... that large or rich sweep or power which belongs to the Illumined Mind is not part of its character. Moreover, it is subtle and fine and has not the wideness which is the characteristic of the planes that rise towards the vast universality of the Overmind." (What distinguishes in manner and quality a pure inspiration of the Illumined Mind from that which has the psychic plane for its origin... something of the Higher Mind. 3 "Intuitive with Overmind ouch. 4 "Intuitive. 5 "Higher Mind with mental Overmind touch. 6 "Mixture of Higher and Illumined Mind—in the last line the mental Overmind touch. 7. "Illumined Mind with mental Overmind touch. 8. "Ditto. 9. "Intuitive, Illumined, Overmind touch all mixed together. "I have analysed very impeifectly—because these... through its sleep: like memories left behind Of some enormous sculpture-cry of soul The rocks reveal their shattered silences. SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENT "A very fine poem—Illumined Mind throughout very perfectly expressed."—"No, it is not the epic kind [of blank verse]—the rhythm is rather large, calm and reflective than epic." 1 "There is a substitute for tie expression ...
... best, the illumined mind." His verdict on the first version of the poem was: "Good on the whole." The second version—the present one—had his approval. He marked off the last couplet and three other lines— Pale silence blossoms like a rose Deep-rooted in the soul's eternity... Where Brindavan has gone behind its God— as having come "through from the illumined mind". He added:... " "To get back from the surface vital into the psychic and psychic vital, to raise the level of your mental from the intellect to the Illumined Mind is your need both in poetry and in Yoga.... If you could always write direct from the Illumined Mind—finding there not only the substance, as Page 124 you often do, but the rhythm and language—that indeed would be a poetry exquisite... SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENT That is extraordinarily fine thioughout. But it is too fine for any need of remarks. Lines 3 4, 5, also 10,11, 12, 13, 14, Illumined Mind with Overmind Intuition touch—the rest Higher Mind suffused with Illumined Mind." * (The Muse is again away and I am feeling impatient. Can't you give me some clue about the direction of consciousness by which I may ...
... paradise to paradise!" SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENT This is now quite perfect. Only, the lines 2-5 are now of the illumined Mind, with a strong undertone of the effective, 1 the first and last four intuitive. This is not a defect. "The poetry of the Illumined Mind is usually full of a play of lights and colours, brilliant and striking in phrase, for illumination makes the Truth vivid—it... inward expression of it. The Illumined Mind sometimes gets rid of its trappings, but even then it always keeps a sort of lustrousness of robe which is its characteristic." * 1 The reference is evidently to one of he five kinds of style Sri Aurobindo has .distinguished on pp. 100-104. In the present context he seems to take the style of the Illumined Mind to be ipso facto that... over life! SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENT 'It is certainly very original and expresses with great force the spiritual experience. A very fine poem—most of it being in substance from the Illumined Mind (except 2 or 3 lines) but its rhythm belongs to the poetic intelligence, strong and clear-cut but not with the subtle or large inner tones of the overhead music. It is a very luminous and powerful ...
... to the poem, these lines rise out of the mental like islands out of the sea. Moreover, except in the lines marked with a cross where the illumined Mind gets strongly in, the 'note' is not quite pure,—there is the higher Mind tone, even a little of the illumined Mind, but not enough to make it absolutely that. It is a fine poem with very fine lines in it." * APOTHEOSIS Spurning... mind. SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENT "It is very good. Such inversions as in the fifth line should not be too often used, as in modern English they are apt to be puzzling. It is from the Illumined Mind that the poem as a whole seems to have come. Most of your poems now are from there. "Lines 1-3: Illumined style . Line 4: Illumined inspired style. Lines 5-8: Effective illunined style... infinity, A fire-tongue nourished by God's whole expanse Through darknesses of superhuman trance. SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENT "Lines five to eight (marked double) are from the Illumined Mind touched with the Intuition—the rest seem to be mainly from the Higher Mind, except that the last two [marked double] have a force of Illumination also. Perhaps the sustained intensity is less than ...
... divine power, measure, dignity is its most frequent character". 10 The One Self everywhere is common to all the overhead planes, but the force at work varies: the Illumined Mind visions rather than thinks. "The outflow of the Illumined Mind comes in a flood brilliant with revealing words or a light of crowding images, sometimes surcharged with its burden of revelations, sometimes with a luminous sweep... semblances from the Illumined Mind truly breaking through the Higher Thought when we get Sri Aurobindo's: One-pointed to the immaculate Delight, Questing for God as for a splendid prey, He mounted burning like a cone of fire 25 – and we rise sheer beyond all possible affinities with Milton's "pyramid of fire" or even his "Eternal Eye" when the Illumined Mind comes assimilated... cosmic functions. The poetic word hailing from the Overmind is the Mantra. We have already spoken of its characteristics. Leading up to its source from the mental plane are the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuition. Unlike the Mind proper, the Higher Mind carries a natural awareness of the One Self everywhere and knows and sees through a lofty and comprehensive thought-force. It has "a strong ...
... into a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfilment. These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis. All these degrees Page 142 are... proceeds; it charges the whole being with a new and superior consciousness, lays a foundation of change, prepares it for a superior truth of existence. The Life Divine, pp. 939-41 (b) Illumined Mind The power of the spiritual Higher Mind and its idea-force, modified and diminished as it must be by its entrance into our mentality, is not sufficient to sweep out all these obstacles... capacitate a higher ascent and a more powerful descent and further prepare an integration of the being in a greater Force of consciousness and knowledge. This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a ...
... Page 200 !. "Illumined Mind. 2. "Illumined Mind. 3. "Intuition. 4. "Illumined Mind with an intuitive element and a strong Overmind touch. 5. "Illumined Mind. 6. "Difficult to say. More of Higher Mind perhaps than anything else—but something of illumination and intuition also. 7. "it is a mixture. Something of the Illumined Mind, something of the Poetic Intelligence... Intelligence diluting the full sovereignty of the higher expression. 8. "Higher Mind combined with Illumined. 9. "Illumined Mind with something from Intuition. 10. "Illumined Mind with something from Overmind." * (Here is your passage describing Savitri in whom the God of Love found "his perfect shrine": Near to earth's wideness, intimate with heaven, Exalted ...
... was bright. (Ibid.) 1."Illumined Mind. 2."Illumined Mind. 3."Intuition. 4."Illumined Mind with an intuitive element and a strong Overmind touch. 5."Illumined Mind. 6."Difficult to say. More of Higher Mind perhaps than anything else—but something of illumination and intuition also. 7."It is a mixture. Something of the Illumined Mind, something of the Poetic In... Intelligence diluting the full sovereignty of the higher expression. 8."Higher Mind combined with Illumined. 9."Illumined Mind with something from Intuition. 10. "Illumined Mind with something from Overmind." * (Here is your passage describing Savitri in whom the God of Love found "his perfect shrine": Near to earth's wideness, intimate with heaven, Exalted ...
... bounded view. 16 Illumined by a vision in the thought. 17 A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes. 18 Sight in the Illumined Mind Beyond the plane of the Higher Mind of Truth-thought lies the plane of the Illumined Mind of Truth-sight, which works primarily by spiritual vision and not by thought: thought is here only a subordinate and secondary movement expressive... into a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfilment. These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis. 8 Now the ascending sight of the sadhaka... as it mounts the ladder of the four-rung 'Spiritual Mind' series. We describe in a brief outline the nature of sight in each of the four levels represented by (i) the Higher Mind, (ii) the Illumined Mind, (iii) the Intuitive Mind, and (iv) the Overmind. But before that let us enjoy the rasa of a significant passage from Savitri: A vision came of higher realms than ours, 6 ...
... eyebrows — ājñācakra — governs the dynamic mind, will, vision, mental formation; the thousand-petalled lotus — sahasradala — above commands the higher thinking mind, houses the still higher illumined mind and at the highest opens to the intuition through which or else by an overflooding directness the overmind can have with the rest communication or an immediate contact." — Sri Aurobindo ... thought-power and comprehensive mental sight. In the Higher Mind one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees habitually with that awareness. Illumined Mind: a mind no longer of higher thought, but of spiritual light; here the clarity of the intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour... power of consciousness nearer and more intimate than the above-mentioned gradations to the original knowlege by identity. What is thought-knowledge in the Higher Mind becomes illumination in the Illumined Mind and direct intimate vision in the Intuition. This true and authentic intuition must be distinguished from a power of the ordinary mental reason which is too easily confused with it, that power ...
... resolved into a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfilment. These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis. All these degrees are gnostic in their principle... will capacitate a higher ascent and a more powerful descent and further prepare an integration of the being in a greater Force of consciousness and knowledge. This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the Page 978 clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an... inner force and power which replaces the comparatively slow and deliberate process of the Higher Mind by a swift, sometimes a vehement, almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation. The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; thought is here only a subordinate movement expressive of sight. The human mind, which relies mainly on thought, conceives that to be the highest ...
... Mind to a steady sun-shine, the knowledge of the Illumined Mind beyond it can be seen as an outpouring of massive lightnings of a flaming sun-stuff. Beyond the Illumined Mind is the Intuitive Mind. It has a still greater power of Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action. The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision... Note by Sri Aurobindo, published in Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 10-12.) Page 243 APPENDIX III (Selected Passages on Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind and Supermind) Our first decisive step out of our human intelligence, our normal mentality, is an ascent into a higher Mind, a mind no longer of-mingled light and... capacitate a higher ascent and a more powerful descent and further prepare an integration of the being in a greater Force of consciousness and knowledge. This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual _____________________________ ¹ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Centenary Library, Vol ...
... (4)"Illumined by a vision in the thought" (176) (5)"A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes" (659) (B.2) Sight in the Illumined Mind : Beyond the plane of the Higher Mind of Truth-Thought lies the plane of the Illumined Mind of Truth-Sight, which works primarily by spiritual vision and not by thought: thought is here only a subordinate and secondary movement expressive... into a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfillment. These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis." (p. 938) Now the ascending sight of... mounts the ladder of the four-rung "spiritual Mind" series. We now intend to describe in brief outline the nature of the sight in each of the four levels represented by (i) the Higher Mind, (ii) the Illumined Mind, (iii) the Intuitive Mind, and (iv) the Overmind. But before that let us enjoy the rasa of a significant passage from Savitri: "A vision came of higher realms than ours, A ...
... sunshine, the knowledge of the Illumined Mind beyond it can be seen as an outpouring of massive lightning of a flaming sun-stuff. 48 Intuitive Mind Beyond the Illumined Mind is the Intuitive Mind. It has a still greater power of Truth-Force, and intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action. The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought... psychic or psycho-spiritual change. There is thus the necessity of an upward journey above our mind and an ascent of consciousness not only into the higher ranges of the superconscient Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuitive Mind but also of Overmind and spiritual nature in which the sense of Self and Spirit is ever unveiled and permanent and in which the self-luminous instrumentation of the Self and... ss and power of five planes which are distinguishable in the path of spiritual ascension, the path of ascent into the superconscient above the mind. These five planes are: the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overmnid, and Supermind. Page 53 Higher Mind The Higher Mind is, according to Sri Aurobindo, a mind which is no longer subject to mingled light and obscurity ...
... as the aspect of the truth, the Higher Mind would be like steady sunshine coming down all the time. The next would be the Illumined Mind which has the constant light of the Overmind. "If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth—we may compare the energy of the Illumined Mind to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming Sun-stuff"— as if the body of the sun was throwing out lightnings and the... all cases. It might be only Intuition; it might be the Illumined Mind, it might be the Higher Mind. Overmind is very rare. Some operation of Overmind one may feel, but not the Overmind itself—Overmind itself is overwhelmingly wide. Q : Are there different stages of illumintion ? A : Yes, from mind you go to Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind and the Overmind. That's Page... movement of universal nature. In the transition from mind to the Supermind one first comes to the movement of what Sri Aurobindo calls the Higher Mind. The next higher layer will be that of the Illumined Mind; the third layer will be Intuitive Mind. The fourth will be Overmind, and Overmind directly puts one in contact with the Supermind. The movement of ascent from mind often begins by stopping all ...
... thought-power and comprehensive mental sight. In the Higher Mind one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees habitually with that awareness. Illumined Mind: a mind no longer of higher thought, but of spiritual light; here the clarity of the intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and... power of consciousness nearer and more intimate than the above-mentioned gradations to the original knowledge by identity. What is thought-knowledge in the Higher Mind becomes illumination in the Illumined Mind and direct intimate vision in the Intuition. This true and authentic intuition must be distinguished from a power of the ordinary mental reason which is too easily confused with it, that power... the Ignorance —the consciousness of Multiplicity as distinguished from the Knowledge, the consciousness of Unity; a view of the reality based on separative or egoistic consciousness. **Illumined Mind* — see under gradations between mind and Supermind.** the Inconscient (Inconscience) —the most involved state of the Superconscience; all powers of the Superconscience progressively evolve ...
... that large or rich sweep or power which belongs to the Illumined Mind is not part of its character. Moreover, it is subtle and fine and has not the wideness which is the characteristic of the planes that rise towards the vast universality of the Overmind." (What distinguishes in manner and quality a pure inspiration of the Illumined Mind from that which has the psychic plane for its origin... through its sleep: like memories left behind Of some enormous sculpture-cry of soul The rocks reveal their shattered silences. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "A very fine poem—Illumined Mind throughout very perfectly expressed."—"No, it is not the epic kind [of blank verse]—the rhythm is rather large, calm and reflective than epic." 1 "There is a substitute for the expression... as the very body of the higher consciousness.... Shakespeare's poetry coruscates with a play of the hues of imagination which we may regard as a mental substitute for the inspiration of the Illumined Mind and sometimes by aiming at an exalted note he links on to the illumined overhead inspiration itself as in the lines I have more than once quoted: 1 Further light from Sri Aurobindo ...
... passes distinctly through The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone and mixes with that of the illumined mind in An eye of deity pierced through the dumb deeps and is replaced completely by it with A slow miraculous gesture's dim appeal. The illumined mind works up to the intuition in the phrases about the "gold panel and opalescent hinge" fixed by the wandering... wander through Eternity. 11 Sri Aurobindo distinguishes a fourfold gradation of the overhead planes as having acted so far in the world's literature on a few occasions: higher mind, illumined mind, intuition, overmind. On all these planes the experience of the Infinite is automatic, and there is a light of direct knowledge of the universe's fundamental being and becoming. But the light... arche-type of the mental Miltonic, the plane active behind Milton's grand style but unable to send its own spiritual stuff of thought in an authentic shape and motion through his genius. The illumined mind is more a luminous seeing than a luminous thinking: it is a play of spiritual sight, the divine secrecies are disclosed through a crowd of colourful yet subtle images in a swift or slow design ...
... ascent: there are in it many steps... no gap anywhere... the gradation can be resolved into a stairway of four main ascents... a series of sublimation of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis. All these degrees are gnostic in their principle... a general, if not a total, conversion of the being into a new light and power of a greater existence. 55 The steps of ascent or "slow gradations" between Mind and Supermind - Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind - spiritual-mental powers, superconscient so far as mental man is concerned, but definitely below sovereign Supermind. In the Arya, Overmind was not mentioned; it was identified... accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, - an image which in this experience becomes a reality, - we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force.. .Intuition... an intermediary of a greater Truth-Light.. ...
... poetry: they are "planes" whose afflatus comes as if from an Page 59 infinitude of conscious being above our brain-clamped mentality. Sri Aurobindo labels them Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and Overmind. Above even Over-mind is the sovereign divine dynamism which he names Supermind and whose ultimate manifestation is the goal of his Integral Yoga. But Supermind, in its... the reflective terms do not exist in their own right but as immediate formations of That which, in the language of the Upanishads, does not think by the mind but by which the mind is thought. The Illumined Mind has a greater intensity of spiritual light and comes forth with a direct vision of fundamental realities rather than with reflective terms. It discloses the very colours and contours, as it were... demonstrating a gradation of inspired speech; and, although a slight overlapping occurs, the parts mostly offer different aspects of that gradation. The first shows the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind and the Intuition in their pure characters at work in whole short Page 61 pieces. It further shows a play of mixed inspiration, either raised to the pitch of the Overmind or ...
... of the Illumined Mind—there is another deeper blue that is of the Higher Mind; another, near to purple, which is the light of a power in the vital. Page 126 Blue Light Blue light, according to the shades, means several different things. If the blue lights [ seen in vision ] were of different shades it might mean the overhead planes, Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind, Higher... come. The golden light is that of the Divine Truth on the higher planes. The pale blue light is mine—the white light is the Mother's. The world you saw above the head was the plane of the illumined Mind which is a level of consciousness much higher than the human intelligence. It is there that the Divine Light and Power come down to be transmitted to the human consciousness and from there they... Blue is the normal colour of the spiritual planes; moonlight indicates the spiritual mind and its light. Moonlight indicates spirituality—the blue light may be that of the higher or illumined mind. The plane with the blue light is the Higher Mind which is just above the ordinary human intelligence, the first of several planes of higher consciousness through which one has to pass in ...
... Midi sans mouvement... Tête complète et parfait diadème. (Midday on high, Midday all motionless... Head without flaw and perfect diadem.) In the next grade, designated Illumined Mind, there is a keenness of lustre accompanying the amplitude, revealing not only the shape of the Spirit under all guises but also its colour and texture, its tense or tingling subdeties. A typical... from the background, its strange sweetness or its wistfulness that is yet never weak or escapist. When it comes to the fore, effects of a ravishing magic are produced, as in its mixing with the Illumined Mind in the second verse of that couplet from the rhymed quantitative hexameters of Ahana — Open the barriers of Time, the world with thy beauty enamour. Trailing behind thee the purple... merely touched by the overhead, as happens at times in Sri Aurobindo's earlier philosophic or other verse, but unified with it and yet not so much assimilated into the specific tones of Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition or Overmind as itself assimilating them. Its own mode remains, but within the possibilities of that mode the overhead is fully exploited instead of new possibilities being created by ...
... steady sunshine, the knowledge of the Illumined Mind beyond it can be seen as an outpouring of massive lightnings of a flaming sun-stuff. Beyond the Illumined Mind is the Intuitive Mind. It has a still greater power of Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth Page 67 vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action. The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought... In the Yogic psychology of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the word 'superconscient' is used to include the planes beyond our present level of awareness, namely, those of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overmind, Supermind, and the other heights of the pure spiritual being. A basic sense and knowledge of unity is the general characteristic of all the grades of the Superconscience ...
... higher planes and receive flashes, but this is not its normal altitude; its mental substance is designed to break down the light. It cannot understand unless it first explains. c) The Illumined Mind The illumined mind has a different nature. As the higher mind gradually accepts silence, it gains access to this region, meaning that its substance gradually clarifies, and what came one drop at a time... luminous flood, they harden it, dramatize it, distort it. There is still power, but compelling and hard – while the essence of the illumined mind is joy. Here we could cite the names of many poets and creative geniuses. 192 Furthermore, the substance of the illumined mind is not truly transparent, but only translucent; its light is diffused, somewhat as if it could feel the truth everywhere without... centers distributed in four zones: (1) The Superconscient , with one center slightly above the top of the head, 45 which controls our thinking mind and communicates with higher mental realms: illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind, etc. (2) The Mind , with two centers: one between the eyebrows, which controls the will and dynamism of our mental activity (it is also the center of subtle vision, ...
... descending order and as named by Sri Aurobindo: Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind and Higher Mind. Together they make up a region which contains the possible gradations of consciousness of the transitional beings whom Sri Aurobindo called “the new humanity”. Overmind (which is the level of the worlds of the gods), Intuition, Illumined Mind and Higher Mind still exist in the Light of the Supermind, they... represents the Supreme and therefore all the other gods. “There is further limitation or change of characteristic action at each step downwards from Overmind to Intuition, from Intuition to Illumined Mind, from Illumined Mind to what I have called the Higher Mind”, writes Sri Aurobindo. 28 The Absolute is Light, the Inconscient is darkness. Light and darkness in this case are much more than poetic epithets... ratiocinative mind, our best organised knowledge-power of the Ignorance, into the realms of the Spirit; it is, indeed, the spiritual parent of our conceptive mental ideation …” 40 Illumined Mind: Illumined Mind is “a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre ...
... between the eyebrows— ājñācakra —governs the dynamic mind, will, vision, mental formation; the thousand-petalled lotus— sahasradala —above commands the higher thinking mind, houses the still higher illumined mind and at its highest opens to the intuition through which or else by an overflooding directness the overmind can have with the rest communication or an immediate contact. 1 I never heard... deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes confused with the brain, but that is an error—the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thou... centre. Usually those who take the centres in the body only, count six centres, the Sahasrara being excluded. It is evidently the sahasradala padma through which the higher intuition, illumined mind and overmind all pass their rays. The sahasradala commands all between the ordinary mind and the supermind—therefore its opening necessarily takes long. But opening by itself only creates ...
... Letters on Poetry and Art Psychic, Mystic and Spiritual Poetry Inspiration from the Illumined Mind and from the Psychic Your question—"What distinguishes, in manner and quality, a pure inspiration from the illumined mind from that which has the psychic for its origin?"—reads like a poser in an examination paper. Even if I could give a satisfactory definition... From the sphere of our sorrow? —you will find there the true rhythm, expression and substance of poetry full of the psychic influence. For full examples of the poetry which comes from the illumined mind purely and simply and that in which the psychic and the spiritual illumination meet together, one has to go to poetry that tries to express a spiritual experience. You have yourself written things ...
... may arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative intelligence, from the plane of dynamic vision, from the psychic, from the illumined mind or Intuition,—even, though this is the rarest, from the Overmind widenesses. To get the Overmind inspiration is so rare that there are only a few lines or short passages in all poetic literature... these are the two most powerfully impelling and compelling parts of the nature. When on the contrary the source of inspiration is in the creative poetic intelligence or even the higher mind or the illumined mind, the poetry which comes from this quarter is always apt to be arrested by the outer intellect, our habitual thought-production engine. This intellect is an absurdly overactive part of the nature;... but it is denied free transmission by some part of the transmitting agency which prefers to translate and is not willing merely to receive and transcribe. When one gets something through from the illumined mind, then there is likely to come to birth work that is really fine and great. When there comes with labour or without it something reasonably like what the poetic intelligence wanted to say, then ...
... many blues and it is difficult to say which these are. Usually deeper blue is higher Mind, a paler blue Illumined Mind—whitish blue Sri Krishna's light (also called Sri Aurobindo's light). March 1934 It depends on the shade of the blue. Ordinary pale blue is usually the light of the illumined Mind or something of the Intuition. Whitish blue is Sri Aurobindo's light or Krishna's light. 6 February... His body and dress were blue. Why did I see him in this colour and not any other? It is the basic light Sri Aurobindo manifests. 23 June 1933 Sri Aurobindo's light is not a light of the illumined mind—it is the divine Illumination which may act on any plane. 7 September 1933 Someone was giving an explanation of the legend of the churning of the ocean. He said that blue is the colour of ...
... fine poem throughout. The 2nd and 3rd lines are from the Illumined Mind. The first from the Higher Mind—the fourth is in substance from the Illumined Mind but there is a mental rhythm— very good and expressive rhythm, no doubt. The rest is the Higher Mind with touch of Illumination and Intuition—the last three lines are the Illumined Mind with Overmind Intuition touch, extremely fine." ...
... "Bull" when these three Page 89 yogas are practiced in a synthetic manner and are united. The teacher further addresses a prayer to Indra, who, as mentioned earlier, represents illumined mind and whose help is necessary for the attainment of the Eternal: "O Indra, thou art the sheath of the Eternal and the veil that the workings of brain have drawn over Him; preserve whole unto me... He points out to Agastya that he mistakenly believes that he can attain his goal only by thought powers (Maruts), but the object of his attainment can be facilitated only by the powers of the illumined mind, which is the special domain of Indra. He, therefore, invites Agastya to receive his help for the attainment of his goal. In giving this message to Agastya, Indra also counsels him that in his... cultivation of the capacity for truth and righteousness which can lead to immortality, which requires the synthesis of the powers of harmony, vastness, and austerity through the instrumentality of the illumined mind and the power of the expression of the soul. The role of the teacher is accomplished when he has led the pupils to the discovery of the truth and righteousness and when he has been able to communicate ...
... of integration. It is in this context, therefore, that the evolutionary process pushes the development upwards from the silence of the mind to higher levels of the mind, such as the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Overmind towards the Supermind. As Sri Aurobindo states: "But when the spiritualization begins and, as its greater results manifest themselves, — silence of the mind, the... original basis of the Nescience proper to the Inconscience will still be there needing at every turn to be changed, enlightened, diminished in extent and in its force of reaction. Even when the illumined mind arrives, and even when there is the descent of the golden drive, and even when a luminous enthusiasm of its force and power effectuates the integration of the lower levels of consciousness and... is enormous. As Sri Aurobindo points out, in the transformation by the Higher Mind, the spiritual sage and thinker will find his total and dynamic fulfillment, and in the transformation by the Illumined Mind, there would be a similar fulfillment for the seer, the illumined mystic, those in whom the soul lives in vision and in a direct sense and experience. Even then, these two stages of the ascent ...
... is, according to Sri Aurobindo, a grade of existence beyond, mind, life and Matter. And, between Mind and Supermind are the intermediate grades which Sri Aurobindo has termed the 'Higher Mind', 'Illumined Mind', 'Intuitive Page 23 Mind', and 'Overmind'.² The Supermind is an eternal reality of the divine Being and divine Nature. In the words of Sri Aurobindo, 'A Supramental Truth-Consciousness... Aurobindo, there is to be an ascent into the planes of the higher dynamic action and the descent of the powers of these planes into our mind, life and body. These planes are those of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, and Overmind preparing the ascent and descent of the Supermind.13 It is this process that is specifically called in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo the process of spiritual transformation... possible forms and constructions of things become more and more visible, put in their proper place, utilisable. Moreover, what is thought- knowledge in the Higher Mind becomes illumination in the Illumined Mind and direct intimate vision in the Intuition. But the Intuition sees in flashes and combines through a constant play of light through revelations, inspirations, intuitions, swift Page 33 ...
... Plumbless inaudible waves of shining sleep. Illumined mind. The diamond dimness of the domèd air. Illumined mind. Page 50 Withdrawn in a lost attitude of prayer. Intuition. This patter of time's marring steps across the solitude Of Truth's abidingness, self-blissful and alone. Illumined mind with an intuitive element and strong overmind touch. ... glimmering and decays. I thought they were from the illumined mind. It is a mixture. Something of the illumined mind, something of the poetic intelligence diluting it and preventing the full sovereignty of the higher expression. 17 March 1935 Page 51 What about these lines of Vaughan's—are they from the illumined mind? 1) But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright... conquer immortality! Illumined Mind with mental overmind touch. ...And to the earth-self suddenly Came through remote entrancèd marvelling Of adoration ever-widening A spacious sense of immortality. Mixture of higher and illumined mind—in the last line the mental overmind touch. Here life's lost heart of splendour beats immense. Illumined mind with mental overmind touch ...
... e. To get back from the surface vital into the psychic and psychic vital, to raise the level of your mental from the intellect to the illumined mind is your need both in poetry and in Yoga. I have told you already that your best poetry comes from the illumined mind, but as a rule it either comes from there with too much of the transcription diminished in its passage through the intellect or else is... On the other hand if you could always write direct from the illumined mind—finding not only the substance, as you often do, but the rhythm and language, that indeed would be a poetry exquisite, original and unique. The intellect produces the idea, even the poetic idea, too much for the sake of the idea alone; coming from the illumined mind the idea in a form of light and music is itself but the shining... higher plane of consciousness, but to do that you must be sure of your poetic gift, that it will not rust by too long a disuse. 4 September 1931 Poetry of the Illumined Mind and of the Intuition The poetry of the illumined mind is usually full of a play of lights and colours, brilliant and striking in phrase, for illumination makes the Truth vivid—it acts usually by a luminous rush. The poetry ...
... beyond it into the beginnings of an ignorance which still bears on its face something of the luminosity that it is leaving behind. 10 . This "Illumined Mind" does not stand for the same thing as "the free and illumined mind" we have mentioned earlier in connection with "true mind". The latter phrase is a synonym for "true mind" and does not connote a specific stage in the hierarchy... with an uncertain and disputed grasp, there could emerge a true mind 6 liberated and capable of the tree and utmost perfection of itself and its instruments, a life governed by the free and illumined mind, a body responsive to the light and 5 . SABCL Vol. 16, p. 48. 6 . "True mind" mentioned in this passage must not be confused with "true mentality" of the passage in the... coated over with intellectual elements, that is sometimes ours is different from the Intuition proper that belongs to a level of Spiritual Mind. Page 113 Illumined Mind, 10 Higher Mind, - a series running from greater to less knowledge until it lapses into the labouriously learning ignorance distinguishing the mental grade on which human beings live at ...
... the Illumined Mind is usually full of play of lights and colours, brilliant and striking in phrase, for illumination makes the Truth vivid,—it acts usually by aluminous rush.... Illumined Mind sometimes gets rid of its trappings, but even then it always keeps a sort of lustrousness of robe which is its characteristic".-— Life, Literature, Yoga. Examples of poetry from the Illumined Mind:— ... leave the naked brain" Keats II. ILLUMINED MIND "Beyond this Truth-Thought (i.e. Higher Mind) we can distinguish a greater illumination instinct with an increased power and intensity and driving force, a luminosity of. nature of Truth- Sight with thought formation as a minor and dependent activity." — Life Divine. Illumined-Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of... impetus of rapid transformation". — Life Divine. If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth—we may compare the energy of the Illumined Mind to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming Sun-Stuff"— Life Divine. The "Illumined-Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; thought is only a subordinate movement expressive of sight" — Life Divine. "The ...
... the higher thinking mind, houses the still higher illumined mind and at the highest opens to the intuition through which or else by an over flooding directness the overmind can have with the rest communication or an immediate contact."² (2) "...the thousand-petalled lotus above the head...commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind... communicating with the greater mind planes (illumined mind, intuition, overmind) above." 4 (4) "...the sahasradala which centralises spiritual mind, higher mind, intuitive mind and acts as a receiving station fort he intuition proper and overmind..." 5 (5) "...the sahasradala padma through which the higher intuition, illumined mind and overmind all pass their rays." 6 It... 6. Ibid., p. 376. Page 2 is mentioned in the Arya-days, now the label "supramental" would be a sheer misnomer for them and could never be applied either to "the illumined mind", "the intuition proper" or even "the overmind". Perhaps it will be argued:" In the Arya-days the overhead planes below the intuition must have fallen outside the Supermind; for, what ...
... expressing with revelatory images the consciousness of the cosmic Self into which one enters by breaking the walls of individual limitation. Higher Mind, touched with Illumined Mind, except lines 3, 4, 8, 9 which are more of the illumined Mind itself." Asked what exactly was meant in line 3 by the phrase "that breaks through form", Sri Aurobindo replied: "It means nothing exactly, but it gives the... and experience not yet expressed and, secondly, in the power of expression which gives it an exact body—a revelatory rot an intellectual exactitude. Lines 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11 are overhead lines—Illumined Mind." The double and single marks against the lines were put by Sri Aurobindo. (From where does the "trance-eye" appear? From the soul drawn up into the transcendent timeless or... proper immediate company—the last is the case with line 2. The overhead lines belong to the type that is now usual with you, Higher Mind lifted by Illumination to reach the Intuition level or else Illumined Mind rising to Intuition level; the latter in 9-11, 13-14, 17-18, 22-23. Both are very fine combinations." * INNERMOST Each form a dancer whose pure naked sheen Mirrors ...
... divine power, measure, dignity is its most frequent character". 1 The One Self everywhere is common to all the overhead planes, but the force at work varies: the Illumined Mind visions rather than thinks. "The outflow of the Illumined Mind comes in a flood brilliant with revealing words or a light of crowding images, sometimes surcharged with its burden of revelations, sometimes with a luminous sweep... semblances from the Illumined Mind truly breaking through the Higher Thought when we get Sri Aurobindo's: One-pointed to the immaculate Delight, Questing for God as for a splendid prey, He mounted burning like a cone of fire [p. 79-80] and we rise sheer beyond all possible affinities with Milton's "pyramid of fire" or even his "Eternal Eye" when the Illumined Mind comes assimilated... cosmic functions. The poetic word hailing from the Overmind is the Mantra. We have already spoken of its characteristics. Leading up to its source from the mental plane are the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuition. Unlike the Mind proper, the Higher Mind carries a natural awareness of the One Self everywhere and knows and sees through a lofty and comprehensive thought-force. It has "a strong ...
... very fine poem throughout. The 2nd and 3rd lines are from the Illumined Mind. The first from the Higher Mind—the fourth is in substance from the Illumined Mind but there is a mental rhythm—very good and expressive rhythm, no doubt. The rest is the Higher Mind with touch of Illumination and Intuition—The last three lines are the Illumined Mind with Overmind Intuition touch, extremely fine." *... the mortality of lifted eyes. SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENT Lines 2, 3, 4—"It is from the Illumined Mind that they come with a touch of the mystic intuive, but only a touch." Lines 6, 7, 8—"These lines have a very high poetic and mystic value. They are a mixed result of Illumined Mind and occult vision with something else that is mystically indefinite." * ANANDA ... COMMENT 'A very fine poem, lines 1, 4 are from the Illumined Higher Mind. The second comes very splendidly from the Illumined Mind, the third is Higher Mind at a high level. The fifth comes from the I higher Mind—the sixth, seventh and eighth from the Illumined Mind touched with something from the Overmind Intuition, though the touch is more evident in 6 and 8 only" * Page ...
... greater whole on the way to a yet unachieved integrality." 18 Illumined Mind At a still higher level, there is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought but of spiritual light. The downpour of inwardly visible Light very usually envelops the action of this Mind. The illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; thought is here... is upward, which presses on the summits of the mind and which breaks the lid of the mind so as to liberate our consciousness into the domains of superconscience, the levels of the higher mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind and overmind, which ultimately leads to the Supermind. In the yogic terminology of the integral yoga these two concentrations are termed as concentrations on (i) the heart centre... intuitively awake — with whatever fresh truth has yet to arrive." 17 Mind and Higher Mind Between the Mind and the Intuitive Mind, there are two layers, — those of the Higher Mind and Illumined Mind. The ordinary human mind is conceptual in character, and even at its highest levels, when it conceives of comprehensiveness and of a highest possible synthesis, it is so much occupied with ...
... Intuition is above illumined Mind—which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration. The substance of knowledge is the same [ in the higher mind and the illumined mind ], but the higher mind gives only the substance and form of knowledge in thought and word—in the illumined mind there begins to be a peculiar light and energy and ananda... higher and the illumined Mind. Powers of the Intuitive Consciousness Revelation is a part of the intuitive consciousness. Page 163 There is a discrimination [ in the intuitive consciousness ] that is not intellectual—a direct perception. No, the world of Knowledge is composed of several planes. It is from one of them that inspiration comes. The Illumined Mind Intuition... the physical consciousness, in the material itself. To live in the Intuitive it is necessary first to have the opening into the cosmic consciousness and to live first in the higher and the illumined Mind, seeing everything from there. To receive constantly the intuition from above, that is not necessary—it is sufficient to have the sense of the One everywhere and to get into contact with things ...
... intensified, broadened, made spiritually supple, can receive without being blinded or dazzled by a Truth beyond it. 44 Page 352 Illumined Mind ...greater Force [than the Higher Mind] is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or ... consciousness below and above mental consciousness — the level with which we are most familiar as human beings. The Inconscient, the Subconscient, the Physical, the Vital, Mind, Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind, Supermind and Sachchidananda constitute the chief levels of consciousness in the vertical system (Fig.2). Page 337 Evolution of Consciousness ... a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfilment. These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis. 42 There are many layers in each ...
... mind and the illumined mind give at one time? There is no fixed number of sides. In fact the attempt to put such rules and limitations and to define the field of these higher things is useless; such an attempt is mental and ceases to have any meaning as one goes upward. What is the difference between the knowledge of the higher mind and that of the illumined mind? ... only the substance and form of knowledge in thought and word-in the illumined mind there begins to be a peculiar light and energy and ananda of knowledge which grows as one rises higher in the scale or else as the knowledge comes from a higher and higher source. This light etc. are still rather diluted and diffused in the illumined mind; it becomes more and more intense, clearly defined, dynamic and effective... effective on the higher planes so much so as to change always the character and power of the knowledge. About the illumined mind, you wrote, "There begins to be a peculiar light and energy and ananda of knowledge." Could you kindly give me some idea of this light, energy and ananda? No. It has to be experienced first. Things that are above the ordinary mind (intellect) ...
... on the third it is in union with the Divine and surrendered. These are three well known conditions of the higher consciousness in its approach to the Divine. An Illumined Mind Experience You probably went up into the illumined Mind which has a pale blue light and were receiving there lights from the higher planes and occasionally seeing the flash of the full orb of the Divine Truth. It is always... is too dense and powerful to be penetrated at present. The higher consciousness is that above the ordinary mind and different from it in its workings; it ranges from higher mind through illumined mind, intuition and overmind up to the border line of the supramental. The Self governs the diversity of its creation by its unity on all the planes from the Higher Mind upwards, for there some... become more and more visible, more perfectly put in their proper place, more luminously utilisable. A clear spacious thought-knowledge in the Higher Mind becomes a mass of illuminations in the Illumined Mind and heightens into direct intimate vision on the Intuition level. But the Intuition sees in flashes and combines through a constant play of light Page 404 —through a chain or coordinated ...
... arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative intelligence, from the plane of dynamic vision, from the psychic, from the illumined mind or Intuition,—even, though this is the rarest, from the Overmind wide-nesses. To get the Overmind inspiration is so rare that there are only a few lines or short passages in all poetic literature... are the two most powerfully impelling and compelling parts of the nature. When on the contrary the source of inspiration is in the creative poetic intelligence or even the higher mind or the illumined mind, the poetry which comes from this quarter is always apt to be arrested by the outer intellect, our habitual thought-production engine. This intellect is an absurdly overactive part of the nature;... it is denied free transmission by some part of the transmitting agency which prefers to translate and is not willing merely to receive and transcribe. When one gets something through from the illumined mind, then there is likely to come to birth work that is really fine and great. When there comes with labour or without it something reasonably like what the poetic intelligence wanted to say then ...
... image of the Sun of Truth we may compare the energy of the Illumined Mind to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming Sun-Stuff." " The poetry of the Illumined Mind is usually full of play of lights and colours, brilliant and striking in phrase, for illumination makes the Truth vivid, it acts usually by a luminous rush.,.. Illumined Mind sometimes gets rid of its trappings, but even then it always... overhead planes are not to be classed together, there are gradations of them. "These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis"². It is possible to mistake these gradations... becomes a reality, we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a compact and steady Sunshine."6 One characteristic of the Higher Mind is " totality of truth-seeing at a single view." Illumined Mind : " Beyond this Truth-Thought (i. e. Higher Mind ) we can distinguish a greater illumination instinct with an increased power and intensity and driving force, a luminosity of nature of truth-sight ...
... existence; it is a chant of the delight of being. The great Light of lights, the Sun of Truth, the illumination of the Truth-consciousness is rising up out of the movement of life to create the illumined Mind, Swar, which completes the evolution of the lower triple world. Eṣa sya bhānur udiyarti . By this rising of the Sun in man, the full movement of the Ashwins becomes possible; for by the Truth... niktahastaḥ , are possibly symbolic 7 of the purified physical being; the power comes from a fulfilled life-energy; the force of clear mental vision, vicakṣaṇa , is the sign of the truth-illumined mind. These are the conditions in mind, life and body for the overflowing of the honey over the triple satisfactions of the Ashwins. When the sacrificer has thus pressed out the honey-filled delight ...
... constantly aware of the Self. Whereas the ordinary mind is a thought-mind, the Higher Mind is a "luminous thought-mind, a mind of Spirit-born conceptual knowledge." 47 Page 95 Illumined Mind: A mind no longer of higher thought but of spiritual light. Intuition: A mind that gets the Truth in flashes, which it turns into intuitive ideas. Overmind: The highest of the... accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth—an image which in this experience becomes a reality—we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it Page 96 to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision ...
... witness. He then ascends to the regions of Heavens of the higher Vital and then crosses over to the Heavens of the Mind. After soaring into regions above Mind, into the Heavens of the Ideal and Illumined Mind he passes beyond the borders of manifested creation to the centre from which creation proceeds. Through a great shaft of Light across a tunnel that leads to the centre, he comes face to face... ence, is not there in the picture. But apart from the dissimilarity of content, one can see that there are passages where the expression of the Upanishad rises to a plane of impersonality of Illumined Mind which sees life in large and compact masses and is at the same time itself suffused with a wide and intense emotion of the tragedy of life subject to human ignorance. It is a very effective ...
... thou movest becoming Page 333 Ayasya towards the gods. (2) Clasped in the mentality, made firm by the understanding Joy is impelled towards the supreme and holds seerhood by the illumined mind. (3) It is this that is awake in the gods and it comes pressed from them into the sheath of the purifying, Delight in his movement accomplishing every work. (4) So do thou flow pure for us... mind, even its electric force and win us our full thousand, now that its self-expression is born. (4) For, seer of the Truth in the man who holds it of itself, it claims the Delight for his illumined mind when his thoughts become clear and bright. (5) Thou art he who in the bringings, in the manifold plenty for the conquerors winnest possession of the felicities even as of these labouring powers ...
... of knowledge and turn them into a parcel of itself or an annexed province; it will infuse into them its more authentic movement and make a more and more Page 168 spiritualised and illumined mind its instrument in these surface fields, its new conquests.... There will be less and less individual choice, opinion, preference, less and less of intellectualisation, mental weaving, cerebral... That is quite necessary for everybody perhaps. I don't know what you want to know! To reach the Supermind, Sri Aurobindo says there are stages: first, the mind, then the purified mind, the illumined mind and all that.... Is it necessary for everyone to go through all these stages? ( After a silence ) It is likely that a sequence of this kind always occurs. But the duration of the stages and ...
... towards a real freedom and a higher, larger and truer siddhi. At each step this has to be done. For whatever comes in this way to the sadhak of this yoga, whether it be from Overmind or Intuition or Illumined Mind or some exalted Life Plane or from all these together, it is not definitive and final; it is not the supreme Truth in which he can rest, but only a stage. And yet these stages have to be passed... from higher mind ranges. The ideas with which these experiences are penetratedand on which they seem to rest their claim to truth are lot of the Overmind, but of the higher Mind or sometime of the illumined Mind; but they are mixed with suggestms from the lower mind and vital regions and badly diminished in their application or misapplied in many plaes. All this would notmatter; it is usual and normal ...
... mortality of lifted eyes. Sri Aurobindo's Comment Lines 2, 3, 4—"It is from the Illumined Mind that they come with a touch of the mystic intuitive, but only a touch." Lines 6, 7, 8—"These lines have a very high poetic and mystic value. They are a mixed result of Illumined Mind and occult vision with something else that is mystically indefinite." Page 46 ...
... eagle-destiny beaconing through all time. Sri Aurobindo's Comment On an earlier version not including lines 5 and 6: "First line from the higher Mind, the next five from the illumined Mind—the last two I can't very well say: perhaps the inner Mind there has taken up the illumined inspiration and given it a turn belonging to an interpretative language of its own making. All the... fine intuitive authenticity and beauty, there is seldom anything to change; (3) a higher level of grander movement and language in which you pull down or reach the influences of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Over-mind Intuition. The last you have not yet fully mastered so as to write with an absolute certainty and faultlessness except by lines and stanzas or else as a whole in rare moments of total ...
... the poem, these lines rise out of the mental like islands out of the sea. Moreover, except in the lines marked with a cross where the illumined Mind gets strongly in, the 'note' is not quite pure,—there is the higher Mind tone, even a little of the illumined Mind, but not enough to make it absolutely that. It is a fine poem with very fine lines in it." Page 104 ...
... possesses all those virtues that are indeed very rare. 30 Now coming to Raghuvamśam, we find that the virtue of equanimity has been highlighted in Rāma by the poet, which speaks highly of his illumined mind. Regarding Rāma's exploits and valour there cannot be any second opinion, of course, as is evident from his slaying of Tātakā at an early age under the guidance of the sage Viśwāmitra and his heroic... next moment: Or rather it was no willing act of thine, towards me, since thou art so benevolent in thy disposition... — Canto XIV. 62 This speaks of her illumined mind in the face of adversity. And then — I would have no longer borne this accursed life, all profitless to me through endless separation from thee, had not thy seed, that I bear in my ...
... witness. He then ascends to the regions of Heavens of the higher Vital and then crosses over to the Heavens of the Mind. After scaring into regions above Mind, into the Heavens of the Ideal and Illumined Mind he passes beyond the borders of manifested creation to the centre from which creation proceeds. Through a great shaft of Light across a tunnel that leads to the centre, he comes face to face with... existence, is not there in the picture. But apart from the dissimilarity of content one can see that there are passages where the expression of the Upanishads rises to a plane of impersonality of Illumined Mind which sees life in large and compact masses and is at the same time itself suffused with a wide and intense emotion of the tragedy of life subject to human ignorance. It is a very effective and ...
... the eye-brows, Agnachakra, governs the dynamic mind, will, vision, mental formation; the thousand-petalled lotus, Sahasradala, above commands the higher thinking mind, houses the still higher illumined mind and at the highest opens to the intuitive through which or else by an over- flooding directness the overmind can have the rest communication or an immediate contact. "4 ________________... deep within it; ( 5 ) commanding expression and externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will and vision;( 7 ) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upward to intuitive and overmind."5 " When we speak of Purusha in the head, heart, etc, we are using a figure. The Muladhara from which the Kundalini rises is not in the physical ...
... spiritually awakened, mental man strives to exceed himself, and as he explores the ascending possibilities, he reaches stage after stage of the overhead—or above mind—consciousness: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind, and beyond it—"at the end of a far-off vista"—Supermind. Sri Aurobindo devotes several pages in The Life Divine 11 and the whole canto in Savitri entitled 'The Kingdoms... puissant truth-consciousness and truth-effectuation: As the Higher Mind brings a greater consciousness into the being through the spiritual idea and its power of truth, so the Illumined Mind brings in a still greater consciousness through a Truth sight and Truth Light and its seeing and seizing power.. . 12 Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior ...
... y supple, can receive without being blinded or dazzled by a Truth beyond it. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Poetry and Art: Higher Mind and Poetic Intelligence Illumined Mind … greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to... Letters on Yoga - IV: The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga The higher consciousness is that above the ordinary mind and different from it in its workings; it ranges from higher mind through illumined mind, intuition and overmind up to the border line of the supramental. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: Classification of the Parts of the Being In this higher consciousness there are many... resolved into a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfilment. These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis. Sri Aurobindo The Life Divine - II: The ...
... of the being. "The role of the superconscient has been to evolve slowly the spiritual man out of the mental half-animal." 26 The superconscient includes the higher planes of mind—Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and Overmind—as well as what is beyond mind, namely, Supermind and the Supreme Reality called Sachchidananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss). These superconscient gradations of consciousness... mind; communicating the higher knowledge in a form that the Mind intensified, broadened, made spiritually supple, can receive without being blinded or dazzled by a Truth beyond it." 27 Illumined Mind "... a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre... feeling, or it may be a rapid "subconscious reasoning" based on subtle cues which are not consciously apprehended. But as employed by Sri Aurobindo to refer to the superconscient plane above the Illumined Mind, the term has a much deeper connotation.] "Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct ...
... levels give birth to overhead poetry: they are "planes" whose afflatus comes as if from an infinitude of conscious being above our brain-clamped mentality. Sri Aurobindo labels them Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and Overmind. Above even Overmind is the sovereign divine dynamism which he names Supermind and whose ultimate manifestation is the goal of his Integral Yoga. But Supermind... the reflective terms do not exist in their own right but as immediate formations of That which, in the language of the Upanishads, does not think by the mind but by which the mind is thought. The Illumined Mind has a greater intensity of spiritual light and comes forth with a direct vision of fundamental realities rather than with reflective terms. It discloses the very colours and contours, as it were... demonstrating a gradation of inspired speech; and, although a slight overlapping occurs, the parts mostly offer different aspects of that gradation. The first shows the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind and the Intuition in their pure characters at work in whole short pieces. It further shows a play of mixed inspiration, either raised to the pitch of the Overmind or plumbing the inmost self in ...
... To get back from the surface vital into the psychic and psychic vital, to raise the level of your mental from the intellect to the Illumined Mind is your need both in poetry and in Yoga. I have told you already that your best poetry comes from the Illumined Mind, but as a rule it either comes from there with too much of the transcription diminished in its passage through the intellect or else... intelligence. If you could always write direct from the Illumined Mind—finding there not only the substance, as you often do, but the rhythm and language, that indeed would be a poetry exquisite, original and unique. The intellect produces the idea, even the poetic idea, too much for the sake of the idea alone; coming from the Illumined Mind the idea in a form of light and music is itself but the ...
... to paradise!" Sri Aurobindo's Comment "This is now quite perfect. Only, the lines 2-5 are now of the Illumined Mind, with a strong undertone of the effective, 1 the first and last four intuitive. This is not a defect. "The poetry of the Illumined Mind is usually full of a play of lights and colours, brilliant and striking in phrase, for illumination makes the Truth vivid—it... an inward expression of it. The Illumined Mind sometimes gets rid of its trappings, but even then it always keeps a sort of lustrousness of robe which is its characteristic." 1 The reference is evidently to one of the five kinds of style Sri Aurobindo has distinguished on pp. 35-40. In the present context he seems to take the style of the Illumined Mind to be ipso facto that which he ...
... will capacitate a higher ascent and a more powerful descent and further prepare an integration of the being for a greater Force of consciousness and knowledge. This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour... seer, is a greater power for knowledge than the consciousness of the thinker. The perceptual power of the inner sight is greater and more direct than the perceptual power of thought.... The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; thought is here only a subordinate movement expressive of sight. The human mind, which relies mainly on thought, conceives that to be the highest... spiritual order thought is a secondary and a not indispensable process. As the Higher Mind brings a greater consciousness into the being through the spiritual idea and its power of truth, so the Illumined Mind brings in a greater consciousness through a Truth-sight and Truth-light and its seeing and seizing power. It can effect a more powerful and dynamic integration; it illumines the thought-mind with ...
... our bounded view. 16 Illumined by a vision in the thought. 17 A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes. 18 Sight in the Illumined Mind Beyond the plane of the Higher Mind of Truth-thought lies the plane of the Illumined Mind of Truth-sight, which works primarily by spiritual vision and not by thought: thought is here only a subordinate and secondary movement expressive... bridges between the now normal waking mind of non-spiritual humanity and the native heights of pure spiritual being. These planes are in their ascending order: (i) the Higher Mind; (ii) the Illumined Mind; (iii) the Intuitive Mind; (iv) the Overmind; and finally (v) the Supermind or Gnosis, this last being the plane of absolute and everlasting Light, that transcends altogether the aparārdha ... suffering world, Calm they gaze down on the little human scene. 41 Spiritual Sight We have been discussing the nature of sight and vision in the superconscient Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Overmind levels of consciousness. Now all these sights are called 'Spiritual Sights'. Here a vague question may perhaps trouble the mind of some readers. Why are we taking ...
... ordinary mind, hidden in our own superconscient parts, there are higher ranges of Mind, gradations of spiritualised mind leading beyond mind to the Supermind. In ascending order they are: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and Overmind. Nature — the outer or executive side of the Conscious Force which forms and moves the worlds. The higher, divine Nature (Para Prakriti) is free from Ignorance... thought-power and comprehensive mental sight. In the Higher Mind one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees habitually with that awareness. Illumined Mind: a mind no longer of higher thought, but of spiritual light; here the clarity of the intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and... power of consciousness nearer and more intimate than the above-mentioned gradations to the original knowlege by identity. What is thought-knowledge in the Higher Mind becomes illumination in the Illumined Mind and direct intimate vision in the Intuition. This true and authentic Intuition must be distinguished Page 126 from a power of the ordinary mental reason which is too easily ...
... or with a minimum of trouble into the higher zones of consciousness where one is in direct contact with the Divine Truth. On the other hand the passage through the higher zones—higher Mind, illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind—is obligatory; they are the true Intermediaries between the present consciousness and the Supermind. All these experiences are of the same nature and what applies to... towards a real freedom and a higher, larger and truer siddhi. At each step this has to be done. For whatever comes in this way to the sadhak of this Yoga, whether it be from Overmind or Intuition or illumined Mind or some exalted Life-Plane or from all these together, it is not definitive and final; it is not the supreme Truth in which he can rest, but only a stage. And yet these stages have to be passed... higher mind ranges. The ideas with which these experiences are penetrated and on which they seem to rest their claim to truth are not of the Overmind, but of the higher Mind or sometimes of the illumined Mind; but they are mixed with suggestions from the lower mind and vital regions and badly diminished in their application or misapplied in many places. All this would not matter; it is usual and normal ...
... Higher Mind. 3."Intuitive with Overmind touch. 4."Intuitive. 5."Higher Mind with mental Overmind touch. 6."Mixture of Higher and Illumined Mind—in the last line the mental Overmind touch. 7."Illumined Mind with mental Overmind touch. 8."Ditto. 9."Intuitive, Illumined, Overmind touch all mixed together, "I have analysed very imperfectly—because... different-that other was more subtly perfect, this reaches another kind of summit through sustained height and grandeur." On the plane of inspiration of the lines marked in the second stanza: "Illumined Mind with mental Overmind touch." This comment came when, considerably after the comment on the whole poem, the lines concerned were separately submitted for classification. We may suppose ...
... COMMENT "That is extraordinarily fine throughout. But it is too fine for any need of remarks. Lines 3, 4, 5, also 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Illumined Mind with Overmind Intuition touch - the rest Higher Mind suffused with Illumined Mind." MADONNA MIA I merge in her rhythm of haloed reverie By spacious vigil-lonelinesses drawn From star-birds... other was more subtly perfect, this reaches another kind of summit through sustained height and grandeur." On the plane of inspiration of the lines marked in the second stanza: "Illumined Mind with mental Overmind touch." MUKTI What deep dishonour that the soul should have Its passion moulded by a moon of change And all its massive purpose ...
... crossing the boundaries of our space and time. To appreciate the niceties of poetic expression let us take the following comment of Sri Aurobindo made in one of his letters to him: "The poetry of the Illumined Mind is usually full of play of lights and colours, brilliant and striking in phrase, for illumination makes the Truth vivid - it acts usually by a luminous rush. The poetry of Intuition may have a... colour and bright lights, but it does not depend on them - it may be quite bare; Page 133 it tells by a sort of close intimacy with the Truth, an inward expression of it. The Illumined Mind sometimes gets rid of its trappings, but even then it always keeps a sort of lustrous robe which is its characteristic." This is well illustrated by Amal's poem "Agni," for example: Not... above quotation] that they had come perhaps from some of the highest levels of inspiration that had been reached in the world's poetic history. Afterwards he wrote to me that they originated in: 'Illumined Mind with an Intuitive element and a strong Overmind touch.' (7 March 1934) Page 138 Ihese lines can be considered what Sri Aurobindo regarded as 'Mantra' in the spiritual sense ...
... bridges between the now normal waking mind of non-spiritual humanity and the native heights of pure spiritual being. These planes are in the ascending order: (i) the Higher Mind; (ii) the Illumined Mind; (iii) the Intuitive Mind; (iv) the Overmind; and finally (v) the Supermind or Gnosis, the plane of absolute and everlasting Light, that transcends altogether the apar ā rdha or the lower ... the integral whole.... This Thought is a self-revelation of eternal Wisdom, not an acquired knowledge." 74 Beyond the plane of the Higher Mind of Truth-Thought lies the plane of the Illumined Mind of Truth-Sight, which works primarily by spiritual vision and not by thought: thought is here only a subordinate and secondary movement expressive of sight. And we know that "a consciousness... significance of the figure, and it can embody her with a finer and bolder revealing outline and a larger comprehension and power of totality than thought-conception can manage." 75 Thus the Illumined Mind makes accessible to us, through the agencies of truth-sight and truth-light, a power of cognition far greater than that of the Higher Mind. It is a Mind where "There are vasts of vision ...
... really the Overmind language and rhythm that have been to some extent transmitted; but of course all Overhead poetry is not from the Overmind, more often it comes from the Higher Thought, the Illumined Mind or the pure Intuition. This last is different from the mental intuition which is frequent enough in poetry that does not transcend the mental level. The language and rhythm from these other... rhythm. The Higher Thought has a strong tread often with bare unsandalled feet and moves in a clear-cut light: a divine power, measure, dignity is its most frequent character. The outflow of the Illumined Mind comes in a flood brilliant with revealing words or a light of crowding images, sometimes surcharged with its burden of revelations, sometimes with a luminous sweep. The Intuition is usually a... And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old. 14 Shakespeare's poetry coruscates with a play of the hues of imagination which we may regard as a mental substitute for the inspiration of the Illumined Mind and sometimes by aiming at an exalted note he links on to the illumined Overhead inspiration itself as in the lines I have more than once quoted: Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast ...
... Indra. Indra is a name of a God whom Sri Aurobindo describes algebraically as the God of the illumined mind. You, first of all, come into contact with the illumined mind. He descends, that is his nature — Agni always ascends, the fire always rises up in aspiration. In answer there is a descent of the illumined mind. This is the first God that comes to your help. But he is very powerful and he is able to ...
... four principal ascents may be distinguished. These gradations may be broadly described as 'a series of sublimations of the consciousness' through what Sri Aurobindo has termed Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and Overmind; "there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis.... All these degrees are gnostic in their principle and power;... system or totality of truth-seeing at a single view;...this thought is a self-revelation of eternal Wisdom, not an acquired Knowledge." 2 Beyond the Higher Mind of Truth-Thought is the Illumined Mind of Truth-Sight, a Mind where There are vasts of vision and eternal suns, Oceans of an immortal luminousness, Flame-hills assaulting heaven with their peaks, There dwelling... Thought trails behind it its long comet tail; The heart glows, an illuminate and seer, And sense is kindled into identity. 3 Thus the characteristic power of the Illumined Mind is not Thought but Vision; it is the field of "the outpourings of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff." And on the dynamic side there is here "a golden drive, a luminous 'enthousiasmos' ...
... or the vital. What is the distinction between the knowledge of the Higher Mind and that of the Illumined mind? The substance of knowledge is the same, but the higher mind gives only the substance and form of knowledge in thought and word — in the illumined mind there begins to be a peculiar light and energy and ananda of knowledge which grows as one rises higher in the scale... scale or else as the knowledge comes from a higher and higher source. This light etc. are still rather diluted and diffused in the illumined mind; they become more and more intense, clearly defined and dynamic and effective on the higher planes so much so as to change always the character and power of the knowledge. Page 259 ...
... Savitri III Overhead Aesthesis Now all these overhead planes—Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind—can influence, each to the measure of its distinctive or sovereign power, our various activities or preoccupations at the mental or the below-mental—the vital and the material planes. If the resistance from the lower powers—matter, life... Now 'overhead' poetry is simply poetry that has been thus influenced, whether to a greater or a lesser extent, by the spiritual power of the Overmind or by the other overhead powers, Higher Mind, Illumined Mind or Intuition. The influence may be the result of the higher power acting in one of two ways: ...in one it touches the ordinary modes of mind and deepens, heightens, intensifies or... Higher Thought has a strong tread often with bare unsandaled feet and moves in a clear-cut light: a divine power, measure, dignity is its most frequent character. The outflow of the Illumined Mind comes in a flood brilliant with revealing words or a light of crowding images, sometimes surcharged with its burden of revelations, sometimes with a luminous sweep. The Intuition ...
... penetrate, much as X-rays do, the divers outer sheaths and reach vijñana and lose itself in Ananda. Between mind and supermind, Sri Aurobindo has located various "overhead" planes - Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind - and a reaction of consciousness from any of these "overhead" levels that helps us to experience the rasa or essential taste of some fragment of experience or other, to... fourth lines above; but Thought rises higher still, seeking other colours in the spectrum of its steep ascent. The next ten lines constitute the second great movement, from Mind to Higher Mind, then Illumined Mind, then Intuition, then Overmind - "glimmering wings" "gold-red seeking" "pale-blue-lined" "crimson-white" - beyond conceptual thought, beyond intermittent visions, beyond lightning flashes, beyond... n with the Night; In the abyss was fixed our rendezvous: In my breast carrying God's deathless light I came her dark and dangerous heart to woo. I left the glory of the illumined Mind And the calm rapture of the divinised soul And travelled through a vastness dim and blind To the grey shore where her ignorant waters roll. I walk by the chill wave through ...
... conveys but also the intensity of the rhythm and the body of the word. 2. Second is Pa ś yanti, the word that sees, or the seeing speech. It is the utterance that comes spontaneously to the illumined mind above the level of reasoning intelligence, but below the highest level of over-mental creative consciousness. When it breaks into the mind it brings in with the word the light that does not require... are seated", and he adds, "One who knows not That, what shall he do with the Ṛks? . (1.164. 39.) The idea of receiving the inspired word, an intuitive truth expression, a revelation in the illumined mind has come down from the Veda and the Upanishads down to the classical period. Bhavabhuti, the famous dramatist, in the opening verses of Uttarr ā mcarit says, "We bow to the goddess of speech... opposites which heightens the contrast even when the same words and adjectives are used. Both are voids, but what a difference! When the whole poem moves on the heights of revelation, inspiration;, illumined mind and never comes down to a lower plane than intuitive sight and expression, it is very difficult to make a choice of passages with special poetical merit. But there are single lines.. double lines ...
... cosmic usually remains in the cosmic Mind-LifeMatter receiving only inspirations and influences from the higher planes of Intuition and Overmind. He receives through the spiritualised higher and illumined mind the fundamental experiences on which spiritual knowledge is based; he can become even full of intuitive mind movements, illuminations, various kinds of powers and illumined light, liberation, Ananda... Overmind ] at present. Only those who have got fully into the cosmic consciousness can do it and even they cannot do it at first. One must first go fully through the experience of higher mind and illumined mind and intuition before it can be done. Planes of the Overmind There are different planes of the Overmind. One is mental, directly creative of all the formations that manifest below in the mental ...
... direct access to all that Supermind can give it. There is a further limitation or change of characteristic action at each step downwards from Overmind to Intuition, from Intuition to Illumined Mind, from Illumined Mind to what I have called the Higher Mind: the Mind of Light is a transitional passage by which we can pass from supermind and superhumanity to an illumined humanity. For the new humanity ...
... infinite consciousness in the cosmos espoused and held by the lower creative power which works through the limited mind and body, but delivered from this subjection by the force of the divine or illumined Mind born of her in the mentality of man. It is this Indra who makes Surya the light of the Truth rise in heaven and dispel the darknesses and falsehoods and limited vision of the separative mentality... is this Increaser who stirs and impels the minds of the illumined and is the means of accomplishment and perfection of their thoughts; he is the seer set in man the thinker, the comrade of his illumined mind who moves him upon the path. He manifests in us the thought which wins the Cow and the Horse and all the plenitude of the wealth. He is the friend of every thinker; he cherishes the thought in ...
... touch with Supermind, the former more like a widened and massive intuition." "...of course all overhead poetry is not from the Overmind, more often it comes from the higher thought, the illumined mind or the pure intuition. This last is different from the mental intuition which is frequent enough in poetry that does not transcend the mental level. The language and rhythm from other overhead... a strong tread often with bare unsandalled feet and moves in a clear-cut light: a divine power, measure, dignity Page 11 is its most frequent character. The outflow of the illumined mind comes in a flood brilliant with revealing words or a light of crowding images, sometimes surcharged with its burden of revelations, sometimes with a luminous sweep. The intuition is usually a ...
... its four domains: a)The inner Mind Intelligence. b)The Intuitive Intelligence. c)The Mystic Mind. d)The Mind of Dynamic Vision. 5)The Psychic. 6)The Higher Mind. 7)The Illumined Mind. 8)The Intuition or the Intuitive Mind. 9)The Overmind, with its four domains: a)The Mental Overmind. b)The Intuitive Overmind or the Overmind Intuition. c)The Overmind Proper... amplitude that belongs to the overhead levels. The Overmind's four domains are the highest levels of poetry. When the Overmind lifts into itself the Creative Intelligence, the Higher Mind and the Illumined Mind and in the process modifies itself to suit the new working it forms the Mental Overmind. When it takes up the Intuition together with these powers into itself and again gets suitably modified, ...
... inspiration in the sense of planes. He touches on the idea that the adequate style might be said to be the mental style, the effective the style of the Higher Mind, the illumined the style of the Illumined Mind, the inspired the style of the Intuition, and the sheer inevitable the style of the Overmind. But he adds that it is not always possible to affirm this, because on each level there could be the... question to sleep — Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the shipboy's eyes and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge? — is, according to Sri Aurobindo, from the Illumined Mind and yet it belongs to the inevitable inevitability. Thus some research in aesthetics remains to be done in order to arrive at a conclusion in the balancing or coinciding of the planes of inspiration ...
... process of Light. 2)Ignorance of the human physical-mertal cannot essentially cease by the descent of the "overhead" grades of Spiritual Mind, which are — from below upwards — Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind. For, the descent of these grades, even of Overmind, can never be complete when made under their own power. The physical-mental always dilutes their Light. It dilutes it because... descended Spiritual Mind — an entire embodiment by Spiritual Mind of itself, which under its own power it could not achieve. The full conversion of the physical-mental into the Light of Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind, which these grades could not formerly bring about, is done now by them on the basis of Supermind's establishment in the physical-mental. This conversion constitutes a mental ...
... are the third and fourth of the middle stanza. Lines i, 7, 8, 9, come from very high and express a vision the full significance of which can only be realised by spiritual experience. Line 1— Illumined Mind taken upwards by a wide intuitive inspiration. Lines 7,8—I am inclined to ascribe them at their source of vision to an intermediate plane which is not Overmind itself but may be called the Overmind... a higher reach of itself, forming there the Overmind Intuition, and then all that into the Overmind Gnosis awaiting the supramental transformation. The Overmind 'touch' on the Higher Mind and Illumined Mind can thus raise towards the O.I. or to the O.G. or leave in the M.O.; but estimating at a glance as I have to do, it is not easy to be quite precise. I may have to revise my estimates later on ...
... more quiet, not the more vivid kind and a great felicity of language. The meaning is not obscure but deep enough to make one reflect before getting the whole of it." "The poetry of the Illumined Mind is usually full of a play of lights and colours, brilliant and striking in phrase, for illumination makes the Truth vivid—it acts usually by a luminous rush. The poetry of the Intuition may... may have a play of colour and bright lights, but it does not depend on them—it may be quite bare; it tells by a sort of close intimacy with the Truth, an inward expression of it. The Illumined Mind sometimes gets rid of its trappings, but even then it always keeps a sort of lustrousness of robe which is its characteristic." Page 10 ...
... expressing with revelatory images the consciousness of the cosmic Self into which one enters by breaking the walls of individual limitation. Higher Mind, touched with Illumined Mind, except lines 3,4, 8, 9 which are more of the Illumined Mind itself." Asked what exactly was meant in line 3 by the phrase "that breaks through form", Sri Aurobindo replied: "It means nothing exactly, but it ...
... Comment "A very fine poem, lines I, 4 are from the Illumined Higher Mind. The second comes very splendidly from the Illumined Mind, the third is Higher Mind at a high level. The fifth comes from the Higher Mind—the sixth, seventh and eighth from the Illumined Mind touched with something from the Overmind Intuition, though the touch is more evident in 6 and 8." Page 48 ...
... Sri Aurobindo's Comment "That is extraordinarily fine throughout. But it is too fine for any need of remarks. Lines 3,4,5, also 10,11,12,13,14, Illumined Mind with Overmind Intuition touch—the rest Higher Mind suffused with Illumined Mind." * (The Muse is again away and I am feeling impatient. Can't you give me some clue about the direction of consciousness by which I may ...
... "All the lines are very fine, especially those marked. The three first of each stanza have a great intensity of vision -Higher Mind plus Overmind Intuition touch. The last -Higher Mind plus Illumined Mind - is not equal in vision but still not too far below." (Is it a bad habit on my part or the natural movement of a certain type of inspiration to have several oppositional lines in a poem... briefly characterising them. It starts with the "inconscient" physical, then proceeds to the vital and the mental, with the psychic innermost recess between them - then sums up the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind and the Intuition and finally goes to the Overmind, the Supermind and the unmanifest Absolute. Do you think a special key is necessary to explain the Page 423 poem or does ...
... a real freedom and a higher, larger and truer siddhi. At each step this has to be done. For whatever comes in this way to the sadhaka of this yoga, whether it be from Overmind or Intuition or Illumined Mind or some exalted Life Plane or from all these together, it is not definitive and final; it is not the Supreme Truth in which he can rest, but only a stage. And yet these stages have to be passed... higher mind ranges. The ideas with which these experiences are penetrated and on which they seem to rest their claim to truth are not of the Overmind, but of the higher Mind or sometimes of the illumined Mind; but they are mixed with suggestions from the lower mind and vital regions and badly diminished in their application or misapplied in many places. All this would not matter; it is usual and normal ...
... 82, 246-47 Ignorance (the), 24, 49, 61, 88, 106, 143, 355 and the Inconscient, 39 transformation of, 158 See also Avidya Illness(es), 342-43 Illumined Mind, see under Mind Illusionism, see Mayavada Inconscience (Inconscient), the, 28- 32, 33, 77, 140, 233-34, 294-98 passim, 307, 377, 392, 393 and the Ignorance... 337 cannot integrate the being, 19 and consciousness, 8-9, 41-43 evolution of mental life, 256-58 Higher Mind, 143-46, 352 an Ignorance consciousness, 54-61 Illumined Mind, 146-49, 353 inner, see Subconscious mind an instrument, 259 and Matter, 6 mechanical, 47 physical, 54-55, 81, 341 and the Self, 122 and sense, 51-54 ...
... understands; he invites Indra and accepts to be led by him, and he is thus helped to move forward towards the Supreme. Beyond Indra: Four Great Kings But even the possession of the illumined mind is not, according to the Vedic yoga, sufficient to enable the seeker to be united with the supreme. It is not by development of only one faculty but by the development of four great powers by processes... or rays of light. Journey is inspired by Agni, the fire of will and the fire that fights on account of its light and knowledge. With the increasing aspiration of Agni, Indra, the cosmic being of illumined mind comes down arid marches with the travellers on the path as their comrade ( sakhibhih). This journey or march is aided by Sarama, who in the esoteric interpretation, represents the psychological ...
... hymned by the Angirasas." Here, again, intuition manifests before Indra, the Page 38 Divine Mind, as its forerunner, and it is by the means of intuition that Indra, the godhead of Illumined Mind, becomes the leader of the rescue of the Light and the conquest of the much wealth of spiritual light hidden within the rock. Dakshinā We have in the Rig Veda also the description of... besieged by the wild impulses or animal troops, paśus; mind evolves when these impulses are aided by Maruts, shining forces that belong to the power of Indra, the cosmic being who represents the Illumined Mind. As one rises and as the truths of Indra convert our animal consciousness, our impulses become the brilliant herds of the Sun, gāvah, rays, the divine consciousness of the Veda. The human ...
... physical world, there is a Vital world, above that is a world of the Mind, and then there are several planes between the Mind world and the world of the Super-mind; these are worlds of Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Over-mind. On the top level, there are worlds of the Super-mind, of Bliss, of Consciousness and of Existence. In the various descriptions of the universe, there are slight ... variations, but on the whole the most prominent description of the universe is that it is seven-fold. The Veda, therefore, speaks of Bhur (Earth plane), Bhuvar (world' of Life), Swar(world of Illumined Mind), Mahas (world of Supermind), Janah (world of Delight), Tapas (world of Consciousness-Force) and Satyam (world of Pure Existence). These worlds are connected among themselves, each one having ...
... Aurobindo, there is to be an ascent into the planes of the higher dynamic action and the descent of the powers of these planes into our mind, life and body. These planes are those of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, and Overmind. It is this process that is specifically called in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo the process of spiritual transformation. This process is extremely complex and it... possible forms and constructions of things become more and more visible, put in their proper place, utilisable. Moreover, what is thought-knowledge in the Higher Mind becomes illumination in the Illumined Mind and direct intimate vision in the Intuition. But the Intuition sees in flashes and combines through a constant play of light—through revelations, inspirations, intuitions, swift discriminations ...
... time with Sri Aurobindo, we asked Him many questions. in an ascending order: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overmind, and the Supermind. Briefly, the Higher Mind is the plane where the mind has fallen silent or thoughts are seen to be occurring on the surface. In the Illumined Mind, thought is replaced by sight and light. In the Intuitive Mind, knowledge is no longer by thought ...
... direct access to all that Supermind can give it. There is a further limitation or change of characteristic action at each step downwards from Overmind to Intuition, from Intuition to Illumined Mind, from Illumined Mind to what I have called the Higher Mind: the Mind of Light is a transitional passage by Which we can pass from supermind and superhumanity to an . illumined humanity. For the new humanity ...
... mind of knowledge." 1 From the Higher Mind it rises to the Illumined Mind, which is a mind not of Truth-thought, but of Truth-vision. "Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit." 2 From the Illumined Mind it climbs to the Intuition, which is a "power of consciousness ...
... assignation with the Night; In the abyss was fixed our rendezvous: In my breast carrying God's deathless light I came her dark and dangerous heart to woo. I left the glory of the illumined Mind And the calm rapture of the divinised soul And travelled through a vastness dim and blind To the grey shore where her ignorant waters roll. I walk by the chill wave through the dull ...
... uncertain and disputed grasp, there could emerge Page 565 a true mind liberated and capable of the free and utmost perfection of itself and its instruments, a life governed by the free and illumined mind, a body responsive to the light and able to carry out all that the free mind and will could demand of it. This change might happen not only in the few, but extend and generalise itself in the race ...
... dare to tarnish them by wrapping them in my 'more rawer breath'? Why even think of gilding the lily? While commenting on many of Amal Kiran's lines Sri Aurobindo has pinpointed their origin to the illumined Mind, touched with the Overmind! Regarding some others he has congratulated the poet by calling them "absolutely perfect"! He has even explained the apparent unintelligibility of some of Amal Kiran's ...
... light of knowledge and a natural experience of the infinite. He distinguished in general a progression of four levels as having found rare voice in the world's literature and art: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind. A fifth and highest plane, which he named Supermind and whose realisation above on its own peaks and ultimate descent below into the physical being are the aim of his own ...
... the Life Gods a remedy for the suffering of Earth under the rule of Night. He enters the vastness of the Mind planes and rises from them into the Heavens of the Ideal. Beyond the highest peaks of Illumined Mind, where "the Thinker sleeps in too much light" 16 he discovers the World Soul. At last, surrendering his separate self at the feet of the Divine Mother, he reaches the end of his journey and the ...
... Evolution has not come to an end with the appearance of mind; it awaits a release into higher, spiritual levels of consciousness of which there are many gradations, ranging from Higher Mind through Illumined Mind, Intuition and Overmind up to Supermind. The present-day trends towards spiritual growth are the sign that the human race is preparing for the next evolutionary leap — the emergence of the spiritual ...
... as the native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being." 36 Among the higher planes of mental being, Sri Aurobindo distinguishes various distinct levels which he terms Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Overmind, culminating in what Sri Aurobindo calls Supermind or the Truth-Consciousness which secretly supports all the universe and leads all towards itself through the evolutionary ...
... golden Light within, our glory and ecstasy of being. The second means of acquiring spiritual knowledge and experience is by gaining access to the spiritual levels above the mind: higher mind, illumined mind, intuition and overmind. 46 “In the East, especially in India, the metaphysical thinkers have tried, as in the West, to determine the nature of the highest Truth by the intellect. They have ...
... complete falsehood and perversion of the nature … there could emerge a true mind liberated and capable of the free and utmost perfection of itself and its instruments, a life governed by the free and illumined mind, a body responsive to the light and able to carry out all that the free mind and will could demand of it. “This change might happen not only in the few, but extend and generalise itself in the ...
... the vital and by sensory perceptions. Above the ordinary intellect and reason there is pure, abstract reason (Kant’s reine Vernunft ), and then the mental means of receptivity to the higher and illumined mind, the intuition and the overmental-spiritual planes above our mind from where it sometimes receives inspirations, intuitions and truthful insights. The life forces (the vital) in us too have ...
... word, but anyhow) its explanation by the ordinary human consciousness (by “ordinary” I do not mean banal, I mean the human consciousness as it is), the explanation as given by Sri Aurobindo in an illumined mind, and the divine perception. All three are simultaneous for the same happening. How to express this with words?’ 20 The end of those years of Entretiens is now fast approaching; soon this ...
... of course , I remember about Barada Babu—I can't say I remember him because I never saw him' at least m the flesh. What he probably means by the Supermental is the Above Mind—what I now call illumined Mind—Intuition-Overmind. I used to make that confusion myself at the beginning. There is not enough to go upon to say whether he really Page 145 sees the Mother or an image of ...
... above, communicating with the brain, which is called the thousand-petalled lotus, and where are centralised the thinking mind and higher intelligence communicating with the greater mind planes (illumined mind, intuition, overmind) above. The second new significant feature is the self-manifestation of the inner mind; for it was your inner mind that was watching, observing and criticising the vital ...
... him from "overhead". But my practice, helped all the time by Sri Aurobindo, of receiving poetic inspiration again and again from the planes above that of the creative intelligence -Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind - has trained the mental Me not exactly to escape ...from the confines of thought To where Mind motionless sleeps waiting Light's birth 1 but at least to ...
... Aurobindonian. (1) The mute unshadowed spaces of her mind. "Intuitive with Oveirnind touch." (2)Flickering no longer with the cry of clay, The distance-haunted fire of mystic mind... "Illumined Mind with the Overmind touch." (3)An ocean-hearted ecstasy am I Where time rolls inward to eternal shores. "Intuitive, Illumined, Overmind touch all mixed together." Page 288 ...
... from beyond the mind coming down to act in the aspiring consciousness in the course of the Integral Yoga. Here the Supermind, no less than the Spiritual Mind with its four levels - Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind - has been at play, but more indirectly than otherwise. The first direct action of the Supermind in the human constitution in a regular way took place on December 5, 1950, ...
... Night; In the abyss was fixed our rendezvous: In my breast carrying God's deathless light I came her dark and dangerous heart to woo. I left the glory of the illumined Mind And the calm rapture of the divinised soul And travelled through a vastness dim and blind To the grey shore where her ignorant waters roll. I walk by the chill wave ...
... consciousness (direct) in anything he said or did, but what he did was done with the greatness of the Avatar. But there have since been men who did live in touch with the planes above mind—higher mind, illumined mind, Intuition. There is no question of asking whether they were "greater" than Rama; they might have been less "great", but they were able to live from a new plane of consciousness. And Krishna's ...
... Proper Above the physical mind and the vital mind is the mental intelligence, the mind proper. Beyond the ordinary thinking mind or intellect is the higher mind; beyond the higher mind is the illumined mind and beyond that is the intuitive mind. Above the intuitive mind are the Intuition and the Overmind. The Mind proper is divided into three parts—thinking Mind, dynamic Mind, externalising ...
... on between the differences of style and the different planes of inspiration? I don't think so—unless one can say that the effective style comes from the higher mind, the illumined from the illumined mind, the inspired from the plane of intuition. But I don't know whether that would stand at all times—especially when each style reaches its inevitable power. 23 September 1934 If one can write ...
... near possibility of return. We have to form as a link or bridge an intuitive or illuminated mind, which is not the direct gnosis, but in which a first derivative body of the gnosis can form. This illumined mind will first be a mixed power which we shall have to purify of all its mental dependence and mental forms so as to convert all willing and thinking into thought-sight and truth-seeing will by an ...
... of the Rishi who has pressed out the wine of delight and seeks to manifest them in speech, in the inspired mantras, sutāvatạ upa brahmāṇi vāghataḥ . He comes with the speed and force of the illumined mind-power, in possession of his brilliant horses to those thoughts, tūtujāna upa brahmāṇi harivaḥ , and the Rishi prays to him to confirm or hold the delight in the Soma offering, sute dadhiṣva naś ...
... Indra,—an expression, we may observe, that is void of sense if Saraswati is only a northern river and Indra the god of the sky, but has a very profound and striking significance if Indra be the illumined Mind and Saraswati the inspiration that proceeds from the hidden plane of the supramental Page 101 Truth. But it is impossible to give Saraswati so important a place with regard to the other ...
... riches for the doer of good works." The riches in which Usha is opulent cannot be anything else than the riches of the Light and the Power of the Truth; full of Indra power, the power of the divine illumined mind, she gives the inspirations of that mind ( śravāṁsi ) which lead us towards the Bliss, and by the flaming radiant Angiras power in her she bestows and arranges her treasures for those who do aright ...
... Literally, passion-mind and the animal; but the word paśu may also mean, as it does oftenest in the Veda, the symbolic Cow of light; in that case the sense will be the emotional mind and the illumined mind. But the first rendering agrees better with the general sense of the hymn and with its previous use of the word. × ...
... Notes - VII The Seven Centres of the Life 1) The thousand-petalled Lotus—above the head with its base on the brain. Basis or support in Life-Mind for the Supramental; initiative centre of the illumined Mind. 2) The centre between the brows in the middle of the forehead. Will, vision, inner mental formation, active and dynamic Mind. 3) The centre in the throat. Speech, external mind, all external ...
... his oneness. He is the light of all lights and luminous beyond all the darkness of our ignorance. He is knowledge and the object of knowledge. The spiritual supramental knowledge that floods the illumined mind and transfigures it is this spirit manifesting himself in light to the force-obscured soul which he has put forth into the action of Nature. This eternal Light is in the heart of every being; it ...
... s. The concentration at the apex above the head is the station in the thousand-petalled lotus. There one becomes aware of states of mind above the ordinary human buddhi , the higher mind, the illumined mind, Page 270 the intuition, the overmind—finally when one has achieved the overmind one opens directly to the supramental consciousness. The cosmic consciousness has many levels—the ...
... of Knowledge The knowledge comes from above like the light and peace and everything else. As the consciousness progresses, it comes from a higher and higher level. First it is the higher or illumined mind that predominates, then the intuition, next the overmind, lastly the supermind; but the whole consciousness has to be sufficiently transformed before the supramental knowledge can begin to come ...
... For if these elements are there, then it is not the true thing. Most, even in doing Yoga, live in the mind, vital, physical, lit up occasionally or to some extent by the higher mind and by the illumined mind; but to prepare for the supramental change it is necessary (as soon as, personally, the time has come) to open up to the Intuition and the Overmind, so that these may make the whole being and the ...
... which may express itself in thought and speech, but is independent of them in itself. Yes, it happens like that. A touch of realisation is enough to set the higher mind knowledge or the illumined mind knowledge flowing. Page 56 × The correspondent said that his mind found it hard to believe that a vacancy ...
... Page 118 trouble into the higher zones of consciousness where one is in direct contact with the Divine Truth. On the other hand the passage through the higher zones—higher Mind, illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind, is obligatory—they are the true Intermediaries between the present consciousness and the Supermind. 28 December 1933 About the intermediate zone, you wrote [in the ...
... rapid (collective as well as individual) transformation and creation into the mental, vital and physical planes from above, by the power of a supramental Light and Force acting through the higher illumined mind and the psychic being. For that purpose she was calling down beings of a higher plane (like the one of which you speak) as an indispensable aid in that process. All went on well enough so long ...
... eye-brows - ājnācakra - governs the dynamic mind, will, vision, mental formation; the thousand-petalled lotus sahasradala - above commands the higher thinking mind, houses the still higher illumined mind and at the highest opens to the intuition through which or else by an over-flooding directness the overmind can have with the rest communication or an immediate contact. * In our Yoga ...
... just touched by Overmind Intuition—a faultless movement of vision and colour, all welded together into a harmonious whole. The next two rise still more to an extraordinary lofty inspiration (Illumined Mind with the Overmind touch)—and present a most profoundly suggestive spiritual picture. The last two are very high up in the Higher Mind—just the right kind to form a powerful and luminous close ...
... proper immediate company—the last is the case with line 2. The overhead lines belong to the type that is now usual with you, Higher Mind lifted by Illumination to reach the Intuition level or else Illumined Mind rising to Intuition level; the latter in 9-11, 13-14, 17-18, 22-23. Both are very fine combinations." * Page 30 ...
... From the pale vistas of a perfect moon— They guard with silences the unbreathable Name. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Very fine throughout. It is a combined inspiration, Illumined Mind with an element of Higher Mind coming in to modify it and sometimes rising to touch Intuition—even what might be called Overmind Intuition. The last touch is strongest in lines 2, 3, there is ...
... lines that belongs to the mental rather than the overhead subtlety and largeness, though the rhythm is good being strong and effective. The ideas and language by themselves have the turn of the Illumined Mind, but the rhythmic breath and power are not of that kind. The images and language are very fine." * Page 44 ...
... through My dreamful silence ere the musics throng, Your deathless silence at each close of song. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Very fine. It is a vision of things from the Illumined Mind with the atmosphere of light and colours that reigns there." Page 64 ...
... life! Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It is certainly very original and expresses with great force the spiritual experience. A very fine poem—most of it being in substance from the Illumined Mind (except 2 or 3 lines) but its rhythm belongs to the poetic intelligence, strong and clear-cut but not with the subtle or large inner tones of the overhead music. It is a very luminous and powerful ...
... words eternal, sprung From golden seeds of packed immensity. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It is a fine poem, the second stanza especially fine. Language and rhythm from the illumined Mind." "I can't exactly say that it is equal to your best. It is a fine poem; but entire inevitability is not there, except perhaps in the second stanza's first three lines (the last is a very ...
... "All the lines are very fine, especially those marked. The three first of each stanza have a great intensity of vision—Higher Mind plus Overmind Intuition touch. The last—Higher Mind plus Illumined Mind—is not equal in vision but still not too far below." (Is it a bad habit on my part or the natural movement of a certain type of inspiration to have several appositional lines in a poem ...
... word, but anyway...), the explanation of the ordinary human consciousness ("ordinary," I don't mean banal, I mean the human consciousness), then the explanation as Sri Aurobindo gives it in an illumined mind, and then... the divine perception. All three simultaneously, for the same thing—how, how do you describe it?! And it's constant, it's all the time like that. So then, this ( Mother points to ...
... Upanishad but also from a brief correspondence between Sri Aurobindo and me in 1948. When I had asked him to help me draw inspiration from the 'overhead' planes which he had named Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Overmind, with the still unmanifested Supermind at the top, and whose distinguishing traits and powers he had explained, I was eager to get lines of English and European poetry ...
... butter" (VI. 10.2), we have in the comparison the clue to the symbol of ghṛita in the sacrifice. 31 Ghṛita is "the light-offering", the labour of the clarity of an enlightened or illumined mind. Perhaps the easiest way to rout Renou and his tribe of modern expositors, on whom Monchanin leans so confidently, is to employ the argument Sri Aurobindo brings to bear on the nature ...
... Intelligence and even the second tier of the overhead ascent, for the Higher Mind which has seized the mental imagination is itself linking its largeness of thought to a wideness of sight proper to the Illumined Mind. Sri Aurobindo has read a capture of the spiritual-mental Illumination and its domination by the inmost being, the Psychic Consciousness, in the last eight lines of the same disciple's poem ...
... quiet felicity in the one and vivida vis (lively force) in the other. Perhaps the second instance is half-way into the "Higher Mind". The next two seem to be the "Higher Mind" taken up into the "Illumined Mind" and verging on the "Intuition". The first of the pair of pen-ultimate instances looks like the direct penetrative simplicity of the "Intuition" under the guise, as it were, of the "Creative I ...
... "above the mind". Sri Aurobindo focuses in it what he specifically calls "Supermind" or "Truth-Consciousness" and distinguishes it from the several other "overhead" levels such as Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition (or Intuitive Mind), Overmind. Sri Page 215 Aurobindo does not just posit these levels and beyond them the Supermind: having had direct experience of them by means ...
... Cellular experiences, 168-71 Hatha yoga, 70, 269 Central being, 262 Higher mind, 78-9, 244-5, 263-4 Chaitya purusha, 262 Chandernagore, 13-4 Illumined mind, 78-9, 244, 263-4 Change, real, 193 Image-worship, 6 Cherry trees, 61-2 Immortality, 220 China, 64 Impersonal, Absolute, 75 City, ideal, 176-8 ...
... self-discovery. It is the constant urge of the hidden Spirit to emerge out of its involution that has created the successive steps in the ascension of consciousness into life, mind, higher mind, illumined mind, intuition, over mind—and supermind as the last term of its self-expression. In divine life, this supermind has to be reached through a complete annulment of the separative and limited ego-con ...
... one's sole real objective, and to put no sure confidence in other things until the mind and life and soul are purified and the light of the spirit and Supermind or at least of the spiritually illumined mind and soul are shed on these inner ranges of experience." (pp. 843-44) We reproduce below a few of the verses from Savitri which graphically describe the sight in this dark zone of e ...
... actuality of dynamic self-giving, the complete renunciation of his works to the Supreme Will. By degrees his mind of an imperfect human intelligence will be replaced by a spiritual and illumined mind and that can in the end enter into the supramental Truth-Light; he will then no longer act from his nature of the Ignorance with its three modes of confused and imperfect activity, but from a diviner ...
... Scripture, and this justifies the description of the Gita as yogashastra, systematic science of yoga. In other words, the Gita provides a sound basis for the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind and God-experienced soul, and in this way the Gita rings with the message with the all-liberating quest that irrespective of what is heard or unheard before, one must always seek the truth in the ...
... sacrifice to flood the offering with a mind pouring ghrita, ghritapusha manasa. The yogic meaning refers to the "mind pouring the light", which is a labour of the clarity of the enlightened or illumined mind. Sometimes the Veda speaks plainly of offering intellect (dhishana) as purified ghrita, to the gods, ghritam na putam dhishanam, as in RV III.2.1. Offering of ghrita means, therefore, the ...
... consciousness (direct) in anything he said or did, but what he did was done with the greatness of the Avatar. But there have since been men who did live in touch with the planes above mind—higher mind, illumined mind, Intuition. There is no question of asking whether they were "greater" than Rama ; they might have been less "great", but they were able to live from a new plane of consciousness. And Krishna's ...
... so high up that I cannot see it but can have only an impression of it. This flight has many gradations. It is the line of connection between the spiritual mind, through higher mind, illumined mind, intuition, overmind to the supramental. For the last two days, my consciousness seems to soar much higher than the Higher Mind. Not only the inner but even the outer being feels ...
... main ones have been named and described by Sri Aurobindo. The first one nearest to the Overmind and the least contaminated by the Mind is pure Intuition; next, the intermediary one is called the Illumined Mind, and last comes the Higher Mind. They are all powers of the Overmind functioning in the Mind. The higher ranges are always more direct, intense, synthetic, dynamic than the lower ones where co ...
... main ones have been named and described by Sri Aurobindo. The first one nearest to the Overmind and the least contaminated by the Mind is pure Intuition; next, the intermediary one is called the Illumined Mind, and last comes the Higher Mind. They are all powers of the Overmind functioning in the Mind. The higher ranges are always more direct, intense synthetic, dynamic than the lower ones where ...
... and awareness. Sri Aurobindo has, in the course of his yogic research, discovered that there are several gradations of the rising layers of mental consciousness such as those of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Overmind; and Sri Aurobindo points out that even in the overmental plane of consciousness, the unity and integrality of the Object of realization is not effected and that one ...
... Purusha Silence Prakriti HEAVENS OF THE IDEAL (Canto XII) The Rose & the Flame GREATER MIND (Canto XI) Higher mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive mind LITTLE MIND (Canto X) Pigmy Thought, Intelligence, Reason NIGHT (Cantos VII, VIII) ...
... Claudio's images are drawn from the vital and the physical, and yet they are passed through the fire and purified in the fountain and lifted up to a higher plane—say, that of the Higher Mind or the Illumined Mind—because, "there is something behind...which comes not primarily from the mind or the vital emotions or the physical seeing but from the cosmic self and its consciousness standing behind them ...
... The key words —'wings of wind', 'gold-red', 'the face lustred.. .gleamed', 'sun-realms of supernal seeing'—make a chain of significant advance and indicate the flight through the worlds of Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, and Overmind. The hippogriff, the "fabulous griffin-like creature with body of horse", 83 naturally calls to our mind the Aswins of the Veda rising upward in the "wide-shinings ...
... consciousness is, "espoused and held by the lower creative power which works through the limited mind and body", but is ultimately, "delivered from this subjection by the force of the divine or illumined Mind born of her in the mentality of man". 54 But in Sri Aurobindo's handling of the theme, there is an even greater wideness and totality of comprehension than any simple statement of the Vedic conception ...
... those heights. 233 If Milton in his 'mighty-mouthed' moments is inspired by the Higher Mind, if Shakespeare in his great dazzling moments of supreme utterance is the poet with the Illumined Mind, if Dante's poetry is charged again and again with the marvellous revelatory power of the Intuitive Mind, then Sri Aurobindo's Savitri embodies the sovereignty of the Overmind and comes to ...
... powers of Agni himself. 32 Of the other insights scattered in Sri Aurobindo's essays on the Veda, there is not space enough here to speak at length. Everywhere he has brought his own illumined mind to dispel the obscurity in symbolism or clear up the ambiguity in phrasing. Varuna and Mitra are Powers of the Truth that compel the human mentality to burst through its egoistic shell and take ...
... Night; In the abyss was fixed our rendezvous: In my breast carrying God's deathless light I came her dark and dangerous heart to woo. I left the glory of the illumined Mind And the calm rapture of the divinised soul And travelled through a vastness dim and blind To the grey shore where her ignorant waters roll. I walk by the chill ...
... free light and air of the modem day, the first to initiate the country into the new religion of the new age; in him appeared in seed-form the potentialities of all future creation; sparks of his illumined mind entered into every important domain of the collective life of the race — politics, society, religion, education, literature, language — and brought to the country a new birth, a new life, a new ...
... development of the Sadhana. The work of the two together alone brings down the supramental Truth into the physical plane. A.G. acts directly on the mental and on the vital being through the illumined mind; he represents the Purusha element whose strength is predominantly in illumined knowledge and the power that acts in this knowledge, while the psychic being supports this action and helps to ...
... Spiritual Power of Healing, Avatar: the Supreme Manifested on the Earth in a body, Victorious Love, Disinterested Work done for the Divine, Consecration, Mental Plasticity, Absolute Truth, Illumined Mind, and so on. Commenting on this half-esoteric flower-cult in the Ashram, Madhav P. Pandit writes: For the Mother, flowers are not just items of decoration; they are not even merely symbols; ...
... are what Sri Aurobindo saw in general, when he was an undertrial prisoner in the Alipur Jail in 1908 as the overhead or above-mind states or powers which he was later to name as Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, and Intuition, leading on to Overmind and Supermind. Making a reference to her 1912 statement in a conversation on 11 November 1953, the Mother said: There are superposed states of ...
... not true because you cannot find it there. That is the limited thought of the sectarian or the composite thought of the eclectic religionist, not the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind and God-experienced soul. Heard or unheard before, that always is the truth which is seen by the heart of man in its illumined depths or heard within from the Master of all knowledge, the knower ...
... Supermind. Acting in the Asram means only acting in the earth consciousness to prepare its own possibility. The forces above the human Page 351 mind, especially Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind can be very intense and fiery. They have divine powers in them. 12 18 September 1935 You wrote that you are "trying to get the supermind down into the material". 13 We understand ...
... complete development of the sadhana. The work of the two together can alone bring down the supramental Truth into the physical plane. A.G acts directly on the mental and on the vital being through the illumined mind; he represents the Purusha element whose strength is predominantly in illumined (intuitive, supramental or spiritual) knowledge and the power that acts in this knowledge, while the psychic being ...
... Yes, of course, I remember about Baroda Babu—I can't say I remember him because I never saw him, at least in the flesh. What he probably means by the Supramental is the Above Mind—what I now call Illumined Mind-Intuition-Overmind. I used to make that confusion myself at the beginning. There is not enough to go upon to say whether he really sees the Mother or an image of her is reflected in his own ...
... into a higher reach of itself, forming there the Overmind Intuition, and then all that into the Overmind Gnosis awaiting the supramental transformation. The overmind "touch" on the Higher Mind and Illumined Mind can thus raise towards the O.I. or to the O.G. or leave it in the M.O.; but, estimating at a glance as I have to do, it is not easy to be quite precise. I may have to revise my estimates later ...
... प्रेरखः सविता । न्यृंजे । नितरां प्रसाधयामि । पश्यता मा । हे जना मां सर्वात्मकं पश्यत । यूयमप्येवमेव स्वस्वरूपमनुभवतेत्युक्तं भवति । I became Manu, I am Surya; Kakshivan the Rishi am I of the illumined mind; I [ ] Kutsa son of Arjuni, I am Ushana the seer; Me behold. 2) अहं । वामदेव इन्द्रो वा । आर्याय । मनवे । वावशानाः । शब्दायमानाः । केतं । संकल्पमनुयंति । I give earth to the Aryan ...
... fine intuitive authenticity and beauty, there is seldom anything to change; (3) a higher level of grander movement and language in which you pull down or reach the influences of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Overmind Intuition. This last you have not yet fully mastered so as to write with an absolute certainty and faultlessness except by lines and stanzas or else as a whole in rare moments of total ...
... outer or surface mind—but it is of the same essential nature. The higher consciousness is that above the or dinary mind and different from it in its workings; it ranges from higher mind through illumined mind, intuition and overmind up to the border line of the supramental. If the psychic were liberated, free to act in its own way, there would not be all this stumbling in the Ignorance. But the psychic ...
... intensity— Yesterday's general attack is being overcome—It failed to create a crisis. The fivefold plane is being manifested in thought etc (puru viҫvâ janima manushânam) with the illumined mind as the centre (samo divo dadrishe rochamâno) & the brihad archis of the vijnana as the source. Page 888 The five purah are being manifested even to the rupadrishti. The vijnana ...
... and one above, communicating with the brain, which is called the thousand-petalled lotus and where are centralised the highest thought and intelligence communicating with the greater mind planes (illumined mind, intuition, overmind) above. The second new significant feature is the self-manifestation of the inner mind; for it was your inner mind that was watching, observing and criticising the vital ...
... comes down into a lower plane, it is diminished and modified by the inferior substance, lesser power and more mixed movements of that lower plane. Thus, if the Overmind Power works through the illumined mind, only part Page 447 of its truth and force can manifest and be effective—so much only as can get through this less receptive consciousness. And even what gets through is less true, ...
... of the Truth in a diminished working, extending the power of the Light not only to its own but to lower levels of consciousness in their climb towards self-transcendence. Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind and what I have called Higher Mind, these and other levels of a spiritualised and liberated mentality, will be able to reflect in the uplifted human mind and its purified and exalted feeling and ...
... mentality. × Thousand symbolises absolute completeness, but there are ten subtle powers of the illumined mind each of which has to have its entire plenitude. × The symbolic figure of the illuminations of ...
... and the triple heavens? But admit the mystical and esoteric meaning and the sense becomes clear. What the Rishi means is a "mind pouring the light", a labour of the clarity of an enlightened or illumined mind; it is not a human priest or a sacrificial fire, but the inner Flame, the mystic seer-will, kavi-kratu , and that can certainly manifest by this process the Gods and the worlds and all planes ...
... outer mental activities of knowledge and turn them into a parcel of itself or an annexed province; it will infuse into them its more authentic movement and make a more and more spiritualised and illumined mind its instrument in these surface fields, its new conquests, as well as in its own deeper spiritual empire. And this will be the second sign, the sign of a certain completion and perfection, that ...
... intense actuality of dynamic self-giving, the complete renunciation of his works to the Supreme Will. By degrees his mind of an imperfect human intelligence will be replaced by a spiritual and illumined mind and that can in the end enter into the supramental Truth-Light; he will then no longer act from his nature of the Ignorance with its three modes of confused and imperfect activity, but from a diviner ...
... accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth,—an image which in this experience becomes a reality,—we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense ...
... greatly increase, but it would still be pursued by a limitation, still condemned to a divisibility which would prevent it from working integrally in the power of the infinite. The power of a divinely illumined mind may be immense compared with ordinary powers, but it will still be subject to incapacity and there can be no perfect correspondence between the force of the effective will and the light of the ...
... mind ordinarily known to man, but yet higher ranges to which he has either no current faculty of admission or else only a partial and mixed reception of some faint portion of their powers,—the illumined mind, the intuition and finally the creative Overmind or Maya which stands far above and is the source of our present existence. If mind is to be understood only as Reason or human intelligence, then ...
... progress one's sole real objective and to put no sure confidence in other things until the mind and life soul are purified and the light of the spirit and supermind or at least of the spiritually illumined mind and soul are shed on these inner ranges of experience. For when the mind is tranquillised and purified and the pure psyche liberated from the insistence of the desire soul, these experiences are ...
... find precise and extended accounts not only of the in-worlds but also of the worlds above the mental level - the "overhead" planes which Sri Aurobindo distinguishes and describes as Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition. Overmind and, beyond the last-named, the still unmanifested Supermind which is the dynamic face and front of the utter Absolute? Isn't there the greatest possibility, the utmost probability ...
... product of rational understanding and cannot be understood by human reason. It is a transcendent mystery (like the mystery of Brahman, of Nirvana or the Tao) which can only be understood by the illumined mind (as Aurobindo might have called it). The presence of the Holy Spirit (which is the divine Spirit) in the Church enables the Church (that is, the Community of Christians) to discern what belongs ...
... be transmitted or what was seized was its reflection in the several grades between it and the mental level - grades distinguished by Sri Aurobindo from that level upwards as Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind. On each of these levels the Spirit has an organised existence in which it is self-revealed, each carries something of which our universe seems a half-lit image-echo; ...
... word "super", as used by Sri Aurobindo, has a particular significance which emerges with unique force once we look at his table of what is above the mind. He speaks of the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind, the Overmind, and then the Supermind. The word "super" does not indiscriminately cover all these levels. It acquires, as distinguished from the word "over", a shade of ...
... assignation with the Night; In the abyss was fixed our rendezvous: In my breast carrying God's deathless light I came her dark and dangerous heart to woo. I left the glory of the illumined Mind And the calm rapture of the divinised soul And travelled through a vastness dim and blind To the grey shore where her ignorant waters roll. I walk by the chill wave through ...
... Latin word "super", as used by Sri Aurobindo, has a particular significance which emerges with unique force once we look at his table of what is above the mind. He speaks of the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuition, the Overmind and then the Supermind. The word "super" does not indiscriminately cover all these levels. It acquires, as distinguished from the word "over", a shade of utter supremacy ...
... effect which in collocation with "thoughts" and "eternity" carries the language to the intense and the immense that are characteristic of what Sri Aurobindo, taking us past Higher Mind through Illumined Mind and Intuition, designates as the utterance of Overmind, the supreme Mantra. "Wander" has a central strength and weight in the letter d, a plumbing resonance in the n preceding and combining ...
... s. Once Sri Aurobindo had put its source a little lower — in the Intuition-plane which is third in the "overhead" levels from the Mind proper, the intervening two being the Higher Mind and the Illumined Mind; but later he raised its origin to the Overmind, saying that since his first judgment he had himself moved more Page 57 intimately in "the fields of sleep". Sri Aurobindo can create ...
... সত্যের আলাের প্রতীক ৷ 28.3.34 সাধারণ মনের তিনটী স্তর আছে ৷ চিন্তার স্তর বা বুদ্ধি, ইচ্ছাশক্তির স্তর (বুদ্ধিপ্রেরিত Wil) আর বহির্গামী বুদ্ধি ৷ উপরের মনেরও তিনটী স্তর আছে ৷ — Higher Mind, Illumined mind, Intuition ৷মাথার মধ্যে যখন দেখেছ, ওই সাধারণ মনের তিনটী স্তর হবে – উপরের দিকে খােলা, প্রত্যেকের মধ্যে একটী বিশেষ ভাগবতী শক্তি কাজ করতে নামছে ৷ 30.3.34 প্রাণের উদ্ধৃগামী অবস্থা ভগবানের ...
... must be a bright blue. Not too light Page 143 because there are three consecutive blues: there is the blue of the Mind, and then comes the Higher Mind, which is paler, and then the Illumined Mind, which is the color of the flag [Mother's flag], a silver blue, but naturally paler than that. And after this comes yellow, a yellow that is the yellow of the Intuitive Mind; it must not be golden ...
... there is any co-ordination between the differences of style and the different planes of inspiration—unless one can say that the effective style comes from the higher mind, illumined from the illumined mind, the inspired from the plane of intuition. But I don't know whether that would stand at all times—especially when each style reaches its inevitable power." We may note here apropos of ...
... and experience not yet expressed and, secondly, in the power of expression which gives it an exact body—a revelatory not an intellectual exactitude. Lines 1,2,4,7,8,9,11 are overhead lines— Illumined Mind." The double and single marks against the lines were put by Sri Aurobindo. (From where does the "trance-eye" appear? From the soul drawn up into the transcendent timeless or from ...
... breath, And make our limbs no longer grope to find A heaven of quiet through world-weary death! Sri Aurobindo's Comment It is very fine. The thought is clear enough. Illumined Mind intuitive inspiration." Page 108 ...
... A fire-tongue nourished by God's whole expanse Through darknesses of superhuman trance. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Lines five to eight (marked double) are from the Illumined Mind touched with the Intuition—the rest seem to be mainly from the Higher Mind, except that the last two [marked double] have a force of Illumination also. Perhaps the sustained intensity is less ...
... Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It is very good. Such inversions as in the fifth line should not be too often used, as in modern English they are apt to be puzzling. It is from the Illumined Mind that the poem as a whole seems to have come. Most of your poems now are from there. "Lines 1-3: Illumined style. Line 4: Illumined inspired style. Lines 5-8: Effective illumined style ...
... "The lines you have sent me no doubt have a remarkable force, especially three or four of them, but I do not know that I can say positively from what level or source they come. Perhaps the Illumined Mind but not purely from that. I would have to wait for more light from that illumined quarter before I could pronounce with a complete certainty." * Page 107 ...
... above time. The lotus of the soul has lifted high A million rapturous petal-arms to clasp The secret of a sempiternal sun. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "All from the illumined mind—only some fines more intensely illumined than others, but all fine." Page 97 ...
... briefly characterising them. It starts with the "inconscient" physical, then proceeds to the vital and the mental, with the psychic innermost recess between them—then sums up the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind and the Intuition and finally goes to the Overmind, the Supermind and the unmanifest Absolute. Do you think a special key is necessary to explain the poem or does it possess a sufficiently i ...
... planes, the hidden ranges of conscious- ness above the intellect, with their inherent light of knowledge and their natural experience of the infinite. He distinguished four planes: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Over-mind. The last-named has been, according to him, the top reach of the dynamic side of man's spirituality so far: a transcendental poise of immutable Brahman or featureless Nirvana ...
... "Climes" of "Eden" which is Blake's synonym for the eternal, the Lion no less than the Lamb is "vocal" of "sweet instructions", and the wounds of the wrathful "War" are those of the give-and-take of illumined mind or heart in contrapuntal dynamic. But if the beast of prey and the warring "wrath" are already there, and if bright thunderous majestic forms are newly created there to meet warlike or other occasions ...
... behind Thy gold apocalypse of shadowless mind! (Orison) About both these passages Sri Aurobindo says that they come Page 376 from the Illumined Mind with the touch of Overmind Intuition. 46 Sethna, we conclude, has always tried, under the guidance of his master, to widen the locus of his poetry, pushing its frontiers to regions normally ...
... critical, offered by Sri Aurobindo while assessing the "overhead” poetry of Amal Kiran. However, implicit in this approach that affirms various levels of inspiration such as the "Higher Mind," "Illumined Mind," "Intuitive Mind," "Overmind" ( The Secret Splendour, p. 81) or the one that defines poetic speech in terms of "Adequate," " Effective," "Intuitive,” "Illuminative," "Inspired" or the ...
... outer or surface mind - but it is of the same essential nature. The higher consciousness is that above the ordinary mind and different from it in its workings; it ranges from higher mind through illumined mind, intuition and overmind up to the border line of the supramental. 14 A more serious confusion found in modern psychology is due to the failure to distinguish between the subconscient ...
... and receive the direct utterance of poetry. It was possible to be receptive to it without myself getting stationed on those higher levels. Sri Aurobindo distinguished these levels as higher mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind and overmind intuition. He considered these planes as being communicated by us through our poems. The sheer overmind was difficult to tap and examples of the sheer communication ...
... that lead to a surpassing of the human formula. About the figure "ten thousand" Sri Aurobindo says: 510 "Thousand symbolises absolute completeness, but there are ten subtle powers of the illumined mind each of which has to have its entire plenitude." We get an inkling of some significant play of the number ten in other Rigvedic decla- 509. Griffith, op. cit., p. 309, col. 2. 510 ...
... knowledge and a natural experience of the Infinite. He distinguished in general a progression of four levels as expressible at present in poetry (or prose): Higher Mind, Page 126 Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind. Savitri was intended to be on the whole the poetry of Overmind, akin on a massive scale to what the ancient Rishis had called the Mantra — the supreme revelatory expression ...
... intuitive authenticity and beauty, there is seldom anything to change; (3) a higher level of grander movement and language in which you pull down or reach the influences of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Overmind Intuition. The last you have not yet fully mastered so as to write with an absolute certainty and faultlessness except by lines and stanzas or else as a whole in rare moments of total ...
... according to him, can hail from one of the following planes: (1) The Subtle Physical, (2) The Vital, (3) The Creative Intelligence, (4) The Inner Mind, (5) The Psychic, (6) The Higher Mind, (7) The Illumined Mind, (8) The Intuitive Mind, (9) The Overmind. For example, quoting the lines Page 283 To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often ...
... different individuals. The colour of the fire coming out from each one indicates the consciousness; white (the Mother's Light), red (Divine Love), Green (Vital Energy), yellow (Mind Plane), blue (Illumined Mind), pink (Psychic Love), golden (Light of Divine Truth). The Asura represents the evil forces that are at work even in the premises of the Ashram; they even want to destroy the samadhi and the ...
... comes down into a lower plane, it is diminished and modified by the inferior substance, lesser power and more mixed movements of that lower plane. Thus, if the overmind power works through the illumined mind, only part of its truth and force can manifest and be effective—so much only as can get through this less receptive consciousness. And even what gets through is less true, mixed with other matter ...
... Certainly, it is necessary for those who want the Supramental change. Unless the overmind opens, there can be no direct Supramental opening of the consciousness. If one remains in mind, even in illumined mind or the intuition, one can have indirect messages or an influence from the Supramental, but, not a direct Supramental control of the consciousness or the Supramental change. Sri Aurobindo ...
... For if these elements are there, then it is not the true thing. 5) Most, even in doing Yoga, live in mind, vital, physical, lit up occasionally or to some extent by the higher mind and by the illumined mind; but to prepare for the Supramental change it is necessary (as soon as, personally the time has come) to open up to the intuitive and the overmind, so that these may make the Adhar ready for ...
... That is how the overmind influence works on the lower planes, when it descends, but, it is not clear here whether it is the direct overmind influence or indirect power of it projected through the illumined mind—probably the latter. The Sun-symbol indicates a direct Light—whether Supramental, Overmental or Intuitive Truth. I have already explained the goats and serpents. Sri Aurobindo ...
... outer being and nature will still go on in their old unregenerate way, bringing in periods of dull obscurations and unwanted reactions due to the play of the gu ṇ as. "The power of divinely illumined mind may be immense compared with ordinary powers, but it will still be subject to incapacity and there can be no perfect correspondence between the force of the effective will and the light of the ...
... p. 240. 89. Ibid., Book IV, Canto IV, p. 383. 90. Ibid.', Book I, Canto III. 91. Ibid., Book X, Canto IV. 92. The Life Divine p. 278. Page 115 (ii)the Illumined Mind, that has for its characteristic action an "outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff' 93 ; (iii)the Intuition, which with its faculty of Truth-vision acts as "a projecting blade ...
... ultimate aim of the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother]. Unless the Overmind opens, there can be no direct supramental opening of the consciousness. If one remains in the mind, even in the illumined mind or the intuition, one can have indirect messages or an influence from the Supramental, but not a direct supramental control of the consciousness or the supramental change.’ 16 This makes it ...
... explanation of the ordinary human consciousness ("ordinary", I do not mean commonplace, I mean human consciousness), the explanation such as Sri Aurobindo gives through Page 236 an illumined mind, and... the divine perception. All the three simultaneously for the same thing—how, how to describe this? And it is constant, all the while in this way. And then that ( Mother points to her ...
... though still light-swept eye is at play. It is as if the poet could not sustain the "occult" or "magic" vein, so enchantingly profound, and opened himself to a region more familiar to him: the Illumined Mind of Sri Aurobindo's overhead series. The inspiration from the Intuition got latched on to this more •familiar, even if intrinsically rare, region and brought forth a pure intuitivised snatch from ...
... development of the Sadhana. The work of the two together alone brings down the Supramental Truth into the physical plane. A. G. acts directly on the mental and on the vital being through the illumined mind; he represents the Purusha element whose strength is predominantly in illumined knowledge (intuition, supramental or spiritual) and the power that acts in this knowledge, while the psychic being ...
... the hidden ranges of consciousness above the intellect, with their inherent light of knowledge and their natural experience of the infinite. He broadly distinguished four planes: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind. The last-named has been, according to him, the highest reach of the dynamic side of man's spirituality so far. The master dynamism of the Divine, the integral earth-transformative ...
... Ignorance 248 immortality 61,83,90,303 Inconscience 80,95,247,260,321,328 Inconscient 252 Indian spirituality 99 Ingelow,Jean 155 inner being 173 inspiration Illumined Mind 237 Overhead 37,211 source of 200,215 Integral Yoga. See yoga intellect bright and dark 307 intelligence 82,215 intuition 235 Overmind 323,347 Iqbal ...
... my hands. You may be interested to know that Sri Aurobindo adopted Einstein's expression: "boundless finite". In Savitri, after describing in brief all the "overhead" planes - Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition - up to Overmind he begins the description of the Overmind: Then stretches the boundless finite's last expanse, The cosmic empire of the Overmind, Time's buffer state bordering ...
... is poetry which passes over everybody's head! (laughter) But how is one to receive an inspiration entirely new which comes from the planes which Sri Aurobindo has distinguished as Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind? So I once got the idea to make a very direct appeal to Sri Aurobindo. I pressed on him a singular request, emboldened by his innumerable favours of tutorship. I wrote to ...
... quiet felicity in the one and vivida vis (lively force) in the other. Perhaps the second instance is half-way into the "Higher Mind". The next two seem to be the "Higher Mind" taken up into the "Illumined Mind" and verging on the "Intuition". The first of the pair of penultimate instances looks like the direct penetrative simplicity of the "Intuition" under the guise, as it were, of the "Creative In ...
... Overhead planes, the hidden ranges of consciousness above the intellect, with their inherent light of knowledge and their natural experience of the infinite. He distinguished four planes: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind. The last-named has been, according to him, the top reach of the dynamic side of man's spirituality so far: a transcendental poise of immutable Brahman or featureless Nirvana ...
... capable too of feeling the Overhead touch when it comes." 62 The Overmind touch, even the touch of anything else Overhead (which comprises all the above-mind states of consciousness: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, 60 Ibid., pp. 788-90. 61 Ibid., p. 743. 62 lbid., p. 759. Page 302 Intuition) must involve, in some measure at least, a "cosmic consciousness", a ...
... Homer's Illiad has not the elevation of Paradise Lost or the effulgence of The Divine Comedy but it has the clear detached vision whose lines suggest the absolute because they take rise in the illumined mind. In the Illiad we have the highest reach of the Hellenic mind. In The Divine Comedy we have the highest attainment of Christian mystical experience; in Paradise Lost we have the highest elevation ...
... unconsciousness and Matter, the regions of Heavens of the Higher Vital, and then crosses over to the Heavens of the Mind. He then goes to the regions above Mind, into the Heavens of the ideal and Illumined Mind and passes beyond the borders of manifested creation to the Centre from which creation proceeds. Here he comes face to face with the World-Soul. He now experiences the presence of the Divine ...
... the sound of supernatural experience as well as the experience of the original sound. While explaining the features of Overhead Poetry, poetry coming from the spiritual planes,—the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, and Overmind,—Sri Aurobindo draws our attention towards the fact that its essential character is in the rhythm and the language that come from some cosmic self rather than from the ...
... Sri Aurobindo, higher levels of consciousness, ranges of the powers of the fourfold personality in the superconscious. These ranges are those of what Sri Aurobindo has termed the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overmind and Supermind. An account of all this would form a subject by itself, and in an introductory paper as this we cannot dare enter into this field. 11. What we need to ...
... indivisible infinite reality is to be Page 65 reflected indivisibly and infinitely, the reflecting medium has to rise to levels higher than that of mind, such as the levels of higher' mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind and supermind. It is only at me level of the supermind that the integral experience of the infinite and the indivisible is obtained in its full infinity and indivisibility ...
... the latest classification which has been presented by Sri Aurobindo, these levels are distinguished from each other and described in an ascending order starting from Higher Mind and rising up to Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overmind and Supermind. The subconscious and inconscience are states of involved consciousness, not itself aware of all that is involved but it acts with some kind of automatic ...
... Supermind and Supramental Transformation The process of ascent to the supermind from the mind and the descent of the supermind, which would transform successively the Overmind, Intuitive mind, Illumined mind, Higher mind, mind and the rest cannot be a logical series of separate segments. Sri Aurobindo has stated that while a sufficient integration of one status has to be complete before an ascent to ...
... infructify the action of any intervening Force that seeks to effect a radical transformation. Even the higher spiritual-mental powers such as those whom Sri Aurobindo has named the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind and the Overmind, and their intensities, entering into the substance of this inconscient foundation, undergo this inescapable disability and fail to annul the disparity between ...
... powerful and fiery-keen. Acting in the Ashram means only acting in the earth-consciousness to prepare its own possibility. The forces above the human mind, especially Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind can be very intense and fiery. They have divine powers in them. You said that "the Supermind descent into Matter is what is being attempted". In that case, has the Supermind already ...
... centre (externalising, expressing mind, the physical mind) and the 'ajnachakra' between the eyebrows, centre of inner thought, will and vision. Are our higher levels — Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind, Supermind—automatically in connection with the Divine? Of course, but you can hardly call them your levels, since you are not conscious of them and in your manifested ...
... the Buddha. It is the Hindus who made him an Avatar. If Buddha had looked upon himself as an Avatar at all, it would have been as an Avatar of the impersonal Truth. You say Buddha achieved Illumined Mind and Ramakrishna the Intuitive. According to your explanation, Intuitive plane appears to be on a higher level than the Illumined. How is it then that Buddha's works and manifestation of realisation ...
... of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfilment. These gradations maybe summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis. 106 Whereas these gradations ...
... the wages of such bondage is death. But Satyavan is himself espoused by Savitri, Surya Savitri the Creator, and he is ultimately "delivered from this subjection by the force of the divine or illumined Mind", a power that can break the bars of the cage, purify what is impure, raise what is low, divinise what is human. Page 278 ...
... there is an entire part of him which rises and tries to profit by this Force for its own benefit, to use it for its personal ends. Her book seems to be altogether a dialogue between her higher illumined mind and her ordinary mind. One gets the impression of a conversation between her conscious self and her higher being or another being or a god. But how many things creep in from below upwards ...
... 10 JUNE 1940 SATYENDRA: Will there be any hierarchy among the supramental beings? SRI AUROBINDO: Supramental beings? In the Overhead, there is a hierarchy: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and so on. PURANI: That includes the Overmind. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, among the supramental beings too there is a hierarchy, in the sense of a gradation of consciousness towards the ...
... capable too of feeling the Overhead touch when it comes". 69 The Overmind touch, even the touch of anything else 'overhead' (which comprises all the above-mind states of consciousness: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition) must involve, in some measure at least, a "cosmic consciousness", a background consciousness to which the million particulars of phenomenal life perceived by the mind or the vital emotion ...
... 432; the turn towards Knowledge, 433; from Ignorance to Knowledge, 434; Karma and rebirth, 434; dynamics of spirituality, 434; ascent towards Supermind, 436ff; steps of ascent, 436ff; higher mind, illumined mind, intuition, overmind, 436-7; emergence of Gnostic being, 437ff; current evolutionary crisis, 438; Mind of light, 439; a Manifesto for the Future, 440; tributes, 440; synthesis of West & East, 440-41; ...
... pronounced philosophical slant, are not - strictly speaking - mystical outpourings. The poems have come - to use the phraseology of his later writings - from the levels of the Higher Mind or the Illumined Mind, perhaps even of the Intuitive Mind, and give us only philosophical generalisations or images of vividly perceived facets of the truth. Sri Aurobindo himself has remarked that "the mental intuitions ...
... of the Truth in a diminished working extending the power of the Light not only to its own but to lower levels of consciousness in their climb towards self-transcendence. Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind and what I have called Higher Mind, these and other levels of a spiritualised and liberated .mentality, will be able to reflect in the uplifted human mind and its purified and exalted feeling and ...
... intuition with an uncertain and disputed grasp, there could emerge a true mind liberated and capable of the free and utmost perfection of itself and its instruments, a life governed by the free and illumined mind, a body responsive to the light and able to carry out all that the free mind and will could Page 180 demand of it. This change might happen not only in the few, but extend and ...
... be achieved. The ascent from Ignorance to Knowledge will be long and slow, and there must be many gradations on the way. In order to reach the Supermind, many levels above the Mind—Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind—will have to be passed. But it can be done, and will be done, leading, "inevitably towards an evolution in the Knowledge, a self-finding and self-unfolding of the Spirit, a ...
... spiritual status or a higher existence."² The opening within has to be supplemented by an opening above. The consciousness of the sâdhaka has to ascend .above the human mind into the Higher mind, the Illumined mind, the plane of Intuition and the Overmind, .and receive from them the transmuting light and force peculiar to them. This ascent may not take place if he ¹ The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo ...
... .."¹ For a complete elimination of the ego-sense and the sporadic recurrence of its reflex action in the Subconscient, one has then to rise into the Overmind which is beyond the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and the plane of Intuition, and bring down the Overmind gnosis into the Subconscient and the Inconscient. The Overmental widening of consciousness is a global universalisation, and its perfection ...
... work according to the supramental discipline?" "Yes, Mother, but they say that regular work is not the supramental way." "Do they know the supramental?" "One doesn't know even the illumined mind, but pretends about the supramental." The person looking after Promesse Maternity has gone away to Bombay with the key of the clinic without informing us. Now there is a case of delivery. ...
... sealed up their outflow. Then came Indra of the richly-various lustres; "he comes impelled by the thought, driven forward by the illumined thinker within; he comes with the speed and force of the illumined-mind power, in possession of his brilliant horses." 1 Indra, the God-mind, smites the Coverer with his flashing lightnings. Indra's thunderbolt, made from the bones of Rishi Dadhichi, slays Vritra ...
... The Serpent Power- says that this lotus "has its head turned downward." Page 324 light around." This centre, said Sri Aurobindo, commands "the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind" and opens "upwards to the intuition and over mind." He clarified that some identify it "with the brain, but that is an error—the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the ...
... love that nowhere need it rush: Calm ether of an infinite embrace— Beauty unblurred by limbs or longing face. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Very beautiful. Higher and Illumined Minds rolled into each other with the Intuition to give an uplifting touch." Page 46 ...
... and limitless Force. Again the mystic deep attempt began, The daring wager of the cosmic game. For since upon this blind and whirling globe Earth-plasm first quivered with the illumining mind And life invaded the material sheath Afflicting Inconscience with the need to feel, Since in Infinity's silence woke a word, A Mother wisdom works in Nature's breast To pour... the heart of toil and want And press perfection on life's stumbling powers, Impose heaven-sentience on the obscure abyss And make dumb Matter conscious of its God. Although our fallen minds forget to climb, Although our human stuff resists or breaks, She keeps her will that hopes to divinise clay; Failure cannot repress, defeat o'erthrow; Final manuscript of Book ...
... benediction of that aureole. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It is very fine—it is the Higher Mind vision and movement throughout, except that in the fifth line a flash of Illumination comes through. Intense light-play and colour in this kind of utterance is usually the Illumined Mind's intervention." In the first version submitted, the second line had run: An ultimate crown... Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual consciousness where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although highly spiritual in its essential substance; and its instrumentation is through an elevated thought-power and comprehensive mental sight — not illumined by any... between the Truth-Light above and the human mind; communicating the higher knowledge in a form that the Mind intensified, broadened, made spiritually supple, can receive without being blinded or dazzled by a Truth beyond it. The poetic intelligence is not at all part of that clarified spiritual seeing and thinking — it is only a high activity of the mind and its vision moving on the wings of imagination ...
... soul: Then every stroke of time shall carve to birth Immortal moods lit by your ecstasy. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Very fine poetry. Blank verse rhythm very good. Illumined Higher Mind." * Page 87 ...
... and eternal Presence, understand at last its true purpose, and live in the harmony and peace of Thy sovereign realisation. Teach us always more, Give us more light, Dispel our ignorance, Illumine our minds, Transfigure our hearts, And give us the Love that never runs dry, and makes Thy sweet law flower in every being. We are Thine for all Eternity. Page 51 ...
... luminous completeness of energy. The Hymn is a hymn of the Adhwara Yajna, the Sacrifice of the Path. Agni, the Divine Will-Force or Power of Consciousness, is the deity. 1) The Gotamas, illumined minds, are to proceed to the path of the sacrifice; let them then give voice to the thought in them which is to be the governing word of their progress for the Divine Will-Force to use; that Force hears ...
... when we cannot aspire let us pray with the simplicity of a child. 25 July 1954 We pray that the Divine should teach us ever more, enlighten us more and more, dispel our ignorance, illumine our minds. 2 November 1954 It is never in vain that an ardent and sincere prayer is addressed to the Divine's Grace. 19 December 1954 The Supreme is divine knowledge and perfect unity; ...
... स्तोमो विप्रेभिरासया । अकारि रत्नधातमः ॥१॥ 1) Lo, the affirmation made for the divine Birth with the breath of the mouth by illumined minds, that gives perfectly the bliss; य इन्द्राय वचोयुजा ततक्षुर्मनसा हरी । शमीभिर्यज्ञमाशत ॥२॥ 2) Even they who fashioned by the mind for Indra his two bright steeds that are yoked by Speech, and they enjoy the sacrifice by their accomplishings of the work... ngs that which is central is the formation of the two brilliant horses of Indra, the horses yoked by speech to their movements, yoked by the Word and fashioned by the mind. For the free movement of the luminous mind, the divine mind in man, is the condition of all other immortalising works. 3 The second work of the Ribhus is to fashion the chariot of the Ashwins, lords of the human journey,—the... they are descended from this luminous Energy and are sometimes so addressed, "Offspring of Indra, grandsons of luminous Force." For Indra, the divine mind in man, is born out of luminous Force as is Agni out of pure Force, and from Indra the divine Mind spring the human aspirations after Immortality. The names of the three Ribhus are, in the order of their birth, Ribhu or Ribhukshan, the skilful ...
... every side cannot pen him in. एतं ते स्तोमं तुविजात विप्रो रथं न धीरः स्वपा अतक्षम् । यदीदग्ने प्रति त्वं देव हर्याः स्वर्वतीरप एना जयेम ॥११॥ 11) O thou who art born in many forms, I illumined in mind, accomplished in understanding, perfect in works, have fashioned for thee this song of thy affirming to be as if thy chariot. If thou, O Strength, take an answering delight in it, by this we may... conscient Mind. The clarities of the higher illumination cannot be kept so long as there is not this Strength to guard them, for hostile powers snatch them away and conceal them again in their secret cavern. Divine Will manifested in man, itself liberated, liberates him from the cords which bind him as a victim in the world-sacrifice; we attain to it by the teaching of Indra, the divine Mind, and it... light and pure bright of hue who was shaping the weapons of his war. I give to him the immortality in me in all my separate parts 3 and what shall they do to me who have not the Word 4 and the God-Mind is not in them? क्षेत्रादपश्यं सनुतश्चरन्तं सुमद् यूथं न पुरु शोभमानम् । न ता अगृभ्रन्नजनिष्ट हि षः पलिन्कीरिद् युवतयो भवन्ति ॥४॥ 4) I saw in the field as though a happy herd that ranged ...
... after death man's attainment to the Paradise of the gods. We now find, that however valid these ideas may have been for the vulgar, they were not the inner sense of the Veda to the seers, the illumined minds ( kavi, vipra ) of the Vedic age. For them these material objects were symbols of the immaterial; the cows were the radiances or illuminations of a divine Dawn, the horses and chariots were symbols... now divinely recovered not by the god of the physical fire, but by the flaming Force which was concealed in the littleness of the material existence and is now liberated into the clarities of an illumined mental action. Indra is not, then, the only god who can break up the tenebrous cave and restore the lost radiances. There are other deities to whom various hymns make the attribution of this great... on the three levels, triṣu sānuṣu , body, life and mind); he it was supported widely heaven and earth, he it was fashioned the car with the seven rays; he it was held by his force the ripe yield (of the madhu or ghṛta ) in the cows, even the fountain of the ten movements." It certainly seems astonishing to me that so many acute and eager minds should have read such hymns as these without realising ...
... a lid over the mind divide us from the Divine. Love and devotion rend the veil, in the quietude of the mind the lid thins and vanishes. 9 September 1936 May the inner Sun tranquillise and illumine the mind and awaken fully the heart and guide it. 9 September 1937 In a quietude of the mind open to the presence of the Divine in your heart and everywhere; in a still mind and heart the Divine... Let the mind be quiet and receive the Light; let the vital be quiet and receive the Force that delivers. 2 February 1944 Let the year that is beginning mark a definitive stage in the growth of your psychic being and its power over your nature and your life. 2 February 1945 Continue to open yourself and the psychic consciousness will grow in you and the Light refine and illumine whatever... the wideness, the heights of knowledge, the seas of Ananda. 15 August 1929 It is not by your mind that you can hope to understand the Divine and its action, but by the growth of the true and divine consciousness within you. If the Divine were to unveil and reveal itself in all its glory, the mind might feel a Presence, but it would not understand its action or its nature. It is in the measure ...
... wherein 'life invaded the material sheath', just as towards the close of the biological phase the cerebral cortex began to be elaborated and with it 'earth-plasm first quivered with the illumining Mind', just as again at the end of the biological phase, with the development of the cerebrum, evolution started on a new course when 'man was moulded from the original brute', similarly now,... is." 2 And here Sri Aurobindo sounds a note of warning to the race: "Mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind is capable of opening to what exceeds it, then there is no reason why... assures us that this need not be so. For it has to be noted that "the appearance of human body and mind on the earth marks a crucial step, a decisive change in the course and process of the evolution; it is not merely a continuation of the old lines. Up till this advent of a developed thinking mind in Matter, evolution had been effected not by the self-aware aspiration, intention, will or seeking ...
... phase wherein 'life invaded the material sheath', just as towards the close of the biological phase the cerebral cortex began to be elaborated and with it 'earth-plasm first quivered with the illumining Mind', just as again at the end of the biological phase, with the development of the cerebrum, evolution started on a new course when 'man was moulded from the original brute', similarly now, with the... concealed in God's Beyond That shall one day reveal its hidden face. Now mind is all and its uncertain ray, Mind is the leader of the body and life,... There are greater destinies mind cannot surmise Fixed on the summit of the evolving Path The Traveller now treads in the Ignorance, Unaware of his next step, not knowing his goal. Mind is not alt his tireless climb can reach, There is a fire... evolution is a fact, the present man cannot be its last term, nor can his noetic faculty, Mind, be the supreme possible instrument of knowledge although we men seem at times to think so. For man as he is at present "is too imperfect an expression of the spirit, mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being ...
... condition of blessedness, a participation both ample and profound in some sort of inner divineness. The background Yoga can be of diverse kinds. People may feel an action from above, illumining both mind and heart and opening an inner eye to strange glorious scenes or to a play of forces seeming to affect the very body although actually the occult or spiritual phenomena have the subtle-physical... or reading or even talking. Such a double state is possible most when the Yoga is done by the heart rather than by the mind. While the mind is occupied with various activities, the heart stands apart, alone with the Divine. Surely a link exists between the two, for it is the mind that on ceasing from its activities at any point realises that what it was conscious of as a far-away yet persisting divine... outward direction by cordial and friendly and co-operative relations with those among whom one lives or works: the same is indicated in an inward direction by getting in touch with the deeper layer of the mind which looks up to a light beyond the mere thinker and with the depth behind the mere "feeler" to a love for some ideality of existence towards which our sense of the good, the true and the beautiful ...
... force the ends of the earth, Brihaspati in the triple seat of the fulfilment, by his cry." 1 On him, it is said, the ancient or pristine Rishis meditated; meditating, they became illumined in mind; illumined, they set him in front as the god of the ecstatic tongue, mandrajihvam , the tongue that takes joy of the intoxicating wine of Soma, mada, madhu , of that which is the wave of sweetness... दधिरे मन्द्रजिह्वम् ॥१॥ l) He who established in his might the extremities of the earth, Brihaspati, in the triple world of our fulfilment, by his cry, on him the pristine sages meditated and, illumined, set him in their front with his tongue of ecstasy. धुनेतयः सुप्रकेतं मदन्तो बृहस्पते अभि ये नस्ततस्त्रे । पृषन्तं सृप्रमदब्धमूर्वं बृहस्पते रक्षतादस्य योनिम् ॥२॥ 2) They, O Brihaspati... us with his cry. स सुष्टुभा स ऋक्वता गणेन वलं रुरोज फलिगं रवेण । बृहस्पतिरुस्त्रिया हव्यसूदः कनिकदद्वावशतीरुदाजत् ॥५॥ 5) He with his cohort of the rhythm that affirms, of the chant that illumines has broken Vala into pieces with his cry. Brihaspati drives upward the Bright Ones who speed our offerings; he shouts aloud as he leads them, lowing they reply. एवा पित्रे विश्वदेवाय वृष्णे ...
... Seer-Poet says: Again the mystic deep attempt began, The daring wager of the cosmic game. For since upon this blind and whirling globe Earth-plasm first quivered with the illumining mind... A Mother wisdom works in Nature's breast To pour delight on the heart of toil and want. 18 Wisdom, the Mother or "the Mother wisdom" who "works in Nature's covert breast"... And see in Mind Wisdom's sole tabernacle. 50 The contrast between the last two passages is instructive. In the lines just quoted the ignorant human race mocks the saviour Light—the words take us back to the theme discussed already—and see in Mind (foolishly) the Wisdom's sole tabernacle. In the other passage, the Mind shall be God-vision's tabernacle. The Mind at its best has... bigger than the thumb of man... Identified with the mind and body and life, It takes on itself their anguish and defeat, Bleeds with Fate's whips and hangs upon the cross. 38 Our true being is the Psyche that takes a new mind and life and body every time it takes birth. The anguish and defeat undergone by body, mind and life are suffered by Christ-like Psyche, bleeding with ...
... cortex began to be elaborated and with it 'earth-plasm first quivered with the illumining Mind', just as again at the end of the biological phase, with the development of the cerebrum, evolution started on a new course when 'man was moulded from the original brute' and "Across the thick smoke of earth's ignorance A Mind began to see and look at forms And groped for knowledge in the nescient... is." 33 And here Sri Aurobindo sounds a note of warning to the race: "Mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind is capable of opening to what exceeds it, then there is no reason why man... Hebrew teaching, apart from man's 'body' that is but 'dust' ( ā ph ā r) and 'flesh' (b ā s ā r), apart from his 'heart' (nephesh) that 'hopes and desponds, fears and longs', apart even from his 'mind' (l ê bh ā bh) that is the seat of 1. Psalms, Bk. VIII-5. Page 1 wisdom and thought, man is endowed with the unique principle, 'spirit' (r ū ach), 'breathed' into him ...
... complexity. His power of ideation is so refined that words flow from him effortlessly, communicating difficult ideas with precision and expressiveness. Striking phrases formulated in inspired moments illumine the minds of pupils with ease and joy. He can expound the same idea in several different ways to suit the preparedness and intelligence of his pupils. A good teacher is a spontaneous innovator, and... meaningful lesson. Among Zen teachers, in particular, we find a remarkably developed art that is well worth studying. Zen is best understood as psychological exploration leading to experience that illumines what is real. Since education is a psychological cultivation of the faculties and capacities of consciousness leading to a knowledge of reality, we can appreciate how Zen can be useful to those who... facts are facts, and that Zen deals with facts and not with verbal representations. Direct simplicity is the soul of Zen and the source of its vitality, freedom and originality. Zen often compares the mind to a spotless mirror. To be simple, therefore, will be "to keep this mirror always bright and pure and ready to reflect simply and absolutely whatever comes before it. "' According to the Zen masters ...
... by some great and illumined individual mind who embodies the desire and seeking of the race. The Vedic law becomes a convention and a Buddha appears with his new rule of the eightfold path and the goal of Nirvana; and it may be remarked that he propounds it not as a personal invention, but as the true rule of Aryan living constantly rediscovered by the Buddha, the enlightened mind, the awakened spirit... finds usually outside himself in some more or less fixed outcome of the experience and wisdom of the race, which he accepts, to which his mind and the leading parts of his being give their assent or sanction and which he tries to make his own by living it in his mind, will and action. Page 477 And this assent of the being, its conscious acceptance and will to believe and realise, may be called... and increase the pleasure and satisfaction and happy condition of mind and life and body, all that is succulent and soft and firm and satisfying. The rajasic temperament prefers naturally food that is violently sour, pungent, hot, acrid, rough and strong and burning, the aliments that increase ill-health and the distempers of the mind and body. The tamasic temperament takes a perverse pleasure in cold ...
... highest inmost light of spiritual illumination. Surya, the Sun-God, was the lord of the physical Sun; but he is at the same time to the Vedic seer-poet the giver of the rays of knowledge which illumine the mind and he is too the soul and energy and body of the spiritual illumination. And in all these powers he is a luminous form of the one and infinite Godhead. All the Vedic godheads have this outer... prolonged in a less inspired, less dynamic and more intellectual form by the Pythagoreans, by the Stoics, by Plato and the Neo-Platonists; but still in spite of them and in spite of the only half-illumined spiritual wave which swept over Europe from Asia in an ill-understood Christianity, the whole real trend of Western civilisation has been intellectual, rational, secular and even materialistic, and... persistent finite, between a luminous Truth-consciousness not expressed or not yet expressed here and the Mind's ignorance. But nothing is more difficult than to bring home the greatness and uplifting power of the spiritual consciousness to the natural man forming the vast majority of the race; for his mind and senses are turned outward towards the external calls of life and its objects and never inwards ...
... established. (4) And thou, O divine Mind, by the mind lead us and by the radiances and by the illumined gods in us to that blissful state and by the soul that is founded in the divine and by the right mind of the godheads that preside in our sacrifice. (5) The divine who enjoys in us and is the creator of bliss and the master of nectar and the divine Mind that conquers all the wealth which the... soul-thought greatening the God-Mind by their hymns of illumination increased him that he might slay the Python. (5) When to thee, the Bull of the diffusion, the Lords of the diffusion sang the illumining hymn and the pressing stones chanted it and the Mother Infinite, of one mind with these, then the wheels that bear no chariot and no horses draw them but God-in-Mind drives, came rolling against the... we have taken from thy ruddy powers, O God-Will; and this heated clarity that was for the intensifying of our strength,—of the thunderstone is its heat,—that too let us take, O minds illumined. SUKTA 31 (1) God-in-Mind maketh him a steep descent for the chariot of his action when he stands upon it, lord of the plenitudes, in its movement towards fullness; as a keeper of the kine with the troops ...
... speaking, we could at once have detected an action of the illumined spiritual Mind taking up the vital love and soaring into spiritual greatness. Or take the quotation— Page 391 the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come. Here both style and language come ultimately from a higher above-mind level, but still it is quite different from Wordsworth's... the rose. I cannot see an ordinary glow-worm in the lines of Shelley's stanza—it is a light from beyond finding expression in that glimmer and illumining the dell of dew and the secrecy of flowers and grass, that is there. This illumination of the earthly mind, vital, physical with his super-world light is a main part of Shelley; excise that and the whole of Shelley is no longer there, there is only... the difference comes because the vision of the "dreaming soul" is felt through the vital mind and heart before it finds expression; in the lines of Wordsworth the vision of the lone voyager through strange seas of thought has not that peculiar thrill but rather remains in an exaltation of light between the mind and some vastness above it. It is this constant vitality, this magnificent vital surge in ...
... 16, the Rishi describes himself as one illumined expressing through his thought and speech words of guidance, 'secret words' - ninya vacamsi — seer wisdoms that utter their inner meaning to the seer' - kavyani kavaye nivacana. ² It is, however, true that there was an external aspect of the Vedic religion and this aspect took its foundation on the mind of the physical man and provided means... Besides these, there is the highest inmost light of spiritual illumination. Surya, the Sun-god, was the lord of the physical Sun, but he is at the same time giver of the rays of Knowledge which illumines the mind. At the same time, he is also the soul of energy and the body of spiritual illumination. All Vedic godheads have an outer as also as inner and inmost foundation, their known as well as secret... the thought of the Veda, the Indian mind has recognised that the same general laws and powers hold in the spiritual, the psychological and the physical existence. Page 21 Omnipresence of life was discovered, and there was affirmation of the evolution of the soul in Nature from the vegetable and the animal to the human form. The philosophical mind started from the data of the spiritual ...
... consciousness, and a highest inmost light of spiritual illumination. Surya, the Sun-god, was the lord of the physical Sun, but he is at the same time the giver of the rays of Knowledge which illumines the mind, and he is also the soul of energy and body of the Page 83 spiritual illumination. All the Vedic godheads have an outer but also an inner and inmost foundation, their known... only be known in their true meaning by one who was himself a seer or mystic; from others the verses withhold their knowledge. For example, in Rig Veda IV.3.16, the Rishi describes himself as one illumined expressing through his thought and speech words of guidance, "secret words"— ninya vachamsi — "seer wisdoms that utter their inner meaning to the seer" - kavyani kavaye nivacana. 4 The tradition... starting from the thought of the Veda, the Indian mind had recognised that the same general laws and powers hold in the spiritual, the psychological and the physical existence. Omnipresence of life was discovered, and there was the affirmation of the evolution of the soul in Nature from the vegetable and the animal to the human form. The philosophic mind started from the data of the spiritual experience ...
... grains of dust if one likes, or compare them to the stars; in either case they are all alike in size and worth before Eternity. Page 157 II Beloved Mother, guide my steps, illumine my mind, and do not leave, I pray, any distance between You and me. I too do not want any distance between us. But the relation must be a true one, that is, based on union in the divine consciousness... atmosphere—doesn't it show that my mind can govern the vital? No, it only shows that in your consciousness the mind takes a bigger place than the vital. What I call the domination of the mind over the vital is when the latter takes no initiative, accepts no impulse which has not been first sanctioned by the mind, when no desire, no passion arises unless the mind thinks it good; and if an impulse... intellectual culture is indispensable for rising above the mind to find there the true knowledge? Intellectual culture is indispensable for preparing a good mental instrument, large, supple and rich, but its action stops there. In rising above the mind, it is more often a hindrance than a help, for, in general, a refined and educated mind finds its satisfaction in itself and rarely seeks to silence ...
... of Light. (3) Then may we know thy most intimate right-thinkings; manifest not beyond us, come. (4) Come over to Indra the vigorous, the unoverthrown, question Page 200 the illumined in mind who has given to thy friends their desirable boon. (5) And may the Binders say to us, “Go forth elsewhere also holding in Indra your work of worship.” (6) And may the enemy peoples call... the lord of the lightnings and brilliant might like the heaven in its wide-extending. (6) Those he beareth up who enjoy in their strength with safety of that which they have created or who are illumined and full of understanding. (7) For he is a gulf that drinks in the Soma utterly even as the sea drinks in the wide waters that have descended from the mountaintops. (8) So in him is the luminous... adoration that has been made for the Bull, for the Self-King, for the Strong whose force is of the truth. O Indra, in this strength may we abide in thy bliss, all the heroes with us and the happy illumined seers. SUKTA 52 (1) O greaten well this Ram who discovers the sun-world. His hundred powers perfect in birth speed together on the way. Indra may I set travelling to me for my increase by my ...
... her ideas were so lacking in humility. Ignorance always lacks humility—the more ignorant the mind, the more it judges and the more it revolts. 13 March 1936 What must one do to illumine the mind? Make it calm and quiet—in calm it can receive the light. 14 March 1936 My mind is always the same, ever full of thoughts. It has never learned to be silent. This is precisely... gained control. In what part does this darkness lie and how long will it remain there? Especially in the physical consciousness—until the physical gets illumined. 17 May 1935 So what must I do to get the physical illumined, as well as the vital, which is also dark and obscure, I suppose? Page 96 Always choose the light instead of the darkness. 18 May 1935 Darkness... is fun to see the soul in evolution. Everything is interesting. Who feels like this—the mind? Yes, it is the mind, but with a first influence of the flame of Agni. 8 February 1935 How can the human mind say that it is fun to see the soul developing, when the soul is above the mind? When the mind says this, it is referring to the vital soul, because that is what develops in life. ...
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