... supramental Nature which manifests the Jiva. 38 As Sri Aurobindo points out, it is the individual being of ours by which ignorance is possible to self-conscious mind, but it is also that by which liberation into the spiritual being is possible and the enjoyment of divine immortality. 39 It is the individual being, represented by the psychic entity 40 that, impelled by the Supreme Will, plunges into... purusa, the supramental being, and ānandamaya purusa, the bliss being. It is the individual being that accepts the identification, by means of exclusive concentration of consciousness, with the physical, vital and mental consciousness as also with the egoistic consciousness. The fall of the individual being in inconscience and its raising up the evolutionary forms of matter, life and mind is seen... to general or universal evolution; it is that which assumes in its Purusha consciousness the various formations that evolve from the inconscient nature in its evolutionary process; it is the individual being who in the human consciousness is found to have assumed in its Purusha consciousness various beings corresponding to the physical, the vital, the mental and the psychic; it is that which is capable ...
... But we see farther that it is not solely and ultimately the cosmic being into which our individual being enters but something in which both are unified. As our individualisation in the world is a becoming of that Self, so is the world too a becoming of that Self. The world-being includes always the individual being; therefore these two becomings, the cosmic and the individual, are always related to each... the world-being is the consciousness of a Self which at one and the same time cosmicises in the world and individualises through the individual Purusha, and both in that world-being and in this individual being and in all individual beings it is aware of the same Self manifesting and experiencing its various manifestations. That then is a Self which must be one in its being,—otherwise we could not have... each other and in their practical relation mutually dependent. But we find that the individual being also comes in the end to include the world in its consciousness, and since this is not by an abolition of the spiritual individual, but by his coming to his full, large and perfect self-consciousness, we Page 386 must suppose that the individual always included the cosmos, and it is only ...
... self-knowledge to observe an experience or representation of mingled knowledge and ignorance, delight and suffering, unreal existence and escape from unreal existence. For the escape is for the individual being constructed by Maya; the Eternal does not need to escape and the play continues its cycle for ever. Or if not the need, there is the will to so create, or there is the urge or the automatic action... with no greater Truth beyond them in which their secret can be found and their contradictions discover a reconciling issue. If Brahman is not the percipient, then the percipient must be the individual being: but this percipient is created by the Illusion and unreal; the percept, the world, is an illusion created by an Illusion and unreal; the perceiving consciousness is itself an illusion and therefore... this withdrawal is for the individual an act of supreme importance. But here a dual being is imposed on Brahman and a reality attributed to something that belongs to the cosmic Illusion,—to the individual being of Brahman in Maya, for Brahman as the Self of all is not even phenomenally bound and does not need to escape from her: moreover, salvation cannot be of importance if bondage is unreal and bondage ...
... creation, instrument and subject of mental, vital, physical Nature. This ego is not his real self, but an instrumentation of Nature by which it has developed a sense of limited and separate individual being in mind, life and body. By this instrumentation he acts as if he were a separate existence in the material universe. Nature has evolved certain habitual limiting conditions under which that... world-being is the consciousness of a Self which at one and the same time cosmicises in the world and individualises through the individual Purusha, and both in that world-being and in this individual being and in all individual beings it is aware of the same Self manifesting and experiencing its various manifestations. That then is a Self which must be one in its being, — otherwise we could not... independent or separate reality. Individual independence, entire separativeness are not necessary for individual reality, do not constitute it. The Life Divine, pp. 465-66 This individual being of ours is that by which ignorance is possible to self-conscious mind, but it is also that by which liberation into the spiritual being is possible and the enjoyment of divine immortality. It ...
... which it receives the contacts of the world and can become aware of them and deal with them before they enter." 18 This environmental consciousness surrounding the body is that part of the individual being through which the individual is in inner contact with other beings and with universal forces. By environmental consciousness I mean something that each man carries around him, outside... 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 Reality — is all-embracing and includes... 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 and the universal being. In the lower nature man is an ego making a clean cut in conception between himself and all other existence; the ego is to him self, but all the rest not-self ...
... dumb result and inanimate field of her action and creation. In animal life the Force begins to become slowly conscious on the surface and puts forth the form, no longer of an object, but of an individual being; but this imperfectly conscious individual, although it participates, senses, feels, yet only works out what the Force does in it without any clear intelligence or observation of what is being... present Nature only by an identification with a greater Truth and a greater Nature. The will of the individual, even when completely free, could not act in an isolated independence, because the individual being and nature are included in the universal Being and Nature and dependent on the all-overruling Transcendence. There could indeed be in the ascent a dual line. On one line the being could feel and... in either case there would be, as the condition of a freedom from the control of a mechanical action of Nature-forces, a submission to a greater conscious Power or an acquiescent unity of the individual being with its intention Page 960 and movement in his own and in the world's existence. For the action of a new power of being in a higher range of consciousness might, even in its control ...
... change, sensations change, what then is the being? Some say that individuality is based upon memory, remembrance: you remember therefore you are an individual being. This is absolutely wrong, for even if you had no memory you would still be an individual being. The river's bed constitutes the river. The bed localises the river, but the bed also changes much; which means that all is inconstant,... itself, deploys itself, it divides itself into innumerable fragments for the need Page 173 of expansion, and each one of these fragmentations has been the beginning, the origin of an individual being. The origin of every individual form is the law of this form or the truth of this form. If there were no law, no truth of each form, there would be no possibility of individualisation. It would... into the many. This multiplicity implies an innumerable quantity of laws, elements of consciousness, truths which spread out into the universe and finally become separate individualities. So the individual being seems constantly to go farther and farther away from its origin by the very necessity of individualisation. But once this individualisation, that is, this awareness of the inner truth is complete ...
... the central Will is represented constantly and permanently in an individual being, this individual being can serve as an intermediary between this Will and all beings, and will for them. Everything this individual being perceives and offers in his consciousness to the supreme Will is answered as if it came from each individual being. And if for any reason the individual elements have a more or less ...
... be taken up from three points of view,—its relation to the Absolute, the supreme Reality, its origin and place in the cosmic workings, its action and point of hold in the Page 619 individual being. It is evident that these contrary phenomena have no direct root in the supreme Reality itself, there is nothing there that has this character; they are creations of the Ignorance and Inconscience... mechanically when, owing to changed circumstances, the need or the necessary circumstances are no longer there. The second source of knowledge is surface contact with the world outside the natural individual being; it is this contact which is the cause first of a conscious sensation and sense-perception and then of intelligence. If there were not an underlying consciousness, the contact would not create... ill-balanced in another, in yet another obscure and unreceptive. This limitation by personality, this defence of personality and refusal to receive what is unassimilable, is necessary for the individual being because in its evolution, at the stage reached, it has a certain self-expression, a certain type of experience and use of experience which must, for the mind and life at least, govern nature; ...
... not a perishable cell or a dissoluble portion of the cosmic Spirit, but has its original immortal reality in the Transcendence. It is a fact that the cosmic Being expresses itself through the individual being, but also it is a truth that the Transcendental Reality expresses itself through both the individual existence and the Cosmos; the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction... truths they stand on fit into its structure. In the supracosmic view of things the supreme Reality is alone entirely real. A certain illusoriness, a sense of the vanity of cosmic existence and individual being is a characteristic turn of this seeing of things, but it is not essential, not an indispensable adjunct to its main thought-principle. In the extreme forms of its world-vision human existence... self-existent significances in a Time-structure. This sounds conclusive enough and it seems that nothing more can be said about the matter. And yet the question remains over; for the stress on our individual being, the demand on it, the value put on individual perfection and salvation is too great to be dismissed as a device for a minor operation, the coiling and uncoiling of an insignificant spiral amid ...
... its own path to the Oneness. That is the secret sense even of our own world of Ignorance which works from the Inconscience but with the underlying cosmicity of the overmind principle. But the individual being in such a creation does not possess this secret principle in knowledge and does not base upon it his action. An overmind being here would perceive this secret; but he might still work on his own... in that way no spiritual fullness and perfection can come. The gnostic life will exist and act for the Divine in itself and in the world, for the Divine in all; the increasing possession of the individual being and the world by the Divine Presence, Light, Power, Love, Delight, Beauty will be the sense of life to the gnostic being. In the more and more perfect satisfaction of that growing manifestation... consciousness that takes on various shapes of its being and energy; each such shape of energy, quality, power or force, though still in itself general, impersonal and universal, is taken by the individual being as material for the building of his personality. Thus impersonality is in the original undifferentiated truth of things the pure Page 1028 substance of nature of the Being, the Person; ...
... but does not admit any at all abiding truth of our spiritual individuality. The All-Soul may continually develop, may slowly yet urgently evolve its becoming; but each individual man or apparent individual being is to this way of thinking only a moment of the All-Soul and its evolution; out of that it rises by the formation which we call birth and it sinks back into it by the dissolution which we call... soul or spirit, our soul personality or spiritual becoming is a fruit of our life and body. Now the question of rebirth turns almost entirely upon the one fundamental question of the past of the individual being and its future. If the creation of the whole nature is to be credited to the physical birth, then the body, life and soul of the individual are only a continuation of the body, life and soul of... past births, this is sufficient warrant for a refusal to accept as sufficient any theory of the ephemeral being of the individual and the sole truth of the evolutionary Universal. Certainly, the individual being is not thereby shown to be independent of the All-Soul; it may be nothing but a form of it in time. But it is sufficient for our purpose that it is a persistent soul form, not determined by the ...
... important elements in the integral yoga which reflect its thrust towards the yoga of self-perfection. In Sri 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... the Divine in Page 65 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 out flowering of the Divine in humanity." 57 As has been noted, each... source of becoming, the source of the divine will and also of the operation of the divine will. That leads to the fulfillment of Karma yoga, since the specific aim of the karma yoga is to unite the individual being and will with the divine being and divine will, as a result of which the individual is rendered into the egoless and desireless instrument of the divine will that works itself out triumphantly ...
... thing indeed becomes clear; Page 323 it is self-evident here that both the individual and 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... power of infinite variation of the truth possibilities of existence and also its capacity to create, without tying itself to its workings, any and every form of Necessity or system of order: the individual being too by experience of these negating absolutes can participate in that dynamic liberty, can pass from one order of self-formulation to a higher order. At the stage when from the mental it has to... would be an Ignorance. But if all is a manifestation of the Reality and itself real by the constituting immanence, the substantiating essence and presence of the Reality, then the awareness of individual being and world-being would be in its spiritual origin and nature a play of the infinite self-knowledge and all-knowledge: ignorance could be only a subordinate movement, a suppressed or restricted ...
... Jivatman, which presides over individual birth and evolution, though the Jivatman itself is unborn, unevolving, above the manifestation. What comes down into the manifestation, descending into the individual being as the representative of the Jivatman, evolving from life to life is the Antaratman, the soul or psychic being. Page 379 Jivatman, the individual self, feels his oneness with... which our life is an eddy, one indivisible Mind of which our mind is a receiving and recording, forming or translating and transmitting station, one indivisible Spirit of which our soul and individual being are a portion or a manifestation. It is the ego-sense which clinches the division and in which the ignorance we superficially are finds its power to maintain the strong though always permeable... according to His will in whatever range and for whatever purpose of His eternal cosmic activity. 51 Importance and Necessity of Individuality The immense importance of the individual being, which increases as he rises in the scale, is the most remarkable and significant fact of a universe which started without consciousness and without individuality in an undifferentiated ...
... plunge from its native Light into the depths of a Nescience out of which arose this world of Ignorance; or a collectivity of souls may Page 796 have been so moved, the Many: for an individual being cannot constitute a cosmos; a cosmos must be either impersonal or multipersonal or the creation or self-expression of a universal or infinite Being. This desire may have drawn down an All-Soul... extinction of a misbegotten soul or an escape out of a mistaken world-adventure. But such theories either imply a premier importance and originating power of mind or a premier importance of the individual being; both have indeed a great place, but the one eternal Spirit is the original power and the original existence. Idea, conceptively creative,—not the Real-Idea which is Being aware of what is in... 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 still be maintained, this origination might conceivably be ...
... secret meaning, the constant drift of its action to seek for and recover. It is through the conscious individual being that this recovery is possible; it is in him that the evolving consciousness becomes organised and capable of awaking to its own Reality. The immense importance of the individual being, which increases as he rises in the scale, is the most remarkable and significant fact of a universe... nothing for which it would be necessary; it would be purely a play, a Lila. But if it is once admitted that the Spirit has involved itself in the Inconscience and is manifesting itself in the individual being by an evolutionary gradation, then the whole process assumes meaning and consistence; the progressive ascent of the individual becomes a key-note of this cosmic significance, and the rebirth of ...
... universe. This consciousness does not abolish the universe; it takes it up and transforms it by giving to it its hidden significance. It does not abolish the individual existence; it transforms the individual being and nature by revealing to them their true significance and enabling them to overcome their separateness from the Divine Reality and the Divine Nature. An integral knowledge presupposes an... spiritual achievement—to affirm the existence of the ineffable Absolute, to emphasise its sole Reality and to negate and abolish for our self, to expunge from our idea and sense of reality, the individual being and the Page 660 cosmic creation. The reality of the individual is Brahman the Absolute; the reality of the cosmos is Brahman the Absolute: the individual is a phenomenon, a temporal... for the multitude of souls and multitude of things and the oneness in diversity of their experience, while at the same time it gives a reality to the separate spiritual growth and destiny of the individual being. But if we can suppose a One Consciousness, or a One Energy, creating a multitude of figures of itself and accommodating in its world a plurality of beings, there is no difficulty in supposing ...
... are those with which it is already familiar, and they are only sufficient as a starting-point. There is first the distinction between the Self and the individual being in Nature. The distinction has been used to point out that this individual being in Nature is necessarily subject, so long as he lives shut up within the action of the ego, to the workings of the three gunas which make up by their unstable... continue in the works of Nature. But it has not yet been stated who is this Supreme, incarnate here in the divine teacher and charioteer of works, or what are his relations to the Self and to the individual being in Nature. Nor is it clear how the Will to works coming from him can be other than the will in the nature of the three gunas. And if it is only that, then the soul obeying it can hardly fail to ...
... unchanging spirit of existence, an indivisible Self of all that is, in which all these many find themselves to be really one. And therefore by returning to that the active, finite personality of the individual being discovers that it can release itself into a silent largeness of universality and the peace and poise of an immutable and unattached unity with all that proceeds from and is supported by this ... through a constantly enlarging sacrifice culminating in a perfect self-giving founded on a perfect self-knowledge, is that to which the experience of life is at last intended to lead. But the individual being begins with ignorance and persists long in ignorance. Acutely conscious of himself he sees the ego as the cause and whole meaning of life and not the Divine. He sees himself as the doer of works... give in return. He misses the true meaning of life and, since he does not use life and works for the enlargement and elevation of his being through sacrifice, he lives in vain. Only when the individual being begins to perceive and acknowledge in his acts the value of the self in others as well as the power and needs of his own ego, begins to perceive universal Nature behind his own workings and through ...
... when we propose to discuss the question of the itinerary of a departed being following its discarding of its physical body: First Line of Inquiry. - Always dwelling at the centre of an individual being, what does the psychic being or the real "jiva" do, stage after stage, after the body's death? Where does it proceed to? And when and after how much time does it decide to reincarnate Page... guidance of those great Beings whom Sri Aurobindo has called "guardians 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... remain always plastic to the touch or influence of the psychic being, it need not be rejected as something inert and ossified and therefore serving no further useful purpose for the progress of the individual being. The same principle applies to the case of the mental being of a person. And if any one wants to preserve his personal identity through the succession of rebirths he has no other go except ...
... beginning inevitable and that is what is happening upon earth. Now, it is through a conscious individual being that this recovery is possible; it is in him that the evolving consciousness becomes organised and capable of awaking to its own Reality. The immense importance of the individual being, which increases as he rises in the scale of evolution, is the most remarkable and significant fact... wave which rises on the surface of the sea, remains in existence for half a minute or so, and then vanishes back into the undifferentiated waters of the sea. In the way of the wave, an individual being has come into existence in the sea of real or imaginary becoming and will surely founder there and cease to exist. It is not at all eternal, and its only "immortality" is a greater or less continuity ...
... thus at once one with the Principle of Being and with the Process of Becoming; in other words, she was the perfect link, the perfect intermediary, the perfect paraclete: This is how the individual being can be the conscious mediator between the absolute Truth and the manifested universe and intervene in the slow, uncertain march of the Yoga of Nature in order to give it the swiftness, intensity... she told her disciples on 8 October 1947, Sri Aurobindo also explained to her that the experience was "a very high one because the consciousness came back to the body directly - that is, the individual being", By its very nature, a profound mystic experience defies description in material categories. A mystic experience is a leap beyond everyday actuality, and it is a seeing, hearing, living... In the entry for 15 January 1916, Mirra affirms her desire to be entirely "identified" with God, who is really "the personal form 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 ...
... , because this is not only the Brahman-consciousness which lives secret within us, but the Brahman-consciousness in which we live. It is the Self which we are within, the supreme Self of our individual being but also the Self which we are without, the supreme Self of the universe, the self of all existences. By living in that self we live in all, and no longer in our egoistic being alone; by oneness... 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 worlds, manifested in Nature ...
... and it is through this meeting that love in its external manifestation is born. After that you have said: "No other movement could have better bridged the abyss that was created when in the individual being consciousness was separated from its origin and became unconsciousness." Yes, because the moment the individual consciousness broke off from the divine Consciousness, from its divine source... sort of foam that has been brought up and is on the surface. But even among these latter, even among these beings who are already a selection, there is hardly one in a thousand who is a truly individual being, conscious of himself, united with his psychic being, governed by his inner law and, consequently, almost if not totally free from external influences; for, being conscious, when these influences ...
... of psychic education, we must have an idea, however relative it may be, of what we mean by the psychic being. Thus one can 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,... a summary explanation for a practical purpose so that it can serve as a basis for the education with which we are concerned. It is through the psychic presence that the truth of an individual being comes into contact with him and the circumstances of his life. In most cases this presence acts, so to say, from behind the veil, unrecognised and unknown; but in some, it is perceptible and its ...
... all the domains of my individual being Thou showerest Thy boons, in the mind, the psychic and even the physical. Thou hast placed me amidst abundance, and abundance seems to me as natural as scarcity and does not bring me a greater joy, for often in poverty the spiritual life was more intense and conscious for me; but I see this abundance very clearly, and my individual being on whom Thou heapest Thy ...
... the Transcendent Eternal, the Cause, Source and Reality of my individual being, Thou who hast through the centuries and millenniums slowly and subtly kneaded this Matter, so that one day it could become consciously identified with Thee, and be nothing but Thee; O Thou who hast appeared to me in all Thy divine splendour—this individual being in all its complexity offers itself to Thee in an act of supreme ...
... that the material Inconscience has been laid down as a basis for the reascent of the Spirit, admitting that rebirth is a fact, a part of the terrestrial order, still a spiritual evolution of the individual being is not an inevitable consequence of any of these admissions or even of all of them together. It is possible to take another view of the spiritual significance and the inner process of terrestrial... evolution.... Do you catch it this time? Good! What Sri Aurobindo has presented here is the explanation of a world which would function quite logically and comprehensibly without any need of an individual being passing from one form into another, without anything permanent which would be free from all destruction, all death, which would persist through all its forms and would itself have a personal, ...
... world; it can be a very complex law, but it is only one law; what is called in India, you know, the Dharma, one Truth, one Law. Each individual being, even if he be of a completely higher kind, even if he is made for an absolutely special work, is only one individual being; that means, the totality of the transformation cannot take place through one single body. And that is why, spontaneously, the mu ...
... have wrested from this general semi-consciousness, and have crystallised into a more or less independent being, conscious of itself and having its own qualities, all this is your individual being. And this individual being is full of all the movements of obscurity, unconsciousness, and of the limitations of ordinary life, and that's... and that's what you must gradually open to the divine influence ...
... centre among many of the Divine Multiplicity. On the higher spiritual planes there is no ego, because the oneness of the Divine is felt, but there may be the sense of one's true person or individual being—not ego, but a portion of the Divine. The Karana Purusha The Karana Purusha is what is called the central being by us, the Jiva. It stands above the play, supporting it always. The Jivatman... Divine; essential in its being, it cannot be regarded as a combination of things. The Jivatman and the Mental Purusha When the Atman is individualised—i.e. supporting from above the play of individual being, it is called the Purusha or sometimes Page 62 the Jivatman. It is the central being. Usually however it is the mental Purusha one first becomes aware of and through that the nature ...
... with his mighty eternal action, but they ask it of the individual, of the soul of man halting perplexed between the oppositions of his mentality. It would seem then that there is something in our individual being which has some real freedom of will, some power of choice of a great consequence and magnitude, and what is it then that thus chooses, and what are the limits, where the beginning or the end of... action of Karma and is not diminished or abrogated by the pouring of its energies into the whirl of the universe. And one may say that man cannot enjoy the double freedom because as man he is an individual being and therefore a thing in Nature, subject to Ignorance, to Karma. To be free he must get away from individuality, nature and Karma, and then man no longer exists, there is only the unconditioned ...
... formulation, would be the real step in the progressive manifestation of the cosmic Inhabitant, the universal Spirit: rebirth is an indispensable condition for any long duration and evolution of the individual being in the earth-existence. Each grade of cosmic manifestation, each type of form that can house the indwelling spirit, is turned by rebirth into a means for the individual soul, the psychic entity... that the material Inconscience has been laid down as a basis for the reascent of the Spirit, admit ting that rebirth is a fact, a part of the terrestrial order, still a spiritual evolution of the individual being is not an inevitable consequence of any of these admissions or even of all of them together. It is possible to take another view of the spiritual significance and the inner process of terrestrial ...
... separativeness an attempt is made to absorb oneself in the idea and realisation of the Divine, and this takes in certain forms of spiritual askesis the turn of a strain towards the abolition of all individual being and a casting away, in the trance of immersion, of all individual or universal relations with the Divine, in others it becomes an absorbed dwelling in him and not in this world or a continual... governing notion, and this knowledge fails it and has to be abandoned for a fresh pursuit of the one thing to be known. That one thing is the Divine, the Self, the Spirit in whom universal and individual being find at last their right foundation and their right harmonies. Again, because it is limited in force, the ego-prisoned soul is full of many incapacities; wrong knowledge is accompanied by wrong ...
... directions to any of which it may give an exclusive preference. Our mind, in its search for what must be, turns towards a concentration on our own inner spiritual growth and perfection, on our own individual being and inner living; or it turns towards a concentration on an individual development of our surface nature, on the perfection of our thought and outer dynamic or practical action on the world, on... These things are impossible without an inward living; they cannot be reached by remaining in an external consciousness turned always outwards, active only or mainly on and from the surface. The individual being has to find himself, his true existence; he can only do this by going inward, by living within and from within: for the external or outer consciousness or life separated from the inner spirit ...
... indulged. But this indulgence of the lower being is not our whole possibility; it is not the sole or crowning experience for which we exist as human beings even in this material world. This individual being of ours is that by which ignorance is possible to self-conscious mind, but it is also that by which liberation into the spiritual being is possible and the enjoyment of divine immortality. It... oneness with God and other beings, this play can and must persist, unless we desire to cease from all self-expression and all but a tranced and absorbed self-experience. But then it is in the individual being that this trance or this liberated play is realised; the trance is this mental being's immersion in the sole experience of unity, the liberated play is the taking up of his mind into the spiritual ...
... 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 in that Being, the cosmos... supreme Being or Existence and Power of Being which manifests as a cosmic Self or Spirit and a cosmic Energy or Nature and in that again as our own self or spirit which becomes aware of itself as an individual being and nature. Union: The Aim of Yoga 118 It is the aim of all Yoga to pass by a change of consciousness into the Reality that is behind things and live no longer in their appearance. ...
... Brahman a contentless void. But if 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 ...
... three-fold Apara Prakriti, and on manifestation of those elements which are directly expressive of Para Prakriti, namely, swabhava and swadharma, shraddha or faith which is the essential nature of the individual being or Purusha, divine nature (daivi bhāva), action that involves giving (dāna) , sacrifice (yajna) and austere process of concentration (tapas) , and inner renunciation of desire... spiritual power and being and divinize by it a 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 c ...
... measure of human culture and growth. That is only a spray of foam on the surface. Even among those who already form a selection, there is not perhaps one in a thousand who can be called truly an individual being, conscious of himself, united with his psychic being, governed by his inner law and therefore partially at least if not wholly free from external influences; because being a conscious entity... seem to agree with his inner growth and normal development he accepts and those that contradict he rejects. And instead of being a chaos, or in any case a frightful mixture, he is an organised individual being, conscious of himself, moving in life knowing where he wants to go and how to go. That is the best of mankind that Nature is capable of producing. They are men still, but the Page ...
... to give a general outline of psychic education, we must have an idea, however relative it may be, of what we mean by the 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... individual being comes into contact with him circumstances of his life. In most cases this presence act to say, from behind the veil, unrecognised and unknown; but in some, it is perceptible and its action ...
... measure of human culture and growth. That is only a spray of foam on the surface. Even among those who already form a selection, there is not perhaps one in a thousand who can be called truly an individual being, conscious of himself, united with his psychic being, governed by his inner law and therefore partially at least if not wholly free from external influences; because being a conscious entity when... seem to agree with his inner growth and normal development he accepts and those that contradict he rejects. And instead of being a chaos, or in any case a frightful mixture, he is an organised individual being, conscious of himself, moving in life, knowing where he wants to go and how to go. That is the best of mankind that Nature is capable of producing. They are men still, but the top of mankind ...
... anywhere, no missing link; and because he has kept his individuality instead of exploding in a luminous no-man's-land, he can both ascend and descend the great Ladder of existence and use his individual being as a material bridge between the very top and the very bottom. His work on the earth is to establish a direct connection between the supreme Force and the individual, between Page 241 ... of spiritualisation or transmutation and a heavy weight holding the soul to earthly nature and preventing its ascent either to spiritual fulfillment in the Supreme or to the dissolution of its individual being in the Supreme. But while this conception of the role of the body in our destiny is suitable enough for a sadhana [discipline] that sees earth only as a field of the ignorance and earth-life as ...
... particular and idiosyncratic little bits of mud, but at the corporeal, physiological, we could almost say “genetic” level: Each individual being, even if he is of quite a superior quality, even if he has been created for quite a special work, is only an individual being; that is, THE totality of the transformation CANNOT TAKE PLACE THROUGH A SINGLE BODY.... If we want to have a general action, ...
... long evolutionary labour? It is the revelation of the One in the Many in the conditions of material life, or, as it is put in philosophical terms, the manifestation of the Divine in Matter. Each individual, being an essential and eternal part of the Divine, is driving, without being aware of it, towards the same consummation—the manifestation. What is Manifestation As we have said above, ... accompanied by the most powerful promise which Nature, the universal Consciousness, can ever make...We have, therefore, the certitude that what has to be done will be done, and that our present individual being is really called upon to collaborate in this glorious victory, in this new manifestation ”.¹ But are not the forces of darkness rampant in the world ? Do we not see greed and violence, hate ...
... Mother, that new being who will be able to have the consciousness of the point and of the whole at the same time. 16 And to have it physically, cellularly. An individual being conscious of the whole. Each individual being conscious of the whole. There is something more than the mere self-breaking of an illusory shell of individuality in the Infinite, 17 Sri Aurobindo wrote. lb be ...
... the Transcendent Eternal, the Cause, Source and Reality of my individual being, Thou who hast through the centuries and millenniums slowly and subtly kneaded this Matter, so that one day it could become consciously identified with Thee, and be nothing but Thee; O Thou who hast appeared to me in all Thy divine splendour – this individual being in all its complexity offers itself to Thee in an act of supreme ...
... this kind of earth-change, I should clarify two terms often mixed up. Strictly speaking, the word "descent" which has been so much in the air in relation to the Supermind is proper only to an individual being who is turned towards the Integral Yoga. We have various levels at which diverse forces in us work. The level of the life-force is centred in the region of the abdomen, the emotional in the area... consciousness to which we may be said'to ascend and from which there can be descents. But this terminology fails to apply under another set of circumstances. The Supermind "descends" so far as the individual being is concerned. When a universal breakthrough by the Supermind occurs we have to speak of a "manifestation". This is the distinction the Mother herself made when referring to the event of 29 February ...
... reality must in some way be present or implied, since otherwise there would be no possibility of their manifestation or, manifested, they would have no significance. What appears here as man is an individual being of the Divine; the Divine extended in multiplicity is the Self of all individual existences. 1 Moreover, it is through the knowledge of self and the world that man arrives at the knowledge... subliminal to the surface individual; it organises itself on the surface by the creation of separate objects and beings. But while it organises the separate object and the body and mind of the individual being, it creates also collective powers of consciousness which are large subjective formations of cosmic Nature; but it does not provide for them an organised mind and body, it bases them on the group ...
... , an illimitable Knowledge, an affirmative absolute Presence. The object of spiritual knowledge is the Supreme, the Divine, the Infinite and Absolute. This Supreme has its relations to our individual being and its relations to the universe and it transcends both the soul and the universe. Neither the universe nor the individual are what they seem to be, for the report of them which our mind and... this, not that, neti neti . And yet we can say of it that it is One, that it is Infinite, that it is ineffable Bliss, Consciousness, Existence. Although unknowable to the mind, yet through our individual being and through the names and forms of the universe we can approach the realisation of the supreme Self that is Brahman, and by the realisation of the self we come to a certain realisation also of ...
... instruments, karaṇa , and the One who works it for his universal ends. The force at work in us must be the manifest divine Shakti, the supreme or the universal Force unveiled in the liberated individual being, parā prakṛtir jīvabhūtā , who will be the doer of all the action and the power of this divine life, kartā . The One behind this force will be the Ishwara, the Master of all being, with whom... nirguṇo guṇī is in its manifestation capable of infinite quality, anantaguṇa . The force that it uses is the supreme and universal, the divine and infinite Shakti pouring herself into the individual being and freely determining action for the divine purpose. Page 751 × That perhaps is why it was the Kshatriya ...
... dissonances. It is this wider view of our spiritual potentialities from which we begin, but we add another stress which 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... 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 out-flowering of the Divine in humanity. This outflowering has its two ...
... awareness. There may be either a concentration of the One in itself to the exclusion of the Many or of the Many in their own action to the exclusion of the all-awareness of the One, or of the individual being in himself to the exclusion both of the One and the rest of the Many who are then to him separated units not included in his direct awareness. Or again there may be or there may intervene at a... exclude the Many from itself, because the Many would not then at all exist; at most it can stand back somewhere in its consciousness from the cosmic play 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 ...
... more which we do not know; our momentary personality is only a bubble on the ocean of our existence. A superficial observation of our waking consciousness shows us that of a great part of our individual being and becoming we are quite ignorant; it is to us the Inconscient, just as much as the life of the plant, the metal, the earth, the elements. But if we carry our knowledge farther, pushing psychological... of which our life is an eddy, one indivisible Mind of which our mind is a receiving and recording, forming or translating and transmitting station, one indivisible Spirit of which our soul and individual being are a portion or a manifestation. It is the ego-sense which clinches the division and in which the ignorance we superficially are finds its power to maintain the strong though always permeable ...
... and body, one has discovered one's true self, discovered the oneness of that self with the pure, silent, immutable Brahman, discovered in the immutable, in the Akshara Brahman, that by which the individual being escapes from his own personality into the impersonal, the first movement of the Path of Knowledge has been completed. It is the sole that is absolutely necessary for the traditional aim of the... individuality in the sense of unity with the Being and with all beings is its effectuation in Yoga of knowledge; to live, think, feel, will and act in that sense of unity is its effectuation in the individual being and the individual life. This realisation of oneness and this practice of oneness in difference is the whole of the Yoga. Sachchidananda is one in Himself in whatever status or Page 420 ...
... the divine Forces. So, a man as a momentary individual being may not appear to progress. But the progress is continued through him, as through all organisms. ( Silence ) Page 421 ( To a child ) You seem to think that it is not very consoling! All the same it is a consolation, because, in fact, it is only for each individual being to precipitate the movement of progress by working ...
... and fundamental Reality or Truth of existence; all that exists is part of the one indivisible Being. The One Being manifests itself on different planes or levels of consciousness, and in the individual being is constituted by different distinguishable parts of the indivisible Being. The part of our nature of which we are normally conscious is our surface or outer being consisting of the body, the... —intelligence-will; understanding; intellect; reason; thinking mind; the discriminating principle, at once intelligence and will. 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 over it, and the psychic being, which stands behind mind, life and body in the ...
... to sketch a general outline of psychic education, we must give some idea, however relative it may be, of what we mean by the psychic 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 ... It is only a very summary explanation for a practical purpose, to serve as a basis for the education which we intend to consider now. It is through this psychic presence that the truth of an individual being comes into contact with him and the circumstances of his life. In most cases the presence acts, so to say, from behind the veil, unrecognised and unknown; but in some, it is perceptible and its ...
... keep this communion with Thee, which is the source of all peace, all strength, all bliss. O my sweet Master, accomplish all the work Thyself through this individual being in its integrality. Or rather, do not let anything in this individual being forget at any moment that it is only an instrument, an illusion made real for Thy intervention in it, and that Thou alone art and actest. Oh, the benediction ...
... the psychic being? The one Purusha is the individual Being of which the psychic and all others are representatives. Page 20 Then is this one Purusha the Jivatman, the Self above? The Self above may be the Atman one in all. When the Atman is individualised - i.e. supporting from above the play of individual being, it is called the Purusha or sometimes the Jivatman ...
... 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 self covertly in a way but overtly too in a singular manner at the same time. The humanised personality of the Divine with his special... that is integral. It takes up the whole man and it embraces all men: it works on a cosmic scale individually and collectively. That force of consciousness identifies itself with each and every individual being in all its parts and limbs; establishing itself in and working through their normal and habitual functionings, it moulds and refashions the earthly vessel. It is a global power, first of all, ...
... medley of facts, unrelated to one another; chaos camouflaged by illusion?" 6 Indeed, it is this 'perception of a certain illusoriness, a sense of the vanity of cosmic existence and individual being' that is in a way 'the starting-point of the spiritual urge' 7 — at least for the 1 Ian Ramsay, Prospect for Metaphysics, p. 153. 2 Sri Aurobindo, The Problem of Rebirth... is rather an obstacle, a heavy weight holding the soul to earthly nature, and thus preventing its ascent either to spiritual fulfilment in the Supreme or to the spiritual dissolution of its individual being. But why is this universal distrust and denial of the body? Is the spiritual disability of man's physical organisation in the nature of something intrinsic and radical? Or is it not ...
... words are used interchangeably, considering that the word Purusha which was used in the Sankhya for the individual witnessing being is taken over in the Gita to be the same as Brahman. (For the individual being, the word that is used is Jiva.) For the sake of greater clarity, it may be mentioned that each of the words Purusha, Brahman, Ishwara and Page 122 Purushottama, has a specific... austerity, (yajna, dā na and tapas) are to be performed in the light of swabhava and swadharma, in the light of sahajam karma, the action that is inherent in the very nature of one's own individual being, jiva; sahajam karma is the action that is born from the operations of the Para Prakriti appropriate to the individual's specific work that is determined by Para Prakriti on account of the individuals ...
... forces of nature for a divine living. Normally, liberation of the soul of man is considered to be purpose of all yogas. 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... the Divine in humanity. The individual Yoga then turns from its. Page 62 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 himself and spirit, becomes in his natural being a self-perfecting instrument for the perfect out flowering of the Divine in humanity." 87 This out flowering implies ...
... 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 both ...
... are to give a general outline of psychic education, we must have an idea, however relative it may be, of what we mean by the 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,... explanation for a practical purpose so that it can serve as a basis for the education with which we are concerned. Page 521 It is through the psychic presence that the truth of an individual being comes into contact with him and the circumstances of his life. In most cases this presence acts, so to say, from behind the veil, unrecognised and unknown; but in some, it is perceptible and its ...
... unrolled itself out of the Brahman – srsti, pravrtti – it has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivrtti). Likewise, the individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although... although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of ...
... Sartre puts it in more philosophical and rational terms, in a secular atmosphere as a kind of inevitable accompaniment to the sense of freedom and responsibility and loneliness that besets the individual being and consciousness at its inmost core, its deepest depth. I was speaking of the depth, of the sounding of consciousness in present-day inquiries into human nature. Sartre's investigation... and the third stage, that is to say, the vital rising into the mental or the mental still carrying an impress of the vital consciousness. It is the emergence of the Purusha consciousness, the individual being in its heart of hearts, in its pure status: for it is that that truly evolves, progresses from level to level, deploying and marshalling according to its stress and scheme the play of its outward ...
... of spiritual power and being and divinize by it a liberated nature in the whole range of human living. In Sri Aurobindo's 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 ... 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 out flowering of the Divine in humanity." 6 As has been noted, each ...
... ion of the Infinite. Nāsti anto vistarasya me . The universe finds itself in me, even as I find myself in the universe, because we are this face and that face of the one eternal Reality, and individual being is as much needed as universal being to work out this manifestation. The individual vision of things is as true as the universal vision, both are ways of the self-seeing of the Eternal. I may ...
... spirit and by the power of the All-Soul out of the vast possibilities of universal Nature. He has developed by his own long evolution of that humanity the character and law of action of his present individual being; he has built his own height and form of human nature. He may change what he has made, he may rise even, if that be within the possibilities of the universe, beyond human and to or towards superhuman ...
... His infinite strength & speed & motion. He bears all of them without respect of differences, samabhavena, with the divine impartiality and equality of soul—samam hi Brahma. To the type of each individual being this Universal Might adapts himself & seems to take upon himself their image. He is Haya to the Gods, Arvan to the Asura, Vajin to the Gandharvas, Aswa to men. Ye yatha mam prapadyante tans tathaiva ...
... oneness. Or at least the oneness seems to be suppressed and latent, not to Page 370 find itself, never to put off its baffling disguises. And in fact it does not find itself till the individual being in this world-nature discovers in himself the higher divine Prakriti from whom this lesser movement is a derivation. Nevertheless, the qualities and energies at work in the world, operating variously ...
... can rise above this relation by transcending the ignorance. For we can identify ourselves with the one Self supporter of all things and become the witness and non-doer. Or else we can put our individual being into the human soul's right relation with the supreme Godhead within us and make it in its parts of nature the immediate cause and instrument, nimitta , and in its spiritual self and person a ...
... mind, body, life, senses, so that Self constitutes all mind, body, life, senses; it is the origin and essentiality of things. Just as the gods govern, supported by our self, the cosmos of our individual being, the action of our mind, senses and life, so the Lord governs as Mind of the mind, Sense of the sense, Life of the life, supporting His active divinity by His silent essential self-being, all ...
... natural self we see and hold the supreme Self of which the ego is an obstructing veil and a blinding shadow. And that can only be when we see the one Self in us seated above Nature and make our individual being one with it in being and consciousness and in its individual nature of action only an instrument of a supreme Will, the one Will that is really free. For that we must rise high above the three ...
... principle, to each in its own kind, after its proper dharma, in its right measure of importance, its spiritual, intellectual, ethical, aesthetic, dynamic utility. I take it as a self-evident law of individual being applicable to group-individuality, that it is neither desirable nor possible to exclude everything that comes in to us from outside. I take it as an equally self-evident law that a living organism ...
... Prayers and Meditations July 6, 1914 What plenitude in the perception! The entire individual being, modest, humble, surrendered, adoring, calm and smiling, feeling one with all beings, unable to make any difference of value, in perfect solidarity with all things, is kneeling down before Thee together with them all; and at the same time the formidable ...
... hast Thou given me hours of unforgettable illumination, hours in which the union between the most divine Consciousness and the most material grew perfect, hours when the identification of the individual being with the universal Mother and of the universal Mother with Thee was so complete that the individual consciousness could perceive simultaneously its own existence, the life of the entire universe ...
... side, it is the supreme power of attraction and on the other the irresistible need of absolute self-giving. No other movement can do better in throwing a bridge over the abyss that was dug in the individual being when its consciousness separated from its origin and became inconscience. "What was projected into space had to be brought back to itself without, however, destroying the universe so created ...
... phrase) "...he is veiled by his Yoga May..." Yes, veiled by his external manifestation. Truly, that's what it means, the outer form of the world; and also the egoism of the Jiva, that is, the individual being. He "works through the ego of the Jiva..." Yes, it's the same thing. Yes, "through"—that means the ego is there. Sweet Mother, here it is written: "But so long as the lower nature ...
... does a psychic being's progress consist? Individualisation, the capacity to take up all experiences and organise them around the divine centre. The aim of the psychic being is to form an individual being, individualised, "personalised" around the divine centre. Normally, all the experiences of the external life (unless one does yoga and becomes conscious) pass without organising the inner being ...
... formulation, would be the real step in the progressive manifestation of the cosmic Inhabitant, the universal Spirit: rebirth is an indispensable condition for any long duration and evolution of the individual being in the earth-existence. Each grade of cosmic manifestation, each type of form that can house the indwelling Spirit, is turned by rebirth into a means for the individual soul, the psychic entity ...
... The Cosmic Spirit uses all powers, but Overmind power is the highest it normally uses in the present scheme of things here. In that sense as intuition is normally the highest power used by the individual being in the body, what you say may be considered as correct. 2 June 1933 Intuition In a recent letter to me you wrote: "But the Intuition sees in flashes and combines through a constant play ...
... More Lights on the Psychic Being I did not understand the explanation of the psychic you have given: "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 ...
... Brahman—which is what one would suppose is meant by the Overself, for it is that which is the real Overself. This Brahman or Atman is everywhere, all is in it, it is in all, but it is in all not as an individual being in each but is the same in all—as the Ether is in all. When the merging into the Overself is complete, there is no ego, or distinguishable I, or any formed separative person or personality. All ...
... it is the supreme power of attraction and on the other the irresistible need of absolute selfgiving. No other movement can do better in throwing a bridge over the abyss that was dug when in the individual being consciousness separated from its origin and became inconscience. What was projected into space had to be brought back to itself without, however, destroying the universe so created. Therefore ...
... If the true vital is "capable of all power, all knowledge, all Ananda", it seems as if it is the supramental vital itself or the vital of the Ishwara. How can it then be possible for the individual being to have such a vital? It is capable of receiving the movements of the higher consciousness, and afterwards it can be capable of receiving the still greater supramental power and Ananda. ...
... at the bottom ofthe spine; it is awakened by Yoga and rises to join the Page 59 Divine Power or Presence in the 'sahasradala' (seventh centre). laya: Dissolution of the individual being, merging in theone Self-Existence. līl ā (Lila): Play (of the Divine). manipura: See cakra. mantra: Set words or sounds having a spiritual significance and power. ...
... progress consist? Individualisation, the capacity to take up all experiences and organise them around the divine centre. The aim of the psychic being is to form an individual Page 68 being, individualised, "personalised" around the divine centre. Normally, all the experiences of the external life (unless one does yoga and becomes conscious) pass without organising ...
... can break the mould and have the object in a precise form. Well, the form of the body serves as a mould in which the vital and mental forces can take a precise form, so that you can become an individual being separate from others. It is only gradually, very slowly, through the movements of life and a more or less careful and thorough education that you begin to have sensations which are personal ...
... manifested nature. It is what is called the Jivatman. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - 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 ...
... 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 over it, and the psychic being, which stands behind mind, life and body in the ...
... life by many strong tentacles of old legislation, continued instinct, persistence of traditional ideas; the fiat has gone out against it in the claim of woman to be regarded, she too, as a free individual being. 68 November, 1918 We are sometimes asked what on earth we mean by spirituality in art and poetry or in political and social life,—a confession Page 138 of ignorance ...
... for the descent Page 295 into the vortex of this hell as Thy torch-bearer? Wouldst Thou have judged my heart strong enough not to fail, my hand firm enough not to tremble? And yet my individual being knows how weak and powerless it is; when Thou dost not manifest Thy Presence, it is more denuded than most people who do not know or care for Thee. In Thee alone lies its strength and ability ...
... remotest action upon it. It is a world of harmony, and everything moves in it from light to light and from progress to progress. It is the seat of the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Self in the individual being. It is a centre of light and truth and knowledge and beauty and harmony which the Divine Self in each of you creates by his presence, little by little; it is influenced, formed and moved by the ...
... does a psychic being's progress consist? Individualisation, the capacity to take up all experiences and organise them around the divine centre. The aim of the psychic being is to form an individual being, individualised, "personalised" around the divine centre. Normally, all the experiences of the external life (unless one does yoga and becomes conscious) pass without organising the inner ...
... 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 concentrate on limits. Without that, there would be no sense of separateness—all would be mixed, as happens quite often in the mental and vital movements of consciousness ...
... physically. There are other things like that, other states, other forces, there are many of these. Fundamentally, if one studies very attentively, one perceives that there is nothing in the individual being which is not the expression or the deformation or diminution, reduction and lessening of something which has its origin in the Supreme and is of a universal nature. So, you see, all these ideas ...
... the first condition for having knowledge is to go beyond reason. That is why he says, "Reason was the helper"—yes, during the whole childhood of humanity and the whole period of growth of the individual being—but if you want to go beyond the human being, the ordinary human state, well, you must go beyond reason; and these things which seem to you so obvious that they are indisputable, you should be ...
... Now what is this truth? This is the question I have been asked: "What is this truth of the being, and how is it expressed externally in physical life?" It is expressed in this way: each individual being has a direct and unique relation with the Supreme, the Origin, That which is beyond all creation. It is this unique relation which must be expressed in one's life, through a unique mode of being ...
... imperfect way with the workings of the divine Force." What is it that you do not understand? The sentence or the idea? The idea, Mother. It can be put in very familiar terms. The individual being, and particularly the mind in it, have an instinctive repulsion to admitting that it's another force than their own small personal one which does things. There is a kind of instinct which makes ...
... innumerable organisms, using countless experiences it, so to speak, becomes refined; it is prepared, and becomes more and more receptive and open to the divine Forces. So, a man as a momentary individual being may not appear to progress. But the progress is continued through him, as through all organisms. The Mother Questions and Answers (1955): 28 December 1955 ...
... Brahman—which is what one would suppose is meant by the Overself, for it is that which is the real Overself. This Brahman or Atman is everywhere, all is in it, it is in all, but it is in all not as an individual being in each but is the same in all—as the Ether is in all. When the merging into the Overself is complete, there is no ego, no distinguishable I, or any formed separative person or personality. All ...
... individualised in the Ignorance is to use it for the ego and not for the Divine. It is that that has to be set right by the union with the Divine Consciousness and also by the widening of the individual being so that it can live consciously in the universal. Difficult it is owing to the fixed ego-habit, but it is not impossible. The Action of the Divine Force The action of the Force does not ...
... which any Yogin may arrive; to reach this condition with relation to the Divine is indeed a common object of Yoga. An incarnation is something more, something special and individual to the individual being. It is the substitution of the Person of a divine being for the human person and an infiltration of it into all the movements so that there is a dynamic personal change in all of them and in the ...
... Subjectivism The subjective stage of human development is that critical juncture in which, having gone forward from symbols, types, conventions, having turned its gaze superficially on the individual being to discover his truth and right law of action and its relation to the superficial and external truth and law of the universe, our race begins to gaze deeper, to see and feel what is behind the ...
... the Spirit is unity. The spiritual life is the flower not of a featureless but a conscious and diversified oneness. Each man has to grow into the Divine Reality within himself through his own individual being, therefore is a certain growing measure of freedom a necessity of the being as it develops and perfect freedom the sign and the condition of the perfect life. But also, the Divine whom he thus ...
... y, but it is also, though in a more subtle and variable way, psychologically true. Now the very nature of man is that of an individual who on one side is always emphasising and developing his individual being to the extent of his power but who is also driven by the Idea or Truth within him to unify himself with others of his species, to join himself to them or agglutinate them to him, to create human ...
... this externality has carried with it an immense advantage as well as great dangers. The individualistic age is, then, a radical attempt of mankind to discover the truth and law both of the individual being and of the world to which the individual belongs. It may begin, as it began in Europe, with the endeavour to get back, more especially in the sphere of religion, to the original truth which convention ...
... speech is itself no accident but the inevitable result, almost physically inevitable, of the first seed-selection of sound process, that original apparently trifling selection of the law of the individual being which is at the basis of all Nature’s infinitely varied regularities. Fidelity to the principle already selected being once observed, the rest results from the very nature & necessities of the ...
... PRAKRITI [Taittiriya Upanishad II. 1-6.] Atman, the Self, represents itself differently in the sevenfold movement of Nature according to the dominant principle of the consciousness in the individual being. Page 32 In the physical consciousness Atman becomes the material being, annamaya puruṣa . In the vital or nervous consciousness Atman becomes the vital or dynamic being, prāṇamaya ...
... of spiritualisation or transmutation and a heavy weight holding the soul to earthly nature and preventing its ascent either to spiritual fulfilment in the Supreme or to the dissolution of its individual being in the Supreme. But while this conception of the role of the body in our destiny is suitable enough for a sadhana that sees earth only as a field of the ignorance and earth-life as a preparation ...
... act only for its purposes. We look into ourselves and all things and become aware Page 20 of it there, an "I", an "Is", a Self, which is other, firmer, vaster than any separate or individual being. But since it is not anything that the mind can make its object or the senses throw into form for the mind, what then is it—or who? What absolute Spirit? What one, supreme and eternal Godhead ...
... supramental plane or is situated there. The word Jiva in its ordinary sense is the living creature, but in its philosophic sense it is often used as a short way of speaking of the Jivatman, the individual being. Neither can it be said that the psychic being is the Jiva. Nor is it the fact that it is the consciousness with a clear individual "I" that disposes variously the centralising stress on one part ...
... to change the troubled nature also into something divine. The Divine and the Atman The Divine is more than the Atman. It is Nature also, it contains everything in Itself. 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. The Divine and the Supermind One can become one with ...
... and the ascension, when one's consciousness is located above, one cannot be expected to 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 isolated without the background & continent of the Sarva Brahman or the pervasive content of the Sarva Ananta Jnana Brahman,—it was divine Anandamaya personality concentrated in a single individual being. All the suspensions, relapses & retardations of the Brahmadarshana during the last few years have had for their object the removal of these & other defects and the development & harmonious u ...
... mental assent or vital desire—that is the last stage after which it can be thrown out of even the environmental Nature through which the suggestion or denial of the general sex-force comes to the individual being. These difficulties [ of human relationship ] in one form or another are felt by all—but they take a stronger form when the root is sexual. The obstinacy with which they return is due to ...
... with such force is itself enough to show that it is not in you that it is, but that it comes from outside. It is a rush of force from the universal Nature that tries to take possession of the individual being and make that being act according to the will of this outside force and not according to the will of the soul within. These things come in the course Page 271 of the sadhana because ...
... which is one in all, remains always wide, free, pure, untouched by the action of life in its ignorance. Its nature is peace, freedom, light, wideness, Ananda. The psychic ( antarātmā ) is the individual being which comes down into life and travels from birth to birth and feels the experiences and grows by them till it is able to join itself with the pure Atman above. 9 April 1936 ...
... essence of our being, but as something only looking down on us from the heights and drawing us only towards the heights and away from the rest of existence. So we get the idea of our cosmic and individual being as a great illusion, and departure from it and extinction in our consciousness of both individual and cosmos as the only hope, the sole release. Or we build up the idea of the earth as a world ...
... ascent; universal and all-knowing they destroy these enemies who are the forces of egoism and limiting ignorance. True in their being, they are the powers that possess and touch the Truth in each individual being; leaders of the journey and the battle they create the wideness of that higher consciousness even out of our narrow and distressed mortality. It is that highest which the thought in the Atris ...
... us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother. The Lord has veiled himself and his absolute wisdom and eternal consciousness in ignorant Nature-Force and suffers her to drive the individual being, with its complicity, as the ego; this lower action of Nature continues to prevail, often even in spite of man's half-lit imperfect efforts at a nobler motive and a purer self-knowledge. Our human ...
... altogether, unite, identify itself with cosmic being, feel itself universal, one with all existence. In this freedom of entry into cosmic self and cosmic nature there is a great liberation of the individual being; it puts on a cosmic consciousness, becomes the universal individual. Its first result, when it is complete, is the realisation of the cosmic spirit, the one self inhabiting the universe, and ...
... 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 Consciousness has assumed in him. Our human mental consciousness sees the world in ...
... whole of existence is to its self-awareness an equable extension, one in oneness, one in multiplicity, one in all conditions and everywhere. Here the All and the One are the same existence; the individual being does not and cannot lose the consciousness of its identity with all beings and with the One Being; for that identity is inherent in supramental cognition, a part of the supramental self-evidence ...
... sought in the integral Yoga is not only to be one with her in her highest spiritual power and one with her in her universal action, but to realise and possess the fullness of this Shakti in our individual being and nature. For the supreme Spirit is one as Purusha or as Prakriti, conscious being or power of conscious being, and as the Jiva in essence of self and spirit is one with the supreme Purusha ...
... impassive, impersonal, self-aware Absolute and therefore to grow into an impassive calm, impersonality and pure self-awareness of spirit is his idea of perfection and a rejection of cosmic and individual being and a settling into silent self-knowledge is his way. To the Buddhist for whom the highest truth is a negation of being, a recognition of the impermanence and sorrow of being and the disastrous ...
... the creation, instrument and subject of mental, vital, physical Nature. This ego is not his real self, but an instrumentation of Nature by which it has developed a sense of limited and separate individual being in mind, life and body. By this instrumentation he acts as if he were a separate existence in the material universe. Nature has evolved certain habitual limiting conditions under which that action ...
... like to believe. The world is an emanation; it depends upon something that manifests in it but is not limited by it: the Divine is not here alone; there is a Beyond, an eternal Transcendence. The individual being also in its spiritual part is not a formation in the cosmic existence—our ego, our mind, our life, our body are that; but the immutable spirit, the imperishable soul in us has come out of the ...
... peaceful, eternal, which possesses them; and since we find this Soul everywhere sustaining and informing and possessing all lives and minds and bodies, we cease to regard it as a separate and individual being in our own. In it all this moves and acts; within all this it is stable and immutable. Having this, we possess our eternal self-existence at rest in its eternal consciousness and bliss. Next ...
... 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 itself at the actual moment, in the actual field of space, in the actual ...
... resistant to the Divine Light. That means transmutation. Sri Krishna and Buddha had doubtless destroyed their egos (or never had them), and yet they undoubtedly talked and acted "in terms of individual being". Note that I am neither supporting nor attacking Sri Aurobindo's special Yoga. I merely say that the divine levels beyond the mind are certainly a fact. It is said that "earth consciousness" ...
... But has it the qualities that are wanted in the ideal national anthem for India? Unfortunately it fails on every count. There is not the intense consciousness of India as a mighty supra-individual Being: the mention of the country or of the nation is on the purely ideative or nobly sentimental level; the deep heart has not felt the huge presence and the words are vacant of its intimate force ...
... But what then is consciousness? Is it something in the very grain of being or an unstable result or fortuitous accident? To whom does it belong? to the world as a whole? or is it peculiar to individual being? Or has it come from elsewhere into this inanimate and inconscient universe? To what end this entry? The significance of our conscious being in an inconscient material world is the last and ...
... the light that belongs to no man and thy works to be made for thee and be delivered from the error of thy personality. When that is done, thou shalt take thy free delight in the truth of thy individual being and in thy strength and in thy glory and in thy beauty and in thy knowledge; and in the denial of these things thou shalt take delight also. For all this is the dramatic mask of the Person and ...
... small! I wanted to put all this into my sentence. Page 307 And I said it because it's quite natural for people reading in the light of their own experience to get the feeling of an individual being who is united with That—it doesn't work that way with me, I can't do it! I can't. The other movement is natural, spontaneous, wonderful—the delight of being and the delight of living. But as soon ...
... Golden Body 16-4-1979) 14-5-79 Dear Champaklal, I was greatly impressed by your Golden Vision. It reveals the Mother in her full reality - not only the Universal Form of her but also the Individual Being. People often say that now that the Mother has left her body she is a Universal Form - as if the bodily shape alone constituted her individuality. What you saw shows not only the cosmic power ...
... but still remains a non-eater, ana ś nan 1 , although 'eating' all the time. Have we then come to the solution of the problem that has been the theme of our present essay? When the individual being through a process of spiritual transformation gets subjectively established in the unitary consciousness of the Spirit and thus transcends the law of hunger and therefore the law of death ...
... to fall into the torpor of sleep. For, this is the only type of inner consciousness to which it is ordinarily accustomed. Now, there cannot be any spiritual life unless and until the individual being goes inward, lives within and from within, and transfers the immediate source of his dynamic becoming from out inward. "In men, says the Upanishad, the Self-Existent has cut the doors of c ...
... limitation, weakness, suffering, ignorant functioning of which the bound and limited creature-Mind is the parent and cause." 3 This disabling perversion whose consequence for the individual being is a 'state of mortality', mṛtyu , has its source and origin in the self-ignorance of the individual soul, because of which it suffers a "limitation and self-division from the One who is ...
... at the boundaries of the world as a Sphinx of eternity and yet to some it gives out its secret. We have, therefore, the certitude that what has to be done will be done, and that our present individual being is really called upon to collaborate in this glorious victory, in this new manifestation. 11-12 November 1954 All barriers must be thrown down one after the other, for the being to ...
... 27 November 1959 Sweet Mother, What is meant by "a zone corresponding to the overmind" and how can one develop it in oneself? What is meant by the "mastery of the overmind"? The individual being is made up of states of being corresponding to cosmic zones or planes, and it is as these inner states of being are developed that one becomes conscious of those domains. This consciousness is ...
... (1) ardent aspiration; (2) progressive abolition of the ego. The divine help is assured to those who set to work sincerely. 8 December 1971 The ego was necessary to form the individual being. Its destruction is therefore difficult. There is a much better, though more difficult solution: to transform it and make it an instrument of the Divine. Egos that are converted and wholly ...
... intermediary between that Will and all beings, Page 20 and will FOR THEM. Whatever this being perceives and consciously offers to the supreme Will is replied to as if it came from each individual being. And if individuals happen to be in a more or less conscious and voluntary relationship with this representative being, their relationship increases his efficacy and the supreme Action can work ...
... responded to the divine Influence progressively crystallizes around the jiva, which becomes more and more conscious as well as more and more organized. Ultimately it becomes a completely conscious individual being, master of itself and moved exclusively by the divine Will. That is to say, an individual expression of the Supreme. This is what we call the "psychic being." Generally speaking, those who ...
... 16 I was greatly impressed by your "Golden Vision". It reveals the Mother in her full reality - not only the Universal Form of her but also the Individual Being. People often say that now that the Mother has left her body she is a Universal Form - as if the bodily shape alone constituted her individuality. What you saw shows not only the cosmic power ...
... the Divine and has all the divine potentialities. But in manifestation it takes two aspects, the Purusha and Prakriti, conscious being and Nature. In Nature here the Divine is veiled, and the individual being is subjected to Nature which acts here as the lower Prakriti, a force of Ignorance, Avidya. The Purusha in itself is divine, but exteriorised in the ignorance of Nature it is the individual ...
... the surface, that we can acquire a true basis of knowledge. The Life Divine, p. 523 A superficial observation of our waking consciousness shows us that of a great part of our individual being and becoming we are quite ignorant; it is to us the Inconscient, just as much as the life of the plant, the metal, the earth, the elements. But if we carry our knowledge farther, pushing ps ...
... conscious identification with its becoming, to mould and model consciously the love, mind and life of the becoming in accordance with the Law of Truth of the Principle. This is how the individual being can be the conscious mediator between the absolute Truth and the manifested universe and intervene in the slow, uncertain march of the Yoga of Nature in order to give it the swiftness, intensity ...
... it has led astray the majority of pantheists. We almost inevitably, as I recalled at the beginning of this section, picture the great Whole to ourselves as a vast ocean in which the threads of individual being disappear. It is the sea in which the grain of salt is dissolved, the fire in which the straw goes up in smoke. Thus to be united with that Great Whole is to be lost. But what I want to be able ...
... absence of any fundamental reality of the individual, of any abiding value and significance of his natural or his spiritual activity... And yet the question remains over; for the stress on our individual being, the demand on it, the value put on individual perfection and salvation is too great to be dismissed as a device for a minor operation, the coiling and uncoiling of an insignificant spiral amid ...
... above even higher Nature. This Supreme Divine also manifests itself into multiple individualities by means of the higher Nature. Each of these individualities is called "Jiva." Each Jiva is the individual being of the Page 47 Supreme Divine, capable of witnessing, controlling, sanctioning and lordship over the movement of Higher Nature. And we may repeat that behind and supervening and overtopping ...
... 53 merely the concrete form of a spiritual truth which is itself independent of the form; it rests on the conception of right works as a rightly ordered expression of the nature of the individual being through whom the work is done, that nature assigning him his line and scope in life according to his inborn quality and his self-expressive function. Since this is the spirit in which the Gita ...
... Mother on the Discovery of the Psychic Being While describing the need to undertake the discovery of the psychic being, the Mother points out that the discovery reveals the truth of the individual being and that that discovery requires a great determination, a strong will and an untiring perseverance and that each one must, so to say, trace out his or her own path through his or her own difficulties ...
... I The supracosmic view In the supracosmic view of things the supreme Reality is alone entirely real. A certain illusoriness, a sense of the vanity of cosmic existence and individual being is normally a characteristic turn of this seeing of things. In the extreme forms of its world-vision, human existence has no real meaning; it is a mistake of the soul or a delirium, an error or ...
... "These things are impossible without an inward living; they cannot be reached by remaining in an external consciousness turned always outwards, active only or mainly on and from the surface. The individual being has to find himself, his true existence; he can only do this by going inward, by living within and from within: ... If there is a being of the transcendence in us, it must be there in our secret ...
... machinery for the working out of the spiritual evolution..." (The 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 ...
... 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 ones may be somewhat inadequately characterised as ...
... signifie les pouvoirs de l'etre individuel qui doivent etre maitrises (tenus en bride). Please tell me what the horse means. The horse signifies the powers of the individual being, which must be controlled (bridled). Le renard de l'enveloppe veut dire habilete. The fox on the envelope means cleverness. C'est un lievre - "prudence" ...
... you have the impression that you are a moving mass with all kinds of contradictory movements in it which cannot be separated from each other. You would not have the impression that you are an individual being, but that you are something like one note or vibration in a whole complex. The original will was to form individual beings capable of becoming conscious again of their divine origin. This process ...
... and act simultaneously, although in various degrees and Page 49 stresses. They act upon each other, and severally and collectively impress upon the nature and character of the individual being and mould and direct his physical status and pragmatic life. A man can however take consciously a definite position and status, identify himself with a particular form and force of consciousness ...
... whole of terrestrial nature, a miniature world, a representation of the entire earth-consciousness in a concentrated form, on a mini-scale. The more the consciousness is developed, the more the individual being grows, and the more this parallelism becomes evident. All that is good in the world you have within you; all that is bad on earth, that Page 100 too you possess in your consciousness ...
... there and that can be the only solution. We, who are here, living under the very eye of the supreme transfiguring force and consciousness that is working out inexorably the destinies of the individual being, the national being and the being of humanity to their divine fulfilment, we who have the privilege of not merely witnessing but collaborating in the mighty labour, however little it may be in ...
... al it moves towards infinity, and on the other, strengthens, intensifies itself, comes up from behind and takes its stand in front visibly and Page 20 dynamically. Man's true individual being starts on its career of evolution as a tiny focus of consciousness totally submerged under the huge surface surge of mind and life and body consciousness. It stores up in itself and assimilates ...
... elements exist simultaneously and act simultaneously, although in various degrees and stresses. They act upon each other, and severally and collectively impress upon the nature and character of the individual being and mould and direct his physical status and pragmatic life. A man can, however, take consciously a definite position and status, identify himself with a particular form and force of consciousness ...
... organised in its turn. Monday, February 22, 1926 I am continuing the separation of my self from the mind. I can easily enough place myself as inactive spectator of the movements of the individual being. In these conditions I exist nevertheless as a mental being, endowed with the `I ' and centred in the brain. But behind this mental self I can discern another state, free from all relation with ...
... elements exist simultaneously and act simultaneously, although in various degrees and stresses. They act upon each other, and severally and collectively impress upon the nature and character of the individual being and mould and direct his physical status and pragmatic life. A man can, however, take consciously a definite position and status, identify himself with a particular form and force of consciousness ...
... helplessly to rough and painful impacts. Indeed, although it may sound somewhat strange and wonderful, nevertheless it is literally true that the body is the fortress par excellence for 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 ...
... an end. Likewise, the manifestation too tells a connected story – it is not a drivel, but has a Page 305 goal; it is a process elaborated by a final cause. Even like an individual being it is an organism, ever growing and bringing out its latent possibilities, moving towards a high fruition of its aspiration and destiny. In this sense manifestation is a more complete – ...
... the throat, (6) between the eyebrows and (7) the crown of the head. But there are others extending from below the spine which are not so well known. It is true, however, that the centres in the individual being end with the spine; what is below belongs more to the universal nature. There is a centre above and beyond the crown; there is also, on the other side, a centre below and away from under the feet ...
... you have the impression that you are a moving mass with all kinds of contradictory movements in it, which cannot be separated from each other. You would not have the impression that you are an individual being, but that you are something like one note or vibration in a whole complex. The original will was to form individual beings capable of becoming conscious again of their divine origin. This process ...
... there and that can be the only solution. We, who are here, living under the very eye of the supreme transfiguring force and consciousness that is working out inexorably the destinies of the individual being, the national being and the being of humanity to their divine fulfilment, we who have the privilege of not merely witnessing but ¹ Sri Aurobindo says, "Even if our personal deliverance is ...
... that theory. Space is indivisible in the sense that existence is indivisible. If you look at existence as a whole, as the one Being, then space and time are indivisible. But if you look at the individual being, they are divided when you want to do anything. India is indivisible but it is very much divided! (Laughter) EVENING SRI AUROBINDO (to Purani): What is the news of the world? PURANI ...
... meetings of spiritual exploration was a fine musician, and "all of a sudden, he had the experience of the infinite in the finite." Although it was an "absolutely true experience" - the finite individual being suddenly overwhelmed by the sense of the infinite - "this upset the boy so much that he could make nothing at all of it! He could not even play his music any longer. The experience had to be ...
... paralysing and purblind incompetence, and the all-too-human error of aggressive egotism - "a global error repeated in millions and millions of Page 105 forms" 44 - when the whole individual being has cleansed itself of widespread taint and forged union with the All, then indeed the propitious hour for the descent of omnipotence and the transformation of our earth nature will arrive at ...
... 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 "One ...
... side, it is the supreme power of attraction and on the other the irresistible need of absolute self-giving. No other movement can do better in throwing a bridge over the abyss that was dug in the individual being when its consciousness separated from its origin and became in conscience. "What was projected into space had to be brought back to itself without however destroying the universe so created ...
... soul—it heralds the replacement of the desire-soul by the delight-soul in man. An increasing unity, harmony, order, loving and joyful mutuality mark this stage at which, in proportion as the individual being is purified of desire, and enlightened and widened in consciousness, the divine Will, the sovereign creator and ruler of the universe, unveils itself and takes up the charge of the nature. Life ...
... on the spiritual planes, where the perception is more or less native and abiding. A full and revealing emergence of "the perfect Existence, Knowledge and Beatitude,'' on all the levels of the individual being—each being comprises ¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, May 27, 1914. Page 122 in itself all the levels or planes of consciousness—depend for its perfection ...
... impeccably moved by the divine Force. 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 ...
... synthetic and flexible system—the steps of the Spirit override all rigour and routine—which, whoever feels called, can follow to its glorious end. Describing the state of the liberated individual being, living in the Divine and exclusively devoted to His work, the Mother ¹ It has been dealt with in our article "THE MOTHER ON TRANSFORMATION” in the Mother India of August 19, 1950 ...
... of the human soul, two things are indispensable : a 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 ...
... eventual sublimation into something beyond and yet sustaining them, something, for the manifestation of which all their chequered growth is but a long and purposeful preparation. The citta of the individual being does not remain the same after it has released the sense-mind from it—it tends to become more awake, more refined, more orderly and consistent in its action. It releases out of it the emotive ...
... with the conscious identification of the becoming, to mould and model consciously the love, mind and life of the becoming according to the Law of Truth of the Principle. It is thus that the individual being can be the conscious intermediary between the absolute Truth and the manifested universe, and intervene in the slow and uncertain advance of the Yoga of Nature in order to give it the swift ...
... rebirth, but the real reason, the compelling cause and drive is the irrepressible urge in the soul for evolution. Originally a spark of the sempiternal Fire, the soul develops here in Matter into an individual being through the chequered process of rebirth, even as a new-born child grows into a man, .or a seed grows into a tree. The cycle of births and deaths is, therefore, an indispensable means of evolution ...
... Indicating the various efficacy of surrender, the Mother says that surrender at once relieves the strain and tension of the struggling will and brings peace and a calm confidence to the individual being. It is a safeguard against all anxiety and fear, and a guarantee of all fulfilment. Surrender heals all physical ailments and restores health and harmony to our life-energies : "As ...
... evolution. The mind is only the inventor of the necessary division, necessary falsehood, necessary pain and necessary illusion, so that each evolutionary point can rediscover the total BEING in an individual being, the total consciousness in an individual consciousness, and the total power in an individual powerlessness. And the joy of being at last. And when the fishbowl reaches the end of its evolutionary ...
... transitional individualistic age, then, there is just a chance that mankind might abandon before it becomes too late the suicidal race towards collectivism, and discover the truth and law of the individual being as well as of the social group to which he belongs. The war of 1914-18, and the even more sanguinary war of 1939-45, were the result of a combination of causes: the nation's vitalistic motive-power ...
... became completely identified with the earth consciousness. Sri Aurobindo explained this experience as a very high one because the consciousness came back to the body directly — that is, to the individual being." Page 409 earth itself. Early in 1916, the Richards left France for Japan, and on Mirra writing about some of the difficulties in her sadhana, Sri Aurobindo replied on 26 ...
... a multi-storied building in Indian society. But thanks to the efforts of reformers and free thinkers the idea is crumbling into dust. The claim of woman is to be regarded and treated as a free individual being. If you remember, one of the tasks given to Sri Aurobindo by Sri Krishna was "to try and bring about certain social changes." The Druids, Peter Beresford Ellis. Page 383 ...
... accident of birth, of a fixed and intolerant inequality, are inconsistent with the supreme teaching, the basic spirit of Hinduism which sees the one invariable and indivisible Divinity in every individual being. Nationalism is simply the passionate aspiration for the realisation of that Divine Unity in the nation, a unity in which all the component individuals, however various and apparently unequal ...
... basis of udaya, udan, uchchá, ut, udara, ushas, uru, ùrjas, ùrmi, ùrdhwa and the words of this class which express the idea of wish and desire. Growth or expansion in richness & substance of the individual being, (the primary object of all Rigveda), is the purpose for which this luminous mental activity & abundant formation is desired by the Rishi,—growth especially of mental force, fertility and clearness ...
... to the ideal plane through the vijnana buddhi has begun to be completed. Dasya is on the verge of fullness, the ego remaining only in the sakshi and in some emotional remnants; the rest of the individual being lives now a secondary life as a conscious becoming of the one Being. Raudrananda, ahaituka & sukshma (materialised), has for some time been established in the system; vishayananda today has ...
... the concrete form of a spiritual truth which is itself independent of the form; it rests on the conception of right works as a rightly ordered Page 6 expression of the nature of the individual being through whom the work is done, that nature assigning him his line and scope in life according to his inborn quality and his self-expressive function. Since this is the spirit in which the Gita ...
... conscious identification with the universal being, Page 524 power & bliss of God that we become also entirely Ishwara; for then all walls break down, then with the false separation of individual being from God-being breaks down also the false separation of individual power from God-power and it becomes possible for that divine Knowledge-Will working in us to fulfil infallibly & inevitably its ...
... few elect, but to draw all men and all life and the whole human being upward, to spiritualise life and in the end to divinise human nature. Not only must it be able to lay hold on his deepest individual being but to inspire too his communal Page 197 existence. It must turn by a spiritual change all the members of his ignorance into members of the knowledge; it must transmute all the instruments ...
... parts had therefore not only a binding authority but a certain sacrosanct character. The right order of human life as of the universe is preserved according to the ancient Indian idea by each individual being following faithfully his swadharma, the true law and norm of his nature and the nature of his kind and by the group being, the organic collective life, doing likewise. The family, clan, caste ...
... carry impersonality to an exclusive extreme, entertain an intolerant passion for the extinction of life and action and would have as the one ultimate aim and ideal an endeavour to cease from all individual being in the pure silence of the ineffable Spirit, is that this is indeed one path of journey and entry into the Infinite, but the most difficult, the ideal of inaction a dangerous thing to hold up ...
... individual; it is the supreme supracosmic Being that is aware of itself as All Being, as the Cosmic Self, 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 ...
... one's actions themselves and feel oneself Page 46 to be merely watching what goes on by force of Prakriti or Nature. This deepens into one's becoming the witness Purusha, the individual Being who initiates nothing and only gives or withholds sanction to Nature's doings — and ultimately one realises the infinite impersonal Atman, the one World-Self standing aloof in divine tranquillity ...
... clearly the dangers to which he is liable. When one desires an object,— particularly if it is the desire for union with another soul,— it is to be seen definitely and clearly whether that soul or individual being has his potentialities, capacities, tendencies turned towards the higher or towards the lower or ordinary common life. Those who are not sadhakas generally move either lower and lower in the ...
... is connected with the body, but does not belong to it, afterwards the planes of consciousness above the body, also a consciousness surrounding the body, but part of oneself, part of the individual being, through which one is in contact with the cosmic forces and with other beings. 7 Each man has his own personal consciousness entrenched in his body and gets into touch with his ...
... “The individual is indeed the key of the evolutionary movement; for it is the individual who finds himself, who becomes conscious of the Reality.” 25 “The immense importance of the individual being, which increases as he rises in the scale, is the most remarkable and significant fact of a universe which started without consciousness and without individuality in an undifferentiated Nescience ...
... its life forms, its physical embodiments call constantly for growth and change …” “The individualistic age is, then, a radical attempt of mankind to discover the truth and law both of the individual being and of the world to which the individual belongs. It may begin, as it began in Europe, with the endeavour to get back, more especially in the sphere of religion, to the original truth which convention ...
... watches at the boundaries of the world as a Sphinx of eternity and yet to some it gives its secret. We have, therefore, the certitude that what has to be done will be done, and that our present individual being is really called upon to collaborate in this glorious victory, in this new manifestation.’ 33 How, in the face of all these unmistakable quotations, could one possibly keep asserting that ...
... emotional. He forgets that we have a finite body and a being with an individual face and mould of nature and cast of character. What must be the spiritual truth underlying our personal and individual being? Is that being of ours, with its ardent cry for form and name, a mockery, a hollow sham we must outgrow and discard for a supracosmic transcendence or else hold here as an antithesis to the ...
... above the Mind uses the Sahasrara for its transit and so opens something there. The centre at the crown must be part of the sahasradala , the centre of communication direct between the individual being and the Infinite Consciousness above. There is not supposed to be any other main centre of dynamism between that and the Ajna Chakra. But there can be many nerve-centres in various parts of the ...
... made. So if nobody can rise above mind to supermind or obtain the descent of the supermind, then logically this Yoga becomes impossible. Every being is in essence one with the Divine and in his individual being a portion of the Divine, so there is no insuperable bar to his becoming supramental. It is no doubt impossible for the human nature being mental in its basis to overcome the Ignorance and rise ...
... s which is connected with the body but does not belong to it, afterwards the planes of consciousness above the body—also a consciousness surrounding the body, but part of oneself, part of the individual being, through which one is in contact with the cosmic forces and with other beings. This last is what I have called the environmental consciousness. Each man has his own personal consciousness ...
... which is one in all, remains always wide, free, pure, untouched by the action of life in its ignorance. Its nature is peace, freedom, light, wideness, Ananda. The psychic ( antarātmā ) is the individual being which comes down into life and travels from birth to birth and feels the experiences and grows by them till it is able to join itself with the free Atman above. The psychic being is concealed ...
... the Divine and has all the divine potentialities. But in manifestation it takes two aspects, the Purusha and Prakriti, conscious being and Nature. In Nature here the Divine is veiled, and the individual being is subjected to Nature which acts here as the lower Prakriti, a force of Ignorance, Avidya. The Purusha in itself is divine, but exteriorised in the ignorance of Nature it is as the individual ...
... called man to assent or not to assent to the Divine leading—how else can any real spiritual evolution be done? All the play in this world is based on a certain relative free will in the individual being. Even in the sadhana it remains and his consent is necessary at each step—even though it is by surrender to the Divine that he escapes from ignorance and separateness and ego, it must be at every ...
... development is to manifest and organise this highest consciousness so as to exist and 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 ...
... freedom which made the discovery and the attempt at all possible. In seeking the truth and law of his own being the individual seems to have discovered a truth and law which is not of his own individual being at all, but of the collectivity, the pack, the hive, the mass. The result to which this points and to which it still seems irresistibly to be driving us is a new ordering of society by a rigid ...
... between a constant affirmation and negation; there is for his mind no truth of idea, no result of experience that cannot be affirmed, none that cannot be negated. It has negated the existence of the individual being, negated the existence of the cosmos, negated the existence of any immanent or underlying Reality, negated any Reality beyond the individual and the cosmos; but it is also constantly affirming ...
... us his divine example as our 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 ...
... but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures. Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact and identification of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya-mukti , by which it can become free 2 even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya-mukti by which the whole conscious existence ...
... with all that comes in upon it or besieges it from the greater whirl of consciousness and energy which environs it on this plane of existence. That it can maintain itself at all and affirm its individual being in the universe, is due indeed to the strength of the spirit within it, but it cannot bring forward the whole of that strength or the infinity of that force to meet the attacks of life; if it ...
... we have the joy of his kingdom. So too to seek him only in ourselves and for ourselves, is to limit both ourselves and our joy in him. The integral delight embraces him not only within our own individual being, but equally in all men and in all beings. And because in him we are one with all, it seeks him not only for ourselves, but for all our fellows. A perfect and complete delight in the Divine, perfect ...
... happiness and misery and suffering be taken as if they existed merely as incentives and deterrents to the natural being in its choice of good and evil. It is for experience, for growth of the individual being that the soul enters into rebirth; joy and grief, pain and suffering, fortune and misfortune are parts of that experience, means of that growth: even, the soul may of itself accept or choose poverty ...
... life by many strong tentacles of old legislation, continued instinct, persistence of traditional ideas; the fiat has gone out against it in the claim of woman to be regarded, she too, as a free individual being. The right of property of the rulers in the ruled has perished by the advance of liberty and democracy; in the form of national imperialism it still indeed persists, though more now by commercial ...
... even though at present under the conditions of a world of Ignorance. Beyond this are the Light and Ananda towards which life is working, but the best way for their advent and foundation in the individual being and nature is to grow in this spiritual equality. That would also solve your difficulty about things unpleasant and disagreeable. All unpleasantness should be faced with this spirit of samatā ...
... divine element in the evolution, (2) the realisation of the cosmic Self which is one in all, (3) the realisation of the supreme Divine from which both individual and cosmos have come and of the individual being (Jivatma) as an eternal portion of the Divine. Foundations of the Sadhana What you are experiencing is the true foundation of the spiritual life and realisation. It has three elements—first ...
... mental construction which should be avoided. The psychic has indeed the quality of peace—but that is not its main character as it is of the Self or Atman. The psychic is the Divine element in the individual being and its characteristic power is to turn everything towards the Divine, to bring a fire of purification, aspiration, devotion, true light of discernment, feeling, will, action which transforms ...
... interest in these voices, keep the mind quiet. All these thoughts and influences come really from outside, from universal Nature—they create formations in us or get habitual responses from the individual being. When they are rejected, they go back into the external universal Nature and if one becomes conscious, one can feel them coming from outside and trying to get a lodging inside again or reawaken ...
... the Divine and has all the divine potentialities. But in manifestation it takes two aspects, the Purusha and Prakriti, conscious being and Nature. In Nature here the Divine is veiled, and the individual being is subjected to Nature which acts here as the lower Prakriti, a force of Ignorance, Avidya. The Purusha in itself is divine, but exteriorised in the ignorance of Nature it is the individual apparent ...
... Vaishnava Yoga. So there is nothing here that was not already present in that line of Asiatic mysticism which looks to a Personal Deity and insists on the eternal pre-existence and survival of the individual being. A spiritual raising of the nature to its highest possibilities is a part of the Tantric discipline—so that too is not absent from Indian Yoga. The writer seems like most European writers to know ...
... rather than help it to cease. In all there lacks the unchanging peace of Thy sovereign contemplation and the calm vision of Thy immutable Eternity. And with the infinite gratitude of the individual being to whom Thou hast accorded this surpassing grace, I implore Thee, Page 635 O Lord, that under cover of the present turmoil, in the very heart of this extreme confusion the miracle ...
... of Truth, thrice have I implored Thy manifestation invoking Thee with deep fervour. Then, as always, the whole being made its total submission. At that moment the consciousness perceived the individual being mental, vital and physical, covered all over with dust and this being lay prostrate before Thee, its forehead touching the earth, dust in the dust, and it cried to Thee, "O Lord, this being made ...
... 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 concentrate on limits. Without that, there would be no sense of separateness—all would be mixed, as happens quite often in the mental and vital movements of consciousness ...
... s which is connected with the body but does not belong to it, afterwards the planes of consciousness above the body—also a consciousness surrounding the body, but part of oneself, part of the individual being, through which one is in contact with the cosmic forces and with other beings. This last is what I have called the environmental consciousness. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The En ...
... towards the integral transformation, but after that, there remains the transformation… The Mother Words of the Mother - III: 6 January 1951 Does the inconscient in oneself belong to the individual being or to the earth? The inconscient is not individualised and when you go down into the inconscient in yourself, it is the inconscient of matter. One can’t say that each individual has his own ...
... individual development. It is not just a tiny little job. It asks for much time and much effort. And when one has attained the perfection of his Page 366 own development, when one is an individual being who is truly personal, that is, who has all the characteristics of something different from all others—for in principle there are no two individualities exactly alike in the world—then, when one ...
... want me to tell you? If you don't feel the difference between the two, I can't explain it to you. There are forces at work all the time, which set people moving, which make them move. In the individual being this is translated into exact intentions; but behind the intention a force is acting which is not individual. Do you understand? Yes. Ah! I think one of the greatest difficulties ...
... is one among millions, naturally there is a multiple and involved interaction as a result of which things don't take place in such a simple and schematic fashion. What you call yourself, the individual being enclosed within the limits of your present consciousness, is constantly penetrated by vibrations of this kind, coming from outside and very often presenting themselves in the form of suggestions ...
... the little concentrations of consciousness were created to do this work. It is the very reason for existence: to be able to become fully conscious of a certain sum of vibrations representing an individual being and put order there and find one's way and follow the way. And so, as men do not know it and do not do it, life comes and gives them a blow here: "Oh! that hurts", then a blow there: "Ah! that's ...
... to follow the path, your path, no matter which—yes, to go there. I did not understand the explanation of the psychic you have given: "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 ...
... Divine Consciousness.... It is a world of harmony, and everything moves in it from light to light and from progress to progress. It is the seat of the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Self in the individual being. It is a centre of light and truth and knowledge and beauty and harmony which the Divine Self in each of you creates by his presence, little by little; it is influenced, formed and moved by the ...
... the maximum individual development. It is not just a tiny little job. It asks for much time and much effort. And when one has attained the perfection of his own development, when one is an individual being who is truly personal, that is, who has all the characteristics of something different from all others—for in principle there are no two individualities exactly alike in the world—then, when one ...
... internal and external growth or decline. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - III: The Inward Movement A superficial observation of our waking consciousness shows us that of a great part of our individual being and becoming we are quite ignorant; it is to us the Inconscient, just as much as the life of the plant, the metal, the earth, the elements. But if we carry our knowledge farther, pushing psychological ...
... is one among millions, naturally there is a multiple and involved interaction as a result of which things don’t take place in such a simple and schematic fashion. What you call yourself, the individual being enclosed within the limits of your present consciousness, is constantly penetrated by vibrations of this kind, coming from outside and very often presenting themselves in the form of suggestions ...
... Now what is this truth? This is the question I have been asked: “What is this truth of the being, and how is it expressed externally in physical life?” It is expressed in this way: each individual being has a direct and unique relation with the Supreme, the Origin, That which is beyond all creation. It is this unique relation which must be expressed in one’s life, through a unique mode of being ...
... all that was inactive before and now rises up to resist. All that does not want to accept this change naturally wakes up and revolts. But that is of no importance. It is the same thing as in the individual being: when you want to progress, the difficulty you want to conquer immediately increases tenfold in importance and intensity in your consciousness. There is but to persevere, that's all. It will pass ...
... unbearable! Experiences of this kind, all the time, all the time... just to show that there is only one thing that has importance, the attitude of the consciousness: the old attitude of the individual being ( gesture of contraction ) or that ( gesture of expansion ). It must be (to put it into words that we understand) the presence of the ego and the abolition of the ego. It is that. And then ...
... hand there is the supreme power of attraction and on the other the irresistible need for absolute self-giving. No other movement could have better bridged the abyss that was created when in the individual being consciousness was separated from its origin and became unconsciousness. What had been projected into space had to be brought back to itself without, however, annihilating the universe which ...
... sation—the whole period of life spent in individualisation is a period of conscious and deliberate crystallisation, which later has to be Page 116 undone. Becoming a conscious and individual being is a constant crystallization—constant and deliberate—of all things; and afterwards one must make the opposite movement, constantly, and also, even more so, deliberately. At the same time, one ...
... day; and day by day too I feel Thy love more ardent within my heart, Thy light more brilliant and yet also more sweet; and more and more am I unable to distinguish Thy Work from my life and my individual being from the entire earth. O Lord, Lord, Thy Splendour is infinite, marvellous is Thy Truth; and Thy all-powerful Love shall save the world. Page 21 ...
... what Thou wantest of me. But since Thou hast appointed me for this work, Thou must give me the means, that is, the knowledge necessary for its realisation. We shall unite our efforts: the entire individual being will concentrate in a constant call for the knowledge of the mode of manifestation of this Force, and Thou, supreme centre of the being, Thou wilt emanate the Force fully so that it may penetrate ...
... rather than help it to cease. In all there lacks the unchanging peace of Thy sovereign contemplation and the calm vision of Thy immutable eternity. And with the infinite gratitude of the individual being to whom Thou hast accorded this surpassing grace, I implore Thee, O Lord, that under cover of the present turmoil, in the very heart of this extreme confusion the miracle may be accomplished and ...
... the conscious identification with its becoming, to mould and model consciously the love, mind and life of the becoming in accordance with the Law of Truth of the Principle. This is how the individual being can be the conscious mediator between the absolute Truth and the manifested universe and intervene in the slow, uncertain march of the Yoga of Nature in order to give it the swiftness, intensity ...
... of Truth, thrice have I implored Thy manifestation invoking Thee with deep fervour. Then, as always, the whole being made its total submission. At that moment the consciousness perceived the individual being mental, vital and physical, covered all over with dust, and this being lay prostrate before Thee, its forehead touching the earth, dust in the dust, and it cried to Thee, "O Lord, this being made ...
... knowledge cannot enter the true room—that is quite clear." × Several people combined in this single individual being. ...
... universal, whereas this needs to be seen from a detailed, occult point of view. For example, one thing had always appeared unimportant to me in action—intermediaries between the spiritualized individual being, the conscious soul, and the Supreme. According to my personal experience, it had always seemed to me that if one is exclusively turned towards the Supreme in all one's actions and expresses Him ...
... moment." So I laughed, that's all—there was nothing else to do! ( silence ) These things would be interesting to keep. But what's impossible to express is the nonexistence of a being, an individual being. When I say "I," there's no knowing what it means. It's not the totality either. Not the totality, not the entire universe, specially not the earth, the poor little earth, which I always see as ...
... the falsehood is indicated by the nature of the snake and the plane where it appears. 30 August 1932 Please tell me what the horse means. The horse signifies the powers of the individual being, which must be controlled (bridled). 1 January 1933 What is the meaning of the drawing You sent me on the envelope? It is a lamb , which means "purity". 4 January 1933 ...
... Bulletins which describes the various stages through which the entire physical being can be changed. And this is what so far has never been done. Does the inconscient in oneself belong to the individual being or to the earth? The inconscient is not individualised and when you go down into the inconscient in yourself, it is the inconscient of matter. One can't say that each individual has his own ...
... myself it won't do!) Once, very long ago, when Sri Aurobindo was telling me about himself, that is, of his childhood, his education, I put the question to him, I asked him, "Why am I, as an individual being, so mediocre? I can do anything; all that I have tried to do I have done, but never in a superior way: always like this ( gesture to an average level )." Then he answered me (at the time I took ...
... almost unbearable! Experiences of that sort, all the time, all the time... to show you that in reality, only ONE THING matters, it's the attitude of the consciousness: the old attitude of the individual being ( Mother makes a gesture of contraction into oneself ), or this ( gesture of expansion ). Probably it must be (to put it into words we can understand) the presence of the ego and the abolition ...
... this), but to tell the truth, it was Sri Aurobindo who came and told me to write this to you. There must have been some reason, mon petit. Page 233 Yes. Here's what you say: "An individual being, whatever his merit, is but a point in the universe.... That's certain! Yes, that was the point. Next? "...He really begins to exist only when his consciousness becomes universal ...
... same for the body: the least thing seems to produce consequences completely out of proportion—in either good or bad. The customary "neutrality" of life is disappearing. ( silence ) For the individual being [ Mother ], it's peculiar how both extremes coexist: the individual feels like a complete cipher... a thing with no strength, no force, no power of decision of any kind, but at the same time ( ...
... fulfilled and the Last Judgment shall surely come to pass. 1 (Li) The belief in a final Day of Judgment is, of course, inextricably linked with a belief in a life after death in which the individual being is punished or rewarded for the life he has led. According to the Koran, the life led in accordance with the mil of the Supreme is rewarded by heaven. These three principles — the unity ...
... responded to the divine Influence progressively crystallizes around the jiva, which becomes more and more conscious as well as more and more organized. Ultimately it becomes a completely conscious individual being, master of itself and moved exclusively by the divine Will. That is to say, an individual expression of the Supreme. This is what we call the «psychic being.» Page 4 Power? It ...
... and laws, right principles and correct laws which establish peace and stability, on the one hand, no doubt, but on the other hand serve also as the frame for the growth and fulfilment of the individual being. The king with his executive body was there to see that the laws were observed and honoured. The later law-givers (the makers of codes, smritis) had not the direct and large vision of the Rishis ...
... have only to repeat and imitate. But this is not as it should be, nor is it the truth of the matter. Every individual soul, however placed it may be, is by nature creative; every individual being lives to discover and to create. Page 7 The inmost reality of man is not a passive receptacle, a mere responsive medium but it is a dynamo – a power-station generating and ...
... of the silent symphony of spaces. Individualities are the freedoms of the collective being and collectivity the concentration of individual beings. The same soul looking inward appears as the individual being and looking outward appears as the collective being. Communism takes man not as ego or the vital creature; it turns him upside down –urdhomulo' vaksakhah-and establishes him upon his ...
... so that the ordinary life itself has to be conducted and lived according to the demands of that view. It is this that humanity is one, that mankind as a whole is a single organism. Even like an individual being, the collective being too is a unit, a close knit living unit. As the individual has different parts and limbs, organs and systems, so is humanity composed of nations and races, cultures and religions ...
... he must first find or become his real self, realise his true individuality before he can reach God, the Divine Self, identify himself with the Transcendent. It is only a freely and truly formed individual being that can give itself to the Divine or become one with it. This true individuality is indeed a solitary being away and apart from the crowd of personalities that surround it – it has been called ...
... 'paradise' and 'purgatory', etc. By the way, these regions ('loka', 'bhuvana') exist at the same time both subjectively and objectively; subjectively, as the planes of consciousness of an individual being, and objectively as independently existing worlds of manifestation. There is one other essential point we have to note in this connection: these supraphysical worlds are not contentless ...
... but which erroneously regards itself as the centre and entity of our individuality. On the other hand, the psychic entity is, according to Sri Aurobindo, that by which we exist and persist as an individual being in Nature. While other parts of our natural composition are not only mutable but perishable, the psychic entity in us persists and is fundamentally the same always. It contains all the essential ...
... deceives not, the Power that neither strays nor stumbles, the wide freedom, the ineffable Beatitude. Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human: Partial Systems of Yoga The liberated individual being, united with the Divine in self and spirit, becomes in his natural being a self-perfecting instrument for the perfect outflowing of the Divine humanity. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga ...
... and linear in nature. The affair is multidimensional and very much complex in character. And the reason is that no man is entirely separate and isolated. He has a universal being as well as an individual being. As a result everyone is indissolubly linked to every other person. Page 120 And the inevitable consequence of this inner solidarity is that the actions of "X" have their reactions ...
... delightful surprise that the entire composition is shot through and through with a panoramic depiction of the 'progression of sight' from plane to plane of the evolving consciousness of an individual being, also from world to world of the hierarchically arranged fields of cosmic manifestation, starting from the blind sight of the "sightless Inconscient" up to the "all-seeing closed eyes" of the ...
... and unimaginable splendour and delight. Not only so; love will escape at the same time the artificial confines arbitrarily imposed upon it by the petty and short-sighted egoism of the individual. Being freed from all limitations, love Page 195 will become universal in its scope: the sadhaka will come to love everyone and everything, for his only object of love will then ...
... cosmic Nature. One thing indeed becomes clear; it is self-evident here that both the individual and 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 ...
... synthesis of Yoga produces integral results. There is, first, an integral realisation of Divine Being; and there is also an integral liberation, mukti, not only sayujya mukti in which the individual being attains unbroken contact in all its parts with the Divine, not only salokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the state of Sachchidananda, but also sadharmya mukti, ...
... contains in all itself and each thing in it the complete immanence of transcendence; it maintains itself as a world-being by the consciousness of its own transcendent reality, it finds itself in each individual being by the realization of the divine and transcendent in that being and in all existences. Finally, the transcendent contains, manifests, constitutes the cosmos and by manifesting it manifests or ...
... and body, one has discovered one's true self, discovered the oneness of that self with the pure, silent, immutable Brahman, discovered in the immutable, in the Akshara Brahman, that by which the individual being escapes from his own personality into the impersonal, the first movement of the Path of Knowledge has been completed. It is the sole that is absolutely necessary for the traditional aim of the ...
... the development of fourfold personality is a necessary part of the yoga of self- perfection. 71 It observes, however, that even though the fourfold power of the soul-force is latent in every individual being, there is normally predominance of one or the other of the soul-powers, and although none of these four powers achieves its fullness without the full development of all the other powers, there ...
... Overmind) divine planes of consciousness. On the higher spiritual planes there is no ego, because the oneness of the Divine is felt, but there may be the sense of one's true person or individual being — not ego, but a portion of the Divine. Page 93 Some travellers of the overhead ranges ask: "Even we do notice ego here and there and sometimes even in greater mass ...
... disappear by itself? Not at once, but it is the first step for the disappearance of the ego. After taking something from the universal con-sciousness one returns to his individual being. Can that something now be called one's own? You can consider anything you like as your own, if you look at it from the egoistic point of view. It is of course from ...
... only when you become conscious that you begin to react to the outside forces that try to control you or utilise you. In the lower creation it is always a play of divergent forces and the individual being is only a field, a passive field for the play of cosmic or collective forces. It is in, man, with the awakening of an individual consciousness in him, that a movement of self-assertion, of ...
... common souls have only to repeat and imitate. But this is not as it should be, nor is it the truth of the matter. Every individual soul, however placed it may be, is by nature creative; every individual being lives to discover and to create. Page 77 The inmost reality of man is not a passive receptacle, a mere responsive medium but it is a dynamo—a power-station generating and throwing ...
... throat, (6) between the eyebrows and (7) the crown of the head. But there are others extending from below the spine which are not so well-known. It is true, however, that the centres in the individual being end with the spine; what is below belongs more to the universal nature. There is a centre above and beyond the crown; there is also, on the other side, a centre below and away from under the ...
... only when you become conscious that you begin to react to the outside forces that try to control you or utilise you. In the lower creation it is always a play of divergent forces and the individual being is only a field, a passive field for the play of cosmic or collective forces. It is in man, with the awakening of an individual consciousness in him, that a movement of self-assertion, of willed ...
... is only when you become conscious that you begin to react to the outside forces that try to control you or utilise you. In the lower creation it is always a play of divergent forces and the individual being is only a field, a passive field for the play of cosmic or collective forces. It is in man, with the awakening of an individual consciousness in him, that a movement of self-assertion, of willed ...
... become one in a mutual embrace. There is an experience and realisation of Brahman which describes the trio of Brahman, brahmanda and jiva, the Supreme Reality, the manifested universe and the individual being, as forming a single unity, one undivided Consciousness strung together in a triple thread. To be one-pointed like an arrow, sara-vat tanmayo bhavet, does not mean that the arrow ceases to be ...
... from what was infinitesimal it moves towards infinity, and on the other, strengthens, intensifies itself, comes up from behind and takes its stand in front visibly and dynamically. Man's true individual being starts on its career of evolution as a tiny focus of consciousness totally submerged under the huge surface surge of mind and life and body consciousness. It stores up in itself and assimilates ...
... liberation. This integral liberation would unite sdyujya mukti, sdlokya mukti and sddharmya mukti. In other words, the integral liberation implies (i) the freedom bornof unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sdyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; (ii) sdlokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the ...
... fundamental reality of the individual, of any abiding value and significance of his natural or his spiritual activity... And yet the question page - 105 remains over; for the stress on our individual being, the demand on it, the value put on individual perfection and salvation is too great to be dismissed as a device for a minor operation, the coiling and uncoiling of an insignificant spiral amid ...
... 89 Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures. Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujyamukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokyamukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells ...
... impacts. Indeed, although it may sound somewhat Page 65 strange and wonderful, nevertheless it is literally true that the body is the fortress par excellence for 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 ...
... 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 particular name and form, 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 ...
... with a beginning, a middle and an end. Likewise, the manifestation too tells a connected story—it is not a drivel, but has a goal; it is a process elaborated by a final cause. Even like an individual being it is an organism, ever growing and bringing out its latent possibilities, moving towards a high fruition of its aspiration and destiny. Page 13 In this sense manifestation ...
... nature, Page 40 The spiritual life is the flower not of a featureless but a conscious and diversified oneness. Each man has to grow into the Divine within himself through his own individual being, therefore is a certain growing measure of freedom a necessity of the being as it develops and perfect freedom the sign and the condition of the perfect life. But also, the Divine whom he thus ...
... on the management of the universe then there must be sanction for the world in the Reality, in the Absolute. Shankara accepted God, probably, to explain the creation of the universe and that of individual being. According to him, the Brahman, the Infinite, could not have created the world; there is no impulse in the Infinite to create, the Absolute does not want to create anything. Then how did the universe ...
... Prayer quoted above proves that the Mother aspired to be nothing short of the burning brazier of Love. She had nothing to ask for herself, nothing to acquire or achieve in the interest of her individual being; but she had to do—because it was the divine Will in her to do—all that was possible to root out for ever the ignorance and suffering of human life and make it a potent channel of the Light ...
... return to its source. Karma 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 ...
... Psychic Purusha. Disciple : Does the psychic being develop from birth to birth? Sri Aurobindo : It is not the psychic being itself that develops, but it guides the evolution of the individual being by increasing the psychic element in the nature of the individual. It is these personalities in nature that are bound. Disciple : It is said that psychic being is a spark of the Divine ...
... work both in man and nature." About his 'Golden Vision' an enlightened devotee Amal Kiran has written, "It reveals the Mother in her full reality - not only the Universal Form of her but also the individual being.... What you saw shows not only the cosmic power set to greater use by her departure from the body. What you saw shows also how closely and organically the Universal and the Individual in her ...
... being, by which the Divine himself.. .shall by the light of his presence and guidance perfect the human being in all the force of the Nature for a divine living.. .The liberated individual being, united with the Divine in self and spirit, becomes in his natural being a self-perfecting instrument for the perfect outflowering of the Divine in humanity. 47 The individual ...
... 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. But the question returns: If the universe of our perception ...
... own self-revelation. He 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 ...
... the king-knowledge (Raja-Vidya), the king-science (Raja-Guhya), the right and just knowledge and the very law of our being? The secret of secrets is, says Krishna, that the Divine is in each individual being or thing, in all beings and things, and also transcends the entire phantasmagoria of the phenomenal play. To seize this "secret of secrets" is to be able to batter one's way out of one's egoistic ...
... failed in our world: communism, capitalism, socialism and even (or specially) gandhism — and rightly so, a holy prison is nevertheless a prison. The only free place is in the heart of each individual being and as long as this free place does not become the law of the collective body, we will go on stumbling and falling. In other words, we have to become living souls, there is no other "system" ...
... which will permit of a relation of love and devotion and a free transmission of the divine Will, and sādharmya will ensure a likeness or sameness between the nature of the 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 ...
... the human soul, two things are indispensable: a 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 ...
... invasion of light into the terrestrial darkness and an infusion of bliss into the mortal suffering. The particular line of divine consciousness influencing and directing the evolution of the individual being is then Page 185 an important determining factor. This influence and direction come down to the evolving individual through the subliminal, and are rather occult to his unenlightened ...
... force, seconded, fortified and sped up by higher spiritual forces, to achieve its crowning end. Yoga breaks away from the tardy process of Nature and, stringing up all the energies of the individual being and firing his central will, sweeps him on to the inevitable fulfilment of his life—the freedom and immortality of the Eternal and Infinite. The times are full of the promise of a gen ...
... November 1959 * * * Sweet Mother, What is meant by “a zone corresponding to the overmind” and how can one develop it in oneself? What is meant by the “mastery of the overmind”? The individual being is made up of states of being corresponding to cosmic zones or planes, and as these inner states of being are developed one becomes conscious of those domains. This consciousness is double, at ...
... aspiration; progressive abolition of the ego. The divine help is assured to those who set to work sincerely. Blessings. 8 December 1971 * * * The ego was necessary to form the individual being. Its destruction is therefore difficult. There is a much better, though more difficult solution; it is to transform it and make it an instrument of the Divine. Egos that are converted and ...
... capital importance has made or is going to make its appearance in the play. How little do individual beings count at such times! They are like wisps of straw carried away by the passing breeze, whirling for a moment above the ground, only to be flung back upon it again and reduced to dust. And individual beings who thus feel so insecure, so stripped of importance, suffer and groan in painful agony.... depth of this outer anguish all formed of narrow egoism; what splendour dwells within this waiting, grown sacred through deep contemplation, when the walls of personal blindness have fallen and the individual consciousness has taken its flight into immensity to unite with Thy eternal consciousness. This sorrowful world kneels before Thee, O Lord, in mute supplication; Matter, tortured, takes shelter... in Thee; the earth awaits Thy decree in a grandiose prostration. Listen, listen: its voice implores and supplicates to Thee.... What will be Thy decree, what is Thy sentence? O Lord of Truth, this individual world blesses Thy truth which it does not yet know, but which it calls, and to which it adheres with all the joyful energy of its living forces. Death has passed, vast and solemn, and all was ...
... been accompanied by the most powerful promise that Nature, the universal Consciousness can possibly make.... Thus we have the certitude that what must be done will be done and that our present individual beings are in reality called upon to collaborate in this glorious victory, this new manifestation. What more do we need to know? Nothing. So it is with the greatest confidence that we can witness the... What opposes is just that upon which it is the mission of these forces to act; it is the darkest hatred which must be touched and transformed into luminous peace. Page 273 If the human individual Thou hast chosen as Thy centre of action and Thy intermediary meets with few obstacles, few misunderstandings and little hatred, it means that Thou hast entrusted to him a limited mission without ...
... would quickly exhaust itself. ⁂ The original Will was towards forming individual beings that would be capable of becoming conscious again of their origin, although the Page 66 procedure of individualisation compelled the individual to feel itself separate in order to be an individual. And the very moment it is separated, it is cut off from the original Consciousness... is the secret of the universe. Perhaps the Divine truly wanted to know Himself, then He cast Himself out of Himself and looked at Himself. And now He wants to take the joy of this possibility of being Himself with the full knowledge of Himself. It becomes much more interesting. ⁂ All physical life has the vital as its origin. The vital has the mental reality as its origin. The mental... and falls into inconscience, for the only thing that is the Life of life is the Origin. It is this inconscience that brings it about that you are not aware any longer of the Truth of your being. The secret of all deformation in the world is this inconscience which has been produced by the fact of separation from the Origin. And that explains why there are ugliness, wickedness, illness, ...
... continues to exist. Otherwise it would soon exhaust itself. The original Will was towards forming individual beings that would be capable of becoming conscious again of their origin, although the procedure of individualisation compelled the individual to feel itself separate in order to be an individual. And the very moment it is separated, it is cut off from the original Consciousness, at least apparently... this is the secret of the universe. Perhaps the Divine truly wanted to know Himself, then He cast Himself out of Himself and looked at Himself. And now He wants to take the joy of this possibility of being Himself with the full knowledge of Himself. It becomes much more interesting. All physical life has the vital as its origin. The vital has the mental reality as its origin. The mental itself... apparently, and falls into inconscience, for the only thing that is the Life of life is the Origin. It is this inconscience that brings it about that you are not aware any longer of the Truth of your being. The secret of all deformation in the world is this inconscience which has been produced by the fact of separation from the Origin. And that explains why there are ugliness, wickedness, illness, suffering ...
... state as the one most in conformity with my present ideal of action! And at that time it seemed to me that the day I should be purified of all egoistic preference, Thou wouldst choose this individual terrestrial being as an instrument of Thy manifestation of love upon earth. And now that Thou askest it of me, more than ever before do I feel my helplessness. For such a long time I thought I knew what love... define, that state which I can no longer distinguish? And yet Thou didst show me yesterday that I was holding enclosed in a dark sheath one of Thy most precious and powerful gifts.... Lord, all my being aspires to obey Thy voice, to conform to Thy Law; but it does not know in its outer consciousness, Page 334 does not understand what Thou expectest of it. It feels indeed that at present... passive state of love which is pure, unchanging and impersonal. But what it still does not know is how, even while retaining its purity, unchangeability and impersonality, qualities now inherent in its being, it can resume its activity. That is why this evening I implored Lord Mitra who so perfectly symbolises Thy truth of love, asking him to come to my help and enlighten my ignorance, dissolve my doubts ...
... was not sufficient to get rid of him in order to get rid of the force that was behind him—that is not so easy. I must tell you that the origin of these beings is prior to that of the gods; they are the first emanations, the first individual beings of the universe; so they cannot be got rid of so easily, by winning one war. As long as they are necessary for the universal evolution they will exist... all psychic beings are not necessarily united with a being of the higher planes. Then Mother passes on to another question, that of "possession" or the embodiment on earth of beings of the vital world (See Questions and Answers 1929 , 12 May ). Have these vital beings a psychic being? No, I said that the first thing they have to do to incarnate is to drive away the psychic being of the person... psychic consciousness upon earth. These are beings who have never taken birth here, beings who materialised themselves more and more as the creation proceeded. They are perhaps the first emanations, beings sent into the universe for special reasons—men call them "gods" or "demi-gods". So, one of these beings may have chosen, for some special reason, a psychic being in formation—he helps it, follows its ...
... Function and Action of the Psychic The Psychic Being Influence and Action of the Psychic At the beginning the soul in Nature, the psychic entity, whose unfolding is the first step towards a spiritual change, is an entirely veiled part of us, although it is that by which we exist and persist as individual beings in Nature. The other parts of our natural c... evolution of being there is indeed no consciousness of soul; there are psychic activities, but the instrumentation, the form of these activities are vital and physical,—or mental when the mind is active. For even the mind, so long as it is primitive or is developed but still too external, does not recognise their deeper character. It is easy to regard ourselves as physical beings or beings of life or... principle, has already begun to take secret form; it puts forward and develops a soul-personality, a distinct psychic being to represent it. This psychic being remains still behind the veil in our subliminal part, like the true mental, the true vital or the true or subtle physical being within us: but, like them, it acts on the surface life by the influences and intimations it throws up upon that surface; ...
... down from higher ranges of consciousness. It means an elevation of consciousness, your being rises into higher realities. The true individual, the being who is capable of living and creating independently, is formed of a stuff that lies in these higher regions. It is only when one has found one's individual self seated in the Divine centre secret behind, organised around the centre all lesser... Page 186 a mental being, because in him the brain has developed to such an extent and in such a manner that it serves as antennae or as an aerial to receive vibrations from the mental world. Indeed the ordinary human mind is a sort of crossroads where all kinds of thoughts from all places meet, cross one another and make an ideal market place. In fact, an individual does not possess any tho... light and peacefulness and happiness, are naturally those that are worth accepting. Those that are of a contrary nature should be pushed out. This is an exercise that develops the individual consciousness and the individual will. Furthermore, one may try to recognise thoughts that are of a different category, that do not seem to belong to the accustomed level of consciousness but carry a vibration ...
... we call usually the psychic being. It is always this psychic being that is the real, though often the secret cause of man‘s turning to the spiritual life and his greatest help in it. It is therefore that which we have to bring from behind to the front in the Yoga. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Psychic Being Mother, is the orientation of an individual’s life directed by the psychic... psychic? Yes. Absolutely unconsciously for the individual, most of the time; but it is the psychic which organises his existence—only in what may be called the main lines, because for intervening in the details there would have to be a conscious union between the outer being, that is, the vital and physical being, and the psychic being, but usually this does not exist. So externally, in the details…... beginning the soul in Nature, the psychic entity, whose unfolding is the first step towards a spiritual change, is an entirely veiled part of us, although it is that by which we exist and persist as individual beings in Nature. The other parts of our natural composition are not only mutable but perishable; but the psychic entity in us persists and is fundamentally the same always: it contains all essential ...
... from higher ranges of consciousness. It means an elevation of consciousness, your being rises into higher realities. The true individual, the being who is capable of living and creating independently, is formed of a stuff that lies in these higher regions. It is only when one has found one's individual self seated in the Divine centre secret behind, organised around the centre all... that is to say, a mental being, because in him the brain has developed to such an extent and in such a manner that it serves as antennae or as an aerial to receive vibrations from the mental world. Indeed the ordinary human mind is a sort of crossroads where all kinds of thoughts from all places meet, cross one another and make an ideal market place. In fact, an individual does not possess any t... happiness, are naturally those that are worth accepting. Those Page 22 that are of a contrary nature should be pushed out. This is an exercise that develops the individual consciousness and the individual will. Furthermore, one may try to recognise thoughts that are of a different category, that do not seem to belong to the accustomed level of consciousness but carry a vibration ...
... down from higher ranges of consciousness. It means an elevation of consciousness, your being rises into higher realities. The true individual, the being who is capable of living and creating independently, is formed of a stuff that lies in these higher regions. It is only when one has found one's individual self seated in the Divine centre secret behind, organised around the centre all lesser... a mental being, because in him the brain has developed to such an extent and in such a manner that it serves as antennae or as an aerial to receive vibrations from the mental world. Indeed the ordinary human mind is a sort of crossroads where all kinds of thoughts from all places meet, cross one another and make an ideal market place. In fact, an individual does not possess any tho... light and peace fulness and happiness, are naturally those that are worth accepting. Those that are of a contrary nature should be pushed out. This is an exercise that develops the individual consciousness and the individual will. Furthermore, one may try to recognise thoughts that are of a different category, that do not seem to belong to the accustomed level of consciousness but carry a vibration ...
... subject nation the very fact of liberation brings to it the energy of self-consciousness and an exhilarating delight in the expression of the newfound selfhood, even as also in the case of the individual human being when he is freed from serfdom and slavery and bondages, he attains, realises the dignity of self-consciousness and self-power, even so the material body too becomes illumined with its freedom... and authenticity and purity shall belong to the body natural of the highest mode of being and consciousness. However, in this age, at the present time the human body is inevitably moving towards such a consummation— towards freedom and buoyancy and radiancy, a new valency, a new self-law. The individual efforts are more than supplemented by a Grace that is at work in a supreme effective... The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11 Body-Energy The Mother spoke once of the body being like a fortress, a strong shelter protecting you against enemy-attacks, the forces that are around roaming in the open spaces, the forces of physical and even moral disruption. The ancients used to refer to the body as a walled city the gates of which are to be carefully ...
... to manifest and the higher state of consciousness that will manifest after some time, there will again be the same difference. These experiences always start from the small circle of the individual as being the best known and most easily observable point, then they begin to spread out, finally extending all over the earth. It's been like that each time. But then, the sense, the perception of the... Do you know what divine purity is?... I no longer know. What can it mean? Obeying the true Impulsion? If we mean "divine purity in beings," I quite understand, but if we mean "the Divine's purity," I no longer understand. Divine purity in beings means they are closed to all influence except that of the Divine. ( Mother counts the petals ) Five petals ... Soon afterwards I go... like a drill ) with a pressure. And as it goes down, as the pressure increases, there is a sort of ... (what can I call it?) a review or overall vision of the whole state of consciousness of the being and beings ( gesture around ). And Page 144 the result is the perception of such imbecility!... When you live, while you live something (you don't even know what you live while you live it), ...
... the rest), Théon's idea was that those first four Emanations, that is, Consciousness, Love, Life, and Truth (Love was the last, I think, but I no longer remember what he said), those four individual emanated Beings, according to him, in full consciousness of their power and existence, cut themselves off from their Origin. In other words, they wanted to depend only on themselves, they didn't even feel... After the translation of "Savitri" (the dialogue with Death) Behold the figures of this symbol realm.... Here thou canst trace the outcome Nature gives To the sin of being and the error in things And the desire that compels to live And man's incurable malady of hope. ( X.IV.643 ) But she will answer you!... I'd like to know what she will answer him. ( silence ...
... is mind as a whole, even spiritualised, able to change it; spirituality liberates and illumines the inner being, it helps mind to communicate with what is higher than itself, to escape even from itself, it can purify and uplift by the inner influence the outward nature of individual human beings: but so long as it has to work in the human mass through mind as the instrument, it can exercise an influence... conformity with the truth of the spirit which he is achieving or has achieved in his inner being and knowledge. Any premature attempt at a large-scale collective spiritual life is exposed to vitiation by some incompleteness of the spiritual knowledge on its dynamic side, by the imperfections of the individual seekers and by the invasion of the ordinary mind and vital and physical consciousness taking... intensive evolution and formation through the individual that anything radical of an expanding or dynamically diffusive character can be expected or any attempt at collective spiritual life,—such attempts have been made, but mostly as a field of protection for the growth of the individual's spirituality,—acquire a successful permanence. For till then the individual must be preoccupied with his own problem ...
... mastery and control over the external nature. He has no doubt developed the powers of reason but this reason turns traitor the moment his own self-interest is affected. And this—not only for the individual human being but also for the collective life. Greed, lust for power and domination over others are his characteristic nature even in these days of so-called enlightened self-interest which is only an euphemism... euphemism for blatant exploitation of others. He is at enmity not only with his neighbour but also at loggerheads with whomsoever stands in the way of the aggrandise ment of his individual and collective ego. Thus sects are ranged against sects, tribes against tribes, religion against religion and nations against nations. He wages relentless wars against his own kind and is seeking complete destruction... change in his life and surroundings and goes on as if things are fixed and stable for ever. But for this illusion, there could not be the continuance of the world. A rational and intelligent human being would certainly get disgusted with this perpetual change and would prefer to remain inactive because of the lack of certitude that life would always remain fixed, pleasant and prosperous. ...
... place in the universal play, in the play of earthly evolution: that is to say, they are there in their own realms and come nearer to the earth to extend their help in its forward march. They help individual beings also bestowing their powers and capacities and their inspiration. The word "inspiration" itself means a breath, an influence from elsewhere, from another sphere. It means that which is not confined... there. All the same what the invisible being was saying was quite interesting, and even could be of educative value. Sri Aurobindo used to explain that many of these beings were very eager to come but they were not always very truthful. They wanted to show their cleverness or amused themselves by confusing or irritating human beings. Sometimes however higher beings can come and then you get useful instruction... Among the people who attended the meditation, mostly our Ashram-people, there used to be present strange guests in the company: invisible beings from other worlds, gods, various degrees and kinds of gods, great gods and small gods – disembodied or unbodied beings jostling with embodied human creatures. They had a great fascination for this meditation. They must have been tempted in view of some profit ...
... man the individual and man the collective being to realise the great destiny that is awaiting the race. And, be it noted, all the principles of education enunciated by Sri Aurobindo are designed to fulfil that very task. We have advisedly employed the expression "man the individual and man the collective being". For, the insistent problems of man do not pertain to his isolated individual existence... psychic dealing of man with his own being, with his fellow-men and with the ordering of his individual and social life. The aim of education should be to help every individual child to develop his own intellectual, aesthetic, emotional, moral, spiritual being and his communal life and impulses out of his own temperament and capacities. Thus the distinctive individual psychology of the child should be... every individual's being; to realise it is the highest reach of our consciousness and we have to realise it if we would be really perfect. But this highest supracosmic Reality is not cut off from the world of manifestation. It is at the same time the cosmic Being, the cosmic Consciousness, the cosmic Will and life; it has put these things forth, not outside itself, but in its own being as its ...
... 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 brings... strict causality and the law of determinism. His argument, as far as I can make it out, is this: (1) The law of strict causality stands because any given action or inner happening of the individual human being is an effect determined completely by two causes, (a) the previous state of his mind taken as a whole, (b) external influences. (2) The will is a mental process completely determined by... determined or something is there which is Fate, let us say; the stars are only indicators. The astrologers themselves say that there are two forces, daiva and puruṣārtha , fate and individual energy, and the individual energy can modify and even frustrate fate. Moreover the stars often indicate several fate-possibilities; for example that one may die in mid-age, but that if that determination can be ...
... is done primarily through the individual man; for this end man has become an individual soul, that the One may find and manifest Himself in each human being. That end is not indeed achieved by the individual human being in his unaided mental force. He needs the help of the secret Divine above his mentality in his superconscient self; he needs the help also of the secret Divine around him in Nature... in proportion as life grows and still more when mind emerges, the individual also arrives at a greater and more vital power of variation. He acquires the freedom to develop according, no doubt, to the general law of Nature and the general law of his type, but also according to the individual law of his being. Man, the mental being in Nature, is especially distinguished from her less developed creatures... so as to assist eventually the development of his law of being and his destiny. All life around him is a help towards the divine purpose in him; every human being is his fellow worker and assists him whether by association and union or by strife and opposition. Nor does he achieve his destiny as the individual Man for the sake of the individual soul alone,—a lonely salvation is not his complete ideal ...
... aspiration of all human beings. An avatar is thus an 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... seems to be an entity lying at the other end away from Matter, it is the Spirit, the individual Conscious Being. If Matter is Bondage, Law, Determinism, Spirit is Freedom, Liberty, Self-choice. That is the well-known duality – Purusha and Prakriti, that divide existence between themselves. Purusha is the conscient Being, and Prakriti the inconscient becoming. These dual realities are however not irrevocably... 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 does not consist in the Page 374 combination, a summation of separate or independent units: the separate units on the surface are an illusion and valuation of individuals in this viewpoint is an anomaly ...
... with all the being a lightness in the high heavens drenched with the luminous wine of the sun-god. The bottle sym- Page 356 bolises the holding, by man's mind, of the fire and ether of inspired supra-intellectual vision. We may say the bottle stands for individual expression and the wine in it for the stuff of poetry shaped according to the form of the individual's being. But just as... chord of powers, each power constituting a plane on which there is a universal play and within this universal Nature a large number of individual natures. People do not always realise that there are other worlds than the physical: they consider all the powers of our being as merely different aspects of bodily activity or else, if distinct from that activity, effective only through centres in the body —... appearance, it is essence — not beauty of body but beauty of being. We have ordinarily set up the figure of Apollo or of Aphrodite as representing the Greek ideal of Beauty. But actually this ideal was caught in the pug-nosed, stumpy, pot-bellied satyr of a man that was Socrates! He Page 357 was Beauty incarnate because his very being was saturated with a sense of the supreme Beauty that ...
... the earth atmosphere, into our inner being and consciousness. A central feature of that endeavour was that she had placed each of us in touch with his inner godhead. Every individual has what may be described as his line of spiritual descent and also ascent; for into each individual consciousness has come down from the supreme Maha Shakti an individual divine being, a particular godhead following a... one had to gather oneself in, limbs and all, and hide as in a shell by cutting oneself off from all outward touches. This was a temporary necessity in order to maintain the consciousness of the individual and the collectivity always at a high level and keep it unsullied and unchanged. Our give and take with the outside world was very little indeed and it was carried on under the strictest vigilance... another, both arranged in rows. The right side of the Mother represented Light, on the left was Power. Each of us found a seat to her right or left according to the turn of our nature of the inner being. I was to her right, Amrita sat on her left. A strange thing used to happen every day at these meditations. Purushottam was one of our number in those days. He used to sit directly in front of the ...
... 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 relapse in the course of his spiritual experience. The "descent" here is the opposite of the individual being's ascent, spoken of earlier, to the "heights" of "heavenlier states". And the "twin duality for ever one" does not refer to Purusha 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... safely, far more fruitfully. But I may add that quite an amount of creative spiritual development can take place - a good deal of psychlcisation and spiritualisation can occur - without the chakras being felt opening in any concrete sense. 1 remember two secrets of success in Yoga mentioned by Sri Aurobindo. One is to regard Yoga not as a part of life but as the whole of life. I understand ...
... say, "This is a cosmic weakness." Universal applies to everything in the universe—there are individual beings everywhere, but not physical in the terrestrial sense—the composition being different. The Nature of the Cosmic Consciousness Man is shut up at present in his surface individual consciousness and knows the world (or rather the surface of it) only through his outward mind and senses... consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic Spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. Only... 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 beyond. The Divine is always One that is Many. The individual spirit is part of the "Many" side of the One, and the psychic being is what it puts forth to evolve here in ...
... many names. All has been done by gradations and through individual beings of all kinds. Each state of being is inhabited by entities, individualities and personalities and each one has created a world around him or has contributed to the formation of certain beings upon earth. The last creators are those of the vital world, but there are beings of the Overmind (Sri Aurobindo calls this plane the Overmind)... vital world, beings of the vital who created that for fun and amused themselves forming all these impossible beasts which make human life altogether unpleasant. Did these intermediaries also come out of the Divine Power? Through intermediaries, yes, not directly. These beings are not in direct contact with the Divine (there are exceptions, I mean as a general rule), they are beings who are in... psychic being. And when one has found one's psychic being—immediately, you understand—one has the sense of immortality. And one knows that what goes out or what comes in is just a matter of convenience: "I am not going to weep over a pair of shoes I put aside when it is full of holes! When my pair of shoes is worn out I cast it aside, and I do not weep." Well, the Page 315 psychic being has ...
... born or the 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; 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... the individual to his eternal principle. 7 Whether this awakening comes as the result of a mystic break-through, or of a spurt of intense religious feeling, or yet as the culmination of a course Of philosophical inquiry, "the important thing is to live the experience". On the one hand, unlike the body, the vital and the mind, of which we are almost constantly aware, the psychic being or soul... consciousness and a new power. And so will begin a new education which can be called the supramental education; it will, by its all-powerful action, work not only upon the consciousness of individual beings, but upon the very substance of which they are built and upon the environment in which they live. 12 It is true that at a time when psychic and spiritual education are a mystery to most ...
... every individual human being even in his ordinary waking existence is not composed of one but of many strands of consciousness and each of these strands has the possibility of having a characteristic sight of its own. The intellect, the will, the sense-mind, the desire-self, the heart, even the body-consciousness, all "see" in different ways. All these and other similar parts of the being are "like... ignorant of all that functions behind the veil. "And yet what is on the surface, what we know or think we know of ourselves and even believe that that is all we are, is only a small part of our being," and by far the immensely larger part lies hidden "behind the frontal consciousness, behind the veil, occult and known only by an occult knowledge." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 348) ... sight A bounded prospect took for the far goal." (257) (8)"... the great truths escape her narrow cast; Guarded from vision by creation's depths" (626) Although man the mental being prides himself on the possession of mind, and his "seeing thoughts" fill in "the blanks left by the seeking sense" (268), it remains a patent fact that mind, the intellect and the reason of man cannot ...
... that each individual must, in order to act, find out the truth of his own being, his true soul and inmost consciousness: one must entirely and integrally merge oneself into that, be identified with it in such a manner that all acts and feelings and thoughts, in fact all movements—inner and outer—spontaneously and irrepressibly well out of that fount and origin. The individual souls being made of one... liberty and freedom—things not very common in the old world; and yet, at the same time, it is a clarion that calls for and prepares strife and battle. If the conception of Right has sanctified the individual or a unit collectivity, it has also, pari passu, developed a fissiparous tendency in human organization. Society based on or living by the principle of Rights becomes naturally and inevitably a... specialisation, organization. And this means consciousness of oneself, of the distinct and separate existence of each and every one, in other words, self-assertion, the claim, the right of each individual unit to be itself, to become itself first and foremost. It is a necessary development, for it signifies the growth of self-condousness in the units out of a mass unconsciousness or semi-consciousness ...
... inculcates that each individual must, in order to act, find out his truth of being, his true soul and inmost consciousness: one must entirely _nd integrally merge oneself into that, be identified with it in such a manner that all acts and feelings and thoughts, in fact all movements, inner and outer-spontaneously and irrepressibly well out of that fount and origin. The individual souls, being made of one ... and freedom – things not very common in the old world; and yet at the same time it is a clarion that calls for and prepares strife and battle. If the conception of Right has s anctified the individual or a unit collectivity, it has also pari passu d eveloped a fissiparous tendency in human organisation. Society based on or living by the principle of Right becomes naturally and ... , specialisation, organisation. And this means consciousness of oneself of the distinct and separate existence of each and everyone, in other words, self-assertion, the claim, the right of each individual unit to be itself, to become itself first and foremost. I t is a necessary development; for it signifies the growth of self. consciousness in the units out of a mass unconsciousness or semi-consciousness ...
... kingdom or reign of the individual's own self. In effect, the world-empire or the imperial reign of the Spirit has three gradations. At the outset each element, that is, each individual human being (we limit ourselves to the human collectivity at present) has to attain svarajya, self-rule, a perfectly homogeneous integral spiritual whole in himself: then all such individuals should achieve integrality... and the true centre of unity to be found – the psychic divine centre. First each element in the individual, each level of his being must find its centre, its soul or psychic base – and then only a co-ordination of all would be possible. Next through the psychic level the general level of the being and consciousness, that is to say, its expression and its field of action should be lifted and raised... another. Each lives in and through every other and all together live in everyone. The whole forms an indissoluble integral and unitary life. This collective integration means all individuals have one mind, one vital being, even one physical consciousness, not of course one material body but still a feeling of the' kind. One mind or one vital or one physical consciousness does not mean everyone has ...
... 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... 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 Asram and others (with also a certain working in... the evolution—there each acts separately according to its own law. It [ the earth ] contains all the potentialities which come out in the beings of earth and also much that is unexpressed. Page 298 It is first through the individual that it [ the supramental activity ] becomes part of the earth consciousness and afterwards it spreads from the first centres and takes up more and ...
... which we have to establish. For our real self is not the individual mental being, that is only a figure, an appearance; our real self is cosmic, infinite, it is one with all existence and the inhabitant of all existences. The self behind our mind, life and body is the same as the self behind the mind, life and body of all our fellow-beings, and if we come to possess it, we shall naturally, when we... right poise and the vision of the Truth all that we drew back from in the 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 ... and all else that is not our eternal being, is to get rid of the false idea of self by which we identify ourselves with the lower existence and can realise only our apparent being as perishable or mutable creatures in a perishable or ever mutable world. We have to know ourselves as the self, the spirit, the eternal; we have to exist consciously in our true being. Therefore this must be our primary, ...
... e. Once it has appeared it persists indeed but as a general phenomenon precariously manifested in individual living beings. It has the seeming either of an uncertain freak of inconscient Nature, — a disease some would conjecture, a phosphorescence playing upon the stagnant waters of inconscient being, active at certain points of animation, or a guest in a world in which it is alien, a foreign resident... self-manifestation of the Reality; as Soul it is the Conscious Being who sanctions the creative adventure of the Consciousness-Force, and as the Lord it controls the process of the self-manifestation of the Reality. The true being in man is a portion of the supreme Reality and is called the soul or psychic being by Sri Aurobindo. The psychic being is of the same essence as God and is other than body, life... in order to avoid confusion and misunderstanding. Soul, for example, is not the animating principle of life, nor the seat of emotions, nor the total personality. Self, atman, both universal and individual, is an experiential concept of Vedanta and of Sri Aurobindo which has no parallel in Western thought or religious literature. All this will be clear to the readers of this most useful guide to Sri ...
... pretty long time to attain to that perfection. But once we are conscious, then we become the Will itself. Consciously we can quicken the progress. This method gives rise to individual perfected beings. As before, they will not see glimpses of the Light of Truth. They will ever be seeing the Eternal Truth. They will turn the darkness around them and in them, into Light. Hitherto, we should have felt a... life a Divine Work by means of the Divine Power using us as an instrument. The fourth object is to enjoy God in all beings, in all things and in all that happens. Since the Life is to be Divine there must be siddhi or Perfection of the Being. The difference between the Divine Being and Divine Life and ours is that we are in the limited ego, confined to our own physical and mental experiences while... the mental idea that I am a separate being existing in my own mind and body independently of everything and everybody else. We have therefore to know ourselves, to realise that we are not the body, nor the Prana, nor the mind and to find out our real Self . That is called Atmajnana. Secondly we have to get rid of the idea of ourselves and others as separate being to realise everything as one Brahman ...
... was, the Will was an individual projection—individual, you understand, a scattering: instead of being a unity containing all, it was a unity made of innumerable small unities which are individualisations, that is, things that feel themselves separated. And the very fact of being separated from all others is what gives you the feeling that you are an Page 70 individual. Otherwise you would... other; you would not have the feeling of being an individual at all: you would have the feeling of something like a vibration in the midst of a whole. Well, the original Will was to form individual beings capable of becoming conscious once again of their divine origin. Because of the process of individualisation one must feel separate if one is to be an individual. The moment you are separated, you are... you, "Do you know the truth of your being?" What will you say?... Do you know it? Well, the same holds for everything. And yet you are already a sufficiently evolved thinking being who has passed through all kinds of refinements. You are no longer quite like, let us say, a lizard that runs on the wall; and yet you would not be able to say what the truth of your being is. That is just the secret of all ...
... shrivel the being. It's the cause of aging, it dries you up—the being shrivels under it like a withering flower. And as I was speaking to him, the experience came; all I remember now is the idea, but the idea is nothing—the experience itself was there. I know that at a certain moment I was making the distinction between the two states, between the person—the individual, personal being—turning towards... there at that moment, and it was eloquent enough. And I was giving him the example of BEING the thing you manipulate and so—since you ARE the thing—having not only the joy of perfect knowledge of manipulation, but the joy of collaboration as well (not collaboration: rather a participation from the thing being utilized). And this from the smallest thing (objects you put in order, for example) right... entirely concrete and material incident—something very amusing; this is not the first time it has happened, but it was so concrete and so precise that it became interesting. Someone was complaining of being ill, quite a serious, psychological illness: periodic possession by a spirit of falsehood, recurring regularly every month, of more or less long duration. This person comes to see me, and the moment ...
... supreme reality. The initial separation, disobedience or sin is the price that the individual human being has to pay in order to move towards its final destiny, the freedom and the integrality of its supreme divine fulfilment. Egoism, the fount and origin of sin, is the mask, the camouflage over the visage of God, the Individual. (4) I have spoken of the sprouting virtue in the earth-element; the... achieves first of all, as I have said, an individuation, an elementary individual form, as in the lower animals, and then in the higher animals it arrives at individualisation. With the emergence of conscious will, self-observation and self-direction in man, the mere psychic element or entity becomes an individuality, a psychic being, the person, the soul, and finally, a full-grown self-fulfilled person... consciousness and will. With its growth and the appearance of mind there grew the psychic element, the beginning of the individual, in the higher animal for example. And the psychic element with the growth of consciousness and will and individuality in man, developed into the psychic being which moves on towards the Divine impersonation on the earth. This is Earth's divine fulfilment in and through her ...
... justifying its existence by organising the general economic and animal well-being of the community and even of all individuals. It is beginning to see the necessity of assuring the intellectual and, indirectly, the moral development of the whole community. This attempt of the State to grow into an intellectual and moral being is one of the most interesting phenomena of modern civilisation. Even the necessity... just routine and security of the happily established communal order. Always it is the individual who progresses and compels the rest to progress; the instinct of the collectivity is to stand still in its established order. Progress, growth, realisation of wider being give his greatest sense of happiness to the individual; status, secure ease to the collectivity. And so it must be as long as the latter... Page 296 of their lives. Yet it is by such minds that the good of all has to be decided, to such hands that it has to be entrusted, to such an agency calling itself the State that the individual is being more and more called upon to give up the government of his activities. As a matter of fact, it is in no way the largest good of all that is thus secured, but a great deal of organised blundering ...
... not do if I would like to act and react as a genuinely free being and not as a slave to my hidden psychological forces. And for Page 80 that, we have to clearly understand another interesting psychological phenomenon. Let us clarify the point. To simplify matters, let us point out that an individual human being, a mental creature but inheriting his physical-vital nature and... of urges are almost always in conflict and fight to gain control of the dynamic will of the individual, to make him act out the resultant. The Upanishads have declared that the manomayapurusah prana-sa-rira-neta, "mind is the leader of the vital and the physical". But in fact, it is not so. Instead of being the leader, it is most often led by the physical and vital pushes and passions. And as the... of a "free" man. 4.Mind offers a successful battle and holds its ground and keeps the vital at bay. Result: the individual does indeed what he thinks to be right at that moment but the recalcitrant vital goes on strike and withdraws all the energy and happiness from the being, which is surely not a desirable state. 5.Mind becomes, not only the successful "leader" but the "converter" of ...
... individualism is the liberty of the human being regarded as a separate existence to develop himself and fulfil his life, satisfy his mental tendencies, emotional and vital needs and physical being according to his own desire governed by his reason; it admits no other limit to this right and this liberty except the obligation to respect the same individual liberty and right in others. The balance of... animal or insect and the human group over the individual human being. Therefore in the true law and nature of things the individual should live for all and constantly subordinate and sacrifice himself to the growth, efficiency and progress of the race rather than live for his own self-fulfilment and subordinate the race-life to his own needs. Modern collectivism derives its victorious strength from the... the individual life and consciousness as the self and regard its power, freedom, increasing light and satisfaction and joy as the object of living and thus arrive at a subjective individualism. We may, on the other hand, lay stress on the group consciousness, the collective self; we may see man only as an expression of this group-self necessarily incomplete in his individual or separate being, complete ...
... These four “ varnas, ” writes Sri Aurobindo elsewhere, are in various degrees 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... of those traditions the universe was divided into a good and a bad half, for ever. They were Manichean, a view which may have originated among the Zoroastrians. In such a cosmic constellation individual beings can be saved when lost in the bad world, but never that world itself. What is explained as a plunge of the Godhead into its contrary cannot be corrected. The world is evil and only an escape into... which we find in the course of the evolution of life on Earth gradually expressed in the shape of the human being. This form is also the inspiration of the knowledge at the base of the occult schemata of the world, e.g. the chakras, the chain of being, the astrological structure of the human being, and the sephiroth in the Kabbalah. Primordial Man The pure spiritual knowledge is the great treasure ...
... original permits, goes to the other extreme. The Revised Version's marginal note for the full turn is: "in your midst." Possibly this is not quite bound to an external sense and may imply each individual's central being, his soul-core, the heart of his self, but the usual understanding of "your midst" is "among you". At a pinch I can only propose as a double-toned translation of the entire phrase: "the Kingdom... one is Luke itself, allude to a Kingdom of God which is not only to be formed by a communion of the faithful with Jesus the Messiah but also to be animated by a core of spiritual inwardness in each individual. To be able to enlist Luke is perhaps the crucial test for my contention, for this Gospel is the immediate context in general of the phrase that is our problem. And I may add a still more... Life and Light as well as a personal being, the Son of God. It is also "the Light of men" (1:4), "the true light that Page 68 enlightens every man" (1:9). And the work of Christ as the incarnate Logos, the Word made flesh, is, as Spencer 4 aptly puts it, "to bring to men the life and the light which are the inmost principle of their being." In view of the Logos-doctrine ...
... as the Being from whom we come and in whom we live and move. We see Nature as his Power or God as Power, Spirit in Power acting in ourselves and the world. The Jiva is then himself this Self, Spirit, Divine, so 'ham , because he is one with him in essence of his being and consciousness, but as the individual he is only a portion of the Divine, a self of the Spirit, and in his natural being a form... link is the supramental or gnostic energy in which the incalculable infinite power of the supreme being, consciousness, delight formulates itself as an ordering divine will and wisdom, a light and power in the being which shapes all the thought, will, feeling, action and replaces the corresponding individual movements. This supramental Shakti may form itself as a spiritualised intuitive light and power... spiritual claim and lose their egoistic character. And in fact the claim of our being upon the Divine is fulfilled absolutely only then when it ceases at all to be a claim and is instead a fulfilment of the Divine through the individual, when we are satisfied with that alone, when we are content with the delight of oneness in being, content to leave the supreme Self and Master of existence to do whatever ...
... 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 consciousness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature... physical being, to regard their activities as only a habitual formation of general Nature in the individual imposed on us by past workings, not as any part of our real being; in proportion as one succeeds in this, becomes detached, sees mind and its activities as not oneself, life and its activities as not oneself, the body and its activities as not oneself, one becomes aware of an inner Being within... 4. The Psychic Being and Sadhana The Psychic Being Emergence of the Psychic—Bringing Forward the Psychic The true central being is the soul, but this being stands back and in most human natures is only the secret witness or, one might say, a constitutional ruler who allows his ministers to rule for him, delegates to them his empire, silently assents to ...
... of th& individual vital being. Society, or any collective unit, however large, is only the larger ego for the individual. The relation of the vital being of man to the higher activities of collective life is one of opposition. In fact, the individual's vital being has to be subjected to discipline in order to maintain society. If the collective life presses too much the vital being of the ... es the opposition between the individual and the collective life is accepted as basic: Hence in all the applications of these outlooks the individual is pitted against the group. It is argued that the individual is only a temporary cell of the collective body and therefore not entitled to independent self-fulfilment. The collectivity Page 55 being eternal, it is by living and s... The divinity in the individual when realised in the collectivity and made dynamic would lead it to collective perfection. It is the universal aspect of the Omnipresent Reality which is behind the drive for collective expression in Nature. Life is the field for the working out of this impulse and it takes two lines in the human being. One is the creation of a distinct individual, say, an ego-centre ...
... mind, life and body for an individual and a communal experience and self-manifestation in the universe. This spirit is an infinite existence limiting itself in apparent being for individual experience. It is an infinite consciousness which defines itself in finite forms of consciousness for joy of various knowledge and various power of being. It is an infinite delight of being expanding and contracting... but user of life and body, knows itself as a mental being working out its mental life and forces and images, bodies of the subtle mental substance, according to its individual knowledge, will and dynamis modified by its relation to other similar beings and powers in the universal mind. When it dwells in the principle of life, it knows itself as a being of the universal life working out action and con... ess by its desires under similar modifying conditions proper to a universal life-soul whose action is through many individual life-beings. When it dwells in the principle of matter, it knows itself as a consciousness of matter acting under a similar law of the energy of material being. In proportion as it leans towards the side of knowledge, it is aware of itself more or less clearly as a soul of mind ...
... the sense of reincarnation is especially an individual phenomenon, the individual forming a divine centre, a focus of consciousness which the group is not; the group is more a field and a frame for the individual in spite of a conscious existence of its own. In any case, the revival or renaissance of a nation – a collective consciousness and being – is quite possible, and the normal curve of... and mark its various stages of growth and evolution. The general theory put in a nutshell would be like this: mankind is composed of groups or aggregates of individuals and each has a life-history of its own even like an individual human being, in other words, an inescapable cycle of birth, growth, maturity, decline and disintegration. All groups – peoples; races, nations – have to pass through these... of life – birth and growth and death – is not even for it the ineluctable destiny. For like the individual, the group too has that in it or the possibility of that in it which is akin, to – an isotope of – the soul or self, the immortal conscious being. Page 246 ...
... have brought her up and it would have been over (they know very well how to do that, nothing would have happened). ( silence ) For this Consciousness, apart from a few individuals, human beings are weak. They are weak beings. Highly speculative, imaginative, very highly active in the mind, oh, tremendously active; that gives it a sense of... oh-oh, what agitation! But like that, from the psychophysical... invention of this system, which prevents you from doing anything unless you pull out a banknote, to it, really it's buffoonery. Strange, I suddenly realize that the psychic being ( dominating gesture behind )... the psychic being is almost like a witness, it's a witness to the whole evolution of things, and it KNOWS (it understands the deeper reasons, it knows how things are). It's in the body that... Aurobindo said, "He will be born in the family" (he came back in a child), "he will come back in the first child to be born in the family." And this girl, I don't know yet what will happen, but her psychic being WANTED to go (for some reason or other). 4 ( silence ) The strange thing is that when you see things with this Consciousness, the PERFECTION of the organization is so TREMENDOUS that you are ...
... linger in the rajaso-tamasic stage. For that is a social period when the claims of the individual are being constantly balanced and adjusted in a manner which strongly resembles the replacement in the physical organism of waste tissue by sound, bad blood by good, corrupted breath by fresh inhalations; the individual is given legitimate scope, but those irreducible demands of society which are necessary... ideals, but by his personal idiosyncrasy and the stress of his own ideas, desires, passions, capacities and ambitions, which clamantly demand satisfaction. Individual originality being given free rein, there is an immense outburst of genius, talent, origination, invention or of splendid personal force and activity. Periods such as the revolutionary epoch in France when the rajasic element gets free play... sanction which punishes or spares, allows or disallows, approves or disapproves, is external and social; society is the individual's judge. Finally, in the higher stage of evolution, the sanction is internal and individual; the individual is his own judge. The indulgence of individual desire in disobedience to a general law is the origin of sin. With the rejection of this theory of an originally perfect ...
... joy of labour for God in yourself and for God in all beings. Love is the crown of works and the crown of knowledge. "This love that is knowledge, this love that can be the deep heart of your action, will be your most effective force for an utter consecration and complete perfection. An integral union of the individual's being with the Divine Being is the condition of a perfect spiritual life. Turn... 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... formal perfection, apposite to a religious turn or to an individual salvation, but rather all action of Page 575 human life taken up by the equal spirit and done for the sake of God and the good of all creatures. There will be needed an uplifting of the heart in a single aspiration to the Highest, a single love of the Divine Being, a single God-adoration. And there must be a widening too ...
... not personal. And the Response from above is what makes it concrete, so to speak, bringing in a sort of perfection of the state and an individual mastery of the new creation. These beings in corresponding worlds (like the gods of the overmind, 4 or the beings of higher regions) came upon earth as soon as the corresponding element began to evolve out of its involution. This accelerates the action... earth is a symbolic history. And it is on earth that this Descent takes place (it's not the history of the universal but of the terrestrial creation); the Descent occurs in the individual TERRESTRIAL being, in the individual terrestrial atmosphere. Let's take Savitri , which is very explicit on this: the universal Mother is universally present and at work in the universe, but the earth is where... the experience of being 'missioned,' so to speak, in a form of Love and Consciousness combined—divine Love in its supreme purity, divine Consciousness in its supreme purity—and emanated DIRECTLY, without passing through all the intermediate states, directly into the nethermost depths of the Inconscient. And there I had the impression of being, or rather of finding a symbolic Being in deep sleep... so ...
... According to pantheism, the universe is a single infinite Being manifesting all that is physical and 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... 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... in the divine Totality, Roman Catholic thought maintains that in pantheistic mysticism a reversal 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 ...
... joyous perceptions the Truth-consciousness, Ritam Brihat, which is the womb or birth-place of this conscient being. For it is out of the Page 320 superconscient that existence descends into the subconscient and carries with it that which emerges here as the individual human being, the conscious soul. The nature of this Truth-consciousness is in itself this that it is abundant in its outflowings... Word or mantra in its profoundest aspect as the expression of the intuition arising out of the depths of the soul or being. It is a voice of the rhythm which has created the worlds and creates perpetually. All world is expression or manifestation, creation by the Word. Conscious Being luminously manifesting its contents in itself, of itself, tmanā , is the superconscient; holding its contents obscurely... night, into darkness concealed in darkness, tamas tamasā gūḍham , where all is hidden in formless being owing to fragmentation of consciousness, tucchyenābhvapihitam . It arises again out of the Night by the Word to reconstitute in the conscient its vast unity, tan mahinājāyataikam . This vast Being, this all-containing and all-formulating consciousness is Brahman. It is the Soul that emerges out ...
... arrives at an organised common life and seeks a common fulfilment and satisfaction, it can only do it by means of the relation of this whole to its parts and by the aid of the expanding life of individual human beings and of the communities whose progress constitutes the larger terms of the life of the race. Nature works always through these three terms and none of them can be abolished. She starts from... and to assert its own natural law and development modified only by its commerce with its environment. All liberty, individual, national, religious, social, ethical, takes its ground upon this fundamental principle of our existence. By liberty we mean the freedom to obey the law of our being, to grow to our natural self-fulfilment, to find out naturally and freely our harmony with our environment. The... by a general principle of interchange and assimilation between individual and individual and again between individual and community, between community and community and again between the smaller commonalty and the totality of mankind, between the common life and consciousness of mankind and its freely developing communal and individual constituents. As a matter of fact, although this interchange is ...
... leaving (not the soul! It's entirely independent, always and in everyone), of leaving the psychic being, the individual psychic being. When I left here in 1915, I left my psychic being here deliberately. I left it here, I didn't take it with me. Consequently, the body can live without the psychic being (it was rather sick, by the way, but that wasn't the reason—it's again the taste for drama!... Oh... experience was different.... Previously, the consciousness of all the other inner beings was there and would fortunately counterbalance this idiotic tendency: even the vital, the vital being which also loves grand effects, but provided at least they are great, vast, powerful enough to be on a large scale and save it from being ridiculous; and then, positively above all that, all the rest, with a smile.... it, but it can be done. My psychic being stayed here with Sri Aurobindo, and I left with my mental, vital and physical beings. It was a ... slightly precarious condition. But as I also kept the contact quite consciously, it could be done. What people call "death"... I see lots of people who to me are living dead (they are those who are without their psychic being, or even those who have no contact ...
... that the transcendence of the individual personality by seeing it as a "becoming" in the impersonal self-existent Being is simply a means of arriving at that great secret impersonal Personality, which is thus silent, calm and uplifted above Nature in the impersonal Being, but also present and active in Nature in all these million becomings. Losing our lower individual personality in the Impersonal... our primary condition of individual, family, social, national egoism into a secondary stage in which the individual realises, as far as it can be done on the intellectual, moral and emotional level,—on that level he cannot do it entirely in the right and perfect way, the way of the integral truth of his being,—the oneness of his existence with the existence of other beings. But Page 136 ... Brahmic status and sees no longer with the false egoistic vision himself and the world, but sees all beings in the Self, in God, and the Self in all beings, God in all beings, what shall be the action,—since action there still is,—which results from that seeing, and what shall be the cosmic or individual motive of all his Page 137 works? It is the question of Arjuna, 2 but answered from ...
... complete communion; without exception, any individual vital being that hasn't been prepared by what might be called a sufficient mental foundation would be panic-stricken. All those poor people who get scared at the least little experience had better not dabble with this—they'd panic! But as it happens—through divine grace, you might say—my vital, the vital being of this present incarnation, was born free... "materialize" something, to work occultly—to create a new body by occult means.... That was the idea: for a few beings to first attain, here in this physical world, a level of realization giving them the power to materialize a supramental being. I once told you I put a body on a vital being 7 —but I couldn't have made that body material; it would have been impossible: something is lacking. Something... would never grow old. For instance, my vital being is more full of energy, and thus full of youth and power to grow, than when I was twenty. There's really no comparison. The power is INFINITELY greater... yet the body is going to pieces—it's really something unspeakable. So a way has to be found to bridge this gap between the vital and the material being. Not that the problem hasn't been partially ...
... truth remains that behind his outward ego-consciousness every individual human being' has within him, deeply hidden behind the veil of Ignorance, the eternal Godhead with his intrinsic Will to possess the universe; for, that is his inherent divine right. Here we meet a strange mysterious phenomenon. Man's superficial ego, being obscurely aware of the inner Godhead's right to infinite and absolute... aspiration is "a purifying Will, an evermounting drive." What we have given above are abstract definitions and generalisations. But how does an aspiration make its appearance in the life of an individual? What impact does it make upon the quality of his life? And what is the result of this aspiration? — All these and other allied questions the Mother discussed in one of her last classes held in the... spiritual path is not only difficult but highly improbable. Sri Aurobindo has reminded us that aspiration is one of the two crucial factors which open wide the window of spirituality, the other one being the progressive eradication of the ego-centric attitude. He has also affirmed that the difficult task the Integral Yoga has taken in hand, that is to say, the establishment of a divine life upon earth ...
... single consciousness, a single will which movesj in the world with innumerable ways of being." (The Mother) And Page 224 what is significant, this Divine Will operative always and everywhere is also active in every individual human being in his 'central will' which resides in his central being. But this Will cannot reach the outer consciousness in its pure form; it becomes deformed... 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 of its being, and there is almost invariably a resistance and, more often than not, a strong and stub-born... mentioned, the D» vine Will becomes operative in the individual's life through the 'central will'. But it is not easy for the extrovert superficial consciousness of the sadhaka to discover this 'central will' in its utter purity and genuineness. For there is a long space of separation between the 'central will' dwelling in the psychic being and the working con- Page 222 ...
... Hence, to be inspired does not necessarily mean that one is a higher being.... One may be inspired also to do and say many stupid things! What does "inspired" mean? It means receiving something which is beyond you, which was not within you; to open yourself to an influence which is outside your individual conscious being. Indeed, one can have also an inspiration to commit a murder! In countries... Does the psychic being always progress? There are in the psychic being two very different kinds of progress: one consisting in its formation, building and organisation. For the psychic starts by being only a kind of tiny divine spark within the being and out of this spark will emerge progressively an independent conscious being having its own action and will. The psychic being at its origin is... thing in the making. For a long time, in most human beings the psychic is a being in the making. It is not a fully individualised, fully conscious being and master of itself and it needs all its rebirths, one after another, in order to build itself and become fully conscious. But this sort of progress has an end. There comes a time when the being is fully developed, fully individualised, fully master ...
... each person has a central being. The one is not separate from the other. The one is not separate from the other? In what sense? The central being isn't separate from the Divine, it's one with the Page 293 Divine. But does each person have a particular, individual central being, or is there one central being for everyone? It becomes personal in our consciousness. It is a phenomenon... 'central being,' this central being is not something here in physical life, is it?... It's above.... It is above and within and everywhere! ( Mother laughs ) No, unless you learn to think at all times with the fourth dimension, you will never understand anything. But Sri Aurobindo says that this central being is 'unborn.' I would like to know whether it is something individual—whether each... Because when one loses his ego and finds this central being, Sri Aurobindo says that an individuality remains—it isn't a dissolution—one retains a personality. Yes, a personality remains. Then this is the personality of the central being, the True Personality. Yes. Then after all, it's an individual, not an impersonal self. Individual in action, in manifestation. This is where the ...
... by rebirth of the individual up the scale of being till in mental man it enters the world of ideas and realm of conscious morality, dharma . This achievement, this victory over unconscious matter develops its lines, enlarges its scope, elevates its levels until the increasing manifestation of the sattwic or spiritual portion of the vehicle of mind enables the individual mental being in man to identify... for the good of others. The second stage has hardly at all commenced for most; the third belongs to the indeterminate future. Individuals have reached the highest stage; the perfected Sannyasin, the liberated man, the soul that has become one with the Spirit, knows all being as himself and for him all self-defence and attack are needless. For strife does not belong to the law of his seeing; sacrifice... nt; for Turkey and China and Japan, say her critics, have outgrown that foolishness, by which it is meant that they have grown rationalistic and materialistic. India alone as a nation, whatever individuals or a small class may have done, has till now refused to give up her worshipped Godhead or bow her knee to the strong reigning idols of rationalism, commercialism and economism, the successful iron ...
... the psychic being is an individual, personal being with its own experience, its own development, its own growth, its own organisation; only, this organisation is the product of the action of a central divine spark. But the day an external being (physical, mental, vital) enters into direct and constant contact with the psychic being, one may say in the same way that the physical being of this person... 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 world. It is at first an undifferentiated power of the divine consciousness, containing... indispensable. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Himself and the Ashram: Jivatman, Spark-Soul and Psychic Being The soul, representative of the central being, is a spark of the Divine supporting all individual existence in Nature; the psychic being is a conscious form of that soul growing in the evolution—in the persistent process that develops first life in matter, mind in life, until finally mind can ...
... dharma. Page 434 × Mark that nowhere in the Gita is there any indication that dissolution of the individual spiritual being into the unmanifest, indefinable or absolute Brahman, avyaktam anirdeśyam , is the true meaning or condition of immortality or the true aim of Yoga. On the contrary it describes immortality... of the manifest worlds and are born again in the appearance of a new cycle. Pralaya, the end of a cycle of aeons, is the temporary disintegration of a universal form of existence and of all the individual forms which move in its rounds, but that is only a momentary pause, a silent interval followed by an outburst of new creation, reintegration and reconstruction in which they reappear and recover... end of Yoga to drop the mutable nature and the gunas born of the embodiment in Nature and disappear into the impersonality and everlasting peace of the Brahman? Is that laya or dissolution of the individual Purusha the greatest liberation? There is, it would seem, something else; for the Gita says at the close, always returning to this one final note, "He also who loves and strives after Me with ...
... 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 consciousness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature... physical being, to regard their activities as only a habitual formation of general Nature in the individual imposed on us by past workings, not as any part of our real being; in proportion as one succeeds in this, becomes detached, sees mind and its activities as not oneself, life and its activities as not oneself, the body and its activities as not oneself, one becomes aware of an inner Being within... physical being. Here the principle is to accord the nature with the inner realisation so that one may not be divided into two discordant parts. There are here several disciplines or processes possible. One is to offer all the activities to the Divine and call for the inner guidance and the taking up of one's nature by a Higher Power. If there is the inward soul-opening, if the psychic being comes forward ...
... were, in spite of all their faults, more worthy of consultation and friendly relation than one which claimed to have got rid of capitalism, racialism and imperialism and yet had reduced the individual human being to a robot. In brief, while Nehru had not outgrown his rose-spectacled hope for a perfect society through Marxism, he no longer could be tempted to equate the distinction he drew between... to individual freedom. Soviet Russia is the extreme example of centralization. I would not like to limit freedom for any nation." Here we had in the clearest terms the recognition by Nehru that what glittered was not always what he took to be the gold of Marxism and also that far more precious than anything else in a nation's life was individual freedom and that those countries where individual freedom... Capitalism with the distinction between Stalin's Russia and Truman's America, much less between Stalin's Russia and Attlee's Britain. This breaking of an old association and throwing of the value of individual freedom into relief Page 95 was of first-rate importance, and made Nehru face the future with an idealistic modernity all the younger from the Indian angle of vision. We may ...
... ly. Objectively, the world was — and still is! — composed of a series of cosmic planes of consciousness (the mind being one of them, rather low on this ascending scale) ; each plane had its own gods and beings, and those cosmic planes were connected to our individual, subjective being through a certain number of inner meeting points or inner centres (called chakras in Indian psychology), which in... eventually gives us the milk of heaven and the divine birth. All is fulfilled. The Rishi "sets flowing in one movement human strengths and things divine," (IX.703) he has realized the universal in the individual, he has become the Infinite in the finite : "Then shall thy humanity become as if the workings of these gods ; it is as if the visible heaven of light were founded in thee" (V.66.2). And far from... Aurobindo That which Sri Aurobindo came to accomplish, other poets, the Vedic Rishis, had announced thousands of years earlier, in prehistoric times : Weave an inviolate work, become the human being, create the divine race.... Seers of truth you are, sharpen the shining spears with which you cut the way to that which is Immortal; knowers of the secret planes, form them, the steps by which ...
... 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 a basis of Ignorance seeking for Knowledge and growing into Knowledge, so supermind must be established here on a basis of Knowledge growing into its own greater Light. But this cannot be so long as the spiritual-mental being has not risen fully... the eye of vision, the wing of the will, the self-affirmation of the spirit in the material universe. 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 the Divinity or the Reality which is concealed by her appearances: a certain change of nature prepares, accompanies... enlargement of the being in a spiritualised mind and heart, but not—or rather not yet sufficiently—for the self-affirmation of the Spirit in its own dynamic and sovereign mastery free from the mind's limitations and from the mental instrumentation. The development 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 ...
... transmutation and a heavy weight holding the soul to earthly nature and preventing its ascent either to spiritual fulfilment in the Supreme or to the dissolution of its individual beings in the Supreme … If a total transformation of the being is our aim, a transformation of the body must be an indispensable part of it; without that no full divine life on earth is possible.” 36 But there remains that... is an intermediate zone between the physical world as it is and the supramental world as it is. This zone remains to be built, both in the individual consciousness and the objective world, and it is being built. When I used to speak of the new world which is being created, it was of this intermediary zone that I was speaking. And similarly, when I am on this side, that is, in the field of the physical... case, but that it simply is the forerunner of a realisation which, even if it is not general, can at least be shared by a certain number of individuals who, moreover, as soon as they share [that realisation], will lose the feeling of being separate individuals and become a living collectivity. “This new realisation is proceeding with what one might call lightning speed, for if we consider time ...
... of Matter of which our own physical being is but a symbolic knot; the second is the manifestation of Life, of which our own individual vital being is but a symbolic knot; the third is the manifestation of the mind, of which our own individual mind is but a symbolic knot; and the fourth is the manifestation of the Super-mind, the corresponding sheath in our being is still to be developed. If, therefore... of integral perfection, both of the individual and of the society, or pursuit of the kingdom of God on the earth. While every individual should be free to choose his or her own aim of life, the choice can be greatly helped, if contents of education are so designed that every student has the possibility of being acquainted with the various goals that human beings have pursued along with the relevant... the increasing knowledge of the Supermind. It is for this reason that integral development of personality includes education of the physical being, the vital being and mental being. Therefore, whatever else may be the contents of education, which every individual has to pursue appropriate to his or her own seeking and to the finding of his or her own status and profession and the role in the life of ...
... 283 de revivre en Toi; la terre attend Ton arret dans me grandiose prosternation .. 1 This is the second 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... there is the apparent obvious meaning, that is on the very surface. It is the Mother's own prayers offered to her own beloved Lord. It is her own personal aspiration, the preoccupation of the individual human being that she is. It is the secret story, the inner history of all that she desires, asks for, questions, all that she has experienced and realised and the farther more that she is to achieve, the... j'ai si frequemment auec Toi; je Te ferai de mon mieux ma confession . .1 But we notice immediately that these are not exclusively personal, absolutely individual assertions. While speaking of 1 Although my whole being is in theory conscrated to Thee, 0 Sublime Master, who art the life, the light and the love in all things, I still find it hard to carry out this consecration in detail ...
... 233 de revivre en Toi,. la terre attend Ton arrêt dans une grandiose prosternation. . ¹ This is the second 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... there is the apparent obvious meaning, that is on the very surface. It is the Mother's own prayers offered to her own beloved Lord. It is her own personal aspiration, the preoccupation of the individual human being that she is. It is the secret story, the inner history of all that she desires, asks for, questions, all that she has 'experienced and realised and the farther more that she is to achieve,... que j' ai si fréquemment avec Toi,. je Te ferai de mon mieux ma corifession. .¹ But we notice immediately that these are not -exclusively personal, absolutely individual assertions. While speaking of ¹Although my whole being is in theory conscrated to Thee, O Sublime Master, who art the life, the light and the love in all things, I still find it hard to carry out this consecration in detail ...
... line of spiritual descent and also ascent, for into each individual consciousness has come down from the supreme Maha Shakti an individual divine being, a particular godhead following a particular line of manifestation of divine power, Vibhuti. To bear inwardly the touch of this divinity and found it securely within oneself, to concentrate on it and become one with it, to go on manifesting it in one’s... her of the Cosmos.) ‘Everyone’s inner being is born in the ansha [portion] of some Devata’ or god, wrote Sri Aurobindo. 14 This enables us to understand Nolini’s words about what happened after that momentous 24 November. ‘The Mother’s endeavour at that time was for a new creation … She had placed each of us in touch with his inner godhead. Every individual has what may be described as his line... n, food, etc., to be organized with restricted means. ‘The Ashram Services had to be reorganized on a departmental footing, reasonable economies had to be imposed, work had to be assigned to the individual sadhaks, and departmental headships had to be instituted,’ writes Iyengar. ‘There was room for rivalry, friction, misunderstanding, sulking, even insubordination. But more than all this there was ...
... his being as the potentiality of the divine, - he is a god in the making. In each of these, plant, animal, man, god, the Eternal is there containing and repressing himself as it were in order to make a certain 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... illusory, and that the best and only rational or super-rational use we can make of our knowledge is to get Page 391 away from them, dissolve our cosmic and individual existence into the essential being and get rid of all becoming as a futility for ever. "In our practical dealings with life we have to arrive at the same truth. For certain practical ends we have to say that... 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 ...
... exclusively personal, absolutely individual assertions. While speaking of herself, spontaneously she seems to be speaking on behalf of all men. The words that she utters come as it were, from the lips of all mankind. She is the representative human being. She gives expression to all that man feels or might feel but is not able or does not 1 Although my whole being is in theory consecrated to... possibilité de revivre en Toi; la terre attend Ton arrêt dans une prosternation grandiose..." (7-11-1915) This is the second 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... there is the apparent obvious meaning, that is on the very surface. It is the Mother's own prayers offered to her own beloved Lord. It is her own personal aspiration, the preoccupation of the individual human being that she is. It is the secret Page 82 story, the inner history of all that she desires, asks for, questions, all that she has experienced and realised and the farther more ...
... 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... an ignorant consciousness, seeking but not possessing know- Page 129 ledge,—it is not a representative of the divine Consciousness. The human being, therefore, though a developed individual, is not the perfect, divine individual, which it is his destiny to become. His is a cramped and clouded, a seeking and struggling and suffering individuality, dragging on a labouring and precarious... ego. His most vigilant care must be directed to the replacement of the ego by "the true being which feels itself, even though individual, yet one with all and one with the Divine."¹ I shall now proceed to dwell upon the means Sri Aurobindo teaches for a complete expulsion of the ego from our entire being. I had better repeat here what I said in the beginning of this book that, unlike most spiritual ...
... supramental being, the Vijnana Purusha. The state of the being after this supramental transformation will be in all its parts of consciousness and knowledge that of an infinite and cosmic consciousness acting through the universalised individual Purusha. The fundamental power will be an awareness of identity, a knowledge by identity,—an identity of being, of consciousness, of force of being and con... 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. This has two results of great importance. First, the phenomena... spirit dynamised for a near and direct operation on and through subtle and gross 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 ...
... limb. As a matter of fact, that is what happens at all the levels of an individual human being from the moment he breaks through his own limits: a mentally conscious individual (not a parrot with a degree or one who forever repeats what he has seen and read and heard according to the old chromosomic and cultural rut, but a being conscious of the universal Mind, who has an independent mental life) does... body. For three days it's been battle, battle , battle.... You see, there's no longer the slightest feeling of being "ill" or anything like that.... It's a strange sensation, a bizarre perception of both the true functioning and the functioning distorted by the sense of being an individual body. They're not even... you can't even say they're superimposed, they're almost simultaneous, and that's why... life, became aware of the "I die," all the while knowing that life continues perfectly. This particular "I" is the whole mystery of the evolutionary transition from an apparently mortal individual to an individual who has acquired enough "I" to include others and the rest of the world in it, and thus no longer has any need of death—that evolutionary device—to develop in accordance with the universal ...
... ess or Spirit. This Consciousness is here incased in matter, involved and immanent in it; and it evolves on the material plane by a process of rebirth of the individual. In this process of evolution, the individual moves up the scale of being from the physical man and vital man till in mental man he enters the world of ideas and realm of conscious morality, dharma. It is this achievement, this victory... evolution develops its lines, enlarges its scope, elevates its levels until there is the increasing manifestation of the sattwic or spiritual portion of the vehicle of mind; this enables the individual mental being in man to finally identify himself with the pure spiritual consciousness that Page 165 exists beyond Mind. This, according to the Indian concept, is the ultimate... system, turn of existence, with the adumbration of a spiritual significance behind, was as far as her ancient system could advance. The full attainment of the spiritual life being was left as a supreme aim to the effort of the individual. However, she did make that endeavour with persistence and patience. There was a constant reminder of the spiritual aim even in the political and social life; and ...
... about this individual into being. When this was brought into being, the process is reversed, and it is the path to the universal consciousness, to the Truth-Consciousness of the Infinite again. That is how the supramental operation is leading the whole phase of life towards the original truth from which the individual has been created. Now, when she has reached this stage, the individual perishes... stable individual, going from the infinite to the finite, then she reverses the process. Then from the finite she wants to go back to the Infinite. The finite individual is forced again by a reversal of the process, to seek the Infinite. In the first process Nature was, as it were, putting out a point of consciousness from this vast inconscience. And now when she has created a mental being, a mental... stage, and the third stage is—only giving, and not receiving; that happens when the psychic being is in front. When the inner soul is in front, then the process is only giving, not thinking of receiving at all—not calculating what one receives. Those are the three stages. The highest is that in which the individual flies into unity or throws himself into the unity. True love means the discovery of one's ...
... his being as the potentiality of the divine, – he is a god in the making. In each of these, plant, animal, man, god, the Eternal is there containing and repressing himself as it were in order to make a certain 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... in that dimensionless being hidden behind our heart, and that it can become a constant, conscious state that never turns sour. We – our species – will have to find that out. “It is impossible for the mind to forecast in detail what the supramental change must be in its parts of life-action and outward behaviour or lay down for it what forms it shall create for the individual or the collective existence... thought-frame the Great Chain of Being occupies a key position. According to him: “After being temporarily derailed in the nineteenth century by a variety of materialistic reductionisms (from scientific materialism to behaviourism to positivism), the Great Chain of Being, the Great Holarchy of Being, is making a stunning comeback.” 23 The Great Chain of Being is known under various names – “a ...
... that the moral nature of the human being is not the last and the highest component; there is, in us, it will be found, a divine being that is spiritual and supra-mental. In that component of our complex nature, it is claimed, is the integrating power; in it the truths of the individual and the collectivity coalesce; there we discover, we are told, that the individual and the collectivity are not what... essential reality or realities, their relationships with the world and with the individual human being. But as distinguished from religion, where methods consist of faith or acceptance of belief or doctrine, and practice or rituals, ceremonies and prescribed acts, -- ethical and religious, -- both in context of the individual progress and social living, the methods of philosophy consist of a critical and... 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 a temporary construction, but behind it there is the unegoistic centre of universality and universality finds its concentrated centre of fullness in the individual. Beyond the moral law are spiritual ideals. These ideals are not limited to moral ...
... consciousness of individual beings, but upon the very substance of which they are built and upon the environment in which they live. .. .the supramental education will result no longer in a progressive formation Page 767 of human nature and an increasing development of its latent faculties, but in a transformation of the nature itself, a transfiguration of the being in its entirety... vital and the mind as the twin horses 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... can serve him truly. Man the individual and 'collective man', or the human aggregate, have no reason to pull in different directions. The aim should rather be to establish "an ideal society in a propitious spot for the flowering of a new race, the race of the Sons of God". The Son of Man must strive to outgrow his limitations and become the Son of God, and human beings should learn to enact the collective ...
... 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... separative ego or the individual becomes greater in knowledge and will than the Divine or can by his own separate power overcome the Divine Will and correct the world movement. In the supermind there is not this division of one part of the being of God willing something and some other part fighting against it. There all is viewed from an integral vision and founded on a harmony in the being—how this works... 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 Asram and others (with also a certain working in ...
... evolution has led to the World Soul being 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... conclusions. Hitler was an ordinary human being, with a soul and a rather elementary, sentimental but cruel psychological makeup, once compared by Sri Aurobindo to that of a street criminal with the psychic being of a London cab driver. (Stalin, on the contrary, was not human, in the sense that he did not have a soul but was a direct incarnation of a vital being.) ‘It is the vital possession that gives... disposal. It is true that in this matter quality by far compensates for quantity. As for the anti-divine forces, they have only too much to choose from and always find minds which they enslave and individuals they turn into docile but nearly always unconscious puppets.’ 11 After the accident, Sri Aurobindo’s way of life changed drastically. Until then the Mother and Champaklal, his faithful attendant ...
... Reality, the conscious Infinite in man upon earth. The possible godhead of man because he is inwardly of one being with God will be its one solitary creed and dogma.... The spiritual aim will seek to fulfil itself therefore in a fullness of life and man's being in the individual and the race which will be the base for the heights of the spirit, — the base becoming in the end of one substance... compulsory acceptance of the conditions, the enlarged and sublimated conditions of our physical being, is the high human ideal. The mental life thus evolving in man is not, indeed, a common possession. In actual appearance it would seem as if it were only developed to the fullest in individuals and as if there were great numbers and even the majority in whom it is either a small and ill-organised... increase to what he can be, is the task that is set for the mental being. Social and Political Thought, pp. 66-67 (c) The Three Stages of Social Evolution — Infrarational, Rational, Suprarational ...there are necessarily three stages of the social evolution or, generally, of the human evolution in both individual and society. Our evolution starts with an infrarational stage ...
... 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 organization. Only, this organization is the result of the action of a central divine spark.’ 77 In other words, the psychic being is the fine flower of the earthly... consequence of the presence of the psychic being in humans and the many lives every human has gone through before attaining the stage of a higher awareness – a threshold which most Ashram children, because of their being chosen, were supposed to have reached – was that every individual is special for reasons of his or her own past experiences. Every individual has reached a particular level or degree... this transformation to succeed, all human beings – even all living beings as well as their material environment – must be transformed. Otherwise things will remain as they are: an individual experience cannot change terrestrial life. This is the essential difference between the old idea of transformation – that is, the becoming conscious of the psychic being and the inner life – and transformation as ...
... was; he is still an ignorant mental being misusing or not effectively using his knowledge, moved by ego and governed by vital desires and passions and the needs of the body, unspiritual and superficial in his outlook, ignorant of his own self and the forces that drive and use him. His life constructions have a value as expressions of his individual and collective being in the stage to which they have reached... is mind as a whole, even spiritualised, able to change it; spirituality liberates and illumines the inner being, it helps mind to communicate with what is higher than itself, to escape even from itself, it can purify and uplift by the inner influence the outward nature of individual human beings: but so long as it has to work in the Page 918 human mass through mind as the instrument, it... and vital parts, a formation mixed with mental aspiration and vital desires, is mistaken for the soul, just as the separative ego is taken for the self, although the self in its true being is universal as well as individual in its essence,—or just as a mixture of mental aspiration and vital enthusiasm and ardour uplifted by some kind of strong or high belief or self-dedication or altruistic eagerness ...
... these stories. Is it an individual affair that one should decide for oneself? Surely it is an individual affair, being a clash of egos. There ought to be no such individual affairs in a Yoga Asram, but ought and is are far asunder. December 13, 1935 About the individual affair, it may be so, but aren't most of the affairs that happen in the Asram, individual? That is why we never... of her fall from sadhana, the affair being only an occasion for the said ego? Can you then silence me or be indifferent to my condition by saying that it is my individual affair? I did not say it was yours—it is not yours at all. It is individual to X, Y, Z... If two of us quarrel and break our heads, will you keep quiet saying that it is an individual affair, look out for yourselves? ... have to feel. It is not the question of "being open" or "knowing how to bow", but having a poetic being open or semi-open... It has nothing to do with the poetic being. "Personal resistance, mental ego" are phrases, for there must first be a poetic being, for an ego to resist. The poetic being is not burdened with an ego. It is the outer being which contributes that. Nishikanta started ...
... We have also a favourable climate being created by some of the progressive experiments in the West, such as those promoted by Pestalozzi, Montessori, Bertrand Russell and others; the trend is towards child-centred education, and the basic idea is that the individual is not merely a social unit, but a soul, a being, who has to fulfil his own individual truth and law as well as his natural or his... supportive role to the self for realization its highest reaches. Somatic starvation, non-fulfilment of the needs and desires of the body not only gives rise to poverty-related debasement of the individual human beings in their life but also makes social psyche sick, entailing civilizational discontent. Page 54 When humans follow the path of dharma succeeds in finding meaning in and of it... environment and empowerment of women has been taken into account. Finally, by insisting on striving towards excellence in all the spheres of individual and collective activity, a great ideal has been stressed in respect of the perfectibility of the individual and the society and their harmonious relationships. This is not an occasion to bring out the implications of these duties and salutary effects ...
... consciousness, and kept pulling there what was high up and from there acted upon individuals and the general earth-scene. The principal opening which they insisted upon in the sadhaks now was the Hrid-padma, "the heart-lotus", in whose depths is the inmost entity in man, his true soul or psychic being. The psychic being in full blaze had always been the Mother's secret of sadhana. And basically due... - the Super-personal Being from whose transcendence the "soul" in its earthly embodiment in life after life has derived. Of course with the transformation of the cells, all their constituents - chromosomes, molecules, atoms, electrons, quarks and what else - will automatically get divinised in the individual body. One need not be surprised at such a consummation being involved by the Supermind's... would be an intermediate race (a race or perhaps a few individuals, one does not know), a kind of intermediate stage which might serve as a passage or might be perpetuated, following the needs and necessities of creation. But if one starts with a body formed as human bodies are now formed, the result will never be the same as in the case of a being formed wholly according to the supramental method and ...
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