... Three Aspects of the Mother The Mother with Letters on the Mother Individual, Universal, Transcendent I am or was under the impression that Mother is the Cosmic and Supracosmic Mahashakti. I don't quite understand the question. I have explained in The Mother that there are three aspects, transcendent, universal and individual, of the Mother. ...
... the Supreme. We have to arrive at the hidden truth behind its manifest appearances; we have to discover the Spirit behind these veils and to see all as the One, vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti , individual, universal, transcendent. But this is a thing impossible to achieve with any completeness of inner reality, so long as we live concentrated in the inferior Nature. For in this lesser movement Nature is an ignorance ...
... is the "transcendent Mother"? Don't you know that there are three principles: the transcendent, the universal and the individual or personal? No?—the Page 391 transcendent which is above creation, at the origin of creation; the universal which is the creation, and the individual which is self-explanatory. There is a transcendent Divine, a universal Divine and an individual Divine. That... constantly a transcendent, constantly a universal, constantly an individual, and the transcendent, universal and individual are co-existent. That is, if you enter into a certain state of consciousness, you can at any moment be in contact with the transcendent Shakti, and you can also, with another movement, be in contact with the universal Shakti, and be in contact with the individual Shakti, and all... the transcendent. So these three aspects are also the three aspects of the divine Mother: transcendent, universal and individual.... Do you know the flower I have called "Transformation"? 1 Yes. You know it has four petals. Well, these four petals are arranged like a cross: one at the top which represents the transcendent; two on each side, the universal; and one at the bottom, the individual. ...
... Page 94 The individual divine Mother, at once transcendent and universal in Her consciousness, brings down the transcendent Will to new creation, and infuses it into those individual units of humanity who open and surrender to Her in an unquenchable aspiration for becoming Her instruments upon earth. In the age in which we live, the Will of the Transcendent is, as Sri Aurobindo assures... the Transcendent, and it is the individual poise of the Mother which, representing the Transcendent, becomes the sole channel of those possibilities as well as of the Will and Grace realising them here. But for this individual embodiment, the transcendent Will could hardly find a direct means of completely fulfilling itself in the material world. The embodied physical action of the individual poise... Is this transcendent and universal Shakti the Mother to whom we are called upon to surrender? Is She the sole pilot of the Integral Yoga? Were it only so, our Yoga would be identical with the Tântric Yoga, and robbed °f much of its integrality and characteristic potentiality For physical transformation and divine manifestation; Page 87 for, the transcendent and universal Mother, as ...
... the delight of the transcendence, not for the sake of transcendence, but because he is the transcendent; the delight of the universal, not for the sake of universality, but because he is the universal; the delight of the individual not for the sake of individual satisfaction, but because he is the individual. It goes behind all distinctions and appearances and makes no calculations of more or less... whole delight of his being; but it is in delight that knowledge fulfils itself, the knowledge of the transcendent in the delight of the Transcendent, the knowledge of the universal in the delight of the universal Godhead, the knowledge of the individual manifestation in the delight of God in the individual, the knowledge of the impersonal in the pure delight of his impersonal being, the knowledge of the... that it need not do so; since the conscious being of the Divine is universal and individual as well as transcendent and absolute, here too there may be and should be a tendency to integral realisation of unity and we can arrive by it at a spiritual oneness with God in man and God in the universe not less complete than any transcendent union. But still this is not quite imperative. For we may plead that ...
... attains to the Self unconditioned, free and transcendent. In practice three conceptions are necessary before there can be any possibility of Yoga; there must be, as it were, three consenting parties to the effort,—God, Nature and the human soul or, in more abstract language, the Transcendental, the Universal Page 31 and the Individual. If the individual and Nature are left to themselves, the... prevalent in India, we find that they arrange themselves in an ascending order which starts from the lowest rung of the ladder, the body, and ascends to the direct contact between the individual soul and the transcendent and universal Self. Hathayoga selects the body and the vital functionings as its instruments of perfection and realisation; its concern is with the gross body. Rajayoga selects the mental being... evolution. It is the individual heart that by sublimating its highest and purest emotions attains to the transcendent Bliss or the ineffable Nirvana, the individual mind that by converting its ordinary functionings into a knowledge beyond mentality knows its oneness with the Ineffable and merges its separate existence in that transcendent unity. And always it is the individual, the Self conditioned ...
... of truths, the transcendent and the cosmic, the universal and the individual; here we have seen that each member of these pairs is contained in its apparent opposite. The universal particularises itself in the individual; the individual contains in himself all the generalities of the universal. The universal consciousness finds all itself by the variations of numberless individuals, not by suppressing... the Many, the finite and the infinite, the transcendent and the cosmic, the individual and the universal; each is the other as well as itself and neither can be entirely known without the other and without exceeding their appearance of contrary oppositions. We see then that there are three terms of the one existence, transcendent, universal and individual, and that each of these always contains secretly... the Knowledge. The power of the individual to possess in his consciousness by self-knowledge his unity with the Transcendent and the universal, with the One Being and all beings and to live in that knowledge and transform his life by it, is that which makes the working out of the divine self-manifestation through the individual possible; and the arrival of the individual—not Page 401 in one ...
... —or else rejects it from Its infinitude. 16 Speaking of the need of realising all the three statuses of the Self—individual, universal and transcendent — Sri Aurobindo states: The Transcendent, the Universal, the Individual are three powers over-arching, underlying and penetrating the whole manifestation.... In the unfolding of consciousness also, these are the three fundamental... above all, transcendent, surpassing all individual birth or cosmic existence. To get into the universal Self — one in all — is to be liberated from ego; ego either becomes a small instrumental circumstance in the consciousness or even disappears from our Page 366 consciousness altogether. That is the extinction or Nirvana of the ego. To get into the transcendent self above... in the psychic being, but not egoism." 14 High above, the real Self is experienced as the Universal or Cosmic Self which is the core of all things and beings in the cosmos, and also as the Transcendent Self beyond the cosmos. Describing the experience of the universal and the transcendent aspects of the highest Self, Sri Aurobindo writes: This Self has two aspects and the results ...
... there is a corresponding divergence. The Buddhist denies the existence of a real self or ego, admits no universal or transcendent Being. The Adwaitin declares the apparently individual soul to be none other than the supreme Self and Brahman, its individuality an illusion; the putting off of individual existence is the only true release. Other systems assert, in flat contradiction of this view, the eternal... the spaces or widening like a liberated flood into the One and Infinite. There is first a sudden sense of a cosmic consciousness, a casting of oneself into the universal; from that universality one can aspire more easily to the Transcendent. There is a pushing back and rending or a rushing down of the walls that imprisoned our conscious being; there is a loss of all sense of individuality and personality... progressive evolution; for this was the means it found for creating out of matter a conscious individual. The dissolution of this limiting ego is the one condition, the necessary means for this very same Life to arrive at its divine fruition: for only so can the conscious individual find either his transcendent self or his true Person. This double movement is usually represented as a fall and a redemption ...
... n of the individual activities is no longer inconsistent with our comprehension of the cosmic consciousness or our attainment to the transcendent and supracosmic. For the World-Transcendent embraces the universe, is one with it and does not exclude it, even as the universe embraces the individual, is one with him and does not exclude him. The individual is a centre of the whole universal consciousness;... the relation between three general forms of consciousness, the individual, the universal and the transcendent or supracosmic. In the ordinary distribution of life's activities the individual regards himself as a separate being included in the universe and both as dependent upon that which transcends alike the universe and the individual. It is to this Transcendence that we give currently the name of... incurring a real bondage. Its chain is a self-imposed convention, Its limitation in the ego a transitional device that It uses in order to repeat Its transcendence and universality in the scheme of the individual Brahman. The Transcendent, the Supracosmic is absolute and free in Itself beyond Time and Space and beyond the conceptual opposites of finite and infinite. But in cosmos It uses Its liberty ...
... there is a corresponding divergence. The Buddhist denies the existence of a real self or ego, admits no universal or transcendent Being. The Advaitin declares the apparently individual soul to be none other than the supreme Self and Brahman, its individuality an illusion; the putting off of individual existence is the only true release. Other systems assert, in flat contradiction of this view, the... also we feel it as above all, transcendent, surpassing all individual birth or cosmic existence. To get into the universal Self—one in all — is to be liberated from ego; ego either becomes a small instrumental circumstance in the consciousness or even disappears from our consciousness altogether. That is the extinction or Nirvana of the ego. To get into the transcendent self above all makes us capable... seen, experienced in all the fullness of its unending riches. And there we discover this Self that we are to be not only a static tenuous vacant Atman, but a great dynamic Spirit individual, universal and transcendent. That Self and Spirit cannot be expressed by the mind's abstract generalisations; all the inspired descriptions of the seers and mystics cannot exhaust its contents and its splendour ...
... Anilbaran seems to hold that the individual has no selective action. He is only an instrument, a puppet, an automaton of the Divine Will. He has no individual choice. SRI AUROBINDO: The individual is also the Supreme. SATYENDRA: Yes, it is the Supreme that has become transcendent, universal and individual. SRI AUROBINDO: How does Anilbaran come to his view of the individual? PURANI: He quotes the... said that each truth has its own plane. What is true on one plane may not be true on another. SRI AUROBINDO: The Supreme takes three positions: transcendent, universal and individual. But it is the position that makes the difference. Here, if the individual doesn't choose, where is the place of effort? Why do we insist on and demand consent? If we were to act without consent, it would create much difficulty... Quite so. And why does he ask Arjuna to get rid of Ahankara? ( Sri Aurobindo quoted the passage.) Who is that "you" there? If he makes the individual a mere puppet, an automaton, my whole philosophy comes to nothing. Doesn't Anilbaran know that the individual has a Purusha who is free to choose, accepting or rejecting? If according to his idea everything is done by the Divine Will, then a murderer ...
... being or self of the individual and as the Self of the cosmos. It has also an existence above the individual and transcending the cosmos in its aspect of Paramatma, the Supreme Being, the Divine. The individual, the cosmic and the transcendent are the three statuses of the Self. As the Self is at once one and many, the universal Self manifests also as the individual self, the Jivatman, which... necessary to the action of the Transcendent in the universe and that action in him does not cease to be possible by his illumination. On the contrary, since the conscious manifestation of the Transcendent in the individual is the means by which the collective, the universal is also to become conscious of itself, the continuation of the illumined individual in the action of the world is an... ego and our false separative sense of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings. 48 ...the ego is the individual only in the ignorance; there is a true individual who is not the ego and still has an eternal relation with all other individuals which is not egoistic or self-separative, but of which the essential character is practical ...
... the true Individual, the Jivatman, who is the real possessor of mind, life and body. Looking back from this Individual to that of which it is the representative and conscious figure, he can get back to the transcendent consciousness of pure Self, absolute Existence or absolute Non-being, three poises of the same eternal Reality. But between the movement of universal Nature and this transcendent Existence... itself out in the universal play of the divine consciousness and force, the other in the action of the same universal Being through our individual soul-centre or soul-form for the purposes of an individual play of mind, life and body. But the summit of this cosmic realisation by knowledge is always the power to dissolve the personality in universal being, to merge the individual in the cosmic consciousness... imperfectly according as the union is partial or complete, the individual for the cosmic consciousness. The ordinary existence of man is not only an individual but an egoistic consciousness; it is, that is to say, the individual soul or Jivatman identifying himself with the nodus of his mental, vital, physical experiences in the movement of universal Nature, that is to say, with his mind-created ego, and, ...
... I: The True Being and the True Consciousness The Jivatman is for me the Unborn who presides over the individual being and its developments, associated with it but above it and them and who by the very nature of his existence knows himself as universal and transcendent no less than individual and feels the Divine to be his origin, the truth of his being, the master of his nature, the very stuff of... Selves Jivatman - Central Being The self, Atman, is in its nature either transcendent or universal (Paramatma, Atma); when it individualises and becomes a central being, it is then the Jivatman. The Jivatman feels his oneness with the universal but at the same time his central separateness as a portion of the Divine. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I:... of his existence. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Jivatman in Other Indian Systems By Jivatma we mean the individual self. Essentially it is one self with all others, but in the multiplicity of the Divine it is the individual self, an individual centre of the universe—and it sees everything in itself or itself in everything or both together according to its state of consciousness ...
... Atman, Purusha, Ishwara..," 16 "...with regard to the universe Brahman appears as the Self of all existence, Atman, the cosmic Self, but also as the Supreme Self transcendent of its own cosmicity and at the same time individual-universal in each being.... As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within... view that affirms the cosmos only and dismisses the individual as a byproduct of the Cosmic Energy, errs by laying too much emphasis on one apparent factual aspect of the world-action; it is true only of the natural individual and is not even the whole truth of that: for the natural individual, the nature-being, is indeed a product of the universal Energy, but is at the same time a nature-personality... immortal reality in the Transcendence.... But equally any view that sees the universe as existent only in the individual consciousness must very evidently be a fragmentary truth: it is justified by a perception of the universality of the spiritual individual...but neither the cosmos nor the individual consciousness is the fundamental truth of existence; for both depend upon and exist by the transcendental ...
... Godhead, an Avatar, a universal Power, a One Reality, a supreme Transcendence. To this occult divinity in which all the significance of man and his long race is wrapped and from which all world-existence receives its inner meaning of ineffable greatness, he had been blind. Now only he sees the universal Spirit in the individual frame, the Divine embodied in humanity, the transcendent Inhabitant of this... this or that exclusive aspect of the one existence, its individual, cosmic or world-excluding figures, but not this greatest reconciling Oneness of all the aspects of the Divinity in which at one and the same time and in one and the same vision all is manifested, all is exceeded and all is consummated. For here transcendent, universal and individual Godhead, Spirit and Nature, Infinite and finite, space... g for the separate littleness of the limited, individual and natural man. A link is needed by which he can see this universal Godhead in his own individual and natural being, close to him, not only omnipotently there to govern all he is by universal and immeasurable Power, but humanly figured to support and raise him to unity by an intimate individual relation. The adoration by which the finite creature ...
... PART III ACCORDING to ancient Indian tradition there are three principal grades or categories of spiritual knowledge: ātmajñāna or knowledge of one's individual soul or self; brahmajñāna or knowledge of the universal and transcendent Self or Spirit, and bhagavatjñāna or knowledge of the Divine, the sole and supreme Being. It is essential to keep this distinction well in mind lest we confound... Reality of our being is, therefore, the completest knowledge to which we have to aspire and attain. Beyond the knowledge of the soul there is the knowledge of the universal and transcendent Self or Spirit, brahmajñāna. The individual soul, emancipated from the meshes of Nature, and cured of all self-identification with her passing modes, may, if it will, enter into the infinite unity and immutability... us saccidānanda in all His statuses and on all the planes of existence. Possessed of it, we can live simultaneously in the consciousness of the Absolute Transcendent and of the Page 381 Absolute manifested in all universal relations; in the Impersonal and in Him who has revealed Himself as all these personalities; in That which is beyond all qualities and in the complex play of ...
... to the Transcendent Being; it is possible for man, the individual, to ascend to the transcendent Truth, that by which the world lives but which does not live by the world. This is the whole basis of Life Divine, that it is possible for the individual to ascend to, to rise to the Transcendent Consciousness. In the metaphysical language, he puts it as the Transcendent, the Universal, and the... co-exist in the Brahman. It holds the Reality of the Individual, of the Universe, of the Transcendental. They are not separate from one another. The Supreme Reality occupies the three positions at the same time. The Transcendent transcends the cosmos, yet embraces it. The Universal is greater than the Individual but includes and supports it. The Individual holds within himself the capacity to liberate... liberate the Self from ego and expand into Universal Consciousness. He can even soar beyond the Universal into the Transcendent and keep his relation with life so as to bring the working of the highest status of Reality into life. The liberated individual thus becomes a point of light, a point of self-manifestation of the Supreme. Then the problem of man's life is solved. Page 38 ...
... things, so much is fairly universal. If there were not these certitudes, there could be no assured spiritual life or endeavour. The transcendent [ is the state beyond the universal forces ]—which for the purposes of our universe would mean the Sachchidananda planes and the supramental as a link with the present manifestation. Of course the absolutely transcendent would be beyond all planes... opposition disappears and the aspects are indivisibly united in the Whole. One must go on enlarging knowledge, adding experience to experience till all the limitation disappears. The Transcendent, Cosmic and Individual Divine The Divine has three aspects for us: 1) It is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the un... one. If it is the Page 8 Cosmic Godhead that I realise, losing in it all personal self, that is a very wide realisation, but I become a mere channel of the universal Power and there is no personal or divinely individual consummation for me. If I shoot up to the transcendental realisation only, I lose both myself and the world in the transcendental Absolute. If on the other hand my aim is ...
... abiding in the transcendent Spirit, paraṁ dhāma , will be the foundation and the assurance of this spiritual state. An intimate understanding oneness with universal being and all creatures, released from the evil and suffering of the separative mind but wisely regardful of true distinctions, will be the conditioning power. A constant delight, oneness and harmony of the eternal individual here with the... sarva-dharmān parityajya , and transform all into its transcendent purity and universal good and infallible force. An ineffable Ananda will take up our petty joy and sorrow, our struggling pleasure and pain, cast away their discordances and imperfect rhythms, sarva-dharmān parityajya , and transform all into its transcendent and universal unimaginable delight. All that all the Yogas can do will... one supreme Soul of all that is and of all Nature, the original transcendent Spirit of existence. An immutable impersonal self-existence is his first obvious spiritual self-presentation to the experience of our liberated knowledge, the first sign of his presence, the first touch and impression of his substance. A universal and transcendent infinite Person or Purusha is the mysterious hidden secret of ...
... so we build up a new, a Yogic, consciousness which is able to communicate direct with the universal consciousness around and the higher spiritual above. As the individual has a consciousness of his own, so too there is a universal consciousness, a cosmic Being, a universal Mind, a universal Life, a universal physical conscious Nature. We are unaware of it because we are shut up in our outer physical... Sachchidananda. People say like that [ the Transcendent is something beyond Sachchidananda ] because the transcendent Absolute is not only what to us is existence but also what to us is non-existence. But there is really no such thing as non-existence. So the Transcendent can be conceived as transcendent Sat, transcendent Chit, transcendent Ananda. Sat or Pure Existence You must remember... Divine Force can act on any plane—it is not limited to the Supramental Force. The Supramental is only one aspect of the power of the Divine. The Supreme cannot create through the Transcendent because the Transcendent is the Supreme. It is through the Cosmic Shakti that the Divine creates. Page 26 Ananda Ananda is a thing to be felt—it cannot be defined except negatively that it is ...
... SELF, INDIVIDUAL AND UNIVERSAL What is called one's self (not the soul or the psychic being) above the head? Is it individual or universal? I mean, is one's self the same as another's self or is there individuality in it as is in the soul of each person? The self is felt as either universal, one in all, or as uni-versalised individual the same in essence... (Shaktas) realise the Devi (Goddess) as the Cosmic and even as the Transcendent Divine. Is not the Self and the Jivatman one and the same thing? The soul is considered as a spark of the Divine and the Jivatman as a portion of the Divine. The self, Atman is in its nature either transcendent or universal (Paramatma, Atma); when it individualises and Page 267 ... is acting. Is not the self a portion of the Divine? It is the individual being that is a portion of the Divine. The universal self or Atman which is the same in all, is not a portion but an aspect of the Divine. Here what is exactly meant by the 'individual being' — is it the soul or the central being? The central being and the soul are ...
... beyond their individual formations find that they are only one centre of the sole Mind, Life, Form of things and therefore they find Brahman in that also and not only in an individual transcendence; they bring down the vision of the superconscient into that also and not only into their own individual workings. The mind of the individual escapes from its limits and becomes the one universal mind, his life... which exceeds the salvation of the individual soul, because the universal is more real than the individual, we who feel more and more, in the language of the Koran, that the Lord did not create heaven and earth in a jest, that Brahman did not begin dreaming this world-dream in a moment of aberration and delirium,—well may we ask whether this gospel of individual salvation is all the message even of... Sense and original Word, to leave the apparent workings of mundane Life and find the transcendent Life. Besides the gods, there is our self, the spirit within who supports all this action of the gods. Our spirit too must turn from its absorption in its figure of itself as it sees it involved in the movement of individual life, mind, body and subject to it and must direct its gaze upward to its own supreme ...
... inner and outer faces of the universal Mother,—account for all that is done in the universe. The universal Mother, Prakriti-Shakti, is the one and only worker. Purusha-Prakriti, Consciousness-Force, Soul supporting Nature,—for the two even in their separation are one and inseparable,—are at once a universal and a transcendent Power. But there is something in the individual too which is not the mental... embodied being, the individual self, Jivatman; it is the Self that seems to limit its power and knowledge so as to support an individual play of transcendent and universal Nature. In deepest reality the infinitely One is also infinitely multiple; we are not only a reflection or portion of That but we are That; our spiritual individuality—unlike our ego—does not preclude our universality and transcendence... level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature,—no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother. The Lord has veiled himself and his absolute ...
... himself in human life. Therefore the Shastra of our Yoga must provide for an infinite liberty in the receptive human soul. A free adaptability in the manner and the type of the individual's acceptance of the Universal and Transcendent into himself is the right condition for the full spiritual life in man. Vivekananda, pointing out that the unity of all religions must necessarily express itself by an increasing... ideal and transforms the lower existence into a reflection of that which it contemplates. By the inpouring of his own influence and presence into us he enables the individual being to attain to identity with the universal and transcendent. What is his method and his system? He has no method and every method. His system is a natural organisation of the highest processes and movements of which the... Yoga is a turning of the human soul from the egoistic state of consciousness absorbed in the outward appearances and attractions of things to a higher state in which the Transcendent and Universal can pour itself into the individual mould and transform it. The first determining element of the siddhi is, therefore, the intensity of the turning, the force which directs the soul inward. The power of aspiration ...
... delight of its being, an ananda, in which they very obscurely and imperfectly, if at all consciously, partake. This tapas is the will of the transcendent spirit who creates the universal movement, of the universal spirit who supports and informs it, of the free individual spirit who is the soul centre of its multiplicities. It is one will, free in all these Page 675 at once, comprehensive, harmonious... and desireless, a spontaneous and illumined, a self-fulfilling and self-possessing, a satisfied and blissful will of the spiritual delight of being. But the moment the individual soul leans away from the universal and transcendent truth of its being, leans towards ego, tries to make this will a thing of its own, a separate personal energy, that will changes its character: it becomes an effort, a straining... the idea of the Gita to be free, mukta . We may accept this description; for everything essential is covered by its amplitude. On the other hand, the positive sense of freedom is to be universal in soul, transcendently one in spirit with God, possessed of the highest divine nature,—as we may say, like to God, or one with him in the law of our being. This is the whole and full sense of liberation and ...
... centre of existence and can be judged by the ego and its view of the dualities, but that the Divine is itself the centre and that the experience of the individual only finds its own true truth when it is known in the terms of the universal and the transcendent. Nevertheless, to substitute this conception for the egoistic without an adequate base of knowledge may lead to the substitution of new but still... not only to the escape from life. The essential cause and condition of universal existence is the Lord, Ishwara or Purusha, manifesting and occupying individual and universal forms. The limited ego is only an intermediate phenomenon of consciousness necessary for a certain line of development. Following this line the individual can arrive at that which is beyond himself, that which he represents, and... whole. All totality, even if it be only in one scheme of the universal vibrations, even if it be only a totality of the physical consciousness without possession of all that is in movement beyond and behind, must be to that extent a reversion to harmony and a reconciliation of jarring opposites. On the other hand, to Sachchidananda transcendent of the forms of the universe the dual terms themselves, even ...
... Yoga - III Chapter XI Objects Cross and Shield The cross is the sign of the triple being, transcendent, universal and individual. The cross indicates the triple Divine (transcendent, universal, individual)—the shield means protection. Crown The crown is the sign of fulfilment (here in the intuitive consciousness) and the going up means an... that is what you saw once and felt for a moment. Pearl It [ a pearl ] may be a representation of the "bindu", which is a symbol of the infinite in the exceedingly small, the individual point which is yet the Universal. Flute The flute is the symbol of a call—usually the spiritual call. The flute is the call of the Divine. The flute is the call of the Divine which descends into ...
... brought forth and put in order for a manifestation of the universal and the individual) becomes meaningful, Supermind is not "Supracosmic." But inasmuch as the cosmos manifested on that plane is the archetypal cosmos, the Truth-world, Supermind is not cosmic in the sense that would apply to Overmind, etc. The fact that it is part of a transcendent quaternary — Sat (Existence), Chit-Tapas (Consci... (Consciousness-Force), Ananda (Bliss), Page 178 Vijnana (Knowledge) — renders it "Supracosmic": it is the Supracosmic turned towards cosmicisation, or the Transcendent Cosmified. It is both transcendent and universal. Perhaps this is what the third letter on the same page means by its closing phrase: "Prajna or Ishwara = the Superconscient Spirit, Master of all things and the highest ...
... the world, he is not living in the full universal consciousness. Either he has shut himself up in an experience of an individual peace and self-content, or he is absorbed by his contact with some universal principle in its abstract form without regard to its universal action, or he is living inwardly apart from the universe in touch with something transcendent of world-experience. All these states are... The Universal Consciousness I have encountered in my life several examples of people living or trying to live in the universal consciousness and it seemed to me that it rendered them less compassionate, less humane, less tender to the sufferings of others. It seems to me that if it is necessary not to remain in the individual consciousness when it is a question... the sufferings of others. In my opinion we feel more keenly the troubles of our brothers in humanity if we remain in the individual consciousness. But I may be mistaken and ask only to be enlightened by you on this point. Is it certain that such people are living in the universal consciousness? or, if they are, is it certain that they are really less humane and compassionate? May they not be exercising ...
... on the other side of the cosmic consciousness there is, attainable to us, a consciousness yet more transcendent,—transcendent not only of the ego, but of the Cosmos itself,—against which the universe seems to stand out like a petty picture against an immeasurable background. That supports the universal activity,—or perhaps only tolerates it; It embraces Life with Its vastness,—or else rejects it from... at the gates of the Transcendent stands that mere and perfect Spirit described in the Upanishads, luminous, pure, sustaining the world but inactive in it, without sinews of energy, without flaw of duality, without scar of division, unique, identical, free from all appearance of relation and of multiplicity,—the pure Self of the Adwaitins, 2 the inactive Brahman, the transcendent Silence. And the mind... we arrive at an insignificance and unreality in the life of the individual and the race which leaves us, logically, the option between either a feverish effort of the individual to snatch what he may from a transient existence, to "live his life", as it is said, or a dispassionate and objectless service of the race and the individual, knowing well that the latter is a transient fiction of the nervous ...
... This self- separation of the individual from the unity of the universe and the eternity of the transcendent constitutes his essential ignorance, Adam's fall from Eden; and so long as he persists in this egoistic separation, there can be no recovery by him of his own infinite and immortal Self, his spiritual knowledge and freedom, and the truth and unity of universal existence. His mind may go on... evolution in the material world: the developing ego acts as a veil between her and her Lord. In man the ego erects a thick wall between the individual and the universal, with the result that the ¹ Sri Aurobindo Page 10 individual is aware of himself as only a finite, mortal being engaged in an unequal struggle with the immense,. unpredictable forces that assail him... terrestrial play. Nature Page 9 is not inconscient and blind, nor her universal strivings a senseless gamble of caprice and chance, and a purposeless expenditure of force—she is big with God. "But what Nature aims at for the mass in a slow evolution, Yoga effects for the individual by a rapid revolution. It works by a quickening of all her energies, a sublimation of all ...
... supreme state of being and consciousness, in an infinite impersonality of self-possessing power and bliss, the Personal by the divine nature acting through the individual soul-form and by the relation between that and its transcendent and universal Self. We may keep even our relation with the personal Deity in His forms and names; if, for instance, our work is predominantly a work of Love it is as the... realise by the path of knowledge is not only the reality which lies behind and supports the states and movements of our psychological being, but also that transcendent and universal Existence which has manifested itself in all the movements of the universal, the knowledge of the Self includes also the knowledge of the principles of Being, its fundamental modes and its relations with the principles of the... the unity of all as That, both in the unity of sum and in the oneness of essence; and we have to realise That as the Transcendent who is beyond all this unity and this multiplicity which we see everywhere as the two opposite, yet companion poles of all existence. For every individual being is the Self, the Divine in spite of the outward limitations of the mental and physical form through which it presents ...
... ever. The Transcendent, the Universal, the Individual are three Page 259 powers overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole manifestation; this is the first of the Trinities. In the unfolding of consciousness also, these are the three fundamental terms and none of them can be neglected if we would have the experience of the whole Truth of existence. Out of the individual we wake into... when the personal opens out into the universal; our very individuality, spiritual, mental, vital, physical even, becomes universalised: it is seen as a power of his universal force and cosmic spirit, or else it contains the universe in that ineffable wideness which comes to the individual consciousness when it breaks its bonds and flows upward towards the Transcendent and on every side into the Infinite... ecstasy; for he detaches from the secret of the hidden Transcendence and the ambiguous display of the cosmic Movement an individual Power of the Divine that can mediate between the two and bridge our passage from the one to the other. In this aspect the transcendent and universal person of the Divine conforms itself to our individualised personality and accepts a personal relation with us, at once ...
... limit of ego, the wall of individuality will break; the individual Mind will cease to know itself as individual, it will be conscious only of universal Mind one everywhere in which individuals are only knots of the one mentality; so the individual life will lose its sense of separateness and live only in and as the one life in which all individuals are simply whirls of the indivisible flood of Pranic... and the Sense, so too is Matter of the body; and when they exist in and for the Brahman only, they will not only know this but will sense, feel and live in that universal unity. Therefore to whatever thing they turn which to the individual sense and mind and life seems now external to them, there also it is not the form of things which they will know, think of, sense, embrace and enjoy, but always... delight or delightful, and "Tadvanam" means therefore the transcendent Delight, the all-blissful Ananda of which the Taittiriya Upanishad speaks as the highest Brahman from which all existences are born, by which all existences live and increase and into which all existences arrive in their passing out of death and birth. It is as this transcendent Delight that the Brahman must be worshipped and sought ...
... the inferior phenomenal form and movement but the inner All and the supreme Transcendence. He becomes of like nature and law of being with the Divine, sādharmyam āgataḥ , transcendent even in universality of spirit, universal even in the individuality of mind, life and body. By this Yoga once perfected, undeviating and fixed, avikampena yogena yujyate , he is able to take up whatever poise of nature... many processes of the world. Multitudinous, universal, the gods weave out of the primary principles of being and its thousand complexities the whole web Page 346 of this diversified existence of the One. All their own existence, nature, power, process proceeds in every way, in every principle, in its every strand from the truth of the transcendent Ineffable. Nothing is independently created... knowledge. This reality is that of the transcendent downlook as well as the close immanent presence of the divine government of the universe. The Supreme who becomes all creation, yet infinitely transcends it, is not a will-less cause aloof from his creation. He is not an involuntary originator who disowns all responsibility for these results of his universal Power or casts them upon an illusive c ...
... the name is a mere convenient abstraction like the materialist's "Nature", or He is the Self within the Universe. If the Self, then He is either transcendent and beyond phenomena and the phenomenal Universe can only be Maya, an imagination in the Universal Mind, or else He is involved in phenomena, Consciousness His soul, the Universe His form, Consciousness the witnessing and inspiring Force, the Universe... are equally logical and therefore equally valid to the reason, are the statements of the Upanishads and the Gita and the experiences of Yoga when the Jivatman or individual Self is in direct communion with the Paramatman or Supreme Universal Self and aware therefore of its real relations to Him. The supreme experience of Yoga is undoubtedly the state of complete identification in Sacchidananda in which... fit it for the presence of God. The sense-obscured, limited and desire-driven individual self must raise itself out of the dark pit of sense-obsession into the clear air of the spirit, must disembarrass itself of servile bondage to bodily, emotional & intellectual selfishness and assume the freedom & royalty of universal love and beneficence, must expand itself from the narrow, petty, inefficient ego ...
... Brahman of the sleep consciousness, and That of the transcendent, absolute consciousness. When one is fully identified with the Divine in all these states of consciousness, one can be said to have realised the most complete union. Thus identified, one becomes, so to say, like the Divine Himself, at once transcendent and immanent, universal and individual, static and dynamic, one and many, and yet—this... yet—this point has to be carefully noted—it is not a self-annihilation of the individual in the Divine, for that would mean an extinction of the very centre of manifestation in the world. The individual persists as an eternal portion and aspect of the Transcendent in the universe, but liberated from all limitations and participating in the infinity and immortality of the Supreme. In a perfect union, one holds... False-hood, and unless their universal base and dynamic are mastered and metamorphosed, unless Ignorance is turned into Knowledge, darkness into Light, Falsehood into Truth, and suffering into Ananda, there is no possibility of any individual, however spiritually great he may be, achieving a complete conversion and transformation of his physical being. It is this universal work that has engaged the ...
... division and successions are only figures in a mental experience.... We see then that there are three terms of the one existence, transcendent, universal and individual, and that each of these always contains secretly Page 107 or overtly the two others. The Transcendent possesses itself always and controls the other two as the basis of its own temporal possibilities; that is the Divine, the... within Himself; the individual exists in the Transcendent, but all the Transcendent is there concealed in the Page 103 individual. Further I am one with God in my being and yet I can have relations with Him in my experience. I, the liberated individual, can enjoy the Divine in His transcendence, unified with Him, and enjoy at the same time the Divine in other individuals and in His cosmic... cannot be so long as cosmos and the individual endure. The cosmic being can only know and possess Page 104 the transcendent unity by ceasing to be cosmic; the individual can only know and possess the cosmic or the transcendent unity by ceasing from all individuality and individualisation. Or if unity is the one eternal fact, then cosmos and individual are non-existent; they are illusions ...
... vital desires and his mental ideas and its forms and of his emotional being but in growing toward and ascending to a universal consciousness, and from there rising to the highest attempt possible,—to the Transcendent consciousness. That is the real line of progress of the individual. A glance at the working of this Satchidananda consciousness in the universe shows that: its infinite energy... down that the Omnipresent Reality is the basis, the fundamental substance, of the universe; it is dynamic and works from three positions which it simultaneously occupies; the Individual, the Universal, the Transcendent : it is identical at all the three levels. The universe is a movement of evolution from apparent Inconscience to a greater and greater degree of Consciousness. It is a process in... awoke up into self-awareness and the individual was created because then he brought into actual dynamic movement the process of expanding out from the individual into the Cosmic, into the Transcendent. That process becomes possible only when the mind having come into existence becomes self-aware in man, in the subjective self, in the individual. And this individual is the centre of reception or of ...
... and circumstance. Thus the three poises of the Individual, Universal and the Transcendent usually perceived by even the spiritualised mind or heart as exclusive of each other and therefore capable of being experienced only separately are perceived simultaneously. An individual, one with cosmic self In the heart of the Transcendent's miracle And the secret of World-personality ... ss and lives in her self of transcendence above it; she is universal but free in the universe, individual but not limited by a separative individuality. Her true Person is not an isolated entity, her individuality is universal; for she individualised the universe: it is at the same time divinely emergent in a spiritual air of transcendent infinity, like a cloud-surpassing summit; for she individualises... manifestation of the Divine Consciousness. It is to be at the centre of the Cross for the manifestation of the Higher Part of the Transcendent both sideways and downwards in the universal consciousness around and below. This is possible only when the separate formation of the individual personality is dissolved and the separate limited functioning of the instruments is made silent. The organs in ...
... the animal to a more exalted light or universal rule. That divine standard, since the godhead in us is our spirit moving towards its own concealed perfection, must be a supreme spiritual law and truth of our nature. Again, as we are embodied beings in the world with a common existence and nature and yet individual souls capable of direct touch with the Transcendent, this supreme truth of ourselves must... the infinite, all evil disappears into a transcendent divine Good which becomes universal on every plane of consciousness that it touches. This, then, stands fixed for us that all standards by which we may seek to govern our conduct are only our temporary, imperfect and evolutive attempts to represent to ourselves our stumbling mental progress in the universal self-realisation towards which Nature... and beyond, to our transcendent spirit-stature. It is indispensable to recognise clearly, not only in our mode of thought but in our way of feeling, sensing, doing, that this movement, this universal action is not a helpless impersonal wave of being which lends itself to the will of any ego according Page 189 to that ego's strength and insistence. It is the movement of a cosmic Being who ...
... comprehends and pervades; its action is in the universal and is in conscious communion with a transcendent source eternal and beyond the formations of the universe. Supermind regards the individual in the Page 45 universal and does not begin with him or make of him a separate being. It starts from the Transcendent and sees the universal and individual as they are in relation to it, as its terms... terms, as its formulas; it does not start from the individual and universal to arrive at the Transcendent. Mind acquires knowledge and mastery ; it reaches it by a constant mentalising and willing: Supermind possesses knowledge and mastery; possessing, it throws itself out freely in various willing and knowing. Mind gropes by divided sensation; it arrives at a sort of oneness through sympathy: Supermind... own being. Supermind fixes these points, sees how consciousness must act from them on other forms of itself and in obedience to the pressure of those other forms, once a particular rhythm or law of universal action is given; it governs the whole action of mentality according to what it thus fixes and sees. Even our ignorance is only the distorted action of a truth projected from the Supermind and could ...
... explains and justifies the soul's descent into human birth. "These three elements, a union with the supreme Divine, unity with the universal Self, and a supramental life action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the individual as the soul-channel and natural instrument, constitute the essence of the integral divine perfection of the human being." 1 ... of the universal unity determining an absolute interdependence of all actions." 2 The first quotation embodies the Mother's aspiration, but the second, which is very significant, shows that the 1 Prayer of November 2, 1912 Page 14 perfection of individual action depends to a great measure upon the conditions which make for the perfection of the universal action... pioneer individual perfection and a progressive reproduction of the individual perfection in the general nature of the collectivity. But the individual, being a part of the collectivity, and not an isolated unit, cannot completely identify himself with the Divine until the rampant impurities of the collective nature have been to a certain extent eliminated. It is this dual work of individual and ...
... felt, seen, experienced in all the fullness of its unending riches. And there we discover this Self that we are to be not only a static tenuous vacant Atman but a great dynamic Spirit individual, universal and transcendent. That Self and Spirit cannot be expressed by the mind's abstract generalisations; all the inspired descriptions of the seers and mystics cannot exhaust its contents and its splendours... Absolute can only be or at least can only inhabit a pure transcendent state of non-cosmic existence or else a non-existence. All cosmic existence or all that we call existence is a state of ignorance. Even the highest individual perfection, even the most blissful cosmic condition is no better than a supreme ignorance. All that is individual, all that is cosmic has to be austerely renounced by the seeker... Existence is not conditioned by the individual Page 296 or by the universe. A spiritual knowledge can therefore surpass or even eliminate these two powers of the Spirit and arrive at the conception of something utterly Transcendent, something that is unnameable and mentally unknowable, a sheer Absolute. The traditional way of knowledge eliminates individual and universe. The Absolute it seeks ...
... one Self, impersonal and universal and transcendent, it does not seem that Buddha made any distinct and unmistakable pronouncements on abstract metaphysical questions; but if the world or all in the world is not-Self, anātman , there can be no more room for a universal Self, only at most for a transcendent Real Being. His conception of Nirvana was of something transcendent of the universe, but he did... The Cosmic Divine can be as close to one as one's own self and the Transcendent as intimate as the closest friend or lover. It is only in the physical consciousness that there is some difficulty in realising it. The Jain realisation of an individual godhead is all right so far as it goes—its defect is that it is too individual and isolated. Buddhism Buddhist teaching does not recognise any... philosophy is concerned with individual perfection. Our effort is quite different. We want to bring down the Supermind as a new faculty. Just as the mind is now a permanent state of consciousness in humanity, so also we want to create a race in which the Supermind will be a permanent state of consciousness. Why cannot one love or experience [ the Cosmic Divine or the Transcendent Divine ] concretely ...
... potentiality thus contained in our human existence is Sachchidananda realising Himself in a certain harmony and unification of the individual life and the universal so that mankind shall express in a common consciousness, common movement of power, common delight the transcendent Something which has cast itself into this form of things. All life depends for its nature on the fundamental poise of its own... has emerged as an individual consciousness and is aware therefore only of a fragmentary movement of its own total activities. The whole crux and difficulty of human life lies here. Man is this mental being, this mental consciousness working as mental force, aware in a way of the universal force and life of which he is part but, because he has not knowledge of its universality or even of the totality... soul is the inner consciousness which aspires to its own complete self-realisation and therefore always exceeds the individual formation of the moment, and the Force which has taken its poise in the formation is always pushed by its soul to that which is abnormal to the poise, transcendent of it; thus constantly pushed it has much trouble in answering, more in evolving from the present to a greater capacity ...
... is in contrast to this. "He announced from the outset that the absolute is transcendent, cosmic, and individual. The evolving temporal world is essentially nothing but the Absolute itself. So is every individual." Sri Aurobindo understood the true condition required for evolutionary fulfilment. "The world and the individual must be divine by right of nature; the evolving world must have all divine... pan-theizing traditional Christianity and making it conform to the demands of what he termed "ultra-physics". His continual problem was: how to reconcile Christianity's transcendent personal God — "God Above", as he named Him — with the universal divinity posited by pantheism and the immanent "ultra-human" — "God Ahead" — that he considered to be implied by evolutionary humanism? * Those parts of this... recognisable as a sort of 'pan-Christism'...." The falsehood that, in Teilhard's eyes, sullied pantheism was the absence he read in the latter of (1) a personal God transcendent of the cosmos and (2) an eternally subsisting individual element along with the All. The pantheist truth that filled a yawning gap in Christianity was a God intrinsic to the universe and co-extensive with it and inwardly energizing ...
... time it becomes more in tune with its Source and eventually the personal will merges upward and all ways into the universal and infinite and obeys implicitly the transcendent. Nor does this change and ascension and expanding mean any annihilation of the will-power working in the individual, as the intellectual man might imagine; but rather it increases it to an immense forcefulness while giving it an... might be the fact if the individual were the real actor and not merely an instrument or secondary agent; but we know well enough, for Science and Philosophy assure us of the same truth, that the universal is the Force which acts through the simulacrum of our individuality. The individual mind, pretending to choose for itself with a sublime ignorance and disregard of the universal, is obviously working... to a new, a higher, a wider mode of consciousness which is not that of the ordinary animal and intellectual man. Yoga is the exchange of an egoistic for a universal or cosmic consciousness lifted towards or informed by the supra-cosmic, transcendent Unnameable who is the source and support of all things. Yoga is the passage of the human thinking animal towards the God-consciousness from which he has ...
... assert in the individual form and by its means its innate character of Ish or Lord and so to possess and enjoy its world." 1 But in the very nature of things this cannot happen, since by the very definition of the term, the ego possesses but a limited capacity. And the difficulty of the individual life arises from this original sin of the separative mind-ego. For the "universal life in us... The self-creation, ātma-kṛti, and a progressive unfoldment of a supremely transcendent and luminous Reality "with the multitudinous relativities of this world that we see and those other worlds that we do not see as means and material, condition and field", 2 is the secret meaning of the universe. This transcendent 1 The Life Divine, p. 188. 2 Ibid, p. 42. Page... becomes imprisoned in an individual action. It exists and acts as a separate life with a limited insufficient capacity undergoing and not freely embracing the shock and pressure of all the cosmic life around it." 2 But because of the inherent limitation of individual life cabined in the confines of a rigidly static material frame, the life-being in the poor individual existence cannot but succumb ...
... submission of the individual to the divine Will which the illumination of Surya reveals in him. Although manifested in his consciousness, this Will is not individual. It is the will of the Purusha who is in all things and transcends them. It is the will of the Lord. Knowledge of the Lord as the One in the fully self-conscious being, submission to the Lord as the universal and transcendent in the fully... together to piece out the whole, stumbles among errors and sins to find the right. Being neither one-visioned nor whole-visioned, having neither the totality of the universal Will nor the concentrated oneness of the transcendent, the individual will cannot walk straight on the right or good path towards the Truth and the Immortality. Governed by desire, exposed to the shock of the forces around it with... in the workings of this world because they are all falsified by desire and egoism, he uses them to transcend them and emerges as the universal in Man or universal Power, Agni Vaishwanara, who contains in himself all the gods and all the worlds, upholds all the universal workings and finally fulfils the godhead, the Immortality. He is the worker of the divine Work. It is these symbols which govern the ...
... become mechanical like a marvellously articulated and animated toy moved by the consciousness from the height of its seat which though no longer individual is still universal, that is, which is not yet completely merged in Thy Oneness. All the laws of individual manifestation have become clear to me, but in so synthetical, so global, so simultaneous a way, that it is impossible to express this in our ordinary... centre where the consciousness, wholly steeped in Thy effective Power, could direct the ray of Thy forces upon the lowly instrument moving among its brother instruments. From the height of these transcendent regions the unity of physical substance is clearly visible, and yet the body which serves as a particular instrument in the material field seems specially precise and distinct like a stronger point ...
... desire, or attachment to any action and its result. All individual action is an indivisible part of the universal action, and inevitably contributes to the self-fulfillment of the All-Being. And yet the individual persists as one of the multiple centers of the transcendent Consciousness, participating at once in the transcendent freedom and the universal movement, in unity and. Page 202 m... modified light it imparts to it, as the Gita puts it. Within the cramping formula of this Nature of the three gunas, there can, therefore, be no freedom, no recovery and expression of the soul's universal and transcendent attributes. This Nature of the three gunas has to be Transcended. Where will this transcendence lead? Is there a dynamic principle above this Nature of the three guṇas -a principle... indwelling Master and Playmate. The individual soul then enjoys infinity and immortality in its uninterrupted union and communion with the Divine, even while it manifests Him in the setting of the material existence and fulfils His Will in every "detail of its earthly life. This ascent to the higher divine Nature is the supreme "work of human life, both individual and collective. The collective lower ...
... explains and justifies the soul's descent into human birth. "These three elements, a union with the supreme Divine, unity with the universal Self, and a supramental life action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the individual as the soul-channel and natural instrument, constitute the essence of the integral divine perfection of the human being.”¹ The three... a constant and precise perception of the universal unity determining an absolute interdependence of all actions.”² The first quotation embodies the Mother's aspiration, but the second, which is very significant, shows that the perfection of individual action depends to a great measure upon the conditions which make for the perfection of the universal action. This perception of the Mother of... pioneer individual perfection and a progressive reproduction of the individual perfection in the general nature of the collectivity. But the individual, being a part of the collectivity, and not an isolated unit, cannot completely identify himself with the Divine until the rampant impurities of the collective nature have been to a certain extent eliminated. It is this dual work of individual and collective ...
... transcendental and universal even in the individual, One in the Many, Many in the One, Stable and Motional, exceeding and reconciling all opposites. The second line, fixing as the rule of divine life universal renunciation of desire as the condition of universal enjoyment in the spirit, has been explained by the state of self-realisation, the realisation of the free and transcendent Self as one's own... Sachchidananda or Immortality. This is the view-point of the Self as Lord inhabiting the whole movement. The individual soul has to change the human or egoistic for the divine, supreme and universal view and live in that realisation. It is necessary, therefore, to have the knowledge of the transcendent Self, the sole unity, in the equation so'ham , I am He, and in that knowledge to extend one's conscious... eighth verse, the One who becomes everywhere); He enters into each object in the movement, to the Knowledge as Brahman supporting individual consciousness and individual form, to the Ignorance as an individualised and limited being. He manifests as the Jivatman or individual self in the living creature. From the standpoint of our lower state in the kingdom of death and limitation Atman is Sachchidananda ...
... power of ...the individual, for he alone can work out at its critical turning-point that movement of self-manifestation which appears to us as the involution and evolution of the divine consciousness between the two terms of the Ignorance and the Knowledge. The power of the individual to possess in his consciousness by self-knowledge his unity with the Transcendent and the universal, with the One Being... conditions of the play Page 58 nearer and nearer to the truth of the divine Delight. In that power lies the justification of individual existence; the individual and the universal unfolding in themselves the divine light, power, joy of transcendent Sachchidananda always manifest above them, always secret behind their surface appearances, this is the secret intention, the ultimate significance... which the individual enjoys immortality, the individual realizes himself in the world and the world in him, he realizes God in him and he in God, not meaning thereby that God depends for His existence on him (man), but that He manifests himself in that which He manifests within Himself; the individual finds himself existing in the Transcendent but he also finds that all the Transcendent is there concealed ...
... Power in the world and the possibility of remoulding his mentality and will into the type of the God-action, transcendent in initiation, cosmic in motive, transmitted through the individual, the Jiva. The supreme Godhead, the Self immutable behind the cosmic consciousness, the individual Divinity in the human being Page 316 and the Divine secretly conscious or partially manifested in... as the Transcendent of things and as God in the world and as the Godhead in all that is, serve him with works of sacrifice, seek him out by knowledge, see nothing else but him everywhere and lift their whole being to him both in its self and in all its inward and outward nature. This they know to be the large and perfect way; for it is the way of the whole truth of the one supreme and universal and ... you have to conceive of it," says the Teacher here to Arjuna. The universal existence is all-pervading and infinite and the Self-existent too is all-pervading and infinite; but the self-existent infinity is stable, static, immutable, the universal is an all-pervading movement, sarvatragaḥ . The Self is one, not many; but the universal expresses itself as all existence and is, as it seems, the sum of ...
... it all to be one with his larger or universal self. Page 269 There is the universal mental, the universal vital, the universal physical nature, and it is out of a selection of their forces and movements that the individual mind, vital and physical are made. The soul comes from beyond this nature of mind, life and body. It belongs to the Transcendent and because of it we can open to the... aware of the Cosmic Self and knows the individual self to be one with it; of the Cosmic Energy and meets directly the action of the cosmic forces; of the cosmic mind, life, matter and feels first a contact of its individual mind, life, body with them, then a unity in which one's own individual mentality, vitality, physicality is felt as only a part of the universal, a wave of the ocean, a dynamo receiving... receiving and formulating the universal forces. Finally, the individual melts into the cosmic consciousness, the whole world is felt in oneself and oneself suffused through the world—it is the cosmic Consciousness, Mind, Life, material Energy that works through the individual function. The separate ego either does not exist or is only a convenience for the universal Spirit Page 268 and its ...
... universe He appears to be the motion or process of the Will of the Lord and to become all the subjective and objective results of the motion. All the states of the Brahman, the transcendent, the continent, the universal, the individual are informed & sustained by the divine Personality. He is both the Existent & the state of existence. We call the state of existence the Impersonal Brahman, the Existent the... false knowledge, effective force & inertia and ineffective force. Our business is by renouncing our divided & unequal individual force of action & thought into the one, undivided universal Chitshakti of Kali to replace our egoistic activities by the play in our body of the universal Kali and thus exchange blindness & ignorance for knowledge and ineffective human strength for the divine effective Force... that mould all mundane existence is the supreme aspiration of religion & the complete practical aim of Yoga. The aim is to realise God in the universe, but it cannot be done without realising God transcendent of the Universe. Page 102 ...
... Divine and that of the individual being, enabling an unhindered and unflawed expression of the Divine Will and a perfect manifestation of the Divine glories upon earth. Then, perfection in Karmayoga demands as an indispensable pre-requisite our union with the Divine simultaneously in His three poises of transcendence, universality and individuality. The Will of the Transcendent will marshal the ... integrated forces of our being, the Universal will supply the necessary field and condition, and the Individual Divine in our heart will give the immediate drive and direction, the proper setting and frame, and the distinctive colour and rhythm to our activities. Without this simultaneity of the triple union, bur work can be great and powerful, even universal in its scope and effectivity, but it will... must precede any perfection in Karmayoga. If there is any part in us, or any single element or energy, which resists or refuses this supramental transformation and this utter submission to the transcendent Will, our work will remain tainted with imperfection. The whole organism of our nature must undergo a total transmutation, a supramental conversion, before it can become a perfect instrument of ...
... of the manifestation), the perfection of the manifestation of God resuscitated in man allows that universal or cosmic thing to manifest. If you take it like that, it makes sense. That "universal thing" might be a collective transformation. A transformation that's no longer exclusively individual—the descent of the Holy Spirit into the collectivity? I had been told that even in the College of... like to ask you a little question. In this book on Sri Aurobindo, I say in passing that the three aspects—Transcendent, Immanent, Cosmic—probably correspond to the Catholic Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Could you tell me the exact correspondence? The Father is clearly the Transcendent, but the Son? The Son is the Immanent. But then, what about the Holy Spirit and its descent? Yes... gave me the explanation, adding that the cardinals were taught this interpretation esoterically, under a vow of Page 151 secrecy. They were also taught that the Virgin was Nature, the universal Mother. But what does the Holy Spirit descending with "tongues of fire" on Pentecost represent? Those "tongues of fire" don't look like a cosmic symbol, do they? But I don't see how the Christ ...
... things both universal and transcendent and are its formulation and luminous activity. And these faculties are the light of a conscious existence superseding the egoistic and itself both cosmic and transcendent, the nature of which is Bliss. These are obviously divine and, as man is at present apparently constituted, superhuman states of consciousness and activity. A trinity of transcendent existence... pain and sorrow as its background, but a delight also self-existent and independent of objects and particular experiences, a self-delight which is the very nature, the very stuff, as it were, of a transcendent and infinite existence. Page 16 Do such psychological conceptions correspond to anything real and possible? All Yoga asserts them as its ultimate experience and supreme aim. They form... and ignores its divine intention. The ultimate knowledge is that which perceives and accepts God in the universe as well as beyond the universe; the integral Yoga is that which, having found the Transcendent, can return upon the universe and possess it, retaining the power freely to descend Page 18 as well as ascend the great stair of existence. For if the eternal Wisdom exists at all, the ...
... s without ever attaining the transcendent Truth. On the other hand, to go to the Divine is also to attain the universal realisation and yet remain free of falsehood. The real bar to self-surrender, whether to the Universal or to the Transcendent, is the individual's love of his own limitations. It is a natural love, since in the very formation of the individual being there is a tendency to ... a centre for Page 33 its play. But you must bear in mind that the universal consciousness so beloved of Yogis is not the Divine: you can break your limits horizontally if you like, but you will be quite mistaken if you take the sense of wideness and cosmic multiplicity to be the Divine. The universal movement is after all a mixture of falsehood and truth, so that to stop there is to... individuality: you only give up your egoism and become the true individual, the divine personality which is not temporary like the construction of the physical consciousness which is usually taken for your self. One touch of the divine consciousness and you will see immediately that there is no loss in it. On the contrary, you acquire a true individual permanence which can survive a hundred deaths of the body ...
... self, Atman, is in its nature either transcendent or universal (Paramatma, Atma); when it individualises and becomes a central being, it is then the Jivatman. The Jivatman feels his oneness with the universal but at the same time his central separateness as a portion of the Divine. The individual Self is usually described as a portion of the Transcendent and cosmic Self—in the higher and subtler... instrument for psychic and spiritual self-expression, a divine manifestation in Nature. The bindu seen by you above may be a symbolic way of seeing the Jivatman, the individual self as a drop of the Sea, an individual portion of the universal Divine; the aspiration on that level would naturally be for the opening of the higher consciousness so that the being may dwell there and not in the ignorance. The... could have no knowledge of his individual Self or Spirit before he rose to the supramental plane; he could not have any experience of the Self, though he may have the sense of the dissolution of his ego in something Universal. But he can become aware of his unborn non-evolving Self, a centre of the Divine Consciousness, long before that; the Self cosmic or individual is experienced long before rising ...
... known in the self, known for that which exceeds self and Nature. He is ever in constant union with him, nityayukta ; his whole life and being are an eternal Yoga with the Transcendent than whom there is nothing higher, with the Universal besides whom there is none else and nothing else. On him is concentred all his bhakti, ekabhaktiḥ , not on any partial godhead, rule or cult. This single devotion is... gained, might seem to be a relapse. For in bhakti there is always the element, the foundation even of personality, since its motive-power is the love and adoration of the individual soul, the Jiva, turned towards the supreme and universal Being. But from the standpoint of the Gita, where the aim is not inaction and immergence in the eternal Impersonal, but a union with the Purushottama through the integrality... formations of mutable nature and as the giver of her results that they realise. But those who adore the transcendent and integral Godhead embrace all this and transform it all, exalt the gods to their highest, Nature to her summits, and go beyond them to the very Godhead, realise and attain to the Transcendent. Devān deva-yajo yānti mad-bhaktā yānti mām api . Still the supreme Godhead does not at all ...
... ultimate particles of matter, all behave uniformly, there is practically no individual variation. It is all a common general universal movement. The individuation begins with the living cells. Each living form starts with moving and reacting in its Page 368 own characteristic manner and style. The one transcendent Consciousness, Sachchidananda, that is behind all seems here on the life... the transcendent Spirit came down from above and stood behind the creation – stood behind for long. And then it advanced towards the front here upon earth: life appeared, the inorganic material particles became organised cells with the first incidence of an incipient consciousness and will. With its growth and the appearance of mind there grew the psychic element, the beginning of the individual, in... general or universal in character, there begins a particularisation and individualisation. The first step towards individualisation is what may be termed individuation. With life upon earth, with the appearance of a living organism there entered into it the rudimentary psychic element or entity: as it grows it achieves first of all, as I have said, an individuation, an elementary individual form, as ...
... present in his surface individual consciousness and knows the world (or rather the surface of it) only through his outward mind and senses and by interpreting their contacts with the world. By yoga there can open in him a consciousness which becomes one with that of the world; he becomes directly aware of a universal Being, universal states, universal Force and Power, universal Mind, Life, Matter... of the Cosmic Self and knows the individual self to be one with it; of the Cosmic Energy and meets directly the action of the cosmic forces; of the cosmic mind, life, matter and feels first a contact of its individual mind, life, body with them, then a unity in which one's own individual mentality, vitality, physicality is felt as only a part of the universal, a wave of the ocean, a dynamo receiving... receiving and formulating the universal forces. Finally, the individual melts into the cosmic Consciousness, the whole world is felt in oneself and oneself suffused through the world — it is the cosmic Consciousness, Mind, Life, material Energy that works through the individual function. The separate ego either does not exist or is only a convenience for the universal Spirit and its action. This ...
... we mean the individual self. Essentially it is one self with all others, but in the multiplicity of the Divine 7 it is the individual self, an individual centre of the universe—and it sees everything in itself or itself in everything or both together according to its state of consciousness and point of view." 8 The self, Atman is in its nature either transcendent or universal (Paramatma... nothing like a true self of the individual. The "innermost I" that Eckhart speaks of is nor an individual self (Jivatma) but the one Universal Self (Atma). Therefore, someone familiar with the dominant Hindu thought, as found in the Gita, is apt to notice that Eckhart's teaching does not include one of the prominent Hindu themes, namely, the growth of the individual self, the Jivatma, from... "rooted in Being," is similar to the Eastern concept of Atma, the Universal Self. Sri Aurobindo expresses the same view in somewhat different words. The Self, he says, is identical with Brahman, supreme Existence or Being; Self is the subjective aspect of Being. But besides Atma, the Universal Self, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the true individual self, the real "I," Jivatma, spoken of figuratively in the ...
... knowledge-the knowledge of the Transcendent Brahman: it is out of the transcendent reality that the immanent deity takes his birth. Hence the Divine Fire, the Lord of creation and the Inner Master – sarvabhūltāntarātmā, antaryāmī – is called brahmajam, born of the Brahman. Yama teaches the process of transcendence. Apart from the knowledge and experience first of the individual and then of the cosmic Brahman... being and consciousness that are at the very basis, forming, as it were, the ground-plan of the integral reality. They are (i) the individual, (ii) the universal or cosmic and (iii) the transcendental. The first boon regards the individual, that is to say, the individual identity and integrity. It asks for the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death... from life to life. The third boon is the secret of secrets, for it is the knowledge and realisation of Transcendence that is sought here. Beyond the individual lies the universal; is there anything beyond the universal? The release of the individual into the cosmic existence gives him the griefless life eternal: can the cosmos be rolled up and flung into something beyond? What would be the nature ...
... the universal is to discover the essential and the universal delight of existence, self-bliss and all-bliss. For the universal is only the pouring out of the essential existence, consciousness and delight; and wherever and in whatever form that manifests as existence, there the essential consciousness must be and therefore there must be an essential delight. Page 389 The individual soul... self is to be in more or less obscure search of the delight of existence. Chit eternally possesses its self-bliss; and since Chit is the universal conscious-stuff of being, conscious universal being is also in possession of conscious self-bliss, master of the universal delight of existence. The Divine whether it manifests itself in All-Quality or in No-Quality, in Personality or Impersonality, in the... separates itself both from the essential and the universal and identifies itself with the separate accidents, with the unessential form and mode and with the separate aspect and vehicle. Thus it takes its mind, body, life-stream for its essential self. It tries to assert these for their own sake against the universal, against that of which the universal is the manifestation. It is right in trying to ...
... all-exceeding eternal Person, at once transcendent, universal and individual, who has to be realised in all His statuses and aspects in a union simultaneously static and dynamic. To be united with Him only in His ineffable transcendence is not an integral union inasmuch as it excludes His universality and individuality. To be united with Him only in His universal play is also a partial realisation... and, therefore, the realisation of the Transcendent One to the exclusion of the universal Many or the One in the Many, is, indeed, a partial realisation, which the Upanishad characterises as a greater darkness, because once the soul has merged in the Transcendent One, it is lost for ever to the Truth of the divine immanence in the world and His Will to universal self expression. The Karmayoga of the... adoring and seeking union with the Transcendent and universal Master of all works, it regards Karmayoga as an indispensable part of itself, and the most effective medium of manifesting God's Power and greatness upon earth. It knows also that knowledge, exclusively pursued, may lead to an immersion in the motionless Self, away from the creative movement of the universal Spirit, that love and devotion, ...
... without ever attaining the transcendent Page 168 Truth. On the other hand, to go to the Divine is also to attain the universal realisation and yet remain free of falsehood. The real bar to self-surrender, whether to the Universal or to the Transcendent, is the individual's love of his own limitations. It is a natural love, since in the very formation of the individual being there is a tendency... be invaded by it and made a centre for its play. But you must bear in mind that the universal consciousness so beloved of Yogis is not the Divine: you can break your limits horizontally if you like, but you will be quite mistaken if you take the sense of wideness and cosmic multiplicity to be the Divine. The universal movement is after all a mixture of falsehood and truth, so that to stop there is to... individuality: you only give up your egoism and become the true individual, the divine personality which is not temporary like the construction of the physical consciousness which is usually taken for your self. One touch of the divine consciousness and you see immediately that there is no loss in it. On the contrary, you acquire a true individual permanence which can survive a hundred deaths of the body ...
... all that is psychological as two aspects of itself, revealing to the inner sight all things as one equal stuff of divinity and absorbing into a Totality of Universal Soul all individual souls that in mystical experience unite with it, individual souls being ultimately this Totality's own partial aspects or phases. In the eyes of Roman Catholic thought, pantheism stands sharply over against... rather than a fulfilment takes place: the individual soul loses all consciousness and suffers dissolution. Naturally, therefore, zealous efforts have been made to prove that Teilhard's pantheistic-seeming declarations were not those of a true pantheist but only of a formulator, in original terms, of two ideas of Christianity: (1) God, who is transcendent of the world, is also omnipresent in the... of the soul of the individual. To Roman Catholicism, the individual soul unites with God in a relationship of intimate and interpenetrative love, such that it is never merged in Him but has always a separate existence of its own though this existence is due altogether to God's will. Further, in spite of pantheists speaking of beatitude and self-universalisation when the individual soul is absorbed in ...
... even to forget that the "form" and "name" before us had a within and around and above of its own being. We have to develop a detachment from the small self, we have to expand inwardly into a universal and transcendent tranquillity. Then alone can we reach most profoundly, most abundantly, the soul-power to unite with the Supreme Person in a blaze of devotion and delight and thus transmute all our outer... you know that 1 have dubbed him "Lullaby". Now for the problem: If the Universal Consciousness of the Mother is already there in the Bliss-sea, what are all of you waiting for? Your dream is definitely charged with an expectancy. The Mother has still to appear. I believe the waiting is for the personal, the individual aspect of her. And perhaps it will Page 41 be poetically in... certain emphasis falls upon her universal aspect: to stress this aspect is one of the lessons we have to learn from her departure. And the more we feel as if we were in wide water the more we are likely to come into rapture-rhythmic touch with the Mother's divinity. At least to be near such a vastness is necessary. Most vividly and rapidly we shall approach the individual Mother whom we knew and loved ...
... self-expression becomes possible, not only possible but inevitable. That bed-rock is one's inmost spiritual being, the divine Consciousness which is at once an individual centre, a cosmic or universal field of existence and a transcendent truth and reality. With that as the nucleus and around it the whole system has to be arranged and organised: according to the demand of the will and vision composing... about in the human system composed of so many different and discordant factors, forms and forces of consciousness? It is not possible if one tries to make them accommodate each other, tone down the individual acuities and angularities, blunt or cut out the extreme expressions and effect some sort of a compromise or a pact of goodwill. It is not the Greek ideal of the golden mean nor is it akin to the ...
... self-expression becomes possible, not only possible but inevitable. That bed-rock is one's inmost spiritual being, the divine consciousness which is at once an individual centre, a cosmic or universal field of existence and a transcendent truth and reality. With that as the nucleus and around it the whole system has to be arranged and organised: according to the demand of the will and vision composing... about in the human system composed of so many different and discordant factors, forms and forces of consciousness? It is not possible if one tries to make them accommodate each other, tone down the individual acuities and angularities, blunt or cut out the extreme expressions and effect some sort of a compromise or a pact of goodwill. It is. not. the Greek ideal of the golden mean nor is it akin to the ...
... is a convenience for individual action, not rigid, not constitutive or separative. The very nature of our conscious activities is henceforth universal; one with those of the universal being, it proceeds from universality to a supple and variable individualisation. It has become the awareness of an infinite being who acts always universally though with emphasis on an individual formation of its energies... consciousness tumbling out of such gnostic Truth as it has attained into the falsehoods of the divided mind-nature. A secure universality of being is the very basis of this luminous higher consciousness. Abandoning all rigid separateness (but getting instead a certain transcendent overlook or independence) we have to feel ourselves one with all things and beings, to identify ourselves with them, to become... one with the idea in the universal, because both are brought back to the truth of the supreme Knowledge and the transcendent Will. The gnosis takes up not only our intelligent will, but our wishes, desires, even what we call the lower desires, the instincts, the impulses, the reachings out of sense and sensation and it transforms them. They cease to be wishes and desires, because they cease first to ...
... in the being and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos. The commencement of yoga is characterized by the point of contact of the human individual consciousness with the higher and profounder states of consciousness that can ultimately lead to the universal and transcendent Existence. That contact normally takes... synthesis of yoga, the spirit in man is regarded not as solely an individual being traveling to a transcendent unity with the Divine, but a universal being capable of oneness with the divine in all souls and all-Nature with all its practical consequences. Page 6 As Sri Aurobindo points out: "The human soul's individual liberation and enjoyment of union with the Divine in spiritual being... 4 But the contact can also be established by a general conversion of the mental consciousness in all its activities. Or it may equally be accomplished through a direct awakening to the universal or transcendent Truth and Bliss by the conversion of the central ego in the mind. In the synthesis of yoga, one can begin with any one of these processes, but in the course of the development, it can be seen ...
... Supreme Being from which all comes and in which all lives. In its supreme Truth the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and delight. The Transcendent, the Cosmic (Universal) and the Individual are three powers of the Divine, overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole of manifestation. Ego —the "I" constituted by a mental, vital and physical formation... something beyond positive conception. Atman — the Self; the Spirit; the original and essential nature of our existence; the spiritual being above the mind. In its nature the Atman is transcendent or universal (Paramatma, Atma); when it individualises and becomes a central being, it is then the Jivatman. Avidya — ignorance; the Ignorance of oneness; the consciousness of Multiplicity.... of the world outside us. cittākāś a — mental ether. Consciousness-Force, the Force — the Conscious Force that builds the worlds; a universal Energy that is the power of the Cosmic Spirit working out the cosmic and individual truth of things. Desire-soul — the surface soul in us, which works in our vital cravings, our emotions, aesthetic faculty and mental seeking for ...
... Who Is the Mother? Do you not refer to the Mother (our Mother) in your book? Yes. Is she not the "Individual" Divine Mother who has embodied "the power of these two vaster ways of her existence" 1 —Transcendent and Universal? Yes. Has she not descended here (amongst us) into the Darkness and Falsehood and Error and Death in her deep and great love for ...
... of variation unique." 4 Thus the individual is called upon to preserve even while he seeks to universalise himself to the full "a mysterious transcendent something" of which his sense of separate personality conveys an obscure and egoistic representation. The individual existence has therefore to reconcile an apparently incompatible dual urge, the urge to strive for infinite self-expansion... is Death , a ś an ā y ā m ṛ tyu ḥ , the individual existence has to annul its ego-isolation and rediscover and re-live its secret unity with all. But uniformity or an amorphous oneness is not the law of cosmic becoming; universal life exists by diversity and "insists that... every being shall be, even while one with all the rest in its universality, yet by some principle or ordered detail of... nothing can devour or disrupt him too, na tadaśnāti kaścana. 2 By finding at last the clue to the establishment of a free play of commerce, uninterrupted and harmonious, with the Universal Life all around, the individual succeeds in absorbing and assimilating all the currents and crosscurrents of life and never again becomes a helpless food for others, with the attendant doom of death and dissolution ...
... knowledge—the knowledge of the Transcendent Brahman: it is out of the transcendent reality that the immanent deity takes his birth. Hence the Divine Fire, the Lord of creation and the Inner Master— sarvabhutantaratma, antaryami— is called brahmajam, born of the Brahman. Yama teaches the process of transcendence. Apart from the knowledge and experience first of the individual and then of the cosmic Brahman... being and consciousness that are at the very basis, forming, as it were, the ground-plan of the integral reality. They are (i) the individual, (ii) the universal or cosmic and (iii) the transcendental. The first boon regards the individual, that is to say, the individual identity and integrity. It asks for the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death... life to life. The third boon is the secret of secrets, for it is the knowledge and realisation of Transcendence that is sought here. Beyond the individual lies the universal; is there anything beyond the universal ? The release of the individual into the cosmic existence gives him the griefless life eternal: can the cosmos be rolled up and flung into something beyond? What would be the nature ...
... From the high plane reached, Aswapati caught the concealed sense of all his embodied existence, a sense akin to or instinct with the drive of the Primal Truths of the Transcendent that have to become the Final Realities of the Individual in the life-terms of the physical universe. Henceforth Aswapati's "walk through Time outstripped Page 123 the human stride" and every step of his... new energies into play — either the dynamism of "an inner Light" or the Shakti of "spirit's immensities" or both together. A cosmicity other than known Nature's is drawn forth into action, a deep universal Will and an archetypal Harmony from beyond even that Will, Page 122 the Harmony of the Original Divine Ideas that have to be fulfilled on earth. Aswapati's consciousness of the secret... his brought nearer to accomplishment the Powers of the immense Spirit from the Overworld. Part of the means towards that accomplishment was a join-up with cosmic forces: The universal strengths were linked with his; Filling earth's smallness with their boundless breadths, He drew the energies that transmute an age. 4 Notes and References 1.Book 1, Canto 3, p. 51 (One-volume ...
... human soul, widened and impersonalised, is wafted straight to the Transcendent. Universality, which is the middle term of the soul, is almost left undeveloped, or is developed, more or less imperfectly, only on its static side, and hardly, except in the sāmrājyasiddhi ¹ of Tantra, on the dynamic. In some Yogas the dynamic universality is studiously eschewed. But ¹ The double spiritual empire... middle term of its spiritual existence. Its self-realisation and divine realisation will be incomplete without its secure participation in the universality of Brahman, and it is this universality that justifies its continued co-operation, even after its individual liberation, in the upward labour of all beings towards the freedom and bliss of the Divine: sambhutyām- ṛtamaśnute, "by the Birth he enjoys... non-becoming".¹ Individual liberation is not the end. of man's life, his glory lies in striving through countless births, if need be, for the liberation of his fellow-mortals. who are equally his own self, and without whose liberation. his own personal freedom remains an imperfect attainment. And the object of liberation is not an ultimate retreat from all individual and universal play of God's delight ...
... individuality in an undifferentiated Nescience. This importance can only be justified if the Self as individual is no less real than the Self as Cosmic Being or Spirit and if both are powers of the Eternal Transcendent. It is only so that can be explained the necessity for the growth of the individual and his discovery of Page 146 himself as a condition for the discovery of the Cosmic... Thus the world is real, the individual is real, and the manifestation is real and not illusory without any purpose behind it. There is a great purpose and that purpose is to usher in the full manifestation of the Transcendent Divine in time and space. And if we adopt this hypothesis, that leads to two important inferences: (i) the reality of the persistent individual; and (ii) the necessity of... annihilate the "individual": the individual, at least the individual soul, is "reborn" in the world of earthly manifestation. Thus, "rebirth" is the fourth element of mystery to confound us. Man has sought to solve these mysteries since the beginning of the recorded history of mankind. Speculations have been galore and various theories and hypotheses have been advanced to no universal acceptance ...
... the individual, no less than from his universal presence in the Cosmos, he originates by force of Nature, manifests some line of his mystery in quality of nature and in executive energy of nature, shapes each thing and being separately according to its kind and initiates and upholds all action. It is this transcendent first origination from the Supreme and this constant universal and individual man... soul of the transcendent Infinite. He sees all in God and God in all; he sees all things as Vasudeva. He is delivered from the dualities of joy and grief, from the pleasant and the unpleasant, from desire and disappointment, from sin and virtue. All henceforth is to his conscious sight and sense the will and working of the Divine. He lives and acts as a soul and portion of the universal consciousness... Ananda; there is a joy of impersonality, a singleness of joy of the pure spirit. But an integral knowledge brings a greater triple delight. It opens the gates of the Transcendent's bliss; it releases into the limitless delight of a universal impersonality; it discovers the rapture of all this multitudinous manifestation: for there is a joy of the Eternal in Nature. This Ananda in the Jiva, a portion here ...
... l transformation will knit in a stable and dynamic harmony the individual, the universal and the transcendent. The individual will find his complete- ness and harmonious fulfilment in his active unity with the universal and the transcendent. And this complete- ness will not be a completeness only in the consciousness of the individual, but it will also be a creative complete- ness in the will and force... still remains as the base of his existence. It can vouchsafe frequent glimpses of the Transcendent, or even contact and communion with It, but it cannot "dynamise the Transcendence" in this world, that is to say, it cannot Page 434 bring down the omnipotent Consciousness-Force of the Transcendent and make it directly operative in this field of ignorance and inconscience.¹ But the... force of his being; for, they too will be united with the Will and Force of the Supreme, which expresses itself in cosmic terms even while it transcends them.... "The complete individual is the cosmic individual, since only when we have taken the universe into ourselves—and transcended it—can our individuality be complete."¹ The supramental transformation will admit us into a participation in the ...
... see things precisely as they are seen from below. The Jivatman is for me the Unborn who presides over the individual being and its developments, associated with it but above it and them and who by the very nature of his existence knows himself as universal and transcendent no less than individual and feels the Divine to be his origin, the truth of his being, the master of his nature, the very stuff of... portion of or wholly dependent on the universal or transcendent Being and seeks to merge himself in that or ascend to that and be it or live in oneness with it. All these things are quite possible without any need of the overhead experience or of the stable overhead Permanence. Page 70 (4) One may ask, first, why not then say that the Jivatman which can be realised in this way is the pure... Person or Divine Individual, though that too is not adequate. The word "I" always comes with an undersuggestion of ego, of separativeness; but there is no separativeness in this self-vision, for the individual here is a spiritual living centre of action for the One and feels no separation from all that is the One. (8) The Jivatman has its representative power in the individual nature here; this ...
... state, our works proceed straight from the Self and Divine within us, are a part of the indivisible universal action, are initiated and performed not by us but by a vast transcendent shakti. All that we do is done for the sake of the Lord seated in the heart of all, for the Godhead in the individual and for the fulfilment of his will in us, for the sake of the Divine in the world, for the good of all... emerges from play of apparently impersonal forces, prakritir jivabhuta. This is possible because personality too is a character of the Divine, although this personality is something exalted, universal and transcendent, immortal and divine. That mystery of the supreme Person is the secret of love and devotion. A new dimension is added to yoga. The spiritual person, the soul in us comes in front, becomes... our soul. As a consequence, a nearest oneness in all the being, profoundly individual in a divine passion even in the midst of universality, even at the top of transcendence is here enjoined on the soul as its way to reach the Highest. The life of the Jiva has to be utterly the life of the Purushottama in him. The individual has to be utterly passive, in every way, sarva bhavena, to the Supreme. The ...
... dependent on the universal movement. From this dependence by inclusion derives the great law that every form of things engendered in the motional universe shall be subject to the processes of that particular stream of movement to which it belongs; each individual body subject to the general processes of matter, each individual life to the general processes of vitality, each individual mind to the general... cosmic Nature & cannot be acquired by the individual except by breaking down the habits of consciousness & exceeding the fixed processes by which the individual action is separated & differentiated from cosmic action. The ultimate evolution must therefore end in the openness of the individual for cosmic or infinite consciousness-being, not limited by individual ego-sense, the workings of free infinite... of Nature, Its universality and unity are not abrogated nor infringed. In all there is That which by coming out of its absorption in form of movement, recovers its unity. As the soul in man, though seeming to be bound, is always free and can realise its freedom, so, though seeming divided, limited and many, it is always universal, illimitable and one and can realise its universality and unity. ...
... supreme Mother, the parā prakṛti, who has become all these numberless Jivâtmâ, these multiple centres of the one transcendent and universal Consciousness— par ā prakṛtirjīvabh ū t ā . Each Jiva or Jivâtmâ is an individual Self in conscious union with the Transcendent and the Universal. It does not descend .into evolution, but presides from above over the evolution of the psychic entity, which is... the psychic being, and using its transient surface formations to further its own ulterior aim of self- manifestation in Matter. This particular line of divine consciousness, at once transcendent, universal and individual, seeks its perfect self-expression on earth through the psychic being, which is its projection here, and is the ultimate reason and justification of the whole complex process of the... unrelated to the universal being and its evolution. The evolutionary development has "a universal as well as an individual aspect: the Universal develops the grades of its being and the ordered variation of the universality of itself in the series of its evolved forms of being; the individual soul follows the line of this cosmic series and manifests what is prepared in the universality of the Spirit. ...
... Preface Yoga is the methodized effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the potentialities latent in the being and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the cosmos. An important question regarding Integral Yoga is as to what are its specific methods that distinguish it from the ...
... and is contained in all, is the One, is universal and not his personal ego. To That he has to subject his ego, that he has to reproduce in his nature and become, That is what has to possess and enjoy with an equal soul in all its forms and movements. There is still something more to do. He has to see that is Universal One is something entirely transcendent, the sole Being and that this universe... c seers sought to know, to live in and to be one with it by identity. And through this endeavour they came to see that the self in us is one with the universal self of all things and that this self again is the same as God and Brahman, a transcendent Existence and Existent, and they beheld, felt, lived in the inmost truth of all things in the universe and the inmost truth of man's inner and outer existence... in unmindful and even unclear, and wanders in the cycle of phenomena. 39 Avidya is a veil of nescience that hides the real reality of the individual, universal and the transcendence and projects a false view centred on ego-consciousness. In avidya, the individual lives in his ego-consciousness, which tends always to assert its finitude and yet its independence, as though it were self-existent. Ego is ...
... cosmic force and action. Or it may be the experience of the loss of individuality in a transcendent being and consciousness in which the sense of cosmos as well as the individual disappears. Or again, it may be in a transcendence which is aware of and supports the cosmic action. But what do we mean by the individual? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego, a device of Nature which holds ... , otherwise there is no complete liberation possible; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal portion of the Divine but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego... ego and our false separative sense of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings. It is this which makes possible the Divine Life. Nirvana is a step towards it; the disappearance of the false separative individuality is a necessary condition for our realising and living in our true eternal being, living divinely in the Divine. But this we can do in ...
... entity and possesses no individual character. His mind is a conglomeration of thoughts and ideas which do not particularly belong to him, but to everybody, being elements of the world-mind in general. His vital being too is a medley of desires, impulses, energies that are not personal in any sense, but pass through him or take a long or short-term asylum in him from the universal vital force. The body... individuality. It is just like a wave-formation out of universal nature, moving in and being moved by the total swell and heave, being formed and being destroyed every moment – as the poet says: They take birth in you and they dissolve in you like the waves in the sea. And yet the building up of an abiding individual is the secret Page 295 urge of Nature's... violent self-assertion. Ego is a helper, but also it is a bar. It assists the first formation but delays and obstructs the true and final formation. For the ego is a formation, an individual formation, but on the level of universal Nature: it is of a piece with the normal cosmic movement, only bounded by a peripheral line. In the general expanse it puts up enclosures and preserves and fencings; the constituting ...
... comprehended, but the source of the revelation is not in one's separate self but in the universal knowledge; the feelings, emotions, sensations are similarly felt as waves from the same cosmic immensity breaking upon the subtle and the gross body and responded to in kind by the individual centre of the universality; for the body is only a small support or even less, a point of relation, for the action... and feeling of a boundless universal self and movement replaces it: many motions that were formerly egocentric may still continue, but they occur as currents or ripples in the cosmic wideness. Thought, for the most part, no longer seems to originate individually in the body or the person but manifests from above or comes in upon the cosmic mind-waves: all inner individual sight or intelligence of things... at the gates of the Transcendent It is in connection with That that one can enter with the world-transcending consciousness and become superior to all cosmic existence. And in regard to that consciousness, a major experience and realization can be obtained. That experience is described by Sri Aurobindo as the experience that one obtains "at the gates of the Transcendent". Sri Aurobindo ...
... four conditions of transcendent and universal Brahman or Self,—they are merely conditions of Being and Consciousness—the Self that supports the Waking State or sthūla consciousness, the Self that supports the Dream State or subtle consciousness, the Self that supports the Deep Sleep State or Causal consciousness, kāraṇa , and the Self in the supracosmic consciousness. The individual of course participates... The Divine, the Cosmos and the Individual The Divine, the Cosmos and the Individual The Cosmos: Terms from Indian Systems Letters on Yoga - I Chapter I The Upanishadic and Puranic Systems Virat Virat is the outer manifestation and if we take all that as Brahman without knowing what is behind the manifestation we shall fall into the intellectual error ...
... many Consciousnesses. Finally at the base of these two realisations was a third, the most important of all to our race,—that the Transcendent Self in individual man is as complete because identically the same as the Transcendent Self in the Universe; for the Transcendent is indivisible and the sense of separate individuality is only one of the fundamental seemings on which the manifestation of phenomenal... itself into innumerable forms which represent themselves as individual selves, yet all these are images of one great Cosmic Will to live, just as all material forms are merely images of one great undifferentiated Universality of Page 380 cosmic matter, causal ether, if we so choose to describe it. That Will is Purusha, that Universality is Prakriti; and both are but images of Parabrahman. ... its separate & limited joy in the sheer bliss of infinite existence. The Will to live individually embodies the pleasure of individual existence which is the outer phenomenal self of all creatures; but the will to live infinitely can only proceed straight from the transcendent, ultimate Spirit in us which is our real Self; and it is this that availeth towards immortality. Brahman, then, Page 369 ...
... the mind a belief in a highest consciousness or state of existence universal and transcendent of the universe, from which all comes, in which all lives and moves without knowing it and of which all must one day grow aware, returning towards that which is perfect, eternal and infinite. Secondly, they tended to lay upon the individual life the need of self-preparation by development and experience till... containing all that is finite and infinite, surpassing all that is relative, a supreme Absolute, originating and supporting all that is transient, a one Eternal. They all admit that there is one transcendent, universal, original and sempiternal divinity or divine Essence, Consciousness, Force and Bliss and that this Divinity is the fount and continent and inhabitant of things. But this Truth of being was... or Supreme Self or Eternal Brahman. The Indian religion allowed the freedom to conceive an experience of the Divine as an impersonal Absolute and Infinite or to approach and feel Him as a transcendent and universal sempiternal person, or even to conceive and have the experience of the highest spiritual reality as Non-Being. Differences of credal belief carne to be perceived by the Indian religion ...
... entity and possesses no individual character. His mind is a conglomeration of thoughts and ideas which do not particularly belong to him, but to everybody, being elements of the world-mind in general. His vital being too is a medley of desires, impulses, energies that are not personal in any sense, but pass through him or take a long or short-term asylum in him from the universal vital force. The body... real individuality. It is just like a wave-formation out of universal nature, moving in and being moved by the total swell and heave, being formed and being destroyed every moment—as the poet says: They take birth in you and they dissolve in you like the waves in the sea. And yet the building up of an abiding individual is the secret Page 177 urge of Nature's evolution:... violent self-assertion. Ego is a helper, but also it is a bar. It assists the 'first formation but delays and obstructs the true and final formation. For the ego is a formation, an individual formation, but on the level of universal Nature: it is of a piece with the normal cosmic movement, only bounded by a peripheral line. In the general expanse it puts up enclosures and preserves and fencings; the constituting ...
... consciousness may be transcendent of the universe and aloof from it, and to this state of distant Bliss the path is equal indifference; it is the path of the ascetic. Or the Sachchidananda consciousness may be at once transcendent and universal; and to this state of present and all-embracing Page 117 Bliss the path is surrender and loss of the ego in the universal and possession of an ... Man, the individual, has to become and to live as a universal being; his limited mental consciousness has to widen to the superconscient unity in which each embraces all; his narrow heart has to learn the infinite embrace and replace its lusts and discords by universal love and his restricted vital being to become equal to the whole shock of the universe upon it and capable of universal delight; his... n and this perversion is the self-division of the being in his consciousness by measuring and limiting Maya and in consequence an egoistic and piecemeal instead of a universal reception of contacts by the individual. For the universal soul all things and all contacts of things carry in them an essence of delight best described by the Sanskrit aesthetic term, rasa , which means at once sap or essence ...
... the ego-consciousness which enjoys and suffers. The Sachchidananda consciousness may be transcendent of the universe and aloof from it, and to this state of distant Bliss the path is equal indifference; it is the path of the ascetic. Or the Sachchidananda consciousness may be at once transcendent and universal; and to this state of * So termed in Sanskrit Rhetoric, the karuna, bhayanaka and... Man, the individual, has to become and to live as a universal being; his limited mental consciousness has to widen to the superconscient unity in which each embraces all; his narrow heart has to learn the infinite embrace and replace its lusts and discords by universal love and his restricted vital being to become equal to the whole shock of the universe upon it and capable of universal delight; his... n and this perversion is the self-division of the being in his consciousness by measuring and limiting Maya and in consequence an egoistic and piecemeal instead of a universal reception of contacts by the individual. For the universal soul all things and all contacts of things carry in them an essence of delight best described by the Sanskrit aesthetic term, rasa, which means at once sap or essence ...
... beginning of the manifest Divine in man. Page 135 THE EGO—THE DESIRE-SOUL PART II THE destiny of the individual, according to Sri Aurobindo, is to unite with God, who is his own supreme eternal Self, by the recovery of his universal and transcendent existence, and make his whole being and nature—his entire individuality—a manifesting centre and medium of the divine Existen... relativities. The individual egos are, according to this view, microcosmic centres of the one universal ego. There being no eternal existence or substance sustaining and supporting the ego, when the individual consciousness attains to spiritual emancipation (Mukti), the ego- creation ceases to exist for it, or exists only as a fleeting panorama of phantom forms. The liberated individual loses the very... cannot yet announce in him, "Here am I, become many, and yet remaining myself, the eternal and indivisible One." The separative ego in man has no experience of the unity of the universal, nor of the absoluteness of the transcendent Existence,—it lives imprisoned in the dim shell of its limited personality. It will have been clear from the above description that the ego-principle has created distinct ...
... existence. The gnostic individual would be the consummation of the spiritual man; his whole way of being, thinking, living, acting would be governed by the power of a vast universal spirituality. All the trinities of the Spirit would be real to his self-awareness and realised in his inner life. All his existence would be fused into oneness with the transcendent and universal Self and Spirit; all his... this natural mystery of existence. A supramental gnostic individual will be a spiritual Person, Page 1029 but not a personality in the sense of a pattern of being marked out by a settled combination of fixed qualities, a determined character; he cannot be that since he is a conscious expression of the universal and the transcendent. But neither can his being be a capricious impersonal flux... supposed that the ego personality is extinguished and replaced by a universalised spiritual individual who is a centre and power of the transcendent Being. It might be deduced that this gnostic or supramental individual is a self without personality, an impersonal Purusha. There could be many gnostic individuals but there would be no personality, all would be the same in being and nature. This, again ...
... everywhere." 2 Then we experience, as Sri Aurobindo has ṣo beautifully put, that it is not an unreal or real-unreal universe that is reposing on a transcendent Reality, but a real universe reposing on a Reality at once universal and transcendent or absolute. 3 For even beyond the avyaktam, the Unmanifest, beyond the divine Darkness, tamasaḥ parastāt, is the Supreme One Existence... aloof and transcendent Real Existence' appearing to have no connection or commerce at all with the world-existence. When the mental being seeks to go still beyond, it negates yet further and arrives at an Asat, "a Void of everything that is here, a Void of unnameable peace and extinction of all, even of the Sat, even of that Existent which is the impersonal basis of individual or universal... the 'gates of the Transcendent' where stands 'the mere and perfect 1 The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 385. 2 Māṇḍukya Upani ṣ ad, 2. 3 The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 384-85. 4 Ibid., p. 350. 5 Letters on Yoga, p. 64. 6 The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 351. Page 111 Spirit', the inactive Brahman, the transcendent Silence, a sense ...
... and shows to the individuals and the collectivities how to liberate themselves from dogma, rituals, outward ceremonies so as to enter into the kingdom of the spirit and experience of the Infinite Reality in thousand different ways. Like all great religions, Indian religion nourished in the mind a belief in a highest consciousness or state of existence, universal and transcendent of the universe... condition of spiritual perfection. It is open to the adherents to conceive and have experiences of the divine as an impersonal Absolute and Infinite or to approach and know and feel him as a transcendent and universal sempiternal Person; but whatever be our way of reaching Him, the one important truth of spiritual experience is that He is in the heart and centre of all existence and all existence is in... live in it in consciousness. One school or sect might consider the real self of man to be indivisible one with the universal Self or the Supreme Spirit. Another might regard man as one with divine in essence but different from him in Nature. The third might hold God, Nature and the individual Soul in man to be three eternally different powers of being. But for all of them the truth of Self is held with ...
... a luminous and enjoyed perfection of unity with all instead of a blind and suffered subjection of the individual to the universal, and at every moment the action of the universal in the individual and the individual in the universal will be enlightened and governed by the rule of the transcendent Supernature. But this highest condition is difficult and must evidently take long to bring about; for... a supreme and universal Consciousness, a supreme and universal Force working in whatever way it chose, on whatever level, within whatever self-determined limits, a conscious working of the transcendent and cosmic Being, the action of the omnipotent and omniscient World-Mother raising the being into herself, into her super nature. In place of the Nature of Ignorance with the individual as its closed... created overtopping and dominating the physical instrument, individual in fact of existence, but impersonal in feeling and recognised by a free cognition as something instrumental to the action of a Transcendent and Universal Being. In the transition towards the supermind this centralising action tends towards the discovery of a true individual replacing the dead ego, a being who is in his essence one ...
... Spiritual, the Supramental. Ashwapathy's yoga may be called the yoga of Ascent mainly, and that of the Vision of Reality in its triple States: the Individual, the Universal, the Transcendent. He ascends from the mind to planes above and reaches the Transcendent; whereas Savitri awakens the Soul in her and brings down the infinite power of the Divine Consciousness in herself and in her nature. Savitri brings... in merging in the Absolute, or the negation of her individual living because of the Impersonal, for everything that the person has got is derived from the Universal. In either case. Death refuses to accept any truth in her personality, and tries to persuade her to reject it. Then a greater Voice spoke from above Savitri, from the Transcendent Self assuring her of the truth of the person. After... throughout the position of the witness, Savitri carries out the Divine dynamis. Ahswapathy sees the Vision of the Supreme, Savitri brings down the Fire. Both pursue the yoga not for an individual but for a universal fulfilment. Both of them strive to change what seems to be the established law of the cosmos by bringing down a Higher Power than mind into the earth consciousness and earth nature. ...
... Supreme Will The universal forces move by their own force and the consciousness within them—but there is also the Cosmic Spirit who supports them and determines by his on-look and disposing will their play—although the direct action is left to the forces—it is the play of universal Prakriti with the universal Purusha watching behind it. In the individual also there is the individual Purusha who can... ordinary play of the forces. Then too we can see that even in the play of the forces and in spite of their distortions the Cosmic Will is working towards the eventual realisation of the Will of the Transcendent Divine. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - II: Faith ... relations, the varying or persistent necessities, the inevitable steps of the movement. There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart ...
... the individual Divine and its universal source, with all the consequences that would accrue from the maintenance and operation of such a dualism." 10 The supermind is the consciousness and will of the Supreme; but there is no gulf between the Supreme and the Universal and the Individual; the supreme himself even while being transcendental and supracosmic is also cosmic; and the individual is the... the individual divine or Jivatman as distinguished from the universal Divine, since the individual is the transcendental itself realizing itself as a concentration of Conscious-Self following and supporting the individual play of movement and upholding its differentiation from other play of movement. The individual is the Supreme supporting the soul-form by means of concentration in the supermind in... Jivātman will have the sense of oneness of the transcendent and universal Divine with its own being. As Sri Aurobindo points out: "It will enjoy that oneness of God with itself in its own individuality and with its other selves in the universality. Its relations of knowledge will be the play of the divine omniscience, for God is Knowledge, and what is ignorance with us will be there only the holding ...
... delight in all things, we do not need to desire. Being one with all beings, we possess, in their enjoyment, in ours and in the cosmic Being's, delight of universal self-expression. It is only by this Ananda at once transcendent and universal that man can be free in his soul and yet live in the world with the full active Life of the Lord in His universe of movement. THE JUSTIFICATION OF WORKS ... I First Movement The Inhabiting Godhead: Life and Action Verses 1-3 1) All this is for habitation by the Lord, whatsoever is individual universe of movement in the universal motion. By that renounced thou shouldst enjoy; lust not after any man's possession. 2) Doing verily works in this world one should wish to live a hundred years. Thus it is in... one with the macrocosm. Yet in their relation of principle of movement and result of movement they are continent and contained, world in world, movement in movement. The individual therefore partakes of the nature of the universal, refers back to it for its source of activity, is, as we say, subject to its laws and part of cosmic Nature. Page 16 SPIRIT Spirit is lord of Its movement ...
... the essence; the finite is a circumstance and not a contradiction of the infinite; the individual is a self-expression of the universal and the transcendent,—it is not a contradiction or something quite other than it, it is the universal concentrated and selective, it is Page 491 one with the Transcendent in its essence of being and its essence of nature. In the view of this unitarian com... universe: for the individual self is really Brahman; it is Brahman who within the field of Maya seems phenomenally to be subjected to her as the individual and in the end releases the relative and phenomenal individual into his eternal and true being. In the temporal field of relativities our experience of the Brahman who has become all beings, the Eternal who has become universal and individual, is also valid;... truth of the Transcendence, or he must be the Transcendent itself dealing with a cosmos manifested in his own being. If the world is at all real, it also must be the manifestation of a truth of the Transcendence; for only that can have any reality. If the individual has the power Page 479 of self-discovery and entrance into the transcendent eternity and his liberation has so great an importance ...
... simultaneous poises of being: the transcendent, the universal, the individual. The point of contact with the transcendent Divine is in general distinguishable by the sense of freedom, the sense of the inexpressible beyond formulas, the sense of the absolute perfection that puts "a yonder to all ends" while holding for each term its legitimate climax and consummation. The universal Divine is suggested generally... to unite with the Eternal and the Infinite. Service of mankind is only a means to an end for him: it is a means towards the mystical experience by enlarging one's scope of action beyond the small individual ego and, when the mystical experience is reached, service of mankind is a means to express it in the world. But this service is not the only means. And true Karma Yoga is done fundamentally by a... generally by the sense of wideness and equality, the sense of unity-in-multiplicity, the sense of a greatly diversified yet persistent order. The general sign of the individual Divine is the sense of plastic form, the sense of adventurous variation without losing balance, the sense of numerous initiatives that compete and yet avoid mutual destruction. We must develop insight enough to mark the Divine at ...
... evolution of a new species on the earth. Three elements, a union with the supreme divine, unity Page 48 with the universal Self, and a supramental life action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the individual as the soul-channel and natural instrument, — constitute the essence of the integral divine perfection of the human being. In the Integral... approach and cast itself into the eternal. It even goes farther and through its injunction to surrender totally to the Divine, it opens up the doors by which the spirit can take up the individual into the universal Power of higher Nature, parā Prakriti. In effect, this would be the method by which the concept of sdlokyamukti and sdyujyamukti is further extended into sādharmyamukti, the liberation... universe into those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense of the material mentality. The crown of this synthesis was in the experience of the Vedic Rishis something divine, transcendent and blissful in whose unity the increasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. This experience culminates in the ascent to the ...
... human species for the evolution of a new species on the earth. Three elements,- a union with the supreme divine, unity with the universal Self, and a supramental life - action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the individual as the soul-channel and natural instrument, — constitute the essence of the integral divine perfection of the human being. In the ... and cast itself into the eternal. It even goes farther and through its injunction to surrender totally to the Divine, it opens up the door by which the spirit can take up the individual Page 295 into the universal Power of higher Nature, Para Prakriti. In effect, this would be the method by which the concept of salokyamukti and sayujyamukti is further extended into sadharmyamukti... confined to the individual, but would extend progressively to the collective divine life on the earth. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our ...
... as the Consciousness-force of cosmic Nature, and at the same time experiences itself as the individual being and consciousness in all existences. The individual consciousness can see itself as limited and separate, but can also put off its limitations and know itself as universal and again as transcendent of the universe; this is because there is in all these states or positions or underlying them... and Force of this self-existence; but with regard to the universe Brahman appears as the Self of all existence, Atman, the cosmic Self, but also as the Supreme Self transcendent of its own cosmicity and at the same time individual-universal in each being; Maya can then be seen as the self-power, Atma-Shakti, of the Atman. It is true that when we first become aware of this Aspect, it is usually in a silence... cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature. Even ...
... supra-human; his being and becoming are the spontaneous expression of a universal and transcendent consciousness. He may not always live and move externally in the non-human way; but even when he appears human in his life and action, his motives are not humanistic, his consciousness lies anchored somewhere else, in the transcendent Will of the Divine that makes him be and do whatever it chooses, human... personal or individual feeling" and sympathy, we ascend to cosmic feeling, to self-identification with the All, the One that is Many. This is the experience that seems to be behind the Buddhistic compassion, karuā. And yet there can be a status even beyond. For, beyond the cosmic reality lies the transcendent reality. It is the Absolute, neti, neti, into which individual and cosmos... of humanism – it is perhaps one of the reasons why Europeans generally are attracted to Buddhism and find it more congenial than Hinduism with its dizzy Vedantic heights. But in the status of the transcendent Self-hood, humanism is totally transcended and transmuted; one dwells there in the Bliss that passeth all feeling. The Upanishadic summit is not suffused with humanism or touched by it, because ...
... help and guidance the basic physical consciousness becomes steady and rises higher and higher, first slowly and then with a surprising rapidity. But the progress is first through the universal counterpart of the individual physical consciousness. And here it is as if from the ordinary ignorance there is a movement into the subconscient or inconscient depths (“pitch darkness”). Strangely, after the extreme... g light like a flower—which is in affinity with the red sun and receives bliss from it. Passing through the sun it grows entirely new and comes into touch with all the depth beyond depth of the transcendent existence, marked by sun after sun at great distances from each other. “When Champaklal returns from the high experience, the bodily newness he felt is represented now by the fact that he feels... the process of rising is repeated and now there is no passing through different degrees of darkness. A straight experience of the Supramental Sun of golden light comes and from the perception of an individual illumination there arises the perception of the whole universe pervaded by the golden light. His body is now a part of this transformed cosmos and is no longer the matter that it was but is a pure ...
... the one hand, the single undifferentiated Self of all and, on the other, the Master and Lord seated in the heart of every creature and - beyond the Universal Person, the common Self of selves and the Inner Presence - he is the Supracosmic, the Transcendent Being. Again, while creatures are projections of himself, they are in a certain aspect distinct from him and granted various relationships with him... unification, the pantheists' most impassioned language is justified...: and to that rapture is added the ecstatic realization that the universal Thing from which everything emerges and to which everything returns... is a living, loving Being, in which the individual consciousness, when it is lost, attains an accentuation and an illumination that extends to the furthest limit of what is contained in... world, we see that the fundamental substances within which souls are formed, the highest environment in which they evolve - what one might call their own particular Ether - is the Godhead, at once transcendent and immanent, in quo vivimus et movemur et sumus - in whom we live and move and have our being. God cannot in any way be intermixed with or lost in the participated being which he sustains ...
... creative act of ordered imagination by a universal Being and he looked upon our imaginative experience as the universal Being's creative faculty actively at work in the individual, co-existent with the individual's conscious will. The two experiences he named the Primary Imagination and the Secondary Imagination. In both, the individual partakes of the universal, though in different ways, and both are... are founded in a basic oneness of the universal and the individual and, in both, it is the spirit that is subject in one aspect, object in another: "The Intelligence tends to objecti-vise itself and... to know itself in the object." But if the individual is really to enter into the universal, instead of functioning in some sort of separation and alienation as he ordinarily does, he must take his experience... degradation of the individual, but an apotheosis. The being of Keats too is not conceived as merged and lost in the Universal Spirit: The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are." To be more precise and positive: the being of Keats is not only said by Shelley to suffer no self-loss in the Spirit that is Page 134 universal - it is also seen ...
... Yoga is a turning of the human soul from the egoistic state of consciousness absorbed in the outward appearances and attractions of things to a higher state in which the Transcendent and Universal can pour itself into the individual mould and transform it. The first determining element of the siddhi is, therefore, the intensity of the turning, the force which directs the soul inward. The power of ... self-existence is his first obvious spiritual self-presentation to the experience of our liberated knowledge, the first sign of his Presence, the first touch and impression of his substance. A universal and transcendent infinite Person or Purusha is the mysterious hidden secret of his very being, unthinkable in form of mind, acintya-rūpa , but very near and present to the powers of our consciousness, emotion... imperfect way with the workings of the divine Force. ... In the world we act with the sense of egoism; we claim the universal forces that work in us as our own; we claim as the effect of our personal will, wisdom, force, virtue the selective, formative, progressive action of the Transcendent in this frame of mind, life and body. Enlightenment brings to us the knowledge that the ego is only an instrument; ...
... ends at the Page 132 control of its senses and the life by clear distinction between the self and non-self; it strives and arrives at union by yoga with the highest Self, the universal Divine, the transcendent Spirit. Through the sattwic guna, one can pass beyond the gunas, and having reached the higher Prakriti, Reason happily obeys the action of the infinite, and therefore it obeys no law... Purusha is only individual or universal or supreme is at first indistinct, but in one of the lofty experiences, one finds oneself as a vast and inalienable stillness, completely separate and independent of all the mental Ignorance, and therefore no longer compelled at all by the mental Ignorance. According to the Sankhya, the Purusha that is experienced in this way is the individual Purusha, although... mukti from desire and egoism to which inadequacies and conflicts are inextricably linked, but also s ā dharmya mukti, liberation in which the individual Page 116 instrument enjoys the freedom of the Divine's own transcendental and universal action and spontaneous harmony of the law of that action. It was in that state that Sri Krishna delivered to Arjuna the supreme secret of ...
... mentally and spiritually. If the supramental transformation be not achieved, the goal of spiritual life would remain what it has always been—liberation of a few exceptional individuals into some land of transcendent peace or bliss; and the world would continue in its present darkness, ignorance and suffering. No ethical pottering or patch-work, no dim-eyed moral rearmament or any such superficial... of Sri Aurobindo. What does this integral union mean? It means that we have to be united with the Divine in all the states, poises and modes of His being and our being. The Divine is not only the Transcendent Absolute; He is not only the infinite, impassive Impersonal; He is all that exists, here as well as there above. He is both Spirit and Nature, Time and the Timeless, Space and the Spaceless, all... of the satya world has become annam or Matter, cit of the world of tapas has become Life, and mahas has become Mind. Matter, which is derived from sat or the luminous substance of the transcendent existence, is not something intrinsically inert and obscure, but has become so on account of its phenomenal evolution from the utter darkness of the Inconscience. Similarly, Life is not something ...
... absolute solitude limits our means and scope of self-fulfilment. Yoga is the application, by whatever means, of Vedanta to life so as to put oneself in some kind of touch with the high, one, universal and transcendent Existence in us & without us in our progress towards a final unity. All religious worship, sincerely done, all emotional, intellectual and spiritual realisation of that which is higher than... also, for humanity being one piece, it is difficult for the individual to attain fullness of life here when the race creates for him an atmosphere of darkness, unrest and base preoccupation with the cares of a half-intellectualised animal existence. So strong has this atmosphere become in the Iron Age, that it is the rule for the individual who seeks his own salvation to sever himself from life and... himself with only the inner realisation. Modern Hinduism has become, therefore, in all but its strongest spirits, absorbed in the idea of an individual salvation. But our Vedic forefathers were of a different stuff. They had always their eye on the individual in the race. Nothing is more remarkable in the Veda than the absolute indifference & even confusion with which the singular and plural are used ...
... may be; the ego-sense can be abolished only by a transcendence even of the universal consciousness and rise into the supra-conscious. And this brings us to the other line of discipline, the supreme discipline which means obedience not merely, not even to the cosmic law but to the transcendent Divine Law. Here the individual is absolutely, utterly, free from his little self, the minor self-law, he is... self-abnegation the individual gains in self-control and self-mastery. But there are rules and rules, laws and laws. For that depends on the ideal or the purpose set before oneself. If the purpose is narrow, limited, superficial, the rules are necessarily likewise, and although effective in a particular field, they have a restricting, even deadening effect on the consciousness of the individual. If discipline... and absolute obedience is an indispensable condition — a sine qua non. In the spiritual domain this was the procedure that was universally accepted and followed, although always in the name of individual freedom and free will protestant movements arose and flourished and traced their own way. But obedience to person is in the last analysis a symbol —symbol of obedience to a principle. The ...
... may be; the ego-sense can be abolished only by a transcendence even of the universal consciousness and rise into the supra-conscious. And this brings us to the other line of discipline, the supreme discipline which means obedience not merely, not even to the cosmic law but to the transcendent Divine Law. Here the individual is absolutely, utterly, free from his little self, the minor self-law, he is... ation the individual gains in self-control and self-mastery. But there are rules and rules, laws and laws. For that depends on the ideal or the purpose set before oneself. If the purpose is narrow, limited, superficial, the rules are necessarily likewise, and although effective in a particular field, they have a restricting, even deadening effect on the consciousness of the individual. If discipline... and absolute obedience is an indispensable condition – a sine qua non. In the spiritual domain this was the procedure that was universally accepted and followed, although always in the name of individual freedom and free will protestant movements arose and flourished and traced their own way. But obedience to a person is in the last analysis a symbol – symbol of obedience to a principle. The person ...
... put forth as cause, so shall be that of the energy which returns as effect, that this is the universal law and nothing in the world can, being of and in our world, escape from its governing incidence. Sri Aurobindo Essays in Philosophy and Yoga: Karma … if Karma be a universal truth or the universal truth of being, it must be equally true of the inly-born mental and moral worlds of our action... are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions, new-create what it had created; the narrow fixed lines disappear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness. Neither Karma nor... its own plane of karma, moves me even, and that characteristically, to override my vital and physical nature. Forms of one universal Force at bottom—or at top—these may be, but in practice they are different energies and have to be so dealt with—until we can find what that universal Force may be in its highest purest texture and initial power and whether that discovery can give us in the perplexities ...
... grow is also real and living. This real living Absolute is God, the Life of all life. Page 271 The Absolute—the Transcendent Transfigurer The Absolute is not only the immanent substratum and link of all relativities, but also the Transcendent, as Pan-entheism rightly holds. An Absolute confined to and exhausted in the relativities cannot be the ultimate Unity and the inspirer... inspirer and leader of the evolution of its own multiplicity. The Creator is superior to His creation, the Fount is anterior to its flow, the One is transcendent of the Many. Beyond life and in life, the Life of life is the sole reality, the sole object of human knowledge, and the solitary goal and abode of all creatures. If we exclude the aspect of God's transcendence, we condemn life to a horizontal... of the transfiguration of the son of man, it is only ii the Word that one has to seek the mystery of the transubstantiation of the flesh. Page 272 Faith, the Leader This transcendent-immanent Absolute is the Divine, the Life of our life whom we have to seek continuously and discover and embrace in love and joy. Does our sense-bound reason doubt His existence, or deny it ? ...
... outburst of the earth's highest need of the hour. Indeed, however great an individual, his greatness is in reality the greatness of the world-spirit in him, and also contrariwise the smallness of an earthly being is the smallness of the universal being at a point, under a particular condition. In other words, the individual represents the weakest or the strongest link as the case may be, in the one... and through many vehicles and instruments. Not even man's mental activity that seems so free and autonomous is outside the compass of the universal gravitational field where everything is appointed and determined in a compact tensile global unity. Each individual human effort is in effect the total human effort canalised at a particular point through a particular receptacle. The unity of the whole... in creation and is in man his soul, an emanation and representative of the Godhead. As it is commonly understood, liberation means the release of the Godhead out of the prison escaping into the Transcendent. The riddle of this creation is therefore to be solved by this process of escape of the Conscious Principle from out of the unconscious covering beyond into the pure Consciousness – laya for the ...
... of personal or individual feeling and sympathy we ascend to cosmic feeling, to self-identification with the All, the One that is Many. This is the experience that seems to be behind the Buddhistic compassion, karuna And yet there can be a status even beyond. For beyond the cosmic reality, lies the transcendent reality. It is the Absolute, neti, neti, into which individual and cosmos, all... human sentiment, human motive do not move him. Humanism generally has no meaning for him. He is no longer human, but supra-human; his being and becoming are the spontaneous expression of a universal and transcendent consciousness. Page 243 Hedoes not always live and move externally in the non-human way; but even when he appears human in his life and action, his motives are not humanistic... of humanism – it is perhaps one of the reasons why Europeans generally are attracted to Buddhism and find it more congenial than Hinduism with its dizzy Vedantic heights; but in the status of the transcendent Selfhood humanism is totally transcended and transmuted, one dwells then in the Bliss that passeth all feeling. The Upanishadic summit is not suffused with humanism or touched by it, because ...
... ensouled and ready for a spiritual change. Its second step is the revelation of a self and spirit which supports our individual soul manifestation and soul development, but knows itself to be one being with cosmic Godhead and universal Nature and can stand back from that even as a transcendent spirit. By this discovery the being in us exceeds its separate individuality, enters into a cosmic consciousness... Himself triply, in the individual, in the universe, in that which transcends the universe. In order to fulfil God in the individual, we must exceed the individual. The removal of limited ego and the possession of cosmic consciousness is the first aim of our sadhana. In order to fulfil God in the cosmos, individually, we must transcend the universe. The ascension into transcendent consciousness is the... Self of the universe in which his individuality loses itself forever. It may be a Self transcendent in which the Ego disappears, but cosmos too is annulled forever in a formless Eternal and Infinite. Another may experience it as God; and God may be either the All of the Pantheist, a cosmic Spirit, an individual Deity, a supracosmic Creator; or all of these together. A Personal Godhead may be the spiritual ...
... imposed upon the mind a belief in a highest consciousness or state of existence universal and transcendent of the universe, from which all comes, in which all lives and moves without knowing it and of which all must one day grow aware, returning towards that which is perfect, eternal and infinite. Next, it laid upon the individual life the need of self-preparation by development and experience till man is... is a Spirit and Self containing all that is finite and infinite, surpassing all that is relative, a supreme Absolute, originating and supporting all that is transient, a one Eternal. A one transcendent, universal, original and sempiternal Divinity or divine Essence, Consciousness, Force and Bliss is the fount and continent and inhabitant of things. Soul, nature, life are only a manifestation or partial... Brahman is the condition of spiritual perfection. It is open to us to conceive and have experience of the Divine as an impersonal Absolute and Infinite or to approach and know and feel Him as a transcendent and universal sempiternal Person: but whatever be our way of reaching him, the one important truth of spiritual experience is that he is in the heart and centre of all existence and all existence is in ...
... Godhead, the universal Spirit, the transcendent Purushottama and, eventually, surrender the whole action into his hands, mayi sannyasya karmāṇi . Then as we get beyond the limitation of the three gunas, so also do we get beyond the division of the fourfold law and beyond the limitation of all distinctive Dharmas, sarvadharmān parityajya . The Spirit takes up the individual into the universal Swabhava... contact with his source, united with the Purushottama; he is no longer the personal doer of the act, but a spiritual channel of the works of the transcendent and universal Spirit. His natural being transformed and illumined remains to be the instrument of a universal and impersonal action, the bow of the divine Archer. What was sattwic action becomes the free activity of the perfected nature in which there... with all that it has been saying throughout the work and especially in the last twelve chapters. The Gita's philosophy of life and works is that all proceeds from the Divine Existence, the transcendent and universal Spirit. All is a veiled manifestation of the Godhead, Vasudeva, yataḥ pravṛttir bhūtānāṁ yena sarvam idaṁ tatam , and to unveil the Immortal within and in the world, to dwell in unity with ...
... which contains all and is contained in all, is the One, is universal and not his personal ego. To That he has to subject his ego, That he has to reproduce in his nature and become, That is what he has to possess and enjoy with an equal soul in all its forms and movements. He has to see that this universal One is something entirely transcendent, the sole Being, and that the universe and all its forms... in the universal as a starting-point for this supreme achievement. By Avidya one may attain to a sort of fullness of power, joy, world-knowledge, largeness of being, which is that of the Titans or of the Gods, of Indra, of Prajapati. This is gained in the path of self-enlargement by an ample acceptance of the multiplicity in all its possibilities and a constant enrichment of the individual by all... itself progressively from that character of Ignorance, of the oblivion of its essential Oneness, which gives it its name. Avidya fulfilled by turning more and more to Vidya enables the individual and the universal to become what the Lord is in Himself, conscious of His manifestation, conscious of His non-manifestation, free in birth, free in non-birth. Man represents the point at which the multiplicity ...
... idols which, whoever keeps, the sadhaka of the integral Yoga must break and cast away from him. For his Yoga is not limited to the realisation of the Transcendent beyond all world by the individual soul; it embraces also the realisation of the Universal, "the sum-total of all souls", and cannot therefore be confined to the movement of a personal salvation and escape. Page 270 Even in his... goal of a progressive manifestation in the universe. The divine Nature, free and perfect and blissful, must be manifested in the individual in order that it may manifest in the world. Even in the Ignorance the individual lives really in the universal and for the universal Purpose, for in the very act of pursuing the purposes and desires of his ego, he is forced by Nature to contribute by his egoistic... and be united with the Divine is at once the liberation and the consummation of his individuality; so liberated, purified, perfected, the individual—the divine soul—lives consciously and entirely, as was from the first intended, in and for the cosmic and transcendent Divine and for his Will in the universe. In the Way of Knowledge we may arrive at a point where we can leap out of personality and universe ...
... movement, the individual would always tend to lose itself in the universal, the relative to disappear into the Absolute. Thus, It supports a corresponding reaction in the individual who regards himself as "other" than the transcendent and universal Brahman and "other" than the rest of the Many. He puts identity behind him and enforces the play of Being in the separative Ego. The individual may regard... becoming each individual is Brahman variously represented and entering into various relations with Itself in the play of the divine consciousness; in being, each individual is all Brahman. Brahman as the Absolute or the Universal has the power of standing back from Itself in the relativity. It conceives, by a subordinate movement of consciousness, the individual as other than the universal, the relative... We have to perceive Brahman as that which exceeds, contains and supports all individual things as well as all universe, transcendentally of Time and Space and Causality. We have to perceive It also as that which lives in and possesses the universe and all it contains. This is the transcendental, universal and individual Brahman, Lord, Continent and Indwelling Spirit, which is the object of all knowledge ...
... To live and act no longer in human ignorance, but in divine Knowledge, conscient of individual nature and universal forces and responsive to a transcendent governance, this is Karmayoga. To live, be and act in a divine, illimitable and luminous universal consciousness open to that which is more than universal, no longer to grope and stumble in the old narrowness and darkness, this is Karmayoga... close union and deep communion with the Divine in us, the Universal around us and the Transcendent above us, not to be shut up any longer in the imprisoned and separative human mind, the slave of its ignorant dictates and narrow suggestions, this is Karmayoga. To work in obedience to a divine command, an eternal Will, a transcendent and universal impulsion, not to run under the whips of ego and need... the bliss of difference. The ecstasy [of the] soul in the pure bliss of the Beatific. The ecstasy of the spirit united in consciousness and force with the Universal. The ecstasy of the pure being absolute and one with the Transcendent. Karma Yoga: The Yoga of Works 138 All spiritual paths lead to a higher consciousness and union with the Divine and among the many paths one of the ...
... everywhere, we transform our souls into a passion of universal delight and a wideness and joy of universal love. All this which, as we shall find, is the summit of the path of Devotion, becomes also an annexe and result of the path of Knowledge. Thus by the integral knowledge we unify all things in the One. We take up all the chords of the universal music, strains sweet or discordant, luminous in their... make that the basis of all effectuation whether of consciousness or force or being, whether of knowledge or will or delight. We have, as we have seen, to live in the consciousness of the Absolute transcendent and of the Absolute manifested in all relations, impersonal and manifest as all personalities, beyond all qualities and rich in infinite quality, a silence out of which the eternal Word creates... vision of the unity. It finds the same oneness in the Unmanifest and the Manifest, in the Impersonal and the Personal, in Nirguna and Saguna, in the infinite depths of the universal silence and the infinite largeness of the universal action. It finds the same absolute oneness in the Purusha and the Prakriti; in the divine Presence and the works of the divine Power and Knowledge; in the eternal manifestness ...
... of the mind and even, if she will, the perfection of the body. Nature seeks the Divine in her own symbols: Yoga goes beyond Nature to the Lord of Nature, beyond universe to the Transcendent and can return with the transcendent light and power, with the fiat of the Omnipotent. But their aim is one in the end. The generalisation of Yoga in humanity must be the last victory of Nature over her own delays... the others and in the evolution their result. Preserving and perfecting the physical, fulfilling the mental, it is Nature's aim and it should be ours to unveil in the perfected body and mind the transcendent activities of the Spirit. As the mental life does not abrogate but works for the elevation and better utilisation of the bodily existence, so too the spiritual should not abrogate but transfigure... physical principles or the supreme group of all, our collective humanity. Man also may seek his own individual good from any or all of these spheres of activity, or identify himself in them with the collectivity and live for it, or, rising to a truer perception of this complex universe, harmonise the individual realisation with the collective aim. For as it is the right relation of the soul with the Supreme ...
... of personal or individual feeling and sympathy we ascend to cosmic feeling, to self-identification with the All, the One that is Many. This is the experience that seems to be behind the Buddhistic compassion, karuna. And yet there can be a status even beyond. For beyond the cosmic reality, lies the transcendent reality. It is the Absolute, neti, neti, into which individual and cosmos, all... human sentiment, human motive do not move him. Humanism generally has no meaning for him. He is no longer human, but supra-human; his being and becoming are the spontaneous expression of a universal and transcendent consciousness. He Page 164 does not always live and move externally in the non-human way; but even when he appears human in his life and action, his motives are not humanistic... of humanism—it is perhaps one of the reasons why Europeans generally are attracted to Buddhism and find it more congenial than Hinduism with its dizzy Vedantic heights; but in the status of the transcendent Selfhood humanism is totally transcended and transmuted, one dwells then in the Bliss that passeth all feeling. The Upanishadic summit is not suffused with humanism or touched by it, because ...
... inconscient darkness”² ² Man has to combine in himself, because it is the Divine in him who combines in Himself, the transcendent, the universal, and the individual. His individuality is meant to be a focal Point and expressive facet of the universal and the transcendent. He is destined to be at once the golden crown of the evolutionary Nature, who began her ascensive spiral from the inert I... secret guide and deliverer of the high and mighty. But all has not been said even when God is affirmed as the goal of life. God—yes, of course, but what do we mean by God ? Is God only a static, transcendent, nameless Reality to which the soul has to climb and cease ? Is the upward ascent the sole legitimate movement of the aspiring human consciousness, and can it affirm a retreat to its Source as its... and the redeeming and transforming Grace of the Divine ? The great goal to which the Mother beckons him is a double fulfilment by a double identification—a dynamic identification not only with the transcendent Fount of all existence, but also with its perennial, rapturous cosmic Flood; and a fulfilment of his integral being in the Divine and the fulfilment of the Divine in his integral being upon earth ...
... gunas; it is above all forms and the builder and enjoyer of all its self-forms and figures. This unimaginable completeness is what the spirit is, the spirit transcendent and universal, and to be one in bliss with the transcendent and universal spirit is for the soul too to be that and nothing less. Necessarily, since there is on this plane the absolute and the play of absolutes, it is ineffable by... regulated and it finds no other. The personal nature or what is left of it merely continues mechanically for a while its past movements, or it dances in the gusts and falls of the universal energy that acts on the individual system rather than in that system, or it strays in the wild steps of an irresponsible ecstasy, or it remains inert and abandoned by the breath of the Spirit that was within it. If... self-possessed Knowledge, Love, Delight in an innumerable Oneness. It seems abnormal only because its rhythm is not measurable by the faltering beats of the mind, but yet it steps in a wonderful and transcendent measure. And what then is the necessity of a still higher step and what difference is there between the soul in gnosis and the soul in the Bliss? There is no essential difference, but yet a ...
... of all Yoga of knowledge the final goal is the Transcendent. We have, however, conceived as the aim of an integral Yoga something more complex and less exclusive—less exclusively positive of the highest condition of the soul, less exclusively negative of its divine radiations. We must aim indeed at the Highest, the Source of all, the Transcendent but not to the exclusion of that which it transcends... This use of concentration implies like every other a previous purification; it implies also in the end a renunciation, a cessation Page 318 and lastly an ascent into the absolute and transcendent state of Samadhi from which if it culminates, if it endures, there is, except perhaps for one soul out of many thousands, no return. For by that we go to the "supreme state of the Eternal whence... consciousness of the world into the form of its secret Truth. We do not seek to excise from our being all consciousness of the universe, but to realise God, Truth and Self in the universe as well as transcendent of it. We shall seek therefore not only the Ineffable, but also His manifestation as infinite being, consciousness and bliss embracing the universe and at play in it. For that triune infinity is ...
... wave to the sea,—the microcosm will participate in the freedom and sovereignty of the macrocosm. A further step will lead him from the universal to the transcendent Mother, in whose arms of unebbing Love he will find his eternal rest, even while, united with Her universal aspect, he lives an immortal's life on earth, fulfilling Her Will and manifesting the Divine. What appears Utopian and impossible... happenings. Once we admit this triple truth, we are on the way to appreciating the significance of the integral surrender in the Integral Yoga. For, if there is one conscious Shakti, the transcendent and universal Mother, everywhere, in all Her self-formations, organic and inorganic, and if it is Her Will that; covertly or overtly, initiates, Page 101 inspires and influences all action... Transported from the blind struggle and suffering of the life of ignorance, we live in the unity and harmony of the Life Divine. Free in the soul and free in the transformed nature, clasped by the Transcendent, and moved by His Immanence, we live, even as the Divine lives, in the triune glory of His self- existence— Sat-Chit-Ananda. And that is the destiny to which the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo leads ...
... life. The Self is the Purusa in the individual; it is the consciousness as pure being, simply existent in its own delight, which sees and sanctions all and is yet aloof from the mutabilities of the life becoming. The Spirit is the Self immanent, universal and transcendent. Page 26 ... Matter and back lies through the Occult World. * Two godheads are there: one above, the other here below. One is transcendent, the other immanent; one is eternal, infinite, immutable, absolute, the other is of the temporal and in it, wedded to the finite, the changing, the relative; one is sovereignly conscious, the other... higher reaches, they are powers of the Superior Hemisphere; living beyond the triple mundane consciousness, in the Fourth- turiya -they are native to the domain of the Spirit. They embody the mighty universal laws of that vaster Truth-Consciousness (Rtam ). To go beyond all the dharmas of this three-fold Lower Nature, attain to the Truth- Consciousness of the ...
... in the actualities of life. Page 360 The Self is the Purusa in the individual; it is the consciousness as pure being, simply existent in its own delight, which sees and sanctions all and is yet aloof from the mutabilities of the life becoming. The Spirit is the Self immanent, universal and transcendent. The Supreme Divine is Purusottama, - the Spirit and its expression and its continent... ss. The passage from the world of the Spirit to the world of Matter and back lies through the Occult World. *** Two godheads are there: one above, the other here below. One is transcendent, the other immanent; one is eternal, infinite, immutable, absolute, the other is of the temporal and in it, wedded to the finite, the changing, the relative; one is sovereignly conscious, the other... higher reaches, they are powers of the Superior Hemisphere; living beyond the triple mundane consciousness, in the Fourth-turiya-they are native to the domain of the Spirit. They embody the mighty universal laws of that vaster Truth-Consciousness (Rtam). To go beyond all the dharmas of this threefold Lower Nature, attain to the Truth-Consciousness of the Fourth Status, incarnate in all that we ...
... vibration of the being is necessary— samaṁ hi brahma . One is then quite free from it in works also. The individual remains but that is not the small separative ego, but a form and power of the Universal which feels itself one with all beings, an acting centre and instrument of the Universal Transcendent, full of the Ananda of the presence and the action but not thinking or moving independently or acting... The Self is essentially universal; the individualised self is only the universal experienced from an individual centre. If what you have realised is not felt to be one in all, then it is not the "Atman"; possibly it is the central being not yet revealing its universal aspect as Atman. The Self is felt as either universal, one in all, or a universalised individual the same in essence as others... each being but centred here. Of course centre is a way of speaking, because no physical centre is usually felt—only all the action takes place around the individual. Page 394 All is in the self; when identified with the universal self, all is in you. Also, the microcosm reproduces the macrocosm—so all is present in each, though all is not expressed (and cannot be) in the surface ...
... the working of ego and nature-personalities. Disciple : When the freedom of the Purusha is won then it becomes possible for the individual to look beyond the Cosmic Spirit to the Transcendent, and act in the Cosmos according to the will of the Transcendent – is it so? Sri Aurobindo : Yes, that is to say, instead of being an instrument of ignorant nature you become the instrument of... Sri Aurobindo : But the Cosmic Spirit is not in evolution, while the individual is in evolution. The individual progresses in his evolution by his nature, – he evolves through his nature. Disciple : Can the individual refuse or reject the Gunas? Page 170 Sri Aurobindo : Certainly. The individual can refuse to submit to nature. For example, Arjuna refused to act accordingly... separation of the Purusha from Prakriti and realizing it as free from it; another is by realizing the Self, The Atman or the Spirit, from the Cosmic movement. Thirdly by the identification with the Transcendent Above, i.e. by realizing the Parmatma. You can also have this freedom by merging into the Shunyam through Buddhistic discipline. Disciple : In the experience through the first and second ...
... existence, thing and creature. The ideal of human existence personal and social would be its progressive transformation into a conscious outflowering of the joy, power, love, light, beauty of the transcendent and universal Spirit. Page 62 × No longer perhaps now, except with a dwindling minority—now that the League of... egoism and the old individualistic doctrine of individual and national liberty and separateness, there is striving to arise a new idea of human universalism or collectivism for the race which, if it succeeds in becoming a power, is likely to overcome the ideal of national separatism and liberty as it has overcome within the society itself the ideal of individual freedom and separate self-fulfilment. This... collectivity. But also we may enlarge the idea of the self and, as objective Science sees a universal force of Nature which is the one reality and of which everything is the process, we may come subjectively to the realisation of a universal Being or Existence which fulfils itself in the world and the individual and the group with an impartial regard for all as equal powers of its self-manifestation. ...
... but also we feel it as above all, transcendent, surpassing all individual birth or cosmic existence. To get into the universal Self—one in all—is to be liberated from ego; ego either becomes a small instrumental circumstance in the consciousness or disappears from our consciousness altogether. That is the extinction or nirvāṇa of the ego. To get into the transcendent self above all makes us capable... vital, body becoming externalised, an outer action, while within and detached from them there grows the sense of a separate self-existent being which opens into the realisation of the cosmic and transcendent Spirit. There is also the method—a very powerful method—of the Sankhyas, the separation of the Purusha and the Prakriti. One enforces on the mind the position of the Witness—all action of mind,... surface but deep within and above. Within is the soul supporting an inner mind, inner vital, inner physical in which there is a capacity for universal wideness and with it for the things now asked for,—direct contact with the Truth of self and things, taste of a universal bliss, liberation from the imprisoned smallness and sufferings of the gross physical body. Even in Europe the existence of something behind ...
... that is the personal individual; then, coming out of that shell you learn to be one with all beings, all humanity, all things even. You become as large as creation itself; however, that is not the end. You have to go beyond, beyond, into what is known as the Transcendent, there you find the Supreme, the total, the Supreme Truth of your being. So the Bride of Brahman from her universal realisation went... Brahman from her individual realisation went forward into the universal where she met her Lord, dwelling in all beings and all creatures everywhere, – she entered into the mansion of all the Gods. Page 25 Now, you know there are three steps, three steps of consciousness, three steps of your being in its ascension towards the Supreme: first, your ordinary individual being with your ... went into the Transcendent, into her Lord, her own total Self. From her ignorant material formulation in her upward march she was shedding her scales as it were, of her inferior formations, putting on purer and higher and more glorious embodiments. Ultimately she found herself to be as she used to be originally and always and ever before the separation. When thus united the Gods were also included in ...
... shapes". It was "The Spirit's conscious representative". "Comrade of the universe, the Transcendent's ray", It was the deepest truth of the individual, one with the universal Being and a projection of the Transcendent. Earth's bliss and grief this Being her soul—welcomed with a smile. This Being, "knows the toil of mind and life". It is this soul that... was all vastness and one measureless point". Her being one with the Universal did not prevent her from being an individual because even that individuality was a "measureless point". "All contraries were true in one huge spirit. "An individual, one with cosmic self In the heart of the Transcendent's miracle Her spirit saw the world as living God; "It saw the One and... saw within her "the individual die, the cosmos pass". "These gone, the Transcendent grew a myth." Yet there was a secrecy. Out of the Vast replies came to her questionings, sometimes in the assembly of sages she received inspired word. It seemed as if the inconscient Nature and superconscient mystery—a dual Power—, at two different poles, acted in her. Now the Transcendent seemed to begin to ...
... humanism and God-centred humanism. Kahler's (and even Schweitzer's) humanism belongs, very much to the first category. He does Page 359 not seem to believe in any transcendent Spirit or God apart from the universal totality of existence, the unitary life of all, somewhat akin to the Vie Unanime of Jules Romains. The limitation of such a human ideal is for us evident. We demand a... ration-alising, that is, ordering life according to a rational pattern. And then the Greek ideal was more for the individual; it was for the culture and growth of the individuality in man. Society was considered as composed of such individualised units. The degree of personal choice, of individual liberty, of free understanding that a Greek citizen enjoyed marked the evolution secured by man out of the primitive... classical culture. On the other hand, modern collectivism tends towards a uniform levelling down of all individual eccentricity. But dangers apart, the truth of either conception, ingrained in human nature, has to be recognised and accepted. A humanity, composed of developed and formed individuals living in broad commonalty – that is the highest achievement the present author holds before mankind. ...
... obscure will to life in Matter, so the cause of continued soul birth is an ignorant desire or will to be in the universal energy of Karma. As the constant wheelings of the universe and the motions of its forces generate individual existences who escape from or end in being by an individual dissolution, so there is this constant wheel of becoming and motion of Karma which forms into individualised soul-lives... highest individuals half consciently striving to be delivered of this greater birth; and since the ascending order of rebirth follows always the degrees of the evolution, that too cannot be meant to stop short or shoot off abruptly into the superconscient without any regard to the intended step. The relation of our birth to life on other levels of consciousness and to whatever transcendent Superconscience... turning away from the demand of the universal Spirit, a refusal of all these cosmic ideas, imaginations, aspirations, action and effectuation. The way to find our being given us is an absolute denial of all our becoming. We rise to self by a liberating negation of ourselves, and in the result the Idea in the universe pursues its monstrous and aimless road, but the individual ceases and is blest in the cessation ...
... One is known as the Individual Self of the One, the Cosmic Self of the All, and the Transcendent above with individual and the All you have not got the right perspective of the Truth-consciousness. Truth-consciousness is itself at Page 161 the centre of the individual. It is the common cosmic or all-pervading consciousness of the All and it is beyond the individual and the cosmic co... Truth-Consciousness. Mind as we know it is derived from That. Life as we feel it is derived from That. There is a relation of the Supermind to mind, life and body. We have seen five planes : the Transcendent, the Infinite, or Eternal Satchidananda; then there is the Supermind or Truth-Consciousness; and then from there are derived the three : Mind, Life and Body. Now here what we are trying to do is... nature. Maya is another name for Nature. Now the question is : what is the relation between these two natures and these three planes ? That is what he is trying to work out, the relation between the Transcendent, and the Supermind and these three, mind, life and body and how they are related to the Truth-Consciousness and to the Transcendental. (It is a little analytical, not that we go into every detail ...
... of the universal Life which he is takes place within limits and is not like the intensive unity of Brahman free from all conception of bound and term, he must necessarily universalise and impersonalise himself in order to manifest the divine All which is his reality. Yet is he called upon to preserve, even when he most extends himself in universality of consciousness, a mysterious transcendent something... itself different from the Impeller of the journey. Accepted by Him, it attains its goal of Immortality. Swetaswatara Upanishad. (I. 6.) The progressive revelation of a great, a transcendent, a luminous Reality with the multitudinous relativities of this world that we see and those other worlds that we do not see as means and material, condition and field, this would seem then to be... becoming of the infinite Bliss-Existence-Consciousness in mind and life and body,—for independent of them it exists eternally,—is the transfiguration intended and the utility of individual existence. Through the individual it manifests in relation even as of itself it exists in identity. The Unknowable knowing itself as Sachchidananda is the one supreme affirmation of Vedanta; it contains all the ...
... satisfaction of ego his whole business on earth, so he made the soul's own individual salvation its one all-important spiritual and heavenly transaction. Or he saw the universal and denied the reality of the individual, refusing to them any living unity or coexistent reality, or saw a transcendent Absolute separate from individual and universe so that these became a figment of the unreal, Asat. Being and... wave, may be a violent excision of something indispensable to the universal order. Individuality is as important a thing to the ways of the Spirit of existence as universality. The individual is that potent secret of its being upon which the universal stresses and leans and makes the knot of power of all its workings: as the individual grows in consciousness and sight and knowledge and all divine power... quality, increasingly he becomes aware of the universal in himself, but aware of himself too in the universality, of his own past not begun and ended in the single transient body, but opening to future consummations. If the aim of the universal in our birth is to become self-conscient and possess and enjoy its being, still it is done through the individual's flowering and perfection; if to escape from ...
... our inner being is seated in the light of self-knowledge. The third step is to know the Divine Being who is at once our supreme transcendent Self, the Cosmic Being, foundation of our universality, and the Divinity within of which our psychic being, the true evolving individual in our nature, is a portion, a spark, a flame growing into the eternal Fire from which it was lit and of which it is the witness... plenitude of movement from vital passion and the turbid falsehoods of our vital nature and its dark self-seekings. This is the first step of self-realisation, to enthrone the soul, the divine psychic individual in the place of the ego. The next step is to become aware of the eternal self in us unborn and one with the self of all beings. This self-realisation liberates and universalises; even if our action ...
... existences,—I am He. Cosmic energy is not other than the conscious force of that Self-existent: by that energy It takes through universal nature innumerable forms of itself; through its divine nature It can, embracing the universal but transcendent of it, arrive in them at the individual possession of its complete existence, when its presence and power are felt in one, in all and in the relations of one with... through himself alone, it is possible for him to plunge into an individual immergence or absorption in the Indefinable and to lose the universe. Arriving through the universe alone, he can sink his individuality either in the impersonality of universal being or in a dynamic self of universal Conscious-Force; he merges into the universal self or he becomes an impersonal channel of the cosmic Energy.... and independently of universal being and universal nature. Secondly, there is that which he knows only indirectly by his mind and bodily senses and its effects upon them, yet must strive always to know more and more completely: for he sees also this rest of being with which he is so closely identified and yet from which he is so separate,—the cosmos, world, Nature, other individual existences whom he ...
... has to start from death and division and arrive at unity and immortality. He has to realise the universal in the individual and the Absolute in the relative. He is Brahman growing self-conscious in the objective multiplicity. He is the ego in the cosmos vindicating himself as the All and the Transcendent. Page 50 × ... Impersonality. When they wish to speak of this Unknowable in the most comprehensive and general way, they use the neuter and call It Tat , That; but this neuter does not exclude the aspect of universal and transcendent Personality acting and governing the world (cf. Kena Upanishad III). Still, when they intend to make prominent the latter idea they more often prefer to use the masculine Sa, He, or else... expresses itself as the universal Personality and the many Persons, and both between the One and the Many and among the Many themselves there is the possibility of an infinite variety of relations. These relations are determined by the play of the divine existence, the Lord, entering into His manifested habitations. They exist at first as conscious relations between individual souls; they are then taken ...
... the multitudinous flux of the manifested world. The experience is born of identification, and it gives her a perfect knowledge of the transcendent ¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother—May 15, 1914. Page 357 Infinitudes above and the universal forms and forces below Another example will give the most conclusive evidence of the knowledge that is attained by identity: ... mechanical character of a marvelously articulated and animated toy moved from the height of its seat by my consciousness which is no longer individual but is still universal, and that means that it is not yet completely immersed in Thy Oneness. All the laws of the individual manifestation clearly appeared to me, but in a manner so synthetic, so global, so simultaneous, that it is impossible to express it... Page 356 wholly steeped in Thy effective Power, may direct the ray of Thy forces upon the lowest instrument moving centrally amidst its brother instruments. From the height of these transcendent regions, the unity of the physical substance is very evidently visible, and yet the body which serves as a particular instrument in the material realm, appears with a special precision and clearness ...
... ss. A realised unity of the transcendent, the universal and the individual is an indispensable condition for the fullness of the self-expressing spirit: for the universe is the field of its totality of self-expression, while it is through the individual that its evolutionary self-unfolding here comes to its acme. But this supposes not only a real being of the individual, but the revelation of our secret... affirms the cosmos only and dismisses the individual as a by product of the cosmic Energy, errs by laying too much emphasis Page 687 on one apparent factual aspect of the world-action; it is true only of the natural individual and is not even the whole truth of that: for the natural individual, the nature-being, is indeed a product of the universal Energy, but is at the same time a natur... self-affirmation of the Absolute in an unreal or temporary individual by the annulment of the false personal being and by the destruction of all individual and cosmic existence for that individual consciousness,—however much these errors may go on, helplessly inevitable, in the world of Ignorance permitted by the Absolute, in a universal, eternal and indestructible Avidya. But this idea of the ...
... our actions to him with the individual as a channel only and an instrument. Our works then proceed straight from the Self and Divine within us, are a part of the indivisible universal action, are initiated and performed not by us but by a vast transcendent Shakti. All that we do is done for the sake of the Lord seated in the heart of all, for the Godhead in the individual and for the fulfilment of his... the cosmic action and Lord of all these existences. The soul of the liberated man thus enters by a reconciling knowledge, penetrates by a perfect simultaneous delight of the transcendent Divine, of the Divine in the individual and of the Divine in the universe into the Purushottama, māṁ viśate tadanantaram . He becomes one with him in his self-knowledge and self-experience, one with him in his being... Spirit of the cosmos, of Vasudeva who has become all this that is, of the Lord of cosmic existence who reigns over the works of Nature. It is the knowledge of the divine Purusha luminous in his transcendent eternity, the form of whose being escapes from the thought of the mind but not from its silence; it is the entire living experience of him as absolute Self, supreme Brahman, supreme Soul, supreme ...
... immanent Divine, the Divine who is at the centre of each being and of whom the psychic being is the sheath and the expression. By the psychic change one passes from the individual Divine to the universal Divine and finally to the Transcendent. The spiritual change puts you directly in contact with the Supreme. 26 — The Mother * Do not confuse the psychic realisation with the spiritual... within it. It lifts the being towards a transcendent Ecstasy and is ready to shed all the downward pull of the world from its wings in its uprising to reach the One Highest; but it calls down also this transcendent Love and Beatitude to deliver and transform this world of hatred and strife and division and darkness and jarring Ignorance. It opens to a universal Divine Love, a vast compassion, an intense... being is the real individuality of the true and divine individual within you. For your individuality means your special mode of expression and your psychic being is a special aspect of the one Divine Consciousness that has taken shape in you. But in the psychic consciousness there is not that sense of division between the individual and the universal consciousness which affects the other parts of your ...
... human formula, he widened out into a universal nature "Awaiting the ascent beyond the world, Awaiting the Descent the world to save". During this interval of waiting all his personal efforts ceased and he passed into an omnipotent peace, and realised the immortality of life. He then felt that he was in the grasp of an unseen Transcendent power that dominated not only his being... the gift; "Profiteers of a mystic interchange They grew by what they took and what they gave". There was a perfect reconciliation between the uniqueness of the individual and the oneness of the universal. For "The Sole in its solitude yearned towards the All And the Many turned to look back at the One." Great spiritual powers of the Timeless came pouring... merely his self but even his nature parts became universalised and in their tremendous universality they "Included every soul and mind in his." The joys Page 234 and sorrows of others became his and a universal sympathy arose in his nature. He became oceanic or like the earth in his wide universal sympathy. "There was no cleavage between soul and soul, There was no barrier ...
... was by living in and attaining knowledge by identity that the Vedantic sages confirmed and restated the truths of a transcendent Being or Existence, Brahman; and they have left with us in the Upanishads a fresh record of their yoga and stated that the self in us is one with the universal self of all things and that this self is transcendental Brahman. The records of their yoga give us evidence that they... being in the individual corresponding to the universal principles of the One Being that is Bliss. The Upanishad defines the Brahman as the Truth, Knowledge, Infinity (satyam, jnanam, anantam), and it defines the result of the knowledge of the Brahman in the secrecy, in the cave of being, in the supreme ether as the enjoyment of all its highest aspirations by the soul of the individual in the attainment... we find in the Upanishads the door of escape from any overemphasis in its own statement of the truth. As the Kena Upanishad points out, the man who knows and possesses the supreme Brahman as the transcendent Beatitude becomes a centre of that delight to which all his fellows shall come as to a well from which they can draw the divine waters." This is the clue that is needed for preserving the connection ...
... being; it is Thy Will that directs, Thy Force that acts; and no longer on the limited field of a small individual consciousness, but on the universal field of a conscious- ness which, in each state of being, is united to all. And the being has at once the conscious perception of all the universal movements in their complexity, and even in their confusion, and the silent and perfect peace of Thy sovereign... operation—one abides in a perfect union and identification with the Divine. As the Divine has not to abrogate or annul his waking self to realize His transcendent immobility, or forfeit His luminous silence and stillness to engage in world-action, so the individual who has realized an integral union with Him, has not to labour under any such disabling dichotomy and oscillate between peaceful passivity and... state), Sushupti (massed sleep-state) and Turiya (transcendent state). It is to become absolutely one with the Absolute, but not by self-annihilation or tranced merger. If we refer to the state of the detached Purusha, witnessing the works of Nature but not participating in them, as described in the Gita, we shall more easily under- stand how the individual consciousness, widened beyond all ego-moulds and ...
... will is universal will, and it cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty; one begins to understand that the divine is not only universal but also transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order with omniscience, where his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done, needing no direction or stimulation by the human thought; one begins to learn that the individual's ... change of consciousness leading up to the total transformation of consciousness in which the individual stands united with the universal and transcendental Divine, which leads to a further step of the reign of the divine consciousness on the psychological and even physical instruments and limbs of the individual in their action of transformation. It is true that as long as the divine consciousness is... received from the cosmic powers in their individual or in their collective combinations. This is where the role of the Gods comes into our view prominently. Gods in their combination manifest the integrality of the one supreme Deva, one integral Divine Existent. The crown of this synthesis was in the experience of the Vedic Rishis of something divine transcendent and blissful in whose unity the increasing ...
... Olympian, Apollonian or Dionysian, any angelic or demoniac supermanhood, but in that of the man whose whole personality has been offered up into the being, nature and consciousness of the one transcendent and universal Divinity and by loss of the smaller self has found its greater self, has been divinised. To exalt oneself out of the lower imperfect Prakriti, traiguṇyamayī māyā , into unity with the... objection of the impersonalising quietist the Gita is at more pains to answer than to that of the man of the world, the kinetic individual. For this quietism having hold of a higher and more powerful truth which is yet not the whole or the highest truth, its promulgation as the universal, complete, highest ideal of human life is likely to be more confusing and disastrous to the advance of the human race towards... The Indian social tendency has been to subordinate the individual to the claims of society, but Indian religious thought and spiritual seeking have been always loftily individualistic in their aims. An Indian system of thought like the Gita's cannot possibly fail to put first the development of the individual, the highest need of the individual, his claim to discover and exercise his largest spiritual ...
... or rapidly degenerating and lost in the frailty of man's inferior nature. But when it comes in the divine truth and power, Divine Love descends first as something transcendent and universal and out of that transcendence and universality it applies itself to persons according to the Divine Truth and Will, creating a vaster, greater, purer personal love than any the human mind or heart can now imagine... has been a Response—an ever-increasing Response. Yet I can't say in all sincerity that the Truth has manifested! Perhaps the preparation is sufficient? Perhaps it's an individual question—yet my action isn't individual, there's a constant perception of the earth's atmosphere. Never mind, to say so gives some comfort! Page 238 ( silence ) Your health—all right? All right ...
... ignorant sense of one's being a separate individual. This self- insulation of the individual from the universal is the cause of all his besetting limitations—limitations of consciousness, knowledge and power. The ego, the circumscribing sense of I-ness and my-ness, mamatwa, must, therefore, completely disappear, if the individual has to recover his innate infinity and immortality;... The Will of the eternal Doer functions through the co-operating will of the apparent human doer, using the means and achieving the ends decreed by itself. The individual being is at once the receiver and the giver—it receives from the Transcendent above and it gives what it receives to the Immanent within and around it. It lives in a double identification—an identification with the supreme Light and an... in this double identification discovers the "secret of Thy sovereign oneness.” This divine commerce between the Transcendent and the Immanent, between the ordaining and initiating Spirit and the actualising Matter through the medium of the surrendered and emancipated human individual, is what the Mother means by true service. Aspiration for Service Once we are convinced that ...
... 100-01, 107, 119-23 passim, 134-35, 136, 140, 171, 197, 361-68, 378-80, 385 and Brahman, 121 and ego, 372, 381 individual, 85; see also Jivatman and Maya, 98 three statuses of, 379 transcendent, 366 universal, 344, 347, 366 See also Atman; Spirit Sense(s), 53-54, 81 inner (psychical, supraphysical), 74-75, 79-80, 81, 177-78... see Samadhi Transcendent (Transcendence), the, 382, 386 Transformation, 394-95 different statuses of, 171 and liberation, 167-69, 394 of the lower nature, 173-74 meaning, 168, 169-70, 172 Truth-Consciousness, 224, 358, 159-60 See also Gnosis; Supermind Turiya, 206, 213 Universal Life, see Cosmic Life Universal Matter, see Cosmic... 328-34 and matter, 329-31 meaning, 6 mind, 8-9, 41-43, 329-32, 333 (ordinary), 209-10 psychic, see Psychic consciousness reality, 328-29 scientific study of, 315-24 transcendent, 373 universal, 386 vital, 4-5 See also Chit Consciousness-Force, 143, 393,395 See also Shakti Cosmic consciousness, 79, 219-25, 351, 367, 371-72 and the ego, 220-21 levels of, 221-22 ...
... whose one aspiration is towards a close intimacy with the supreme Soul of all existence, accomplished by the unity of these three perfected powers an inner all-comprehending unity with the transcendent and universal Spirit and Nature and all creatures are the foundation offered for his activities to the liberated man. For from that foundation the soul in him can suffer the instrumental nature to act... Godhead with whom the soul of man has to enter into this closest oneness, is indeed in his supreme status a transcendent Unthinkable too great for any manifestation, Parabrahman; but he is at the same time the living supreme Soul of all things. He is the supreme Lord, the Master of works and universal nature. He at once exceeds and inhabits as its self the soul and mind and body of the creature. He is ... of the one eternal and immutable self, a teaching which agreed well with his previous notions and offered no difficulties. But now he is confronted with the vision of this greatest transcendent, this widest universal Godhead and commanded to seek oneness with him by knowledge and works and adoration. Therefore he asks the better to have a doubt cleared which might otherwise have arisen, "Those devotees ...
... the mind a belief in a highest consciousness or state of existence universal and transcendent of the universe, from which all comes, in which all lives and moves without knowing it and of which all must one day grow aware, returning towards that which is perfect, eternal and infinite. Secondly, they tended to lay upon the individual life the need of self-preparation by development and experience till... truths of the individual and the collectivity coalesce; there, we discover that the individual and the collectivity are not what they appear to be in the lower or infra-rational parts of our being. Individual is not, it is discovered, fundamentally egoistic in nature; ego is only at a temporary formation, but behind it there is the un-egoistic centre of universality, such that the individual finds its... of yoga considers the individual soul and the universal principles of Matter, Life and Mind to be intertwined in an evolutionary process which has so far reached a critical stage where it is possible for the individual to develop knowledge and will that can be consciously applied for purposes of the evolution of supramental consciousness in matter by means of which the individual will be able to realize ...
... and transmutes Ananda into Love, a terrestrial humanised love. An earlier form of this humanised love was given in Buddha's Compassion. The transcendent Delight (Ananda) was made terrestrial and human in Buddha. But Buddha's compassion was a universal feeling and had no personal frame as it were. Vaishnavism gave it a personal frame and a human form. Radha and Krishna are not figures of an allegory... sometimes given as (I) Brahma-loka of the Vedantin, (2) Shivaloka of the Tantrik and finally (3) Goloka of the Vaishnava. The relation between the Supreme (over and above the creation) and the individual in the creation representing the creation is sometimes described in human terms to give it a concrete and graphic form. This relationship characteristically indicates the fundamental nature of... out into prominence the Purusha aspect of the Reality. In the Tantra the relation is as between Mother and child. The supreme Reality is the Divine Mother holding the universe in her arms. The individual worships and adores the Supreme Prakriti as a human child does. The Vaishnava makes the relation as between the lover and the beloved, and the love depicted is intensely vital and even physical ...
... realizes the same Spirit in all. Also when the mental, vital and physical nature is known to be derivative from the Universal Mind, universal vital and the universal physical then the same result ensues. The individual must realize his divinity i.e. his identity with the Transcendent or the Cosmic Divine. Generally, when one realizes the Spirit, it is the mental sense of the ego that goes, not ...
... of Brahman in the universe. Equally, we find the affirmation of the Divine Reality in the individual: this too is an experience concept; it is seized upon not as an appearance, but as an Page 661 actual becoming. In place of a sole supreme exclusive affirmation negating all else than the transcendent Absolute we find a comprehensive affirmation carried to its farthest conclusion: this concept... n ceases. Unable by the claim of the Infinite upon us to dwell for ever in the bonds of the finite or to find there satisfaction and largeness and peace, we have to break all the bonds of individual and universal Nature, destroy all values, symbols, images, self definitions, limitations of the illimitable and lose all littleness and division in the Self that is for ever satisfied with its own infinity... This initial incapacity could not be there if these objects were the Mind's own structures, creations of its self-Power. It may be that this is so because individual mind has only a frontal and derivative power and knowledge and there is a universal Mind that is whole, endowed with omniscience, capable of omnipotence. But the nature of Mind as we know it is an Ignorance seeking for knowledge; it is a ...
... harmony. In its relations with its supreme Self, with God, the divine soul will have this sense of the oneness of the transcendent and universal Divine with its own being. It will enjoy that oneness of God with itself in its own individuality and with its other selves in the universality. Its relations of knowledge will be the play of the divine omniscience, for God is Knowledge, and what is ignorance... things would, on the contrary, always have the conscious sense of itself as a manifestation of the Absolute. Its immutable existence it would be aware of as the original "self-form" 2 of that Transcendent,—Sachchidananda; its play of conscious being it would be aware of as manifestation of That in forms of Sachchidananda. In its every state or act of knowledge it would be aware of the Unknowable... all existences is the basis of our oneness with all; the Self containing all existences is the basis of our oneness in difference; the Self inhabiting all is the basis of our individuality in the universal. If the defect of our mentality, if its need of exclusive concentration compels it to dwell on any one of these aspects of self-knowledge to the exclusion of the others, if a realisation imperfect ...
... which you belong. You must find, in the depths of your being, that which carries in it a sense of universality, limitless expansion, unbroken continuity. Then you decentralise, extend and widen yourself; Page 514 you begin to live in all things and in all beings; the barriers separating individuals from each other break down. You think in their thoughts, vibrate in their sensations, feel in... the course of things and give birth to a new world. For the true solution to the problem of suffering, ignorance and death is not an individual escape from earthly miseries by self-annihilation into the unmanifest, nor a problematical collective flight from universal suffering by an integral and final return of the creation to its creator, thus curing the universe by abolishing it, but a transformation... Page 515 spiritual liberation means "a return to the unmanifest", a canter beyond the phenomenal world. For the latter realisation - that is, the union or the losing of the soul in the Transcendent - there are the tested paths of Knowledge (Jnana) and of Love or Devotion (Bhakti), though "the swiftest method is total self-giving". If we must speak in traditional terms, Ātma-vicāra or inquiry ...
... He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self. There is the universal mental, the universal vital, the universal physical Nature and it is out of a selection of their forces and movements that the individual mind, vital and physical are made. The soul comes from beyond this nature of mind, life and body. It belongs to the transcendent and because of it we can open to the higher Nature... union either transcendental (above the universe) or cosmic (universal) or individual or, as in our Yoga, all three together. Or it means getting into a consciousness in which one is no longer limited by the small ego, personal mind, personal Page 9 vital and body but is in union with the supreme Self or with the universal (cosmic) consciousness or with some deeper consciousness within... power for things; it can pour downwards into the body, working, establishing its reign, extending into wideness from above, link the lowest in us with the highest above us, release the individual into a cosmic universality or into absoluteness and transcendence. * Page 10 In the process of our Yoga the centres have each a fixed psychological use and general function which base all ...
... a concentration of Conscious-Self following and supporting the individual play of movement and upholding its differentiation from other play of movement,—the same everywhere in soul-essence, but varying in soul-form. This concentration supporting the soul-form would be the individual Divine or Jivatman as distinguished from the universal Divine or one all-constituting self. There would be no essential... essential difference, but only a practical differentiation for the play which would not abrogate the real unity. The universal Divine would know all soul-forms as itself and yet establish a different relation with each separately and in each with all the others. The individual Divine would envisage its existence as a soul-form and soul-movement of the One and, while by the comprehending action of consciousness... but were to project itself into the movement and to be in a way involved in it. Here, the character of the play would be altered, but only in so far as the individual Divine would so predominantly make the play of relations with the universal and with its other forms the practical field of its conscious experience that the realisation of utter unity with them would be only a supreme accompaniment ...
... superconscious to us because it is in its essence supra-mental, and it knows all because it is all. Our highest Self which possesses and supports this universal Power is not our ego-self, not our personal nature; it is something transcendent and universal of which these smaller things are only foam and flowing surface. If we surrender our conscious will and allow it to be made one with the will of the... way of life must be its central purpose. The means towards this supreme end is a self-giving of all our nature to the Divine. Everything must be given to the Divine within us, to the universal All and to the transcendent Supreme. An absolute concentration of our will, our heart and our thought on that one and manifold Divine, an unreserved self-consecration of our whole being to the Divine alone—this... delight, its vast universal equality or its boundless God-existence. 3 Page 100 These are the conditions of our effort and they point to an ideal which can be expressed in these or in equivalent formulae. To live in God and not in the ego; to move, vastly founded, not in the little egoistic consciousness, but in the consciousness of the All-Soul and the Transcendent. To be perfectly ...
... the individual, no less than from his universal presence in the Cosmos, he originates by force of Nature, manifests some line of his mystery in quality of nature and in executive energy of nature, shapes each thing and being separately according to its kind and initiates and upholds all action. It is this transcendent first origination from the Supreme and this constant universal and individual man... soul of the transcendent Infinite. He sees all in God and God in all; he sees all things as Vasudeva. He is delivered from the dualities of joy and grief, from the pleasant and the unpleasant, from desire and disappointment, from sin and virtue. All henceforth is to his conscious sight and sense the will and working of the Divine. He lives and acts as a soul and portion of the universal consciousness... Ananda; there is a joy of impersonality, a singleness of joy of the pure spirit. But an integral knowledge brings a greater triple delight. It opens the gates of the Transcendent bliss; it releases into the limitless delight of a universal impersonality; it discovers the rapture of all this multitudinous manifestation: for there is a joy of the Eternal in Nature. This Ananda in the Java, a portion here ...
... that Eternity is the Brahman. Brahman is That which is transcendent and That which is universal: it is the free spirit who supports in front the play of soul with nature and assures behind their imperishable oneness; it is at once the mutable and the immutable, the All that is the One. In his highest supracosmic status Brahman is a transcendent Eternity without origin or change far above the phenomenal... all too that the body supports, the working of nature, the mentality, the natural action of the objectivity and subjectivity of our being. 1 This wider body too is only the individual field; there is a larger, a universal, a world-body, a world-field of the same Knower. For in each embodied creature there is this one Knower: in each existence he uses mainly and centrally this single outward result... that in us which is eternal and immortal. As we perceive more and more this equal spirit in all things, we pass into that equality of the spirit; as we dwell more and more in this universal being, we become ourselves universal beings; as we grow more and more aware of this eternal, we put on our own eternity and are for ever. We identify ourselves with the eternity of the self and no longer with the ...
... also we feel it as above all, transcendent, surpassing all individual birth or cosmic existence. To get into the universal Self - one in all - is to be liberated from ego; ego either becomes a small instrumental circumstance in the consciousness or even disappears from our consciousness altogether. That is the extinction or Nirvana of the ego. To get into the transcendent self above all makes us capable... Opening The whole principle of this Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody and nothing else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, Truth-consciousness and Ananda of the Supramental Divine. * Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral... vital, body becoming externalised, an outer action, while within and detached from them there grows the sense of a separate self-existent being which opens into the realisation of the cosmic and transcendent spirit. There is also the method - a very powerful method -of the Sankhyas, the separation of the Purusha and the Prakriti. One enforces on the mind the position of the Witness - all action of mind ...
... first movement of recoil and withdrawal. The individual mind, life and body which we recoiled from as not our true being, we shall recover as a true becoming of the Self, but no longer in a purely individual narrowness. We shall take up the mind not as a separate mentality imprisoned in a petty motion, but Page 372 as a large movement of the universal mind, the life not as an egoistic activity... We have to take back all things and beings into our new consciousness but as one with all, not divided from them by an egoistic individuality. In other words, besides the consciousness of the transcendent Self pure, self-existent, timeless, spaceless we have to accept and become the cosmic consciousness, we have to identify our being with the Infinite who makes himself the base and continent of the... activity of vitality and sensation and desire, but as a free movement of the universal life, the body not as a physical prison of the soul but as a subordinate instrument and detachable robe, realising that also as a movement of universal Matter, a cell of the cosmic Body. We shall come to feel all the consciousness of the physical world as one with our physical consciousness, feel all the energies of the ...
... fixed one-dimensional discipline as in the older Yogas. It is a plastic movement, varying in its turns, suiting each individual and depending ultimately on the working of the Supramental Godhead, the Will and the Grace of the transcendent Mother who is also universal and individual. The central process of this Yoga, therefore, is a constant aspiration to that Godhead and that Mother, a surrender ...
... plants and even inanimate objects as part of myself, limbs of my body: I was the earth-consciousness incarnate. But the point is to be this individual consciousness anywhere or everywhere and still to maintain the higher, the universal and transcendent, the supreme consciousness, to be simultaneously conscious in both the modes to the utmost degree. Page 107 ... there is only one consciousness; it is everywhere, in all objects, in the universe and beyond. When a limit is put around it somewhere, a frame is erected, then it becomes or appears to become an individual consciousness. It is man's ego, a spot or point cutting and shutting itself off from the global consciousness, that has thus separated from the Divine; it is that ego, that separative consciousness ...
... plants and even inanimate objects as part of myself, limbs of my body: I was the earth-consciousness incarnate." But the point is to be this individual consciousness anywhere I or everywhere and still to maintain the higher, the universal and transcendent, the supreme consciousness, to be simultaneously conscious in both the modes to the utmost degree. Page 287 ... there is only one consciousness; it is everywhere, in all objects, in the universe and beyond. When a limit is put around it somewhere, a frame is erected, then it becomes or appears to become an individual conscious-ness. It is man's ego, a spot or point cutting and shutting itself off from the global consciousness, that has thus separated itself from the Divine; it is that ego, that separative co ...
... its mental, vital and physical parts by the spiritual ideality. These three elements, a union with the supreme Divine, unity with the universal Self, and a supramental life action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the individual as the soul-channel and natural instrument, constitute the essence of the integral divine perfection of the human being. Page 622... worlds beyond, it admits too the terrestrial as a continued term of the one existence and a change of individual and communal life on earth as a strain of its divine meaning. To open oneself to the supracosmic Divine is an essential condition of this integral perfection; to unite oneself with the universal Divine is another essential condition. Here the Yoga of self-perfection coincides with the Yogas... the divine knowledge, will and joy of existence, unless there is a union with the supreme Being, Consciousness and Bliss and a unity with its universal Self in all things and beings. A wholly separative possession of the divine nature by the human individual, as distinct from a self-withdrawn absorption in it, is not possible. But this unity will not be an inmost spiritual oneness qualified, so long ...
... strategy to launch upon aggression before consolidating the defence. But when one realises one's true self, one finds it widening into infinity. It is realised not only as an individual entity, but also as universal and transcendent; and then nothing remains outside-all is seen and felt and tackled in oneself. It is only when we have this comprehensive realisation of ourself containing the whole universe... supremely conscious, complex and firmly individualised personality is the best "intermediary of the divine Will”, if the "I” in it is not the little, limited, separative "I", but the transcendent and universal Page 310 "I" who is without a second. Through such impersonal personalities alone can the Divine affirm His inalienable unity in diversity and yet make each diversity, each... indivisible One has been fulfilled" ? The "I" will then remain,—without it there can be no reception and transmission of the divine Will and the divine forces—but it will become the transcendent and universal "I", the one "I" conscious of itself in all forms and powerful to achieve everything. The blind, sense-embedded, separate "I" will disappear for ever, even from the physical consciousness ...
... Conscious Force that upholds us and the universe. Transcendent, the original supreme Shakti, she stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. Universal, the cosmic Mahashakti, she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces. Individual, she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of... sanctions; nothing can take shape except what she moved by the Supreme perceives and forms after casting it into seed in her creating Ananda. The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining... of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between the human personality and the divine Nature. The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and the ineffable Presence; containing or calling the Truths that have to Page 14 be manifested ...
... strongly indicated by the Fourth Gospel: "I am in the Father and the Father is in me" (John 14:10). The transcendent God is immanent here without the immanent God's excluding the transcendent. And with John such a phenomenon has a wide bearing. To him, Christ is the Logos (a la Philo), the universal Word, an immanent principle of eternal Life and Light as well as a personal being, the Son of God. It... is the here and now Kingdom of power over devils and sickness, and the fellowship of Jesus and his disciples in righteousness, peace, and joy. Always, says Otto, the kingdom is seen as external, transcendent, not immanent, and Jesus has nothing mystical in mind. Another recent writer, Perrin, says, "... the decisive observation is that if the word entos is to be translated 'within', then... Ashramite is too inwardly or upwardly absorbed to notice, or care for, finite things like friends' letters. No doubt, what concerns him is more the spirit than the letter, but he never makes such a universal sweep of a statement as: "the letter killeth." He does not do it even when he is the Editor of Mother India, to whom communications often come in tidal waves, a veritable "sea of troubles" undreamed ...
... way cannot go to its end without a seeing vivid and vital, as concrete in its way as physical sight, of the works of the universal Spirit everywhere. On its summits it rises into a constant living and thinking and willing and acting in the presence of the Supramental, the Transcendent. Whatever we see and hear, whatever we touch and sense, all of which we are conscious, has to be known and felt by us... itself as the Supreme. But afterwards the seeker discovers that all is there for him contained or new-made in that silence or through it descends upon him from a greater concealed transcendent Existence. For this Transcendent, this Absolute is not a mere peace of signless emptiness; it has its own infinite contents and riches of which ours are debased and diminished values. If there were not that Source... self-creator, a Cosmic Spirit, a universal Mind, a universal Life, the conscious and living Reality supporting the appearance which we sense as unconscious inanimate Matter. On the other side he becomes aware of the same Godhead in effectuating consciousness and power put forth as a self-aware Force that contains and carries all within her and is charged to manifest it in universal Time and Space. It is evident ...
... vertical portion above the transverse line, stands for the supreme or transcendent Divine, one who is above manifestation; the middle – the transverse or horizontal branch stands for the expanse of the universal consciousness, the Cosmic Divine; and the bottom portion, the vertical line below the transverse stands for the individual Divine immanent or imbedded in the manifestation. You will note that ...
... pp. 28-29 ] that there are three aspects, transcendent, universal and individual of the Mother. 31 May 1933 "At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power" [ p. 32 ]. Are we to understand that the Transcendent Mother stands above the Ananda plane? There... or Trinity is not very far off at bottom from my trinity of the individual, cosmic and transcendent Divine—as far at least as one can judge who has not himself followed the Christian discipline. Christ whether as the human Incarnation or the Christos in men or the Godhead proceeding from the Father, seems to me to be quite my individual Divine. The Father has very much the appearance of the One who... not the vital itself part of the same Prakriti? By Prakriti is meant universal Prakriti. Universal Prakriti entering into the vital being creates desires which appear by its habitual response as an individual nature; but if the habitual desires she throws in are rejected and exiled, the being remains but the old individual prakriti of vital desire is no longer there—a new nature is formed responding ...
... Self —the Atman, the universal Spirit, the self-existent Being, the conscious essential Existence, one in all. The Self is being, not a being; it is the original and essential nature of our existence. soul —the psychic essence or entity, the divine essence in the individual; a spark of the Divine that comes down into the manifestation to support the evolution of the individual. In the course of the... the right law of individual and social life; literally, that which one lays hold of and which holds things together. Divine, the —the Supreme Truth, the Supreme Being from whom all have come and in whom all are. environmental consciousness (being) —part of the being that each person carries around him, outside his body, by which he is in touch with others and with the universal forces. gradations... evolution and passing from life to life. See psychic being . Spirit —the Consciousness above mind, the Atman or universal Self which is always in oneness with the Divine. spark-soul —see psyche . the subconscient —the subconscient or subconscious of the individual is that submerged part of his being in which there is no waking conscious and coherent thought, will, feeling or organised ...
... the social system is to lump all these activities and to demand from each individual his contribution to the intellectual, economical and military life and needs of the community without paying any heed to the demands of his individual nature and temperament. The ancient Indian civilisation laid peculiar stress on the individual nature, tendency, temperament and sought to determine by it the ethical... which is unaffected by the dream and has no real part in it,—if we accept at all, as the Gita accepts, the existence of God, that is to say of the omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, yet always transcendent Being who manifests the world and Himself in the world, who is not the slave but the lord of His creative Consciousness, Nature or Force (Maya, Prakriti or Shakti), who is not baffled or thwarted... was even more than it is now a necessary part of human activity and the idea of its elimination from the scheme of life would have been an absolute chimera. The gospel of universal peace and goodwill among men—for without a universal and entire mutual goodwill there can be no real and abiding peace—has never succeeded for a moment in possessing itself of human life during the historic cycle of our progress ...
... discloses progressively in us his own nature of freedom, bliss, love, power, immortal being.... By the inpouring of his own influence and presence into us he enables the individual being to attain to identity with the universal and transcendent. 39 To be able to read the veiled eternal Shastra and to be able to awaken and to hearken to the Jagad-Guru or World-Teacher secret within us, what is needed... that devours the ego and breaks up the limitations of its petty and narrow mould for the full and wide reception of that which it seeks, that which, being universal, exceeds and, being transcendent, surpasses even the largest and highest individual self and nature. 40 The "personal effort" required is described more concretely and with much greater particularity in The Mother which Sri Aurobindo... Karmayogin makes himself the vehicle of the universal energy, and achieves release and fulfilment in the completion of the work; in the result, he has become a willing tool in whom the Lord of that energy has manifested himself: Not desire, not attachment must drive him, but a Will that stirs in a divine peace, a Knowledge that moves from the transcendent Light, a glad Impulse that is a force from ...
... subsequent ages, and a cleft was made between Purusha and Prakriti. The transcendence of the Brahman became the exclusive aim of all, or almost all, spiritual seeking, and the intention of the Transcendent in its own immanence in the world was more or less completely ignored. Therefore, we meet with two divergent lines of Yoga in India— one inclusive and comprehensive, embracing Light and ... says in his The Synthesis of Yoga: "To live in God and not in the ego; to move, vastly founded, not in the little egoistic consciousness, but in the consciousness of the All-Soul and the Transcendent. "To be perfectly equal in all happenings and to all beings, and to see and feel them as one with oneself and one with the Divine; to feel all in oneself and all in God; to feel God in all... is peculiar to India is not the hunger, but the generalisation of the hunger. Spirituality has not been in India, as in many another country, an exceptional pursuit or a hothouse growth, but a universal, national preoccupation. Mystics and saints have been born in all countries, but nowhere, as in India, has the ideal of the saint, the illumined God-drunk man, exerted such a permanent and powerful ...
... prove its undefeatable inevitability; then only will it turn out to be a direct action of the Transcendent. Such a moment has now arrived for the high involvement and only in that high involvement will this world be carried forward in a decisive way. The Transcendent’s action is going to yield the Transcendent’s result. Arjuna is called, explains Sri Aurobindo, …to self-knowledge; he must see God... merges into the Eternal these forms have to go away and it is this fact which Jnaneshwar must have intended in the use of tridhatu. The term tridhatu has a Vedic connotation also; it describes the Transcendent in the triple state of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, Sachchidananda, but that cannot be the sense in the present context. The problem of editing Jnaneshwari is therefore still an open issue.... the gods and the fulfilled beings and the Rishis give praise, chant hymns of benedictive glory with the swasti -utterances. Even as the Vision in front of Arjuna grows more and more wide in its transcendent dimensions, we also hear in Vyasa the ring of Overmind poetry manifoldly expressing that unseizable Greatness: (The Gita: 11.36-40) Rightly and in good place, O Krishna, does ...
... ways in his three well-known aspects. As the transcendent Reality he is above and beyond creation, he is the U nmanifest, although he may hold within either involved or dissolved the entire manifestation. Next, he is the manifestation, the cosmic or the universal; he is one with creation, immanent in it, still its master and lord. Finally, he has an individual aspect: he is a Person with whom human b.eings... all-pervading, exercising his influence through the pressure of Universal Law, perhaps in a concentrated form, still working gradually, step by step, as though through a logical process, for the maintenance of the natural order and harmony, lokasamgraha. God can be more than that, individualised in a special, even a human sense. His individual being can and does hold within itself his cosmic and transcendental... SRI Aurobindo's Yoga, it has been said, begins where other yogas end. Other yogas end by the attainment of the Brahman or some form or mode of it or something akin to it, which means the transcendent Reality, the supreme status of the Spirit beyond name and form, beyond all particular manifestation. It is the final realisation of the soul in its upward ascent, the nee plus ultra. Sri Aurobindo's ...
... absorbed into the Unutterable, the Ineffable. The return towards the consciousness of the individual body took place very slowly in a constant and invariable splendour of Light and power and Felicity and Adoration, by successive gradations, but directly, without passing again through the universal and terrestrial forms. And it was as if the modest corporeal form had become the direct and immediate... but only her golden robe which symbolizes the Supernature. The central consciousness of man, once it has travelled beyond the borders of even the spiritual mind, finds a stable base above in the Transcendent, and a tranquil, luminous poise in it, and never spirals back — na punarāvartate — into the whirl of the lower energies. It is the divine nature assumed after the ascent that descends as a vehicle... vehicle of the divine Grace to help and heal humanity. This movement illustrates the Mother's rôle, so well indicated in many of her later Prayers, of the Mediatrix between the supreme Transcendent above and the material world below. The stretching out of the golden robe is a significant gesture of the divine Grace leaniing down to succour suffering humanity. It is interesting to note again that the ...
... original and primal Ignorance. Maya, if it be an original power of the consciousness of the Eternal, cannot itself be an ignorance or in any way akin to the nature of ignorance, but must be a transcendent and universal power of self-knowledge and all-knowledge; ignorance can only intervene as a minor and subsequent movement, partial and relative. Is it then something inherent in the multiplicity of souls... distinction Page 593 arises by a movement of the individual soul from one poise to another, from the poise of Brahman-consciousness in the world, where it is a fulcrum for the universal action, to or towards the poise of Brahman-consciousness beyond the world, where it is a power for the withholding of energy from the universal action. Moreover, if it is by energy of Tapas that the dispensing... earth-life where the individual consciousness in the many identifies itself by dividing mind with the form, which is the only safe basis of division. But what is the form? It is, at least as we see it here, a formation of concentrated energy, a knot of the force of consciousness in its movement, a knot maintained in being by a constant whirl of action; but whatever transcendent truth or reality it proceeds ...
... first limits of his ego, has to be taken up into a unifying divine love for the universal Divine. Adoration fulfilled in love, love in Ananda,—the surpassing love, the self-wrapped ecstasy of transcendent delight in the Transcendent which awaits us at the end of the path of Devotion,—has for its wider result a universal love for all beings, the Ananda of all that is; we perceive behind every veil the... Love is seeking here in the darkness of the Ignorance and it is that which it finds when individual human love is changed into the love of the Immanent Divine incarnate in the material universe. As with individual, so with universal Love; all that widening of the self through sympathy, goodwill, universal benevolence and beneficence, love of mankind, love of creatures, the attraction of all the... the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal. An ultimate inexpressible adoration offered by us to the Page 159 Transcendent, to the Highest, 1 to the Ineffable, is yet no complete worship if it is not offered to him wherever he manifests ...
... sense in that Self and yet at the same time extraneous to its consciousness, non-existent in its existence, existing only in a sort of unreal mind,—a dream therefore, an illusion. This aloof and transcendent Real Existence may be realised as an utter Self of one's own being; or the very idea of a self and of one's own being may be swallowed up in it, so that it is only for the mind an unknowable That... conscious force of being as well as pure awareness of conscious being. The Self as the All, not only in the unique essence of things, but in the manifold form of things, not only as containing all in a transcendent consciousness, but as becoming all by a constituting consciousness, this is the next step towards his true possession of existence. In proportion as this realisation is accomplished, the status... channel. But this phenomenon is not really abnormal or contrary to the general law of things. For do we not see a perfect working of the secret universal Will and Intelligence in the apparently brute ( jaḍa ) action of material Nature? And it is precisely this universal Will and Intelligence which thus acts through the calm, indifferent and inwardly silent Yogin who offers no obstacle of limited and ignorant ...
... power over the earth has increased: she can act now with unhampered universality. But surely all the power she can exercise now on the universal scale was always there? There was always the Universal Mother as well as the Transcendent Mother in addition to the Individual Mother as manifested in a physical body. The embodied individual Mother's working put no bar to the working of her Page 281 ... the Alone." The latter brings the feeling of what the Upanishads figure forth as the one Fire that has become many flames. We may speak of the submergence as a hint of the Transcendent, the emergence as a glimpse of the Universal. And the real beauty of the Yogic life lit up by the grace of our uplifting Master and our enfolding Mother is that the high hint and the wide glimpse are not alternatives... question which she had put to the Lord, whether or not her body would go successfully to the end. The secret so far hidden from her was now known - namely, that the Will of the Supreme - her own transcendent self - was that her present body would not serve for the final supramentalisation. She could have gone on for some time more but the state in which she was would not have been to the benefit of ...
... behind, with the riches of a plenary Supernature, a divine mentality, a divine vitality, a divine corporeality. Alluding to that basis, Sri Aurobindo gives the injunction: One with the Transcendent, calm, universal, Single and free, yet innumerably living, All in thyself and thyself in all dwelling, Act in the world with thy being beyond it. Here we have an anticipation of the... Nature is not abandoned: all her parts are retained in their essence within what Sri Aurobindo's spiritual metaphysics terms "the psychic being", the true inner individual, the deep dweller in man's "bosom", who has descended from the Transcendent, the Supreme, as a portion of that Eternity's and Infinity's Supernaure, "the heart of the Ineffable", into the cosmic phenomenon and evolves there to consummate... Drowned in the Absolute, found in the Godhead... Here the Single and the Multiple seem reflected in the two sections of either line. But surely we cannot just equate the Single with the Transcendent and the Multiple with the cosmic? No doubt, we may say that the ultimate Plenitude is at once the Eternal that is timeless and spaceless and the Infinite that is all time and space—at once the Absolute ...
... higher Prakriti is, says Krishna, my supreme nature, prakṛtiṁ me parām . And this "I" here is the Purushottama, the supreme Being, the supreme Soul, the transcendent and universal Spirit. The original and eternal nature of the Spirit and its transcendent and originating Shakti is what is meant by the Para Prakriti. For speaking first of the origin of the world from the point of view of the active power... the nature. It is a principle in each creature that derives from and is immediately related to a transcendent divine Becoming, that of the Ishwara, madbhāvaḥ . In this relation of the divine bhāva to the svabhāva and of the svabhāva to the superficial bhāvāḥ , of the divine Nature to the individual self-nature and of the self-nature in its pure and original quality to the phenomenal nature in... are manifested and come out of timelessness into Time. But in order to provide a spiritual basis for this manifold universal becoming in the cosmos the supreme Nature formulates itself as the Jiva. To put it otherwise, the eternal multiple soul of the Purushottama appears as individual spiritual existence in all the forms of the cosmos. All existences are instinct with the life of the one indivisible ...
... Descriptions Yoga has four powers and objects, purity, liberty, beatitude and perfection. Whosoever has consummated these four mightinesses in the being of the transcendental, universal, lilamaya and individual God is the complete and absolute Yogin. All manifestations of God are manifestations of the absolute Parabrahman. The Absolute Parabrahman is unknowable to us, not because It is... world & not the sheer Absolute,—since otherwise It is unknowable. This is the simultaneous knowing & not knowing spoken of in the Vedanta. Of Parabrahman we should not say that "It" is world-transcendent or world-immanent or related or non-related to the world; for all these ideas of world and not-world, of transcendence and immanence and relation are expressions of thought by which mind puts its ...
... vertical portion above the transverse line, stands for the supreme or transcendent Divine, one who is above manifestation; the middle—the transverse or horizontal branch stands for the expanse of the universal consciousness, the Cosmic Divine; and the bottom portion, the vertical line below the transverse stands for the individual Divine immanent or imbedded in the manifestation. You will note that ...
... Absolute. I am without activity, changeless, without parts, formless, absolute, eternal, without any other support, the One without a second. I am the Universal, I am the All, I am transcendent, the One without a second. I am Absolute and Infinite Knowledge, lam Bliss and indivisible. Page 181 As darkness, which is distinct (from sunshine), vanishes... "Brahman alone is real, the universe is unreal, and the individual soul is no other than the Brahman ": the call of the centuries that has held the soul of India in its spell. Some resounding echo of this powerful and impelling cry can still be heard in the remote corners of our own being — even though we belong to another age. The One Transcendent Reality, knowing which, all else seems unreal. The immobile... and which brings with it ineffable Peace and completest fulfilment. Finally, even the individual is no more, for That alone is: the One ^ Existence without a second, ekam eva advitiyam. What Shankara thus communicates to us with such power and impact is his experience of the One shining transcendent Reality, besides which there is no other, But to us of the present times, imbued as we ...
... done individually in a solitary way only ." No individual solitary transformation apart from the work for the earth (which means more than any individual transformation) would be either possible or useful. (Also no individual human being can by his own power alone work out the transformation, nor is it the object of the Yoga to create an individual superman here and there.) The object of the Yoga... power of receptivity of the inferior levels. Page 299 I presume it is the development of the Truth Power and the Ananda Power in the overmind consciousness that is being pursued. The transcendent Ananda in itself could descend only after the complete Supramentalisation of the being and would mean a stupendous change in the earth consciousness. It is the divine Truth in the overmind and the... on earth, to fix it there, to create a new race with the principle of the supramental consciousness governing the inner and outer individual and collective life. Therefore the existence of the Asram, whatever difficulties it created for ourselves or for the individual, was inevitable. The method was the preparation of the earth consciousness in the human being as represented by the members of the ...
... brings in a completer significance. We regard the spirit in man not as solely an individual being travelling to a transcendent unity with the Divine, but as a universal being capable of oneness with the Divine in all souls and all Nature and we give this extended view its entire practical consequence. The human soul's individual liberation and enjoyment of union with the Divine in spiritual being, consciousness... with all beings by a sympathy and participation in Page 613 the spiritual purpose of the Divine in humanity. The individual Yoga then turns from its separateness and becomes a part of the collective Yoga of the divine Nature in the human race. The liberated individual being, united with the Divine in self and spirit, becomes in his natural being a self-perfecting instrument for the perfect... show themselves in fact or in incipient potentiality. This unity at once suggests the possibility of a synthetic Yoga. Tantric discipline is in its nature a synthesis. It has seized on the large universal truth that there are two poles of being whose essential unity is the secret of existence, Brahman and Shakti, Spirit and Nature, and that Nature is power of the spirit or rather is spirit as power ...
... God." The two formulas are the obverse and reverse of the same mighty occurrence. And, for the individual soul, the occurrence would be, at the same time, God withdrawing into Himself the individual aspect He has put forth of His own being, and the individual aspect of Him merging in its own original universal reality. The soul grows conscious of the World-Soul that is its own secret supreme Self. What... necessarily a special development of the pantheism that is non-Christian and it must carry over the universal identity of being, which is the true substance of the latter, and, because of this carrying over, cannot help passing at times into a total union such as pantheism promises to the individual soul. However, we should remark here on the wrong-headed-ness of Teilhard's notion, 17 which... manifestation he has to wait until his birth as Jesus and his subsequent resurrection. Perhaps there will be an attempt to avoid this consequence by saying: "Christ is Omega only in Omega's transcendent or supernatural aspect, not in its immanent or natural one. You must show him as identical with the latter to render the consequence unescapable." Well, Teilhard gives Christ himself a natural as ...
... volume. Beyond our personality there is, first, a universal being as well as a universal becoming of which ours is a little movement; and beyond that too there is the eternal Being out of which all becoming derives and to which it owes its potentialities, elements, original and final motives. We may say indeed that all becoming is only an act of universal consciousness, is Maya, is a creation of the will... light is so strong in him as to bring him to its own culminating point, then he will be able advancing from that point to make out his gate of entrance into some first ray of that which is divine, transcendent and absolute. In all effort at self-finding these possibilities are there; they are the conditions of this spiritual adventure. Now we have to see how the Gita deals with this question on its... because all is naturally and easily divine, all is that Tapas. There will be no separate labour of the lower energism, because the energy of Prakriti will have found its true source and base in the transcendent will of the Purushottama. Then, because of this high initiation, the acts of this energy on the lower planes also will proceed naturally and spontaneously from an innate perfect will and by an inherent ...
... except of the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gitâ. The Infinite and Eternal to whom it claims to lead is the Page 58 One without a second, the omnipresent Reality, the immanent and transcendent Purusha, who is every being, every thing, every happening, the Creator and Master of the whole universe, which is His phenomenal self- extension in Himself, and at the same time the inconceivable... increasing expansion of the waking human consciousness, and its ascent beyond the mind, beyond even the spiritual ranges of the mind, to that plane where Sachchidânanda stands as at once the transcendent Absolute and the timeless Creator of the universe. This ascent is a superhuman labour, impossible of achievement except by the Grace of the Divine; for, it involves an opening of the "higher layers... consciousness with the divine consciousness in a permanent, integral and dynamic identification. On the sun-bathed heights of the Supermind, the Yogi enjoys at once the invariable bliss of the transcendent Sachchidânanda, and the variable, multifarious delight of the cosmic existence. He walks. in the steps of the supreme Truth, and works by the Will of the supreme Force, and wears his humanity ...
... something of the calm of the impersonal basing and elevating the effort and struggle of the personality, something of the largeness of the universal releasing and harmonising the troubled concentrations of the individual existence, something of the sense of the transcendent raising the inferior, ignorant and uncertain powers of life towards a greater strength and light and Ananda. And when art and poetry... and the universal Mother. A later tone brought in more of the subtleties of the vital soul of the natural world and a response of the moved sensation and emotion of the life-spirit in us and out of this arose an intellectual and aesthetic sense of hidden finer and subtler things and, more profound, in the poetry of Wordsworth, Byron and Keats and Shelley an attempt at communion with a universal presence... it will be an expression of the very self of man and the self of things and the self of nature; it will be a creative and interpretative revelation of the infinite truth of existence and of the universal delight and beauty and of a greater spiritualised vision and power of life. This can only come if the mind of the race takes actually the step over which it is now hesitating and passes from the ...
... Aurobindo's synthesis of yoga, the spirit in man is regarded not solely as an individual being traveling to a transcendent unity and the divine but universal being capable of oneness with the divine in all souls and in all-Nature with all its practical consequences. As Sri Aurobindo points out: "The human soul's individual liberation and enjoyment of union with the Divine in spiritual being, co... the words of Sri Aurobindo: "The individual soul will be the channel of this action and Page 75 offering, and it will enjoy at once its oneness with the Ishwara and its oneness with the Prakriti and will enjoy all relations with Infinite and finite, with God and the universe and beings in the universe in the highest terms of the union of the universal Purusha and Prakriti." 66 ... quality, anantam brahma, in Brahman as self- existent consciousness and universal knowledge, jnānam brahma, in Brahman as the self-existent bliss and its universal delight of being, ānandamdm brahma. He will experience all the universe as the manifestation of the One, all quality and action as the play of his universal and infinite energy, all knowledge and conscious experience as the out flowing ...
... valuation of the world is the Maya of the Gita and can be surmounted without abandoning either action or world-existence. But in addition, the whole of universal existence is in this sense an illusion of Maya that it is not an unchanging transcendent and final reality of things but only a symbolical reality; it is a valuation of the reality of Brahman in the terms of cosmic consciousness. All these... highest is this supreme perception that the world is a mass of consciousness-symbols, having a conventional value, beings exist only in Brahman's self-consciousness & individual personality & ego-sense are only symbols & terms in the universal Page 135 symbol-existence. We have said that & we shall see that we are not compelled by this perception to set down the world as a myth or a valueless... their fixed conventional values, some of which are relative to the general consciousness & some to the individual consciousness of the symbol-being. Matter, Mind, Life for instance are general symbols with a fixed general value to God in His cosmic consciousness; but they have a different individual value, make a different impression or represent themselves differently, as we say, to myself, to the ant ...
... determinism can stand; the uncertainty of individual behaviour (electrons, quanta) does not really undermine determinism, but only brings a new feature into it. That seems from a hasty glance to be his position. Certain scientific thinkers consider this uncertainty of individual behaviour to be a physical factor correspondent to the element of free will in individual human beings. It is here that Planck... are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions, new-create what it had created; the narrow fixed lines disappear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness. Neither Karma nor... field of causality or all is so bound together that it is the whole that determines the local result. A man's action then would be determined by universal forces and his state of mind and apparent choice would be only part of the instrumentation of Universal Force. In the case of Socrates and that of the habitual drunkard raised by you, the difference you make is correct. The weak-willed man is ...
... qualities, any more than existence is necessarily individual existence or a selection & arrangement of movements in our being. Personality can be & is Universal; this Universal Personality is God in relation to our individual experiences. Personality also can be & is Transcendent, selfexistent, beyond individuality & Universality,—this transcendent Personality, a blissful unlimited self-conscious Awareness... to God's transcendent embracing vision which sees all things & states & is affected & bound by none. They all therefore make the essential error of duality, from which eventually every kind of ignorance & confusion arises. It is for this reason, to discourage this error that the Sage insists on his ekam in the neuter—not only is He divine, Sa, God regarding Himself subjectively as universal cognisant... delight in Vidya, delight in Avidya & governing all things towards that purpose,—self-aware as the One & self-aware as the Many, self-aware as Sat & self-aware as Asat. This great self-aware transcendent more than universal existence we call Sa, Ishwara, "He", God, the Paratpara Purusha, the Higher than the Highest. We see therefore that these three names merely try to express in human language certain f ...
... indivisible regard upholding by its immutable self-conscious unity the variations of the universe. But we must not now ask how the contents of Time and Space would present themselves there in their transcendent truth; for this our mind cannot conceive,—and it is even ready to deny to this Indivisible any possibility of knowing the world in any other way than that of our mind and senses. What we have... place and circumstance both of its gradual and its Page 144 ultimate realisation. To see things steadily and see them whole is not possible to the mind; but it is the very nature of the transcendent Supermind. This Supermind in its conscious vision not only contains all the forms of itself which its conscious force creates, but it pervades them as an indwelling Presence and a self-revealing... consummate it in itself by an act of power which is inseparable from the act of knowledge and from the movement of self-existence, is indeed one and the same act. For we have seen that universal force and universal consciousness are one—cosmic force is the operation of cosmic consciousness. So also divine Knowledge and divine Will are one; they are the same fundamental movement or act of existence ...
... will and the thought of the Page 243 mind are the motives of action only in the lower nature; when the ego is lost and the Yogin becomes Brahman, when he lives in and is, even, a transcendent and universal consciousness, action comes spontaneously out of that, luminous knowledge higher than the mental thought comes out of that, a power other and mightier than the personal will comes out of... activities, the master of the silence and the peace, the master of the power and the action, who is here incarnate as the divine charioteer of the stupendous conflict, the Transcendent, the Self, the All, the master of every individual being. He is the enjoyer of all sacrifice and of all tapasya, therefore shall the seeker of liberation do works as a sacrifice and as a tapasya; he is the lord of all the... it is gained through the Akshara, is founded upon the being of the Purushottama, mat-saṁsthām , and that is extended, the Divine, the Brahman is extended too in the world of beings and, though transcendent of it, not imprisoned in its own transcendence. One has to see all things as He and live and act wholly in that vision; that is the perfect fruit of the Yoga. But why act? Is it not safer to ...
... Spirit that is all and more than all, a transcendent and a universal Godhead, at once personal and impersonal, while they saw also within all a divine dweller ever developing forms higher and higher, they did not fail to see that this development (which we now recognise as evolution) is often a most paradoxical story because the transcendent and universal and immanent Godhead has worked out the... Supermind and could become permeated with the Light beyond this universe of death took upon itself not the mere task of an extraordinary individual transformation but the giant labour of being representative of all bodily life and hence accepting a universal responsibility so that the hope of an entire transformed mankind might result from its achievement. In a Yoga thus representative and ...
... It is to this Godhead, this Being that the Bhakti of an integral Yoga will be poured out and uplifted. Transcendent, it will seek him in the ecstasy of an absolute union; universal, it will seek him in infinite quality and every aspect and in all beings with a universal delight and love; individual, it will enter into all human relations with him that love creates between person and person. It may... to our consciousness, and then too love and adoration find their place. And even when our personality seems to disappear into unity with it, it may still be—and really is—the individual divine who is melting to the universal or the supreme by a union in which love and lover and loved are forgotten in a fusing experience of ecstasy, but are still there latent in the oneness and subconsciently persisting... starts from and it rises and widens to its issue by adoration of the divine Personality. The Divine is a Being and not an abstract existence or a status of pure timeless infinity; the original and universal existence is He, but that existence is inseparable from consciousness and bliss of being, and an existence conscious of its own being and its own bliss is what we may well call a divine infinite Person ...
... using them as its instruments. Consciousness-Force — the Conscious Force that builds the worlds; a universal Energy that is the power of the Cosmic Spirit working out the cosmic and individual truth of things. Dharma — law; the deepest law of one's nature; the right law of individual and social life; literally, that which one lays hold of and which holds things together. Higher... delight, beatitude, spiritual ecstasy; the essential principle of delight: a self-delight which is the very nature of the transcendent and infinite existence. Bhakti — devotion, love for the Divine. central being — the portion of the Divine which supports the individual being and survives from life to life; it has two forms: jivātman, which is above the manifestation in life, presiding... divine essence in the individual. In the course of the evolution, the soul grows and evolves in the form of a soul-personality, the psychic being. See also psychic being and soul. the psychic — psychic being, the term is sometimes used for the psyche or soul. See also psyche and psychic being. psychic being — the divine portion in the individual which evolves from life ...
... being. One could say, for example, that the creation of an individual being is the result of the projection, in time and space, of one of the countless possibilities latent in the supreme origin of all manifestation which, through the medium of the one and universal consciousness, takes concrete form in the law or the truth of an individual and so, by a progressive development, becomes his soul or psychic... age to which you belong. You must find, in the depths of your being, that which carries in it a sense of universality, limitless expansion, unbroken continuity. Then you decentralise, extend and widen yourself; you begin to live in all things and in all beings; the barriers separating individuals from each other break down. You think in their thoughts, vibrate in their sensations, feel in their feelings... things and give birth to a new world. For the true solution to the problem of suffering, ignorance and death is not Page 37 an individual escape from earthly miseries by self-annihilation into the unmanifest, nor a problematical collective flight from universal suffering by an integral and final return of the creation to its creator, thus curing the universe by abolishing it, but a transformation ...
... human incarnation on a universal scale. Keeping in view the Cosmic Christ as both anterior and posterior to Jesus as well as passing through him, the Cosmic Christ as identical with the immanent evolving Omega no less than with the transcendent evolver Omega, the Cosmic Christ as the universal Soul and Body which are perfect at the same time that he is the universal Soul and Body which are... ic pantheism. Under penalty of being less evolved than the ends brought about by its own action universal energy must be a thinking energy . Consequently,...the attributes of cosmic value, with which it is irradiated to our modern eyes, in no way abolish our need to recognise it as a transcendent form of personality ." The same grand note 33 is heard again: "If the cosmos were basically... Resurrection as an isolated event in time, with an apologetical significance, as some small individual triumph over the tomb won in turn by Christ. It is something quite other and much greater than that. It is a tremendous cosmic event. It marks Christ's effective assumption of his function as the universal centre. Until that time, he was present in all things as a soul that is painfully gathering ...
... pattern of being marked out by a settled combination of fixed qualities, a determined character; he cannot be that since he is a conscious expression of the Universal and the Transcendent." Describing the gnostic individual he says : "We feel ourselves in the presence of a light of consciousness, a potency, a sea of energy, can distinguish and describe its free waves of action and quality, but... In this connection Sri Aurobindo said during an Evening Talk : "No human manifestation can be illimitable and .unlimited but the manifestation in the limited should reflect the unlimited, the Transcendent Beyond." (28-4-1923) This possibility of the human touching and manifesting the Divine has been realised during the course of human history whenever a great spiritual Light has appeared on... divine works, free, unegoistic, disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as a divine personality, which shall fill the consciousness of the human being, to replace the limited egoistic personality, "so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out' of birth into immortality." 3 It is clear that ...
... the spiritual principle, becomes expressed and dominant in her, takes up cosmic and individual existence on the lower planes into its truth and transforms all into a conscious manifestation of the Spirit. The true individual, the spiritual being, emerges, individual yet universal, universal yet self-transcendent: life no longer appears as a formation of things and an action of being created by the... with it the destruction of our true individuality, our spiritual existence, for that was always universal and one with the Transcendence; but there is a transformation which replaces the separative ego by the Purusha, a conscious face and figure of the universal being and a self and power of the transcendent Divine in cosmic Nature. In the same movement, by the very awakening into the spirit, there... true individuality by a limiting self-identification of it with this life, this mind, this body: it is a separation from other souls which shuts us up in our own individual experience and prevents us from living as the universal individual: it is a separation from God, our highest Self, who is the one Self in all existences and the divine Inhabitant within us. As our consciousness changes into the height ...
... aspects and all semblances are the supreme Brahman, the Absolute. In fact, Brahman is at once the Transcendent and incommunicable, the supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that pervades all things, but also the self of each individual and can be discovered by the individual even here in the terrestrial embodiment. But this primary, ultimate and eternal Existence... and charity are held to belong to empty churches. There is a void to-day in men's minds which dogmatic religions are unable to fill. Modern man feels himself to be completely debarred from the transcendent world and from the fulfilment of his metaphysical and religious needs and desires. The consciousness of such an inability induces a crisis of intellectual despair and of metaphysical sickness... For if we care to look around and scan the horizons of thought, we shall see that there already exists an integral philosophy of life that embraces in its synthetic sweep Man, Cosmos and the Transcendent. This is Sri Aurobindo's Yoga-Philosophy of Divine Humanism. This philosophy offers man a new hope to live by and a glorious ideal to strive after. For, it is not concerned with man in ...
... transmutes Ananda into Love, a terrestrial humanised love. An earlier form of this humanised love was given in Buddha's Compassion. The transcendent Delight (Ananda) Page 182 was made terrestrial and human in Buddha. But Buddha's compassion was a universal feeling and had no personal frame as it were. Vaishnavism gave it a personal frame and a human form. Radha and Krishna are not figures... sometimes given as (1) Brahmaloka of the Vedantin, (2) Shivaloka of the Tantrik and finally (3) Goloka of the Vaishnava. The relation between the Supreme (over and above the creation) and the individual in the creation representing the creation is sometimes described in human terms to give it a concrete and graphic form. This relationship characteristically indicates the fundamental nature of the ...
... rūpāntar , the change in the universal Nature. This change was only in seed and in symbol. Afterwards this part of the vision disappeared and you saw again the darkness of the lower Nature. But in you the light was there still and the assurance that it brings. For it is in the individual that the change must first come and it is with the light and the faith in the individual as a support that the wider... ess, gold the hue of the supramental knowledge or of knowledge from the intermediate planes. (3) OM golden rising to the sky = the cosmic consciousness supramentalised and rising towards the Transcendent consciousness. (1) and (2) indicate either something that is happening at present or a potentiality that is trying to materialise. (3) symbolises the process of the Yoga which will be followed ...
... liberated nature in the whole range of human living. Moreover, in Sri Aurobindo's synthesis of yoga, the spirit in man is regarded not as solely an individual being Page 82 travelling to a transcendent unity with the Divine, but a universal being capable of oneness with the divine in all souls and in his all-nature with all the practical consequences. Sri Aurobindo acknowledges that... immortal Dharma of the spirit; there is the experience of a free immortal action, a divine illimitable knowledge, a transcendent power, an unfathomable repose. ..." 67 In other words, the Sattwa is transformed into divine illimitable Knowledge, rajas is transformed into transcendent power and free immortal action, and tamas is transformed into unfathomable repose. Contribution of the Tantra... the salvation of the individual and the rejection of the cosmic and physical life, has been the cause of much of the gradual decline of Indian vigour and vitality in the later centuries of Indian history. As Sri Aurobindo states: "Now certainly there is an emphasis in the Upanishads increasing steadily as time goes on into an over-emphasis, on the salvation of the individual, on his rejection of ...
... long ago in prehistory, in the antiquity of the gods, at the beginning of the transcendent Time, and it is that he reasserted on the battlefield. 36 That, then, is really the seed-action in the creation. Sacrifice is the noblest dharma. The social and spiritual order, even the occult, is founded in it; the universal harmony and concordance grow and flourish in the leaping of those mighty flames... that divinity itself. Hers is the transcendental Yajna, ours the individual. In the flaming spirit of her Yajna are kindled all these thousand Yajnas of our souls. Such is the possibility that the Divine as Death has now opened out in this earthly existence. Such is the glory of Savitri's threefold Yajna: the Individual, the Universal, the Transcendental. This is the executive Truth we see in Savitri's... the reach of death. The Yajna-Purusha has to be someone greater than Agni or Prajapati or Brahma performing the cosmic Yajna. His dwelling has to be in infinity of the Transcendent. As a matter of fact he himself is the Transcendent turned towards creation. If Savitri is the incarnation of the most excellent executive power of the Divine and if it is in her House of Meditation that she sees the sacrifice ...
... one Consciousness and a pure channel and instrument of the one Existence. A support for the individual manifestation and action of the universal Force, it gradually reveals behind it the true Person in us, the central eternal being, an everlasting being of the Supreme, a power and portion of the transcendent Shakti. 2 Here too, in this movement by which the soul divests itself gradually of the... a sacrifice to the Supreme and to the veiled Power present in us and in all beings and in all the workings of the universe. Life is the altar of this sacrifice, works are our offering; a transcendent and universal Power and Presence as yet rather felt or glimpsed than known or seen by us is the Deity to whom they are offered. This sacrifice, this self-consecration has two sides to it; there is the... perfect behind his masks. All indeed has to be changed, not ugliness accepted but divine beauty, not imperfection taken as our resting-place but perfection striven after, the supreme good made the universal aim and not evil. But what we do has to be done with a spiritual understanding and knowledge, and it is a divine good, beauty, perfection, pleasure that has to be followed after, not the human standards ...
... universe begins to disappear and vanishes altogether. We realise the selfsame Pantheos in ourselves, in others and in all universal existence. But also by Yoga we become aware of something that is more than our individual being and more than the cosmic being, a transcendent Being or Existence which is not dependent on ours or the existence of the universe. Our existence is a manifestation of and... or a World Father or World Mother or an almighty Lord of all or a Divine Lover. We are in the presence of a Cosmic Spirit in whose universal consciousness we lose our separate ego or a Supracosmic Absolute in whom we lose altogether our cosmic as well as our individual existence. We find our own highest Self or the Self of all or we pass into a sublime Page 331 Mystery without relation... strong in spirit, the touch may indeed be rapid & summary & we may wake at once & stride Page 338 forward to the state of divine indwelling, soul of man in the soul of God, the individual in the universal; but the touch must be there. To enforce this preliminary step, to bring man into some kind of contact with God, is the common and sometimes the sole preoccupation of human religions. It ...
... psychological individuality turned upon things held under the lens as an object of the intelligence; but now there are coming a universal subjectivity of the whole spirit, an attempt towards closeness and identity, a greater community of the individual with the universal soul and mind. The wider interest in Man has not lessened in breadth, but it is changing its character. More strenuous than before... suggested by Whitman, of the full power and meaning of the individual with the full power and meaning of the universal, eternal and infinite, but it is concentrated and brought to bear on a single feeling for its enlargement with a great power of intuitive and revealing suggestion. This enlarging of the particular to meet and become one with the universal and infinite—Tennyson's knowing of what God and man... deeper significance of his present, to his self-creation. The profounder ranges of his being are now sounded and there is an initial feeling and even some actual seeing of the greater individual and the communal or universal self of our kind. Nature is seen more in her hidden suggestions and soul meanings and in the finer impressions by which we enter into them and establish with her a spiritual relation ...
... say, Page 122 for example, that the creation of an individual being is the result of the projection, in time and space, of one of the countless possibilities latent in the Supreme Origin of all manifestation which, through the one and universal consciousness, is concretised in the law or the truth of an individual and so becomes by a progressive growth its soul or psychic being. ... to which you belong. You must find, in the depths of your being, that which carries in it the sense of universality, limitless expansion, termless continuity. Then you decentralise, spread out, enlarge yourself; you begin to live in everything and in all beings; the barriers separating individuals from each other break down. You think in their thoughts, vibrate in their sensations, you feel in their... the course of things and bring to birth a new world, For the true solution of the problem of suAering, ignorance and death is not the individual escape by self-annihilation from earthly miseries into the nonmanifest, nor a problematical collective Bight from universal suffering by an integral and final return of the creation to its creator, thus curing the universe by abolishing it, but a transformation ...
... quickened and superbly accentuated in its manifold self-expression under the luminous direction of the omnipotent Will. The egoistic division having disappeared, the individual identifies himself with the Universal and the Transcendent and partakes of the life of all and embraces all in his unwalled consciousness. What will he now crave or covet ? What gain will elate and what loss depress him ? Perceiving... the growth of the individual unit. The universal Will is stationed behind, controlling and co-ordinating the giant interaction of the multifarious hungers Page 226 and desires of the evolving units, but not obtruding on the surface. It acts through the unconscious drive or the subconscious urge or, as in man, through desire and a delusive free will, in each individual unit. Hunger or... ce behind the movements of individual and universal nature, but is only an overt incentive to action, a concomitant of ignorance, entailing conflict and struggle and suffering, which are inevitable, even necessary, in the egoistic phase of evolution. The real motive-force is the Will of the supreme Being, which emerges from behind the confusion and anarchy of individual desires and cravings, Page ...
... be fulfilled in his spirit and in his life as he moves towards spiritual perfection. He will become aware of the transcendent reality, possess in the self-experience the supreme existence, consciousness, bliss, be one with Sachchidananda. He will become one with cosmic being and universal Nature: he will contain the world in himself, in his own cosmic consciousness and feel himself one with all beings;... transformed, spiritualise whatever can be spiritualised, cast its influence on the rest and effectuate either a radical or an uplifting change, bring about a deeper communion between the universal and the individual, invade the ideal with the spiritual truth of which it is a luminous shadow and help to uplift into or towards a greater and higher existence. Mind it will uplift towards a diviner light... justify its way of existence. It will be obvious that an escape from life is not necessary for the Divine to find itself or its reality; it possesses that always whether in cosmic life or in its transcendent existence. The divine life cannot Page 562 be a contradiction of the Divine or of the supreme reality; it is part of that reality, an aspect or expression of it and it can be nothing ...
... guidance. Yoga is, as stated by Sri Aurobindo, "a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the potentialities latent in the being and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos."³ Object and States of Yogic Knowledge Swami Vivekananda has stated: "Yoga is really one of the grandest... discover and apply more and more refined means and instruments, not only to arrive at the union of the individual consciousness with the universal consciousness and transcendental consciousness, but also to manifest the consequences of this union for arriving at ever increasing perfection of the individual and collective life in the physical world and even to transform earthly life into what can be called... with religion, and yet the distinction is very vast. If Yoga is a quest, religion, too, is a quest; if yoga aims at the practice of a discipline which aims at uniting the individual and his faculties with the operation of the universal and transcendental consciousness and being, religion, too, has a similar discipline. Where then is the difference? The answer lies in the fact that although religion at ...
... "gnostic individual" in his masterpiece The Life Divine . He says : "A Supramental gnostic individual will be a Spiritual Person, but not a personality, in the sense of a pattern of being marked out by a settled combination of fixed qualities, a determined character; he cannot be that since he is a conscious expression of the Universal and the Transcendent." Describing the gnostic individual he says... 258 ² The Life Divine, p. 883 Page 6 "No human manifestation can be illimitable and unlimited but the manifestation in the limited should reflect the unlimited, the "Transcendent Beyond." (28–4–1923) This possibility of the human touching and manifesting the Divine has been realized during the course of human history whenever a great spiritual Light has appeared on earth... impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine loves. He comes as a divine personality, which shall fill the consciousness of the human being, to replace the limited ____________________ 1 Essays on the Gita, P. 258 2 Ibid Page 5 egoistic personality, so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out of birth ...
... super-mind they attain to the same infinite amplitude of right becoming, right action and right knowledge. The Truth in its largeness moulds all into the terms of the infinite and universal Life, replaces with it the limited individual existence, maps out in the terms of their real being the realms of the physical consciousness which, as Savitri, it has created. This also is in us a creation, although in reality... Savitri the Creator, Pushan the Increaser. His rays in their own nature are supramental activities of revelation, inspiration, in tuition, luminous discernment, and they constitute the action of that transcendent principle which the Vedanta calls Vijnana, the perfect knowledge, the Veda Ritam, the Truth. But these rays descend also into the human mentality and form at its summit the world of luminous in... illumined the whole world of our becoming. We grow into the complete, the universal, the infinite. So has Shyavashwa, of the sons of Atri, succeeded in affirming Savitri in his own being as the illuminative Truth, the creative, the progressive, the increaser of man—he who brings him out of egoistic limitation into universality, out of the finite into the infinite. "And thou hast power alone for creation; ...
... only a few gifted individuals. It is true, of course, that a few individuals will be the pioneers in this spiritual work of transformation and manifestation, but what they will achieve will be the pledge and prophecy of what humanity in general is called upon to accomplish. This collective aspect of the message of Manifestation foreshadows the splendour of a more or less universal perfection in humanity... can reveal here, if it will, the light and power and harmony of the higher reaches of its being. The culmination of this evolutionary ascent will be the supreme creative Truth-Consciousness, the transcendent Supermind or Vijnana, in which man will live, even as the Divine lives, in the unfading glory of infinite knowledge and power and creative delight of an immortal existence. The ascent to the... Divine Life, for it argues the inevitability of such a consummation. The second element is, that Manifestation, according to Sri Aurobindo, will not be a spiritual victory of an individual or a few exceptional individuals, but a signal triumph of the collective man over the forces of ignorance. For, the crux of the problem of Manifestation is the transfiguration of the physical being of man which is ...
... immobility of the Transcendent and Unmanifest . Indeed, since the heights to which our consciousness attains in its upward ascension are in general superconscient to our mind, the latter fails to remain awake there and hence considers these ascents as only luminously blank. Thus, our mind-consciousness is tempted to effectuate a short-cut and take a straight jump to the Transcendent. On this line... exhausted itself with the emergence of man the mental being, so that the only possible course left for the embodied soul is how to make an exit from this not too perfect world-existence and take the transcendent leap into the Unknowable and Unmanifest? As a matter of fact, the evolutionary oestrus is even now very much at work and it is not liable to annul itself until and unless the divine ... -matter of fact, "it is capable of a direct communication with the universal forces, movements, objects of the cosmos, a direct feeling and opening to them, a direct action on them and even a widening of itself beyond the limits of the personal mind, the personal life, the body, so that it feels itself more and more a universal being no longer limited by the existing walls of our too narrow ...
... He "...gives consent to all that she can wish". Thus, it comes about that the Transcendent who rules the cosmos after taking his plunge into the Nescience evolves into Matter, then into Life and then Mind; in the Mind he evolves into an ego-centre and becomes "A luminous individual Power, alone". "The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone" has called cut his silent power... Divine Spirit and opened to cosmic widenesses and the sweep of the Transcendent. This experience completely revolutionised his consciousness and its values. Henceforth he seemed to breathe a superhuman air. Thereafter "The python coils of restricting Law Could not restrain the swift arisen God". His individual self became wide as the cosmos,—as the poet says "The... parts, I. He is achieving his. own spiritual self-fulfilment as an individual, II. Next, he makes an ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness. (Yoga of the King) III. Finally, he aspires no longer for himself but for all, for a universal realisation and new creation. (Book of Divine Mother). "As if a ...
... has chosen. At any level, from the most modest to the most transcendent, one rarely finds a perfect balance between the sum of self-control, the power of sacrifice available to the individual who has chosen a goal, and the sum of renunciations of every kind and nature which the goal requires. When the constitution of an individual permits this perfect balance, then his earthly existence yields... in identification with the terrestrial prana , or rather with the divine bliss deep within all sensations as within all universal activities. The result is that instead of feeling the joy of a sensation, one is this very sensation in all those who enjoy it. Then the individual prana no longer exists; but there is instead a force, at once impersonal and conscious, which manifests in all the organs... tranquil, vast, pure like an aspiration, holy like a prayer; on mountains, in forests, along stray paths beside limpid streams, or on the shores of a boundless ocean. So long as the prana remains individual, this joy can Page 119 only be experienced when certain outer conditions are fulfilled. On the other hand, when the prana is truly impersonalised, universalised, one becomes this ...
... limited Nature. God is That which is the All and which exceeds the All. It is therefore only the knowledge, love and possession of God that can make us free. He who is transcendent, can alone enable us to transcend ourselves; He who is universal can alone enlarge us from our limited particular existence. In this necessity is the justification of that great & imperishable force of Nature, which Rationalism... type; and so far as she can consistently with the survival of the type, she presses forward to what she has seen in God's eternal knowledge as standing beyond. From this ego, she moves towards a universal consciousness, from this limitation to a free movement in infinity, from this twilit & groping mind to the direct sunlit vision of things, from this conflict without issue between vice & virtue to... developed. The higher the effort accomplished, the more richly endowed the organism of the species, the greater the chances of inequality. In so high and developed a natural movement as Man, equality of individual opportunity is conceivable, equality of natural powers and accomplishment is a chimera. Nor will the generalisation of powers or the increase of material make any difference to the level of natural ...
... and the delight of that play is entirely possessed by the Universal; but in the individual owing to the action of ignorance and division it is held back in the subliminal and the superconscient being; on our surface it lacks and has to be sought for, found and possessed by the development of the individual consciousness towards universality and transcendence. We may, therefore, if we will, pose... basis of knowledge towards which we were striving. We have laid down that the origin, the continent, the initial and the ultimate reality of all that is in the cosmos is the triune principle of transcendent and infinite Existence, Consciousness and Bliss which is the nature of divine being. Consciousness has two aspects, illuminating and effective, state and power of self-awareness and state and power... of seeing things from other centres or standpoints or even from the real Centre of all or in the vastness of a universal self-diffusion, still if he is not capable of fixing himself normally in his own firm standpoint for certain purposes of the divine activity, if there is only the universal self-diffusion or only infinite centres without some determining or freely limiting action for each, then there ...
... name "Christ" becomes merely an individual preference and, while finding the historical Jesus a medium of the former, we have seen no cause to consider this medium necessarily unique: it has the appearance of uniqueness simply because of Teilhard's religious milieu and cultural limitation. A Pantheos who is also a Person, a Universal Godhead who is also a Transcendent Divinity, form the basis of Teilhardism... Breuil on December 13,1952: "If only I were Pope for just long enough to write one encyclical on 'the universal Christ'"? Nor is his isolation surprising when we see how his Christ's peculiar universality made the immanent universe more and more urgent in his view than the transcendent God in spite of neither of them having complete justification without the other. On October 16,1947, he... vis-a-vis the Universal Christ: "...between him and me there is perhaps only a difference of tendency, or at least of accent - he insisting especially on the Transcendence of the Universal Christ, I on his 'physicity'. These attitudes are complementary." Teilhard's remark shows that the order which is not the same "as organic life or the ether" is at the same time transcendent and physical. The ...
... from Reality a real creation has to issue out then, to participate in that creation, there has to be an individual being living by virtue of the universal being which in turn becomes meaningful by virtue of the individual being. “This means that cosmos and individual are manifestations of a transcendent Self who is indivisible being although he seems to be divided or distributed; but he is not really divided... the cause of everything, it must be the cause of the individual soul as well. The absolute divine essence is present in all its manifestations. Every individual shares in the spirit of God. It is not clear, from Badarayna’s account, in what exact manner the individual is related to Brahman, as a part ( amsa ) or reflection ( abhasa ) of the universal self... The passage saying that the Jiva is a part... can also be spoken of one among many centres of the Universal Being and Consciousness... (p. 280) Purusha in Prakriti is the Kshara Purusha—standing back from it is the Akshara Purusha. The psychic being evolves, so it is not the immutable. The psychic being is especially the soul of the individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in evolution. (p. 291) ...
... through the mutual cooperation of the double terms: the universal and the individual. For they are the two essential terms into which the Absolute has descended in manifestation and always indeed they exist for each other and profit by each other. For "universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe... found itself on the true communism of the equal godhead in the race; for the Spirit, the inmost Self, the universal Godhead in every being is that whose very nature of diverse oneness it is to realise the perfection of its individual life and nature in the existence of all, in the universal life and nature." 30 But does this not seem to be a solution that appears too remote, too chimerical... dominant stress sometimes on the individual, at other times on the collectivity. In the first view wherein emphasis is laid on the individual, the society is considered to exist only as a field of activity and growth for the individual; its sole function is to help the individual to satisfy his needs and interests of all sorts. In the opposite view, the individual's importance is considered to be ...
... fulfilled in his spirit and in his life as he moves towards spiritual perfection. He will became aware of the: transcendent reality, possess in the self-experience the supreme existence, consciousness, bliss, be one with Sachchidananda. He will become one with cosmic being and universal Nature: he will contain the world in himself, in his own cosmic consciousness and feel himself one with all beings;... transformed, spiritualise whatever can be spiritualised, cast its influence on the rest and effectuate either a radical or an uplifting change, bring about a deeper communion between the universal and the individual, invade the ideal with the spiritual truth of which it is a luminous shadow and help to uplift into or towards a greater and higher existence. Mind it will uplift towards a diviner light... existence. It will be obvious that an escape from life is not necessary for the Divine to find itself or its reality; Page 176 it possesses that always whether in cosmic life or in its transcendent existence. The divine life cannot be a contradiction of the Divine or of the supreme reality; it is part of that reality, an aspect or expression of it and it can be nothing else. In life on the ...
... lives cannot be satisfied, cannot either rest from the movement or fulfil the movement except by laying hold on this universal delight which is at once the secret total delight of its own being and the original, all-encompassing, all-informing, all-upholding delight of the transcendent and immanent Sachchidananda. To seek for delight is therefore the fundamental impulse and sense of Life; to find and... corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine. Not the unborn Self or Atman, for the Self even in presiding over the existence of the individual is aware always of its universality and transcendence, it is yet its deputy in the forms of Nature, the individual soul, Page 238 caitya puruṣa , supporting mind, life and body, standing behind . the mental, the vital, the subtle-physical being... which is the foundation of the supramental existence. If we scrutinise these terms carefully we Page 231 shall see that they are shapes and stages of the soul's seeking for the individual and universal delight of things; the ascent of Life is in its nature the ascent of the divine Delight in things from its dumb conception in Matter through vicissitudes and opposites to its luminous consummation ...
... sense of a pattern of being marked out by a settled combination of fixed qualities, a determined character; he cannot be that since he is a conscious expression of the Universal and the Transcendent." Describing the gnostic individual he says : "We feel ourselves in the presence of a light of consciousness, a potency, a sea of energy, can distinguish and describe its free waves of action and quality... . In this connection Sri Aurobindo said during an Evening Talk : "No human manifestation can be illimitable and .unlimited but the manifestation in the limited should reflect the unlimited, the Transcendent Beyond." (28-4-1923) This possibility of the human touching and manifesting the Divine has been realised during the course of human history whenever a great spiritual Light has appeared on earth... divine works, free, unegoistic, disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as a divine personality, which shall fill the consciousness of the human being, to replace the limited egoistic personality, "so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out' of birth into immortality." 3 It is clear that Sri ...
... begin to replace desire altogether by a still greater enlightened thought and sight and will in touch with the Infinite, consciously subject to a diviner will than his own, linked to a more universal and transcendent knowledge, he has commenced the ascent towards the superman; he is on his upward march towards the Divine. It is, then, in the highest mind of thought and light and will or it is in the... universe. Life is the field of a divine manifestation not yet complete: here, in life, on earth, in the body,— ihaiva , as the Upanishads insist,—we have to unveil the Godhead; here we must make its transcendent greatness, light and sweetness real to our consciousness, here possess and, as far as may be, express it. Life then we must accept in our Yoga in order utterly to transmute it; we are forbidden... He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. To him as to all seekers of the spirit there are offered for solution the oppositions of the reason, the clinging ...
... only a few gifted individuals. It is true, of course, that a few individuals will be the pioneers in this spiritual work of transformation and manifestation, but what they will achieve will be the pledge and prophecy of what humanity in general is called upon to accomplish. This collective aspect of the message of Manifestation foreshadows the splendour of a more or less universal perfection in humanity... reveal here, if it will, the light and power and harmony of the higher reaches of its being. The culmination of this evolutionary ascent will be the supreme creative Truth-Consciousness, the transcendent Supermind or Vijnana, in which man will live, even as the Divine lives, in the unfading glory of infinite knowledge and power and creative delight of an immortal existence. The ascent to... Life, for it argues the inevitability of such a consummation. The second element is, that Manifestation, according to Sri Aurobindo, will not be a spiritual victory of an individual or a few exceptional individuals, but a signal triumph of the collective man over the forces of ignorance. For, the crux of the problem of Manifestation is the transfiguration of the physical being of man which ...
... which will deliver us from our narrow limits and bounds. The individual Self and the universal Self are one; in every world, in every being, in every thing, in every atom is the Divine Presence, and man's mission is to manifest it. In order to do that, he must become conscious of this Divine Presence within him. Some individuals must undergo a real Page 41 apprenticeship in order... the source of life, the source arose within him; since he could no more receive the light from above, the light shone forth at the very centre of his being; since he could commune no more with the transcendent love, that love offered itself in a holocaust and chose each terrestrial being, each human self as its dwelling-place and sanctuary. That is how, in this despised and desolate but fruitful and... is our life and our light. This idea, expressed in sublime words, has been taught in various forms by all the great Instructors in all lands and all ages. The Self of each one and the great universal Self are one. Since all that is exists from all eternity in its essence and principle, why make a distinction between the being and its origin, between ourselves and what we place at the beginning ...
... thee to Myself through and beyond all sorrow and evil. Whatever difficulties and perplexities arise, be sure of this that I am leading thee to a complete divine life in the universal and an immortal existence in the transcendent Spirit." 99 Eckhart conveys this supreme secret of the Gita in a form more accessible to the modern mind. How to transform the unconsciousness of the mind into the... freely, largely, more in harmony with the universal and eternal will by that Power itself in us if we could only Page 123 put ourselves passively as instruments in the hands of a supreme and absolute strength and wisdom. That Power is not separate from us; it is our own self one with the self of all others and at the same time a transcendent Being and an immanent Person. Our existence... mental separation. It would be the vast movement of an Infinity and an intimate ineffable Presence; it would be the constant spontaneity of formation and expression in us of this deep universal self and this transcendent Spirit. 102 Thus, Eckhart and Sri Aurobindo have the same perspective in looking upon the egoic self as incapable of transforming itself and in regarding Presence or the Divine ...
... phenomena in which Nature has no surface consciousness at all or at best a very restricted one? On looking at "evil" as a component of world reality, Sri Aurobindo is not standing on a universal or transcendent height which corrects our human outlook. Now his earlier treatment of the problem of waste becomes no more than half the answer of his spiritual philosophy. That half is part of the... purpose and all that does not subserve that part we call waste. Yet even our own human action is full of an apparent waste, so appearing from the individual point of view, which yet, we may be sure, subserves well enough the large and universal purpose of things. That part of her intention which we can detect, Nature gets done surely enough in spite of, perhaps really by virtue of her ... inevitably occur in it, surely Nature is ² . Ibid., p. 555. Page 100 working under conditions that are imperfect. And, though we may assert that only her individual items are faulty but her sum-total is faultless, we still do not quite get rid of our conclusion. To hold that in the divine reason of things there is a key beyond us to all the waste we witness ...
... In Sri Aurobindo's yoga, the spirit in man is looked upon not merely as an individual being travelling to a transcendent unity with the Divine, but as a universal being capable of oneness with the Divine in all souls and all nature with all its practical consequences. As Sri Aurobindo explains: "The human soul's individual liberation and enjoyment of union with the Divine in spiritual being, con... so as to create a fundamental blissful dualism in unity between the individual Divine and its universal souls. These three statuses of the Supermind correspond, respectively, to unitary consciousness, qualified oneness and Page 64 blissful dualism. In the Supermind these three do not conflict with each other but express a total harmony. As Sri Aurobindo states: "We cannot stamp any of these... Nirvana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object; (2) the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic achievement; and (3) a method has been preconized for achieving this ...
... methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the secret potentialities latent in the being and—highest condition of victory in that effort—a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos. But all life, when we look behind its appearances, is a vast Yoga of Nature who attempts in the conscious and the... ultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of self-fulfilment. It can only be a temporary necessity under certain conditions or a specialised extreme effort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a greater general possibility for the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious Yoga in man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga ...
... all exists by it, it is all. Whatever be [the] plane of being, whatever be the cosmos, whatever be the individual, the truth of its existence is the same; that it or he is the One; for there is and can be no other. The Transcendent is the Divine, the universal is the Divine, the individual is the Divine; all are the one Reality. Not only what we see as the Infinite, but the finite also is that... The Divine Reality is unconfined by form or quality; but form and quality also are his, infinite quality, innumerable figure, vessel of that earth, coin of that gold, colour inherent in that transcendent whiteness. All is the divine Eternal and Infinite. Impersonal and Personal are not contrary appearances or Page 184 even dual aspects nor is the Person our convenient imagination... available to experience Page 181 or self-revelation, if denied to intellectual research, a single truth comprehensive & universal in the light of which the whole of existence would stand revealed and explained both in its nature and its end. This universal existence, for all its multitude of objects and its diversity of faces, is one in substance and origin; and there is an unknown quantity ...
... the universal precedes the individual, gives it its field, is that in which it exists cosmically even though its origin is in the Transcendence. The individual soul lives here by the All-Soul and depends upon it; the All-Soul very evidently does not exist by the individual or depend upon it: it is not a sum of individual beings, a pluralistic totality created by the conscious life of individuals; if... the desire of the individual soul, its caprice of an ignorant egoistic enjoyment, then the mental Individual and not the Cosmic Being or a Transcendent Divinity should be the creator and witness of the universe. In the past trend of human thought the individual being has always loomed enormously large in the front plan of things and in the premier dimensions of importance; if these proportions could... what acted was not desire in an individual or a universal Mind or Life, but a will in the Spirit,—a will of Being deploying something of itself or of its Consciousness, realising a creative idea or a self-knowledge or an urge of its self-active Force or a turn to a certain formulation of its delight of existence. But if the world has been created, not by the universal Delight of existence, but for the ...
... light and force into human existence, there is no other means than Yoga.¹ But it must be a yoga that accepts the whole of life, looks upon it as the field for the progressive manifestation of the Transcendent, and knows the secret of bringing about its radical transformation by the highest Truth-Light of the dynamic Superconscient. The yogas that are wedded to the philosophy of māyā, or attached to... East and to learn it we have to turn to the East." —A. Koestler Page 468 manifest the Divine here, in the material world, and turn all human existence into a vehicle of His transcendent splendours. The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, as we have followed it in the preceding chapters, envisages as its aim such an all-round divinely pragmatic consummation—an integral perfection... has developed a philosophy of its own, which tends to approximate to a metaphysic of material realities. The dividing lines between the different departments of knowledge are melting away into a universal feeling of family kinship and organic unity, in spite of the tough resistance of the dyed-in-the-wool materialists and rationalists. But nowhere is the change more striking and pregnant with f ...
... the cosmos come from a transcendent Reality which takes form in them: the mind and life of the individual being, its self in nature must therefore be a partial self-expression of the cosmic Being and, both through that and directly, a self-expression of the transcendent Reality,—a conditional and half-veiled expression it may be, but still that is its significance. But also we see that what the expression... first and last word of existence. If we enter through the Saguna into some ultimate possible of experience, we arrive at a divine Absolute, a personal supreme and omnipresent Godhead, transcendent as well as universal, an infinite Master of all relations and determinations who can uphold in his being a million universes and pervade each with a single ray of his self-light and a single degree of his... beyond individual mind, beyond even universal mind in the Ignorance; it carries in itself a first direct and masterful cognition of cosmic truth: here then we might hope to understand something of the original working of things, get some insight into the fundamental movements of cosmic Nature. One thing indeed becomes clear; Page 323 it is self-evident here that both the individual and the ...
... consciousness itself was absorbed in the Unutterable, the Ineffable". The return journey from the Transcendent to "the consciousness of the individual body" was effected - as if by a chord line - without pausing at the intermediate steps of the universal and the terrestrial. It was as though the Transcendent and the Cosmic had established direct 'hot lines' with the individualised and human Mirra, now... of the Transcendent Eternal, Cause, Source and Reality of my individual being". Through the centuries and millenniums, she has been "slowly and subtly kneaded" to befit ultimate total identification with - or absorption in - the Divine. There has been astonishing progress, yet it is still short of the desired stable perfection. What is the difference between Mirra the aspiring individual Page... It is the Nought, but a Nought which is real and can last eternally .... 8 And the result of it all is that, divorced or withdrawn from the body as it were, Mirra's individual consciousness has merged with the universal or cosmic consciousness, making nonsense of the fret and fever and hectic movements of the phenomenal world. Page 137 III The meditation for 24 May 1915 ...
... particular finite form of a fugitive duration, a sparkling bubble on the moving ocean of Time, but the Timeless in time, the Archetype of all forms, the eternal and transcendent One who beams and beckons in and through all forms. He is everywhere, embodied in all things and all beings, and to be united with Him in them all, not abolishing the awareness of, but embracing and enjoying Him in all phenomenal... incarnated in a human being if psychic love has cleared the whole consciousness and nature of all selfish distortions and the individual has opened wide—receptively wide—to its mighty influx. Often it is seen partially and temporarily occupying the being of an individual and working through it; it retires as soon as egoism or the unredeemed obscurities of the nature re-assert themselves. Except... killed : a loveless life is a dreary desert, arid and infertile. Love has to cure itself of desire and soar above attachment; it should be a bond of union between the individual and the Divine, and through the Divine between the individual and all beings. It has to transcend all personal limits and widen itself into infinity and impersonality. What it has really been seeking after is not any particular ...
... 161 into the divine consciousness, and in its intensest culmination is a losing of the separate self in that. The soul merges its individuality in an infinite and universal being or loses it in the heights of a transcendent being; it becomes one with the Self, the Brahman, the Divine or, as it is sometimes more absolutely put, becomes the one Self, the Brahman, the Divine. The Gita itself speaks... part of the becoming, bhūtagrāma , an ascent in the ordinary manifestation; in the Avatar there is the special manifestation, the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a form of individual humanity, ātmānaṁ sṛjāmi , and conscious not only behind the veil but in the outward nature. There is an intermediary idea, a more mystical view of Avatarhood which supposes... assumption. The eternal and universal self of every human being is God; even his personal self is a part of the Godhead, mamaivāṁśaḥ ,—not a fraction or fragment, surely, since we cannot think of God as broken up into little pieces, but a partial consciousness of the one Consciousness, a partial power of the one Power, a partial enjoyment of world-being by the one and universal Delight of being, and therefore ...
... Supreme is the Divine Mother in Her transcendent poise, Aditi, holding the Truths that have to be manifested out of the absolute Mystery. Through the transcendent Mother and by Her creativity the whole universe has taken birth. And when the Supreme manifests in the world His own personal being, He does it also through Her transcendence. In Her universal aspect She is Mahashakti. All the... the universal Mother which are not yet made manifest to us, and many universes too which are still in the Unmanifest and which the Divine Mother can create. What has been created is just one system of possibilities out of the innumerable that She and the Supreme can realise. Time and again this Divine Creatrix takes a direct hand in the workings of the world. Through individual forms... consciousness with the Universal Mother. She has written about this in her Prayers and Meditations. She has described there two successive identifications. Of course, she had known, long before, that she was the Mother: only the complete identification took place now, after her coming to India. This was but natural, since no other country has felt and known the universal aspect so intensely ...
... the Supreme is the Divine Mother in Her transcendent poise, Aditi, holding the Truths that have to be manifested out of the absolute Mystery. Through the transcendent Mother and by Her creativity the whole universe has taken birth. And when the Supreme manifests in the world His own personal being, He does it also through Her transcendence. In Her universal aspect She is Mahashakti. All the Gods... powers of the universal Mother which are not yet made manifest to us, and many universes too which are still in the Unmanifest and which the Divine Mother can create. What has been created is just one system of possibilities out of the innumerable that She and the Supreme can realise. Time and again this Divine Creatrix takes a direct hand in the workings of the world. Through individual forms She... outer consciousness with the Universal Mother. She has written about this in her Prayers and Meditations. She has described there two successive identifications. Of course, she had known, long before, that she was the Mother: only the complete identification took place now, after her coming to India. This was but natural, since no other country has felt and known the universal aspect so intensely. ...
... Knowledge. This evolving psychic being is not therefore at any time all that the soul or essential psychic existence bears within it; it temporalises and individualises what is eternal in potentiality, transcendent in essence, in this projection of the spirit. The central being is the being which presides over the different births one after the other, but is itself unborn, for it does not descend into the... only in the sense that it contains all the possibilities of the Divine within it, but it has to evolve them and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing psychic individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is the spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until it is able to... or spirit, as it is usually called in English, is self-existent above the manifested or instrumental being —it is superior to birth and death, always the same, the individual Self or Atman. It is the eternal true being of the individual. The soul is a spark of the Divine which is not seated above the manifested being, but comes down into the manifestation to support its evolution in the material ...
... neither is our perfect individual self-expression feasible if we exclude the cosmic Reality. The individual will ever remain incomplete, bound within the confines of a separative ego-consciousness, if he does not open into universality and thus become universal himself. It follows that a consciously realised unity of the transcendent, the universal and the individual is an essential condition... which have to be taken into account in a true and living education: (i) the man, the individual in his commonness and uniqueness, (ii) the nature or people, and (iii) universal humanity. For, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, "...within the universal mind and soul of humanity is the mind and soul of the individual with its infinite variation, its commonness and its uniqueness, and between them there... naturally lead us to the question: What then, is man? And what should be the aim and purpose of his education? Sri Aurobindo sees in man the individual a soul, a portion of the Divinity enwrapped in mind and body, a conscious manifestation in Nature of the universal self and spirit; at the summit of his ascent man is bound to rise to something greater than his physical, vital and mental personalities, ...
... whole that is everywhere individual in different shades and measures, the one life manifesting in space and time through such unities and wholes is likely to be itself a unity that is self-differentiated, a whole whose individuality does not preclude a manifoldness of subordinate individualities or individual "souls", as it were, numerously expressive within it of a single universal essence and emerging... sense, for it does not reduce matter to the individual's sensation and perception and idea. Although it opens up the possibility of the individual consciousness's partaking in a consciousness which is cosmic and by which matter is not experienced as an extraneous foreign substance, it asserts merely the relation between the different grades of universal being. Here we must halt if we are to remain... postulated by the summationists, to which Driesch felt obliged to add a transcendent factor. The call for vitalism remains even after we discard the old mechanical theory of the organism. The whole as a factor genuinely transcendent in some manner can alone give us organic unity. Another argument of von Bertalanffy's against a transcendent factor rests on certain experimental observations. Among the several ...
... supraphysical and transcendent realisation. Chardin has clearly suggested that the new earth will not be anything like a planet renovated into a "sidereal" body illumined by its own light and not that of another. It will not be a thing of the gross material world at all. It would rather come into being as if by rending through the old earth and destroying it, almost as a result of a universal catastrophe... at least for the individual, and for the ordinary life of the common multitude; this manner of complete self-immolation of the individual serves a collective end, like the self-sacrifice of an army or a multitude of soldiers in a war. But in Sri Aurobindo's view, even for the individual, for any individual, this consummation in self-sacrifice is not the final end; for the individual too this is merely... concomitant results of the original total movement, perhaps even an inevitable necessity. But even from the individual's point of view this seeming waste and destruction is no sign of any futility, for through each individual there has been flowing that upward stream of consciousness, each individual has within himself an impulse and an endeavour to move along that stream and as an aid to it, no matter ...
... partial or modified or suppressed figures. It is in the second place universal and sees all that is individual in the terms of the universal as well as in its own individual terms and holds all these individual figures in their right and complete relation to the universe. It is in the third place, separately with regard to individual things, total in its view because it knows each in its inmost essence... Ananda of the infinite self by oneness with the Spirit, but in the dynamical expression it must determine and individualise itself according to the nature of the self-expression which the transcendent and universal Spirit seeks in the Jiva. It is God-realisation and God-expression which is the object of our Yoga and more especially of its dynamic side, it is a divine self-expression in us of the Ishwara... relative figure. It cannot grasp the universal, but only arrives at some idea of it through an extension of the individual or a combination of apparently separate things and so sees it either as a vague infinite or indeterminate or a half-determined largeness or else only in an external scheme or constructed figure. The indivisible being and action of the universal, which is its real truth, escapes the ...
... Chapter XVII Religion as the Law of Life Since the infinite, the absolute and transcendent, the universal, the One is the secret summit of existence and to reach the spiritual consciousness and the Divine the ultimate goal and aim of our being and therefore of the whole development of the individual and the collectivity in all its parts and all its activities, reason cannot be the last and... find out the regulating and harmonising principle of all our life and action. For reason stops short of the Divine and only compromises with the problems of life, and culture in order to attain the Transcendent and Infinite must become spiritual culture, something much more than an intellectual, aesthetic, ethical and practical training. Where then are we to find the directing light and the regulating... pursuit of the outward and imperfect appearances of things. To make all life religion and to govern all activities by the religious idea would seem to be the right way to the development of the ideal individual and ideal society and the lifting of the whole life of man into the Divine. A certain pre-eminence of religion, the overshadowing or at least the colouring of life, an overtopping of all the other ...
... it as part of itself or a function of its apprehension. The many Purushas (conscious beings or subjects) are imbedded in the universal Nature, say the Sankhyas. Kali, Divine Nature, is the manifest omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent reality holding within her the transcendent divine Purusha who supports, sanctions and inspires secretly, yet is dependent on the Mahashakti and without her is nothing... movement in and of the consciousness of a universal subject. It is subjective in the sense that it is essentially a function of the subject and does not exist apart from it or outside it; it is objective in the sense that it exists really and is not a figment or imaginative construction of any individual consciousness, although it exists in and through the individual consciousness in so far as that con... consciousness is universalised, is one with the universal consciousness (or the transcendental, the two can be taken together in the present connection). Instead of the Kantian transcendental idealism we can name it transcendental realism. In the other case the world exists here below in its own reality, outside all apprehending subject; even the universal subject is in a sense part of it, immanent ...
... cosmic existence,—freedom, that is to say, from all positive terms of actual existence which consciousness in the universe can formulate to itself, even from the most abstract, even from the most transcendent. It does not deny them as a real expression of Itself, but It denies Its limitation by all expression or any expression whatsoever. The Non-Being permits the Being, even as the Silence permits the... he known as the real in existence. Taittiriya Upanishad. (II. 6.) Since, then, we admit both the claim of the pure Spirit to manifest in us its absolute freedom and the claim of universal Matter to be the mould and condition of our manifestation, we have to find a truth that can entirely reconcile these antagonists and can give to both their due portion in Life and their due justification... Truth of Being which expresses itself in the symbols of the universe; Life, when it consciously lends its energies to the perfect self-figuration of the Divine in ever-new forms and activities of the universal existence. In the light of this conception we can perceive the possibility of a divine life for man in the world which will at once justify Science by disclosing a living sense and intelligible ...
... our emotional heart, the active will or more largely by general conversion of the mental consciousness in all its activities. It may be equally accomplished through a great awakening to the universal or transcendent Truth and Bliss by the conversion of the central ego in the mind. And according to the point of the contact that we choose, will be the type of Yoga that we practise. THE SYSTEMS... is what Sri Aurobindo has to say: WHAT IS YOGA The contact of the human and individual consciousness with the Divine is the very essence of Yoga. Yoga is the union of that which has become separated in the play of the universe with its own true self, origin and universality. The contact may take place at any point of the complex and intricately organised consciousness, which... utilities. The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort. Such a consummation being no other than the kingdom of heaven within reproduced in the kingdom of heaven without ...
... towards that which these outward things mean to the higher spiritual consciousness. The "I" can then be seen as a mental reflection of the Self, the Spirit, the Divine, the one existence transcendent, universal, individual in its multiplicity; the consciousness in which these things meet, become aspects of one being and assume their right relations, can then be unveiled out of all these physical and mental... all activity, is evidently not a counsel of active perfection. But it is meant that the Siddha of the active integral perfection will live dynamically in the working of the transcendent power of the divine Spirit as a universal will through the supermind individualised in him for action. His works will therefore be the works of an eternal Knowledge, an eternal Truth, an eternal Might, an eternal Love... knowledge, spiritual power, spiritual delight, unity and harmony of unity; the outward perfection of his works will be freely shaped as the self-expression of this inner spiritual transcendence and universality. For this change he must make conscient in him that power of spirit and supermind which is now superconscient to our mentality. But that cannot work in him so long as his present mental, vital, ...
... sādharmyamukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe. {Synthesis of Yoga, Vol. 20, pp. 41-43.) * * * There have been other syntheses in the long history... ly or in a solitary way only. No individual solitary transformation uncon Page 101 cerned with the work for the earth (which means more than any individual transformation) would be either possible or useful. Also no individual human being can by his own power alone work out the transformation, nor is it the object of the yoga to create an individual superman here and there. The object... supramental consciousness on earth, to fix it there, to create a new race with the principle of the supramental consciousness governing the inner and outer individual and collective life. That force accepted by individual after individual according to their preparation would establish the supramental consciousness in the physical world and so create a nucleus for its own expansion. (Letters ...
... Social and Political Thought, pp. 84-86 Since the infinite, the absolute and transcendent, the universal, the One is the secret summit of existence and to reach the spiritual consciousness and the Divine the ultimate goal and aim of our being and therefore of the whole development of the individual and the collectivity in all its parts and all its activities, reason cannot be the last... things both universal and transcendent and are its formulation and luminous activity. And these faculties are the light of a conscious existence superseding the egoistic and itself both cosmic and transcendent, the nature of which is Bliss. These are obviously divine and, as man is at present apparently constituted, superhuman states of consciousness and activity. A trinity of transcendent existence... and sorrow as its background, but a delight also self-existent and independent of objects and particular experiences, a self-delight which is the very nature, the very stuff, as it were, of a transcendent and infinite existence. Do such psychological conceptions correspond to anything real and possible? All Yoga asserts them as its ultimate experience and supreme aim. They form the governing ...
... of it. But in the first place this highest power of the individual consciousness cannot be peculiar to it, for it must be a power of the general and universal; the individual reflects the universal, for it is only the law of the universal that can be repeated with individual modifications in the law of the individual. Secondly, the universal soul is the same in all; for that is the experience of the... the changes of phenomena. As this self can draw back that which supports the individual into it, so it is and must be capable of drawing back that which supports the universal. In one case the stream of phenomena centred around its individual reflection ceases, in the other the stream of phenomena centred around its universal reflection. A theory only? But it is justified by reason acting on our total... in the substance of that self-consciousness into these images of form and force which make up the world. What we call world, is a harmony of things seen not by the individual mind or even by universal mind, but rather seen through universal mind, as through a reflecting medium, by the Eye of divine Being. The eye that sees is immaterial, the things seen are Page 199 immaterial; for matter ...
... advice on spiritual matters or individual guidance in some public activity. One such interview is given here to illustrate how he dealt with the questions of Sadhana, – spiritual practice. Disciple : I have, at present, a very strong impulse to realise the infinite Transcendent Shakti. I want to know whether it is safer to leave the Sadhana to the Universal or to the Divine? Sri Aurobindo... Aurobindo : The Transcendent and the Universal Powers are not always exclusive of each other; they are almost mutual : when the Transcendent is realised in Mind it is the Universal. One has to have that realisation also. Disciple : What is the distinction between the two ? Sri Aurobindo : The Universal is full of all sorts of things, – true as well as false, good as well as bad, both... superficial workings. What man thinks to be "himself" is only a movement in nature, – a movement in the universal mind, universal life and universal Matter. What you have to do is to separate, or rather detach, yourself from the movements of Nature. You will then find that you are not only watching the universal action of Nature but consenting to it. The movement of watching that is going on in you is not ...
... the gods is His own victory and greatness, but it is only given in order that man may grow nearer to the point at which his faculties will be strong enough to go beyond themselves and realise the Transcendent. Therefore Brahman manifests Himself before the exultant gods in their well-ordered world and puts to them by His silence the heart-shaking, the world-shaking question, "If ye are all, then what... limitations, manifest themselves in the lower cosmos and assume the mould of its cosmic operations; but this is only their lesser and lower movement and beyond it they are for ever the One, the Transcendent and Wonderful, the Master of Force and Delight and Knowledge and Being. But in the Upanishads the Brahman idea has grown and cast down the gods from this high pre-eminence so that they appear only... that it may riot and enjoy. If this Daemon be no birth of Matter, but some stupendous Life-force active whether in the depths or on the heights of being, who shall know it, who shall seize it in his universal expansion if not Vayu Matarishwan? There is the same confident advance upon the object, the same formidable challenge, "Who art thou? What is the force in thee?" This is Vayu Matarishwan and the ...
... statement of his being. Each is the whole Eternal concealed. Man himself, who takes up all that went before him and transmutes it into the term of manhood, is the individual human being and yet he is all mankind, the universal man acting in the individual as a human personality. He is all and yet he is himself and unique. He is what he is, but he is also the past of all that he was and the potentiality of all... with the master Beings of the universe or with the universal Being and its universal will or a supreme Being and His supreme will, follow the law It gives him and the assigned or revealed aim of his life and conduct, raise himself towards the highest height that It demands of him in his life now or in his existence hereafter; if there is no such universal or supreme Spirit or Being, he must know what there... meaningless. Page 384 For Sri Aurobindo however there cannot be one logical criterion of Reality, for Reality for him is not of the nature of logical truth. It is a living whole and transcendent which escapes completely the net of a circumscribing logic. The Isha Upanishad is a case in this point for Sri Aurobindo. Let us see what Sri Aurobindo has to say. "Synthesis of knowledge ...
... it as part of itself or a function of its apprehension. The many Purushas (conscious beings or subjects) are imbedded in the universal Nature, say the Sankhyas. Kali, Divine Nature, is the manifest Omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent reality holding within her the transcendent divine Purusha who supports, sanctions and inspires secretly, yet is dependent on the Mahashakti and without her is nothing... movement in and of the consciousness of a universal subject. It is subjective in the sense that it is essentially a function of the subject and does not exist apart from it or outside it; it is objective in the sense that it exists really and is not a figment or imaginative construction of any individual consciousness, although it exists in ahd through the individual consciousness in so far as that consciousness... consciousness is universa,lised, is one with the universal consciousness (or the transcendental, the two can be taken together in the present connection). Instead of the Kantian transcendental idealism we can name it transcendental realism. In the other case the world exists here below in its own reality, outside all apprehending subject; even the universal subject is in a sense part of it, immanent ...
... 16 The individual acts upon the aggregate, and the aggregate upon the individual, and it is the inner or veiled Divinity that should flower in both, and engender the desired transformation. While the individual's inner development will be proportionate to the measure of his progressive union with the Divine, this should not mean an escape from life into the Transcendent, a divorce from... Perfect the race. If, then, the goal be a "progressing universal harmony", the means for achieving it on earth is the realisation of human unity through awakening and manifesting "the inner Divinity which is One" in individual and collectivity alike. More specifically, the task before us is fourfold: firstly, for each individual to realise in himself the one Divine Presence; secondly, in... tree. Begin with the individual, even one individual; and ultimately alchemise the race, the earth itself! The individual has to awaken to the divine light within, he has to seek and find his soul; only then will he be in rapport with the soul of humanity, the soul of the world, which are also of the divine substance and essence. In his external action, the individual has to find his right ...
... the courtroom, Sri Aurobindo had reached the end of the road. One after another, he had realized the Immanent, the Transcendent, and the Universal – that cage scarcely held anything more than a body: in his consciousness, he was everywhere at will. But perhaps he was recalling an individual named Aurobindo, who since Cambridge and his years in the West had continuously accumulated consciousness in that... " The individual is the key to the supramental power. The supramental being has not only a transcendent and cosmic status but also an individual one: the triple hiatus of experience that divided the monist, the pantheist, and the individualist is healed. His transcendent status does not abolish the world or the individual, no more than his cosmic status deprives him of the Transcendent or of his... he rarely attains universality through his own individual efforts, leaping instead beyond the individual without bothering to develop all the intermediate rungs of the personal consciousness, and when he reaches the "top" he no longer has a ladder to come down, or he does not want to come down, or there is no individual self left to express what he sees, or else his old individual self tries its best ...
... retaining all the instrumentation of his nature widens out into a vast cosmocity of being and of nature. He can even rise to the supra-cosmic, the Transcendent and by an act of supreme surrender bring down into his apparently individual self, the Transcendent being and his Divine Power. This would be possible when his nature rejects the attraction of the lower life of darkness and ignorance, rejects the... rendering of the Transcendent Supreme. So also the passage on page 64 beginning with "This is a sailor on the flow of time" (Book I, Canto 4) right upto the end of page 66 ending with the lines "And the moms of God have overtaken his night", consisting of about 103 lines is one of the most sustained symbolic and at the same time poetical flight in the whole range of literature. The individual soul here... every face, The Presence of the Eternal in the hours would make Whole the fragment-being we are here". Sāvitrī, Book I Canto 3. It would require the union of the Individual with the Transcendent, and also the realisation of the One Divine everywhere and the realisation of the Tune-movement as an expression of the Eternal. The first union would replace the ego and consequently ...
... towards action, sarvarambhah; it insists, above all & to the end, on the supreme renunciation of the ego-sense, the ahankara, as the one all-satisfying and divine sacrifice demanded by the ego-transcendent Universal Being from the ego-besieged and ego-ridden human soul. We must, in this consummation, fall perfectly passive in mind, life & body & allow the Divine Power to use them from above, as a man uses... energies to individual movements and creatures; from their store, the individual receives whatever he possesses of capacities, desires & enjoyments; at their hands he must seek whatever, not possessing, he desires firmly to acquire. But the principle of Nature, that great motion and complex rhythm, stands in the harmony & interdependence of the individual & general, jagatyam jagat; the individual, therefore... in a man's soul by sympathy and identity with all beings & with universal Nature. Still, these things will always remain the instrument of enjoyment; the object of the enjoyment, the true object of all bhoga, for the liberated soul, is God,—not Nature, although God in Nature & through Nature. We shall enjoy God in & through His universal manifestation, but always God and never the universe falsely e ...
... Thus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent, indefinable, timeless and spaceless Being who alone renders time and space and cosmos possible, and in all these the higher truth realisable by the lower... towards the accordance of yet higher opposites rational in itself, but it is the only logical completion of a rule and an effort that seem to be a fundamental method of Nature and the very sense of her universal strivings. We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be... contradiction of its normal experience and the affirmation of higher and deeper experiences which are abnormal to humanity and only to be attained, in their organised entirety, by a revolutionary individual effort or an evolutionary general progression. To know, possess and be the divine being in an animal and egoistic consciousness, to convert our twilit or obscure physical mentality into the plenary ...
... Knowledge. This evolving psychic being is not therefore at any time all that the soul or essential psychic existence bears within it; it temporalises and individualises what is eternal in potentiality, transcendent in essence in this projection of the spirit. The central being is the being which presides over the different births one after the other but is itself unborn, for it does not descend into the... supreme or universal Self brings the sense of liberation; but for the transformation of the life and nature the awakening of the psychic being is indispensable. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Himself and the Ashram: Jivatman, Spark-Soul and Psychic Being The Self or Atman being free and superior to birth and death, the experience of the Jivatman and its unity with the supreme or universal Self brings... Jivatman or spirit, as it is usually called in English, is self-existent above the manifested or instrumental being—it is superior to birth and death, always the same, the individual Self or Atman. It is the eternal true being of the individual. The soul is a spark of the Divine which is not seated above the manifested being, but comes down into the manifestation to support its evolution in the material ...
... as the individual. Seen from a spiritual consciousness "both individual and universe are simultaneous and interrelated expressions of the same transcendent Being". 29 "Universe is a diffusion of the Divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time." 30 It is the ego that creates a wall and sense of separation between the individual being... mental idea and mental or other action, he is inseparable from the universal being, his body from universal force and matter, his life from the universal life, his mind from universal mind, his soul and spirit from universal soul and spirit. 31 Thus each part of the individual being corresponds to a plane of the universal being. Ego and Individuality In our normal consciousness... may be realised in one or both of two aspects — the individual soul (psychic being) or the Universal Self (Atman). Page 347 Being — Individual and Universal When we think of the being, we normally think of the individual being, just as when we think of consciousness, we generally think of the consciousness of the individual. But Being or Consciousness — two aspects of the One ...
... eternally superior to them, keep their hold on the real and divine bliss of God's triple self-manifestation; they know and exercise the simultaneous & harmonious enjoyment of His transcendent being, His universal Self and His individual play of becoming. This then is the fundamental position assumed by the Seer, not denying the realisations of the quietistic sages but exceeding the goal of quietism, not... through the world rhythm. Action to the Mayavadin can only be motived by individual ignorance and must always be a knot of that ignorance; action to the Seer can even in our outward consciousness be motived & in the secret consciousness of God always is motived by the divine & universal Force & Bliss at free play in the divine & universal Being. The world is to the Mayavadin a freak of knowledge, an error... Akshara Brahman we perceive the supreme existence of the Param Brahma which, transcendent, realises in Itself the harmony of [the] stillness & the movement; beyond and containing the Kshara & the Akshara Purusha we arrive at & inhabit the supreme soul-state of the Purushottama, the Para Purusha, Ishwara & Bhagavan, who, transcendent, is the possessor, user and sovran reality of the movement and the eternal ...
... dimensions." 16 The only nexus with orthodoxy lies in the latter's ascribing to Christ "the function of universal consolidation and universal animation" - a function appearing akin to the one performed by the "physical pole of universal evolution". It is thus that Teilhard finds his "individual faith in the world" and "Christian faith in Christ" "inexhaustibly justified by one another". 17 ... adds that in "pan-Christism" the individual is super-personalized and does not dissolve in the divine All. Looking at his religious discovery he 21 tells us: "I have never for the last twenty-five years ceased to marvel at the infinite possibilities which the 'universalization' of Christ opens up for religious thought..." And he 22 holds that only through the Universal Christ as he envisaged him "a... may recall that the individual Jesus is, in the framework of Teilhard's vision, just the stepping-stone to the Cosmic Christ whom he saw taking shape from the Resurrection of Jesus - a stepping-stone he 20.Ibid., p. 368. 21.Ibid., p. 369. 22.Ibid. Page 142 practically ignored in his worship once he had arrived at that universal divinity. Further, as ...
... feels a Wideness and becomes a Power, All knowledge rushes on him like a sea: Transmuted by the white spiritual ray He walks in naked heavens of joy and calm, Sees the God-face and hears transcendent speech. (Savitri, p. 375) Happy is the man when this exceptional moment arrives for him. Happier still is he who lives in it. He who chooses the Guru has actually been chosen by the... Thus Jnaneshwar gives his obeisance to the rising sun who is the Guru, who dispels the night of ignorance and spreads the day of auspicious realisation. While singing this praise the transcendent (Para) and the articulate colloquial (Vaikhari) enter into the secrecy of the seen (Pashyanti) and the mature middle (Madhyama) tongues, the four divisions of speech joining together in one fulfilled... mind is troubled with fear. O Godhead, show me that other form of thine. I would see thee even as before crowned and with thy mace and discus. Assume thy four-armed shape, O thousand-armed, O Form universal." (The Gita: 11.41-46; Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, p. 375) Page 9 world of death, Mrityuloka. Not self-oblivion or abolition of our individuality in the ...
... created overtopping and dominating the physical instrument, individual in fact of existence, but impersonal in feeling and recognised by a free cognition as something instrumental to the action of a Transcendent and Universal Being. In the transition towards the Supermind this centralising action tends towards the discovery of a true individual replacing the dead ego, a being who is in his essence... source of the revelation Page 153 is not in one's separate self but in the universal knowledge; the feelings, emotions, sensations are similarly felt as waves from the same cosmic immensity breaking upon the subtle and the gross body and responded to in kind by the individual centre of the universality; for the body is only a small support or even less, a point of relation, for the action... a free and pure essential self-consciousness or it is an identification with the All, — the extension or the identification constituting a cosmic being, a universal individual. In one state of the cosmic consciousness there is an individual included in the cosmos but identifying himself with all in it, with the things and beings, with the thought and sense, the joy and grief of others; in another ...
... either with universal or transcendent Beauty through the revealing ideas and motives and suggestive forms of poetic creation. This is the individual aspect of the personal or time element. But there is also a larger movement to which we belong, ourselves and the poet and his poetry; or rather it is the same movement of the general soul of mankind in the same endeavour as the individual's and towards... nationalism in literature may be for some time a living idea and a powerful motive. In others which have had a vivid collective life that has exercised a common and intimate influence on all its individuals or in those which have cherished an acute sense of a great national culture and tradition, the more stable elements of that tradition may exert a very conscious influence on the mind of the poets... its nature. All its self-expression is in conformity with them. And its poetry, art and thought are the expression of this self and of the greater possibilities of its self to which it moves. The individual poet and his poetry are part of its movement. Not that they are limited by the present temperament and outward forms of the national Page 46 mind; they may exceed them. The soul of the ...
... progressive sacrifice of energies and increasing self surrender to the highest Object of knowledge. That object is described as at once simple and complex, at once One and Many, and at once the universal and the individual and the transcendental. The methods of the Vedic yoga were progressively synthesized by the unifying method of tapas applied to the pursuit of the highest flights and widest rangings of... it (Brahman) which is thou, that of It which is in the gods." The method is that of a synthesis of the development of faculties in their universality, symbolically described as the gods, and the discovery of the inner being, that which is deepest in the individual self. In this Upanishad also, the yoga-siddhi is described as follows: "The name of That is That Delight'; as that Delight one should... successive instructions, Bhrigu concentrates himself successively in thought and by the askesis (tapas) of his brooding, on universal matter (anna), on universal life-force (prāna), on universal Mind (manas), on universal principle of Knowledge (yijnāna), and on universal Bliss (ānanda). The entire process ends in the realization of the Brahman, the eternal, who synthesizes matter, life, mind ...
... fancy of the particular individual. Naturally it cannot bear the message of the vast universal life-force. The poet who is a slave of his emotional impulse must perforce live in the imaginative circle of his own temporary experience – his ego, the knot of his heart – and consider the narrow compass of his surrounding and time as vast and gigantic. The universe, the universal does not get a chance to... forces. Therefore the first principle of poetry is freedom from all narrowness: The poet will adore the universal ideas and expressions that can be appreciated and welcomed by all without any distinction of race, caste or creed. No doubt, the poet also is a man and every man is endowed with individual as well as collective traits. Life and conduct, social laws and customs, culture and education, that... a small area to be the absolute truth so also he must not have a bias for the abstract philosophical truth which does not come into contact with a particular time, space and the individual. In fact, the formless universality that does not or cannot bear the touch of the physical world is particularly a matter of philosophy. The philosophical truth always likes to shun the local colour, for its purpose ...
... governed by the law of Death. That is an individual solution which makes no difference to mankind and the world, or rather makes only this difference that they are deprived of so much spiritual power which might have helped them forward in the painful march of their evolution. What then is the master man, the divine worker, the opened channel of the universal Will to do when he finds the World-Spirit... the worlds are God's discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda. The problem raised by the Gita and the solution it gives demand this character of the vision of the World-Spirit. It is the problem of a great struggle, ruin and massacre... Second Series The Synthesis of Works, Love and Knowledge Essays on the Gita X The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer The vision of the universal Purusha is one of the best known and most powerfully poetic passages in the Gita, but its place in the thought is not altogether on the surface. It is evidently intended for a poetic and revelatory ...
... superior to theirs, in which case we would have to be quite certain that our ideal conforms in every respect to the supreme ideal, the absolute ideal, to the universal plan in its innermost essence.... But before attaining to such transcendent heights, we can always keep in mind that the malevolent or uncharitable thoughts emanating from men are the chief causes of division among them; they make their... autonomous, living and active entities. Besides, if we do not want to indulge in idle talk, if, very sincerely, we want to explain the smallest phenomenon, we must always go back to the most universal general laws. The whole universe is necessary to explain a grain of sand. And this is not the programme we have chosen for the Union de Pensée Féminine . Those who, as a result of the teaching they... you, and this for two reasons. The first is that in order to explain the smallest phenomenon (for such is our usual way of proving its reality to ourselves), it is necessary to bring in the most universal general laws. Many times we have been led to observe that the whole universe is necessary to explain a grain of sand. And this enquiry would lead us really too far tonight. On the other hand, to ...
... thought and vision; for both proceed from the conception of the One Reality, but one line leads to a universal Illusionism, the other to a universal Realism,—an unreal or real-unreal universe reposing on a transcendent Reality or a real universe reposing on a Reality at once universal and transcendent or absolute. In itself and by itself the vital being's aversion, the life-mind's recoil from life... contended that the world is in its very nature an illusion and no reasoning from the features and circumstances of an Illusion could justify it or raise it into a Reality,—there is only one Reality, the transcendent, the supracosmic: no divine fulfilment, even if our life were to grow into the life of gods, could nullify or cancel the original unreality which is its fundamental character; for that fulfilment... Or even if not absolutely an illusion, it would be a reality of an inferior order and must come to an end by the soul's recognition that the Brahman alone is true, that there is nothing but the transcendent and immutable Absolute. If this is the one Truth, then all ground is cut away from under our feet; the divine Manifestation, the victory of the soul in Matter, its mastery over existence, the divine ...
... towards the replacement of physical force by soul-force, of war by peace, of strife by union, of devouring by love, of egoism by universality, of death by immortal life. God is not only the Destroyer, but the Friend of creatures; not only the cosmic Trinity, but the Transcendent; the terrible Kali is also the loving and beneficent Mother; the lord of Kurukshetra is the divine comrade and charioteer, the... the vision of the Lord of all things as Time arising to devour and destroy the creatures whom it has made. Page 39 This is the vision of the Lord of all existence as the universal Creator but also the universal Destroyer, of whom the ancient Scripture can say in a ruthless image, "The sages and the heroes are his food and death is the spice of his banquet." It is one and the same truth seen... the soul's vision of that which manifests itself in life. The outward aspect is that of world-existence and human existence proceeding by struggle and slaughter; the inward aspect is that of the universal Being fulfilling himself in a vast creation and a vast destruction. Life a battle and a field of death, this is Kurukshetra; God the Terrible, this is the vision that Arjuna sees on that field of ...
... his own perfection, but the perfection of all. He will not feel his individuality perfect except in the largest universality, nor his own life to be full life except as it is one with the universal life. He will not live either for himself or for the State and society, for the individual ego or the collective ego, but for something much greater, for God in himself and for the Divine in the universe... its complementary truth which is as valid as itself. The Supreme is at once the One and the Many; He is simultaneously immanent and transcendent; He is at once personal and impersonal; and yet He is beyond all the formulations. The Jivatma, the individual self, is a reality the same time distinct from, related to and one with the Supreme. Nothing exists but the Supreme. If He is all. He... souls, the Divinity concealed and to be self-discovered in its human individuals and collectivities, group-souls meant like the individuals to grow according to their own nature and by that growth to help each other, to help the whole race in the common work of humanity. And that work is to find the divine Self in the individual and the collectivity and to realize spiritually, mentally, vitally, materially ...
... guidance. Yoga is, as stated by Sri Aurobindo, "a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the potentialities latent in the being and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos."5 Page 17 HOME ... climb thee like a ladder, O hundred powered. As one ascends from peak to peak, there is made clear the much that has still to be done. And yet in the ever-progressive movement, the individual seeker, the individual soul, discovers the stable source and foundation, the creative power of the world, and even while seated securely in that foundation, it sees luminously the progressive self-unfolding... faculties in search and realisation of psychic, spiritual and supramental reality or realities that lie beyond the body, life and mind, as also the consequences of that search and realisation for the individual and collective existence in the cosmos. Sri Aurobindo's book The Synthesis of Yoga is related to yogic experiences that can be attained by the application of yogic shastra, independent of any religion ...
... Page 81 yet develops by the process of evolution an individuality of its own which becomes a particular radiating centre of the Divine Consciousness. It manifests an individual aspect of the universal and transcendent Divine. The object of its passing through births is not only awakening and liberation from the thraldom of Nature and recovery of its essential consciousness, but also a progressive... feel its own existence as separate from the universal existence. It lives in conscious unity with all. "You are conscious ¹ & ² Words of the Mother. Page 80 there (in the psychic being) that your individuality is your own line of expression, but at the same time you know too that it is an expression objectifying the one universal consciousness.”¹ It is only the ego in us... uses the psychic being as an immortal, living individual unrolling infinite variation on the bosom of a conscious unity. The psychic being is the living temple of the Divine on earth, and if we aspire to realise the Divine, it can be only through a realisation of the psychic in us. "Below the human level there is, ordinarily, hardly any individual formation—there is only this (psychic) presence ...
... probability that a single individual will be found at a particular place in a street. Let us suppose the probability is greatest at the centre and falls off steadily away as we approach either end. The probability distribution can then be represented graphically by a wave curve but it will have no physical existence when only one individual is in the street. If 10,000 individuals are there, however, the... time and thus escapes all final analysis by physical concepts of space-unit and time-unit - what else can this "staticle" with its inherent indefiniteness and natural indeterminacy be except a free transcendent Being's self-manifestation in the terms of microphysics - A magic's process in a magical space, An unintelligible miracle's depths Whose source is lost in the Ineffable? Page... detail." And he adds that, since all experiments are subject to the laws of microphysics, which is the science dealing with the world's final constituents, the universal invalidity of the causal law is proved as undeniably as the universal invalidity of Newton's absolute space, time and motion. Lest it be thought that Heisenberg brings in complete irregularity in the physical world, we should ...
... corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine. Not the unborn Self or Atman, for the Self even in presiding over the existence of the individual is aware always of its universality and transcendence, it is yet its deputy in the forms of Nature, the individual soul, caitya puruṣa, supporting mind, life and body, standing behind the mental, the vital, the subtle-physical being in us and watching... being is not therefore at any time all that the Page 86 soul or essential psychic existence bears within it; it temporalises and individualises what is eternal in potentiality, transcendent in essence, in this projection of the spirit. The central being is the being which presides over the different births one after the other, but is itself unborn, for it does not descend... spirit, as it is usually called in English, is self-existent above the manifested or instrumental being — it is superior to birth and death, always the same, the individual Self or Atman. It is the eternal true being of the individual. The soul is a spark of the Divine which is not seated above the manifested being, but comes down into the manifestation Page 85 to support its ...
... of others; his universal individuality effectuates itself in the movement of the All in all beings towards its greater becoming. He sees a divine working everywhere; what goes out from him into the sum of that divine working, from the inner Light, Will, Force that works in him, is his action. There is no separative ego in him to initiate anything; it is the Transcendent and Universal that moves out... its own kind if the consciousness does not exceed the restricted play of an individual vitality and feel the universal life as its own and its oneness with all life. The mentality is not a full conscious existence or activity in its own kind if one does not exceed the individual mental limits and feel a oneness with universal Mind and with all minds and enjoy one's integrality of consciousness fulfilled... transcend not only the individual formula but the formula of the universe, for only so can either the individual or the universal existence find its own true being and a perfect harmonisation; both are in their outer formulation incomplete terms of the Transcendence, but they are that in their essence, and it is only by becoming conscious of that essence that Page 1062 individual consciousness or ...
... thoroughly the process of change. It is so because when one begins yoga the problem seems individual—in a certain sense it is even personal but when one begins to work it out, one finds, Page 140 at a certain point, that the probem is universal; it is not A or B or C who has the imperfection—it is universal imperfection one is up against. And to succeed in one's efforts the help of... steady movement of the whole inner being towards the ideal. But even the ideal envisaged by the mind is not a perfect Reality, it is imperfect and the human being moves from imperfect idealism to a Transcendent Page 137 Reality. Thus we see that the pull of the Higher consciousness is already acting on the mind even when the veil intervens between the two. Mind cannot explain the... into the tree the potentiality again resumes its existence in the form of numerous seeds. So also the whole of the resultant organism is held in infinitesimal plasm. Page 134 The individual being can make distinction between himself and the force that works in him : I and my mind, I and my power etc. But the force is himself, the resultant force is also himself. So, in the creation ...
... nature and the extreme multiplicity of frail aspiring human nature. All that Hinduism asks is: Can you in any manner realise the Supreme Page 83 Being who is at once transcendent, universal and individual and whose modes of manifestation are myriad? Without the least violation of its own character it can take the essence of the religion of Buddha to its bosom, even as it can take that... Its fundamental tenet is the old Rig-Vedic formula: "The One whom the sages call by many names." Unity and multiplicity, simplicity and complexity, the supra-cosmic and the cosmic, the universal and the individual - all these are blended together in Hinduism and express themselves in the large number of aspects our country's culture and social life possess. A million gods revealing and concretising... vast brotherhood, a profound parity as between all classes, is indeed one of its tenets, this brotherhood and parity is a tenet not of mere sociology but of a spirituality which is rooted in the universal Self of selves or the single Lord whose undying sparks are all evolving souls. To be ready to forego this spirituality just because the social structure within which it first flourished and still ...
... perverse Page 170 figure; we have tried to give ourselves an idea of what this divine Maya may be, this Truth-consciousness, this Real-Idea by which the conscious force of the transcendent and universal Existence conceives, forms and governs the universe, the order, the cosmos of its manifested delight of being. But we have not studied the connections of these four great and divine terms... harmonious play of the supreme Truth in its universal manifestation. The fundamental error of the Mind is, then, this fall from self-knowledge by which the individual soul conceives of its individuality as a separate fact instead of as a form of Oneness and makes itself the centre of its own universe instead of knowing itself as one concentration of the universal. From that original error all its particular... al to the divine Real-Idea. There we perceive what the world really is; we know in every way ourselves in others and as others, others as ourselves and all as the universal and self-multiplied One. We lose the rigidly separate individual standpoint which is the source of all limitation and error. Still, we perceive also that all that the ignorance of Mind took for the truth was in fact truth, but truth ...
... grasp of the human reason, and is, therefore, readily branded as mystic, occult or esoteric. But, in fact, spirituality would not be what it is, if it were not mystic, not a power and principle transcendent of the human mind and capable of illumining and transforming it by virtue of its very transcendence. Spirituality effects a living contact between the limited human consciousness and the infinite... morality nor religion can change man and his society; it is the very lightning of the Spirit that has to be infused into them to quicken a new birth. If we admit that the Spirit is the essential and universal truth of existence, the one, immortal Self of all beings, and that body, life and mind are its instruments of self-expression in the material world, then we cannot escape the conclusion that the power... Mother to the Mother, "This intellectual faculty which makes man vain and leads him into error., is the very faculty which can also, once enlightened and purified, lead him further, higher than the universal Nature, to the direct and conscious communion with the Lord of us all. He who is beyond all manifestation. This dividing intelligence which enables him to separate himself from me, enables him also ...
... him as the first Creator from Page 329 whom has originated all that originates and creates in space and time and relation. It knows him as the Master and ordainer of all universal and of every individual dispensation. The world and fate and uncertain eventuality cannot terrify, the aspect of suffering and evil cannot bewilder the man who has surrendered himself to the Eternal. God to the... in whom we are one self with the universe and its creatures. For both world and self, Nature and the soul in her are enlightened by the consciousness of the One, are inner and outer bodies of the transcendent Purushottama. So comes a synthesis of mind and heart and will in the one self and spirit and with it the synthesis of knowledge, love and works in this integral union, this embracing God-realisation... adoration of the Divine and Infinite. The mind attaches itself singly to the eternal, the spiritual, the living, the universal, the Real; it values nothing but for its sake, it delights only in the all-blissful Purusha. All the word and all the thought become one hymning of the universal greatness, Light, Beauty, Power and Truth that has revealed itself in its glory to the human spirit and a worship of ...
... their true values; and this recovery can be effected by the right participation of the individual in the consciousness of the totality and in the consciousness of the transcendent which the totality represents. ... "... We have the dissolution of this egoistic construction by the self-opening of the individual to the universe and to God as the means of that supreme fulfillment to which egoistic... divisions of the Ignorance towards integralising consciousness and knowledge. Role of the Individual The role of the individual in the evolutionary process is, according to Sri Aurobindo, of fundamental importance. In the evolution, the individual, as distinguished from the ego, is capable of universal consciousness, and therefore, can summarise within his own consciousness the evolutionary... foundation, the essence of all life is a movement of a universal and immortal existence, the essence of all sensation and emotion is the play of an universal and self-existent delight in being, the essence of all thought and perception is the radiation of a universal and all- pervading truth, the essence of all activity is the progression of a universal and self-effecting good. Sri Aurobindo explains in ...
... idea of the Gita to be free, mukta. We may accept this description; for everything essential is covered by its amplitude. On the other hand, the positive sense of freedom is to be universal in soul, transcendently one in spirit with God, possessed of the highest divine nature, — as we may say, like to God, or one with him in the law of our being. This is the whole and full sense of liberation... also. Spiritual experiences can fix themselves in the inner consciousness and alter it, transform it, if you like; one can realise the Divine everywhere, the Self in all and all in the Self, the universal Shakti doing all things; one can feel merged in the Cosmic Self or full of ecstatic bhakti or Ananda. But one may and usually does still go on in the outer parts of Nature thinking with the intellect... is not enough, it is only a middle term; the ultimate achievement needs the action of the supramental Consciousness and Force. Something less than that may very well be considered enough by the individual, but it is not enough for the earth-consciousness to take the definitive stride forward it must take at one time or another. Letters on Yoga, pp. 98-99 What I mean by the spiritual ...
... mentality a passive channel of the divine Light and Power, the active being a mightily effective instrument for its work in the world, will be the poise of this supreme union of the Transcendent, the universal and the individual. Equality too there will be with regard to the action of others upon us. Nothing that they can do will alter the inner oneness, love, sympathy which arises from the perception... but if a certain mastery comes by our individual strength, the freedom of mastery only comes by our union with God, by a merging or dwelling of the personality in the one divine Person and the loss of the personal will in the divine Will. There is a divine Master of Nature and her works, above her though inhabiting her, who is our highest being and our universal self; to be one with him is to make ourselves... ly, for the keeping and leading of the peoples on the path to the divine goal, is a rule which rises necessarily from the oneness of the soul with the Divine, the universal Being, since that is the whole sense and drift of the universal action. Nor does it conflict with our oneness with all beings, even those who present themselves here as opponents and enemies. For the divine goal is their goal also ...
... the way of the synthesis of Yoga, which aims at total freedom of each individual in his or her method of approach and which aims at integral development of personality and integral self-perfection by the expression of the potentialities latent in the being and the union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence which we see partially expressed in the human being and cosmos... the One and known and worshipped Him in the glories of His light and purity and wisdom and power. 2 Ishopanishad describes the loftiest experiences of consciousness, where the individual, universal and the transcendental unite in the following verses: But he who sees everywhere the Self in all existences and all existences in the Self, shrinks not thereafter from aught. He... that cannot be doubted. There is, first, the experience of our individual entity as an observer who observes, experiences, acts and reacts. There is, second, a field of circumstances in which the individual finds in himself or herself and in which he or she works, learns and struggles to arrive at mastery. Arrival at this mastery, individual and collective, may be considered to be the realisation of human ...
... one, the Divine is the transcendent, unique, inexpressible, infinite reality. So why do you want somebody else to love? You are trying to introduce a duality into the Ultimate which is single." All kinds of arguments Death puts forward to Savitri, and Savitri answers every time in the light of her inmost being. She is not answering as an individual, but as a representative of the divine... master act, a king idea Can link man's strength to a transcendent Force. Then miracle is made the common rule, One mighty deed can change the course of things; A lonely thought becomes omnipotent. Savitri was faced with this problem of conquering death and the poet is putting before us an idea as to how one individual can conquer death. Cosmic machinery is grinding its wheels... sticks to her decision and she performs Tapasya, proceeds along the path of self-knowledge and universal knowledge and enters into the divine knowledge. Here Savitri goes into the constitution of the universe and, entering deep inside, she meets all the universal powers that are at work, and finds that the universal powers themselves are incomplete and imperfect. The universe is not perfect, because the ...
... continues: "It lifts the being towards a transcendent Ecstasy and is ready to shed all the downward pull of the world from its wings in its uprising to reach the One Highest; but it calls down also this transcendent Love and Beatitude to deliver and transform this world of hatred and strife and divisions and darkness and jarring Ignorance. It opens to a universal Divine Love, a vast compassion, an intense... supreme perfection of form, the infinite Beauty: that is, a Form which is perfect with an infinite Being come to focus in it, a Perfect Form in which Divinity is individual yet is not limited by individuality but overflows the Form into the universal. Now the question is: Does the Rose of God which stands for such a Form mean the same as the Deathless Rose about which Sri Aurobindo has spoken in ... up on our way to the sheer poetry of the piece. 1 p. 187-188. 2 Ibid., pp. 189. Page 278 I have looked upon the God-Rose as the supreme Absolute grown a Form of transcendent Beauty that we may term the Divine Mother joining the Infinite to the finite by her role as Creatrix and joining the finite to the Infinite by her role as Mediatrix. Beauty is an expression of ...
... material universe into those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense and the material mentality. The crown of this synthesis was in the experience of the Vedic Rishis something divine, transcendent and blissful in whose unity the increasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. The Upanishads take up this crowning experience... sense, narrow so much at least of the teaching, deprive it of its universality and spiritual depth and limit its validity for mankind at large. But if we look behind to the spirit and sense and not at the local name and temporal institution, we see that here too the sense is deep and true and the spirit philosophical, spiritual and universal. By Shastra we perceive that the Gita means the law imposed on... never be quite sure of understanding an ancient book of this kind precisely in the sense and spirit it bore to its contemporaries. What is of entirely permanent value is that which besides being universal has been experienced, lived and seen with a higher than the intellectual vision. I hold it therefore of small importance to extract from the Gita its exact metaphysical connotation as it was understood ...
... quite different things. The psychic being is one's own individual soul-being. It is not the Divine, though it has come from the Divine and develops towards the Divine. It [ the psychic ] is constantly in contact with the immanent Divine—the Divine secret in the individual. It is the psychic that is in direct relation with the transcendent Divine and leads the nature upwards towards the Supreme... Self gives peace or a universal Ananda. The Atman, the Jivatman and the Psychic The Jiva is realised as the individual Self, Atman, the central being above the Nature, calm, untouched by the movements of Nature but supporting their evolution though not involved in it. Through this realisation silence, freedom, wideness, mastery, purity, a sense of universality in the individual as one centre of this... support of the individual evolution; it is connected with the universal both by direct contact and through the mind, vital and body. It may be said of the psychic that it is that [ the luminous part of our being ], because the psychic is in touch with the Divine and a projection of the Divine into the lower nature. But the inner mind, vital and physical are a part of the universal and open to the ...
... at the very outset as the dual personality of Ishwara and Shakti (the Divine Father and the Divine Mother) —sa dvitiyam aichhat, as the Upanishad says. That is still the Divine in His highest transcendent status, par ā tpara. Next, this dual or biune or divalent reality shows itself or throws itself further out in a fourfold valency of the dynamic truth consciousness, creating and leading the cosmic... the individual being: it is not merely an ugly dirty clothing that has to be cast off so that one may go straight to the enjoyment of the beatitude of Paradise; on the contrary, it is, as it were, an armour, a steel-frame that protects the subtle body against the attacks or harsh and cruel touches of other worlds and their beings. Once outside the body, there is every danger for the individual to go... grouping will appear natural and inevitable when we bear in mind the purpose of creation and the role of the psychic consciousness. For it is not a matter of individual salvation, of the unilateral growth and development and fulfilment of an individual psychic being. The soul is a luminous point in an inconscient universe and its role is to make it conscious, at least a representative portion of it. The ...
... impersonal cosmic or a transcendent Force. A cosmic Mind, Life, Substance must act, or a pure transcendent Self-Power and Bliss other than our own personal being or its building of Nature. This is a state of freedom which can come in the Yoga of works through renunciation of ego and desire and personal initiation and the surrender of the being to the cosmic Self or to the universal Shakti; it can come... Modes of Nature To transcend the natural action of the lower Prakriti is indispensable to the soul, if it is to be free in its self and free in its works. Harmonious subjection to this actual universal Nature, a condition of good and perfect work for the natural instruments, is not an ideal for the soul, which should rather be subject to God and his Shakti, but master of its own nature. As agent... repose, kinesis, illumination of the divine Nature. This supreme harmony cannot come except by the cessation of egoistic will and choice and act and the quiescence of our limited intelligence. The individual ego must cease to strive, the mind fall silent, the desire-will learn not to initiate. Our personality must join its source and all thought and initiation come from above. The secret Master of our ...
... so as to enable a similar movement in the individual being. The Many in the integrality or in each self of the Many cannot be really ignorant of the One or of others, because by the Many we mean the same divine Self in all, individualised indeed, but still one in conscious being with all in a single universality and one too with the original and transcendent Being. Ignorance is therefore not the natural... living. Living in his superconscient or subliminal self, he could not have worked out from the knot of his individual Page 611 mentality the relations which he has to ravel and unravel with the world about him, or would have to do it in a radically different fashion. Living in the universal self and not in the egoistic separative consciousness, he could not evolve that separate action, personality... Consciousness Truth was born and the Law of Truth; from that the Night, from the Night the flowing ocean of being. Rig Veda. (X. 190. 1.) Since Brahman is in the essentiality of its universal being a unity and a multiplicity aware of each other and in each other and since in its reality it is something beyond the One and the Many, containing both, aware of both, Ignorance can only come ...
... the soul, the divine psychic individual in the place of the ego. "The next step is to become aware of the eternal self in us unborn and one with the self of all beings. This self-realisation liberates and universalises.... "The third step is to know the Divine Being who is at once our supreme transcendent Self, the Cosmic Being, foundation of our universality, and the Divinity within of... also 'a great discovery'. For this soul or the psychic is a kind of individual concentration of the divine Grace; it is the Grace's individual representative in the human being. It is like a particular delegation of the Spirit in mankind, a special help to lead it faster and faster. It is, after all, the soul that makes the individual progress spiritually. Hence it is incumbent on every sadhaka... past, the psychic being of an individual has been exercising beneficial influence upon him, perhaps in slow and small doses, but from behind the opaque covering of the ignorant mind and heart and the physical self of man. But as a result of continuous evolutionary progression of Page 260 consciousness, a moment comes in the life of every individual when his occultly dwelling psychic ...
... Perpetual renewal. 6 March 1967 Page 359 This is how I understand the Purusha: The Lord is the Supreme Purusha, the Purushottama. The Atman is the universal Purusha. The Jivatman is the individual Purusha, and the physical Purusha, the vital Purusha, the mental Purusha and the secret Purusha in the heart are projections of it. The soul is the Purusha that enters... When the remembrance is constant, one often feels a Presence that imposes itself on the remembrance. 29 January 1968 While speaking about the "Transcendent Mother" (and the upper petal of the Transformation flower), You said, "The Transcendent is both one and two (or dual) at the same time." What does this mean? Beyond the creation lies the perfect Oneness, but potentially it contains duality... duality since the Mahashakti will manifest for the needs of the creation. 5 February 1968 Last Monday You spoke to me about the Transcendent which is both one and two at the same time. Naturally, I shall wait for the true consciousness to come in order to have this knowledge. But yesterday I tried to note down what You had said: "The mind thinks about things in succession. But beyond ...
... sarva-dharman parityajya , and transform all into its transcendent purity and universal good and infallible force. An ineffable Ananda will take up our petty joy and sorrow, our struggling pleasure and pain, cast away their discordances and imperfect rhythms, sarva-dharman parityajya , and transform all into its transcendent and universal unimaginable delight. All that all the Yogas can do will... thee to Myself through and beyond all sorrow and evil. Whatever difficulties and perplexities arise, be sure of this that I am leading thee to a complete divine life in the universal and an immortal existence in the transcendent Spirit. ( Essays on the Gita , SABCL, Vol. 13, pp. 537-38) The supreme Mantra is given to the seeker soul: An omniscient consciousness will take up our knowledge... hierarchy of the Planes of Consciousness comes from the topmost plane standing above the mental consciousness in its widest sense. Which also means that the Gita itself is an utterance of the supreme transcendent being standing on the Overmind plane, Krishna as the Overmind Avatar. In the evolutionary process of the Earth his chief concern was to establish this dynamism, it leading to the completest possible ...
... at the very outset as the dual personality of Ishwara and Shakti (the Divine Father and the Divine Mother) – sa dvitiyam aicchat, as the Upanishad says. That is still the Divine in His highest transcendent status, paratpara. Next, this dual or biune or divalent reality shows itself or throws itself further out in a fourfold valency of the dynamic truth consciousness, creating and leading the cosmic... the individual being: it is not merely an ugly dirty clothing that has to be cast off so that one may go straight to the enjoyment of the beatitude of Paradise; on the contrary, it is, as it were, an armour, a steel-frame that protects the subtle body against the attacks or harsh and cruel touches of other worlds and their beings. Once outside the body, there is every danger for the individual to go... grouping will appear natural and inevitable when we bear in mind the purpose of creation and the role of the psychic consciousness. For it is not a matter of individual salvation, of the unilateral growth and development and fulfilment of an individual psychic being. The soul is a luminous point in an inconscient universe and its role is to make it conscious, at least a representative portion of it. The ...
... culmination of his evolutionary progression, into the supreme Truth-Consciousness, which will admit of a simultaneous Page 2 realisation of and union with the transcendent Sachchidananda and His universal Immanence—a consummation not yet achieved by man. But in order that this emergence may be complete and securely established on earth, it is essential, as a pre-condition, that... be aware of the Supermind or any such plane of creative Truth-consciousness, where man can have a perfect union, both in silence and in action, and a simultaneous self-identification with the Transcendent and the Immanent. The general trend of mystical thought in the West, in spite of the towering achievements of Ruysbroeck and St. Teresa, inclines towards a denial of the possibility of a complete... there are not a few subsequent Prayers depicting Remarkable transitions and new conquests. The Mother's sadhana has followed strange curves of ascent and descent, for it has not been so much an individual as a collective sadhana for the conversion of the earth-consciousness and the supramental self-expression of God in man. It would, therefore, be a great mistake to try to assess and understand ...
... emergence of man, as the culmination of his evolutionary progression, into the supreme Truth-Consciousness, which will admit of a simultaneous realisation of and union with the transcendent Sachchidananda and His universal Immanence—a consummation not yet achieved by man. But in order that this emergence may be complete and securely established on earth, it is essential, as a pre-condition, that Matter... be aware of the Supermind or any such plane of creative Truth- consciousness, where man can have a perfect union, both in silence and in action, and a simultaneous self-identification with the Transcendent and the Immanent. The general trend of mystical thought in the West, in spite of the towering achievements of Ruysbroeck and St.Teresa, inclines towards a denial of the possibility of a complete... there are not a few subsequent Prayers depicting remarkable transitions and new conquests. The Mother's sadhana has followed strange curves of ascent and descent, for it has not been so much an individual as a collective sadhana for the conversion of the earth-consciousness and the supramental self-expression of God in man. It would, therefore, be a great mistake to try to assess and understand it ...
... or Trinity is not very far off at bottom from my trinity of the individual, cosmic and transcendent Divine—as far at least as one can judge who has not himself followed the Christian discipline. Christ, whether as the human Incarnation or the Christos in men or the Godhead proceeding from the Father, seems to me to be quite my individual Divine. The Father has very much the appearance of the One who... transcendence. That self-existent transcendent Love spreading itself over all, turning everywhere to contain, embrace, unite, help, upraise towards love and bliss and oneness, becomes cosmic divine Love; intensely fixing itself on one or others to find itself, to achieve a dynamic unification or to reach here towards the union of the soul with the Divine, it becomes the individual divine Love. But there are... self-existent force, an absolute, a transcendent (as I have put it), which does not depend upon the objects,—it depends only on itself or only on the Divine,—for it is a self-existent power of the Divine. If it were not self-existent, it would hardly be independent of the nature or reaction of its Page 369 object. It is partly what I mean when I speak of transcendent Love—though this is only one ...
... original nature of Mind, Life or Matter necessitates a fall from Knowledge. It has been shown indeed that division of consciousness is the basis of the Ignorance, a division of individual consciousness from the cosmic and the transcendent of which yet it is an intimate part, in essence inseparable, a division of Mind from the supramental Truth of which it should be a subordinate action, of Life from the original... of its process, its course and its consequence. Since the Consciousness-Force of the eternal Existence is the universal creatrix, the nature of a given world will depend on whatever self-formulation of that Consciousness expresses itself in that world. Equally, for each individual being, his seeing or representation to himself of the world he lives in will depend on the poise or make which that... entry into the superior spirit ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary ...
... ineffable latency.... It is not a denial, it is one term, one formula of the infinite and eternal Existence. 35 Nay more: Reality transcendent (that is, beyond the manifestation), cosmic or universal Reality, and microcosmic Reality or the autonomy of the individual being, these too are not distinct absolutes but only terms of the One Existence, each containing secretly or overtly the other two.... spanning the infinitesimal and the immense: energy - that floating, universal entity from which all emerges and into which all falls back as into an ocean; energy, the new spirit; the new god. So, at the world's Omega, as at its Alpha, lies the Impersonal. 83 There is also, in Teilhard's treatment of the problem of pain and individual human suffering, the same assumption as in Sri Aurobindo that... the subliminal or deeper realities of Mind, Life and Matter: The subliminal mind in us is open to the universal knowledge of the cosmic Mind, the subliminal life in us to the universal force of the cosmic Life, the Page 423 subliminal physicality in us to the universal force-formation of cosmic Matter... 19 There are, then, the two hemispheres, the parārdha of ...
... Himself in His pure personality. For in all the divine manifestation, there is always this double aspect of Personality & Impersonality. God Impersonal manifests Himself, both in the universe & transcendent of the Universe, transcending it as infinite pure Existence, infinite pure Consciousness, infinite pure Delight, the triune Sachchidananda of our Scriptures, entering world existence. He manifests... matter is only an appearance. But for the present, the Rishi is content to envisage the world as a world of motion & multitude. In essence the kshobha or formative movement called active Prakriti, in universality it is this force ordering & arranging its objects by motion, jagati; in detail it is a multitude of single objects, forces, ideas, sensations etc, all in their nature motion of this moving universe... ns makes up the marvellous web of the world. But He is also, transcending existence, the infinite Pure Existent, the infinite Pure Conscious, the infinite Pure Blissful,—not anyone, no person or individual, for He alone is, but still neither a mere abstraction or state of Being. Entering into world existence, He is All-being, God, Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna, Kali, Allah, the Mighty One, the Humble, the ...
... within it. It lifts the being towards a transcendent Ecstasy and is ready to shed all the downward pull of the world from its wings in its uprising to reach the One Highest; but it calls down also this transcendent Love and Beatitude to deliver and transform this world of hatred and strife and division and darkness and jarring Ignorance. It opens to a universal Divine Love, a vast compassion, an intense... exaggerated amplification of one side of our nature; in that exaggeration there can be no clue for the full and perfect divine evolution of the many sides of our individualised being towards the universal and transcendent Eternal. Nor can the religio-ethical ideal be a sufficient guide,—for this is a compromise or compact of mutual concessions for mutual Page 152 support between a religious urge... worship through altruistic works or a preparation through acts of love, of benevolence, of service to mankind or to those around us. It is indeed by the religio-ethical sense that the law of universal goodwill or universal compassion or of love and service to the neighbour, the Vedantic, the Buddhistic, the Christian ideal, was created; only by a sort of secular refrigeration extinguishing the fervour of ...
... in the second motive force, that of the call to Transcendence. If the Transcendent is not only supra cosmic but an aloof Incommunicable, avyavahāryam , which one cannot reach except by a negation of all that is here, then some kind of Nirvana, an absolute Nirvana even is inevitable. If on the other hand the Divine is transcendent but not incommunicable, the call will still be there and the soul will... will leave the chequered cosmic play for the beatitude of the transcendent existence, but an absolute Nirvana would not be indispensable; a beatific union with the Divine offers itself as the way before the seeker. This is the reason why the Cosmic Consciousness is not sufficient and the push away from it is so strong,—it is only if the golden Page 143 lid of the Overmind is overpassed and... identification or universalisation may be more on one plane or level of consciousness than on another, predominantly mental or predominantly emotional (through universal sympathy or love) or vital of another kind (experience of the universal life forces) or physical. But in any case, even with the full realisation and experience it should be evident that this Page 141 cosmic play would be ...
... cosmic force and action. Or it may be the experience of the loss of individuality in a transcendent being and consciousness in which the sense of cosmos as well as the individual disappears. Or again, it may be in a transcendence which is aware of and supports the cosmic action. But what do we mean by the individual? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego, a device of Nature which holds... otherwise there is no complete liberation possible; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal portion of the Divine, but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the... ism and Vaishnavism, each insisting on its own God’s greatness. That is not the case. Page 152 And then what Krishna must I challenge – the Krishna of the Gita who is the transcendent godhead, Paramatma, Para-brahma, Purushottama, the cosmic Deity, master of the universe, Vasudeva who is all, the immanent in the heart of all creatures, or the Godhead who was incarnate at Brindavan ...
... these tribes," is the Divine Word—a creative power, a saving grace. A conscious surrender to her Light is the indispensable condition of progress, for the individual as for the human race, for she alone "can link man's strength to a transcendent Force." 5 Meditating on this light, extending its influence in our lives so that we act always from the summit of our consciousness, we prepare to take the... as a way of initiation. Sri Aurobindo describes the gods as "universal powers descended from the Truth-Consciousness which build up the harmony of the worlds and in man his progressive perfection." 1 These powers are psychological. The first light of dawn touching the earth is Sri Aurobindo's symbol of their awakening within the individual seeker, just as, in the poem, it heralds the awakening of the... essential meaning is to be found by opening ourselves to the consciousness that transformed the legend into a symbol: This Light comes not by struggle or by thought; In the mind's silence the Transcendent acts And the hushed heart hears the unuttered Word. A vast surrender was his only strength. A Power that lives upon the heights must act, Bring into life's closed room the Immortal's ...
... noun would indicate a state of all-knowledge and not a being who knows all. The personal identity of the yogi is preserved in some supreme form in a realm where the basic Universal Page 138 wears numerous individual faces and the One Omniscient manifests in a multiplicity of Omniscients. There is also a sound-effect to be appreciated. The sh-sound in "hush" is caught up in "Omniscient"... 139 The absolute of this peace, the self-existent infinitude of it meets us in a life-changing passage when Aswapati's as-piring consciousness breaks beyond the barrier of both individual and universal existence: Across a void retreating sky he glimpsed Through a last glimmer and drift of vanishing stars The superconscient realms of motionless Peace Where judgment ceases... is at the tail-end of a series of five monosyllables, a sort of climaxing of the process they represent. And this fivefold process thus climaxed terminates and culminates in a massive reality of transcendent transformation indicated by the single four-syllabled word "Omniscient". To feel and recognise the spiritual afflatus of so superb a kind, borne magically home to us in a design of manifold ...
... a will, tapas, śakti, by which the secret spirit im poses on its outer members all their action... This Tapas is the will of the transcendent spirit who creates the universal movement, of the universal spirit who supports and informs it, of the free individual spirit who is the soul centre of its multiplicities. It is one will, free in all these at once, comprehensive, harmonious, unified;... Influence. In the fourth stage, the will, the strength and the askesis of the Page 232 sadhaka lose their separate individual character and are felt by him as "activities of that higher Power and Influence at work in the individual." Whatever may be the variations of forms of the will's functioning under different circumstances and at different stages, its essential... being of the individual is at the mercy of the objects of sense and lives in the outward contacts of things. That life is just a life of desires. For, the senses excited by their objects create a restless or often violent disturbance and a strong or even headlong outward movement towards the seizure of these objects and their subsequent enjoyment.... The mind of the individual becomes subject ...
... phase of passive peace and silence, as do Sankhya and Jainism; or, one may proceed through it, by a deepening and widening of the consciousness of peace and silence, to the realisation of the universal and transcendent Brahman. There is another phase at which one also stops short—the phase of love and devotion for the Divine in the heart. One may intensify this phase and enjoy a blissful union and communion... blissful immortality in this undisputed empire of death and suffering. When the psychic is realised, it is our second birth, we attain to dwijattwa, we step into Brahminhood. A new sense of universality, of illimitable expansion, of termless continuity develops in us. We find our existence infinitely enlarged, our ¹Words of the Mother. Page 91 consciousness illumined... SOUL OR THE PSYCHIC (II) How to Realise the Psychic? IF it is true that the psychic is our true self, and that it is only when we identify ourselves with it that we can become real individuals, then it is obvious that nothing should be regarded as more pressingly important in life than the discovery and realisation of the psychic. Of what avail our humanitarian strivings, our struggles ...
... Even then it is there behind supporting, animating, helping all and everything. It is indeed the secret Delight in things. It is the sense of utter identity of Self and self. Its status is in the Transcendent where Love and Life and Light are fused to gether Page 274 into one single absolute reality. When it expresses itself, that is to say, when it makes its presence felt as such in... a holy unction of purification, give a sweet intensity to all his urges in the progressive march to Resurrection. This is the Immanent Divine who has to be worshipped and realised as much as the Transcendent Divine, if man is to fulfil himself wholly and earth justify its existence. The legend of the great ascetic Sankaracharya going straight to the realisation of the Supreme knowledge in Brahman... amplitude and splendour of its original form in the divine consciousness, to express that plenitude here below. This original, the archetype of each and every individual embodied upon earth is the central being, Jivatman. At the beginning the individual soul in terrestrial evolution is just a tiny particle of consciousness: it evolves, that is to say, grows and increases in stature and potency, through a ...
... nature by the mental being, into a highest harmony with the high infinite and universal life of the spirit. The mind can have the touch of the infinite and the universal and can reflect and even lose itself in them, but the supermind alone can enable the individual to be completely one in action with the universal and transcendent spirit. Here the one thing that is always and constantly present, that... act no longer only in the infinite above with some limited or veiled or lower and deformed manifestations in the individual being and nature, but largely and totally in the individual as a conscious and self-knowing spiritual being and a living and acting power of the infinite and universal spirit. The character of this action, so far as it can be expressed, may be spoken of more fitly afterwards when... irregular visitations, then form as we grow a more frequent and regularised action above it. These anticipations are still more large and frequent the moment we enter on the supramental level. The universal and infinite consciousness can always seize on and surround the mind and it is when it does so with a certain continuity, frequency or persistence that the mind can most easily transform itself into ...
... symbols which are as old as the Vedas. NIRODBARAN: The cross is a significant one. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, it is ancient and very well known. It marks the meeting-point of the Individual, the Universal and the Transcendent. These symbols are seen even when you don't know anything about them. There are some symbols which have not been fixed but which accompany the opening to the Brahman. Thus, I used... many languages perhaps? I don't understand what they mean by it. SATYENDRA: What is the significance of the Son, the Father and the Holy Ghost? SRI AUROBINDO: The Son, I suppose, could be the individual Divine, the Divine in man—they speak of the Christ in man; the Father is the personal Divine, the ruler of the world; and perhaps the Holy Ghost is the Impersonal. But I don't understand what... are two kinds of experiences: some people see visions with open eyes, others with closed eyes. Those who see with open eyes can easily mistake their visions for material forms and feel as if the individual seen was physically present. NIRODBARAN: But is materialisation possible? SRI AUROBINDO: There is a well-known case of such materialisation. It relates to the mother or the grandmother of the ...
... sense I often have of being a channel, however limited and imperfect, of Sri Aurobindo's light and the Mother's love, two felicitous forces which have a universal movement behind every individual-seeming action and which through that universality bring to our fumbling and aching selves the hope of an all-consummating future, as envisaged in Savitri: A Mind unvisited by illusion's gleams, ... his psyche. The sunlit path is the one on which the heart of man, surging out of its depths rather than floating on from its surfaces, can go dancing to the Divine instead of toiling towards the Transcendent. Perhaps we may even sum up the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as being in its most concentrated and swiftest form an injunction to be sublimely simple and seraphically merry: that is to say... toss). Many sadhaks are content to soar into inner freedom and bliss but do not know how to be in their outer lives a centre of light from which their being may spread into a subtle oneness with the Universal Spirit and permeate with bliss all who come in touch with them. An indrawn and up-drawn concentration is surely an important part of our Page 279 sadhana, but the final test of success ...
... Aswapathy found the cause and aim of universal evolution. The Purusha is at present bound in Nature, as we saw, because he pursues Nature for the delight, the fulfilment, the will he finds in her, but when he finds that all this running is without any issue, he separates himself from her and puts his own consciousness on its true throne, so to say; then he is the transcendent one who can transcend Nature,... do it. It was very clear: A magic leverage suddenly is caught That moves the veiled Ineffable's timeless will: A prayer, a master act, a king idea Can link man's strength to a transcendent Force. Then miracle is made the common rule, One mighty deed can change the course of things; A lonely thought becomes omnipotent. That is what we quoted yesterday if you remember... first stage that it reaches is psychicization. The second stage it reaches is universalization or spiritualization. And the third stage it reaches is supramentalization or divine Nature. You see that from human nature to the divine the stages are one, two and three. The first stage is psychicization, the second is universalization or spiritualization, and the third is supramentalization or total transformation ...
... The habitual noun would indicate a state of all-knowledge and not a being who knows all. The personal identity of the yogi is preserved in some supreme form in a realm where the basic Universal wears numerous individual faces and the One Omniscient manifests in a multiplicity of Omniscients. There is also a sound-effect to be appreciated. The sh-sound in "hush" is caught up in "Omniscient" which is ... [p. 36] The absolute of this peace, the self-existent infinitude of it meets us in a life-changing passage when Aswapati's aspiring consciousness breaks beyond the barrier of both individual and universal existence: Across a void retreating sky he glimpsed Through a last glimmer and drift of vanishing stars The superconscient realms of motionless Peace Where judgment ceases... is at the tail-end of a series of five monosyllables, a sort of climaxing of the process they represent. And this fivefold process thus climaxed terminates and culminates in a massive reality of transcendent transformation indicated by the single four-syllabled word "Omniscient". To feel and recognise the spiritual afflatus of so superb a kind, borne magically home to us in a design of manifold ...
... glimpsed so that they may be sought after and chased and captured. Man is God hiding himself from Nature so that he may possess her by struggle, insistence, violence and surprise. God is universal and transcendent Man hiding himself from his own individuality in the human being. The animal is Man disguised in a hairy skin and upon four legs; the worm is Man writhing and crawling towards the evolution... out a cosmic sum in numbers or a thinker resolving by experiment a problem in relations of principles and the balance of forces: but also we should speak of Him as if He were a lover, a musician of universal and particular harmonies, a child, a poet. The side of thought is not enough; the side of delight too must be entirely grasped: Ideas, Forces, Existences, Principles are hollow moulds unless they... soul-strength; let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy goal. Transform enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy; let all thyself be bliss. This is thy goal. Transform the divided individual into the world-personality; let all thyself be the divine. This is thy goal. Transform the Animal into the Driver of the herds; let all thyself be Krishna. This is thy goal. Page 199 ...
... on the Vedanta, of ancient and modern thought. In him the values of being and becoming, of Spirit and matter, of the One and the many, of the eternal and the temporal, of the universal and the individual, of the personal God and the absolute Godhead, are integrated in a vision of the whole, which has never been surpassed in depth and comprehensiveness. In the integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo... on finding grounds to suspect what may be called "panpsy-chism" or even "pantheism" — but actually these "heresies" appear not in their European form which can be taken to exclude or negate the transcendent Divine but in their Indian version in which, as far back as the Rigveda, the Seers perceived about the Supreme Purusha that "one quarter of him is here on earth, three quarters are above in heaven"... experiences. She was even reported as equating the Grace-Light to the supramental consciousness and as saying that a number of individuals, known or unknown, are likely to have brought this consciousness to the earth throughout the ages but that now instead of an individual possibility Sri Page 51 Aurobindo and she were working to establish it as a collective possibility, as a terrestrial ...
... Page 263 the participants and specially on the face of my dear friend adds a new glow to the self-surrender I always aspire to make to Sri Aurobindo and to his Shakti, the transcendent and universal Creatrix who not only meets us as a close personal presence in the depths of our hearts but brought for year on sunlit year an embodied beauty and bliss to our adoring eyes and worshipping... entities enclasp each other, interpenetrate, catch fire, grow one blaze of beauty, disappear as separate existences and forces, become something which at the same time combines both and is a different transcendent "third". This culmination gives point to the word "vanish" in my piece. The first stanza is to be read in conjunction with the less radical expressions of the second and the third. "A light... faith is not enough. The manner of life counts a great deal. Between the two parents there must be a play of sweetness and light, those two natural attributes of the Psychic Being. Also, one's individual and personal habits create an aura of their own. The consciousness has to be calm, clear, bright and has to express itself in a certain attitude and activity of the outer being, which must practise ...
... that climbs beyond the reach of time. "He moved through regions of transcendent Truth Inward, immense, innumerably one," Page 225 He was completely freed from the limitations of mind and Time's triple dividing step baffled him no more and he saw Time in a "single wide regard". There was a universal beauty sheltered behind all forms which rendered commonplace things into wonders... the impossible". Page 215 They penetrate the subliminal mind of the cosmos or of the higher power and bring from there the intended potentialities. "Tracing the curve of a transcendent Power, They framed the cabbala of the cosmic Law". They permeate all the forces of nature and forge their ends under the mask of necessity and chance. From the chaotic moods of the Infinite... man, the miracle, the charm and the mystery, were lost. Men found many truths but not the one Truth that matters. Knowledge of many things did not lead to the knowledge of the essential "And the Transcendent kept its secrecy". Aswapathy ascended the wide summits of the triple stairs where "Bare steps climbed up like glowing rocks of gold Burning their way to a pure absolute sky." ...
... to the universal mould or Page 357 Creation. It is significant that Shri Pandit also, except for the lines under consideration, interprets the whole passage as relating to Man and not to creation in general. I shall be highly obliged if you will send your illumined comments to clarify the whole thing." In my opinion, the passage refers only to the individual's rise and... would mean the pulling down of the individual soul by the 'subconscient cords' or the 'dull gravitation' and the formless Power following in the shadow is the supreme Diplomat coming down in the wake of our fall - the individual fall - to convert it into a means for 'greater rise'. In other words, the whole passage relates to the happenings in an individual mould and cannot therefore refer... have the Aristotelian notion transmitted by Thomas Aquinas to the Middle Ages that all creation moves towards its Creator - who is Himself unmoving - by a love born in all things because of His transcendent Beauty. Dante is not figuring God's love as urging onward the sun and the rest of the stellar world - the whole universe with all its living and non-living contents: he . is imaging the whole universe ...
... created overtopping and dominating the physical instrument, individual in fact of existence, but impersonal in feeling and recognised by a free cognition as something instrumental to the action of a Transcendent and Universal Being. In the transition towards the Supermind this centralising action tends towards the discovery of a true individual replacing the dead ego, a being who is in his essence one... comprehended, but the source of the revelation is not in one's separate self but in the universal knowledge; the feelings, emotions, sensations are similarly felt as waves from the same cosmic immensity breaking upon the subtle and the gross body and responded to in kind by the individual centre of the universality; for the body is only a small support or even less, a point of relation, for the action... extension of a free and pure essential self-consciousness or it is an identification with the All,—the extension or the identification constituting a cosmic being, a universal individual. In one state of the cosmic consciousness there is an individual included in the cosmos but identifying himself with all in it, with the things and beings, with the thought and sense, the joy and grief of others; in another ...
... limitations have been exceeded by the soul's seeing of all things as the Lord in the light of a perfect spiritual oneness. There results an integral vision of the Divine Existent at once as the transcendent Reality, supracosmic origin of cosmos, as the impersonal Self of all things, calm continent of the cosmos, and as the immanent Divinity in all beings, personalities, objects, powers and qualities... spiritual liberation and divine works. The Godhead has been revealed in thought to Arjuna; he has been made visible to the mind's search and the heart's seeing as the supreme and universal Being, the supernal and universal Person, the inward-dwelling Master of our existence for whom man's knowledge, will and adoration were seeking through the mists of the Ignorance. There remains only the vision of... divine efficient cause of all their becoming, God of the gods from whom all godheads have sprung, master of the universe who manifests and governs it from above by the power of his supreme and his universal Nature, bhūta-bhāvana bhūteśa deva-deva jagat-pate . And lastly he accepts him as that Vasudeva in and around us who is all things here by virtue of the world-pervading, all-inhabiting, all-constituting ...
... independent of any outer equipment, ornamentation, or environment, the subjective state alone of the individual can make the form beautiful. Sri Aurobindo clarifies the nature of the experience of beauty and its highest seeking: " When it (the soul) can get the touch of this universal, absolute beauty, this soul of beauty, this sense of its revelation in any slightest or greatest thing... identifies himself with the spirit of the poem, with a character in a drama or story, and at the same time a detachment keeps all personal elements aside. The individual outgrows the limits of his ego, enlarges his being, and has the joy of the universal consciousness. That is why Vishwanath, the Sanskrit critic, speaks of the delight or Rasa — as " Brahmānanda sahodara " "Of the same nature as the spiritual... escape from the imprisonment of human limitations beating ineffectively their wings against the bars. But their perception has great truth and power; they stress the need for reaching out to the transcendent beauty. Shelley writes:— I can give not what m en call love; But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above. And the Heavens reject not; The desire of ...
... exclusion of the something More that compels Art to change always in its constant seeking for more and more that must be expressed of the concealed or the revealed Divine, of the individual and the universal or the transcendent Spirit. If we take these three elements as making the whole of Art, perfection of expressive form, discovery of beauty, revelation of the soul and essence of things and the... and revelation of Beauty and we can say nothing more by way of prohibition or limiting rule. But there is one thing more that can be said, and it makes a big difference. In the Yogin's vision of universal beauty all becomes beautiful, but all is not reduced to a single level. There are gradations, there is a hierarchy in this All-Beauty and we see that it depends on the ascending power (vibhuti) of ...
... and the mind and soul of universal Nature. For always the effect of the supramental growth is to universalise the individual consciousness. As it makes us live, even in our individual vital movement and its relations with all around us, with the universal life, so it makes us think and feel and sense, although through an individual centre or instrument, with the universal mind and psychical being.... again, is felt by us not merely as a vital ocean and its streams, but as the vital way and form and body and outpouring of a conscious universal Shakti, and that conscient Shakti reveals itself as the Chit Shakti of the Divine, the Energy of the transcendent and universal Self and Purusha of which—or rather of whom—our universalised individuality becomes an instrument and channel. As a result we feel ourselves... matter and for formation and action in the material universe. The first result is that the limitations of our individual life being break down and we live no longer with a personal life force, or not with that ordinarily, but in and by the universal life energy. It is all the universal Prana that comes consciently streaming into and through us, keeps up there a dynamic constant eddy, an unseparated ...
... 667-68. Page 37 exact opposite of the cosmic-terrestrial view of reality. According to this theory the supreme and supracosmic transcendent Reality alone is to be considered entirely or essentially real. Everything else, whether individual being or cosmic existence, suffers from a certain sense of vanity and illusoriness. The supracosmic view has many variants of which the principal... glories of heaven, that is to say, supraterrestrial realms of existence that may open their portals to him after the dissolution of his earthly physical life; finally, the supreme and supracosmic transcendent Reality enthralls him with its bare and solitary snowy grandeur. Thus he is confronted with a conflict of his life-motives and the simultaneous ill-reconciled clamours of various impulses and... materialist and individualistic view of existence, the only significance of life will be to achieve the individual's greatest possible perfection or make the most of his life in whatever way his personal nature demands, until it passes out of him in the course of inevitable and not so far-off individual annihilation. 1 To exemplify the attitudes to body and bodily life this cosmic-terrestrial ...
... their source, for it can only impose on the individual what many individuals consider to be advantageous to collective existence-and its will is not from any plane higher than that of the single individual and hence cannot have a definitively binding character. Mere numbers cannot make a thing right. Nor can any punishment visited on the recalcitrant individual prove the duty of not being dishonest, cruel... men in whom the rational has been absorbed and taken up into sainthood, seerhood, yoga - men who have inwardly opened to the Lord seated in the heart of hearts, the Cosmic Consciousness and the Transcendent Self and Master, men who are no moral preachers with an intellectually guided religious fervour but such as are at least on the way to realising the goal so integrally revealed in that fourfold... and effective force? Not that it is an utter contradiction of the below and the above: there is in the former a certain instinct of mutual aid while in the latter is to be found a spontaneity of universal oneness, but the infra-rational has also a violent competitive impulse and the supra-rational brings at times a power of destruction at which the mere mind trembles and with which it can scarcely ...
... earlier Incarnation that was Krishna has a specially sympathetic and intimate reality. Krishna, the Overmind divinity incarnate, who declared in the Gita his own transcendent Godhead no less than his universal form and his individual Mastership, and who in the self-disclosure at Brindavan let loose the intensest power of the soul's love for and surrender to the Supreme Beauty and Bliss in terms... formula to the sheer Transcendent but to that Transcendent's absolutely immobile aspect (Nirvana, an indescribable Permanence void of all that we know as existence, or, in positive Vedantic nomenclature, Nirguna Brahman, Silent Quality-less Eternal Being) and, finally, Kalki who will come to set right the balance by bringing the Transcendent's power to base on the Transcendent's peace a new earth-order... in fact attributed to himself by Krishna among the diversity of statuses which he claims as his. Sri Aurobindo¹ recognises it in his comprehensive phrase: "the Krishna of the Gita who is the transcendent Godhead, Paramatma, Parabrahma, Purushottama, the cosmic Deity, Master of the universe, Vasudeva who is all. Immanent in the heart of all creatures..." And such a status would be capable of issuing ...
... haste and error. Reflected Experience of the Higher Planes One can get the experiences of a higher plane by reflection or some partial descent in the lower. It is the experience of the transcendent planes as reflected on the higher planes of consciousness (Overmind, etc.), in relation to them; just as one can have an experience of Sachchidananda and these planes as reflected in the mind or... oneself there until that is done. If the workings are really those of the higher consciousness or if these predominate the ego fades out—but there is also often a wideness of opening to the universal mental, vital, physical existence and, if the sadhak responds more to these than to the higher consciousness, then he does not get free. Sometimes even the ego gets aggrandised. But if the psychic... 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 realisation or vision of the One Truth or the Universal is the natural frame and basis of the whole consciousness. But the higher one rises upward, the more the spiritual view changes, the power of consciousness changes, the Light becomes ever more intense ...
... Page 35 This is quite certain. Aspire with ardour (but without impatience) and it will be soon. 2.2.1968 Speaking of the "Transcendent Mother" (and the upper petal of the Transformation flower), You have said, "The Transcendent is one and two (or dual) at the same time." What does this mean? Beyond the creation lies the perfect Oneness, but potentially it contains duality... duality, since the Mahashakti will manifest for the needs of the creation. 5.2.1968 Last Monday You spoke to me about the Transcendent which is one and two at the same time. Naturally, I shall wait for the true consciousness to come in order to have this knowledge. But yesterday I tried to note down what You had said: The mind thinks about things in succession. But beyond and above, everything... to be a docile and if possible a conscious instrument of the Divine Will. To be and to do what the Divine wants, this is truly the important thing. 3.12.1968 "The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. " 2 Similarly, can one say that the Supreme Divine carries the Mother in his eternal ...
... following words: Page 32 [Yoga is] a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the potentialities latent in the being and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos. 11 According to Sri Aurobindo, what we need today is the practice of meticulous methods that can bring about... Vaishnavism end in the release from life; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life. Page 22 Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic achievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing in of a... necessity of spiritual transformation. Sri Aurobindo points out that a change from the vital and mental to the spiritual order of life must necessarily be accomplished in the individual and in a greater number of individuals before it can come to have an effective hold upon community. What is necessary is that the common human mind begins to admit the ideas proper to the higher order that is in the ...
... The relation between Matter and the Omnipresent Reality operating as Supermind is made clear in the three chapters that have preceded. They explain why a cosmic existence has manifested out of Transcendent Satchidananda whose nature is infinite existence, consciousness and bliss. The world could have been an infinity of figures without any fixed order or relation. But we find it is not so. The reason... ess descends after rending of the veil. So by a descent of Light, Power and Knowledge from above, or by an inward turn opening to the self, the universal consciousness, one knows the subliminal parts of one's own being and subliminal 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... weak points in his thesis are two or three. One is he admitted God also as responsible for creation. Now the purpose of the human individual is to merge into the Absolute. There is a sort of a contradiction here, because if God is there in between, how is the individual to merge into the Absolute without the intervention of God ? And if God Page 261 carries on the management of the ...
... religious being and reposes on a universal truth. The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that being omniscient... foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or Page 566 stimulation by human thought and that the individual's desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least human will, aspiration... whether for lower or higher purposes,—and there are plenty of disciplines which put it forward as the one force to be used,—or it can act in dependence upon and with subordination to the divine or the universal Will. And this latter way again may either look upon that Will as responsive indeed to our aspiration, but almost mechanically, by a sort of law of energy, or at any rate quite impersonally, or else ...
... change and the law of interchange between those cosmic forces and the individuals who are all involved in the cosmic work of energies, which have themselves two levels of operations, the level of Apara Prakriti, where action s are ruled by ignorance, and the level of Para Prakriti where actions are ruled by universal and transcendental knowledge. It is this knowledge issuing from Para Prakriti... these states of equality, more and more elevating and more and more luminous experiences of equality are attained by the perception of the interplay of the transcendental consciousness, universal- consciousness, individual consciousness and also the interplay of the action of Para Prakriti and Apara Prakriti. With these experiences, there comes about the annihilation of desire and also of ego. Sri Aurobindo... attained. This is e perception of Purusha as a poise of the individual, where the individual itself can be experienced as a portion — an ś a and a portion derived from a higher creative force, parā Page 27 prakriti, from a transcendental origin, Purushottama. In the philosophical language of India, this experience of the individual is that of a jiva, which has been described as a formation ...
... or divine perfection is to be achieved, Sri Aurobindo says: These three elements, a union with the supreme Divine, unity with the universal Self, and a supramental life action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the individual as the soul-channel and natural instrument, constitute the essence of the Integral divine perfection of the human being. 16 The... occasion for collective and individual Sadhana and that is why I engage myself in it and take special interest in it. We do not work for the success of X's play, or of Y's dance, or Z's scenario. We want to render in physical terms, as perfectly as possible, the inspiration sent by the Lord for the accomplishment of His work upon earth. And for that each individual soul is a helper and a c... The basic condition for this to happen would be for man to break out of his ego into the larger freedom of union with the universal Divine: He must cease to be the mental, vital, physical ego; for that is always the creation, instrument and subject of mental, vital, physical Nature... While the identification lasts, there is a self-imprisonment in this habitual round and narrow action.... The ...
... same message? Because the world situation requires the message, because there is a need, therefore it has come. I will give one line that explains this nicely: Aswapathy has reached the transcendent consciousness, and he is looking down, from the plane of Motherhood, the House of the Spirit. Then suddenly there came a downward look. Aswapathy looked down As if a sea exploring... Do you follow the image properly? Then what did he see? A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white love Caught all into a sole immense embrace; When he looked down from the transcendent, he saw that The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul, To feel was a flame-discovery of God, All mind was a single harp of many strings. All life a song of many meeting... typifies one line of growth. The King passes through one stage, Savitri passes through another, penetrating into the cosmic constitution. Aswapathy expands his consciousness into the cosmic and transcendent. Knowing the constitution of existence, he tries to fulfil the mission that is given to him of progress towards the Light, and for that progress he requires the help of the Divine so he prays for ...
... includes both liberation and transcendence, but it takes liberation or even a certain Nirvana, if that comes, as a first step and not as the last step of its siddhi. Whatever exit to or towards the Transcendent it achieves is an ascent accompanied by a descent of the power, light, consciousness that has been achieved and it is by such descents that is to be achieved the spiritual and supramental transformation... that transformation is not a result or object of the Yoga of Knowledge. The realisation of the Yoga of Knowledge is when one feels that one lives in the wideness of something silent, featureless and universal (called the Self) and all else is seen as only forms and names; the Self is real, nothing else. The realisation of " my self in other forms" is a part of this or a step towards it, but in the full... man who has the realisation from feeling and meeting the Divine behind the disguise. I have known even instances in which the perception of the Divine in all accompanied by an intense experience of universal love or a wide experience of an inner harmony had an extraordinary effect in making all around kind and helpful, even the most coarse and hard and cruel. Perhaps it is some such experience which is ...
... with its psychological and physical instruments, limited by them, bound by its personality, subject to Nature, and the life of the Spirit, superior to these things, large, impersonal, universal, free, unlimited, transcendent, supporting with an infinite equality its natural being and action, but exceeding them by its freedom and infinity. We may live in what is now our natural being or we may live in our... many Purushas and not one universal Purusha, otherwise the separate experience of the soul and its separate Page 256 liberation while millions of others are still involved, would not be intelligible. Nature is not a separate principle, but the power of the Supreme going forth in cosmic creation. But if the Supreme is only this immutable Self and the individual is only something that has... personal emotions no longer govern it; where the dualities fall away; where the action is no longer our own and where therefore the sense of personal virtue and personal sin is exceeded; where the universal, the impersonal, the divine spirit works out through us its purpose in the world; where we are ourselves by a new and divine birth changed into being of that Being, consciousness of that Consciousness ...
... independent of any outer equipment, ornamentation, or environment; the subjective state alone of the individual can make the form beautiful. Sri Aurobindo clarifies the nature of the experience of beauty and its highest seeking : " When it (the soul) can get the touch of this universal absolute beauty, this soul of beauty, this sense of its revelation in any slightest or greatest thing... with the spirit of the poem, with a character in a drama or a story, and at the same time a detachment keeps all personal elements aside. The individual out- grows the limits of his ego, enlarges his being, and has the Page 89 joy of the universal consciousness. That is why Vishwanath the Sanskrit critic, speaks of the delight or Rasa E "Brahmananda sahodara" "of the same nature as the... escape from the imprisonment of human limitations, beating ineffectively their wings against the bars. But their perception has great truth and power; they stress the need for reaching out to the transcendent beauty. Shelly writes : I can give not what men call love; But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above, And the Heavens reject not; The desire of the moth ...
... It is to this Godhead, this Being that the Bhakti of an integral Yoga will be poured out and uplifted. Transcendent, it will seek him in the ecstasy of an absolute union; universal, it will seek him in infinite quality and every aspect and in all beings with a universal delight and love; individual, it will enter into all human relations with him that love creates between person and person. Page... our consciousness, and then too love and adoration find their place. And even when our personality seems to disappear into unity with it, it may still be — and really is — the individual divine who is melting to the universal or the supreme by a union in which love and lover and loved are forgotten in a fusing experience of ecstasy, but are Page 237 still there latent in the oneness... everywhere where he manifests his being. All the beauty and joy of existence is seen as his joy and beauty; he is embraced by the spirit in all beings; the ecstasy of love enjoyed pours itself out in a universal love; all existence becomes a radiation of its delight and even in its very appearances is transformed into something other than its outward appearance. The world itself is experienced as a play of ...
... Nature (parā prakriti)” 74 The divine birth of which Sri Krishna speaks has significance not only for the individual in whom that birth takes place, but since that birth arises from the universal and transcendental supreme divine, it has also universal significance and universal consequence, a wider and higher significance, and it is in that context that the Gita's meaning of divine incarnation... union with the divine, all knowledge by identity with the divine, all the manifestation of the divine in human being, is essentially an influx of the divine from its transcendence and universality, and each individual who receives in his being this influx is a recipient of the descent of the divine consciousness and therefore of divine incarnation, divine avatarhood. But Sri Krishna goes farther and... Page 92 have knowledge of the Self. Once again, this is a reaffirmation of the statement in the Kena Upanishad 90 where the Brahman consciousness is described as "tad vanam”, the transcendent Delight the all-blissful ananda of which the Taittriya Upanishad speaks as the highest Brahman from which all existences are born, by which all existences arrive in their passing out of death and ...
... using terms like individual, universal and transcendent as though they are mechanical formulas: Page 528 We speak as though things had unfolded in time... but it is not quite like that!... if you enter into a certain state of consciousness, you can at any moment be in contact with the transcendent Shakti, and you can also, with another movement, be in contact with the universal Shakti, and... these instruments' toil to know; Knowledge was Nature's pastime like the rest. ... There reigned a breath of high immune content, A fortunate gait of days in tranquil air, A flood of universal love and peace. 27 Page 530 The Mother's class in the Playground X Thus , while some in the outside world were speculating as to whether the Ashram would long survive... Evening after evening, this bombardment of souls by the soul continued, and there was in the result a widening, deepening and heightening of the consciousness of the congregation as well as of its individual members. Where was the academic testing technique that could register the success attained from time to time? On the other hand, of the eager-eyed children who hearkened to the Mother's words and ...
... percussion and the delivering shock come by the touch of the Divine on our actual nature which directs the energy away from its normal limited separative action and objects towards the Eternal, Universal and Transcendent, orientates it towards the infinite and absolute Godhead. This truth of the dynamic omnipresence of the divine Power of being is the foundation of the theory of the Vibhuti. The infinite... possible. Themselves too, their soul, mind, life and physical mould he will see only as a result of the power, will and force of this one Self and Spirit. All will be to him a becoming of this one universal Being. Their consciousness he will see to be derived entirely from its consciousness, their power and will to be drawn from and dependent on its power and will, their partial phenomenon of nature... and the giving up of his whole being into the Godhead, is able indeed to rise to the absolute Transcendence, but also to act upon the world, no longer in ignorance, but in the right relation of the individual to the Supreme, in the truth of the Spirit, fulfilled in immortality, for God in the world and no longer for the ego. To call Arjuna to this action, to make him aware of the being and power that ...
... talk about it for fear of ridicule. The Britannica Concise Encyclopedia defines “near-death experience” as follows: “Mystical or transcendent experience reported by people who have been on the threshold of death. The near-death experience varies with each individual, but characteristics frequently include hearing oneself declared dead, feelings of peacefulness, the sense of leaving one’s body, the... their psychic resting place. The significance of “she whom we call the Mother” can only be fully understood in her three aspects as the Great Mother of many names, but always “the one original transcendent Shakti;” as Mahashakti, the cosmic Mother of the Gods; and as the incarnated Mother in the Yoga. The Great Mother is known in all great spiritual and occult traditions, even though variously... the Vedantic scriptures: It is I who am the offspring of what gave birth to me [what gave birth to her being the One]; And it is I who am the Mother [the Great Mother, the one original transcendent Shakti]; It is I who am the wife [Shakti to Ishwara, in human metaphorical language]; It is I who am the virgin [for ever the untouchable Origin of all]; It is I who am pregnant [with ...
... Space a single book: There is the Godhead's universal gaze And there the boundaries of immortal Mind. 27 In the Overmind "all inner individual sight or intelligence of things is now a revelation or illumination of what is seen or comprehended, but the source of the revelation is not in one's separate self but in the universal knowledge." 28 Here are some verses from ... Page 162 In reality, the origin, the continent, the initial and the ultimate truth of all that is easily anywhere in the universe is the triune principle of Sachchidananda: it is a transcendent and infinite and absolute Existence-Consciousness-Bliss which is the very nature of the divine Being. Thus Sachchidananda is the One with a triple aspect of functioning differently in... "full dynamic truth of Sachchidananda and the universe and its consequence cannot be grasped by any other consciousness than the supermind." 72 Sachchidananda contains all in a passive transcendent consciousness but becomes, sustains and governs everything by an active constituting consciousness. The higher hemisphere is the realm of the Spirit's perfect and eternal reign. There ...
... mortal sight." 18 For, from the spiritual point of view, sleep denotes a poise of consciousnes in which we are completely ignorant of the fundamental truths of existence, — of existence individual, cosmic or transcendent, — and of the Reality that is at the basis of all things; while the dream-state signifies that particular status in which we may be aware of this "reality" but only in a distorted, disfigured... the evolving terrestrial cycle as its central and significant element, has for its goal the self-finding of Sachchidananda, of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss absolute, in other conditions than the transcendent supracosmic, and even in the apparent opposites of His being, occasioned by an embodied material existence. Thus, for divine Sachchidananda to trace the cycle of self-oblivion and self-discovery... that knowledge, because it is itself in its substance and nature that self-conscious self-existence dynamic in illumined action." 58 But this Self-Existent Sachchidananda is not merely a transcendent supra-cosmic Creator: He Himself has become this universe, 52.Vyasa, Brahma-Sutra, 14.9. Compare: "The world is but a spark-burst from its light, All moments flashes from its ...
... of that evolutionary ascension. For, this man, the transitional being, is destined to become the vehicle of the establishment and manifestation of divine life upon earth. And for that, the Transcendent-Universal Lord of existence has come down into the heart of every human being to take His permanent position there as the inner Controller, Antaryāmī. He is guiding man from there towards his future... world existence has some sort of lesser reality and offers us some scope of happy enjoyment, why should the sadhaka be interested in that, once he has tasted the absolute bliss and peace of the Transcendent? For he knows by experience that even the highest and the intensest worldly pleasure stands no comparison with Brahmananda, the Bliss of Brahman. Any enjoyment of worldly objects, whatever they... the primary aim of all spiritual sadhana. But what is important to note in Page 67 this connection is that this absolute Existence-Consciousness is not utterly and absolutely a Transcendent Reality; it is no doubt beyond Time and Space but it is at the same time immanent in world-existence and governing and guiding the manifestation as the Lord of cosmos, Viśveśvara. The question ...
... spiritually, morally, socially for the reign of universal peace; meanwhile the aspect of battle and the nature and function of man as a fighter have to be accepted and accounted for by any practical philosophy and religion.” 28 “The Yoga having come down against the bed-rock of Inconscience which is the fundamental basis of all resistance in the individual and in the world,” 29 the situation of... the world are God’s discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda.” 13 Sri Aurobindo touches here upon the question that has been on the mind of all humans since their appearance on the Earth, and to which all religions have to provide... our souls have chosen to incarnate in this evolutionary universe. “If it be true that the Self alone exists, it must also be true that all is the Self.” “The gospel of universal peace and goodwill among men – for without a universal and entire mutual goodwill there can be no real and abiding peace – has never succeeded for a moment in possessing itself of human life during the historic cycle of our ...
... a sentence on "Absolute": "... It is the individual soul and all souls and more of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe."¹³ The other instance effects an entertaining anagram on the nature of dead matter by giving us "cold" for "clod" in a phrase on the surrender, in "Adhyātma Yoga", to the transcendent, infinite and universal Personality who "informs with his being not only... renders difficult any completeness of internal surrender even to a greater Light and Knowledge, even to the divine influence - these are frequent obstacles. "But these things are not universal in Westerners; they are super-structural formations, not the very grain of the being. They cannot permanently stand in the way of the soul, if the soul's aspiration is strong and firm, if the... does not philosophise in any intellectual fashion, but she often transmits in a systematised intellect-stirring shape the discoveries she has made in the realms of psychology, occultism, the universal consciousness, the transcendental being. To every subject discussed she brings a quickening insight. Sometimes the insight is simultaneously profound and piquant. Thus we read under Meditation ...
... immanent Divine, the Divine who is at the centre of each being and of whom the psychic being is the sheath and the expression. By the psychic change one passes from the individual Divine to the universal Divine and finally to the Transcendent. The spiritual change puts you directly in contact with the Supreme. 9 September 1959 Sweet Mother, How can one make one's psychic personality grow... exist! The soul is that which comes from the Divine without ever leaving Him, and returns to the Divine without ceasing to be manifest. The soul is the Divine made individual without ceasing to be divine. In the soul the individual and the Divine are eternally one; therefore, to find one's soul is to find God; to identify with one's soul is to unite with the Divine. Thus it may be said that... facilitates and improves respiration increases at the same time the absorption of physical energy. But there are many other kinds of energies, or rather many other forms of Energy, which is one and universal. And it is through the various yogic exercises of breathing, meditation, japa and concentration that one puts oneself in contact with these various forms of Energy. 10 September 1959 ...
... knowledge. Through this process of knowledge by identity or intuition the seers of Upanishads came easily to see that the self in us is one with the universal self of all things and that this self again is the same as God and Brahman, the transcendent Being or Existence, and they beheld, felt, lived in the inmost truth of all things in the universe as well as the inmost truth of man's inner and outer... complete and separate cosmic personality of the one Existence. In their combination of the powers, they form the complete universal power, the cosmic whole. Each again, apart from his special function, is one godhead with others. Each holds in Page 12 himself the universal divinity, each god is all the other gods. This complex aspect of the Vedic teaching and worship has been given by European... regarded as its greatest power. Consciousness of the godheads can be built, according to the Vedic teaching, within man, and affirmation of these powers leads to the conversion of human nature into universality of divine nature. Gods are the guardians and increasers of the Truth, the powers of the Immortal, the sons of the Infinite Mother, Aditi. Man arrives at immortality by calling the gods into himself ...
... find that we are not limited, for we also are infinite. Our ego is only a face of the universal being and has no separate existence; our apparent separative individuality is only a surface movement and behind it our real individuality stretches out to unity with all things and upward to oneness with the transcendent Divine Infinity. Thus our ego, which seems to be a limitation of existence, is really... for Prakriti cannot act without the assent of the Purusha. There must have been not only the will of the Divine Purusha to make the cosmic creation possible, but the assent of the individual Purusha to make the individual manifestation possible. But it may be said that the reason for the Divine Will and delight in such a difficult and tormented progressive manifestation and the reason for the soul's... reality alone and discount the suggestions of the outer figure, such might be the nature of the evolution, the change we have to undergo in Nature; so it would appear perhaps to the impartial eye of a universal vision untroubled by our dualities of knowledge and ignorance, good and evil, happiness and suffering and participating in the untrammelled consciousness and delight of Sachchidananda. And yet, from ...
... itself in the multiple forms of the universal motion. One begins to become what inwardly one sees. The whole inner life undergoes a radical change so that life begins to represent perfectly in all parts of the being what is understood by the intellect and seen by the inner perception. The limits of the individual mentality and the limits in which the individual soul had experienced bondage begin to... continues to develop it, continues to control it and continues to enjoy it. Thus the Brahman is Purusha and is also Ishwara, the Lord. All that is in the universe, whatsoever is individual universe of movement in the universal motion is for habitation by the Lord (Īśa vāsyam idam sarvam yat kinca jagatyām jagat). 50 In the following two verses, the Isha Upanishad formulates the highest realization... — the totality of particulars, ever expanding particulars or names and forms. Apart from this perception of all this, all can be conceived in a vast universality of things without beginning or end; there is also the perception of a number of individuals, —many centers of consciousness, each occupying a conglomeration or a group of particular names and forms. At this stage, what is realized is a pluralistic ...
... peace of the immutable Self, universal in consciousness and eternally equal to all impacts of the world. It is one of the prerequisites of the manifestation of the Divine in and through the liberated soul of man. It is only in this boundless, nameless Page 22 peace that the liberated individual develops what the Gita calls Para Bhakti, and by this transcendent love and adoration knows... it is usually found to be a precarious peace and very superficial, behind which one can often hear the uneasy rumble of the rebellious forces. The Socratic confession of suppressed passions is a universal experience which sometimes damps the ardours of youthful idealism and leads to cynicism or pessimism. A peace or calm held at the point of the sword against the unflagging opposition of its enemies... Spirit, infinite, eternal, all-embracing and all-transcending. It is through this peace alone that the Divine can sovereignly act in the liberated human instrument. Man, torn and tossed by the universal unrest, pants today for peace : his soul is in deep agony. War and strife have become the order of the day, war and strife in every walk of life; and everywhere there is a conflict of values, a crumbling ...
... self-fulfilment as the Individual in the Yoga of the King (Cantos 3,4 and 5 of Book I). Next, he makes an ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness. This is described in the second Book (consisting of 15 cantos). Finally, he aspires no longer for himself but for all, for universal realisation and new... unconscious, prone. 6 He now reached the highest state — the Parabrahman state. On the break of his trance he knocked at the doors of the Unknowable. He moved through regions of transcendent Truth above Space and Time. He had reached the top of all that can be known. 7 He was a vast that soon became a Sun. 8 All these things are depicted in detail in the Cantos... strength, but it refused his call. His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured. At last he knew defeat inevitable And left crumbling the shape that he had worn... The dire universal Shadow disappeared Vanishing into the Void from which it came... And Satyavan and Savitri were alone. 18 In Book XI, there is only one canto consisting of about 1500 lines "dictated ...
... traditional Yogas, and with a sanction and equipment unknown, because unnecessary, to them. Since it seeks neither merely the personal salvation of the human soul, nor its self-extinction in the transcendent Absolute, nor any rapt and rapturous union with the Supreme in some Heaven beyond, but a constant, total and dynamic union with the Divine in life, it takes care to lay a triple foundation consisting... view to making the surrender complete and constant, which, of course, involves a considerable purification. The tapasyâ of the egoistic individual lies simply in resolutely willing and compassing its own abdication, its utter effacement, in favour of the true individual, the soul, and its eternal Master, the Divine. Each part of the complex human nature, each movement of its thought and feeling and... has become all existences that are Becomings, for he has AC perfect knowledge, how shall he be deluded, whence shall be have grief who sees everywhere oneness?" It is a state of being infinite and universal, liberated from the shackles of the ego. It is to put on Brahmanhood, and con- front the world with the calm regard of the Eternal. But it is not easy to have equality all at once in the beginning ...
... of knowledge. Through this process of knowledge by identity or intuition the seers of Upanishads came easily to see that the self in us is one with the universal self of all things and that this self again is the same as God and Brahman, a transcendent Being or Existence, and they beheld, felt, lived in the inmost truth of all things in the universe and the inmost truth of man's inner and outer existence... himself a complete and separate cosmic personality of the one Existence. And in their combination of powers they form the complete universal power, the cosmic whole. Each again, apart from his special function, is one godhead with the others. Each holds in himself the universal divinity; each god is all the other gods. This complex aspect of the Vedic teaching and worship has been given by the European... may be regarded as its greatest power. Power of the godheads can be built, according to the Vedic teaching, within man, and affirmation of these powers leads to the conversion of human nature into universality of divine nature. The gods are the guardians and increasers of the Truth, the powers of the Immortal, the sons of the Infinite Mother, Aditi. Man arrives at immortality by calling of the gods into ...
... mechanically determines its own action; it is the will of the Supreme which inspires her; he who has already slain the Dhritarashtrians, he of whom Arjuna is only the human instrument, a universal Soul, a transcendent Godhead is the master of her labour. The reposing of works in the Impersonal is a means of getting rid of the personal egoism of the doer, but the end is to give up all our actions to that... of the hasty human will: Yoga, says the Gita elsewhere, is the true skill in works, yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam . But all this is done impersonally by the action of a great universal light and power operating through the individual nature. The Karmayogin knows that the power given to him will be adapted to the fruit decreed, the divine thought behind the work equated with the work he has to do, the will... the perplexed thinker who judges life and works by the external, uncertain and impermanent distinctions of the lower reason. Therefore the liberated man is not afraid of action, he is a large and universal doer of all works, kṛtsna-karma-kṛt ; not as others do them in subjection to Nature, but poised in the silent calm of the soul, tranquilly in Yoga with the Divine. The Divine is the lord of his works ...
... The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and 44 Ibid., p. 99. 45 The Mother, SABCL, Vol. 25, pp. 24- 25. 46 Savitri . p. 295. 47 Ibid. Page 119 the ineffable Presence.... The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out... directly. There is a similarity in the tone of expression with the verse of the Gita: The Lord abides in the heart of all beings. So also, the two lines referring to the original Transcendent One: He was here before the elements could emerge, Before there was light of mind or life could breathe. 35 These are similar to a Vedic hymn That One lived without breath... 37 At first it looks rather a philosophical statement to our intellect; but really speaking, in the context of the poem where the poet speaks of the whole cosmos as the figure of the Transcendent One and sees the process of the creation of duality from the original Identity, each of these lines adds an aspect and a colour to the apparent self-division of the One. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad ...
... her endless act". Sāvitrī , Book II, Canto 14. "Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and the ineffable Presence; The Mahāśakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever Page 57 is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine ... exist....Each of „ the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahāśakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother....The one original transcendent śakti, the Mother, stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine''. Mother (P. 38). The spiritual truth conveying the logic... the tone of expression with the verse of the Gītā,: "The Lord abides in the heart of all beings". Gītā, XVIII, 61. So also, the two lines referring to the original Transcendent One: "He was here before the elements could emerge, Before there was light of mind or life could breathe". Sāvitrī , Book I, Canto 4. are similar to one of the Vedic hymn; ...
... the question for all Avatars, how much less can it be conceived in connection with the incarnate Supermind? The Supermind, unlike even the highest Overmind consciousness like Sri Krishna's, is the Transcendent not acting indirectly as in Sri Krishna through the supreme grade of the Cosmic Divine, but acting directly, with all the 1 Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, p. 411. 2 Ibid. ... from becoming dominant was in enough exercise but there seemed to be a standstill, a kind of stalemate. We have to say "seemed" because the Supramental Avatar holds by the right of a direct transcendent origin, the capacity to counter and annul all cosmic laws. The Mother could have brought that capacity into play and moved forward, but the reversal of the problem she had admitted into herself—the... the World-Play, she consented to the dissolution of a body whose cells where passing through the sublime suffering of a radical recast under the Supermind's Page 147 pressure. The Transcendent, that was her own highest Self, overruled in the interests of His earth-creatures His own planned triumph in a chosen vehicle. The sole course open to the Mother was to let fall the body she ...
... health and holiness. These four h's are things that are modes of the Mother's "warm wide being" already present in the world's depths. The Divinity high above in the Transcendent is also there within us and within the universal existence. That is what is implied by the phrase you have quoted from Sri Aurobindo: "... this consciousness, this supreme reality which is behind all existence, which is... pursuit". Teilhard de Chardin was born with an intuition of Indian spirituality that he called "pantheism" and grossly misunderstood because of the Western pantheistic philosophy that excludes the Transcendent. He always fought with himself because of conventional Catholic scruples and never achieved the synthesis of the true Indian spirituality which, from the time of the Rigveda, held that the Supreme... can judge that you and your wife are going on steadily forward. There is a poise full of a quiet happy receptivity - a sure sign of a touch on you from both the infinite Self of all and the true individual soul, the Divine Immense and the Divine Intense, the peace of the Beyond and the joy of the Within. The Beyond tends to put an end to what Sri Aurobindo calls "time's unrest" and to bring an unshakable ...
... our inner being is seated in the light of self-knowledge. The third step is to know the Divine Being who is at once our supreme transcendent Self, the Cosmic Being, foundation of our universality, and the Divinity within of which our psychic being, the true evolving individual in our nature, is a portion, a spark, a flame growing into the eternal Fire from which it was lit and of which it is the witness... is its law of being, its dharma. This limitation of mind-consciousness by personality and of truth by mental temperament and preference must be the rule of our nature so long as the individual has not reached universality, is not yet preparing for mind-transcendence. But it is evident that this condition is inevitably a source of error and can at any moment be the cause of a falsification of knowledge... consciousness in these conditions is the growth of a self-affirming vital and physical individual, a construction of Nature of life and matter with a concealed psychic or spiritual true individual behind it for which Nature is creating this outward means of expression. As mentality increases, this vital and material individual takes the more developed form of a constantly self-affirming mental, vital and physical ...
... with 'inconstant blink of mortal sight.' For, spiritually, sleep denotes a poise of consciousness in which we are ignorant of the fundamental truths of existence — existence whether individual, cosmic or transcendent — and of the Reality that is at the basis of all things; while the dream state signifies that particular status in which we may be aware of this "reality" but only in a distorted... Self; we take the constant mobility and mutation of the cosmic becoming in Time and Space for the whole truth of existence, — that is the second, the cosmic ignorance. We are ignorant of our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, our infinite unity with all being and becoming; we take our limited egoistic mentality, vitality, corporeality for our true self and regard ...
... synthesis, based on the Vedanta, of ancient and modern thought. In him the values of being and becoming, of Spirit and matter, of the One and the many, of the eternal and the temporal, of the universal and the individual, of the personal God and the absolute Godhead, are integrated in a vision of the whole, which has never been surpassed in depth and comprehensiveness. In the integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo... shocked on finding grounds to suspect what may be called "panpsychism" or even "pantheism" - but actually these "heresies" appear not in their European form which can be taken to exclude or negate the transcendent Divine but in their Indian version in which, as far back as the Rigveda, the Seers perceived about the Supreme Purusha (Person) that "one quarter of him is here on earth, three quarters are above... experiences. She was even reported as equating the Grace-Light to the supramental consciousness and as saying that a number of individuals, known or unknown, are likely to have brought this consciousness to the earth throughout the ages but that now instead of an individual possibility Sri Aurobindo Page 11 and she were working to establish it as a collective possibility, as a t ...
... world of ignorance. In fact ascending through the grades of spiritual consciousness, our sight also climbs to higher and higher worlds and in the process it acquires a certain universality; it can leap even into the transcendent. What was so far incomprehensible now comes into its all-encompassing view. In that sight an identity between the subject and the object is at once experienced. Then the "spirit... real, to effect it in the physical, she spared no effort. In that effort in the Will of the Lord she brought the proclaimed future at our doorsteps. 3: After the siddhis of the Individual Yoga and the Universal Yoga Aswapati has to move forward. He has yet to discover the solution to the problem of imperfection of this suffering world. In the Transcendental Yoga of Aswapati a moment comes when... terrestrial creation. That Creatrix in the nature of the Word is held by Brahma in his clasp 5 and, when she comes out, she comes out as Gayatri in the Transcendent and Savitri in this world of ours. While as Gayatri she is the creative force in the Transcendent, in the mortal world she 5 Savitri, p. 525. takes birth as Savitri for the transformative action. If from that Word world ...
... this Page 467 Dharma or inferior law of Nature is replaced by the immortal dharma of the spirit; there is the experience of a free immortal action, a divine illimitable knowledge, a transcendent power, an unfathomable repose. But still there remains the question of the transition; for there must be a transition, a proceeding by steps, since nothing in God's workings in this world is done... sattwic nature. The distinction between the Deva and the Asura is not comprehensive of all humanity, not rigidly applicable to all its individuals, neither is it sharp and definite in all stages of the moral or spiritual history of the race or in all phases of the individual evolution. The tamasic man who makes so large a part of the whole, falls into neither category as it is here described, though he... divine spiritual Will which uses at present these inferior conditions, but is itself not limited, not dominated, not mechanised, as is the human will, by the gunas. No doubt, since these modes are so universal in their action, they must proceed from something inherent in the power of the Spirit; there must be powers in the divine Will-force from which these from aspects of Prakriti have their origin. For ...
... one Consciousness and a pure channel and instrument of the one Existence. A support for the individual manifestation and action of the universal Force, it gradually reveals behind it the true Person in us, the central eternal being, an everlasting being of the Supreme, a power and portion of the transcendent Shakti.¹ Here too, in this movement by which the soul divests itself gradually of the obscure... come from a transcendent Reality which takes form in them: the mind and life of the individual being, its self in nature must therefore be a partial self-expression of the cosmic Being and, both through that and directly, a self-expression of the transcendent Reality, — a conditional and half-veiled expression it may be, but still that is its significance. But also we see that what the expression shall... first and last word of existence. If we enter through the Saguna into some ultimate possible of experience, we arrive at a divine Absolute, a personal supreme and omnipresent Godhead, transcendent as well as universal, an infinite Master of all Page 185 relations and determinations who can uphold in his being a million universes and pervade each with a single ray of his self-light and a ...
... his own practice. His main contribution, amongst others, has been the now widely recognized concept of the existence of a ' universal collective unconscious we can see reflected in the myths and fairy-tales of the peoples all over the world and in the dreams of many individuals. 2. Heracleitus: Heracleitus was born to a noble family in Ephesus around 530 BC and died, probably of dropsy* in his... has been present in all cultures of the world since time immemorial, even though questioned and denied from time to time. Carl Jung, ¹ the father of depth psychology, viewed Man's urge towards transcendent meaning as an instinct sui generis٭ in the human psyche, or as he would say, "an innate predisposition of mankind.” All over the world, the spiritual foundation of a society is reflected... animating power, is a remarkably universal feature in the religious culture of the ancient world, and similarly even wood-gods, river-gods, mountain-gods, house-gods, tree deities, snake deities peopled the world of ancient India. But the great gods of the Vedas, as well as the Olympians belonged to a much higher order. They were great powers, supporting universal laws and functions, and were not ...
... truth and a large aspect of it. It is really Himself in his relation to the Universe, but not the whole of Himself. But the ancient Aryans of India raised the veil completely and saw Him as the Universal Transcendent Self of all things who is at the same time the particular present Self in each. They reached His singleness aloof from phenomena, they saw Him in every one of His million manifestations in... them to Him. With the declaration of the Eternal as the Universal and Omnipresent Lord the Upanishad must, therefore, begin. Now it is about to take a step farther & set forth the ideal of the Karmayogin and the consummation of his yoga. It preludes the new train of thought by identifying Isha the Lord with Parabrahman the Eternal and Transcendent Reality. Not only does He surround and sustain as the... the motion of Spirit in Cosmos is the illusory motion we see in the landscape as it whirls swiftly past the quiet watcher in the railway-carriage. The individual Self in Man is the watcher in the train, the train is Prakriti, the landscape the Universal Self in the Cosmos. The watcher is not moving, the landscape is not moving; it is the train which is moving and carries the sitter with it. In this second ...
... effort and the Divine Grace. Personal effort is to be done by the individual and not by the Divine; aspiration, rejection and surrender are within the field of the individual effort. But to bring perception, to develop power, to give him the Truth, to give him the cosmic consciousness, to give him the experience of the transcendent consciousness, to give him the transformation, to bring the four-fold... and there is a revaluation of his whole individual life. The way in which he looked at the world before and the way in which he perceives it after are not the same. That is what makes the difficulty of spiritual persons. For instance, somebody says, "This man is bad". The spiritual man says, "There is a bad tendency in Nature; there is no bad man. Universal nature has some tendency which is low... Of course, he does not do it individually. Today scientific research is done in collective groups. It is not possible for an individual to do it. Collectivity must take advantage of scientific progress and apply it so that it is now the result of the groups. An individual is only a means to make this collective progress possible. But this scientific will or this will to increase knowledge in the ...
... inference to have intended or purposed—our inferences are often wrong and even when they are right touch only the surface of the matter. All life is the play of universal forces. The individual gives a personal form to these universal forces. But he can choose whether he shall respond or not to the action of a particular force. Only most people do not really choose—they undergo the play of the forces... established. The one thing is to preserve equanimity and make an opportunity and means of progress out of all that happens in the course of the life and the sadhana. There is a higher secret Will transcendent behind the play and will of the cosmic forces—a play which is always a mixture of things favourable and things adverse—and it is that Will which one must wait upon and have faith in; but you must... trickery from the other side of the veil. Very little genuine knowledge of the nature of the after-life can be gathered from these séances; a true knowledge is more often gained by the experience of individuals who make serious contact or are able in one way or another to cross the border. They [ mediums and clairvoyants ] are most of them in contact with the vital-physical or subtle physical worlds ...
... air of the Spirit-skies that a new limitless vista will open before him and he will know that he is infinitely greater than he ever imagined, and that he has the power to reveal and radiate this transcendent greatness by every part of his being, even by every pore of his body. "There is , so to say, no limit to its (the body’) growth in capacities and to its progress”, says the Mother, "provided... preconceived mould. But the best results can only be obtained if the body and its evolving consciousness are steadily opened to the infinite consciousness and force of the Divine. Once united to its universal source and sustenance, it will receive a perennial flow and know no defeat or depletion. Among several means of replenishing the bodily energies, the Mother mentions two : "The first is to put... into contact with it and to receive it, it is sufficient to sincerely aspire for it, to open oneself to it in faith and confidence, so as to enlarge one's consciousness for identifying it with the universal Consciousness, ”¹ "We can easily imagine what would be the consequences of this power to draw at will and in all circumstances from the limitless source of an omnipotent energy in its luminous ...
... Yoga. By Yoga, says Sri Aurobindo, "We mean ... a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the potentialities latent in the being and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent existence we see partially expressed in man and in the cosmos." Page 349 In the right view of Yoga and of Education, we find, Education and Yoga are one and identical... and if it is lit and continues to burn, then, we are assured, we shall arrive. A thousand-rayed sun of solid mass of knowledge illuminating, by an incessant downpour of its sheer lustre, the universal skies and the hidden and distant secrets of Matter, a most potent drive of energy and action, and an irresistible bursting forth of love, joy and marvellous forms of beauty - these are the new ideals... body with the psychic centre and the body will learn to put forth at every minute the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action, to replace through contact with universal forces the energies it spends consciously and usefully. By this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, Page 366 reflecting the harmony of the regions which will ...
... ego and personal will and the thought of the mind are the motives of action only in the lower nature; when the ego is lost and the Yogin becomes Brahman, when he lives in and is, even, a transcendent and universal consciousness, action comes spontaneously out of that... (Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, I, p. 303) Page 61 Action without desire is possible, action... is organised now, there would be no individual, and with the ego the world cannot become divine." 3 Similarly, desire in all its guises gross and subtle must be altogether extirpated from our waking consciousness, if we would like to acquire a divine life of action and creation firmly established in the consummated transcendence of the universal Ignorance; for, contrary to what is generally... in the All-Being.... Desire is the result of incompleteness, of insufficiency, of something that is not possessed or enjoyed and which the being seeks for possession or enjoyment. A supreme and universal Being can have the delight of its all-existence, but to that delight desire must be foreign, — it can only 1 2 The Life Divine, p. 960. (Italics ours) 3 Bulletin of Sri ...
... being. This indeed is the dual importance of the individual that it is through him that the cosmic spirit organises its collective units and makes them self-expressive and progressive and through him that it raises Nature from the Inconscience to the Superconscience and exalts it to meet the Transcendent.” 27 “It is always the individual who receives the intuitions of Nature and takes the... always crystal clear and exactly to the point. “The individual is not merely the ephemeral physical creature, a form of mind and body that aggregates and dissolves, but a being, a living power of the eternal Truth, a self-manifesting spirit.” 24 “The individual is indeed the key of the evolutionary movement; for it is the individual who finds himself, who becomes conscious of the Reality... this right and this liberty except the obligation to respect the same individual liberty and right in others.” 29 “The great evolutionary periods of humanity have taken place in communities where the individual became active, mentally, vitally or spiritually alive. For this reason Nature invented the ego that the individual might disengage himself from the inconscience or subconscience of ...
... immanent Divine, the Divine who is at the centre of each being and of whom the psychic being is the vesture and the expression. By the psychic change one passes from the individual Divine to the universal Divine and finally to the Transcendent. The spiritual change puts you directly in contact with the Supreme. 8 September 1959 * * * Sweet Mother, How can one draw energy into oneself from... exist! The soul is that which comes from the Divine without ever leaving Him, and returns to the Divine without ceasing to be manifest. The soul is the Divine made individual without ceasing to be divine. In the soul the individual and the Divine are eternally one; therefore, to find one’s soul is to find God; to identify with one’s soul is to unite with the Divine. Thus it may be said that... facilitates and improves respiration, increases at the same time the absorption of physical energy. But there are many other kinds of energies, or rather many other forms of Energy, which is one and universal. And it is through the various yogic exercises of breathing, meditation and concentration that one puts oneself in contact with these various forms of Energy. What are these other forms of ...
... Mother. A secret splendour rose revealed to sight Where once the vast embodied Void had stood. Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face. 20 In that domain of pure transcendent light stood face to face the human Savitri and the transformed Satyavan. -3- Savitri has entered into the deathless luminous world where there is only faultless beauty, stainless... has to make a choice between two destinies, two soul-movements, — although the choice is already made even before it is offered to her, Aswapati had to abandon, we know, the silent immutable transcendent status of pure light in order to bathe in this lower earthly light. Savitri too, as the prototype of human consciousness, chose and turned to this light of the earth. The Rishi of the Upanishad... can the earth be radically changed and wholly transformed. In the beginning the Divine once came down, but by sacrificing Himself, being pulverised, scattered and lost in the infinitesimals of a universal, material, unconsciousness. Once again He has to come down, but this time in the supreme glory of His victorious Luminosity. This then is the occult, the symbolic sense of the Mother's gesture ...
... the Divine Mother. "A secret splendour rose revealed to sight Where once the vast embodied Void had stood. Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face." 1 In that domain of pure transcendent light stood face to face the human Savitri and the transformed Satyavan. (3) Savitri has entered into the deathless luminous world where there is only faultless beauty, stainless... Ashwapati, has to make a choice between two destinies, two soul-movements—although the choice is already made even before it is offered to her. Ashwapati had to abandon, we know, the silent immutable transcendent status of pure light in order to bathe in this lower earthly light. Savitri too as the prototype of human consciousness chose and turned to this light of the earth. The Rishi of the Upanishad... can the earth be radically changed and wholly transformed. In the beginning the Divine once came down, but by sacrificing Himself, being pulverised, scattered and lost in the infinitesimals of a universal, material, unconsciousness. Once again He has to come down, but this time in the supreme glory of His victorious Luminosity. This then is the occult, the symbolic sense of the Mother's gesture ...
... A secret splendour rose revealed to sight Where once the vast embodied Void had stood. Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face. 18 In that domain of pure transcendent light stood face to face the human Savitri and the transformed Satyavan. 15.Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 29, p. 664. 16. Ibid. p. 666. 17. Ibid, p. 667. 18. Ibid... Ashwapati, has to make a choice between two destinies, two soul-movements - although the choice is already made even before it is offered to her. Ashwapati had to abandon, we know, the silent immutable transcendent status of pure light in order to bathe in this lower earthly light. Savitri too as the prototype of human consciousness chose and turned to this light of the earth. The Rishi of the Upanishad... can the earth be radically changed and wholly transformed. In the beginning the Divine once came down, but by sacrificing Himself, being pulverised, scattered and lost in the infinitesimals of a universal, material, unconsciousness. Once again He has to come down, but this time in the supreme glory of His victorious Luminosity. This then is the occult, the symbolic sense of the Mother's gesture ...
... explains the differences in tendencies, aptitudes, capacities of individuals in' life. Another idea which is basic to Buddhism is that there is no substratum for the individual being; in fact, Page 129 there is no real individual, it is only a flux—a constant flow. of consciousness which gives the illusion of the persistent individual. Psychologically it worked out a system of self-control... Unconscious" reminds the Indian Student of the terms "Collective Consciousness", and " Cosmic Consciousness" already used in our Ancient Sacred "books. This Cosmic Consciousness and even a supra cosmic-transcendent-Consciousness mentioned in Indian books, are Superconscient to the ordinary man, but they are regarded as capable of being experienced by men if certain psychological conditions are fulfilled.¹... behaviour is influenced by these repressions in the individual. Even small slips and errors of behaviour are subconsciously determined by the repressed impulses. These repressed impulses Freud traced to the sexual impulse. The repression here consists in the forcible suppression of the sexual impulse by the social and normal pressure upon the individual. According to Freud sex-impulse is co-existensive ...
... status of the Mother's being, the first is the personal and individual, the second is this collective and universal being. But she is not merely the universe, she is the Mother of the universe. Hers is not merely earth's prayer, but the prayer of the Mother of the earth. It is not merely the prayer of the universe but the prayer of the Universal Mother to the Supreme Lord for the deliverance of the universe... enfant malade qu'il faut guérir et pour lequel on a, ài cause même de sa faiblesse, une tendresse toute spéciale.¹ The triple status of the Mother, the individual, the collective and the transcendental (or, in other words, the personal, the universal and the supra-personal) has been condensed and epitomised in the magical note describing her first meeting with the Lord: Peu importe qu'il... ent comme des rêves invécus. .¹ which possesses furthermore the magic of an indefinable mysticism so rare in the French language. The mystic element gives a special grace and flavour, a transcendent significance serving as an enveloping aura to the whole body of these Prayers and Meditations. One cannot, for example, but be bewitched by the mystic grandeur of this image : 0 Conscience ...
... comprehended, but the source of the revelation is not in one’s separate self but in the universal knowledge; the feelings, emotions, sensations are similarly felt as waves from the same cosmic immensity breaking upon the subtle and the gross body and responded to in kind by the individual centre of the universality; for the body is only a small support or even less, a point of relation, for the action... high and intense individual opening upwards is not sufficient, – to that vertical ascent towards summit Light there must be added a vast horizontal expansion of the consciousness into some totality of the Spirit. At the least, the inner being must already have replaced by its deeper and wider awareness the surface mind and its limited outlook and learned to live in a large universality; for otherwise... and feeling of a boundless universal self and movement replaces it: many motions that were formerly egocentric may still continue, but they occur as currents or ripples in the cosmic wideness. Thought, for the most part, no longer seems to originate individually in the body or the person but manifests from above or comes in upon the cosmic mind-waves: all inner individual sight or intelligence of ...
... theory the religious experience which leads man to find his final good beyond the world, would have its ultimate Ground in a transcendent and spiritual God. It is right to remind the reader that, though we speak of explaining the religious experience by reference to a transcendent Source, we do not and cannot mean explanation in the scientific sense of the term. For this, we know, signifies the est... this way, if his Being were bound up with that experience in the manner that a system is with its elements. The note of a transcendent Being is, that it cannot thus be co-ordinated with the parts of the world, nor can its activity be rationally deduced. 16 Hence a transcendent God 'explains' experience because he is its Sufficient Ground; but we cannot argue from the Ground to the dependent experience... (1911), and determines his conception and working out of the theory of the religious relation. Siebeck (Religionsphilosophie, p. 331 ff.) points out we cannot deduce the activity of a transcendent Being. 17.Ladd, Phil, of Religion, vol. ii. p. 68. Page 49 ...
... I know what is meant by universal surrender. The other day I had talked to you about it. I know what it is. I am given the experience. It is certainly not the surrender by everybody. It is the surrender of the universal consciousness of the individual. I saw it very clearly. Something came out from it and made the surrender. From some point of the universal the surrender is made by coming... physical body of Sri Aurobindo; the Mother was doing some work in me. My psychic being went to the Transcendent; yes, to the Transcendent—and about it I was told afterwards. But I do not know which part of me had gone along with it. Which part of me had gone along with the psychic being to the Transcendent, that I do not know. 07:04:1994 "I am working on your essential human elements." I heard... that had descended. It was that action which was going on. 27:12:1994 Day before yesterday, during the evening meditation, around the Samadhi, there was the Universal Consciousness. It was the Universal Consciousness that acted in me. It was the Overmind action. Yesterday, for a long time, for more than an hour, the work was going on. I saw the Mother returning, after the ...
... ourselves, into our free Soul and Self which is the same and one in all and has therefore no personal interests, to the Divine in our being who possesses Himself transcendent of cosmos and is therefore not bound by His cosmic works or His individual action. That is what the Gita teaches and desirelessness is only a means to this end, not an aim in itself. Yes, but how is it to be brought about? By doing... approaches his statement of the doctrine of sacrifice; but throughout, even from the very beginning, he keeps his eye not on the restricted Vedic sense of sacrifice and works, but on their larger and universal application,—that widening of narrow and formal notions to admit the great general truths they unduly restrict which is always the method of the Gita. Page 113 ... one necessary means, indispensable, imperative? For how, if the works of Prakriti continue, can the soul help being involved in them? How can I fight and yet in my soul not think or feel that I the individual am fighting, not desire victory nor be inwardly touched by defeat? This is the teaching of Page 106 the Sankhyas that the intelligence of the man who engages in the activities of Nature ...
... Vinci. A good poet adds to it the expressive power of the ineffable transcendent, coming in rhythms of its calm and silent delight. Such indeed is the Savitri given to us by the Rishi. Nowhere in English literature is to be seen such restrained dignity and such poetic completeness as we have in this little episode. The theme is universal, the poetry is epic, the style is impersonal and bare, the diction... imponderable in the Savitri-myth. But what is clear is that it is Satyavan who is going to abandon his body and others are universal agents in the deep and occult play. There are conflicting forces, and there is fate, and there is the circumstance in the working of Time; yet the individual's freewill is the primary factor in moulding and shaping his destiny. Of course, very characteristically, Vyasa does not... Because it is the boon of the supreme Goddess, it has the sanction of the Supreme. It only means that great issues are presently involved in the creation and that they have to be dealt with by the transcendent Power acting in a decisive way. The operative phrase is "the day when Satyavan has to die". Sri Aurobindo has revealed the importance of the Savitri-myth by saying that it belongs to the Vedic ...
... also whether the world-creative Power whom he called the Demiurge is one with the supreme reality of Ideas, their self-manifesting aspect, or a subordinate deity copying out in mutable phenomena transcendent patterns passive for ever. Nor was he quite sure again whether these phenomena were created out of nothing or compounded of the ideal realities and an alien "chaos", an enigmatic "non-being" on... and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without... the same the terms in which he caught a reflection of them could not help remaining somewhat uncertain, if not wavering. He was not quite sure whether he was dealing with what logicians label as Universals, each idea the general and common essence of a class of objects, or with the laws according to which things operate, the Pythagorean "numbers", the mathematical constancies and regularities ruling ...
... the ship itself no longer seems distinct from the infinite ocean. He stands outside of and apart from his familiar ego, all its protective barriers having been shed; and this can lead in some to transcendent experience, while in others to a deep panic. To those for whom their ego is their only possible self, the only possible mode of consciousness, its disappearance is a kind of death. "It is here... what has been named "liberation"- therapy, which yields conceptions exceeding even the largest and boldest terms of Western psychiatry and seems analogous to the highest Vedantic realisation - the Universal Self and the Cosmic Consciousness - we cannot help seeing that a tremendous breakthrough is made available towards the ultimate of both the subjective and the objective worlds. Here we must keep... "unitive knowing" is not actually the Vedantic Knowledge in however temporary a form. All practitioners of Yoga9 are aware that there are many "planes" of existence and on each plane there is a universal consciousness which is not the ultimate Ground - Atman, Brahman - or the total Cosmic Consciousness, but only an immensity of the principle basic or active on that plane - the Life Force or the Mind ...
... dominant. The subjectivity of the nineteenth century was an individual subjectivity but what seems to be coming after the appearance of Whitman is a I universal subjectivity, that is to say, we see the rise of creators in the field of poetry who, as individuals seem to be striving to live in the universal soul and the universal mind. This tendency naturally means a move towards a greater... those inspired out- bursts of Whitman wherein "he casts forward the ideal heart of this wider movement into the sense of the divine unity which is its completion": (Future Poetry) "0 Thou transcendent, Nameless, the fibre and the breath, Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them, Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving, How should I think... stress of life have given evidence of a capacity to Page 70 rise to intuitive perception or inspired expression or psychic insight in their creation. There is the perception of the universal subjectivity on their part and it gives a new vision of nature—of the land and the sea and the earth and its objects—a new way of looking at human relations, a vision of the collectivity or of hu ...
... A secret splendour rose revealed to sight Where once the vast embodied Void had stood. Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face. 3 In that domain of pure transcendent light stood face to face the human Savitri and the transformed Satyavan. (3) SAVITRI has entered into the deathless luminous world where there is only faultless beauty, stainless... Ashwapati, has to make a choice between two destinies, two soul-movements—although the choice is already made even before it is offered to her. Ashwapati had to abandon, we know, the silent immutable transcendent status of pure light in order to bathe in this lower earthly light. Savitri too as the prototype of human consciousness chose and turned to this light of the earth. The Rishi of the Upanishad... can the earth be radically changed and wholly transformed. In the beginning the Divine once came down, but by sacrificing Himself, being pulverised, scattered and lost in the infinitesimals of a universal, material, unconsciousness. Once again He has to come down, but this time in the supreme glory of His victorious Luminosity. This then is the occult, the symbolic sense of the Mother's gesture ...
... of the Divine Mother. A secret splendour rose revealed to sight Where once the vast embodied Void had stood. Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face.³ In that domain of pure transcendent light stood face to face the human Savitri and the transformed Satyavan. (3) SAVITRI has entered into the deathless luminous world where there is only faultless beauty, stainless delight... Ashwapati, has to make a choice between two destinies, two soul-movements – although the choice is already made even before it is offered to her. Ashwapati had to abandon, we know, the silent immutable transcendent status of pure light in order to bathe in this lower earthly light. Savitri too as the prototype of human consciousness chose and turned to this light of the earth. The Rishi of the Upanishad... can the earth be radically changed and wholly transformed. In the beginning the Divine once came down, but by sacrificing Himself, being pulverised, scattered and lost in the infinitesimals of a universal, material, unconsciousness. Once again He has to come down, but this time in the supreme glory of His victorious Luminosity. This then is the occult, the symbolic sense of the Mother's gesture ...
... status of the Mother's being, the first is the personal and individual, the second is this collective and universal being. But she is not merely the universe, she is the Mother of the universe. Hers is not merely earth's prayer, but the prayer of the Mother of the earth. It is not merely the prayer of the universe but the prayer of the Universal Mother to the Supreme Lord for the deliverance of the universe... qu''il faut guerir et pour lequel on a, a cause meme de sa faiblesse, une tendresse toute speciale. 1 The triple status of the Mother, the individual, the collective and the transcendental (or, in other words, the personal, the universal and the supra-personal) has been condensed and epitomised in the magical note describing her first meeting with the Lord: Peu imports qu''il y... comme des reves invecus.. 1 which possesses furthermore the magic of an indefinable mysticism so rare in the French language. The mystic element gives a special grace and flavour, a transcendent significance serving as an enveloping aura to the whole body of these Prayers and Meditations. One cannot, for example, but be bewitched by the mystic grandeur of this image:— ...
... disclosing itself. When the Supermind, the Vijnana-plane, has established its splendour amongst us, it will serve as the beginning of a movement towards establishing the wonder that is the Transcendent Bliss, the Ananda-plane. After that, other secrets of the Supreme will work out their revelation. But we must not overlook a great difference between the Supermind's manifestation and the ... vaster than the mental and beyond all merely ethico-religious rule. Again, it can take place straight from the supreme Truth-Consciousness, the Supermind, where the ultimate marvel of the Transcendent is organised for time-creation and the all-transformative archetype of earth-existence is dynamic. The Avatarhood from the Supermind carries not only in the inward but also in the outward... spiritual. No doubt, every movement that loosens one's self-centredness is a help to spirituality. But it is not till the ego which is one's common centre is replaced by the true soul and the universal Self that spirituality is established. Otherwise all that happens is a subtilisation of the ego, a diffusion of it in place of a concentration - a state in which it is at times more difficult ...
... is the aksara consciousness of which the Gita speaks ? Sri Aurobindo : It is the Immutable, impersonal Brahmic consciousness – it is the basis of calm and equality and universal passivity. It is an aspect of the transcendent,, the Purusottama. Disciple : What is the gain in attaining this consciousness in Sadhana ? Sri Aurobindo : An impersonal attitude, calm and equality – it... : Is it easier to draw vital energy from man than from the Universal? Sri Aurobindo : It is not so easy as you think. There are conditions for drawing it from man or supplying it to another man. But it is much more easy to draw it from the universal. The one fact is that in man the vital energy is limited, while the universal is inexhaustible. If you supply your vital force to another man... Aurobindo : There are no such universal laws of nature. If you ask people who have lived a long life you will find one saying that he lives long because he has kept to what you would call the laws of nature, that he is not smoking or taking wine etc. While another will say that he has been able to live long because he had always a peg ! And so on. So there are no such universal laws. Disciple : ...
... of further spiritual progress.' (adapted) Sri Aurobindo, on his part, has laconically expressed the same view in the following words. "Universal statements cannot be easily made about these things - there is a general line, but individual cases vary in an almost indefinite extent." (Letters on Yoga, p. 436) In our present chapter we shall confine ourselves mainly to the discussion... stay permanently in any desired supernal world such as Brahmaloka, Vishnuloka, Sivaloka, etc., or crossing the bounds of all cosmic manifestation may pass beyond time and space and merge in the Transcendent Absolute. To quote Sri Aurobindo: "[The Jivanmukta] can go wherever his aim was fixed, into a state of Nirvana or one of the divine worlds and stay there or remain, wherever he may go, in... of the psychic world". There, in the psychic world, will take place the proper assimilation of the past experiences of the individual being and the preparation for its next earthly life. Such, then, is the general line of movement. But in the case of those individuals whose consciousness has not yet been sufficiently developed, who are tied down to the pleasures and enjoyments of the physical ...
... You have to deal with world-forces because they make themselves felt, especially the hostile ones ; and so also you have to know the forces that make for help. Even when one is doing individual Sadhana, these universal forces make themselves felt. Of course, as you develop, their aspect changes completely. " The movement of these world-forces does not begin on the lower planes. It begins high above... open to the Infinite and Universal Power, to receive its intimations and to have experiences, to completely go beyond the ego, to realise the Universal Mind, Universal Soul, the Universal Spirit, that is only the first condition. We have to call down this greater Consciousness directly into the vital being and into the physical being, so that the supreme calm and universality will be there in all its... shown all the things by the Supreme. Only when the universal conditions are ready then all things are shown to him ; while one who is detached sees many things more. Also, the Supreme does not decide every detail before the universal conditions are ready when it comes down with an imperative .decision. In between, it is all a working of universal forces. For example, take the case of physical disease ...
... psychic being. Thus one can say, for example, that the creation of an individual being is the result of the projection, in time and space, of one of the countless possibilities latent in the Supreme Origin of all manifestation which, through the one and universal consciousness, is concretised in the law or the truth of an individual and so becomes by a progressive growth its soul or psychic being... other. This is in accordance with the ancient Indian tradition. For, as Sri Aurobindo puts it: India has seen always in man the individual a soul, a portion of the Divinity enwrapped in mind and body, a conscious manifestation in Nature of the universal self and spirit. Always she has distinguished and cultivated in him a mental, an intellectual, an ethical, dynamic and practical, an aesthetic... which you belong. You must find, in the depths of your being, that which carries in it the sense of universality, limitless expansion, termless continuity. Then you decentralise, spread out, enlarge yourself; you begin to live in everything and in all beings; the barriers separating an individuals from each other break down. You think in their thoughts, vibrate in their sensations, you feel in ...
... A good poet adds to it the expressive power of the ineffable transcendent, coming in rhythms of its calm and silent delight. Such indeed is the Savitri given to us by the Rishi. Nowhere in English literature is to be seen such restrained dignity and such poetic completeness as we have in this little episode. The theme is universal, the poetry is epic, the style is impersonal and bare, the diction... e in the Savitri-myth. But what is clear is that it is Satyavan who is going to abandon his body and others are universal agents in the deep and occult play. There are conflicting forces, and there is fate, and there is the circumstance in the working of Time; yet the individual's free-will is the primary factor in moulding and shaping his destiny. Of course, very characteristically, Vyasa does... Because it is the boon of the supreme Goddess, it has the sanction of the Supreme. It only means that great issues are presently involved in the creation and that they have to be dealt with by the transcendent Power acting in a decisive way. The operative phrase is "the day when Satyavan has to die." Sri Aurobindo has revealed the importance of the Savitri-myth by saying that it belongs to the ...
... actually complementary to each other, and act to fulfil the far strategic aim of the Divine. Sri Aurobindo has termed one of the aspects "Will of the Cosmic Divine" and die other "Will of the Transcendent Divine". The first one expresses the Divine's "immediate Will of the moment", considering the totality of the prevailing circumstances. But at the same rime the other aspect too acts parallelly... must be prepared to proceed from illumination to illumination, from experience to experience, from soul-state to soul-state so as to reach the utmost transcendence of the Di vine and its utmost universality. Nor must we attach ourselves even to the truths we ho ld most securely, for they are but forms and express ions of the Ineffable who refuses to limit himself to any form or express ion. Always... which is absolutely necessary for reaching the other two objects, but it is not at all easy to accomplish it. One may almost say that this spiritual change which yoga demands from human nature and individual character is the most difficult of all human aspirations and efforts. For our character is largely mechanistic and made up of habits and it clings to them, is disposed to think them the very law ...
... the characteristics of each human being, man and woman. They are universal properties and should not be confused with the four “castes,” which are no more than their calcified caricature. It is in the human individual and in the human society that we find “the cosmic Purusha” or the divine archetype mirrored. As the idea of a universal archetype is common to the fundamental wisdom traditions everywhere... found also here; in fact, they form the foundation on which Gnosticism has worked out its cosmic and supracosmic vision, albeit with other names and sometimes quite baroque variations. There is a transcendent, ineffable God (the passive Brahman). For reasons surpassing our understanding (his Lila ), this God wanted to know himself by manifesting himself, by making himself concrete in the glories of... creator, and his Knowledge or Power, who is the creatrix, are common to most high religions. In Hinduism, for instance, they are Purusha and Prakriti or Ishvara and Shakti . The principle of the universal manifestation is then their Son, the true and perfect Anthropos or Adamas, divine as his parents are, from whom all things originate, and who is seen as “an incorruptible and endless light.” This ...
... e a far greater & more consistent universalist than the Greeks. All his creations are universal types from Lancelot Gobbo & his dog up to Lear & Hamlet. 147) The Greeks sought universality by omitting all finer individual touches; Shakespeare sought it more successfully by universalising the rarest individual details of character. That which Nature uses for concealing from us the Infinite, Shakespeare... deliverance. 202) The human race always progresses most when most it asserts its importance to Nature, its freedom & its universality. 203) Animal man is the obscure starting-point, the present natural man the varied & tangled mid-road but supernatural man the luminous & transcendent goal of our human journey. 204) Life and action culminate and are eternally crowned for thee when thou hast attained... of a just & enlightened state of society not only universal education, morality and spirituality but this also that there shall be "none who is compelled to eat coarse food, none uncrowned & unanointed or who is restricted to a mean and petty share of luxuries." 195) The acceptance of poverty is noble & beneficial in a class or an individual, but it becomes fatal and pauperises life of its richness ...
... source in the infinite self-existence of the Divine in our depths and goes forth to the same limitless reality in the manifested world. A special mark of it is that what is a universal light is known by it also as an individual form of enchanting beauty and ineffable love, a pulsing personal centre whose happy aureole is a light fanning out in all directions. From the very beginning of my stay in the... is like a vast guardian of the land that lies at its foot. If 1 have to talk in ultimate language, I may aver that the father's art conveys, knowingly or unknowingly, a sense of the benevolent transcendent Godhead, the Supreme who is above and yet not aloof, while the son's art inspires, consciously or unconsciously, a sense of the compassionate immanent Godhead, the Supreme who is always with... and harmony distinguishing spiritual truths. In addition to the acuity of discernment in your letter, there is the wide warmth of it, typical of the soul's gesture which is always in tune with the universal Krishna, the omnipresent Vasudeva who is at once at play with myriads while being felt as each one's special beloved. It was good to meet your father. Years of distance did not prevent us ...
... status of the Mother's being, the first is the personal and individual, the second is this collective and universal being. But she is not merely the universe, she is the Mother of the universe. Hers is not merely earth's prayer, but the prayer of the Mother of the earth. It is not merely the prayer of the universe but the prayer of the Universal Mother to the Supreme Lord for the deliverance of the universe... faut guérir et pour lequel on a, à cause même de sa faiblesse, une tendresse toute spéciale." (14.10.1914) The triple status of the Mother, the individual, the collective and the transcendental (or, in other words, the personal, the universal and the supra-personal) has been condensed and epitomised in the magical note describing 1er first meeting with the Lord: 3 "Peu importe qu'il... sent comme des rêves in-vécus..." 1 which possesses furthermore the magic of an indefinable mysticism so rare in the French language. The mystic element gives a special grace and flavour, a transcendent significance serving as an enveloping aura to the whole body of these Prayers and Meditations. One cannot, for example, but be bewitched by the mystic grandeur of this image:— —"O ...
... Mother-Power all the transcendent light, force, wideness, peace, purity, Truth-Consciousness and Ananda of the supramental Divine." 9 From this it must follow that vital relations or interchanges with others could only pull down the soul to Page 353 the lower consciousness. Even husband and wife, or parents and children, once accepted in the Ashram, were but individual disciples, and... Darshan. It is quite impossible to express in words the feelings of joy, a joy that is of a quite different quality - as if it was descending from heaven. 1 While this relief, this joy, was universal, there was also the remembrance of things past and comparison with the altered conditions now. One of the sadhaks, Mrityunjoy, while feeling grateful for the Mother's gracious coming, could also... During Pranam following the evening meditation, the sadhaks were not supposed to ask questions or raise any personal problems. The action of the Mother in the meditation was "at once collective and individual"; and her aim was to try "to bring down the right consciousness in the atmosphere of the Ashram". The evening meditation was a "brief period in which all is concentrated in the sole force of the ...
... works: The Mother , a collection of short prose pieces on the Mother, and Letters on the Mother , a selection of letters by Sri Aurobindo in which he referred to the Mother in her transcendent, universal and individual aspects. In addition, the volume contains Sri Aurobindo's translations of selections from the Mother's Prayers and Meditations as well as his translation of "Radha's Prayer". The... and on the Mother (1953) included edited versions of the correspondents' questions if he thought they would help the reader to understand Sri Aurobindo's replies. He also placed headings before individual letters or groups of letters and supplied the dates if they were known. The editors of the present volume have continued these practices, adding many headings and edited questions, and supplying... the Mother" consists of almost 1400 separate items, an "item" being defined as what is published between one heading or asterisk and another heading or asterisk. Many items correspond exactly to individual letters; other items, however, consist of portions of single letters, or two or more letters or portions of letters that were joined together by earlier editors or typists and revised in that form ...
... be : why does Energy take the form of Matter ? Is it the sense-organism of the individual mind that gives the impression of Matter ? No. It is the Universal Mind that is the creator of Matter. " Matter is substance of one conscious-being phenomenally divided within itself by the Page 16 action of a universal Mind. "¹ " Material substance is the form in which Mind acting through sense... Reality is the basis of the universe—its fundamental substance. This Omnipresent Reality is active :". the universe in three positions or, say, it is triple in its moments: the Individual, the Universe- and the Transcendent i In all the three it is identical. The universe is the movement of evolution from an apparent Inconscience to a greater and greater degree of consciousness: this is a process in... of the individual It may be also exclusive concentration of a particular subject of interest. Some of our leaders seem to think that there is only one method by which problems can be faced or solved. But that would be arbitrary limitation—for there can be many methods. One may have to wait for conditions to be fulfilled to try his method. In fact, no true progress or gain by the individual in any field ...
... continues: "It lifts the being towards a transcendent Ecstasy and is ready to shed all the downward pull of the world from its wings in its uprising to reach the One Highest; but it calls down also this transcendent Love and Beatitude to deliver and transform this world of hatred and strife and division and darkness and jarring Ignorance. It opens to a universal Divine Love, a vast compassion, an intense... being, is in us the meeting-place between the mind-consciousness and the life-consciousness, it is the. centre of our normal nature: whatever individual self or soul we may have is likely to be seated hereabouts. Intellectuals may enthrone the mind as the individual self; but we may cheekily ask an intellec-tual: "Who says the soul is the mind?" He will answer, "I say so", and, while answering, he will... will for the good of all, for the embrace of the World-Mother enveloping or gathering to her her children, the divine Passion that has plunged into the night for the redemption of the world from the universal Ignorance." In the last phrase we have the rationale of the Love-Rose's arising from Nature's abyss: it is Divine Love, the "fire-passion of Grace", that has made a holocaust of itself by plunging ...
... has novelty and power but only within prescribed limits. It is not the creator of content but the two kinds; that which is determined by abstract and universal rules and that which takes shape under the pressure of a concrete and individual insight, or point of view. The distinction we have to draw is thus not between formal and non-formal or informal logic, but between formal logic at the... explain the two levels at which questions provide their own answers ... at the level of systematic thought and at the higher level of faith where one seeks to convert an insipient understanding of transcendent things into a direct knowledge beyond thought. I have shown that both these types of logic that claim exemption from any prior commitment to a point of view fail to account for the... in all, a sense of Immortality. Prom deep within us come intimations of a Presence which is radiant and incorruptible and beyond all nisus. It is our immortal Self. There is an urge towards transcendent freedom - mumuksatva - in which the Self abides in unconditional Bliss or acts with an unfettered and, luminous spontaneity. There glimmers above us the Awful Emptiness - śunya - sucking ...
... 1. When the ordinary consciousness – the world consciousness – dissolves, becomes zero and vanishes into the transcendent zero. 2. Then that supreme zero – consciousness expresses, embodies, the dharma, the supreme law of right living. 3. There the individual is one with the Supreme Reality on all the four levels of consciousness – the soul or self, mind, life and body. ... one with the Supreme Shakti and declares her mightinesses. Here also the woman-singer, filled with the divine afflatus, intones her inexpressible experiences. Her individual consciousness is identified with the universal Mother consciousness. And as such while she casts her glance into herself, into the depth of her womb, she finds the entire universe there and it comes out in a burst. But... the illusory world. Page 284 6. For when one's consciousness is fixed upon the transcendent the relative, the cosmos disappear. 7. The true source of all becoming is this transcendent zero. 8. The middle course, the course of the heart is the course of the truth, that turns neither to the left nor to the right but moves ...
... seekings of thought into identity with a supreme light, the rapture of the saint made one by love in the pure heart with the transcendent and universal Love, the will of the Karmayogin raised above egoistic desire and passion into the impersonality of the divine and universal will, these things on which India has set the highest value and which have been the supreme endeavour of her greatest spirits... her culture between philosophical truth and truth of psychology and religion was not extended in the same degree to the truth of physical Nature; physical Science had not then arrived at the great universal generalisations which would Page 124 have made and are now making that synthesis entirely possible. Nevertheless from the beginning, from as early as the thought of the Vedas, the Indian... itself very expressly upon four human interests; first, desire and enjoyment, next, material, economic and other aims and needs of the mind and body, thirdly, ethical conduct and the right law of individual and social life, and, lastly spiritual liberation; kāma, artha, dharma, mokṣa . The business of culture and social organisation was to lead, to satisfy, to support these things in man and to build ...
... Divine Mother.’ To understand Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s venture, it is essential not to forget that she was an incarnation of the transcendent, cosmic and individual Divine Mother in a human body, just as he was an incarnation of the transcendent, cosmic and individual Ishwara in a human body. ‘Either she is that or she is not’ and he is that or he is not – and if they were and are not ‘that,’ the... object … Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life. 2. Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realization for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic achievement … 3. Because a method has been precognized for achieving... the preparatory work has to be done.’ 28 (Sri Aurobindo) The Mother and the Disciples I am not eager to be the Guru of anyone. It is more spontaneously natural for me to be the universal Mother and to act in silence through love. 29 – The Mother ‘When someone is accepted, the Mother sends out something of herself to him and this is with him wherever he goes and is ...
... concreteness and vividness of a large-idea'd utterance like: Page 67 Thought lay down in a mighty voicelessness; The toiling thinker widened and grew still, Wisdom transcendent touched his quivering heart: His soul could sail beyond thought s luminous bar; Mind screened no more the shoreless Infinite. Across a void retreating sky he glimpsed ... Death, the works of Sri Aurobindo's youth. However, not only is the influence of the Idylls most faint, if at all, but also the other influences do not prevent the play of a fresh individual style reflecting an individual temperament and taking up the best of blank-verse masters into a new creation with qualities all its own of beauty and power: Snow on ravine, and snow on cliff, and snow ... Sweeping in strenuous outlines to heaven, With distant gleaming vales and turbulent rocks, Giant precipices black-hewn and bold Daring the universal whiteness. Or take the passage in which Pururavas paused not on the plains nor on the foot-hills But plunged over difficult gorge and prone ravine And rivers thundering between dim walls, Driven ...
... reaches his goal at last, he becomes the perfected Aryan, the "Arhat", master of the three rungs of the ascending spiral of consciousness, Page 402 the individual, the cosmic-universal and the transcendent: The perfect Arhat is he who is able to live simultaneously in all these three apparent states of existence, elevate the lower into the higher, receive the higher into... Krishna and Kali. The true Yogi turns himself into a pure engine of Power, to be used for His purposes by Krishna. What, then, happens to the individual self? In itself it is nothing; the more the Yogi becomes a power-house of the Supreme and a centre of the universal Existence, the more his ego dwindles into zero. But there are further horizons still: the power-house has to be charged with Divine Knowledge... were insuperable obstacles in the way to the realisation of the ideal of human brotherhood. Without freedom - freedom for individual man and also for each nationality - healthy self-expression would be impossible; but without order and unity - a sense of self-discipline in individual man and in the corporate life of the nation - harmony would again be impossible. Freedom and Unity were indeed the two ...
... express and embody itself as the creative Truth-consciousness ( surya savitri). In the Supermind things exist in their perfect spiritual reality; each is consciously the divine reality in its transcendent essence, its cosmic extension, its spiritual individuality; the diversity of a manifested existence is there, but the mutually exclusive separativeness has not yet arisen. The ego, the knot of ... Overmind dissolves or transcends the ego-consciousness which limits the being to its individualised formation bounded by an outward and narrow frame or sheath of mind, life and body ; it reveals the universal Self and Spirit, the cosmic godhead and its myriad forces throwing up myriad forms; the world-existence there appears as a play of ever-shifting veils upon the face of one ineffable reality, as a... ss, and on the other it is the secret upholder and controller (bhart ā , antary ā min) of the inferior consciousness, the hidden nucleus round which the body and the life and the mind of the individual are built up and organised. The first decisive step in Yoga is taken when one becomes conscious of the psychic being, or, looked at from the other side, when the psychic being comes forward ...
... express and embody itself as the creative Truth- consciousness (surya savitri). In the Supermind things exist in their perfect spiritual reality; each is consciously the divine reality in its transcendent essence, its cosmic extension, its spiritual individuality; the diversity of a manifested existence is there, but the mutually exclusive separativeness has not yet arisen. The ego, the knot of ... Overmind dissolves or transcends the ego-consciousness which limits the being to its individualised formation bounded by an outward and narrow frame or sheath of mind, life and body; it reveals the universal Self and Spirit, the cosmic godhead and its myriad forces throwing up myriad forms; the world-existence there appears as a play of ever-shifting veils upon the face of one ineffable reality, as a... consciousness, and on the other it is the secret upholder and controller (bharta, antaryamin) of the inferior consciousness, the hidden nucleus round which the body and the life and the mind of the individual are built up and organised. The first decisive step in Yoga is taken when one becomes conscious of the psychic being, or, looked at from the other side, when the psychic being comes forward ...
... become the symbol of suffering and purification. 35 He also explains differently, rather with different focus: The cross is the sign of the triple being, transcendental, universal and Individual. 36 31 Sr. Matthew, xxvii, 50, 46. 32 St. Lake, xxiii, 42. 33 Ibid., xxiii, 43. 34 Savitri, p. 446. 35 The Hour of God, SABCL, Vol. 17, p. 99. 36 Letter... that Vak, corresponding to Logos, the Word, is not strange to Indian tradition. Actually in Lalitā Sahsranāma, the Supreme Mother is addressed as Vak in her four planes of operation, Parā, the Transcendent, Pashyanti, the Seeing One, Madhyama, the Middle or the subtle One, and Vaikhari, the Gross. 5 But Sri Aurobindo took the expression from the Bible. We will see that there is much of... is brought out in another passage. When Aswapati moves from the very home of the World-Soul, the heart of Time and Space, to the Kingdom of Greater Knowledge He moved through regions of transcendent Truth Inward, immense, innumerably one 13 and sees A wisdom waiting on Omniscience 14 who Sat voiceless in a vast passivity. 15 Incidentally Wisdom waiting ...
... new word arrives: "Here am I. " 30 The individual, the universal, the Transcendent - Mirra is now this, now that, and anon the other; these prayers and meditations too thus come to us, now from one plane, now from another; and, of course, even as Mirra is somehow triumphantly all three at the same time (the individual aspirant, the universal earth-mother, and also the Mother beyond all... in a truer sense it was but a new phase of their preordained spiritual odyssey on the earth. Sri Aurobindo had realised, as he told Dilip Kumar Roy in 1924, that the transformation of a single individual was not enough; humanity had to ripen too, and be ready for the desired radical change: "For the crux of the difficulty is that even when the Light is ready to descend it cannot come to stay until... egoism, scatter the obstacles of ignorance, shine resplendent as sovereign Master of the earth. 8 Later, in Pondicherry, Mirra meditates on the morning of 17 April on the meaning of the individual human personality, and the need to see it always in integral relation to the Divine. We may call this her own form of viśistādvaita, her qualified non-dualism! In a manifested universe, the ...
... experience on the border touching the Transcendent, returns to the things of cosmic Time. Now wherever he goes he carries along with him the consciousness of Passive Brahman, the quiescent Sachchidananda as a foundation for all of his activities in the world. He sees the powers that supervise the world and beyond them looks for that which can bring about a universal change. He makes a total yogic surrender... answer to Aswapati's prayer. In the context of the creation's issue he carries with him the world's desire and invokes her to incarnate. For that he engages himself in the triple Yoga, the Individual, the Universal, and the Transcendental Yoga. This Yoga is done in earth-consciousness to prepare the needed base for her birth and action. Aswapati himself as the Supreme incarnate accepts the burden... on of an answering voice. Aswapati's solitary concern is the good of the grieving creature. His long tapasya was for that purpose. Indeed, it is out of it that sprang up a new creation in the transcendent. But it ought to become a part of the evolutionary reality. For that to happen the Spirit's disdainfulness towards Matter should disappear. Behind the present world Aswapati sees a world to be ...
... imagine that the first to be born among us will necessarily be those who in past times attained, or at this moment attain to, the plenitude of their being through the spiritual knowledge of the Transcendent, who have instilled, or are in the process of instilling, in themselves the permanent sense of this transcendence, it is also logical to imagine that it is this sense which will activate the cells... teaching has begun to influence the faith of the world by turning no longer towards the reality of an immutable beyond, but towards the realization here on Earth of that beyond—no longer towards the transcendent Spirit, but towards the transcendental spiritualization of Matter. In fact, it is not here a question of an intellectual adherence or of a conviction of the vital which is provoked by the power... them up. God would appear before them in one form or another and, concentrating on that aspect, their souls united with ours, they would impregnate humanity. The latter, discovering in itself the transcendent truth of the words liberty, or service and sacrifice, activated unknown to us the power which henceforth radiated over the Earth. In effect, a fully awakened consciousness comes into contact with ...
... unfair manner, that did the trick. You have read Homer, I suppose. You know the story of Achilles. He was sulking in his tent because of a 136 The Universal form of the Divine, as distinct from the Transcendent and the Individual. Page 91 wrangle between himself and Agamemnon for nothing mote than a woman! But when he heard that his great friend Patroclus had been... We must have fought, we must have killed, we must have been killed, we symbolizing the individual souls who are all in love with the One Krishna. 'Rasa Lila' (the play of Divine Love) is a symbol of this spiritual play of love, of the One Krishna having infinite relations with all individual souls. 128Sir, in Bengali. 129O Friend, my Friend. Page 87 must have ...
... seekings of thought into identity with a supreme Light, the rapture of the saint made one by love in the pure heart with the transcendent and universal Love, the will of the Karmayogin raised above egoistic desire and passion into the impersonality of the divine and universal Will, these things on which India has set the highest value and which have been the supreme endeavour of her greatest spirits... Japanese and Indian art. His intimacy with the Hellenic and the Hindu spirit, and the cultural achievements of the West and the East, gave him the clue to a catholic and universal aesthesis; and his appreciation of art and of individual works of art flowed from a wide background of knowledge as well as an intuitive understanding of motive, media and techniques. It is no small privilege, then, to be initiated... Fire was for him also Zeus the Eternal. But beyond Force and Intelligence - universal energy and universal reason - there is the third principle, "a third aspect of the Self and of Brahman, besides the universal consciousness active in divine knowledge, besides the universal force active in divine will, it saw the universal delight active in divine love and joy". 68 But this third constituent of the ...
... rope and no climber, and yet one is persuaded that they are there. Laya According to both Buddha and Shankara liberation means laya of the individual in some transcendent Permanence that is not individualised—so logically a belief in the individual soul must prevent liberation while the sense of misery in the world leads to the attempt to escape. The impulse towards laya is a creation... by a rigorous logical reasoning. Only, when it comes to an explanation of Maya he, like the scientist dealing with Nature, can do no more than arrange and organise his ideas of the process of this universal mystification; he cannot explain how or why his illusionary mystifying Maya came into existence. He can only say, "Well, but it is there." Of course, it is there. But the question is, first, "What ...
... the Integral Yoga The Divine Response Letters on Yoga - II Chapter III The Guru Acceptance of the Guru The Guru should be accepted in all ways—transcendent, impersonal, personal. It has always been held in Indian yoga that the relation between Guru and disciple must be one of full confidence and full acceptance of the Guru by the Shishya. The... do not see that the egoistic element remains in their action just as before. Other Gurus All true Gurus are the same, the one Guru, because all are the one Divine. That is a fundamental and universal truth. But there is also a truth of difference; the Divine dwells in different personalities with different minds, teachings, influences so that He may lead different disciples with their special... which argue in this manner. If you do not follow the rules laid down by the spiritual guide or obey one who is leading you to the Divine, then what or whom are you to follow? Only the ideas of the individual mind and the desires of the vital: but these things never lead to siddhi in Yoga. The rules are laid down in order to guard against certain influences and their dangers and to keep a right atmosphere ...
... sustainer of the cosmos: he is an intrinsic divine principle, he has in creating it united himself to his work, partially immersed himself in it, involved himself in it by a universal incarnation - without ceasing to be transcendent, without his divinity being exhausted by the dimensions of the universe. Teilhard at the same time breaks through the limits of Spinozist pantheism and of orthodox Christianity... creating (and in consequence being incarnate) without totally immersing himself in the world he brings into being." This is tantamount to saying that creation is a progressive universal incarnation that yet leaves God "transcendent" -subsisting free, independent, self-fulfilled. Here Teilhard offers what you demand - namely, that God's nature is in no way affected by the action of the chit-shakti -... certainly both the Soul and the body of the universe, Christ the Evolver as well as Christ the stuff that evolves but he is more than such, he has a transcendent reality too and also a historically manifested individuality expressing the transcendent no less than the cosmic. Teilhard's Christian pantheism or pantheist Christianity or Pan-Christism goes beyond your Teilhardian stance. It ...
... the question is, why so? Why is all this clash and collision and disharmony? What is the root-cause of this ignoble failure on the part of man as a species to organise his individual and collective life on the basis of universal harmony and union? If we really want to reconstruct our society on an ideal basis, we have to touch and tackle the problem at its very root. To manipulate only on the surface... destiny and also in the destiny of the world. Here comes Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy of Integralism, an integral philosophy of life that embraces in its synthetic sweep Man, Cosmos and the Transcendent. Sri Aurobindo's Yoga-Philosophy of Divine Humanity offers man a new hope to live by and a glorious ideal to strive after. For, it is not concerned with man in his actuality alone; it concerns itself... Is there at all a meaning behind this colossal world-existence? Of what worth is the individual man in this immense cosmic drama? Does his existence bear any relevance here? Is there any sense and purpose behind the march of humanity, and if so, what is it? What should be the goal of man the individual and of the human race? Is there any truth in the notion of human free-will, or is man a mere ...
... later whether he did not refer to "our Mother" in his book The Mother, he gave the supremely succinct answer, "Yes." She was verily the 'individual' divine Mother who embodied the Page 292 power of the two vaster ways (universal and transcendent) of her existence; and she had descended here amongst us into this 'too too sullied' world of error and falsehood and darkness and death only... there is the lower human justice ("an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"!), and there is the higher Divine Grace: The Divine Grace alone has the power to intervene and change the course of Universal Justice. The great work of the Avatar is to manifest the Divine Grace upon earth. To be a disciple of the Avatar is to become an instrument of the Divine Grace. 15 And it is through the mediation ...
... 15, pp. 263-64) So why should the sadhaka seek to terminate the cycle of rebirths upon earth and spiritually escape to some celestial world or even to merge himself in the repose of the Transcendent? (Q. 31): Does the soul never come to an end of its pilgrimage? Must it always take a physical body? (A. 31): "Not necessarily; but the soul needs to have achieved a before it... Life Divine,Cent. Ed., pp. 754-55) (i)"...rebirth is an indispensable condition for any long duration and evolution of the individual being in the earth-existence." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., pp. 735-36) (ii)"...[by it alone the ascent of the] individual soul-consciousness in the body... can... take place... within the ascending order..." (Ibid., p. 758) Page 158 ... and one with the exterior being." (Ibid., pp. 148-49) "For, as a rule, the physical mind and the physical vital dissolve with the death of the organism: they disintegrate and return to the universal Nature and nothing remains of their experiences." (Ibid., p. 149) "Not until they [the physical mind and the physical vital] have become united with the psychic, so that there are not two ...
... see but are aware of,—men, things, ourselves, events, gods, titans, angels,—as one divine Brahman, and in action and attitude, an absolute self-surrender to the Paratpara Purusha, the transcendent, infinite and universal Personality who is at once personal and impersonal, finite and infinite, self-limiting and illimitable, one and many, and informs with his being not only the Gods above, but man and... physically,—because there is no such thing, Space and Time being only conventions and arrangements of perception, the perspective in God's creative Art,—but by cit , the divine awareness in his transcendent being. ईशा वास्यमिदं सर्वं यत् किञ्च जगत्यां जगत् । "All this world and every object in this world of Prakriti has been created as a habitation for the Lord." Nor is it enough to see... once; for whatever impurity is in you, harboured openly or secretly lurking, is likely to rise at first and be repeated so long as it is not exhaustively swept out, and doubt in this age is an almost universal impurity. But even when doubt assails, stand by and wait for it to pass, availing yourself if possible of the satsaṅga of those who are already advanced on the path, but when that is absent, still ...
... , which the Yogis of the East especially search for—the deep concealed Soul that is a growing spark of divinity, the vast Cosmic Spirit at once witness and worker, the ineffable Transcendent where both the individual and the universe find their perfect source. The full and whole man has to be a mystic par excellence. That is one indispensable condition. The other is that, having become a mystic... remote: Snow on ravine and snow on cliff and snow Sweeping in strenuous outlines to heaven. With distant gleaming vales and turbulent rocks. Giant precipices black-hewn and bold Daring the universal whiteness— now in the same breath far and near, mysterious and concrete: Slow my heart-beats' rhythm like a giant hammer's; Missioned voices drive to me from God's doorway Words... mystical quest: Sri Aurobindo is above all a pilgrim of Eternity. But he is a very remarkable pilgrim in two ways. While seeking Eternity he never ignores Time and both the acts are done by an individual in whom a multitude of personalities flame up into genius. The merit of Professor Iyengar's biography lies chiefly in the thoroughness with which the author has travelled round his many-sided ...
... atmosphere can be acquired without his rapturous realisation of the omni-present Divine Mother. Qualities of the soul reach their acmes only through the soul's awakening to its cosmic and transcendent source. But Russell's failure to assess rightly the validity and worth of spiritual experience must not blind us to the noble, Page 103 acute, healthy sagacity he... a spiritual self, and that the destiny of both is not so much in relation to each other as in relation to the single Godhead they have to evolve side by side and co-operatively on earth. Transcendent of the sex-differentiations and of the physical-vital-mental formula is the more-than-human nature they bring as their basis: Considered in the light of that nature, their finest development... with Tolstoy's theory of art. Here a remark of his is worth citing about a point which Gandhi, the next subject of interview in the book, attempts to drive home. Gandhi wants art to be always universal in appeal, to reach the masses and never to need any specialisation, a certain high level of culture, for its appreciation. Page 99 Rolland is certainly against ...
... them—their Words winged with the red splendour of the heart Page 165 Indeed, just as they touch the skies with hands of clay, Savitri touches the poor dust with "the high Transcendent's sunlike hands". Man's earth-born heart is never forsaken by it. And perhaps the intensest throb of that heart is heard in those four long colloquies—first, the dialogue between King Aswapathy and... and the incarnate Love that is Savitri, in which Savitri affirms: Love must not cease to live upon the earth; For Love is the bright link twixt earth and heaven, Love is the far Transcendent's angel here; Love is man's lien on the Absolute, and defines against the lure of the Death-god towards escape beyond earth into pure peace the meaning of true freedom: Freedom is... Savitri is granted her prayer by the Supreme and allowed to be the centre of His manifestation among the cosmic myriads: O lasso of my rapture's widening noose, Become my cord of universal love. Thus the earth-born heart of man is shown in the poem not only in its finiteness aching for the infinite but also in an apocalyptic fulfilment. And this fulfilment, though dense with ...
... healing atmosphere can be acquired without his rapturous realisation of the omnipresent Divine Mother. Qualities of the soul reach their acmes only through the soul's awakening to its cosmic and transcendent source. But Russell's failure to assess rightly the validity and worth of spiritual experience must not blind us to the noble, acute, healthy sagacity he is shown by Roy to be commanding in many... a soul, a spiritual self, and that the destiny of both is not so much in relation to each other as in relation to the single Godhead they have to evolve side by side and co-operatively on earth. Transcendent of the sex-differentiations and of the physical-vital-mental formula is the more-than-human nature they bring as their basis: considered in the light of that nature, their finest development would... way with Tolstoy's theory of art. Here a remark of his is worth citing about a point which Gandhi, the next subject of interview in the book, attempts to drive home. Gandhi wants art to be always universal in appeal, to reach the masses and never to need any specialisation, a certain high level of culture, for its appreciation. Rolland is certainly against pretentious high-browism, against punditism ...
... selection of one part of consciousness from the wider Universal Consciousness; the Dream Consciousness or Hiranyagarbha is a selection from the wider Sleep Consciousness, and the Waking Consciousness Virat or Vaisvanor is a selection from the wider Dream Consciousness; similarly each individual consciousness is only a selection from the wider Universal Waking Consciousness, each step involving a narrower... himself; why then should he be said to surround all things as if he were different from them? THE GURU It is meant by this expression that the universal & undivided consciousness which we call Brahman, surrounds and includes all the limited individual consciousnesses which present themselves to us in the shape of things. THE STUDENT Still I do not understand. How can the one indivisible con... fraternity; the spirit it professed but could not attain we know, humanity. In liberty the union of the individual moral liberty of Christianity with the civic liberty of Greece; in equality, the democratic spiritual equality of Christianity applied to society; fraternity, the aspiration to universal brotherhood, which is the peculiar and distinguishing idea of Christianity; in humanity, the Buddhistic ...
... them - their Words winged with the red splendour of the heart. [p. 615] Indeed, just as they touch the skies with hands of clay, Savitri touches the poor dust with "the high Transcendent's sunlike hands". Man's earth-born heart is never forsaken by it. And perhaps the intensest throb of that heart is heard in those four long colloquies - first, the dialogue between King Aswapathy... and the incarnate Love that is Savitri, in which Savitri affirms: Love must not cease to live upon the earth; For Love is the bright link twixt earth and heaven, Love is the far Transcendent's angel here; Love is man's lien on the Absolute, [p. 633] and defines against the lure of the Death-god towards escape beyond earth into pure peace the meaning of true freedom: ... Savitri is granted her prayer by the Supreme and allowed to be the centre of His manifestation among the cosmic myriads: O lasso of my rapture's widening noose, Become my cord of universal love. [p. 702] Page 76 Thus the earth-born heart of man is shown in the poem not only in its finiteness aching for the Infinite but also in an apocalyptic fulfilment. And this ...
... movement of the universalised individual towards the Transcendence. There is an ever enlarging experience which takes up the elements of spiritual realisation and in this uplifting and transforming process they become other and greater things than they were and more and more they take their place by sublimation, first in the spiritual-cosmic, then in the all-embracing transcendent whole. The difference... the heart, through Love and Bhakti, its highest culmination is in a transcendent Ananda, an unspeakable Bliss or Beatitude of union with the Divine through Love. The school of Chaitanya laid especial and indeed sole emphasis on this way and made this the whole reality of Page 483 Krishna consciousness. But the transcendent Ananda is there at the origin and end of all existence and this is... intensity when it wants to sublimate and cannot maintain either the continuity or the extension or the sublimated paroxysm of Page 485 these things. But as the individual becomes cosmic (the universalising of the individual without his losing his higher individuality as a divine centre is one of the processes which lead towards the supramental Truth), this disability begins to disappear. The ...
... visions, fresh realisations; and, as we follow the golden sequence of the Prayers and Meditations, we too cannot help partaking something of the widening and heightening, something too of the transcendent light and life of this other-existence which is as yet so inherently this-existence, however coiled and veiled within. A fortnight later, on 19 November, there is an ambrosial affirmation:... condition of Mirra's life, there is experienced a rending of the veil of separativity, and an opening up of the reservoirs of unity, harmony and peace. But Mirra was never for an escape into the Transcendent as a cure for the density, obscurity and impurity of terrestrial life, for that would be merely refusing cowardlike to accomplish the mission - "the redemption and purification Matter": To... that divides the "I" from the "Thou", for this really is the source of all error, uneasiness and pain. The cure for the error and the pang is to lose oneself in the Other, and experience "the universal unity determining an absolute interdependence of all actions": in other words, to live the integral unity and harmony of the One in the manifoldness of the phenomenal play. In the entry of the ...
... urge struggling through the ego capsule is to overflow to all beings, to comprehend all existence, to be world-wide, and even world-transcendent. In Jungian language, we may say that it is that part of the individual consciousness which is the outward crest of the "individual unconscious" and, through the latter, a participant in the "collective unconscious". It is what Jung considers the "inner core"... Has this perfection a really individual sense? Of course, evolution, the long process which makes for perfection across a thousand zigzags, is through individual organisms. But can we say that the organic individualisation is anything more than a passing unity achieved by the universal powers of life and mind and beyond-mind? In common parlance, is there an individual "soul" answering to the distinct... not stopped with pluralism. Indeed, he and mind we have regarded as powers distinct from matter having their own typical activities - activities subliminal no less than on the surface, universal as well as individual. However, to render intelligible the interaction of all three we have posited a unity by an approach from the right end instead of from the wrong which materialism adopts: we have looked ...
... Space a single book: There is the Godhead's universal gaze And there the boundaries of immortal Mind. 27 In the Overmind "all inner individual sight or intelligence of things is now a revelation or illumination of what is seen or comprehended, but the source of the revelation is not in one's separate self but in the universal knowledge." 28 Here are some verses from ... of existence and he embodies the consciousness of the One, which includes the many ... After describing the overwhelming experience of Aswapati with the absolute stillness at 'the gates of the transcendent, the poet observes that that is not the Ultimate." 1 In Savitri: An Approach and a Study A. B. Purani writes: "Aswapati acquired this secret knowledge [see Book I Canto IV] that had... immense Inconscient's scheme, Audacious lines were traced upon the Void; The Infinite was reduced to square and cube. Arranging symbol and significance, Tracing the curve of a transcendent power, They framed the cabbala of the cosmic Law, The balancing line discovered of Life's technique And structured her magic and her mystery. Imposing schemes of knowledge on ...
... have afflicted the world if the vast poison had not been drawn away into the body of this one man whose spiritual consciousness, armed with divine Love, had made him a universalised individual incarnating the Transcendent's Will. And here we may refer again to the fact that the obstacles confronting Sri Aurobindo in his Yoga were not really personal. They were representative of the race and he gladly... which the Divine has posited a difficult evolution of matter, life-force and mind - with a soul supporting them - out of a vast Inconscience, a primal darkness set by Him as the nether pole to the transcendent Absolute. Between the two poles and above the evolving earth and below the archetypal Supermind are various occult planes - Subtle Matter, Vitality, Mind, Overmind and, at the back of the first... soul's rest before being reborn with a new subtle body as well as a new gross one. Sri Aurobindo, at the hour of his physical withdrawal, was in a position to do much more than be the cosmic and transcendent Purusha that his supramental Yoga had made his incarnate personality. He could actually be that Purusha active in an indissoluble subtle body at once divine and human, in a far more direct constant ...
... have afflicted the world if the vast poison had not been drawn away into the body of this one man whose spiritual consciousness, armed with divine Love, had made him a universalised individual incarnating the Transcendent's Will. And here we may refer again to the fact that the obstacles confronting Sri Aurobindo in his Yoga were not really personal. They were representative of the race and he gladly... which the Divine has posited a difficult evolution of matter, life-force and mind - with a soul supporting them - out of a vast Inconscience, a primal darkness set by Him as the nether pole to the transcendent Absolute. Between the two poles and above the evolving earth and below the archetypal Supermind are various occult planes - Subtle Matter, Vitality, Mind, Overmind and, at the back of the first... soul's rest before beingreborn with a new subtle body as well as a new gross one. Sri Aurobindo, at the hour of his physical withdrawal, was in a position to do much more than be the cosmic and transcendent Purusha that his supramental Yoga had made his incarnate personality. He could actually be that Purusha active in an indissoluble subtle body at once divine and human, in a far more direct constant ...
... made explicit his assumption that human nature and society can have conflicting demands, and this can lead to a edge. But for him self-knowledge meant "the knowledge of personal causes, not transcendent needs, of organic appetites, not spiritual purpose. Freud's conviction was that the quest for the self must take us down and back - into the juice and tissue of our physical nature, into its... these higher supramental levels of consciousness to transform the lower nature so that there can be a divine fulfilment of life. The objective here is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth consciousness as a whole. No Plato and no Marx ever thought of such a Republic based on a communism of the spirit. ... does not make reason a sufficient basis for democracy. In practice it is often a dominant class which rules over the ignorant masses. Sri Aurobindo has pointed out that the expectation that universal education will strengthen human rationality has also proved to be unfounded. 9 Sri Aurobindo is as much a firm believer in the Open Society and democracy as Karl Popper is, except that ...
... texts, was both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship. Many will be puzzled by these sentiments, assuming that a rigorous scientist could not also be a serious believer in a transcendent God. This book aims to dispel that notion, by arguing that belief in God can be an entirely rational choice, and that the principles of faith are, in fact, complementary with the principles of science... omniscient monarch: a God who grew up with the universe or a king who imposed his will on nature. A third kind of deity, which was more Platonic, was a borderline case, but was generally viewed as transcendent, as far outside of nature, whether as an idea, mathematical form, the ground of being, or ‘the wholly other’.” 56 Witham quotes Freeman Dyson as having said: “God learns and grows as the universe... compromise. Religion has failed, and its failure should be brought into the open. Science, with its present successful effort at universal competence through identification of the smallest [reductionism], she who is the highest joy of the intellect, should be recognized as the universal Queen.” 23 Steven Weinberg, caustically, is “all in favour of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive ...
... Conscious Force that upholds us and the universe. Transcendent, the original supreme Shakti, she stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. Universal, the cosmic Mahashakti, she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces. Individual, she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of... pursue us.’ 57 This means that in Pondicherry he took his share of the universal battering. For in the Integral Yoga the attainment of a universal consciousness is one of the necessary stages, and we know that Sri Aurobindo had already realized that consciousness in the jail of Alipore. And universal consciousness means universal presence and sensitivity. The following is the first part of Mirra’s... – The Mother ‘It was in 1914 that the identification with the Universal Mother took place, the identification of the physical consciousness with her. Of course, I knew before this that I was the Mother, but the complete identification took place only in 1914,’ 33 said the Mother many years later. Who is the Universal Mother? A few pages before we have seen that when the One wanted to objectify ...
... of the race. Sri Aurobindo has defined Yoga as "a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the potentialities latent in the being, and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence". In its far aims as also in its essential processes, education coalesces with Yoga, and it is thus no mystery at all that the Centre of Education is an inseparable part... life of a Divine Society. A double attempt at self-perfection is thus called for: individual transformation and social transformation, or the perfection of the individual and the perfection of the race. Before the entire race can be perfected, we may have to start with experimental groups that strive in their individual and collective life towards perfection. The members of such a group will (i) strain... discovers, develops, builds into form in the individual man: it is through the progressive and formative individual that it offers the discovery and the chance of a new self-creation to the mind of the race. For the communal mind holds things subconsciently at first or, if consciously, then in a confused chaotic manner: it is only through the individual mind that the mass can arrive at a clear knowledge ...
... appearances, not Page 117 reality. The path of Knowledge, then, consists in turning inward (antarmukha), away from appearances and towards the inner self which is one with the universal and transcendent Self, Atman or Brahman. Plato also makes a distinction between the objects of sense-perception and the objects of reason or the soul. The former are phenomena of becoming which are... worth. " In other words, the good teacher is moved to go down in order to uplift those who are still tied to ignorance, that they too can see the real and attain to freedom. Indeed, we have here the universal truth that the good teacher seeks pupils, even as good pupils seek good teachers. The Platonic philosophy of education has deep metaphysical foundations related to the theory of Ideas and... on them by sensual indulgences like gluttony, which twist their minds' vision to lower things, and suppose that when so freed they were turned towards the truth, then this same part of these same individuals would have as keen a vision of truth as it has of the objects on which it is at present turned." "Very likely." "And is it not also likely, and indeed a necessary consequence of what we have ...
... unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality. Living within the Ignorance, from moment to moment, from field to field, from relation to relation, the conscious soul stumbles on in the error of a fragmentary knowledge. 1 ... man,—it is memory that constitutes our personality and holds cemented the foundation of our psychological being; for it links together our experiences and relates them to one and the same individual entity. This is an idea which takes its stand on our existence in the succession of Time and accepts process as the key to essential Truth, even when it does not regard the whole of existence as ...
... beast, to grow from mind into supermind, from twilight into light, from the mind's half-consciousness into what is now to us superconscient, from a narrow imprisoned ego into the transcendent and universalised individual, from a struggling half effective into a throned and master power, from little transient joys and sorrows into an unalloyed divine delight, this is the goal of our journey, the secret... mistranslate and at best have not the truth-substance. It is only when the object is entered into, seen with an inner and surrounding vision, possessed in experience, taken into our living universal & identifying individual consciousness, made one with us in the Truth that is, holds, comprehends, actuates all things,—only then is there the characteristic process of the supermind, the way of directness, the... he tries to reform his world, he sets out to level everything down towards Page 234 or even to the worst. He can force all things down to the level of a universal proletariat, but he cannot make of the proletariat a universal aristocracy. 55 There are two states of being, two levels or limits between which all existence stands or moves, a highest limit of supreme consciousness ...
... sadhakas of the Integral Path? "Life is the field of a divine manifestation not yet complete: here, in life, on earth, in the body ... we have to unveil the Godhead; here we must make its transcendent greatness, light and sweetness real to our consciousness, here possess and, as far as may be, express it. Life then we must accept in our Yoga in order utterly to transmute it; we are forbidden... serious test he will have to go through. What is more, it is not his Page 2 own personal nature alone which will try to resist him with its recalcitrance at every step; even the universal Nature will seek to erect a wall of darkness across his path, for this Nature under the prompting of cosmic Ignorance is deadly opposed to the prospect of any sadhaka escaping from her prison and... The physical consciousness also may offer a resistance which is usually that of a fundamental inertia, an obscurity in the very stuff of the physical.... There is, moreover, the resistance of the Universal Nature which does not want the being to escape from the Ignorance into the Light." (Letters on Yoga, Part IV, p. 1616) In the same connection the Mother too has warned the sadhakas of the ...
... of Pranayama and yogic asanas are not obligatory. Basically yoga is a methodized effort of concentration of consciousness so that the inner self of the individual is discovered and thein dividual attains union with the universal and transcendent Reality. Page 35 ... dead and cannot breathe anymore. That flame, after coming out of the dead body travels. Where does it travel to? The answer is that this travel follows a path, which is different for each individual. The path maybe smooth or difficult, it may be slow-moving or it can be rapid. It all depends upon one important law. What were the thoughts of the man when he was in the body? What were... steadfast; his goal was to make a search for the highest truth. He was able to travel to Yama from whom he could gain truek nowledge of the truth. The travel after death would depend upon the individual's aspirations, his deeds and his goals, which he was pursuing in the body when it was alive. But this travel is for a short or long time, and the time comes when he will need to have another body ...
... characterise them — their Words winged with the red splendour of thy heart. 34 Indeed, just as they touch the skies with hands of clay, Savitri touches the poor dust with "the high Transcendent's sunlike hands". Man's earth-bom heart is never forsaken by it. And perhaps the intensest throb of that heart is heard in those four long colloquies — first, the dialogue between King Aswapati... and the incarnate Love that is Savitri, in which Savitri affirms: Love must not cease to live upon the earth; For Love is the bright link twixt earth and heaven, Love is the far Transcendent's angel here; Love is man's lien on the Absolute. 37 That defines against the lure of the Death-god towards escape beyond earth into pure peace the meaning of true freedom: Freedom... Savitri is granted her prayer by the Supreme and allowed to be the centre of His manifestation among the cosmic myriads: O lasso of my rapture's widening noose, Become my cord of universal love. 40 Thus the earth-bom heart of man is shown in the poem not only in its finiteness aching for the infinite but also in an apocalyptic fulfilment. And this fulfilment, though dense ...
... lies in the intellectual perception of the universal. No particular can be understood without the universal of which it is an illustration or a member. Therefore, one of the counsels that the good teacher gives for content-enrichment is to enlarge the vision of the students so as to open out before them the vistas of universals. It is these vistas of universals that can serve as nurseries of students'... had striven to reach the highest and the best. Some have arrived at the supracosmic aim of life, which does not find in the world any satisfying fulfilment. They have experienced some supreme and transcendent Reality and found in that experience and realisation something most substantial and most ecstatic; and they have found that one can abide in that realisation permanently and fully when one transcends... thirdly, the process by which the soul and the spirit can manifest through our outer instruments of thought, feeling and action. Introspection plays a major role in all these three aspects, since the individual needs to turn more and more inwards (antarmukha). This requires the aid of encouragement and atmosphere where everything is turned towards the truth, beauty and goodness. Children need to be given ...
... individually in a solitary way only" [ p. 649 ]. No individual solitary transformation apart from the work for the earth (which means more than any individual transformation) would be either possible or useful. (Also no individual human being can by his own power alone work out the transformation, nor is it the object of the Yoga to create an individual superman here and there.) The object of the Yoga... to me that the evolution out of matter could have taken place without the hostile forces. It could have happened quickly, by the descent of the Supramental and other lights, powers and joy of the Transcendent. Anything could have happened—but if the Supramental was to descend immediately, there was no need of matter or evolution—the only reasonable thing would have been to create a supra mental world... that the ascension to the supermind and individual transformation must precede the manifestation of the Sangha. But why did you allow the Sangha to manifest before this condition was fulfilled? Which Sangha? I have never called this Asram the Sangha. The Asram is a field of growth, not a manifestation of perfection. Is there no possibility of an individual rising up to the Supramental separately ...
... radiance that has never come down so far and whose one spark would be more precious, more potent than the most wide-spreading fame and name and flame the world has known. What I speak of is the transcendent Truth of things the Mundaka Upanishad dazzlingly glimpses in the Mantra as rendered by Sri Aurobindo: There the sun shines not and the moon has no splendour and the stars are blind; there these... d for nearly 20 years, I am not oblivious of the several fine attributes of an early creed like mine. Each of the non-Indian religions develops to an exquisite point one or another aspect of the Universal Reality. These points are worth appreciating but their essence can be caught without our being limited to them. To go beyond them is not to run them down. To run them down would signify that one has... people connected with the Ashram. In all that you write I can feel your love for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and your soul's sight of them as the Incarnate Divine. You are a wonderful and inspiring individual. It is great luck to be in touch with you. At the moment you are in a bit of the blues because all around you is so much ignorance, so much preoccupation with sheer Matter. But you have sufficient ...
... Purusha individual, is it not the universal which determines it? There is the universal Purusha as there is the individual Purusha, and there is that which transcends them both. This individual Purusha is distinct, though not separate — he does not feel himself separate — from the whole. And when he is fully conscious, he has direct access to the transcendent. Without this individual Purusha... Here's exactly what makes so many people stumble. They imagine, because they have an experience of something higher than the ordinary mentality, that everything is the truth. But when the universal Force enters an individual, 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... inertia and rest I want, but peace in action, the cessation of individual effort. The deeper peace cannot come till the "lotuses" are open and the force descends to take possession. Besides, a distinction must be made between the real individuality and the illusory sense of the ego. The true individuality is a fragment of the universal consciousness and even when it seems to merge in this consciousness ...
... energy and drive - not a Nietzschean, Olympian, Apollonian or Dionysian 'superman', but a man "whose whole personality has been offered up into the being, nature and consciousness of the one transcendent and universal Divinity and by loss of the smaller self has found its greater self'. 53 The commentary on the first six Books takes up 24 of the 48 chapters of Essays on the Gita, but already... ones bring to us Indra, companioning the Rudras bring vast Rudra, with the Adityas bring the boundless and universal Mother, with those who have the illumined word bring the master of the word in whom are all desirable things... 28 Found for us felicity of earth and heaven and universal life that we may worship thee with sacrifice, O god; O doer of works, may we keep close to Page 456 ... two, though closely related, must be kept apart. The Rishis arranged the substance of their thought in a system of parallelism by which the same deities were at once internal and external Powers of universal Nature, and they managed its expression through a system of double values by which the same language served for their worship in both aspects. But the psychological sense predominates.... The Veda ...
... them, the more he comes in touch with the kosha with which that centre connects him. The Purushottama , the inmost of all that is and all that is not, is the Supreme being of that transcendent and universal substance-delight whose nature is consciousness that is force. He is the divine Archer who is seated high in his own immensities far, far away from those koshas , above them in the mystic... It is in this sense that faith moves mountains. In the supramental knowing also faith disappears. There the individual knows what is to be done. The individual is knowingly moved to action; but it may be — while he is yet at the lower heights of the supermind — at the expense of the individual's joy or grief. But it will be ultimately a self-luminous action moving in self-delight. To start with, the... the expense of which he profits more than he gives. The entire cosmos is a tremendous travail for the birth of something divine. That tremendous travail of the cosmos reflects itself as work in individuals. We are unconscious of that which is to be born; also we are unconscious of the divine meaning of what we do. From the spiritual height alone the things that are obscure grow clear. Even what are ...
... words : "Life is the field of a divine manifestation not yet com- Page 269 plete: here, in life, on earth, in the body,... we have to unveil the Godhead; here we must make its transcendent greatness, light and sweetness real to our consciousness, here possess and, as far as may be, express it." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 68) If that be so, we have to squarely face the di... feelings is very much creative in nature. As soon as it is indulged in, it becomes an independent formation, leaves the mental field of the person, and gets into the environing atmosphere of the universal mind. It then invariably goes on its errand of fulfilling the object which was the subject-matter of the thought. When a strong feeling or will is added to the thought, the latter's creative potency... many an occasion to the absolute necessity of this process of "individualisation", Here is, for instance, one passage from her Talk of 28 July 1954: "... at least ninety-nine parts of an individual's character are made of soft butter... on which if one presses one's thumb, an imprint is made. Now, everything is a 'thumb': an expressed thought, a sentence read, an object looked at, an observation ...
... remember that duty is an idea which in practice rests upon social conceptions. We may extend the term beyond its proper connotation and talk of our duty to ourselves or we may, if we like, say in a transcendent sense that it was Buddha's duty to abandon all, or even that it is the ascetic's duty to sit motionless in a cave! But this is obviously to play with words. Duty is a relative term and depends upon... the fruit, but the claim to be the doer of works has to be renounced in the realisation of the Self as the equal, the inactive, the immutable principle and of all works as simply the operation of universal Force, of the Nature-Soul, Prakriti, the unequal, active, mutable power. Lastly, the supreme Self has to be seen as the supreme Purusha governing this Prakriti, of whom the soul in Nature is a partial... wideness including in it all works, sarvakarmāṇi , and which far exceeds, though it may include, social duties or ethical obligations. What is the work to be done is not to be determined by the individual choice; nor is the right to the action and the rejection of claim to the fruit the great word of the Gita, but only a preliminary word governing the first state of the disciple when he begins ascending ...
... death never come but also we shall enter a condition in which we shall rise above both life and death into the consciousness either of the inmost immortal soul, the true individual, or of the highest eternal Self of selves, the universal One within the many. You are very lucky in your sleep-state. I think it is the constant presence of the psychic being in all your actions and reactions that makes... word to be scorned as too abstract: it can be made living by a line like Sri Aurobindo's White chambers of dalliance with eternity, but here it is out of place and would denote simply a transcendent state rather than One who is such a state and who can be in warm contact with us. "Force" in the last line is certainly a substantive, as you have discerned, both in the grammatical sense and in ...
... karma bandhana keeps man bound to the idea of misery and pain? According to both Buddha and Shankara liberation means laya of the individual in some transcendent Permanence that is not Page 312 individualised—so logically a belief in the individual soul must prevent liberation while the sense of misery in the world leads to the attempt to escape. This implies that those who believed... they will come to be realized [or to dawn] in their true [or void] form through not being abandoned." 4 "The Clear Light ... symbolizes the unconditioned pure Nirvāṇic Consciousness, the transcendent, Supramundane Consciousness of a Fully Awakened One. It is a Mystic Radiance of the Dharma-Kāya, of the Nirvāṇic Consciousness free of all sangsāric or conditioned obscuration. It cannot be described;... very difficult stage. Wonderful! The realisation of the Self which includes the liberation from ego, the consciousness of the One in all, the established and consummated transcendence out of the universal Ignorance, the fixity of the consciousness in the union with the Highest, the Infinite and Eternal is not anything worth doing or recommending to anybody—is "not a very difficult stage"! Nothing ...
... Each individual formation is united with and partakes of the nature of the one supreme Reality. Although difference is born here, separation is not yet come. Variety is there, but not discord, individuality is there, not egoism. This is the first step of Descent, the earliest one—not, we must remind ourselves again, historically but psychologically and logically—the descent of the Transcendent into... of the psychic personality is due to an especial Descent, the descent of a Person from another level of consciousness. That Person (or Super- person) is the jivatman, the Individual Self, the central being of each individual formation. The Jivas are centres of multiplicity thrown up in the bosom of the infinite Consciousness: it is the supreme Consciousness eddying in unit formations to serve as... tolerate each other. Mind is the birth-place of absolute division and exclusivism —it is the "own home" of egoism. Egoism is that ignorant mode—a twist or knot of consciousness which cuts up the universal unity into disparate and antagonistic units: it creates isolated, mutually exclusive whorls in the harmonious rhythm and vast commonalty of the one consciousness or conscious existence. The Sankhya ...
... identity. Each individual formation is united with and partakes of the nature of the one supreme Reality. Although difference is born here, separation is not yet come. Variety is there, but not discord, individuality is there, not egoism. This is the first step of Descent, the earliest one—not, we must remind again, historically but psychologically and logically—the descent of the Transcendent into the Cosmic... flowering of the psychic personality is due to an especial Descent, the descent of a Person from another level of consciousness. That Person (or Super-person) is the Jivatman, the Individual Self, the central being of each individual formation. Page 52 The Jivas are centres of multiplicity thrown up in the bosom of the infinite Consciousness: it is the supreme Consciousness eddying in unit... tolerate each other. Mind is the birth-place of absolute division and exclusivism—it is the "own home" of egoism. Egoism is that ignorant mode—a twist or knot of consciousness which cuts up the universal unity into disparate and antagonistic units: it creates isolated, mutually exclusive whorls in the harmonious rhythm and vast commonality of the one consciousness or conscious existence. The Sankhya ...
... Each individual formation is united with and partakes of the nature of the one supreme Reality. Although difference is born here, separation is not yet come. Variety is there, but not discord, individuality is there, not egoism. This is the first step of Descent, the earliest one-not, we must remind ourselves again, historically but psychologically and logically-the descent of the Transcendent into... of the psychic personality is due to an especial Descent, the descent of a Person from another level of consciousness. That Person (or Superperson) is the j īvatman, the Individual Self, the central being of each individual formation. The Jivas are centres of multiplicity thrown up in the bosom of the infinite Consciousness: it is the supreme Consciousness eddying in unit formations to serve as... tolerate each other. Mind is the birth-place of absolute division and exclusivism – it is the "own home" of egoism. Egoism is that ignorant mode-a twist or knot of consciousness which cuts up the universal unity into disparate and antagonistic units: it creates isolated, mutually exclusive whorls in the harmonious rhythm and vast commonalty of the one consciousness or conscious existence. The Sankhya ...
... them, the more he comes in touch with the kosha with which that centre connects him. The Purushottama , the inmost of all that is and all that is not, is the Supreme being of that transcendent and universal substance-delight whose nature is consciousness that is force. He is the divine Archer who is seated high in his own immensities far, far away from those koshas , above them in the mystic... is in this sense that faith moves mountains. In the supramental knowing also faith disappears. There the individual knows what is to be done. The individual is knowingly moved to action; but it may be — while he is yet at the lower heights of the supermind — at the expense of the individual's joy or grief. But it will be ultimately a self-luminous action moving in self-delight. To start with,... the expense of which he profits more than he gives. The entire cosmos is a tremendous travail for the birth of something divine. That tremendous travail of the cosmos reflects itself as work in individuals. We are unconscious of that which is to be born; also we are unconscious of the divine meaning of what we do. From the spiritual height alone the things that are obscure grow clear. Even what are ...
... nature & svadharma is the law of that nature. Later, when the psychic being experiences its universality and transcendence and becomes a divine child of the Divine Mother, it transcends the law of its individual nature, and lives and moves and acts, a free being, at once individual, universal and transcendent, in the Divine, unfettered by the limitations of his individuality. 22.02.65 * ... inclined have to follow. If it had not, it would not be a collective Yoga, but one which each individual might follow in his own way; and the goal, too, would not be the manifestation of the Divine in earth consciousness and the birth of a new race of supramental men, but the realisation of the Divine by the individual in his own being, Page 58 more or less on old lines. It is true... your physical mind, and revert to the joy and peace, the love and light of the psychic. Look upon your mind and treat its thoughts and ideas and logic and suggestions as something belonging to the universal nature. You are not the mind. Its thoughts and ideas must not be suffered to disturb or distract you. Stand back from them, recover your identity with your soul, and you will regain your true relation ...
... it in from the universal or he can bring it down from the transcendent. For in the Divine cosmic and transcendent all things are. Whether He will do so or not in a particular case is quite another matter. My argument was directed towards dissipating this "can't, can't" with which people try to stop all possibility of progress. You have raised another new point about the universal. These are... undiscoverable latency? If you say it is in the subliminal, I answer that the subliminal is the inner being which is open to the universal and plastic to it. All things exist in the universal, so it is impossible to say what will or will not manifest in the inner being, once the universal acts on it. If the Divine is omnipotent, he can do it. If he can't do it, he is not omnipotent. What is this absurd ... it is evidently not there below? You say, if I understand you right, that since the inner being is open to the universal, anything can manifest through it even if it is not there latent ; you further add that it is impossible to say what will or will not manifest once the universal acts upon it. But is this impossible for Yogis also? For example, can't you say whether a man has a capacity for Yoga ...
... to movement of progress. When inconscience and inertia would have disappeared, the alternations will no longer be necessary. 29.11.1969 Can the individual rise above the alternations of light and darkness while the universal inconscience and inertia exist? Page 115 Not only can he rise there, but even a part of his consciousness can stay there in a permanent way. It... progress towards seeing the Divine everywhere and in everything. According to the experience of this body, here called Mother, it is first necessary to realise the union with the supreme and transcendent Divine, and after that one is able to find the Divine again in everything, but covered with a veil, more or less thick. 8.1.1969 A confession: I could not yet receive from You the complete... endless progression ? Most certainly the spiritual wisdom existed for a small number in that epoch. 22.9.1969 In "Last Poems" Sri Aurobindo shows the relation between the Transcendent and the Cosmos: "My vast transcendence holds the cosmic whirl, I am hid in it as in the sea a pearl." What an experience!. . . 24.9.1969 Page 106 Is it the mind ...
... Aurobindo describes the Mother’s three essential aspects: the transcendent Mother, the universal cosmic Mother, and the human Mother in the yoga. A disciple asked him: “Do you not refer to the Mother (our Mother) in your book The Mother ?” Sri Aurobindo answered with one word: “Yes.” Then the disciple asked: “Is she not the ‘individual’ Divine Mother who has embodied ‘the power of these two vast ways... echo the Vedic scriptures: It is I who am the offspring of what gave birth to me [what gave birth to her being the One]; And it is I who am the Mother [the Great Mother, the one original transcendent Shakti]; It is I who am the wife [Shakti to Ishwara, in human metaphorical language]; It is I who am the virgin [for ever the untouchable Origin of all] … etc. Until now, and throughout... pralaya ) and then started again in the same order. “Lord Vishnu mounted on a white horse, with a drawn scimitar, blazing like a comet will come to end the present Kali Yuga and inaugurate a reign of universal goodness, peace and prosperity, he will renovate the creation with an era of purity or Krita Yuga. The four yugas will then proceed in the same order once again, with similar characteristics, and ...
... Peace, a joint divine environment, as it were, calling forth, from behind, beyond, within us, a new superhuman manifestation. Gradually we are re-created by a distant yet receptive Silence and a transcendent yet responsive Vigilance alert to the rhythm of our human cry - serving by their combined or rather fused influences the cause of our sadhana. (5.5.1992) Thank you for your donation... realised that something had gradually stood back from the feverish Amal. The fever had not gone but the real I was free from it. Then 1 recalled Sri Aurobindo writing that mountains were a symbol of the Universal Consciousness. It also struck me that what he had called the "overhead" planes - planes of consciousness above the mind-level - would surely be inner heights in a spiritual wideness, from where Sri... equanimity is not only - as one of my favourite Savitri-lines has it - A wide unshaken look on Time's unrest - a calm controlled attitude of detached impersonality ruling out all individual reactions of thought and judgment. Equanimity is also a seeing of one's inner agitations which are as much part of "Time's unrest" as are the ups and downs of the outer world. Here the changing history ...
... of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, 'sarvam khalvidam brahma', verily, all this that is is the Brahman. And still there is a third and final step: to rise beyond the individual and the universal to the Transcendent through the Supramental consciousness and to bring down the powers of the Supramental into mind, life and body for a total and perfect transformation. We need not go into details... the individual soul in man awaken, the inmost psychic being come into the forefront, governing and purifying his external mind, life and body, and lead him to a union with the Divine. This individual realisation of the soul is the indispensable first step in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, difficult and arduous as it is. But he bids us ascend further. The second step is the realisation of the universal or... descent. It is the descent of the new consciousness attained by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana.... Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic achievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing in of a ...
... dramatist, philosopher, critic, interpreter of and commentator on the Vedas, the Gita and all the transcendent lore and legend of India, and he is something higher than these, the Saint who has realised his oneness with the Universal Spirit, and fathomed the depths and brought up treasures of transcendent value and brilliance.' Dr. Reddy came to Pondicherry to offer the Prize to Sri Aurobindo in person... towards the Absolute. We can say that it is the prophetic message of the divinised earth and of man's God-like possibility: For in the march of all-fulfilling Time The hour must come of the Transcendent’s will.. || 155.51 || The frontiers of the Ignorance shall recede, More and more souls shall enter into light, Minds lit, inspired, the occult summoner hear And lives blaze with a sudden inner... what he was occupied with. This period was perhaps the most mysterious part of his life. Was he drawing down the Supramental Force or concentrating on a critical phase of the War or perhaps on some individual case needing some special attention? All we were told was that he had a special work to do and had to be left alone unless some very urgent business needed his attention. During this period we were ...
... through your individual consciousness, it puts on a form, an appearance which differs according to your temperament, your aspiration, your need, the particular turn of your being. Your individual consciousness is like a filter, a pointer, if I may say so; it makes a choice and fixes one possibility out of the infinity of divine possibilities. In reality, the Divine gives to each individual exactly what... for your ultimate good that you feel the wrath of God; He will be Kali for the worshippers of Kali and Beatitude for the Bhakta. And He will be the All-knowledge of the seeker of Knowledge, the transcendent Impersonal of the illusionist; He will be atheist with the atheist and the love of the lover. He will be brotherly and close, a friend always faithful, always ready to succour, for those who feel... me to be the universal Mother and to act in silence through love. But as you put the question, I shall answer. From the time you started using a mantra, I had put in it the power to make it effective. Now that you have stated what is the word of this mantra, I am confirming the power into it. How do you conceive of my relation with you? Are you not the son of the universal Mother? ...
... absolute selfness which is sweeter, mightier, profounder than any aspect. His peace, rapture, light, freedom, beauty are marvellous and ineffable, because he is himself magically, mysteriously, transcendently marvellous and ineffable. He can then be sought after for his wonderful and ineffable self and not only for the sake of one aspect or another of him. The only thing needed for that is, first, to... the end it rises beyond the lid which has so long kept it tied in the body and finds a centre above the head where it is liberated into the Infinite. There it begins to come into contact with the universal Self, the Divine Peace, Light, Power, Knowledge, Bliss, to enter into that and become that, to feel the descent of these things into the nature. To concentrate in the head with the aspiration for... chest), one in the head. The concentration in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psychic being, the divine element in the individual. This being unveiled begins to come forward, to govern the nature, to turn it and all its movements towards the Truth, towards the Divine, and to call down into it all that is above. It brings the ...
... included in Volume 5 (Collected Poems) of the Centenary Library edition, was in two Parts, both in dialogue form. In the first Part, Ahana is shown as being apparently reluctant to return from her transcendent retreat to the turbulent ways and wants of the world. The Voices of the Earth, however, who are Ancients of Knowledge and Sons of the Morning, tell her that she cannot choose but submit to the... echoing vibrations upon these lesser levels" (The Approach to Mysticism, p. 17). Page 629 He walks in naked heavens of joy and calm, Sees the God-face and hears transcendent speech.. . 48 The Taittiriya Upanishad speaks of the five sheaths - body, life (prāna), mind, supermind (vijñana) and Ananda - and if mantric poetry is soul communing with soul, it... self-forgetful bliss of the innermost of the five sheaths, ānandamaya. As Sri Aurobindo explained in the course of a long letter written in 1946: It is the universal Ananda that is the parent of aesthesis and the universal Ananda takes three major and original forms, beauty, love and delight, the delight of all existence, the delight in things, in all things.... As we climb beyond Mind, ...
... participated in; any spiritual realization he acquired, she shared. There was the division of tasks, without which the work could not be done, but there was at its base the unity transcendent, supramental and as embodied individuals. ‘[In] all those thirty years of life, not for a second did I have any sense of responsibility,’ she would later say, ‘in spite of all the work I was doing, all the organizing... , and when you go down into the Inconscient in yourself, it is the Inconscient of Matter. One cannot say that each individual has his own Inconscient, for that would already be a beginning of individualization. And when you go down into the Inconscient, it is perhaps not the universal but at least the terrestrial Inconscient.’ 55 ‘It has been done’ – by whom? By whom else but Sri Aurobindo... ‘The psychic being is organized around the divine spark. The divine spark is one, universal, the same everywhere and in everything, one and infinite, of the same kind in all. One cannot say that it is a being. It is the being, if you like, but not a being … The psychic being, on the contrary, is an individual, personal being with its own experience, its own development, its own growth, its own ...
... of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda." 8 Page 423 4.A passage from Letters on Yoga: "I would prefer to avoid all public controversy especially if it touches in the least on politics. Gandhi's theories are like other mental theories built on a basis of one-sided reasoning and claiming for a limited truth (that of non-violence and passive resistance) a universality which it... The Synthesis of Yoga: "The general power of Delight is love and the special mould which the joy of love takes is the vision of beauty. The God-lover is the universal lover and he embraces the All-blissful All-beautiful. When universal love has seized on his heart, it is the decisive sign that the Divine has taken possession of him; and when he has the vision of the All-beautiful everywhere and... priestcraft, no religion, no kings, no oppression, no poverty, no war or discord anywhere. Industry will fill the earth with abundance, commerce will spread her golden reconciling wings everywhere. Universal education will stamp out ignorance and leave no room for folly or unreason in any human brain; man will become cultured, disciplined, rational, scientific, well-informed, arriving always at the right ...
... of much use. Today I was very quiet in meditation and saw the full moon with cross stripes over it. Full moon=spiritual consciousness. Cross is the symbol of the triple Divine—transcendent cosmic, individual. December 12, 1934 Last night I had a dream that you had come out of your seclusion for once,; you were tall, quite young, but very dark. I began to wonder if this was Sri... the shackles of the outer nature; one becomes aware of one's inner being, and feels the outer as an instrument; one feels the universal Force doing one's works and the self or Purusha watching or witness but free; one feels all one's works taken from one and done by the universal or the supreme Mother or by the Divine Power controlling and acting from behind the heart. By constant reference of all one's... for the Mother in all sincerity are prepared by the work itself for the right consciousness even if they do not sit down for meditation," Yet in another letter you say: "It may be necessary for an individual here and there to plunge into meditation for a time." This applies to a certain number of people—it does not lay down non-meditation as a principle. Note the "even if" which gives the proper ...
... immortality, grow into the epiphany of the gods and build in our human existence the universal formations Page 476 of the higher or divine creation. Man then possesses both the divine and the human birth; he is lord of the double movement, he holds Aditi and Diti together, realises the universal in the individual, becomes the Infinite in the finite. It is this conception that Surya embodies... and philosophic could apply with little or no change to the supreme and universal Godhead. He is the vastness and the multiplicity; among his usual epithets are vast Varuna, abundant Varuna, Varuna of whom wideness is the habitation, Varuna of many births. But his puissant being is not only a universal wideness; it is a universal force and might. The Veda says of him in words that both have an outward... travelling can attain, nor these Waters ranging sleeplessly, nor they who hedge in the hugeness of the wind." It is a force of universal existence which is active around and in all that lives. 8 Behind this vast universality of force and being there watches and acts a vast universality of knowledge. The epithet of kinghood is constantly coupled with the epithet of seerhood, not otiosely but in the strong ...
... hast chosen for thy home, Thou art thyself the author of thy pain. 41 — Savitri The soul or psyche thus exists in different aspects. 1. It is an eternal part of the Godhead in his one transcendent multiplicity (the jivatman of the Hindus); 2. It is the projection of that eternal part into the manifestation because the Great Mother has brought the divine Self as Love into this manifestation;... Aurobindo referring to the sheaths described above. ‘All things are potentially present in the substance out of which man has been formed … In an essential way every human being contains in himself all universal potentialities,’ 10 said the Mother; and she wrote to a disciple: if we did not carry in ourselves something corresponding to all that exists in the universe, the universe wouldn’t exist for us... possibilities ‘more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane.’ 17 Of the Mother we know that already in Tlemcen she was able to climb the twelve steps of the universal scale of consciousness, up to the border where the manifested worlds fade out at the gates of the eternal white silence. In letter after letter from some disciples Sri Aurobindo had to read how ...
... when the psychic being reaches its full development, it becomes a kind of bodily or at any rate individual raiment of the soul. The soul is a portion of the Supreme - the jiva is the Supreme in individual form. And since there is only one Supreme, there is only one jiva, but with millions of individual forms. This jiva begins as a divine spark - immutable, eternal and infinite too (infinite in possibility... its selecting will, In the Divine Comedy a participant, The Spirit's conscious representative, God's delegate in our humanity, Comrade of the universe, the Transcendent's ray, She had come into the mortal body's room To play at ball with Time and Circumstance. A joy in the world her master movement here, The passion of the... rising from below, isn't it? Is it then another movement, an ascending movement...? That is the consciousness of the jiva [soul], the personal, individual consciousness. It's something that grows.... It is the individual consciousness. Aspiration is almost always an expression of the psychic being - the part of us that's organized around the divine center, the small divine ...
... has also indicated the triple form of the Divine Mother described by Sri Aurobindo in The Mother as the Matustrayividya with Tantrik elements: The Transcendent Shakti: Mulashakti The Universal Power: Vishveshvari The Individual Mother: Jivabhutā Again and again we are drawn to the Mother idea in Savitri for Sri Aurobindo found this to be the most potent instrument to lead... In this ancient culture of varied religious and spiritual quests, the Puranas have played an important part in getting the aspirant accustomed to certain ideas. For instance, the universal deities take an individual form and not only walk on this earth but go through all the motions of life as lived by ordinary man. A goddess as a Princess going in search of a consort is familiar to the Indian... luminous, more self-possessed in the human being by the opening of all his instruments of knowledge, will, action, life to the Spirit within him and in the world. 3 And it so happens that the universal energy is always flowing around us and into us. We have "to connect" with this divine Shakti to get the transformation going. But how can we connect unless we know what it is and how it acts? The ...
... century AD, and was rediscovered during the Renaissance. Hermetism is an effort to bridge the gap between religion and science and to deify man through knowledge of the world and experience of the transcendent divinity. 6. Cf. Will Durant, The Story of Civilization Part V: The Renaissance. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), p. 222. 7. Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) was an artist and, more... educated laymen, civil servants and merchants. To the humanists, the ideal individual was one equipped with intellectual and practical skills, and viewed as the conscious mover of his own fate. To them, the aim of life was success and fulfilment in the world, not beyond it. This new image of man as an active individual striving rationally towards worldly success began to replace the medieval ... his impact on the course of Western history has been immeasurable. Leonardo's unparalleled diversity of talents justifies calling him a "genius", a true embodiment of the Renaissance ideal of a universal man. Not only did he excel as a painter and sculptor, but he displayed a whole range of artistic and scientific capacities in such diverse fields as mathematics, mechanics, aeronautics, anatomy ...
... behind the entire endeavour of yoga. Yoga is a methodized effort towards self-perfection, by the expression of the potentialities latent in the being, and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence that we see partially expressed in man and in the cosmos; it derives its significance from the fact that all life, when we look behind its appearances, is a vast yoga... Ignorance to the Knowledge to throw off her mask and to reveal herself as the luminous Consciousness-Force carrying in her the eternal Existence and its universal Delight of being....What the evolutionary Power has done is to make a few individuals aware of their souls, conscious of their selves, aware of the eternal being that they are, to put them into communion with Page 29 the Divinity... the conclusion that the Rishis arranged the substance of their thoughts in a system of parallelism by which the same cosmic powers and beings were at once internal and external powers and beings of universal Nature, and that they managed their expressions through a system of double values by which the same language served for their systems of the practice of yoga in both aspects. According to this p ...
... consciousness in this Reality of which only the Transcendent itself can seize the truth, which is self-evident to It, while the apprehension of it by the Gods (the mind, senses etc.) must necessarily be imperfect and relative since they can try to follow but none can really overtake (apprehend or seize) that Truth, each being limited by its own view-point, 3 lesser instrumentality or capacity of consciousness... larger statement of the nature of universal existence than the Einstein theory which is confined to the physical universe. You can deduce too a much larger law of relativity from the statement in the verse. What it means from this point of view—for it contains much more in it—is that the absolute Reality exists but it is immovable and always the same, the universal movement is a motion of consciousness... corresponding with one another or aware of each other's experiences and results as are modern scientists from New York to Yokohama. That would seem to show that there is something there identical, universal and presumably true—however the colour of the translation may differ because of the difference of mental language. As for ultimate Truth, I suppose both the Victorian agnostic and, let us say, ...
... himself in human life. Therefore the Shastra of our Yoga must provide for an infinite liberty in the receptive human soul. A free adaptability in the manner and type of the individual's acceptance of the Universal and Transcendent into himself is the right condition for the full spiritual life in man. 17 The Mother, SABCL, Vol. 25, pp. 24-25. 18 Rig Veda: Mandala One, Sukta 70.2 ... the waters, the child of the forests, the child of things stable and the child of things that move. Even in the stone he is there for man, he is there in the middle of his house,— he is as one universal in creatures; he is the Immortal, the perfect thinker. 18 Depending on the initial impetus to the Yoga, one may or may not begin with Bhakti. Yoga has multiple beginnings, indeed as many... seizes me, my captive grows: This shalt thou henceforth learn from thy heart-beats. For ever love, O beautiful slave of God! O lasso of my rapture's widening noose. Become my cord of universal love. The spirit ensnared by thee force to delight Of creation's oneness sweet and fathomless, Compelled to embrace my myriad unities And all my endless forms and divine souls. ...
... Conscious Force that upholds us and the universe. Transcendent, the original supreme Shakti, she stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. Universal, the cosmic Mahashakti, she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces. Individual, she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of... all happenings in the physical plane? Her business in her embodiment is to know the workings of the universal forces and use them for her works; for the rest she knows what she needs to know, sometimes with her inner self, sometimes with her physical mind. All knowledge is available in her universal self, but she brings forward only what is needed to be brought forward so that the working is done.’... had the Mother. ‘I don’t trust the old profession of guru,’ she said, ‘I am not eager to be the guru of anyone.’ What did she want to be, then? ‘It is more spontaneously natural for me to be the universal Mother and to act in silence through love.’ 4 She therefore declared simply that the sadhaks and sadhikas of the spiritual community she was building up were not her disciples but her children ...
... has immensely enlarged the scope. The main story has not undergone much change. But within the ancient framework he has given form to a vast and eternal vision encompassing many planes of individual and universal life, physical, occult and spiritual. In the study of influence we could analyse how the original tale has grown, what the additions and modifications are. 74 Although it would be an ... aesthesis turns into a pure delight and becomes capable of a high, a large or a deep abiding ecstacy... In the Overmind we have a first firm foundation of the experience of the universal beauty, a universal law, a universal delight." 142 If the poet can make this aesthesis his own, he "becomes a spokesman of the eternal spirit of beauty and delight and shares the highest creative and self-expressive... time effects indeed all mortals, for, consumed by time all men die. Now a passage from Sri Aurobindo: ... in the march of all-fulfilling Time The hour must come of the Transcendent's will: All turns and winds towards his predestined ends In Nature's fixed inevitable course Decreed since the beginning of the worlds In the deep essence of created things: ...
... himself and in the world. 6 Man is no puny ineffectual creature, - not in essence; he is indeed heir to the three worlds, he can spiral upwards from the separative to the universal, and even escape into the transcendent. It would be the aim of the Arya to school its readers in the twin disciplines of self-conquest and self-perfection so that they could "elevate the lower into the higher, receive... Wisdom , Paul Richard brought together "in a homogeneous continuity" the finest thoughts from the sages of all times grouped under "The Song of Wisdom" and "Wisdom and the Religions" - a veritable universal congress of the world's seers, saints and savants like Asoka, Carlyle, Porphyry, Seneca, Emerson, Socrates, Plato, Heraclitus, Voltaire, Tseu-Tse, Confucius, Minamoto Sanetomo, St. Paul, St. Augustine... having drawn him forth out of the divine possibilities of Nature, it would now draw out of his nature the possibilities of the Divine. This supreme aspiration of Love explains and justifies the universal desire and transfigures it; therein the being discovers the secret of his goal shedding light on the mystery of his beginning. 38 Although The Wherefore of the Worlds series came to a ...
... absorbed into the Unutterable, the Ineffable. The return towards the consciousness of the individual body took place very slowly in a constant and invariable splendour of Light and Power and Felicity and Adoration, by successive gradations, but directly, without passing again through the universal and terrestrial forms. And it was as if the modest corporeal form had become the direct and immediate... kingdom within himself and in the world. "The Aryan perfected is the Arhat. There is a transcendent Consciousness which surpasses the universe and of which all these worlds are only a side-issue and a by-play. To that consciousness he aspires and attains. There is a Consciousness which, being transcendent, is yet the universe and all that the universe contains. Into that consciousness he enlarges... for the individual, so now to discover for the race its integral collective expression and found for mankind its new spiritual and communal order. Our first object shall be to declare this ideal, insist on the spiritual change as the first necessity and group together all who accept it and are ready to strive sincerely to fulfil it: our second shall be to build up not only an individual but a ...
... it. It returned because these things are a movement of certain universal life-forces that, once allowed a habitual wrong response in the individual system, tend to continue in that form and, even if evicted, try always to recur. Your mind has rejected them, but something in your vital nature—the part that responds directly to the universal lifeforces—still takes pleasure and has preserved the capacity... converted into a pretext for indulging the ordinary human nature. Sex a Movement of General Nature All movements are in the mass movements of Nature's cosmic forces—they are movements of universal Nature. The individual receives something of them, a wave or pressure of some cosmic force, and is driven by it; he thinks it is his own, generated in himself separately, but it is not so, it is part of a general... The whole principle of this Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody and to nothing else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother Power all the transcendent light, force, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ananda of the supramental Divine. In this Yoga, therefore, there can be no place for vital relations or interchanges with others; any ...
... seekings of thought into identity with a supreme Light, the rapture of the saint made one by love in the pure heart with the transcendent and universal Love, the will of the Karmayogin raised above egoistic desire and passion into the impersonality of the divine and universal Will, these things on which India has set the highest value and which have been the supreme endeavour of her greatest spirits... feeling and conduct! "And whole disciplines are systematised for this purpose, disciplines which men still practise! And whole lives are given up to this pursuit of the supreme Person, the universal Godhead, the One, the Absolute, the Infinite! And to pursue this immaterial aim men are still content to abandon the outward life and society and home and family and their most cherished pursuits... term, must be mentioned in this connection. Passing through Samuel Butler and G.B.Shaw, we come to Aldous Huxley and George Orwell of the 20th century, who have produced pure satire in their own individual ways. 3 This is how Sri Aurobindo has commented on a few of the great names occurring in the field of satire: "It is Dryden and Juvenal who have oftenest made something like genuine poetry ...
... to perceive a universal, which has never been experienced by the senses. These operations of understanding, recognition and formation of universal ideas constitute the middle level of the functioning of Pure Reason. "Let us go still farther. Once one universal idea is formed, it becomes easier for us to form other universal ideas; and then you begin to compare one universal idea with another... myself, have taken up My abode in the human body.") I felt in an instant as though I had understood the inter-relationship of all these statements which I found hanging together in the unity of transcendent self- existent from which all Space and Time and forms issue and in which they are contained. I seemed to understand the illustration given in the Vedanta of the relation of the phenomena of Nature... and it views them as fact. Therefore, every concept is incomplete for us and to a part of our nature almost unreal until it becomes an experience. The metaphysical knowledge of the reality of the transcendent existence- in-itself has, therefore, to be verified in our experience. It is only because there is a supreme experience of that Reality testified by the science of Yoga that our integral nature ...
... 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 the mystic swoon in which me time-consciousness is left by Page 88 the soul's escape? I wonder, however, whether the expression warrants so definite a distinction... And pours the omnipresence of a sun. Her tongues of fire break from a voiceless deep Dreaming the taste of some ineffable height— A cry to clasp the one God-hush in all, A universal hunger's white embrace That from the Unknown leaps burning to the Unknown. SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENT "Exceedingly fine; both the language and rhythm are very powerful and highly... COMMENT That is perfect—it is all of one piece, an exceedingly fine poem 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 ...
... realisation can be had on any plane by contact with the Divine (who is everywhere) or by perception of the Self within, which is pure and untouched by the outer movements. The Supermind is something transcendent—a dynamic Truth consciousness which is not here yet and has to be brought down from above. The Overmind and the Supramental There are many aspects of the Divine and of existence manifested... achievement with regard Page 267 to living matter; but this still awaits the discovery of the true characteristic method and power of spirit in the body. We may say therefore that the universal Consciousness after its descent into Matter has conducted the evolution there along two lines, one of ascent to the discovery of the self and spirit, the other of descent through the already evolved... also. Spiritual experiences can fix them selves in the inner consciousness and alter it, transform it, if you like; one can realise the Divine everywhere, the Self in all and all in the Self, the universal Shakti doing all things; one can feel merged in the Cosmic Self or full of ecstatic bhakti or Ananda. But one may and usually does still go on in the outer active parts of Nature thinking with the ...
... includes both liberation and transcendence, but it takes liberation or even a certain Nirvana, if that comes, as a first step and not as the last step of its siddhi. Whatever exit to or towards the Transcendent it achieves is an ascent accompanied by a descent of the power, light, consciousness that has been achieved and it is by such descents that is to be achieved the spiritual and supramental transformation... follow that all he said or did must be accepted as the highest truth or the best. His ideal of sevā was a need of his nature and must have helped him—it does not follow that it must be accepted as a universal spiritual necessity or ideal. Whether in declaring it he was the mouthpiece of Ramakrishna or not, I cannot pronounce. It seems certain that Ramakrishna expected him to be a great power for changing... transformation is not a result of or object of the Yoga of Knowledge. The realisation of the Yoga of Knowledge is when one feels that one lives in the wideness of something silent, featureless and universal (called the Self) and all else is seen as only forms and names; the Self is real, nothing else. The realisation of " my self in other forms" is a part of this or a step towards it, but in the full ...
... dramatist, philosopher, critic, interpreter of an commentator on the Vedas, the Gita and all the transcendent lore and legend of India, and he is something higher than these, the Saint who has realised his oneness with the Universal Spirit, and fathomed the depths and brought up treasures of transcendent value and brilliance.* After reviewing Sri Aurobindo's many-sided achievement as poet... it has a soul, even like a human individual. The soul of a nation is also a. psychic being, that is to say, a conscious being, a formation out of the Divine Consciousness and in direct contact with it, a power and aspect of Mahashakti. A nation is not merely the sum total of the individuals that compose it, but a collective personality of which the individuals are as it were cells, like the cells... the meeting as requested by Gandhiji, Surendra Mohan had to offer "individual satyagraha", and was jailed again; and the interview between Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo did not, after all, take place. The withdrawal of the Congress Ministries, the truculence of Mr. Jinnah and the Muslim League, the launching of individual satyagraha, the ignoble course of! the 'phoney war', the cold cynicism ...
... Guru's physical being had been born. With a natural modesty and an impersonal insight her emphasis fell more on the entry into time of the larger non-individual reality of the everlasting inner Divine within that being, and most on the transcendent Supermind's becoming now, through this reality and that being, a part of the earth's future and creating the possibility of an earthly heaven. The last... can satisfy some faithful feelings." The remainder of the message in English read: "To celebrate the manifestation of the eternal Consciousness can be done at every moment of the universal history." "But to celebrate the advent of a new world, the Supramental, is a marvellous and exceptional privilege." Evidently, the Mother was pulling us beyond the disciples' devoted... now certain that we shall realise what he expects of us. It has become no longer a hope but a certainty. Only the time necessary for this realisation will be longer or shorter according to our individual effort, our concentration, our goodwill and the Importance we give to this fact. For the inattentive observer things may appear very much what they were before, but for one who knows how to ...
... its movements in view of a perfect eventual result.... Whatever difficulties and perplexities arise, be sure of this that I am leading you to a complete divine life in the universal and an immortal existence in the transcendent Spirit." (Essays on the Gita, Cent. Ed., pp. 537-38) At this point an intriguing question may haunt the sadhaka's mind: If so great is the all-fulfilling capability... easily attained. There is much resistance and obstruction in the sadhaka's habitual consciousness and nature which militates against the attainment. The Divine can surely take full charge of an individual's life in all its aspects, relieving him entirely of all burden and personal responsibility but only on one condition. That condition is that the Sadhaka on his part should completely and unreservedly... is leading or struggling towards higher things out of a first darker appearance. Whatever guidance there is must be given under these conditions of opposition and struggle... It is leading the individual, certainly,... towards the higher state, but through the double terms of knowledge and ignorance, light and darkness, death and life, pain and pleasure, happiness and suffering; none of the terms ...
... individualized in the many souls of humanity, and in the building up of the individual psychic being in every human being. When we connect the Mother’s role in the evolutionary action with what was at stake in the Second World War, and consider that the Mother on Earth embodied the transcendent, universal and individual Mother, it becomes intelligible why Sri Aurobindo called this war ‘the Mother’s... understanding is that it has to be sought outside the boundaries of ‘objective’ thinking, which is the only way in which academic historians are able to view the subjects of their studies. ‘It is a universal failing of writers on Hitler to assume that there is nothing mysterious or difficult to understand about him,’ writes Kimberley Cornish. ‘Yet if we ignore the moral dimension of what he wrought –... the descent of a divine world on Earth possible was the mission of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It was also what the Second World War was about. The reader may recall how in the Beginning the Universal Mother turned towards ‘the Lord’ and prayed that he should redeem what had gone wrong. At that moment the Lord ordered the Mother to infuse her divine Love into the manifestation. This resulted, on ...
... personality 25 of the pioneer geared to the Time-Spirit, and receptive and plastic to its inspirations. He is not so much an individual man, experimenting with Truth in the dim light of his faith and reason, and groping his way forward, but a focal point of universal forces, releasing into expression the elements that go to construct the future. For an objective study of the origin and ... an unhampered growth of his whole personality, for progress towards an integrated and harmonious life, individual and collective. Synthesis, integrality, harmony, and unity were the goal towards which humanity aspired and advanced. In the poet's dream it figured as the emergence of the universal man, in the mind of the spiritual seeker it meant the attainment of Swarajya, and in the vision of the... lapped in the Yogic sleep of deep meditation. And, all of a sudden, an appeal of vibrant poignancy swept out of the deepest chord of my soul: 'Tell me, when wilt thou reveal thyself as the living, transcendent embodiment of the Puma (integral) Yoga and the integral liberation? Come, manifest thyself, India, bent and humbled, calls for thy advent.' To the image of that resplendent divinity my heart ...
... standard paradigm. “As soon as the laws are confined to some abstract realm of ideal mathematical forms, there is no problem,” writes Paul Davies, “but if the laws are considered to inhabit, not a transcendent Platonic realm, but the real universe, then it’s a very different story.” And a French scientist states squarely: “The fundamental laws [of physics] are now about possibilities and no longer about... calcified in the dogmas of a new religion; it should provide the guidance for the adventure of consciousness into which humanity is engaging – the adventure into the miraculous. Thus will the masked Transcendent mount his throne. When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp, As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread Of one who steps... blow, one single blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces. Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.” 12 Before this universal event all was possibility; after it all had become certainty. This event should not be seen only in the context of the lives of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, or of the twentieth century. Its s ...
... sense become subtle, intense, large to embrace all existence, to see God, to feel Page 946 and hear and touch the Eternal, to make a deeper and closer unity of self and the world in a transcendent realisation. Other decisive experiences, other changes of consciousness determine themselves which are corollaries and consequences of this fundamental change. No limit can be fixed to this revolution;... t of an other instrumentation has begun, but has yet to become total and effective; it has besides to cease to be a purely individual self-creation in an original Ignorance, something supernormal to Page 923 earth-life that must always be acquired as an individual achievement by a difficult endeavour. It must become the normal nature of a new type of being; as mind is established here on... what she has begun by a passage from the Ignorance to the Knowledge, to throw off her mask and to reveal herself as the luminous Consciousness-Force carrying in her the eternal Existence and its universal Delight of being. It then becomes obvious that there is something not yet accomplished, there becomes clear to view the much that has still to be done, bhūri aspaṣṭa kartvam ; there is a height still ...
... formless & universal Krishna. Either the first was intensely sensed & the latter became merely Brahman or the latter was seen & the human form became a mask of Brahman + guna etc. This is now in type surmounted; but the Siddhi goes back to this stage firmly in order to bridge over the division by proceeding from the universal to the individual and no longer from the individual to the universal. In all... (without smarana). The perfect spontaneity of all the sharira Anandas must be assured before there can be fixed recurrence and continuity. The entire Krishnadarshana, individual in universal, universal in individual and both the same, is now accomplished. It has yet to be given such force & consistency as to eliminate all relapse and to be raised to higher intensities. Farther combination... by the dwaya consciousness. All energies are now felt to be in oneself. Along with this realisation comes the Ishwarabhava and attahasya. The hasya is also manifesting itself. The sense of the transcendent Krishna maintains the dasya. The Aishwarya is again active and powerful. There is sraddha, but not immediate or particular, only of general and final result. There is still doubt as ...
... 1938: "A general descent of the kind you speak of is not in view at the moment..."¹ Yes, a manifestation on a universal scale such as was attested, by the Mother for 29 February 1956 was somehow delayed - for 18 years as it proved to be - but a breakthrough was achieved on the individual scale and this is what the Mother's statement first cited by Albless implied. From my later essay the statement... Sahasradala has also a spiritual reality centred within it, the Atman or Supreme Self. More accurately, we may say that this Chakra is the seat of the Jivatman, the true individual Self which is not divided from the universal and infinite Atman - the free Jivatman, whose delegate in the evolution is .the psyche. The attention Sri Aurobindo paid to the Chakras in his writings is related to... Yogas. But the psychic being is the true fountainhead of spiritual evolution. Even the urge towards a supracosmic realisation comes ultimately from it. In fact the psychic being hails from the Transcendent, the negative aspect of which is the Supracosmic in the sense of the Extracosmic Unmanifest. Since the past Yogas did not envisage a fulfilment here and now but strained in one way or another ...
... remember that, although Aswapati's is superficially an exteriorised Yoga and Savitri's an interiorised Yoga, the spiritual realities affirmed or experienced by them are the same. The individual, universal and transcendent realisations are common features, but there is no repetition; there is seeming variation and there is also oneness behind the play of variation. Quintessentially, it is the same ... with their happiness and their grief; Their love, their anger, their unspoken hopes Entered in currents or in pouring waves Into the immobile ocean of his calm. 26 Beyond this universal or cosmic experience there is the Nirvanic absolute silence, and Aswapati wins his way to its supernal calm: There only were Silence and the Absolute... He plunged his roots into the... Ablaze the triple heavens revealed their suns, The obscure Abyss exposed its monstrous rule. 32 But how about the rest of mankind? What he aspires for is not a personal solution but a universal realisation and a new creation. 29 Ibid., pp. 79-80. 30 Ibid., p. 91. 31 Ibid., p. 88. 32 Ibid., p. 300. Page 291 And so he continues his search for ...
... stamps his uniqueness, even his presence in the enjoyment of poetic delight that flows from it. But there is an aspect of impersonality too, impersonality not of aloofness but of universality, even of the transcendent. Savitri has all the three. That makes the poetic work minutely elaborate; also. being an experience, there does not remain any question of vagueness. Let us... epic and the standards of short lyrical verses cannot be applied to it. Besides, it is another kind of epic. The Epic of the Universal is full of Rasas— madhura, karuna, vātsalya, adbhuta, vira, bibhatsa, shānta, etc. But, at the same time, it is the Epic of the Individual,—and also the Transcendental,—with the Rasa of Shantam pervading all through. It is in this great Silence that the Epic was... upon which the special tones of the aesthetic consciousness come out or from which they arise... In the overmind we have a first firm foundation of experience of a universal beauty, a universal love, a universal delight... This universal aesthesis of beauty and delight... draws a Rasa from them and with that comes the enjoyment, Bhoga, and the touch or the mass of the Ananda." 49 There is a completeness ...
... remember that, although Aswapathy's is superficially an exteriorised Yoga and Savitri's an interiorised Yoga, the spiritual realities affirmed or experienced by them are the same. The individual, universal and transcendent realisations are common features, but there is no repetition; there is seeming variation and there is also oneness behind the play of variation. Quintessentially, it is the same co... their happiness and their grief; Their love, their anger, their unspoken hopes Entered in currents or in pouring waves Into the immobile ocean of his calm. 34 Beyond this universal or cosmic experience there is the Nirvanic absolute silence, and Aswapathy wins his way to its supernal calm: There only were Silence and the Absolute.... He plunged his roots into the... Ablaze the triple heavens revealed their suns, The obscure Abyss exposed its monstrous rule. 40 But how about the rest of mankind? What he aspires for is not a personal solution but a universal realisation and a new creation. And so he continues his search for this ultimate solution, and his efforts are rewarded at last: The Presence he yearned for suddenly drew close... The ...
... agnostic, brought up from childhood in the midst of the triumphant materialism of the 19th century England! Page 139 without a second, the integral, indivisible unity of transcendent and universal Existence. His Yoga had no mists and shades and twilights in it, or the decoying glimmers of a spurious occultism. He lived and worked, taught and wrote, in the true spirit of a scientist... the problem of the individual's action goes, his abstention from strife and its inevitable concomitant destruction in their more gross and physical form may help his own moral being, but it leaves the Slayer of creatures unabolished." 160 "A day may come, must surely come, we will say, when humanity will be ready spiritually, morally, socially for the reign of universal peace; meanwhile the... the waking consciousness, but a fully conscious, exploratory, and heuristic ascent from level to level of experience, and from world to world of beings and forces, to the highest peaks of the transcendent Spirit, and its subsequent descent, charged with the dynamic Light and Power of the Spirit, to trans- figure by means of them our squalid earthly life of darkness, disorder and discontent. His ...
... prayers, requests, emotions pour forth - and a flood of blessings pours down carrying all of them away .... The look! - the enrapturing and captivating eyes! Who can "ever forget? .. If some transcendent Divinity is not here where else can he be? 18 In the evening there is a repetition - a repetition with a difference - of the divine efflorescence. The inmates and permitted visitors assemble... down the greater is the resistance. You yourself can see that there is something pressing down. You can also see that there is the tremendous resistance. 22 The question was asked how the universal conditions were more favourable Page 226 now to the descent of the Supermind than they were before. After a pause, Sri Aurobindo answered: Firstly, the knowledge of the physical... condition for the highest Truth coming down .... Fourthly, the rise of persons who wield tremendous vital influence over large numbers of men. These are some of the signs to show that the universal condition may be more ready now. 23 And he concluded by warning that, if one were serious about doing the Yoga, one shouldn't tamely surrender to the hostile forces that were always i ...
... religions in opposition, Aurobindoism and Vaishnavism, each insisting on its own God's greatness. That is not the case. And then what Krishna must I challenge, – the Krishna of the Gita who is the transcendent Godhead, Paramatma, Parabrahma, Purushottama, the cosmic Deity, Master of the universe, Vasudeva who is all, the Immanent in the heart of all creatures, or the Godhead who was incarnate at Brindavan... happenings in the physical plane? Her business in her embodiment is to know the workings of the universal forces and use them for her works; for the rest she knows what she needs to know, sometimes with her inner self, sometimes with her physical mind. All knowledge is available in her universal self, but she brings forward only what is needed to be brought forward so that the working is ... means of action; there must be an increasing non-cooperation and passive resistance which would render the administration of the country by a foreign Government difficult or finally impossible, a universal unrest which would wear down repression and finally, if need be, an open revolt all over the country. This plan included a boycott of British trade, the substitution of national schools for the Government ...
... the one Truth: The Highest was to them unknowable. By knowing too much they missed the Whole to be known: The fathomless heart of the world was left unguessed And the Transcendent kept its secrecy." (Sri Aurobindo, Savitri,p.271) Prometheus and Ganymede The human spirit has ever oscillated between two extreme and opposite ideals. Goethe has well... perception is much nearer to something that corresponds to the universal Reality than the perceptions, say, of the Stone Age;... but even this will be completely transcended, surpassed and probably upset by the intrusion of something which was not in the universe and has not been studied so far. This change, this sudden mutation in the universal elements will very certainly bring a kind of chaos in our... of all rationale. For this whole is certainly not a chaos. "The cosmos is no accident in Time" and "There is a meaning in each play of chance". To speak mathematically, this universal Becoming is not a 'scalar', it is a multidimensional 'vector'. "World-existence is the ecstatic dance of Shiva which multiplies the body of the God numberlessly to the view: it leaves that white existence ...
... that the process of evolution is universal and that human evolution cannot Page 99 be bound down to a set of ideas of philosophy or rules of practice. No epoch, no individual, no group has the monopoly of truth. It is the same with the religions also. Disciple : I don't think such a wide view is possible unless man reaches the universal mind. Sri Aurobindo : ... – but mind or rather movement of mind. Mind is universal, even the animal has got it. We can only speak of human mind which is a particular organization of the general principle of Mind. One can speak of one’s own mind for the sake of convenience, i.e. for practical purposes. Disciple : What then, makes the difference between individuals? Sri Aurobindo : There is no fundamental... Gita lays stress on certain broad lines of the integral supramental yoga : For instance : 1. Acceptance of life and action. Page 117 2. Clarification of the nature of the Transcendent Divine. 3. The Divine Personality and its Transcendence. 4. Existence of two Natures – parā and aparā . Disciple : It speaks of the Para Prakriti and says that advanced souls attain ...
... also we feel it as above all, transcendent, surpassing all individual birth or cosmic existence. To get into the universal Self—one in all— is to be liberated from ego; ego either becomes a small instrumental circumstance in the consciousness or even disappears from our consciousness altogether. That is the extinction or Nirvana of the ego. To get into the transcendent self above all makes us capable... vital, body becoming externalised, an outer action, while within and detached from them there grows the sense of a separate self-existent being which opens into the realisation of the cosmic and transcendent spirit. There is also the method—a very Page 115 powerful method—of the Sankhyas, the separation of the Purusha and the Prakriti. One enforces on the mind the position of the Witness—all... surface but deep within and above. Within is the soul supporting an inner mind, inner vital inner physical in which there is a capacity for universal wideness and with it for the things now asked for—direct contact with the truth of self and things, taste of a universal bliss, liberation from the imprisoned smallness and sufferings of the gross physical body. Even in Europe the existence of something ...
... real Self. This is now being corrected by the mind being seen Page 741 as an activity formulated & directed in himself by the universal Ishwara. To this is now being added the same relation of mind to the transcendent Ishwara in the individual. All that has now to be done is to confirm thoroughly the Krishnabhava & Ishwaradarshana against surprise & interruption, as is being... ritam is communicating itself to the Tapas. The difficulty of the Tapas is to harmonise the universal, the central & the individual Will. The universal is realised in the present & past progression. The central having realised itself in the past & present determines & prepares the future. The individual submits to the central and accepts its part in the preparation & determination. Page 712 ... Ananda confirmed & universalised is the path to the conversion of Prana into the universal Chit-Tapas and that the path to the conversion of Body into Sat— It is this Chit Tapas which is the base of Aishwarya-IshitaVashita; so long as it is not entirely realised there can be only a partial efficacy of the individual Tapas. The way to it is self-association with all energies in the universe. The Dwayavins ...
... This supreme message of Savitri to humanity (or rather of Dawn to Night) has been brought out in three progressive stages through the personality of Savitri who is the Incarnation of the All-transcendent Mother-Shakti, the Creative Dynamis of the Divine. First, she wants to realise her highest self through a sense of kinship with all earthlings whom she embraces in her inmost being accepting... break the imperfect earth. 59 But what Aswapati could not afford to disobey, Savitri can, because her soul is the last perfection of the aspiring Incarnation: Bearing the burden of universal love, A wonderful mother of unnumbered souls. 60 Therefore when she is invited — or rather tempted — for the last 54 Savitri, pp. 692-93. 55 Ibid., p. 693. 56 Ibid., p... of the world's burden too along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more of the nature of a battle than others'; but this is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a considerable country. He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them as representatives of ...
... of the Dharmic Mind fighting to establish this psychological level in the race. Valmiki, according to Sri Aurobindo, has truly caught the nature of the Avatar who acts not from the individual standpoint but from a universal plane, the plane of supreme mental ideals. Of course a lot of myth is mixed up with the historical crisis or perhaps facts of a non-physical occult dimension get fused with occurrences... circumstances of his time his single-track message had a valuable work to do. Shankara had even a bhakta-side to him: he composed splendid hymns to the Divine Mother and his call towards a featureless transcendent Atman-Brahman was deemed a final necessary step from a world which for all its teeming labour seemed to him incapable of lasting reformation. Knowing that in its central drive Buddhism itself in... Wordsworth in some degree or other, sensing a Cosmic Revelation in various forms, more distinct in some aspects of Nature than in others as the seer of the Lake District knew when he spoke of the secret universal Being Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns. Do you know that Tennyson regarded this line as the grandest in English poetry? He may well be nearly right, for to my mind both the art ...
... adversity"! There was, in particular, an alleged dacoit sentenced to ten years' rigorous imprisonment, but to Sri Aurobindo he seemed a saint. As a result of these insights and illuminations, a transcendent peace now possessed Sri Aurobindo's mind and heart, and all was incomparable peace within. This singular immaculate inner equanimity and this miraculous gift of mystical vision helped him to see... What was it - in the individual as well as National planes? Just this, affirmed Chittaranjan: Vedantism. Sri Aurobindo was not a politician in the ordinary. Western sense of the term, but a deeply committed person to whom politics was as profoundly spiritual an experience as was religion itself. Elucidating this point, Chittaranjan continued: As in the case of individuals you cannot reach your... rebuff administered to the Government, for they could now have no doubt that the people were with the supposed "criminal" and not with the prosecuting alien bureaucracy who were only the object of universal detestation. Nay more: contributions and messages of sympathy came even from Europe, from Australia, from America - and the bureaucracy felt isolated from civilised opinion and was left to fend ...
... after fulfilling, his grace overflows. Love and grace flow on undiminished. The look! enrapturing and captivating eyes! Who can ever forget Pouring love and grace and ineffable divinity? If the transcendent Divinity is not here, where else can it be? "He is usually an embodiment of knowledge. But to-day he is different. He is all love. Here is the Great Poet and the Supreme Lover incarnate! It is... . ... One needs to have a calm heart, a settled will, entire self-abnegation and the eyes constantly fixed on the beyond to live undiscouraged in times like these which are truly a period of universal decomposition. For myself, I follow the Voice and look neither to right nor to left of me. The result is not mine and hardly at all now even the labour. ¹ 6 May 1915 Heaven we have possessed... the earth: the body of the awakened consciousness was the terrestrial globe moving harmoniously in etheral space. And the consciousness knew that its global body was thus moving in the arms of the universal Being, and it gave itself, it abandoned itself to It in an ecstasy of peaceful bliss. Then it felt that its body was absorbed in the body of the universe and one with it; the consciousness became ...
... blue self-born sea of a silent Dawn; The ceaseless vibration-scroll of a hidden Sun Creates within her, where all is a magic incantation, A picture of the transcendent Mystery;—that luminous laughter (Or, A mystery-picture of the Transcendent?) Is like the voice of a gold-fretted flute flowing from the inmost heart of the Creator. Now, I don't know whether that was what you meant, but it is the... a very apt imagination and serves to carry the meaning of the poem beyond the earth-limits to the beyond—as such it is striking and legitimate. But it has to be taken as a God constructed out of universal appearances by the lover's mood—it is evidently not A. E.'s Divinity, so A. E. need not have been in pain for him—and as such any objections (I don't know precisely what they may be) are out of court... human love and happiness. It was this that drew from A.E. that remark: he could find nowhere in the poem the distinction you make between the time and essential Godhead and a construction out of universal appearances.... Page 474 Do you wish me to drop the sentence altogether? If Harin had indicated that the God spoken of was not the sole Divinity, he would have spoiled the poem. ...
... Mandukya Upanishad in which three grades of being - the outer human, the inner occult, the inmost spiritual - are termed Jagrat (Wakefulness), Swapna (Dream), Sushupti (Sleep), with a final utter transcendent state simply named Turiya (Fourth). Sushupti indicates the tranced condition at its deepest, in which the human soul partakes of a Super-consciousness described by the Upanishad thus: "The self... Iien on the Absolute.... Our minds hush to a bright Omniscient... Unweave the stars and into silence pass.... Bear; thou shalt find at last thy road to bliss. Even when a transcendent experience is presented, such words as would shadow forth its living and substantial nature are pressed into service: Across a void retreating sky he glimpsed Through a last glimmer... William James are the ones that strike me at the moment. Then there was the fascination of the actual life aiming to plumb the In-world and penetrate the Over-world as well as move in step with the Universal Divine. Nor was the rapt experience the ultimate goal here: Augustine's "Beauty of ancient days yet ever new" was to be made active in all the waking hours and set at smiling play in all relationships; ...
... multiplicities have fundamental types behind them - individuals grounded in Page 6 species, species grounded in genera. A wide variation playing upon a persistent pattern is her creative mode everywhere. The overhead planes hold that basic oneness most intensely. Conscious being there does not forget as in our lower hemisphere the universal Self: every movement is fraught with awareness... the Yogic self-release of Savitri's father, Aswapathy, into the spiritual ether by breaking "the intellect's hard and lustrous lid": The toiling thinker widened and grew still, Wisdom transcendent touched his quivering heart: Page 36 His soul could sail beyond thought's luminous bar; Mind screened no more the shoreless infinite. Across a void retreating sky he... graver, more contained movement. To such a mood end-stopping comes with greater naturalness. But Sri Aurobindo does not make a fetish of end-stopping. What he does is a most careful moulding of the individual line so that it may not merely serve the broad scheme as in much present-day verse but be as well a power and perfection in its own right, without of course the least rhythmic monotony occurring ...
... over the pain or whatever else is the Page 32 trouble to the Mother whom I feel to be standing in front of me. The second movement is to lift the trouble far above my head to some transcendent region of light and love. Of course, along with the trouble, I offer to the Mother the person who is suffering or has the problem. In both cases the offering is sustained for a time and is repeated... Unknown. For those who have not known Sethna intimately or have not had close acquaintance with his various writings, it is difficult to believe that such a radiant multifaceted personality and universal Page 1 genius is unassumingly living in our midst in the small Ashram community. The present essay is a humble attempt at offering to the reading public a short pen-picture —... both the movements are made not only with a keen mental concentration but also with the heart's intense consecration." 15. Amal-da as a Sadhaka Amal-da is a gifted intellectual, a universal genius, a distinguished writer and a renowned poet. But is that all that can be said about him? Surely not. Already in the early thirties, when somebody in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram - of which K.D ...
... be found again. For there is also a Rhythm, which is not a fiction either, any more than that “fire” or “flowing” is. They are one and the same thing with a triple face, 55 in its individual and universal aspects, in its human condensation or interstellar space, in this rock or that bird. Each thing, each being has its rhythm, as well as each event and the return of the birds from the north... the world if it were confined to only a few individuals. Actually, from the very beginning, from the very first steps, the seeker has realized that this yoga of the superman was not an individual yoga, though the individual is the starting point and instrument of the work, but a collective yoga, a form of concentrated evolution in which the individual is but an outpost, the spreader of the possibility... as if they came to meet him. It was a strange multiplication, a kind of golden contagion. Gradually, he entered an all, but, oh, quite an odd “all,” which had nothing to do with a cosmic or transcendent or dazzling consciousness – yet which was like a million little bursts of gold, fleeting, elusive, almost mocking. Perhaps we should say “a microscopic consciousness”? – and warm: a sudden sweetness ...
... wrote subsequently in a letter, in 1935. Page 311 passport, if I could, to your time-old wisdom of the spirit— and that as a seeker, not a critic." I was impressed by the note of transcendent sincerity in his delicately-cadenced voice and strikingly-intellectual physiognomy. Besides, his face looked so emaciated and pale that it touched a chord in my heart. I went straight to the... and the lack of response the inescapable retribution. "To which he wrote back with his unfailing kindness and patience: "The peculiarity you note — of self-contradiction in yourself — is universal: it is one part of the being which believes and speaks the right and beautiful things: it is another which doubts and says the opposite. I get communications for instance from X in which for several... attracted me with its fine ______________________ 'I can promise to be sincere but not impartial. Page 281 crop of Christ-like whiskers which he discarded subsequently, to the universal regret of his friends and admirers. For we did admire it without pressing the 'resemblance' any further. And let me add, with a sigh, that those who have never seen him with his whiskers will never ...
... all her multiplicities have fundamental types behind them — individuals grounded in species, species grounded in genera. A wide variation playing upon a persistent pattern is her creative mode everywhere. The overhead planes hold that basic oneness most intensely. Conscious being there does not forget as in our lower hemisphere the universal Self: every movement is fraught with awareness of the Infinite... the Yogic self-release of Savitri's father, Aswapathy, into the spiritual ether by breaking "the intellect's hard and lustrous lid": The toiling thinker widened and grew still, Wisdom transcendent touched his quivering heart: His soul could sail beyond thought's luminous bar; Mind screened no more the shoreless infinite. Across a void retreating sky he glimpsed Through... which our flesh returns after the brief interval of living, the immense inanimate within which our few feverish years seem to make a small noise and cease to be. A profound awe, a solemn sense of universal Nature blindly and inexorably at work in its gigantic reaches of space and time, pervade his philosophical epic like a religion manque, even as the presence of ari "unweeting" power, absolute and ...
... over Harm, we have omitted most of these "private" letters. All the same we have plucked a few lines from here and there, when the individual merged with the universal. After all, none of us are free from our dark side. For, are we not all buffeted by the play of universal forces, such as anger, pride, etc. ? Sri Aurobindo and Mother gave Harm a "long and full chance to develop his better side of... absolute selfness which is sweeter, mightier, profounder than any aspect. His peace, rapture, light, freedom, beauty are marvellous and ineffable, because he is himself magically, mysteriously, transcendently marvellous and ineffable. He can then be sought after for his wonderful and ineffable self and not only for the sake of one aspect or another of him. The only thing is first to arrive at a point... of a big universal working and it is impossible any longer to explain everything as the result of one's own sole and independent personality. Page 226 You yourself have at one time written that your crises of despair etc. came upon you as if thrown on you and worked themselves out without your being able to determine or put an end to them. That means an action of universal forces and ...
... More that compels Art to change always in its constant seeking for more and more that must be expressed of the Page 329 concealed or the revealed Divine, of the individual and the universal or the transcendent Spirit. If we take these three elements as making the whole of Art, perfection of expressive form, discovery of beauty, revelation of the soul and essence of things and the... revelation of Beauty, and we can say nothing more by way of prohibitive or limiting rule. But there is one thing more that can be said, and that makes a big difference. In the Yogin's vision of universal beauty, all becomes beautiful, but all is not reduced to a single level. There are gradations, there is a hierarchy in this All-Beauty and we see that it depends on the ascending power ( Vibhuti... throwing in some colour, some trait, some capacity here and there,—or they stand in front and there is a multiple personality, a many-sided character or a many-sided, sometimes what looks like a universal capacity. But if a former personality, a former capacity is brought fully forward, it will not be to repeat what was already done, but to cast the same capacity into new forms and new shapes and ...
... was "transcendental meditation", and he had them come to stay with him for a month in the Himalayas. Obviously after fifteen days they were bored and they couldn't take it any more! And then the "Transcendent" is without much opening for the world!... If they were to be shown what Sri Aurobindo brought forth, — a yoga open to the world — it would get through to them. The unfortunate thing is... to me: above all, don't try (no propaganda in any way), don't try to make people understand; that which will have the most effect is the Consciousness at work Page 102 in the world (universal gesture), because it produces in each one the utmost of which he is capable - the most that he can understand will be understood by the influence of the Pressure of the Consciousness. As soon as... it to them, give them something to read. Reading is still too mental! [The Aurovilian:] But we can also, if you think it's possible, put together a small group, or maybe a single individual, or two or three, to go and see them That's it. [The Aurovilian:] And speak to them in their own language, but show them there's something else. Yes, that's it. [The ...
... are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions, new-create what it had created, the narrow fixed lines disappear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness. Neither Karma nor... terror: "When a nation, instead of an individual is seized with lunacy, it is thought to be displaying remarkable industrial wisdom.” Qu'en dites-vous ? Seized with lunacy ? But that implies that nation is ordinarily led by reason ? Is it so ? Or even by common sense ? Masses of men act upon their vital push, not according to reason— individuals too mostly, though they frequently call... bhajasva mām [This world is full of misery and ephemeral: so turn to worship me. Gita, 9.33] Of course we hope to initiate a better world here, but that is another matter. The individuals or some individuals first— afterwards the world may ask for its chance. 1936 The increase of "peace and purity" I have been feeling of late — I had asked if that was any index to our ...
... therefore the Pure Subject. Even Brahmā cannot grasp Thee, the Transcendent Spirit, as he is bound by the modes of material Prakriti. All Paths lead to Thee (4-10) 4. Persons who have developed the highest spiritual insight worship Thee directly (without the help of any substitute or symbol) through intuition, as the one Lord and Universal Being. Other devotees who require the use of symbols, worship... the Supreme Lord, who has assumed a form out of His own free will for the good of the world? 36. The one Spirit that pervades the souls of these Gopīs, their husbands and all other beings — that universal Witness has assumed the form of Śrī Krsna for the sake of sport. For the all-pervading Being, where is the distinction between oneself and another, and how can any good or evil therefore accrue... Divinity of Śrī Krsna — the faith that He is Mahāvisnu the Supreme Being — attains to the highest devotion to the Lord, and in the course of the development of devotion, he quickly overcomes lust, the universal malady of mankind. Page 118 The Lord slays Śarikhacūda Salvation of Sudarśana (1-19) Sri Suka said: 1. Once during a festive season, the Gopas went with great enthusiasm ...
... that I was identified. 5 November 1934 "All the individual faculties slumber and the consciousness is not yet fully awake in the transcendent states; that is, its wakefulness is then intermittent and in between there is sleep." (19 May 1914) Does this mean that before the consciousness has awakened in the transcendent states, there is a period in which the consciousness is asleep... are watching over me at every moment. Take one step back from the surface consciousness, enter just a little inside yourself, and you will become aware of it. 24 July 1936 Does the universal Justice prevent us from rising above the universe when we want to? To a certain extent, yes. Certainly in order to rise above the universe , one must be absolutely liberated from Justice, for... until it is awakened. How long does the consciousness sleep like this? A second or an eternity. 10 April 1935 Then what does this mean exactly? There are experiences of a universal order which can be revealed only to those who have had them. 13 April 1935 "Thou hast made a promise, Thou hast sent into these worlds those who can and that which can fulfil this promise ...
... Glad because I was by nature energetic; sad because I feared that karma would tether me irrevocably to the world and therefore, a fortiori, to my present state of non-experience as against transcendent God realisation. Yet why must he go on browbeating Nirod the charming pessimist, with his Aurobindonian gospel of incessant karma to the exclusion of jnana and inveigh against those who, like... hard assertions of mental belief leading to a vehement vindication of one's mental creed and goal because they are one's own and must therefore be greater than those of others — an attitude which is universal in human nature. Even the atheist is not tolerant but declares his credo of Nature and Matter as the only truth and on all who disbelieve it or believe in other things he pours scorn a» unenlightened... action. Sri Aurobindo gave me a pregnant hint of this deep difficulty in 1924, when he said that he had come to realise through his Yogic knowledge that "to help humanity out, it is not enough for an individual, however great, to achieve an ultimate solution individually" because "even when the Light is ________________ * Savitri XLI For full quotation vide Chapter VIII Page 135 ready ...
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