mental in its basis to overcome the Ignorance and rise to or obtain the descent of the Supermind by its own unaided effort, but by surrender to the Divine it can be done. One brings it down ...
... June 1932 Page 384 Rabindranath Tagore Of course Tagore's worshippers will go for Prabodh Sen, what did you expect? Literary nature (artistic generally, or at least very often) is human nature at its most susceptible— genus irritabile vatum . And besides where is the joy of literature if you cannot use your skill of words in pummelling some opposite faction's nose? Man is a reasoning ...
... and endeavour until the wall between the instrument in front and the Divinity behind or above is broken. No rule can be laid down which applies without distinction to everybody—the variations in human nature are too great to be covered by a single trenchant rule. It is not possible to get rid of the stress on personal effort at once—and not always desirable; for personal effort is better than ...
... itself—it undergoes eclipse but not extinction. It is quite sufficient if there is the firm and constant will towards faith and self-offering. It is understood that it is not possible for the human nature to be always without movements of doubt, obscurity or things not yet offered until the inner consciousness has sufficiently grown to make these impossible. It is because it is so that the will is ...
... manifestation and put themselves into it with results which will obviously be just such a stupendous difference of degrees, and even intervene by descending into the play through the gates of birth in human Nature. There are many complexities and the problem cannot be put with the rigidity of a mathematical formula. A great part of the difficulty of these problems, I mean especially the appearance of ...
... sion which is the object of our Yoga and more especially of its dynamic side, it is a divine self-expression in us of the Ishwara, but under the conditions of humanity and through the divinised human nature. Page 798 ...
... transcendence of the three modes of Nature is the first condition, their transformation the decisive step of this change by which the Way of Works climbs out of the pit of narrowness of our darkened human nature into the unwalled wideness of the Truth and Light above us. Page 242 ...
... 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 danger or difficulty can daunt and which feels its power equal to meet and face and bear whatever assault of man or fortune or adverse gods, the dynamic audacity ...
... the dynamic sense-mind and only tries to give them a more orderly direction and effective success. But the man whose reason and will are led and dominated by the lower mind, is an inferior type of human nature, and the part of our conscious being which consents to this domination is the lowest part of our manhood. The higher action of the buddhi is to exceed and control the lower mind, not indeed to get ...
... unite oneself with the universal Divine is another essential condition. Here the Yoga of self-perfection coincides with the Yogas of knowledge, works and devotion; for it is impossible to change the human nature into the divine or to make it an instrument of the divine knowledge, will and joy of existence, unless there is a union with the supreme Being, Consciousness and Bliss and a unity with its universal ...
... harmony and intimate rightness which is native to the psychic essence. A psychic or, more widely speaking, a psycho-spiritual transformation of this kind would be already a vast change of our mental human nature. But all this change and all this experience, though psychic and spiritual in essence and character, would still be, in its parts of life-effectuation, on the mental, vital and physical level; ...
... from which the action flows, upon its truth, fearlessness, purity, love, compassion, benevolence, absence of the will to hurt, and upon the actions as their out-flowings. The old western idea that human nature is intrinsically bad and virtue is a thing to be followed out in despite of our fallen nature to which it is contrary, is foreign to the Indian mentality trained from ancient times in the ideas ...
... The Yoga of Divine Love The Synthesis of Yoga Chapter I Love and the Triple Path Will, knowledge and love are the three divine powers in human nature and the life of man, and they point to the three paths by which the human soul rises to the divine. The integrality of them, the union of man with God in all the three, must therefore, as we have seen, ...
... and all his environment in the right of their common Truth. Brahmā rājani pūrva eti . 10 For this Brahma, this creative Soul seeks to manifest and increase himself in the royalty of the human nature and he who attains to that royalty of light and power and creates in himself for Brahma that highest human good, finds himself always cherished, fostered, increased by all the divine cosmic powers ...
... Now also let Indra use the Maruts as his instruments for the illumination. By them let him establish the supramental knowledge of the seer. By their energy his energy will be supported in the human nature and he will give that nature his divine firmness, his divine force, so that it may not stumble under the shock or fail to contain the vaster play of puissant activities too great for our ordinary ...
... within a certain settled framework as a preparation for subsequent existences; it is variable in natures which admit of considerable enlargements and changes. There are four orders in the ordinary human nature, mental, psychic, nervous, physical; four in the superior or superconscient nature. It is probably to the four human orders that the 290 belong; the physical are few in comparison; it is the three ...
... because the true aim of that existence has not been found and realised. Here and not elsewhere the highest Godhead has to be found, the soul's divine nature developed out of the imperfect physical human nature and through unity with God and man and universe the whole large truth of being discovered and lived and made visibly wonderful. That completes the long cycle of our becoming and admits us to a supreme ...
... is the symbol of submission to the divine Being in ourselves and in the world. Here the offering is that of completest submission and the self-surrender of all the faculties of the lower egoistic human nature to the divine Will-force, Agni, so that, free from internal opposition, it may lead the soul of man through the truth towards a felicity full of the spiritual riches, rāye . That state of beatitude ...
... though she moulds on one general plan, she insists always on an infinite variation. The plan of the human form is one, yet no two human beings are precisely alike in their physical characteristics. Human nature is one in its constituents and its grand lines, but no two human beings are precisely alike in their temperament, characteristics and psychological substance. All life is one in its essential plan ...
... s still prevent it from becoming a memory in the dead chapters of Time. The ambition of a particular religious belief and form to universalise and impose itself is contrary to the variety of human nature and to at least one essential character of the Spirit. For the nature of the Spirit is a spacious inner freedom and a large unity into which each man must be allowed to grow according Page 264 ...
... break down stifling obstructions, but they cannot of themselves create either the kingdom of good or the kingdom of God; for that a mental and spiritual change is needed to which our slowly moving human nature takes time to shape its customary being. The ideal, a thing of the intellect and the sentiment only, cannot so easily bring about its own effectuation; force of circumstance, the will to survive ...
... hardly sufficient. The idea, powerful in itself and in its effects, is yet not powerful enough to mould the whole life of the race in its image. For it has to concede too much to the egoistic side of human nature, once all and still nine-tenths of our being, with which its larger idea is in conflict. On the other side, because it leans principally on the reason, it turns too readily to the mechanical solution ...
... intentions, and the cause is that while the better reason and will of man may be one hopeful factor in Nature, they are not the whole of nature and existence and not by any means the whole of our human nature. There are other and very formidable things in us and in the world and if we juggle with them or put on them, in order to get them admitted, these masks of reason and sentiment,—as unfortunately ...
... undertake a more intellectual Page 210 though always poetic criticism of life and might fill the place of philosophy and religion which were supposed for a time to be dead or dying powers in human nature; but this came to the same thing, for it meant a deviation from the true law of aesthetic creation and only a more protracted decadence. And behind these uneasy suggestions lay the one fact that ...
... l Divine who can bridge by his light the gulf between the higher and the lower consciousness and unify them). But the smoky appearance, the veil etc. indicated that there was something in the (human) nature that made rapid realisation difficult. This was what was also said by the voice that the time was not yet. Obviously the supramental cannot be achieved except by a long sadhana—the experience should ...
... the ordinary human vital demands upon him. But that should not perturb you. It is better to be a stone on the road to the Divine than soft and weak clay in the muddy paths of the ordinary vital human nature. Overcoming Dependence What you say about your dependence on others is true, because this dependence is accompanied by a demand on those others, the desire that they should always be occupied ...
... etc. If one wants to be a Yogin, it will not do to be like the ordinary man to whom food, sex and gain are nine-tenths of life or even to keep in any of these things the reactions to which vital human nature is prone. Equality is here the test as in so many other matters. If you can take the Ashram food with satisfaction or at least without dissatisfaction, that is already a sign that attachment ...
... Letters on Yoga - IV Note on the Texts LETTERS ON YOGA — IV, the last of four volumes, contains letters in which Sri Aurobindo speaks about the transformation of human nature that is attempted in the practice of his system of Yoga. The letters have been arranged in four parts dealing with these broad subject areas: 1. Sadhana on the Level of the Mind 2. Sadhana ...
... obscurity and suffering and ignorance so that she can effectively lead us—human beings—to Knowledge and Bliss and Ananda and to Him. The Divine puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to be the Divine. It is a manifestation that takes place, a manifestation of a growing divine Page 31 consciousness ...
... away that there will be harmony and peace. Wherever there are human beings working together, differences and disagreements and incompatibilities of temper will always be there. It is only if the human nature changes that it will be otherwise, but that cannot be done at once. One has to go on quietly and patiently doing the work for the Mother's sake until the change can be made in yourself and others ...
... incoherence as one who had no control over his impulses and desires. To do anything by mental control is always difficult, when what Page 45 is attempted runs contrary to the trend of human nature or of the personal nature. A strong will patiently and perseveringly turned towards its object can effect a change, but usually it takes a long time and the success at the beginning may be only ...
... guiding you and the resolution of truth-speaking that it made you take, that your psychic being is awake within you. The fault of character of which you speak is common and almost universal in human nature. The impulse to speak what is untrue or at least to exaggerate or understate or twist the truth so as to flatter one's own vanity, preferences, wishes or to get some advantage or secure something ...
... is in the midst of difficulties that it is destined to come. The times now are both worse and better than in Wordsworth's—on one side there is a collapse into the worst parts of human Page 102 nature and a riot of the vital forces, on the other there is in compensation a greater seeking for something beyond and a seeking with more light and knowledge in it. The Irrationality of ...
... in the heart may be necessary hereafter. What usually comes is a descent of the Divine Power to work upon the nature and prepare it for the Divine Presence in the heart. There is much in human nature that has to be changed before it can hold what descends—incapacity and limitation of the mind, insufficient purity in the heart and elsewhere, restlessness etc. To contain the descent a quiet mind ...
... other relation of the vital ordinary kind brings reactions contrary to the sadhana,—desire, egoistic abhimāna , demand, revolt and all the disturbance of ignorant Page 450 rajasic human nature from which it is the object of the sadhana to escape. 26 April 1933 I am afraid you have allowed some old movement of the vital to come up and obstruct the work that was being done. You ...
... there anyone who has been able to abandon everything at once without any struggle. There is no reason to feel therefore that if you call, you will not be heard—the Mother knows the difficulties of human nature and will help you through. Persevere always, call always and then after each difficulty there will be a progress. 20 April 1935 What poise or mode should we keep for the supramental descent ...
... else. 14 March 1936 Page 480 Certainly, it is not necessary for you to become "good" in order that the Mother may give you her love. Her love is always there and the imperfections of human nature do not count against that love. The only thing is that you must become aware of it always there. For that it is necessary for the psychic to come in front—for the psychic knows, while the mind, ...
... Pranam with only their own spiritual reception of her influence. Pranam is for that and not for these other things which have nothing to do with sadhana. Jealousy and envy are things common to human nature, but Page 533 these are the very things that a sadhak ought to throw out of himself. Otherwise why is he a sadhak at all? He is supposed to be here for seeking the Divine—but in the ...
... turn towards the one-pointedness of sadhana; but people take time to arrive at it. 12 July 1935 Yes, it is the thing to be attained—not to receive any other influences than the Divine, as human nature ordinarily does. Then under the sole influence of the Mother's Light and Force, all that has to be changed in the nature can be quietly and smoothly changed, all that has to be developed can be ...
... Fragmentary Draft Letter [.....] with whatever the superior wisdom and political experience of the ruling race to grant to them. You are asking for a thing contrary to human nature.* 1 I state the difficulty broadly as I see it; I shall try to make my meaning more precise in a subsequent letter. Meanwhile all I can say is that whatever can be done to alter this state ...
... progress, others linger. You must not expect a sudden collective miracle. I have not come here to accomplish miracles, but to show, lead the way, help, on the road to a great inner change of our human nature,—the outer change in the world is only possible if and when that inner transmutation is effected and extends itself. You must not expect to establish a perfect sangha all at once and by a single ...
... Mother Their Patience I am overwhelmed at the patience and compassion with which you put up with our insincerities, disobediences and loosenesses. Human nature is like that in its very grain; so if we are not patient, there would be little hope of its changing. But there is Page 120 something else in the human being which is sincere and can ...
... themselves; if they put themselves on the right side, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose in spite of all defects, errors, wrong movements and actions which are common to human nature and all human collectivities. The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly ...
... disturbance is always quiet, unshaken, holding on to the Mother—then these things will no longer be able to cloud the inner consciousness as now. Plenty of people have this condition (it is human nature) and there is naturally a way of coming out of it—having full faith in the Mother to quiet the inner mind (even if the outer continues to be troublesome) and call in it the Mother's Peace and Force ...
... except a few have this difficulty of the external consciousness denying or standing in the way of the inner experience and trying to cling to its old ways, ideas, habits and desires. This division in human nature is a universal fact and one should not make too much of it. Once the Peace Page 123 and Power are there, it is best to trust to that to remove in time the opposition and enlighten and ...
... feeling which has not truth or good sense or reason at its back? This accusation of partiality rests first on feelings of egoistic vital demand, jealousy etc. which are no doubt fairly universal in human nature as it is, but not the more respectworthy for that. It supports itself on a crude idea of "equality" of treatment which in practice comes to this Page 354 that everyone should be treated ...
... nature. In all the Asrams I have seen people were just as others except for certain specific moral controls put on certain kinds of outer action (food, sex etc.), but the general nature was the human nature (as in the story of Narad and Janaka). It is even a theory of the old Yogas that the prārabdha karma and therefore necessarily the permanent elements of external character do not change—only one ...
... assertions of a mental belief leading to a great vehement assertion of one's creed and god because they are one's own and must therefore be greater than those of others—an attitude which is universal in human nature. Even the atheist is not tolerant, but declares his credo of Nature and Matter as the only truth and on all who disbelieve it or believe in other things he pours scorn as unenlightened morons and ...
... frankly and conceal nothing—so there is not the least likelihood that she will resent what you write. Moreover she knows perfectly well the difficulties of Page 550 the sadhana and of human nature and, if there is goodwill and a sincere aspiration such as you have, any stumblings or falterings of the moment will not make any difference in her attitude to the sadhak. The Mother thinks you ...
... instruments of the Divine purpose in spite of all defects, errors, wrong movements and actions (past or present or possible Page 215 backslidings in the future) which are common to human nature and to all human collectivities. The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces; the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly ...
... conscious application of the means that will remove or nullify it. The ignorance from which these movements rise is a general human condition, but it can be conquered; for we are not bound to the crude human nature from which the external being starts and which is all around us. Ignorance is dispelled by a growing consciousness; what you need is consciousness and always more consciousness, a consciousness ...
... jumping-board into the realm of the Spirit. One who holds a particular faith or who has found out some truth, is disposed to think that he alone has found the Truth, whole and entire. This is human nature. A mixture of falsehood seems necessary for human beings to stand on their legs and move on their way. If the vision of the Truth were suddenly given to them they would be crushed under the weight ...
... possession of him, driving out entirely the real human soul and personality. These creatures, when in possession of an Page 42 earthly body, may have the human appearance but they have not a human nature. Their habit is to draw upon the life-force of human beings; they attack and capture vital power wherever they can and feed upon it. If they come into your atmosphere, you suddenly feel depressed ...
... transfiguring grace will most effectively radiate. And, fortunately for the aspirants, that successful future will materialise for them in spite of all the obstacles set in its way by unregenerate human nature! Page 124 ...
... so I have my doubts. Is it possible to accomplish a total transformation of one's being so long as the collectivity has not reached at least a certain degree of transformation? I don't think so. Human nature remains what it is—one can attain a great change of consciousness, that yes, one can purify one's consciousness, but the total conquest, the material transformation depends definitely to a large ...
... people ready to say ignorant things, that is, to deny all spiritual realisation, deny the capacity for progress, deny the possibility of realising another life than this existing one, deny that human nature can be changed, and so on; or if you like, ready to affirm that it is impossible to escape from illness, that it is impossible to escape death, impossible to understand; ready to assert that never ...
... so I have my doubts. Is it possible to accomplish a total transformation of one’s being so long as the collectivity has not reached at least a certain degree of transformation? I don’t think so. Human nature remains what it is—one can attain a great change of consciousness, that yes, one can purify one’s consciousness, but the total conquest, the material transformation depends definitely to a large ...
... and endeavour until the wall between the instrument in front and the Divinity behind or above is broken. No rule can be laid down which applies without distinction to everybody - the variations in human nature are too great to be covered by a single trenchant rule. * There is a state in which the Sadhak is conscious of the Divine Force working in him or of its results at least and does not ...
... this question of the Divine upon the earth: well, quite naturally those who believed in him have made a god of him. One has only to see all the temples and all the Buddhist godheads to know that human nature has always the tendency to deify what it admires. So, there it is! There is something else we would like to ask. There are many discussions on this subject: should we take any interest in ...
... to meditate for hours every day and spend their whole day praying, to me it seems that three-fourths of the time it must be absolutely mechanical; that is to say, it loses all its sincerity. For human nature is not made for that and the human mind is not built that way. In order to concentrate and meditate one must do an exercise which I could call the "mental muscle-building" of concentration. One ...
... in which people had to give one thing to get another—something which could in principle be world-wide, universal; this is also altogether indispensable for the simplification of life. Now, with human nature, just the very opposite is happening! The situation is such that it has become almost—intolerable. It has become almost impossible to have the least relation with other countries, and that much-vaunted ...
... others and believe themselves superior. "One who holds a particular faith, or who has found out some truth, is disposed to think that he alone has found the Truth, whole and entire. This is human nature. A mixture of falsehood seems necessary for human beings to stand on their legs and move on their way. If the vision of the Truth were suddenly Page 246 given to them they would be ...
... tenderness, goodwill, compassion, benevolence, on all beauty and gentleness and fineness and light and strength and courage, on all that can help to refine and purify the gross-ness and commonness of human nature; but it knows how mixed are these human movements at their best and at their worst how fallen and stamped with the mark of ego and self-deceptive sentimental falsehood and the lower self profiting ...
... character, genius, dynamic force, saintliness, love, purity or perfection. Supermind is something beyond mental man and his limits; it is a greater consciousness than the highest consciousness proper to human nature. . . . Man's greatness is not in what he is, but in what he makes possible. His glory is that he is the closed place and secret workshop of a living labour in which supermanhood ...
... perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will etc. that are part of man's intelligence. The physical is that part of human nature which includes the physical body and the physical consciousness. The psychic or psychic being is the evolving soul of the individual, the divine portion in him which evolves from life to life ...
... sections of the human family and even oppose them to each other; but, for myself I would rather be disposed to dwell on oneness and unity than on division and difference. East and West have the same human nature, a common human destiny, the same aspiration after a greater perfection, the same seeking after something higher than itself, something towards which inwardly and even outwardly we move. There has ...
... manifestation and put them- selves into it with results which will obviously be just such a stupendous difference of degrees, and even intervene by descending into the play through the gates of birth in human Nature. There are many complexities and the problem cannot be put with the rigidity of a mathematical formula. A great part of the difficulty of these problems ...
... in contact with the divine Love which is behind all things. That is the best way. To want to get rid of the one in order to find the other is very difficult. It is almost impossible. For human nature is so limited, so full of contradictions and so exclusive in its movements that if one wants to reject love in its lower form, that is to say, human love as human beings experience it, if one makes ...
... one should make an effort in this direction and not remain hypnotised by the so-called "needs" which are nothing but personal fancies. Look upward and forward, strive to surmount the animal human nature. Make the resolution and you will see that you are helped on the way. 3.3.1971 Page 35 It is not for comfort and satisfaction of desires that one comes to Auroville; it is for ...
... liberator. Not the Pundit, but the Yogin; not monasticism, but the inner renunciation of desire and ignorance and egoism. This is irrefutably clear and it is exactly what we are trying to do. But human nature is rebellious and finds it difficult to win freedom at the price of renouncing desire and ignorance and egoism. Most human beings prefer the slavery of desire and ignorance and egoism to freedom ...
... instrument through which it is expressed. The same holds true for strength and knowledge. In their essence they are eternal and unlimited. It is the limitations and deficiencies Page 359 of human nature which distort them and alter them beyond recognition. 3 June 1970 ...
... view, this is true; but unfortunately this concession has served as an excuse to justify a whole category of things which are nothing but the efflorescence of all that is vulgar, crude and base in human nature. Its coarsest instincts, its most depraved taste find in this concession a good excuse to display and impose themselves as an inevitable necessity. They are nothing of the kind, however; one can ...
... work in an individual long before anything of it becomes perceptible in his bodily life. To sum up, one can say that the supramental education will result no longer in a progressive formation of human nature and an increasing development of its latent faculties, but in a transformation of the nature itself, a transfiguration of the being in its entirety, a new ascent of the species above and beyond ...
... must always necessarily be human, at least in their formulation. For, in their spiritual ascent towards the Unknowable and Unthinkable, certain exceptional individuals have been able to transcend human nature and identify themselves with the object of their seeking in a sublime and, in a way, unformulable experience. But as soon as they sought to share the benefit of their discovery with others, they ...
... attain the Divine. Human mediocrity is intolerable. We aspire for a knowledge truly knowing, for a power truly powerful, for a love that truly loves. Suffocated by the shallowness of the human nature we aspire to the knowledge that truly knows, the power that truly can, the love that truly loves. 24 April 1964 Who am I? The Divine under many disguises. 1966 Page 18 ...
... Each one should make an effort in this direction and not remain hypnotised by the so-called "needs" which are nothing but personal fancies. Look upward and forward, strive to surmount the animal human nature. Make the resolution and you will see that you are helped on the way. 3 March 1971 To work for Auroville is to hasten the advent of a more harmonious Future. 27 March 1971 ...
... in the making". And so there are those who tell you, "You'll never succeed!" Because their argument is, "They are human beings and they'll stay human beings" - that's where they are mistaken. "Human nature cannot be changed," on that basis they tell you that you won't succeed. Consequently, the only thing necessary is not only to accept and want the future, but to cling to the will for transformation ...
... suffering and ignorance so that she can effectively lead us—human beings—to Knowledge and Bliss and Ananda and to the Supreme Lord. The Divine puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to be the Divine. It is a manifestation that takes place, a manifestation of a growing divine consciousness, not human ...
... become general and unless something is done to stem the tide of evil, it will sweep away the soul of India in its turbid current and leave only a shapeless monstrosity of all that is worst in human nature. * * * April 11, 1908 The Mother's feet are on the threshold, but she waits to hear the true cry, the cry that rushes out from the heart, before she will enter.... The Mother ...
... And the Page 197 Ashram was founded on this idea, not on any other—a place where people would have enough to live on so as to have time to think of the True Thing. ( Mother smiles ) Human nature is such that laziness has taken the place of aspiration—not for everyone, but anyway in quite a general way—and licence or libertinism has taken the place of freedom—which would tend to prove that ...
... better to ask what you must be, because the circumstances and activities in life have not much importance. What is important is our way of reacting towards them.' This is where it begins.... 'Human nature is such that when you concentrate on your body you fall ill; when you concentrate on your heart and feelings you become unhappy; when you concentrate on the mind you get bewildered.' ( Laughing ...
... Now, if the contract is signed, there is nothing to add. Yesterday, the 24th, there was a meditation. 2 It was intense and formulated itself thus: "Suffocated by the shallowness of the human nature, we aspire to the knowledge that truly knows, the power that truly can, the love that truly loves." Page 114 The words are poor; the experience was strong. I am with you always ...
... those relationships take depends on the human consciousness. You can be... The scriptures say, "Man is cattle for the gods"—but that's if man ACCEPTS the role of cattle. There is in the essence of human nature a sovereignty over all those things which is spontaneous and natural, when it's not warped by a certain number of ideas and a certain amount of so-called knowledge. We could say that man is the ...
... repair the mistakes is to surrender truly. Page 236 But it is not a reason for being upset about it. There is only to remain quite cool and do our best within the limits that the human nature ascribes to us. After all, the whole, entire responsibility is the Lord's and nobody else's. So there is nothing to worry about. It is good to recognise your mistakes, but you must not ...
... the first fall and how, since it was due to the divine freedom with which God had gifted him and not to some ineluctable or blind Fate, even Adam's transgression was a glory — though it brought human nature most dangerously near perdition. That dangerous nearness, that dreadful proclivity, is caught in a figure: He brake Him and betrayed Him, And fast and far he fell, Till you and ...
... given by actual experience, outer or inner, and then transform them into a power of measured beauty by reflecting or transmitting the response from some centre of consciousness beyond the normal human nature: that is to say, the imagination is a medium. Some poets are close to their own experience-stuff; still, they too reshape it in order to embody as perfect a glow or gusto of beauty as possible: ...
... nobility of the human character or an idea that we are here to establish mental and moral and social Truth and justice on human and egoistic lines. I have never promised to do anything of the kind. Human nature is made up of imperfections, even its righteousness and virtue are pretensions, imperfections and prancings of a self-approbatory egoism.... What is aimed at by us is a spiritual truth as the basis ...
... her loose notes and stumbles on two slips of paper that seem to be two rather close versions of the same experience. The first "version" is as follows: ) "Suffocated by the shallowness of the human nature we aspire to the knowledge that truly knows, the power that truly can, the love that truly loves." April 24, 1964 The same experience came back to me later; it isn't another "version" or another ...
... was on this idea that the Ashram was founded, not on any other: a place where people's means of existence would be sufficient to give them the time to think of the True Thing. ( Mother smiles ) Human nature is such that laziness has taken the place of aspiration (not for everyone, but still fairly generally), and license or libertinism has taken the place of freedom. Which would tend to prove that ...
... had profoundly troubled him, and he felt the need for Permanence. His whole quest was to find the Permanent (why was he so anxious to have the Permanent?...). There are a few things like that in human nature, in the deep human need. And then I saw another such need: a need for the Certitude which is security. I don't know how to explain it.... Because I had the experience of it, I saw it was one of ...
... have tried, because when she returned this morning, there was really a difference, especially a difference in the understanding, and she explained it to me. Then I spoke to her about the physical human nature and its infirmity, and she told me, "There is in this body something we—all of us up above—do not have and cannot have: the possibility of a constant Presence and of a constant contact with the ...
... as you do. Only the vision is clouded by human sorrow and ignorance. I don't believe India has any equivalent of the Christian doctrine of 'the Fall' but it is hard for any Westerner not to see human nature as 'fallen', inexplicably imperfect, therefore unable fully to perceive and rejoice in what we nevertheless know is there. The poet sees from afar what the yogi sees and experiences totally. But ...
... them. Chaucer's job is to present life interestingly, not to interpret Page 367 it. Ease, grace, lucidity, a fluent yet compact expression adequate to the manifold impression of human nature and earth-nature in a mirror-mind that has no marked depth of its own but has an individual colour, as it were, so that what is imaged is not a mere "yellow primrose" but a thing made yellow and ...
... fail to be realists. To expect that no section of the Hindu community would indulge in reprisals for acts of injustice and brutality committed against Hindus in Pakistan is simply to be ignorant of human nature: the way to avoid retaliations is not merely to preach Gandhism to the masses or to punish those who take the law into their own hands but to add to all genuinely preventive or deterrent measures ...
... what you must do. It would be better to ask what you must be, because the circumstances and activities in life have not much importance. What is important is our way of reacting towards them. Human nature is such that when you concentrate on your body you fall ill, when you concentrate on your heart and feelings you become unhappy, when you concentrate on the mind you get bewildered. There are ...
... Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II: Jainism and Buddhism Yoga is in essence the union of the soul with the immortal being and consciousness and delight of the Divine effected through the human nature with a result of development into the divine nature of being, whatever that may be, so far as we can conceive it in mind and realise it in spiritual activity. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of ...
... there no remedy to arrest this dangerous trend in the affairs of humanity at large ,? Lust, anger and greed like other evils such as jealousy, ill-will, fear and hatred etc. are inherent in human nature. Education and mental enlightenment have not been able to eliminate these ingrained evils of vital and physical nature. On the other hand, the more clever and intelligent one is, the less scrupulous ...
... the mastermind of the world you should attribute your failure not to his fault or failure on His part but your rien lack of understanding. What we do not understand, we deny or decry. This is human nature. In order to understand Krishna you should attain to the level of! his .consciousness as Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Vivekananda and as others have done, then only you know what he is and ...
... the duty of a king, as he had to protect the hermitages of the forest against wild beasts. Education as seen by the Rishis of ancient India aimed at perfection — a perfection of the total human nature. It would have been surprising then if this education did not look after the aesthetic needs of the individual. As a matter of fact, openness to poetry, art, and beauty was a quality very much ...
... feel the aspiration towards the spiritual change and open itself to the workings of the Power which shall transform it. A supreme perfection is possible only by a transformation of our lower or human nature, a transformation of the mind into a thing of light, our life into a thing of power, an instrument of right action, right use for all its forces, of a happy elevation of its being lifting it beyond ...
... want to grasp a happiness which will not come to an end. The instinct is a true one..." 156 All? It is far too sweeping a generalisation. If he had said that it is one very strong strain in human nature—it could be accepted. But mark that it is in human physical consciousness only. The human vital tends rather to reject a happiness untainted by sorrow and to find it a monotonous, boring condition ...
... violence. Has he ever thought how he will rule by non-violence? PURANI: He will persuade and convince people by peaceful means, I believe. SRI AUROBINDO: Will the Parsees come round by that? Human nature is non-violent till one gets power. EVENING PURANI: Sir Akbar asks if you could change "seven crores" into "thirty crores" in your translation of Bande Mataram ." SRI AUROBINDO: That has ...
... flame, not a red one; but Page 57 white heat is not inferior to the red variety in its ardour. It is true that the psychic love does not usually get its full play in human relations and human nature; it finds the fullness of its fire and ecstasy more easily when it is lifted towards the Divine. In the human relation the psychic love gets mixed up with other elements which seek at once to use ...
... are speaking of is a passive wish - I would like it to be like that, I want it to be like that. That is not will. I have mentioned several methods available to me for dealing with my human nature. Which of them do you find best for me? Whatever method is used, persistence and perseverance are essential. For whatever method is used, the complexity of the Nature-resistance will be ...
... 1939 Talks with Sri Aurobindo 4 DECEMBER 1939 SATYENDRA: Ancient Yogis always believed that human nature couldn't be changed. They compared it to a dog's curved tail and left it alone, although they admitted the spiritual principle to be at work. Only Sri Aurobindo thinks it can be changed. NIRODBARAN: And you don't? SATYENDRA: No. SRI AUROBINDO: ...
... forces of nature and are indistinguishable from each other. It is upon this mass of uniformity that the totalitarian regimentation bases itself easily and naturally. Still even if human nature in the mass is like this, what the totalitarian system does is to fix and eternise the mould. To admit Nature as it is and leave it at that, to arrange and organize things within that given framework ...
... he, like a grand patriarch, guided and led us all towards the goal! Humour that springs from a heart of sympathy made him smile at our follies and foibles and the numerous eccentricities of our human nature. The readers of Talks with Sri Aurobindo must have observed how Sri Aurobindo threw aside his mantle of gravity and enjoyed with us pure fun and frolic, as if we had been his close playmates. ...
... the only creed – if creed it be that we ask people to note and freely follow. We ask all people to be fully self-dependent and self-illumined, for only thus can a real and solid reconstruction of human nature and society be possible; we do not wish that they should bow down ungrudgingly to anything, be it a principle or a personality. In this respect we claim the very first rank of iconoclasts and anarchists ...
... . The process here too, as in the domain of extension, is one of graduation, advance by stages. The light, the light of awakening consciousness first touches the more easily accessible parts of human nature, the higher domains that are not too much involved in the gross material or animal nature. It is the realm of thoughts and ideas, of idealism, imagination and aspiration: it is man's mind, which ...
... member of the lower sphere that is taken up and dealt with by the soul; for it is the highest and the most characteristic element in man and less dense and less subject to the darkness inherent in human nature. The mental individual persists the longest after the dissolution of the body, it survives and may survive very long the disruption of the vital being. This vital being is next in the rung to be ...
... be emphasised as never before, and the meaning of liberation will come to include not only freedom from bondage, ignorance and backwardness but also freedom from gravitational pulls of the lower human nature. The role of education as an aid to the evolution of Nature, will also come to be acknowledged more and more widely. It will be realised that education should aim at evolving faculties and integrating ...
... Two and for ever innumerably All and Eternal and Infinite, this is the indication of the Supreme who is beyond Time and Timelessness in the highest Absolute. Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human: Nature: The World-Manifestation ...
... exclude our divine possibilities. We have to bring a wider meaning into our human life and manifest in it the much more that we secretly are. We have to recognise the purport of our whole complex human nature in its right place in the cosmic movement and give its full legitimate value to each part of our complex being and many-sided aspiration; we have to find out the key of their unity as well as their ...
... chimerical and thus puts, off the consummation of a better human society to a far-off date in the future evolution of the race? For it means that an inner change is needed in the very basis of human nature, a change apparently too difficult to be effected or even attempted except by the rare few. But, if Sri Aurobindo's evolutionary interpretation of world-existence is correct, and if the total ...
... personal deserts and rewards, which equivalence is not found in life; (5) The historical argument: the fact that the belief is widespread and ancient, showing it to be deep-seated in human nature." 1 Whatever may be the logical validity of these arguments, the fact remains that man has variously viewed the phenomenon of physical death as a portal to a future and greater discarnate ...
... Saiyen, (14) Kshitish, (15) Tirupati, and (16) Manmohan. In the meantime the Mother had come back from Japan and joined Sri Aurobindo in his Tapasya aimed at the divine transformation of human nature and life. One Miss Dorothy Hodgson, for many years a companion of the Mother, came with her and joined Sri Aurobindo's entourage. She was known by the Indian name Datta. A few more years rolled ...
... on the path of the Integral Yoga? For we do not want to follow the way of escapist spirituality which seeks to withdraw from life and its activities with the hope of tackling the weaknesses of human nature by bypassing them as far as practicable. We in our sadhana aspire! after a total divine transformation of the whole of our nature. for that we have to accept life with all its complexities tad ...
... occasions liable to disturb their sang-froid: there the quality cardinally called for is Vairagya or 'Dispassion'. But in the practice of the Integral Yoga which aims at the transformation of the total human nature, the sadhaka has to boldly confront all the vagaries and vicissitudes of life, carry the relentless spiritual battle into the lion's den itself and score victory there. And this hazardous procedure ...
... and harmony can triumph and science and technology can be used to abolish poverty and deprivation, precisely at that time, the forces of violence and gravitational pulls of impulses of the lower human nature are pressing forward on a global scale. Rationality, in which humanity has placed great trust for arriving at the fulfillment of its ideals of true knowledge and comprehensive knowledge, appears ...
... process of training whereby the individual is enabled to embody, progressively, those values which we in our highest thought and aspiration come to regard as something most desirable. If the human nature is analyzed, it is found that there are various energies in us which can be distinguishable under various categories, such as physical, emotional, mental, aesthetic, moral and spiritual. These ...
... the Divine is considered to be the Goal of attainment, he himself at the same time acts as the sadhaka, also the sadhana. Still, so long as a sadhaka remains under the control of his lower human nature, it becomes altogether imperative that he make some personal effort for his progress. This personal effort comprises the three operations of aspiration, rejection and surrender. The preceding chapter ...
... this change, which is absolutely necessary for reaching the other two objects, but it is not at all easy to accomplish it. One may almost say that this spiritual change which yoga demands from human nature and individual character is the most difficult of all human aspirations and efforts. For our character is largely mechanistic and made up of habits and it clings to them, is disposed to think ...
... and harmony can triumph and science and technology can be used to abolish poverty and deprivation, precisely at that time, the forces of violence and gravitational pulls of impulses of the lower human nature are pressing forward on a global scale. Rationality, in which humanity has placed great trust for arriving at fulfilment of its ideals of true knowledge and comprehensive knowledge, appears to ...
... the adharma that was to arise in the entire society as a result of massive massacre of enemies whose wives would be rendered into the state of widowhood and would be obliged by the force of the human nature to take recourse to immoral ways of life that would Page 62 generate generations of people who would be born through immorality? That would be a total collapse of dharma. Which dharma ...
... of six elements. The first element of perfection is that of perfect equality and perfect action of equality. The second element of perfection is attained by raising all the active parts of the human nature to that of higher condition of working pitch of the power and capacity on which they become capable of being divinised into true instruments of the free, perfect, spiritual and divine action. This ...
... non-violence or peace as the part of the highest ideal, but contended it must be spiritual or at the very least psychological in its basis. He pointed out later in a letter that without a change in human nature it could not come with any finality. If it is admitted on any other basis (mental principle, gospel of Ahimsa or any other) it will fail and even leave things worse than before. Sri Aurobindo's ...
... How often have I intimated that G was no great clergy. As for experiences, anybody with an occult bent can have experiences. The thing is to know what to do with them. Am I to say alas, human nature! Or alas, Divine Power! Excuse me. It was not the Divine Power that told G to be a Teacher It was his ego. Please don't mind our pungent remarks. We don't look upon you as a Bengali father ...
... occurs. But in spite of these experiences, in my spiritual history there was a lot of trouble, a lot of heartache, a lot of doubts. So, you see, spiritual experience, on one hand, and frailty of human nature, on the other. Now I will finish this talk by reading Nolini-da's text, very apt, appropriate for all of you and particularly for the young people here and elsewhere: Youth of today ...
... can catch you: some tail, some hair, either a lock here or a tail behind." That is what I see happening from day to day; that's a daily revelation for me. Still, my friends, this dog's tail of human nature still has some doubt. Again and again, I hear Him saying: "O Nirod of little faith!" Faith alone - to have faith and to be faithful, or the other way: to love the Divine, and love Him alone. Or ...
... psychic. Do you think that I remained too much in the higher consciousness and in the yogic experiences ? That I really never thought enough of bringing all that down to change my human nature? Page 262 Your tendency was to go up and to leave the higher consciousness to deal with the lower nature without any personal effort for that. That could have worked all right ...
... Thou knowest, Lord, that I have been keeping separate from the lower Prakriti for a long time. It is during this period of detachment that the Mother made me realise what I really am and what human nature is. But the Mother knows that a mere separation is not enough. Now I must control that nature and govern it according to her Light; then only can there be a conquest. Let me then apply myself to ...
... the heart-centre why does my psychic Page 195 being stay mostly on the Sachchidananda plane above the head? It is from there that it manifests love and joy and governs the human nature. Probably it joins the central being there. What is meant by the psychic being joining the central being? Any part of the being can go upward and meet ...
... the other parts for the needed help. Yes. Page 270 the part of my being which is stationed in the higher self has to come down to work for the change of the human nature. It says, "Oh, now I am a part of the Divine and yet I have to descend and dwell with the lower physical nature." I suppose, you would agree that in my previous birth I must have been a sannyasin ...
... and not as a part of a gospel of Non-violence or pacific idealism. Peace is part of the highest ideal, but it must be spiritual or at the very least psychological in its basis; without a change in human nature it cannot come with any finality. If it is attempted on any other basis (moral principle or gospel of Ahimsa or any other), it will fail and even may leave things worse than before. He is in favour ...
... n. Cannot the passive and the active Self be harmonised so as to govern and change my nature properly? Either one of the two does not seem sufficient to handle the whole of the human nature. Yes, but the Peace, Purity and Calm of the Self must be fixed — otherwise the active Descent may find the forces it awakes seized on by lower Powers and a confusion created. That has ...
... characters. Most of this happens in very early childhood; consequently it is at this period that we can most hopefully attempt to form character. Those who like existing evils are fond of asserting that human nature cannot be changed. If they mean that it cannot be changed after six years old, there is a measure of truth in what they say. If they mean that nothing can be done to alter the instincts and reflexes ...
... . The process here too, as in the domain of extension, is one of graduation, advance by stages. The light, the light of awakening consciousness first touches the more easily accessible parts of human nature, the higher domains that are not too much involved in the gross material or animal nature. It is the realm of thoughts and ideas, of idealism, imagination and aspiration: it is man's mind, ...
... to the world or not. And yet in meditation, they came into contact with some higher and deeper consciousness and reality. It is for this reason that people who have found it difficult to change human nature, have declared it an impossibility and advised that the one thing to do under the circumstances is to abandon the world and escape. Naturally, if all could run away there would no more be any world ...
... And thou shalt see the face of the Absolute. Then shall the holy marriage be achieved, Then shall the divine family be born." 2 (6) To the inconscient and ignorant human nature, Savitri, the Divine's delegate presents the powers and personalities that are behind man's present infirmities—these broken images of true realities lying scattered about in the front of existence ...
... s, although not in the mass, nor generally even in individuals, but there has come a common acquiescence in the being to a higher status of living—proletarianism at its best means nothing else. Human nature has shed something of its mediaeval crudeness and obscurantism, separatism and selfishness; human mind has been more sharpened and polished and widened so as to receive easily the message of the ...
... Indian spirituality precisely envisages such a transcendence. According to it, the liberated soul, one who lives in and with the Brahman or the Supreme Divine is he who 'has discarded the inferior human nature and has taken up the superior divine nature. He has conquered the evil of the lower nature, certainly; but also he has gone beyond the good of that nature. The liberated man is seated above the ...
... in the play of this apparent breach and proves in the end that it is part of a wider scheme, a vaster harmony. Evil is rounded off by Grace. The total eradication of Evil from the world and human nature and the remoulding of a terrestrial life in the substance and pattern of the Highest Good that is beyond all dualities is a conception which it was not for Goethe to envisage. In the order of reality ...
... home, for their health does not permit them to continue here; it is gradually getting worse and worse and they ask for my permission. I wonder at their ignorance. Perhaps I should not wonder; human nature is like that. These people do not know or see or feel in the least that they are here in the best of conditions for cure, nowhere else in the world would they get anything like the opportunity or ...
... in the past in any realm or domain towards a higher life has been contributory to this supreme consummation that Sri Aurobindo envisages as corning or sure to come. It is very often asserted that human nature is irremediable and although we may try at a little amelioration of his instinctive life, especially as a social being, there can be no permanent or radical cure of the original sin of Ignorance ...
... illustrative example. The men of Homer's world, however mighty and powerful they may be, are after all human beings. Achilles and Hector are but the royal editions or dignified versions of our frail human nature. Never do they reflect the Infinite. The gift of the West is to bring to the fore the speciality of the finite through the senses. Plato himself did not like very much the Homerian god who to him ...
... move and have their being. Karmayoga is union in mind and soul and body with the Lord of action in the execution of his cosmic purpose. And this union is effected through a transformation of the human nature, through the revelation of the Divine Prakriti and its descent upon and possession of the inferior human vehicle. Arrived so far, we now find, if we look back, a change in the whole perspective ...
... thou shalt see the face of the Absolute. Then shall the holy marriage be achieved, Then shall the divine family be born. 30 (6) To the inconscient and ignorant human nature, Savitri, the Divine's delegate presents the powers and personalities that are behind man's present infirmities - these broken images of true realities lying scattered about in the front of existence ...
... seeks the Divine. This bears upon the occult story of man's spiritual evolution upon earth. The Divine Grace descends from the highest into the deepest and from the deepest to the outer ranges of human nature, so that the whole of it may be illumined and transformed and one day man can embody in his earthly life the integral manifestation of God, the perfect Epiphany. Each religion, each line of spiritual ...
... in the past in any realm or domain towards a higher life has been contributory to this supreme consummation that Sri Aurobindo envisages as coming or sure to come. It is very often asserted that human nature is irremediable and although we may try at a little amelioration of his instinctive life, especially as a social being, there can be no permanent or radical cure of the original sin of Ignorance ...
... the brain extending its range down the spinal column to its end at the last vertebra – this is the element that has to be treated and reorganised first and foremost if a physical reorganisation of human nature and behaviour is to be achieved. I explained – tried to explain – that this being the physical or material field, the first of the elements – ksiti or earth or matter – the God presiding over it ...
... something less drastic. Ours is not a path of escape, although that too needs heroism, but of battle and conquest and lordship. It is not to say that other remedies – less radical but more normal to human nature – cannot be undertaken in the meanwhile. The higher truths do not rule out the lower. These too have their place and utility in Nature's integral economy. An organisation based on science and ethicism ...
... the existence or manifestation of the Divine upon earth, they who believed in Buddha have now made him a God. You have only to look at the Buddhist temples and all their divinities to know that human nature has always the tendency to deify what it admires. Page 106 ...
... loneliness that besets the individual being and consciousness at its inmost core, its deepest depth. I was speaking of the depth, of the sounding of consciousness in present-day inquiries into human nature. Sartre's investigation links itself up with the eternal inquiry graphically and beautifully described in the famous parable of the Taittiriya Upanishad (III). In his quest for Brahman, Bhrigu ...
... the world and from the present position of things foretell the time and place of each and every event in the cosmic field. The idea of Karma, or Kismet, is a parallel conception in the domain of human nature and character. The chain reaction of cause and effect" is rigorous and absolute, follows a single line of movement and possesses a rigidly predetermined disposition. The principle is equally applicable ...
... come as the chronological scheme would seem to demand. We propose, however, to reopen the question and enquire if there has not been some kind of radical change or progress in the make-up of human nature and civilisation even within the span of historical times. This reminds us of the remarkable conclusion or discovery made by the much maligned and much adulated Psycho-analysts. Jung speaks of ...
... human organisation. They can be remedied to a large extent, and society made more decent to live in, even though it may not be transfigured into the City of God. Man, without foregoing his present human nature, can yet be a more humane and humanistic creature, that is to say, more truly human and less animal and demoniac that he is trying to be. To this end the advent and the presence of the divine race ...
... a god's: the human eye blinks or twinkles. That is how Damayanti recognised her human partner. And it is precisely winking, we may say, that brings out the tear-drop – this is the hallmark of human nature. Winking or blinking means time-bound, time-made, i.e., mortality, therefore inevitably, tearfulness; on the other hand unwinking means the unbroken even stretch of eternity, i.e., immortality. ...
... perfection as consisting of six elements. The first consists of the perfection of equality (samata) and of the action of equality. The next element consists of raising all the active parts of the human nature to that highest condition and working pitch of that power and capacity, s'akti, at which they become capable of being divinized into the true instruments of the free, perfect, spiritual and divine ...
... form. On its worst side, the survival of humanity on the earth has come under severest attack; on its best side, it has come to be realised that a new consciousness must seize humanity and change human nature so radically that the spirit of oneness and unity not only reigns as an idea and an aspiration but becomes embodied in human life like its living breath. A significant fact is that the age ...
... as the chronological scheme would seem to demand. We propose, however, to reopen the question and inquire if there has not been some kind of radical change or progress in the make-up of human nature and civilisation even within the span of historical times. This reminds us of the remarkable conclusion or discovery made by the much maligned and much adulated Psycho-analysts. Jung speaks ...
... now-a-days but it is not sufficient, Mother says. If you are content to be human beings, just human beings, differences will arise again and again and not only differences but serious differences. Human nature is composed of these differences, and culture and civilisation meant nothing more than a reconciliation, a compromise among these differences. And the result has been that we have not gone very ...
... therefore somewhat European way of thought and expression did not come naturally to Bengali – it became difficult, laboured, artificial: e.g., 'An enquiry into the relation between other phenomena and human nature' of Akshay Kumar Dutta or even 'Bodhodaya' of Ishwar Chandra. It was Bankimchandra who was the Page 169 pioneer in whose hand this line of development attained something like ...
... for discipline and control over many things in ordinary life: the social, collective control, the legal control, mental and ethical do's and don'ts. Thanks to this the various temperaments of human nature, the different inner urges and movements are kept in check. Life thus goes on undisturbed with a superficial calm and order. But for us here, especially in this Ashram, the ordinary controls ...
... general forces of nature and are indistinguishable from each other. It is upon this mass of uniformity that the totalitarian regimentation bases itself easily and naturally. Still even if human nature in the mass is like this, what the totalitarian system does is to fix and eternise the mould. To admit Nature as it is and leave it at that, to arrange and Page 106 organize things ...
... Divine into its perfect light and power and bliss. The large mass Page 146 of human beings might still remain for long content with a normal or only a partially illumined and uplifted human nature. But this would be itself a sufficiently radical change and initial transformation of earth-life; for the way would be open to all who have the will to rise, the supramental influence of the tr ...
... towards the spiritual change and open itself to the workings of the Power which shall transform it. A supreme perfection, a total perfection is possible only by a transformation of our lower or human nature, a transformation of the mind into a thing of light, our life into a thing of power, an instrument of right action, right use for all its forces, of a happy elevation of its being lifting it beyond ...
... social system will not help him in any way. The upheaval that is required is of a deeper kind: it is the appearance of a new consciousness that is called for, and the subsequent transformation of human nature. There must grow in a few individuals at first, then in an increasing number of people, the urge to overpass the old limits, to find in themselves or above themselves a new light, a new consciousness ...
... room. It is difficult for a man with strong personality to surrender himself. But even a great personality has not much precious stuff to give up. What man has to surrender is his petty human nature, his ego, his desires, ambitions etc. He may even feel, on a closer introspection, that what he is and what he has is not something wonderful—it is often the ordinary trash of human weakness. ...
... to extend the field of our own consciousness and get into the experience of cosmic consciousness. And this can be done not by simply wanting it, but by increasing the instrumental capacities of human nature. Man is given certain instruments,—senses, nervous being, vital being, emotional being and mental being. These have certain capacities and they are capable of development. Man's intellectual ...
... of Will, Knowledge and Will go together; where the vibration of knowledge is one with rhythm of will and both become indistinguishable. There the divine nature is described as distinguished from human nature. When the Rig Veda speaks of the realm of the gods or the realm of Truth-Consciousness, it is really describing to us the divine nature and its function—, and how the divine nature is constituted ...
... its greatest exponent. The Divine, the sense of that living Reality, the need of bringing the influence and the presence of the Divine in all human activities and the consequent transformation of human nature and life into an expression of the Divine,—these are some of the fundamental concepts of his great vision of man's future. In the words of K. D. Sethna "Philosophical statement lending logical ...
... nor conversion. The bitter truth has to be admitted that no amount of spiritual realisation has ever been able to overcome the inherent darkness and disabilities of the physical part of our human nature. Inertia, obscurity, disease, decrepitude and death, doubt, obstinacy in error, unwillingness to change, a helpless subjection to past associations, proneness, to suffering and a sharp sense ...
... to be the divine love, "in every activity, in all the worlds of being”, so that she might achieve what the supreme Love alone can achieve in the material world—the integral transformation of human nature. It is not possible for us to gauge this Love, nor conceive the exact nature and extent of the work it has been doing for humanity. One day when the Mother indicated to us, in passing, how she ...
... chance To an inescapable fatality." Everything here on earth is enacted under their influence "Here too these godlings drive our human hearts". The twilight of human nature is the place they lurk in and they speak to the human being "with the voices of the Night". It is thus that these forces utilise human beings for their purpose and build up structures or con ...
... and his power is to bring down the Immortal in life. There is a divine sanction to our works: "Our will labours permitted by thy will". The godhead replied: How would it be that earth-nature—human nature—would rise while the earth would unchanged? Heaven's light may visit the mind of earth, but earth remains earth subject to her ignorance, suffering and evil. Earth can have only "fragments of a ...
... within that knows beyond our knowings; "To live, to love are signs of infinite things, Love is a glory from eternity's spheres." Page 284 Even though lower elements of human nature debase and mock at it, still, love is a divine power by which "all can change". Love is like a bud in the human being, it opens slowly; or it is like a somnambulist child wandering about ...
... thought, intuitive imagination, intuitive perception—but also for its inaptitude and disinclination for the spiritual life, and the fungus growth of doubt and disbelief choking its mind. Every part of human nature has, unquestionably, a right to autonomy, but it must be an autonomy respecting and conforming to the organic unity of the whole, and not exclusive and subversive of it. Besides, as we have already ...
... original legend,257-264; his ideas on the symbolic content of Savitri, 264-265; Sri Aurobindo on the Vedic myths, 269-271; on the symbol of'Savitri' in the Veda, 275-279; on the divinisation of human nature, 281-283; on the overhead planes of consciousness, 295-299; Sri Aurobindo's overhead aesthesis, 299-303; Sri Aurobindo on mantric poetry, 303-304; on overhead poetry, 309-310; overhead ...
... that in Russia what they have attempted is real democracy? Sri Aurobindo : In Europe they have always tried for democracy. Real democracy has always failed, and failed because it is against human nature. There are certain men who are bound to govern. One must be prepared to face facts. Even in the democracies those men manage to rule and one knows too well the villagers do not. Only, those people ...
... that reason would not be right if it did not differ. For instance, if the descriptions of all the countries were the same it would not perhaps do. And yet the earth is one and so is mankind and human nature. All is One. Disciple : About the knowledge of identity, is the identity of Sushupti the same as knowledge by identity? Sri Aurobindo : No, it is not the same as knowledge by ...
... had intended to say 'lawyers', but his pronunciation gave his remark a deep force of philosophic observation and generalisation which he had not intended! But it seems to me the last word in human nature. "² 1. "Towers, Robert Mason, M. A. 1889, incorporated from Dublin, I. C. S., University Teacher of Bengali 1888-1907. Admitted at Gains 1889. Son of Rev. Robert Towers, deceased ...
... face each other unflinchingly, the sad formidable voice of worldly wisdom cries to Savitri to let go her invisible grasp of Satyavan, to weep for a while as is proper, and then to forget, as is human nature. She relaxes her hold, but otherwise listens not to the voice, but stands "gathered in lonely strength", Like one who drops his mantle for a race And waits the signal, ...
... akti ? What is the Ananda plane in life ? Sri Aurobindo : He may be able to manifest it in the future, when the Supermind has become a stable achievement. But the present organisation of human nature is quite unable to bear it. It is too infinite for man. I am not Page 281 speaking of the mental infinite. I am speaking of the Sachchidananda on its own highest level. You can ...
... complete submission of the individual to the divine Will", and in a footnote adds: "Here the offering is that of completest submission and the self-surrender of all the faculties of the lower egoistic human nature to the Divine Will-force." 49 The Gita, of course, is a pocket spiritual encyclopaedia, for all spiritual problems are "briefly but deeply dealt with" in it, and in his Essays ...
... sound. Where then shall God be found? Seek not in the distant skies: In man's own heart He lies. 94 It is always a question of exceeding the limited human nature and growing into the Truth, the Right, the Vast. Man is at the meeting point of the physical and the metaphysical, and sums up in himself all physical nature and all the possibilities of angelic ...
... relations can be very different from what he is in actual fact or in other relations or on another side of his nature. To be absolutely sincere, straightforward, open is not an easy achievement for human nature. It is only by a spiritual endeavour that one can realise it — and to do it needs a severity of introspective self-vision, an unsparing scrutiny of self-observation which many sadhaks and yogis ...
... essence can be housed in humanity with all the limitations of that material tenement: The Avatar is always a dual phenomenon of divinity and humanity; the Divine takes upon himself the human nature with all its outward limitations and makes them the circumstances, means, instruments of the divine consciousness and the divine power, a vessel of the divine birth and the divine works... the object ...
... drops to burst in their faces, or Mother. And he further explains: “I am perplexed because it seems to me that the only important thing is Mother’s protection, and you have it.” It is incredible. Human nature is decidedly an abyss of cowardice. It is incurable. We might call it: “The Falsehood of the right-thinking ones.” It was the same thing with Petain — they all were petainists, except for a ...
... arga of Vishvamitra's creation. What Sri Aurobindo could do was to convey to others the lights that were the enduring gains of his Yoga and his well-grounded hopes for the supramentalisation of human nature and of all terrestrial existence. Perhaps some few choice spirits at least would hearken and respond to the paean of hope and the lure of the Light, and join Sri Aurobindo in structuring the conditions ...
... plenitude, Indian civilisation took equal note of the primacy of the Spirit and the immediate claims of phenomenal life. Life was a movement, a progression, a battle; and life was complex, and human nature was complex. Whether for individual or collective man, the key to progressive development lay in the realisation of inner unity and the willing acceptance of the play of outer variety. Ātma-vidyā ...
... natural, especially when things are given to you full-heartedly - and am I not your mother who loves you? 63 When he asks her how he can ever hope to rise to the heights of realisation when his human nature drags him mercilessly down, she says simply: Let me carry you in my arms and the climbing will become easy. 64 Again:"Dear child, I am always with you and my love and blessings ...
... inhabitants. Her burdens and impurities are those that she herself has taken up to be able to lead earth and mankind to the goal of transformation and divinisation. Since the cardinal sin of human nature is "egoistic separativity", for it is this that starts the multi-pronged movement of division, confusion and disintegration, the radical need is to replace this egoistic separativity by crystalline ...
... falsehood cannot help. They must be as real as the struggles and sufferings of men themselves - the Divine bears them and at the same time shows the way out of them. Otherwise his assumption of human nature has no meaning and no utility and no value .... ... The manifestation of the Divinity in the Avatar is of help to man because it helps him to discover his own divinity, find the way to realise ...
... Gandhi, pointed out that the spiritual way was the right way of man's future progress, and the action of the highest Truth of the Supermind would be crucial for effecting a radical transformation of human nature. He mentioned what the Mother had said: real freedom lay in complete subjection to the Divine. Only God is absolutely free. And all that wise people could do was to submit to the Divine in utter ...
... into the illimitable freedom of her creative Consciousness-Force. This release and transmutation of Nature demand an uninterrupted Karmayoga, a free exercise of all the parts and elements of the human nature in a growing spirit of dedicated service and in the emergent light of spiritual knowledge. Not escape from Nature, but a sovereign possession and joyous utilisation and enjoyment of a divinised ...
... recondite tracts of his nature to its transforming light. Purification renders the nature transparent, and develops in it many new perceptive faculties which usually lie dormant in the unpurified human nature. In course of the purification of the physical nature, a time comes when one finds oneself almost identified with one's external physical personality, which is full of obscure and unregenerate ...
... long journeys in order to have the privilege of paying their tribute of devotion. What they get in return is a glimpse of a higher and truer life which responds to the most innate aspiration of human nature. 55 The Mother gave darshan every day, and jointly with Sri Aurobindo on the four darshan days. For the sadhaks and other seekers, darshan was always a moment of mystic union between ...
... step. She could not take the step all alone. Is it possible to achieve total individual transformation without some measure of correspondence in the collectivity?.. It doesn't seem possible to me. Human nature remains unchanged—one can greatly change the consciousness (for sure, one can purify one's consciousness), but the total conquest, the material transformation, certainly depends to a great extent ...
... infusion into the parts of our nature. The psychicisation of our being is regarded as the first solid achievement upon which the later attainments and conquests can be securely based. Our normal human nature would never care to turn to the Divine or the Eternal, were it not for the occult influence of the psychic. Whenever there is an aspiration for the Infinite, for a transcendence of the ego and its ...
... and render it a means of the self-expression of his soul, and the Divine dwelling in it. He works out of a growing inner freedom and peace and joy, and not by the blind impulsions of his normal human nature. "All should be done quietly from within—working, speaking, reading, writing, as part of the real consciousness—not with the dispersed and unquiet movement of the ordinary consciousness."¹ He can ...
... to see that the things one should seek for in a pure or unmixed way in order to go forward in sadhana, are all lacking in me, — there is only the ego! SRI AUROBINDO: It is so with everybody. Human nature is shot through in all its stuff with the thread of the ego, even when one turns to get away from it, it is in front or could be behind all thoughts and actions like a shadow. To see that is the ...
... part which has to change. It is tamasic and does not want to change, does not want to believe unless it can be done by reassuring the vital ego. But there is nothing new in all that — it is part of human nature and has always been there, hampering and limiting the sadhana. Its existence is no reason for despair — everyone has it and the sadhana has to be done in spite of it, in spite of the mixture it ...
... not more conscious of his own soul and cannot yet support himself n that alone — for it might leave him dejected, without self-respect of any kind, given up to mere despair. One must not treat human nature like a machine to be handled according to 'rigid mental rules — a great plasticity is needed in dealing with its complex motives. No date If you are not in the least upset after ...
... hot-house product of the eclectic and utilitarian intellect, is powerless to control and purify the obscure and perverse energies of life, and either creates serious complexes and reactions in the human nature, or acts only as a pious mask covering many a festering sore. "It was when the Great Way declined that human kindness and morality arose" is the penetrating verdict of Lao Tzu, and Whitehead chimes ...
... scepticism which proves a great bar to the progress of knowledge by its wilful shutting out of the unexplored levels of human consciousness and the Page 265 unawakened faculties of human nature. Its vaunted rationalism is a stubborn blindness to the higher light. The physical mind is not the whole of the human mind, but in many men it is the most dominant. In the modern age of materialism ...
... conversion. The bitter truth has to be admitted that no amount of spiritual realisation has ever been able to overcome the inherent darkness and disabilities of the physical part of our human nature. Inertia, obscurity, disease, decrepitude and death, doubt, obstinacy in error, unwillingness to change, a helpless subjection to past associations, proneness to suffering and a sharp sense of ...
... consummating transcendence will inevitably be followed by a corresponding supramental metamorphosis or transformation of nature. Even the most confirmed sceptic will admit that the present evolution of human nature does not exhaust all its possibilities—it has a divine Face to unveil, the shining contours of the Supernature. Page 419 There is yet another point to consider in this connection ...
... resist but overcome that pull." He was speaking on 18 January 1939. And he threw a challenge. "This is the solution I propose. It is a spiritual solution that aims at changing the whole basis of human nature. But," he cautioned, "it is not a question of a moment or a few years. There can be no real solution unless you establish spirituality as the whole basis of life." In point of fact the 'spiritual ...
... divorce from Henri Morisset was finally decreed in March 1908. Mirra went out to all kinds of occult reunions, séances and all. And being a thorough 'materialist' she was equally keen on studying human nature; so she went to the theatre. Once, long ago, Mother was asked by a young chap, "How do you know the character of a person by looking at his eyes?" She replied, "Not only by looking at ...
... Sweet Mother, What are “the different psychological divisions of the human being”? These divisions are merely arbitrary. They have been established in order to facilitate the study of human nature and especially to establish a definite basis for the various methods of self-development and self-discipline. That is why each philosophic, educational or Yogic system has, as it were, its own division ...
... penetrate, Let this ambrosia feed his veins That he be deathless, godlike, great; Page 54 Immortal youth and beauty shine Within his limbs and life and thought; Change human nature to divine, That Zeus' purpose may be wrought. She goes to the fire-place, arranges the logs, stirs the fire to make it blaze up high, then comes and lifts the child from the cradle ...
... there is hardly a single instance in English poetry between Dryden and Thomson. 4ṭḥ The exclusion of human emotion, i.e. to say poetry was not only limited to the workings of the human mind and human nature but to cultured society and to the town, & not only to this but to the intellect and weaknesses of men purely; the deeper feelings of the heart are not touched or only touched in an inadequate manner; ...
... Kalidasa's beloved Ujjaini taken up into the clouds & transformed into a seat of ideal bliss & loveliness. In the same moment he strikes straight home at one of the most deep-seated feelings in human nature, its repining at the shortness of life & the more tragic shortness of youth, and imaginative dream of an eternal beauty, youth & joy. These he satisfies and turns from a source of unrest into a ...
... against their enemies, savages who have indeed progressed and have learned that the torture of the soul Page 495 is a more terrible revenge than the torture of the body, to murder the human nature a greater satisfaction than to slay the animal frame. Ancient nations punished their enemies by death, slavery, torture, humiliation and degradation. The jail system is an organisation of these ...
... and religious faith with Western pragmatic idealism and their fusion into the basis of a new culture and, we will not say a new universal religion,—for religion must vary with the variations of human nature,—but a new practical spirituality in which all mankind can become one. There is much in Mr. Wells' statement of his new-born belief that is imperfect, limited and a little crude, much that is ...
... to the Scientist throwing chemicals at the Mystic and immediately withering into something infrahuman under the onslaught of the Mystic's mohanam, stambhanam and maranam . Don't interfere with human nature. Professor —We will provide the fun, but let it be human, civilised fun. We must curb the excess of our original simian ancestors in our humour. Mystic —You can't, Professor, and we shouldn't ...
... for consumption in India. Yet that this has been so far the net result of our political commerce with the West, will be very apparent to anyone who chooses to think. National character being like human nature, maimed and imperfect, it was not surprising, not unnatural that a nation should commit one or other of various errors. We need not marvel if England, overconfident in her material success and the ...
... possibilities of universal Nature. He has developed by his own long evolution of that humanity the character and law of action of his present individual being; he has built his own height and form of human nature. He may change what he has made, he may rise even, if that be within the possibilities of the universe, beyond human and to or towards superhuman nature. It is the possibility of the universal Nature ...
... sattwic mind and temperament, quiet happiness, a clear and calm content and an inner ease and peace. Happiness is indeed the one thing which is openly or indirectly the universal pursuit of our human nature,—happiness or its suggestion or some counterfeit of it, some pleasure, some enjoyment, some satisfaction of the mind, the will, the passions or the body. Pain is an experience our nature has to ...
... Those who are great-souled, who are not shut up in their idea of ego, who open themselves to the indwelling Divinity, know that the secret spirit in man which appears here bounded by the limited human nature, is the same ineffable splendour which we worship beyond as the supreme Godhead. They become aware of the highest status of him in which he is master and lord of all existences and yet see ...
... the works to which he is called, kṛtsna-karma-kṛt, sarvakarmāṇi joṣayan , no greater or more liberal rule of divine works can be given. This freedom and this oneness are the secret goal of our human nature and the ultimate will in the existence of the race. It is that to which it must turn for the happiness all Page 210 mankind is now vainly seeking, when once men lift their eyes and their ...
... 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 human nature; his real God is this ego. His mind and will, hurried away in the activities of the Maya of the three gunas, are not instruments of the spirit, but willing slaves or self-deceived tools of his desires ...
... too, that the tendency to put too much stress on externals has always been there and worked to overcloud the deeper spiritual motive; but that is not peculiar to India, it is a common failing of human nature, not less but rather more evident in Europe than in Asia. It has needed a constant stream of saints and religious thinkers and the teaching of illuminated Sannyasins to keep the Page 185 ...
... let it keep within the bounds of the practical reason and an earthly intelligence. This description no doubt isolates the main strands and ignores departures to one side or the other; and in all human nature there must be departures, often of an extreme kind. But it would not, I think, be an unfair or exaggerated description of the persistent ground and characteristic turn of the Western temperament ...
... really worth noting, the difference of mentality which is at the bottom of these comparisons. There is not any inferiority of life or force or active and reactive will but, as far as the sameness of human nature allows, a difference of type, character, personality, let us say, an emphasis in different and almost opposite directions. Will-power and personality have not been wanting in India, but the direction ...
... do my mind and vital want to make contact with human beings and acquire their narrow love and affection? Tell me now what I should do. Page 184 These are the usual weaknesses of the human nature when it makes relations with human beings—there are always these clashes and difficulties and turmoil in the vital. If you want to be free from them, do what we have already told you—look on all ...
... to come in you. Meditation is not enough; think of the Mother and offer your work and action to her, that will help you better. 7 April 1932 The play of the mental and vital defects in the human nature which belongs to the Ignorance is allowed—as also the attacks and suggestions of the Asuric forces—so long as there is anything in the nature which responds to these things. If they rise in you ...
... he had intended to say "lawyers", but his pronunciation gave his remark a deep force of philosophic observation and generalisation which he had not intended! But it seems to me the last word on human nature. Only the lying is sometimes intentional, some times vaguely half-intentional, sometimes quite unintentional, momentary and unconscious. So there you are! Learning Languages It seems most ...
... hostile forces and get wounded by them. What is the best means for them to go forward? Faith in the Mother and complete surrender. "This illusion of action is one of the greatest illusions of human nature. It hurts progress because it brings on you the necessity of rushing always into some excited movement" [ p. 67 ]. What is meant by "illusion of action"? Illusion means that they think their ...
... substance; they become capable for a moment of forgetting themselves, for a moment its divine touch awakens and magnifies all that is fine and beautiful. But afterwards there comes to the surface the human nature, full of its impure demands, asking for something in exchange, bartering what it gives, clamouring for its own inferior satisfactions, distorting and soiling what was divine." Questions and ...
... much profit as possible from the opportunities you have. For to profit by things one must appreciate them, you see. But this seems too natural for you to appreciate it. That's how it is. And as human nature is never constantly satisfied, you can even find many occasions for not being content, without even realising that if you were in other circumstances, they would be much more serious and [...] ...
... some impatience at the slowness of so many to realise what is after all a logical conclusion from the very principle of our Yoga which is that of a transformation, all that is disharmonious in human nature being enlightened out of existence, all that makes for harmony being changed into its divine equivalent, purer, greater, nobler, more beautiful and much being added which has been lacking to the ...
... only in the last two years that the last shadow of doubt, not latterly of its theoretical feasibility, but of the practical certainty of its achievement in the present state of the world and of the human nature, entirely left me. The same can be said of the egoistic poise,—that almost all strong men have the strong egoistic poise. But I do not think judging from the photograph that it is the same half ...
... embraces. It is a white flame, not a red one; but white heat is not inferior to the red variety in its ardour. It is true that the psychic love does not usually get its full play in human relations and human nature; it finds the fullness of its fire and ecstasy more easily when it is lifted towards the Divine. In the human relation the psychic love gets mixed up with other elements which seek at once to use ...
... but is not shaken, angered or grieved by them. We ourselves know what an obstacle all this egoism and falsehood are to our work, but are not impatient because we know also that they are part of human nature and have so much hold that it is difficult for the sadhak to get rid of them even when his mind really wishes to do so. They are with many sadhaks habits stronger than their will. When there is ...
... things from you in an occult way. The whole of Gandhi's affair is simply our passive resistance movement given an ethical instead of a political form, applied with a rigid thoroughness which human nature except in a minority cannot bear for long and given too a twist which seems to me to make it harmful to the sane balance and many-sided plasticity necessary for national life. What with Gandhi, ...
... written in that silence of the mind, without intellectual effort and by a free activity of this knowledge from above. This is important because the principle of this Yoga is not perfection of the human nature as it is but a psychic and spiritual transformation of all the parts of the being through the action of an inner consciousness and then of a higher consciousness which works on them, throws out ...
... intellects but try to see that truth and follow it. February 1933 It is not X alone, but many or most who turn things [ spoken by the Mother ] in that way—the tendency is almost universal in human nature. It is not from dishonesty that he or others do it—it is because when they listen, their minds are not silent but active and the thought of their minds mixes with what they have heard and gives ...
... on the Mother Telling the Whole Truth The unwillingness to tell the whole truth, the wish to conceal or justify things is another general trait of human nature which is common in the Asram. It is perfectly true that to do that is to stand in the way of one's own progress, but the lower nature is Page 463 strong and overcomes the buddhi . People ...
... not as a part of a gospel of Non-violence or pacific idealism. Peace is a part of the highest ideal, but it must be spiritual or at the very least psychological in its basis; without a change in human nature it cannot come with any finality. If it is attempted on any other basis (moral principle or gospel of Ahimsa or any other) it will fail, and even may leave things worse than before. He is in favour ...
... that stage and not as part of a gospel of Non-violence or Peace. Peace is part of the highest ideal, but it must be spiritual or at the very least psychological in its basis; without a change in human nature it cannot come with any finality. If it is attempted on any other basis (mental principle, or gospel of Ahimsa or any other) it will fail, and even may leave things worse than before. He is in favour ...
... one who follows it can in time discover the one Self in all and evolve a higher consciousness than the mental, a spiritual and supramental consciousness which will transform and divinise human nature. February 1934 Page 550 ...
... They want to grasp a happiness which will not come to an end. The instinct is a true one." 3 All? It is far too sweeping a generalisation. If he had said that is one very strong strain in human nature it could be accepted. But mark that it is in human physical consciousness only. The human vital tends rather to reject a happiness untainted by sorrow and to find it a monotonous, boring condition ...
... before something of it becomes perceptible in the life of the body. In brief, one can say that the supramental education will result not merely in a progressively developing formation of the human nature, an increasing growth of its latent faculties, but a transformation of the nature itself, a transfiguration of the being in its entirety, a new ascent of the species above and beyond man towards ...
... followed one another, religions, spiritual or social, have been created, their beginnings were at times full of promise: but, as humanity was not transformed at heart, the old errors arising from human nature itself have reappeared gradually and after a time it was found that one was left almost at the same spot from where one had started with so much hope and enthusiasm. In this effort, however, to ...
... Bulletin that letter of Sri Aurobindo’s: the “Evil Persona” 40 ? It is in the Bulletin . The thing is very well explained there. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - IV: The Difficulties of Human Nature The Mother Questions and Answers (1954): 3 February 1954 × "... Everyone possesses in a large measure ...
... get complete possession of him, driving out entirely the real human soul and personality. These creatures, when in possession of an earthly body, may have the human appearance but they have not a human nature. Their habit is to draw upon the life-force of human beings; they attack and capture vital power wherever they can and feed upon it. If they come into your atmosphere, you suddenly feel depressed ...
... character, genius, dynamic force, saintliness, love, purity or perfection. Supermind is something beyond mental man and his limits, a greater consciousness than the highest consciousness proper to human nature. ... Page 9 Man's greatness is not in what he is but in what he makes possible. His glory is that he is the closed place and secret workshop of a living labour in which supermanhood ...
... act according to my own inspiration!" Then, what are you going to do? Try to give a lesson to your mind? You may always try, but it is not sure that you will succeed. It is not an easy problem.... Human nature is very unstable; after having thought in one way, it thinks in another; after having felt in one way, it feels in another, and so on; nothing lasts: the good not longer than the bad; the bad, a ...
... transfiguring grace will most effectively radiate. And, fortunately for the aspirants, that successful future will materialise for them in spite of all the obstacles set in its way by unregenerate human nature! Page 180 ...
... the thing comes to you. Since I have been here—it is a long time, isn't it?—I have known people who have never asked me for anything; I don't even think (naturally there are always weaknesses in human nature), but I don't even think they have had a violent desire for anything at all, but when it was a need, automatically it came to them. Suddenly the idea would come to me, "Ah! This must be given to ...
... heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once ...
... exercised over his own being as over the environing human existence. The difficulty is great; for their hold is so strong, so apparently invincible that it justifies the disdainful dictum which compares human nature to a dog's tail,—for, straighten it never so much by force of ethics, religion, reason or any other redemptive effort, it returns in the end always to the crooked curl of Nature. And so great is ...
... be in contact with the divine Love which is behind all things. That is the best way. To want to get rid of the one in order to find the other is very difficult. It is almost impossible. For human nature is so limited, so full of contradictions and so exclusive in its movements that if one wants to reject love in its lower form, that is to say, human love as human beings experience it, if one makes ...
... mistake a stage for the goal or to linger too long in a resting place. " Thoughts and Glimpses, SABCL, Vol. 16, pp. 391-92 All that Sri Aurobindo says here is aimed at fighting against human nature with its inertia, its heaviness, laziness, easy satisfactions, hostility to all effort. How many times in life does one meet people who become pacifists because they are afraid Page 65 ...
... Letters on Yoga - IV: The Nature of the Vital In the ordinary life, people accept the vital movements, anger, desire, greed, sex etc. as natural, allowable and legitimate things, part of the human nature. Only so far as society discourages them or wishes to keep them within fixed limits or subject to a decent restraint or measure, people try to control them so as to conform to the social standard ...
... change things. It is merely taking a cup and beating the water in it; the water is moved about, but it is not changed for all your beating. This illusion of action is one of the greatest illusions of human nature. It hurts progress because it brings on you the necessity of rushing always into some excited movement. If you could only perceive the illusion and see how useless it all is, how it changes nothing ...
... mathematics, which stands on a footing of its own, knowledge may be divided into two great heads, the knowledge of things and the knowledge of men, that is to say, of human thought, human actions, human nature and human creations as recoided, preserved or pictured in literature, history, philosophy and art. The latter is covered in the term humanities or humane letters and the idea of a liberal education ...
... few and unimportant. Once a man becomes conscious of the Divine and unites with Him, he certainly becomes abnormal to ordinary eyes, for he no longer has the weaknesses that make up ordinary human nature. But fortunately for him, by the very fact of his inner realisation, he loses man's habit of boasting and is thus able to avoid the ill will of others. 5 December 1969 ...
... them, the form of these relations, depend upon the human consciousness. You may be... It has been said, "Men are cattle for the gods", but if men accept to be cattle. There is in the essence of human nature a sovereignty over all things which is spontaneous Page 37 and natural, when it is not falsified by a certain number of ideas and so-called knowledge. One could say that man is the ...
... very unfortunate, but it can be put right. Whereas to go on making the same mistake, knowing that it must not be made, is an act of cowardice which we must not permit ourselves. To say, "Oh, human nature is like this. Oh, we are in the inconscience. Oh, we are in the ignorance,"—all this is laziness and weakness. And behind this laziness and weakness there is a huge bad will. There! I say this ...
... one another; religions, spiritual or social, have been created; their beginnings have sometimes been promising, but as humanity has not been fundamentally transformed, the old errors arising from human nature itself have gradually reappeared and after some time we find ourselves almost back at the point we had started from with so much hope and enthusiasm. Also, in this effort to improve human conditions ...
... it does not follow at all that humanity will be automatically bettered. Scientific progress does not necessarily imply moral progress. Scientific and intellectual knowledge is powerless to change human nature, and yet that has become the pressing need. If human greed and passion remain what they are today, almost the same as they were in the Stone Age, then humanity is doomed. We have reached a point ...
... response it hoped for... SCHOOLFRIEND My poor friend! SHE Oh, I am not telling you this to arouse your pity. I am not to be pitied. My dream is practically unrealisable in the world as it is. Human nature would have to change so much for this to become possible. Besides, my husband and I are very good friends, although that does not prevent us both from feeling very isolated. Esteem and mutual c ...
... rule, and feel happy and proud merely to serve under it and ensure its continuation, strikes the native of Europe as a most monstrous mockery, as some unimaginable and unaccountable perversion of human nature. He gradually gets to believe that whatever may be the excellence of his domestic life or the greatness of his philosophy, the Indian is by birth fit only to be a slave, and education succeeds in ...
... an inelastic dogma. We preach defensive resistance mainly passive in its methods at present, but active whenever active resistance is needed; but defensive resistance within the limits imposed by human nature and by the demands of self-respect and the militant spirit of true manhood. If at any time the laws obtaining in India or the executive action Page 296 of the bureaucracy were to become ...
... facts we see around us or in the nature of things. They are inconsistent with the fundamental nature of foreign domination; they ignore the experience of all other subject nations; they disregard human nature and the conditions of human development in communities. The Loyalist gospel is as untrue as it is ignoble. Page 359 ...
... Press in England on his courage in coupling repression with reforms, kicks with bread-crumbs. For ourselves we are struck by his singular want of sagacity and of even an elementary knowledge of human nature and the feelings which govern great masses of men. As well might we call the policy of a Louis XVI or a Czar Nicholas courageous. The courage may or may not be there, but there can be no doubt of ...
... to insist on the indulgence conceded to him as on a right, to rebel against occasional harshnesses, to wag his tongue with too insolent a licence and disobey imperative orders, then it is not in human nature for the master to refrain from calling for the scourge and the fetters. And if the slave resists the application of the scourge and the imposition of the fetters, it becomes a matter of life and ...
... details of life or thought, she is unable to harmonize them into a perfect symphony and she falls into intellectual heresies, practical extravagances which contradict the facts of life, the limits of human nature and the ultimate truths of existence. It is therefore the office of Asia to take up the work of human evolution when Europe comes to a standstill and loses itself in a clash of vain speculations ...
... to become general and unless something is done to stem the tide of evil, it will sweep away the soul of India in its turbid current and leave only a shapeless monstrosity of all that is worst in human nature. We are convinced, of course, that India is destined to rise again, we await with confidence the coming of the avatar of strength who will follow the avatar of love, but in order that He ...
... than the more ferocious species. "Obey me or perish" is the attitude of the latter, and it is one which can be appreciated if not admired. But "love me or die" is a principle of government to which human nature cannot so easily accustom itself. It is too ethereal for the grossness of our base terrestrial composition. Page 1023 ...
... proportions. I have seen that more than half of the untoward happenings of this kind in life are due to this cause. But in ordinary life personal feeling and sensitiveness are a constant part of human nature and may be needed there for self-defence, although, I think, even there, a strong, large and equal attitude towards men and things would be a much better line of defence. But, for a sadhak, to surmount ...
... Guest in human beings. It is the same with Indra or Soma. The building of the gods in man means a creation of the divine Powers, Indra the Power of the Light, Soma the Power of the Ananda in the human nature. No doubt, the Rishis felt the actual presence of the gods above, near, around or in them, but this was a common experience of all, not special and personal, not an emanation or incarnation. ...
... is something more than that, and this transformation does not come by contemplation alone; works are necessary, Yoga in action is indispensable. The Need for Plasticity One must not treat human nature like a machine to be handled according to rigid mental rules—a great plasticity is needed in dealing with its complex motives. Fundamentally the nature in all is the same and the methods ...
... and Capital was suspended. It was then hoped that after the war the spirit of unity, conciliation and compromise would continue to reign and the threatened conflict would be averted. Nothing in human nature or in history warranted any such confident trust in the hopes of the moment. The interclass conflict has long been threatening like the European collision. The advent of the latter was preceded ...
... enormous masses of men, once subjects and passive means of self-enrichment but henceforth to be powerful equals and perhaps formidable rivals, is too great a demand upon egoistic Page 435 human nature to be easily and spontaneously conceded where concession is not forced upon the mind by actual necessity or the hope of some great and palpable gain that will compensate the immediate and visible ...
... what form the State may assume. The tyranny of the absolute king over all and Page 293 the tyranny of the majority over the individual—which really converts itself by the paradox of human nature into a hypnotised oppression and repression of the majority by itself—are forms of one and the same tendency. Each, when it declares itself to be the State with its absolute "L'état, c'est moi" ...
... which oppose them. The pure application of ideals to politics is as yet a revolutionary method of action which can only be hoped for in exceptional crises; the day when it becomes a rule of life, human nature and life itself will have become a new phenomenon, something almost superterrestrial and divine. That day is not yet. The Allied Powers in Europe were themselves nations with an imperial past and ...
... necessities and instincts. The clan and the tribe ideas had a similar origin, less primary and compelling, and therefore looser and more dissoluble; but still they arose from the vital necessity in human nature for aggregation and the ready basis given to it by the inevitable physical growth of the family into clan or tribe. These were natural aggregations, evolutionary forms already prepared on the animal ...
... the most striking recent developments of "modern" humanity. But this may be regarded perhaps as a temporary backsliding, though it sheds lurid lights on the still existing darker possibilities of human nature. × Now we must say Great Britain and Ireland, for the United Kingdom exists no longer. ...
... direct touch of the Divine into its perfect light and power and bliss. The large mass of human beings might still remain for long content with a normal or only a partially illumined and uplifted human nature. But this would be itself a sufficiently radical change and initial transformation of earth-life; for the way would be open to all who have the will to rise, the supramental influence of the tr ...
... same psychological intention perseveres, the same simple & profound ideas & expressions recur in the same natural association, with the same harmony & fixed relation founded on the eternal truth of human nature & a fine & subtle observation of its psychological faculties & functionings. The next reference to Ritam meets us in the twenty-third hymn of the Mandala, the last hymn of the series assigned ...
... tribulation, suffering, disharmony, disorder, obscure Inconscience. To spiritual experience it is not a speculation but a fact that there is a Godhead immanent within behind this flawed and imperfect human nature into some likeness to which this nature can try to grow; there is something behind the cosmic movement with all its disorder which is of the nature of abiding peace, calm, strength, joy and all ...
... twisted by misuse of Mind) and the ability (not much used as yet) of reaching towards higher things. Human life and mind are neither in tune with Nature like the animals nor with Spirit—it [ human nature ] is disturbed, incoherent, conflicting with itself, without harmony and balance. We can then regard it as diseased, if not itself a disease. Yes, it is a more simple and honest consciou ...
... general forces and impulses in the atmosphere ] are able to act with a greater force if they can make a special formation Page 559 than by a general psychological action common to all human nature. The forces are conscious. There are besides individualised beings who represent the forces or use them. The wall between consciousness and force, impersonality and personality becomes much ...
... forbidden to use powers from mere vital motives, to make an Asuric ostentation of them or to turn them into a support for arrogance, conceit, ambition—or any other of the amiable weaknesses to which human nature is prone. It is because half-baked Yogins so often fall into these traps of the hostile forces that the use of Yogic powers is sometimes discouraged as harmful to the user. But it is mostly people ...
... the nature can change. Obviously what the Mother told you was the fact—but such missing of opportunities should not discourage, the recognition of it must be a spur to do better in future. Human nature is weak and is always missing the divine opportunities; but if the spirit is willing, the weakness of the nature is obliged eventually to yield to its will. Renew that will always, so that failure ...
... Page 463 generally of the ordinary nature in which we are born. Your dream was evidently a symbolic representation of some part of the vital plane (corresponding to a part of human nature also) in which the Mother had made her house (established something of her consciousness). The village represented some formation of human life in which there is outward beauty and harmony as in ...
... own increase. Thus divine force continues ever increasing in our Page 624 purified mentality. To heaven and earth in man, manushye, mind & matter manifesting in this mortal world & in human nature, Agni stands in two relations. Divine force in us is purity & to the soul that is pure both mental & physical nature become harmonious, amical, like two friends and helpful playfellows. Divine force ...
... compromise, no abating reserves or conditions, no profitable compact between the egoistic life and virtue. It is offensive too to the practical reason, for it ignores the complexity of the world and of human nature and seems to savour of an extremism and exclusive exaggeration as dangerous to life as it is exalted in ideal purpose. Fiat justitia ruat coelum , let justice and right be done though the heavens ...
... be the nature of man the mental being. On this basis it becomes possible to come at some clear and not wholly antinomous relation between man's necessity and man's freedom, between his earthly human nature at whirl in the machinery of mind, life and body and the master Soul, the Godhead, the real Man behind whose consent supports or whose bidding governs its motions. The soul of man is a power of ...
... Varuna, the vast form of the Truth, and Mitra the beloved, godhead of its harmonies and large bliss, who conquer for us the perfect force of our true and infinite being, to change our imperfect human nature into the image of their divine workings. Then the solar Heaven of the Truth is manifested within us, its wide pasture of herding illuminations becomes the field of journeying of our chariots, the ...
... opposition, a missing of the divine equation, of the total sense of creation and the entire will of the Creator. That equation can only be found if we recognise the purport of our whole complex human nature in its right place in the cosmic movement; what is needed is to give its full legitimate value to each part of our composite being and many-sided aspiration and find out the key of their unity as ...
... would be some race or kind or make of human beings that has already the material of the superman in it, just as the peculiar animal being that developed into humanity had the essential elements of human nature already potential or present in it: there is no such race, kind or type, at most there are only spiritualised mental beings who are seeking to escape out of the terrestrial creation. If by any occult ...
... shakti Page 733 is required not only for the lower but still necessary use, but also for the free and full operation of mind and supermind and spirit in the instrumentality of our complex human nature. That is the main sense of the use of exercises of Pranayama for control of the vital force and its motions which is so important and indispensable a part of certain systems of Yoga. The same mastery ...
... declare that to the spirit there is no difference between them, which would be in the plane of individual action an obvious untruth and might serve to cover a reckless self-indulgence of the imperfect human nature. Neither is it meant that since good and evil are in this world inextricably entangled together, like pain and pleasure,—a proposition which, however true at the moment and plausible as a generalisation ...
... include, if it is to deserve the name, two things, self-mastery and a mastery of the surroundings; it must seek for them in the greatest degree of these powers which is at all attainable by our human nature. Man's urge of self-perfection is to be, in the ancient language, svarāṭ and samrāṭ , self-ruler and king. But to be self-ruler is not possible for him if he is subject to the attack of the lower ...
... vices and passions, the exaggerations of the aesthesis, the morbidities and perversions of the sensational and vital being. Tamas in its own right produces the coarse, dull and ignorant type of human nature, rajas the vivid, restless, kinetic man, driven by the breath of action, passion and desire. Sattwa produces a higher type. The gifts of sattwa are the mind of reason and balance, clarity of the ...
... equal bliss which can only come when the peace of equality is founded and which is the beatific flower of its fullness. The next necessity of perfection is to raise all the active parts of the human nature to that highest condition and working pitch of their power and capacity, śakti , at which they become capable of being divinised into true instruments of the free, perfect, spiritual and divine ...
... 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 shape out a collectivity, a nation, a State with the purpose ...
... indefinitely could be there even before. Whatever signs of age and whatever physical ailments might appear would be because of a sanction of the conscious will in order to meet every difficulty facing human nature and to cope with it by actual acceptance of it: unless this is done there can be no complete evolutionary Page 154 conquest significant for the race. Whether the final physical ...
... cellular consciousness was going on in the Mother but there seemed to have been no definitive supramentalisation of the physical stuff. The difficulty lay in the fact that these Avatars had assumed human nature with all its fundamental difficulties, the human constitution as evolved in the course of millennia, for then alone whatever change they would achieve in themselves would be meaningful for us, be ...
... Chaitanya, the intellect of a Plato and the exquisite sensibility of a Da Vinci? If we accept a Spirit as well as its secondary powers as concealed in the material shell, we can comprehend both sides of human nature no less than all those intermediate impulses between the brute and the superman which constitute average humanity. The one last question which intrudes itself hails from the moralist quarter: ...
... the mind. of man was granted its own non-material essence, the body of man came under the mechanistic category and even the mind was regarded with a mechanistic eye. As Edmund Wilson 2 puts it, human nature came to be reduced to a set of principles according to which it invariably acted. Everything was strictly rationalised. In poetry also the role of the imagination was diminished - it was made out ...
... peaceful transference of power to the people, thus securing a glorious euthanasia which would have been remembered in history as an unique example of self-denial and far-seeing statesmanship. But human nature is too feeble to arise to such heights of wisdom and self-abnegation except in those rare instances when the divine breath enters into Page 980 a nation and lifts it to a pitch of enthusiasm ...
... phrase, the readiness to use repression and what are erroneously called strong measures, to intimidate a popular movement, is a tendency which belongs not to British character especially but to human nature, and should be considered the result not of character but of the position. The Government in India favour repression because it seems the only way of getting over what they regard as a dangerous ...
... Within that general individuality there are typal, racial, national, class individualities and each man has his own individual nature, one indeed in its general basis and materials with general human nature and with his type, race, class, nation, but yet possessed of its own principle of particular individuation. It is this which reigns in his mentality, vital being, physical being and stamps itself ...
... human being on earth is God playing at humanity in a world of matter under the conditions of a hampered density with the ulterior intention of imposing law of spirit on matter & nature of deity upon human nature. Evolution is nothing but the progressive unfolding of Spirit out of the density of material consciousness and the gradual self-revelation of God out of this apparent animal being. Yoga is the ...
... and obstructions arise, be apramatta, dhīra , have the utsāha , and leave God to do the rest. Time is necessary. It is a tremendous work that is being done in you, the alteration of your whole human nature into a divine nature, the crowding of centuries of evolution into a few years. You ought not to grudge the time. There are other paths that offer more immediate results or at any rate, by offering ...
... has a swabhava or nature and acts according to it, and the universe also has its swabhava or nature and acts according to it. Mankind is a group of individuals and every man acts according to his human nature, that is his law of being as distinct from animals, trees or other groups of individuals. Each man has a distinct nature of his own and that is his law of being which ought to guide him as an individual ...
... a supreme restraint twice repeated, by that diminutive pregnancy, the adverb "once". And a long persistent mass of pitiful ordinary experience is gathered up, with a deft display of knowledge of human nature, in the moving yet poised phrases: Helped by the anxious joy of their kindred supported their anguish 1 P. 19. 2 P. 23. 3 P. 56. Page 120 Women with travail ...
... still at peace! The role of Sri Aurobindo the dramatic poet is worth bearing in mind when, face to face with his later poetic work, one is inclined to believe that he looks too much beyond human nature. Of course, even his philosophical and spiritual inspiration would be misjudged by such a belief; for he always returns upon the world of clay and flux and common breath after his conquest of fire ...
... ( gesture of crumbling ). And strangely, almost at the same time, there's torture and bliss—almost at the same time. There you are. ( Mother coughs silence ) Only, what's odd is that human nature as it is constituted seems to understand torture more readily than bliss. There's a curious phenomenon: because books [by Mother] are published, I am put in contact with things I said before ...
... subterranean palace: Blake substitutes the Lion because in the Neoplatonist tradition the empire of Pluto begins from the sign Leo where "the rudiments of birth, and certain primary exercises of human nature commence..." 20 Blake's Lion symbolizes 17. Ibid., 33. 18. Ibid., 43. 19. Ibid., pp. 43-44. 20. Ibid., p. 36. Page 135 Pluto, but in the designs of the poems ...
... early morning balcony darshan until evening time. Have you faced many difficulties in your sadhana and how do you deal with such difficulties? Yes, naturally there have been difficulties. Human nature is not so wonderful. Prayer is essential. Always pray to the Mother for help. Also one should look at oneself clearly and honestly in order to set things right in one’s being. Only with her help ...
... the social system for this falsification while Freud blamed it on the hidden content of the subconscious. In his civilization and its Discontent, 13 Freud made explicit his assumption that human nature and society can have conflicting demands, and this can lead to a edge. But for him self-knowledge meant "the knowledge of personal causes, not transcendent needs, of organic appetites, not ...
... Kwannon. Face and figure are not strangers in the realm of Spirit - the Divine is heard, seen, touched, and if any Yoga is to be fruitful it must yearn with sense as well as soul, the whole complex of human nature must be bent on the Divine, for then only can the Divine be experienced in its fullness and its luminous substantiality. Unless the Spirit is loved concretely as if it were physical and material ...
... representation of general nature' alone. The overplus of Shakespearian creative poetic energy goes far beyond in that it conjures up new worlds or invents the world anew, this latter 'the invention of human nature' that Harold Bloom has recently celebrated in Shakespeare in his recent book of that title. This point of Sri Aurobindo, emphasised by Sethna, would remind usthat the same Dr. Johnson who in his ...
... khadi (hand-spun cotton) instead of woollen clothes or wrapping a shawl around himself, but bathing seems difficult to him!” By such anecdotes, my father used to illustrate the peculiarities of human nature. These stories have proved most useful in my life. On occasions he taught us through couplets, verses, poems, or fables. At that time these things interested me but were not fully understood ...
... themselves; if they put themselves on the right side, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose in spite of all defects, errors, wrong movements and actions which are common to human nature and all human collectivities. The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces; the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly ...
... then be something worthwhile Eastern spirituality has to tell about modern science in general and evolution in particular? In 1949, Sri Aurobindo wrote in a message: “East and West have the same human nature, a common human destiny, the same aspiration after a greater perfection, the same seeking after something higher than itself, something towards which inwardly and even outwardly we move. There has ...
... and half to fall, Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of Truth, in endless error hurl’d; The glory, jest and riddle of the world. If, as Immanuel Kant also thought, “human nature occupies as it were the middle rung of the Scale of Being,” the scale must consist not only of matter, life-force and mind, but also of spiritual gradations above the mind (which was another reason ...
... of the old fiasco – a partial and transient spiritual opening within with no true and radical change in the external nature.” 4 The old fiasco was the effort of the previous Avatars to change human nature and make spiritual progress in the material evolution possible. In his Essays on the Gita Sri Aurobindo had already written: “Not till the Time-Spirit in man is ready can the inner and ultimate ...
... the USA Congress: “Without a worldwide revolution in the human consciousness nothing will change for the better.” This agrees with Sri Aurobindo’s declaration that “an inner change is needed in human nature,” and that “if this is not the solution, then there is no solution, if this is not the way, then there is no way for the human kind.” 12 Laszlo seems to share this conviction, but two turns ...
... Patterns of the Present Introductory Quotes ..to hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition; it is to ask for something unnatural and unreal, an impossible miracle. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: The Divine Life Mankind has a habit of surviving the worst catastrophes ...
... increased from 24 to 150 in 1935. The descent of the over-mental consciousness and Light had charged the atmosphere of the ashram with dynamic silence. The main object, however, was to transform the human nature into the divine and that demanded its own pace. A good deal of human patience was called for. GOVINDBHAI ...
... in social and cultural living and the township of Auroville was taken in hand. This evoked a wide response and the project has already yielded some fine results. The partialities of the normal human nature, its limitations and prejudices presented tremendous difficulties. But integration and integrality are high ideals, which must be pursued and therefore the difficulties faced and overcome. The Mother ...
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