... 'descent' is the individual movement in an individual consciousness. But when a new world is manifesting in an old world—as when similarly the mind spread over the earth—I call it a manifestation. You may call it whatever you like, it makes no difference to me, but we must understand each other. What I call a 'descent' takes place in the individual consciousness. In the same way, we speak of 'ascent'... and conscious relationship what is missing is an intermediate zone between the existing physical world and the supramental world as it exists. This zone has yet to be built, both in the individual consciousness and in the objective world, and it is being built. When formerly I used to speak of the new world that is being created, I was speaking of this intermediate zone. And similarly, when I am... 'You have accepted that this world should know the Supramental Truth... and it will be expressed totally, integrally.' Yes, yes.... And the thing is DONE (long silence) The individual consciousness came back, just the sense of a limitation, limitation of pain; without that, no individual.¹ And we set off again on the way, certain of the Victory. The heavens are ringing with ...
... spreads over her lips ) I have a sort of impression of knowing the why of the creation. It was to realize the phenomenon of a consciousness which would have at once an individual consciousness—the individual consciousness we have naturally—and a consciousness of the whole, a consciousness (how to put it?)... it could be called global. But both consciousnesses merge into something... which we have... simultaneously. For example, right now I am having a whole series of experiences concerning the latent power of creation of the individual consciousness, I mean the capacity we have of knowing things—knowing or wanting them, as we say—in the individual consciousness before they take place. We say "I want this," but that's merely an intermediary device, it's actually the consciousness on the way... as if it were something "being done," or which is "to be done." But that is the illusion we're still in. Because we have not... we have not yet crossed over to the other side. But the individual consciousness is not at all a falsehood, it has to be associated with the consciousness of the whole so as to make another kind of consciousness which at the moment we still don't have. Not that it will ...
... 1971 I have as though the feeling that I know the why of creation. It was to realise the phenomenon of a consciousness which would have at the same time the individual consciousness—the individual consciousness that we naturally have—and the consciousness of the whole, the consciousness (how to say it?)... one might say "global". But the two consciousnesses unite in something... which... simultaneously. For example, at this moment there is a whole series of experiences about the power of creation that is latent in the individual consciousness, that is to say, the capacity for knowing things—knowing, or what we call "willing"—in the individual consciousness before they have come into being. We say "we will that", but it is an intermediary, 1 it is the consciousness which is Page... us by time), as though it is "being done", as though something is "to be done". But that is the illusion in which we are. Because we have not... crossed over to the other side. But the individual consciousness is not at all a falsehood; it must be linked with the consciousness of the whole in such a way that it makes another consciousness which for the moment we do not yet possess. Not that it must ...
... s. 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 principle... the cosmic vastness. If the knots of the ego have been frayed or loosened, and the invasion of the desires quelled, a quiet and intense aspiration will act as a strong lever of ascent. The individual consciousness, breaking out of the ego-bounds, will soar and expand till it realises the Atman, the individual-universal Self, or Vishwâtman, the Cosmic Self. This widening may be felt in the beginning... supraphysical experience. It is, as if, something was bursting out of it, submerging and surpassing it at the same time, and expanding on all sides. Gradually, careering past the ego, the individual consciousness learns to breathe freely in that large and limpid air, and looks down upon its phenomenal form as a tiny knot of Matter, Life and Mind, as a minute point in the limitless vastness of his ...
... unreal temporal reality, on the eternity of the formless relationless Absolute. This imposition is made by our misleading individual consciousness which falsely sees Brahman in the figure of the cosmos—as a man mistakes a rope for a serpent; but since either our individual consciousness is itself a relative supported by the Brahman and only existent by it, not a real reality, or since in its reality it... first it will be convenient to meet and get out of the way one difficulty that inevitably arises, the difficulty of admitting that, even given the immanence of the Divine in us, even given our individual consciousness as a vehicle of progressive evolutionary manifestation, the individual is in any sense eternal or that there can be any persistence of individuality after liberation has been attained by unity... consciousness is there perfect undifferentiated unity. Now in what we may call the waking union of the individual with the Divine, as opposed to a falling asleep or a concentration of the individual consciousness in an absorbed identity, there is certainly and must be a differentiation of experience. For in this active unity the individual Purusha enlarges its active experience also as well as its ...
... the moment the individual consciousness broke off from the divine Consciousness, from its divine source, it created the sense of separation. The moment the individual consciousness ceased to follow, did not remain identified with the movement of the divine Consciousness, this produced a separation. The divine Consciousness follows its own movement, and if the individual consciousness does not remain... course or slows down on the way, this creates a separation. And it is this separation that is the cause of all misery. All the miseries in the universe are the result of this separation of the individual consciousness, which, for some reason or other, did not remain identified with the primal Consciousness, its origin, and separated from it. Separated... it did not deliberately separate itself, but it did ...
... when the individual consciousness moved away from its divine origin and remained no longer identified with the movement of the divine consciousness, the sense of separation was created. The individual consciousness did not separate wilfully, but it remained no longer identified. Not being identified, the Divine Consciousness followed a certain movement and the individual consciousness followed... followed another, and naturally they moved away from each other more and more. Let us say, as an image, that the Divine Consciousness advances at a certain speed and the individual consciousness, not having remained united with it, could not follow it and therefore fell back more and more, far behind. The Divine moves forward, the individual stops; when the individual moves, the Divine flies. When the ...
... moment when the individual consciousness moved away from its divine origin and remained no longer identified with the movement of the divine consciousness, the sense of separation was created. The individual consciousness did not separate wilfully, but it remained no longer identified. Not being identified, the Divine Consciousness followed a certain movement and the individual consciousness followed another... another, and naturally they drifted apart from each other more and more. Let us say, as an image, that the Divine Consciousness advances at a certain speed and the individual consciousness, not having remained united with it, could not keep pace with it and therefore fell back more and more, far behind. The Divine moves forward, the individual stops; when the individual moves, the Divine flies. When ...
... equally any view that sees the universe as existent only in the individual consciousness must very evidently be a fragmentary truth: it is justified by a perception of the universality of the spiritual individual and his power of embracing the whole universe in his consciousness; but neither the cosmos nor the individual consciousness is the fundamental truth of existence; for both depend upon and... g self-affirmation of the Absolute in an unreal or temporary individual by the annulment of the false personal being and by the destruction of all individual and cosmic existence for that individual consciousness,—however much these errors may go on, helplessly inevitable, in the world of Ignorance permitted by the Absolute, in a universal, eternal and indestructible Avidya. But this idea of the ...
... quite beyond its scope, it can no longer see truth even as in a dream, but passes into the blank incomprehension and non-reception of slumber. This border-line varies with the power of the individual consciousness, with the degree and height of its enlightenment and awakening. The line may be pushed up higher and higher until it may pass even beyond the mind. Normally indeed the human mind cannot... enlarge and raise the whole seeing, living and active consciousness. The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 498 (d) 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 and by interpreting their contacts with the world. By yoga there can open in him a consciousness... might ask, if the higher planes or if the overmind itself were to manifest their consciousness with all their power, light, freedom and vastness and these things were to descend into an individual consciousness here, would not that make unnecessary both the cosmic negation or the Nirvanic push and the urge towards some Divine Transcendence? But in the result though one might live in a union with ...
... constantly receive, most often unknowingly, all sorts of vibrations – subtle physical, vital or mental, higher or lower – that account for our way of thinking, feeling and living, with our individual consciousness acting as a filter and picking up certain vibrations rather than others, in accord with its own social environment, tradition, education, etc. As a general rule, in sleep or in death, we go... can return upon the universe and possess it, retaining the power freely to descend as well as ascend the great stair of existence. 170 This double movement of ascent and descent of the individual consciousness is the basic principle of the supramental discovery. But in the process Sri Aurobindo was to touch an unknown spring which would change everything. The Ascent of Consciousness It is... s is no longer the narrow shutter that needed to be kept narrow lest it explode; it is a great, tranquil Gaze: "Like an eye extended in heaven," says the Rig Veda (I.17.21). The ordinary individual consciousness is like an axis , says the Mother, and everything revolves about that axis. If it moves we feel lost. There is this tall axis (more or less tall; it may also be very small) fixed in time ...
... able to regard both sides and change the recalcitrant lower nature. The wideness comes when one exceeds or begins to exceed the individual consciousness and spread out towards the universal. But the psychic can be active even in the individual consciousness. At the beginning the experience of wideness like other experiences comes only from time to time. It is only afterwards that it becomes... 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 and by interpreting their contacts with the world. By Yoga there can open in him a consciousness ...
... without losing that status and poise in which there is no vibration of action. It is the discovery of that free will and of the method by which that will can be made operative through our individual consciousness that constitutes the methodology of Karma Yoga. It is because that operation is inconsistent with the vibration of desire that Karma Yoga proposes those steps by which desire can be eliminated... movement of Prakriti. This egoistic consciousness is ignorant of all, — of itself and of the vast universal energy of which it has no clear conception. The jiva, on the other hand, is the individual consciousness having its luminous source in the workings of higher nature, and even then it is not a mere construction; it is a manifest portion of the Purushottama, eternal and immortal, sanatanah, ... essentially the Universal Lord, Ishwara, but individualized in the play of the totality; it is, therefore, capable of constantly universalizing itself and living in the transcendental. It is this individual consciousness, the Jiva, is found to be hooked to Apara Prakriti through the instrumentality of that cog of the machinery of Prakriti, which is called ego. But even in that condition, this Jiva is in his ...
... descent is the individual movement, in an individual consciousness. And when it is a new world manifesting in an old world―just as, for a comparison, when mind spread upon the earth―I call that a manifestation. You may call it whatever you like, it's all the same to me, but we should understand each other. What I call a descent is in the individual consciousness. Just as one speaks of ascent―there ...
... universe as the Virat Purusha, the Cosmic Soul ( paribhū of the eighth verse, the One who becomes everywhere); He enters into each object in the movement, to the Knowledge as Brahman supporting individual consciousness and individual form, to the Ignorance as an individualised and limited being. He manifests as the Jivatman or individual self in the living creature. From the standpoint of our lower state... Sachchidananda the self-manifestation of a supreme Unknowable, Para-Brahman or Para-Purusha. We perceive the soul in all bodies to be this one Self or Sachchidananda multiplying itself in individual consciousness. We see also all minds, lives, bodies to be active formations of the same existence in the extended being of the Self. This is the vision of all existences in the Self and of the Self in ...
... vital, physical even, becomes universalised: it is seen as a power of his universal force and cosmic spirit, or else it contains the universe in that ineffable wideness which comes to the individual consciousness when it breaks its bonds and flows upward towards the Transcendent and on every side into the Infinite. In a Yoga lived entirely on the spiritualised mental plane it is possible and... who receives all out of the Transcendence and develops what descends into forms that are now an opaque disguise or a baffling half-disguise, but destined to be a transparent revelation. The individual consciousness will recover its true sense and action; for it is the form of a Soul sent out from the Supreme and, in spite of all appearances, a nucleus or nebula in which the Divine Mother-Force is at ...
... existence persists even though our separate individual consciousness has been transcended. It is quite possible to realise the cosmic consciousness without becoming that; we can see it, that is to say, with the soul, feel it and dwell in it; we can even be united with it without becoming wholly one with it; in a word, we may preserve the individual consciousness of the Jivatman within the cosmic consciousness ...
... not their product. We are blinded to this truth because when we think of consciousness, it is of the individual we think. We look at the world in the way and speak of it in the terms of individual consciousness; but it is of the universal consciousness that the world is a creation. The individual participates subconsciently and superconsciently in the universal consciousness. But the embodied... Everything appears to be in the body or by the body and either for the body or for the I-sense in the body. The body seems to be the principal if not the only cause or determinant of individual consciousness. What is not of the body is of the physical field outside the body. Whatever in consciousness seems not to be of the physical field, yet appears to be derived from it, to be a resultant ...
... same consciousness, one and the same person. Only, when this unique force or presence is felt in your individual consciousness, it assumes different forms or appearances depending upon your temperament, your aspirations, your needs, the particular cast of your nature. Your individual consciousness is Page 117 like a filter, a pointer, as it were; it makes a choice and settles upon one ...
... action of individual consciousness upon the subconscious substance; this creates a kind of semiconsciousness, and that stays. For example, when people are told, 'You have pushed your difficulty down into the subconscient and it will resurface,' this does not refer to the general Subconscient, but to something individualized out of the Subconscient through the action of individual consciousness and remaining ...
... destroyed, this supreme Reality can be realised, in a deep silence, by all aspirants. IV. The presence of the Divine is there always, at all places, continuous and full. It is the egoistic individual consciousness that stands as the main stumbling block in realising it; and when the ego is destroyed, none else but the Divine can be seen in this world. V. The Real is integral. Every philosophy... manifestation of the reality lying within. The seed and the tree cannot be absolutely the same. The ordinary human being lives in the surface consciousness and, separated as he is, by his egoistic individual consciousness, is whirled in the darkness of ignorance and struggles in the storm of desire. He cannot in any way become equal to the seer who, as a result of a life of tapasya and the descent of the Grace ...
... to join in a constant and conscious relation 98 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 in the objective world, and it is being built … ‘I was on a huge ship, which was a symbolic representation of the place where this work is going on. This ship, as large as a city, is... × The Mother makes a distinction between ‘descent’ and ‘manifestation.’ ‘What I call a descent,’ she says, ‘is the individual occurrence, in an individual consciousness. And when it is a new world manifesting in an old world – just as, by way of comparison, when mind pervaded the earth – I call that a manifestation. You may call it whatever you like, it’s ...
... something rising from below, isn't it? Is it then another movement, an ascending movement...? That is the consciousness of the jiva [soul], the personal, individual consciousness. It's something that grows.... It is the individual consciousness. Aspiration is almost always an expression of the psychic being—the part of us that's organized around the divine center, the small divine flame deep within ...
... ), but it's in order to go like this ( gesture of a new curve rising higher from that point on ), and again like this—for ever and ever. It may be an individual consciousness, not necessarily an impersonal one; for the individual consciousness, too, it's like this: a great curve ( Mother draws a trajectory up to a point ), and like a springboard to go farther. So it was a vision like that, of something ...
... like this ( Mother twists something between her thumb and index finger ). I know—this morning, it was very clear. You see, everything is the Supreme's action to hasten the return of the individual consciousness to the Consciousness—the supreme Consciousness; so then, through the individual (I don't know if you'll be able to follow), the pressure of the Force to be accepted is turned into a will to... Infinite and Eternal, the All-Powerful [being turned] into the individuality—the individual limitation. And for the ordinary consciousness, the usual consciousness—that is to say, the limited, individual consciousness—that experience itself is marvelous, but you are the "recipient," you are "the one who experiences." That's the point, it's the difference between the [pure] experience and, all of a sudden ...
... reverse direction, and in a growing manner of integrality. And that is the essential process of integral yoga. There is, first, the movement of quieting the frontal movement of Prakriti in the individual consciousness, and in this movement, there is an exclusive concentration increasingly on the concealed inner being, on the Self or on the true inmost psychic being, Purusha, so that the same may be ... instead of knowing itself as one concentration of the universal is also an act of the Ignorance. It is also true that the Ignorance is the parent of the sense of separation and division in the individual consciousness; but it is important to make a distinction between separateness or division, on the one hand, and differentiation, on the other. It may be said that the differentiation is not by itself a ...
... do I go?", you wrote, "I suppose you feel yourself nowhere because you are accustomed to regard the individual consciousness as somewhere and this experience goes outside that somewhere." What is this "somewhere" and what is meant by going out of it? I said the individual consciousness is felt by you as the only definite plane of your existence. When your consciousness spreads out of it ...
... and represents the whole of the terrestrial consciousness; in truth he contains it in himself, in his consciousness. Each element in the earth-consciousness has a corresponding point in the individual consciousness; man is an amalgam of both the good and the evil of the whole of terrestrial nature, a miniature world, a representation of the entire earth-consciousness in a concentrated form, on a mini-scale... this will not do: we have to accept our burden; we must take part in the collective effort. If one of us makes a progress, he does it for the earth; if one bit of evil is annihilated in one individual consciousness, it produces a corresponding effect in the terrestrial consciousness; if one individual cures a single ill in his nature, the whole world gets the benefit, In fact, unless all is cured, nothing ...
... only one consciousness; it is everywhere, in all objects, in the universe and beyond. When a limit is put around it somewhere, a frame is erected, then it becomes or appears to become an individual consciousness. It is man's ego, a spot or point cutting and shutting itself off from the global consciousness, that has thus separated from the Divine; it is that ego, that separative consciousness which... people, living and moving in me, trees and plants and even inanimate objects as part of myself, limbs of my body: I was the earth-consciousness incarnate. But the point is to be this individual consciousness anywhere or everywhere and still to maintain the higher, the universal and transcendent, the supreme consciousness, to be simultaneously conscious in both the modes to the utmost degree ...
... subject and does not exist apart from it or outside it; it is objective in the sense that it exists really and is not a figment or imaginative construction of any individual consciousness, although it exists in ahd through the individual consciousness in so far as that consciousness is universa,lised, is one with the universal consciousness (or the transcendental, the two can be taken together in the present ...
... consciousness of Sat-Chit-Ananda on the most material levels will be the final triumph of the transforming descent of the Supermind. The second point that the Mother speaks of is that the individual consciousness must station itself in the intermediate world (called by Sri Aurobindo the Supermind) from where it can, effecting a synthesis of a the planes of consciousness, act simultaneously, freely... very well see, is of the body of the Mother with which she has united herself in order to give an expression to its intense and resolute aspiration. This truth of the body's having a distinct individual consciousness of its own is a definite fact of spiritual experience and provides the rationale of the physical transformation. There is an involved yearning in Matter for a permanent union with the Divine; ...
... others. It seems to me that if it is necessary not to remain in the individual consciousness when it is a question of our own sufferings, it is otherwise when it is a question of sympathising with the sufferings of others. In my opinion we feel more keenly the troubles of our brothers in humanity if we remain in the individual consciousness. But I may be mistaken and ask only to be enlightened by you on ...
... Vernal beauty wandering on her way" does that wandering by a multitudinous variation of forms appealing to a multitudinous variation of consciousness. There comes in the difficulty. Each individual consciousness tries to seize the eternal beauty expressed in a form (here a particular poem or work of art), but is either assisted by the form or repelled by it, wholly attracted or wholly repelled,... "Eternal beauty wandering on her way" does that wandering by a multitudinous variation of forms appealing to a multitudinous variation of consciousness. There comes in the difficulty. Each individual consciousness tries to seize the eternal beauty expressed in a form (here a particular poem or work of art) , but is either assisted by the form or repelled by it, wholly attracted or wholly repelled ...
... reality in the Transcendence.... But equally any view that sees the universe as existent only in the individual consciousness must very evidently be a fragmentary truth: it is justified by a perception of the universality of the spiritual individual...but neither the cosmos nor the individual consciousness is the fundamental truth of existence; for both depend upon and exist by the transcendental Divine ...
... energy, action and result, which also we feel to be not our own, but that of the Divine, of Sachchidananda, ourselves only its field or channel. The result happens in both cases because our individual consciousness rests from an ignorant limited action and opens itself to the supreme status or to the supreme action. In the latter, the more dynamic opening, there is power and play of knowledge and action... Ignorance, as we have already stated, comes in at a later stage, as a later movement, when mind is separated from its spiritual and supramental basis, and culminates in this earth-life where the individual consciousness in the many identifies itself by dividing mind with the form, which is the only safe basis of division. But what is the form? It is, at least as we see it here, a formation of concentrated ...
... more active way of seeing; and not only that it is possible but it will be realised later, then one would be strong enough to resist. "A fixed form was needed in order that the organised individual consciousness might have a stable support. And yet it is the fixity of the form that made death inevitable." Questions and Answers 1929 ( 5 May ) Page 171 Who will tell me what constitutes... no truth of each form, there would be no possibility of individualisation. It would be something extending indefinitely; there would be perhaps points of concentration, assemblages, but no individual consciousness. Each form then represents one element in the changing of the One into the many. This multiplicity implies an innumerable quantity of laws, elements of consciousness, truths which spread out ...
... consciousness coming Page 388 down into the being and expressing itself in action, but from impulses or influences from outside. We reserved the word will to express what in the individual consciousness is the expression of an order or impulse coming from the truth of the being, from the truth of the individual—his true being, his true self, you understand. That we call will. And all the... In very few people, and even in the very best at very rare moments in life, does the will of the being express that deep inner, higher truth. ( After a silence Mother continues :) The individual consciousness extends far beyond the body; we have seen that even the subtle physical which is yet material compared with the vital being and in certain conditions almost visible, extends at times considerably ...
... consequences of all error and all ignorance. These two states have always been considered as the summit of consciousness; they are what could be called the frontier, the extreme limit of what the individual consciousness can attain in its union with the Divine. But there is something which lies beyond; it is precisely a state of perfect delight which is not static: delight in a progressive manifestation... it is as though these did not exist! And it is just this need for expression, this need for translation, which causes the greater part of the experience to lose its power of action on the individual consciousness. How is it that you have a decisive, definitive experience, that, for instance, you have opened the door of your psychic being, you have been in communion with it, you know what this means ...
... arising not from a higher consciousness coming down into the being and expressing itself in action, but from impulses or influences from outside. We reserved the word will to express what in the individual consciousness is the expression of an order or impulse coming from the truth of the being, from the truth of the individual—his true being, his true self, you understand. That we call will. And all the... In very few people, and even in the very best at very rare moments in life, does the will of the being express that deep inner, higher truth. (After a silence Mother continues:) The individual consciousness extends far beyond the body; we have seen that even the subtle physical which is yet material pared with the vital being and in certain conditions almost visible, extends at times considerably ...
... one and the same person. Only, when this force or this presence, which is the same, passes through your individual consciousness, it puts on a form, an appearance which differs according to your temperament, your aspiration, your need, the particular turn of your being. Your individual consciousness is like a filter, a pointer, if I may say so; it makes a choice and fixes one possibility out of the infinity ...
... 'descent' is the individual movement in an individual consciousness. But when a new world is manifesting in an old world—as when similarly the mind spread over the earth—I call it a manifestation. You may call it whatever you like, it makes no difference to me, but we must understand each other. What I call a 'descent' takes place in the individual consciousness. In the same way, we speak of 'ascent' ...
... inexpressible. Then I understood. Everything became clear, clear, clear.... You remember, I had told you that the Divine wanted the individual consciousness to have the experience of the Divine; well that was it. That was it, it was the individual consciousness (since I became conscious of it) seeing the world.... All of a sudden the world became what it is for the Divine.... It is indescribable ...
... below, isn't it? Is it then another movement, an ascending movement...? That is the consciousness of the jiva [soul], the personal, individual consciousness. It's something that grows.... It is the individual consciousness. Aspiration is almost always an expression of the psychic being - the part of us that's organized around the divine center, the small divine flame ...
... everything wrong: it must disappear. SRI AUROBINDO: What is to replace the ego? SATYENDRA: Something like Divine Mind—Divine Mind acting through the individual consciousness. SRI AUROBINDO: Oh, he recognises the individual consciousness as real? SATYENDRA: He has no systematised philosophy. One has to build it out of his utterances. SRI AUROBINDO: No critical mind, as I have said. ...
... consciousness and power, and into his own universal and transcendental Self and source of existence. It has, however, been argued that, even granting the immanence of the Divine, even granting our individual consciousness as a vehicle of progressive evolutionary manifestation, the individual cannot be accepted as eternal or that there can be any persistence of individuality after the individual has attained... contains in himself all the generalities of the universe; the universal consciousness finds all itself that the variations of the numberless individuals, not by suppressing variations; the individual consciousness fulfils all itself when it is universalized in sympathy and identity with the cosmic, not by limiting itself in ego; so too the cosmic contains in all itself and each thing in it the complete ...
... conducted over millennia in developing Yogic methods and Yogic knowledge, Yoga continues to discover and apply more and more refined means and instruments, not only to arrive at the union of the individual consciousness with the universal consciousness and transcendental consciousness, but also to manifest the consequences of this union for arriving at ever increasing perfection of the individual and collective... elevating and more and more luminous experiences of equality is attained by the perception of the interplay of the Page 106 transcendental consciousness, universal consciousness, individual consciousness and also the interplay of the action of Para Prakriti and Apara Prakriti. With the increasing experience of Karma yoga, there comes about the annihilation of desire and also of ego. Sri Aurobindo ...
... one and the same person. Only, when this force or this presence, which is the same, passes through your individual consciousness, it puts on a form, an appearance which differs according to your temperament, your aspiration, your need, the particular turn of your being. Your individual consciousness is like a filter, a pointer, if I may say so, it makes a choice, fixes one possibility out of the infinity ...
... or feel that the movement is one's own. In order to have one's own thought, in order to think by oneself, a long process of education and training is necessary. A growing personal individual consciousness is the first requisite and for that one must do what the Vedic Rishi I spoke of sought to do, gather the thoughts that one has, collect them, sift them and try to have a control over them... peacefulness and 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 ...
... and does not exist apart from it or outside it; it is objective in the sense that it exists really and is not a figment or imaginative construction of any individual consciousness, although it exists in and through the individual consciousness in so far as that consciousness is universalised, is one with the universal consciousness (or the transcendental, the two can be taken together in the present ...
... think or feel that the movement is one's own. In order to have one's own thought, in order to think by oneself, a long process of education and training is necessary. A growing personal individual consciousness is the first requisite and for that one must do what the Vedic Rishi I spoke of sought to do, gather the thoughts that one has, collect them, sift them and try to have a control over them... that carry 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 ...
... think or feel that the movement is one's own. In order to have one's own thought, in order to think by oneself, a long process of education and training is necessary. A growing personal individual consciousness is the first requisite and for that one must do what the Vedic Rishi I spoke of sought to do, gather the thoughts that one has, collect them, sift them and try to have a control over them... carry 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 ...
... But there was a considerable resistance born of old age, even though we are here precisely to get rid of that. The resistance comes from two sources. It is there first of all in your own individual consciousness; you have heard of the adage about getting old before twenty. It is true that here in the Ashram we are often apt to forget, or we try to forget, to take count of our age. For example, even... our years. But the inexorable law of the external physical nature is still in operation; It invades our mind and' afflicts it at times. Moreover, in addition to this resistance in our own individual consciousness 01.' frame of mind, there is pressing upon us from all around the collective resistance, a resistance that comes from the consciousness arid mental attitude of everybody else, the neighbours ...
... But there was a considerable resistance born of old age, even though we are here precisely to get rid of that. The resistance comes from two sources. It is there first of all in your own individual consciousness; you have heard of the adage about getting old before twenty. It is true that here in the Ashram we are often apt to forget, or Page 111 we try to forget, to take count of... of our years. But the inexorable law of the external physical nature is still in operation. It invades our mind and pains it at times. Moreover, in addition to this resistance in our own individual consciousness or frame of mind, there is pressing upon us from all around the collective resistance, a resistance that comes from the consciousness and mental attitude of everybody else, the neighbours ...
... merger. If we refer to the state of the detached Purusha, witnessing the works of Nature but not participating in them, as described in the Gita, we shall more easily under- stand how the individual consciousness, widened beyond all ego-moulds and revelling in the infinity of the Eternal, who is at once in Time and beyond Time, can see all the movements of its nature initiated, guided and consummated... particular world. It is Thou, O Lord, who settest all in motion from the depths of the being; it is Thy Will that directs, Thy Force that acts; and no longer on the limited field of a small individual consciousness, but on the universal field of a conscious- ness which, in each state of being, is united to all. And the being has at once the conscious perception of all the universal movements in their ...
... It's amusing. Yes, the ordinary consciousness is like an axis with everything revolving around it. An axis which is fixed somewhere, and everything revolves around it — that is the ordinary individual consciousness. And if the axis shifts, one feels lost. It's like a big axis (it is more or less big, it can be tiny) planted squarely in time with everything revolving around it. The consciousness may be... the only one left, is being converted very rapidly and interestingly.... What could we call it?... A transfer of power. The cells, the entire material consciousness, used to obey the inner individual consciousness (the soul in most cases, or the mind). But now this material mind is organizing itself like the other, or rather like all the others, like the mind of all the layers of being. Just imagine ...
... getting worse, as it were, we can mention the one that dates from early 1968 (already). Mother was noting the eternal Fact of the total Consciousness, without separation, and of our little individual consciousness that has fragmented, divided, separated, put everything outside of its cage—for basically, our whole transition from caterpillar to butterfly is only the transition from this separated co... the whole "natural" functioning is to be dissolved. And what is the operation all about, finally? It is a formidable transfer of power, 11 as Mother said, the transition from the small individual consciousness which has traced furrow upon furrow and has slowly shut itself up in one cage or another, has "magnetized" these cells and other cells, has hypnotized and frozen its substance into a certain ...
... 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 and Thy eternity beyond all change. Beatitude was at its height in an ineffable and infinite peace, the co ...
... seems necessary that a whole set of things changes, at least in relative proportions, so that one can exist, continue to exist. This then brings much complication, for it is no longer one individual consciousness that has to do the work, it becomes a collective consciousness. And so it is much more difficult still. ( Silence ) If we are not conscious of all that the Divine is doing for us, do ...
... was separated from his instinct and wanted to act independently.... What exactly is instinct? It is the consciousness of Nature. Nature is conscious of its action, but this is not an individual consciousness. There is an instinct of the species. Some have said that there were even "spirits of the species", conscious beings for each species. Instinct depends on the way Nature works, and Nature ...
... and work for its realisation. Blessings. 28.2.1969* * Auroville anniversary To all Aurovilians My blessings for the progress and the growth of the collective and individual consciousness 28.2.1971 * Opening of the Aspiration School A sincere will to know and to progress. 15.12.1970 * Opening of the Last School The future belongs to those ...
... particular world. It is Thou, Lord, who settest all things in motion from the depths of the being, it is Thy will which directs, Thy force which acts; and no longer in the limited field of a small individual consciousness but in the universal field of a consciousness which, in every state of being, is united with the whole. And the being has at once the conscious perception of all universal movements in their ...
... like when you put a stick into water; you see the stick, not in its true line, but bent into an angle. But it is an illusion, a distortion by the sight; it is not even a real angle. Each individual consciousness, you can say, brings into the universal movement something that you can call from a certain point of view its own deformation or from another its own quality of the movement. These individual ...
... increasing consciousness. And in this process of growth dissolution of forms became an inevitable necessity, as things actually took place. For a fixed form was needed in order that the organised individual consciousness might have a stable support. And yet it is the fixity of the form that made death inevitable. Matter had to assume forms; individualisation and the concrete embodiment of life-forces or c ...
... towards the goal you want to realise. The "stress" is the pressure upon a point, what is concentrated upon a point and insists that it be done. Consciousness—the consciousness of the being, individual consciousness—puts a pressure upon a point, you see. We may take the example we were just speaking of: you have a chronic illness, a malformation of the body, a physical defect. Then your consciousness ...
... 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 at Thy ...
... was conscious in all her states of being, and she used to be able to go out twelve times from her body, that is to say, from twelve consecutive bodies, until she reached the summit of the individual consciousness, which could be called the threshold of the Formless. She remembered everything and recounted everything in detail. She was an Englishwoman; I even translated from English a book in which ...
... substance. So, in accordance with—how to put it?—the quality of the receiver, they either keep all their own qualities and original nature or become distorted, coloured, transformed in the individual consciousness. But the idea goes far beyond the mind; the idea has an origin much higher than the mind. So, the functioning is the same from both the universal and the individual point of view; the individual ...
... worlds to unite in a constant and conscious relation, 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 ...
... collective experience would be its power to make things—these appearances that we call the world—different from what they are. From the subjective point of view, the effect of the experience on an individual consciousness is an undeniable proof; for one who attains bliss, sovereign peace, unchanging delight, the profound knowledge of things, it is more than proved. The effects on the outer form depend on many ...
... is, the world as it is, your consciousness as it is, things in the state they are in, are the result of this separation of the consciousness and its immediate obscuration. The minute the individual consciousness is separated from the divine Consciousness, it enters what we call the inconscience, and it is this inconscience that is the cause of all its miseries. But all that is, is essentially divine ...
... consciousness, individually, it is different, this means that what we call the world—the thing in itself—escapes our perception completely. It must be something else. And we must come out of our individual consciousness to be able to understand what it is; and this is what Sri Aurobindo calls the passage from the lower to the higher hemisphere. In the lower hemisphere there are as many universes as individuals ...
... out the right material method and process of a material transformation, For this, no doubt, the spirit's supreme light and power and creative joy must have manifested on the summit of the individual consciousness and sent down their fiat into the body, but still the body may take in the working out its spontaneous part of self-discovery and achievement. It would be thus a participator and agent in ...
... experience that the four stages he mentions correspond to four states of consciousness which are the result of inner development and the degree of union with the divine consciousness which the individual consciousness has achieved. When the union is perfect, there only remains "a fiercer form of delight". Page 332 If it is the physical pain endured by the body, the experience does not follow ...
... the 15th there has been a whole work of preparation for the transformation. What could one call it?... a transfer of power. The cells, the whole material consciousness obeyed the inner individual consciousness—most often the psychic or the mental (but the mind has been silent since long). But now this material mind is busy organising itself like the other or rather like all the others, like the ...
... Knowledge, from darkness through half-lights to Light, from death to Immortality, from suffering to the Divine Bliss. Suffering is due first to the Ignorance, secondly to the separation of the individual consciousness from the Divine Consciousness and Being, a separation created by the Ignorance—when that ceases, when one lives completely in the Divine and no more in one's separated smaller self, then only ...
... most favourable condition for any of these things to happen. In this Yoga it is the most favourable condition (not the only one) for the Divine Power to descend first upon and then into the individual consciousness and there do its work to transform that consciousness, giving it the necessary experiences, altering all its outlook and movements, leading it from stage to stage till it is ready for the ...
... body & mind I can become one with all things in being & in experience, even with the stone & the tree. My universal soul need no more be limited by my individual mind and body, than my individual consciousness is limited by the experiences of a single cell in my body. The walls which imprison us have been built up by Prakriti in her movement and exist only in her inferior kingdoms. As one rises ...
... "Eternal beauty wandering on her way" does that wandering by a multitudinous variation of forms appealing to a multitudinous variation of consciousnesses. There comes in the difficulty. Each individual consciousness tries to seize the eternal beauty ex pressed in a form (here a particular poem or work of art), but is either assisted by the form or repelled by it, wholly attracted Page 663 ...
... s, Beauty also. The "experience" of the individual is his response or his awakening to the beauty which the Universal Consciousness has placed in things; that beauty is not created by the individual consciousness. The philosophy of these lines is not at all clear. It says that the experience of beauty is a living truth added to beauty, a truth of which beauty is unaware. But if beauty is only the ...
... is necessary to be clear and precise in one's use of terms so as to avoid confusion of thought and vision by confusion in the words we use to express them. If I had meant that it is an individual consciousness that determines all this working, as you tell me, then I should be in contradiction with my own teaching of the Divine as the Master of all and the need of surrender—for an individual who ...
... and time, and something that exceeds this cosmic formula or any cosmic formula. There is a cosmic consciousness experienced by many which is quite different in its scope and action from the individual consciousness, and if there is a consciousness beyond the cosmic, infinite and essentially eternal, not merely extended in Time, that also must be different from these two. And if the Divine is or manifests ...
... seeming expansion of the head is due to the joining of the mind with the consciousness of the Self or Divine above. That consciousness is wide and illimitable and when one rises into it the individual consciousness also breaks its limits and feels wide and illimitable. At such times one often feels as if there were no head and no body but all were a wide self and its consciousness, or else the head or ...
... knowledge comes. Your experience means manifestly the uniting of the IshwaraShakti sides of the manifestation—as in the Hara-Gauri figure—with the result of a universalisation of the individual consciousness indicated by the shooting out towards infinite distances. The currents are of course the currents of the double force working to make this liberation. The blue and gold must be the blue of ...
... As for the experience at the Pranam it was the other thing, the descent of the higher consciousness (the Mother's consciousness) from above, with its light, peace and wideness. When the individual consciousness is enveloped in that, rests in it, then you feel that you are lying in the Mother's lap. As the psychic consciousness grows from within, it becomes more and more possible for this to descend ...
... course it returns and tries to take possession of its lost territory, but that is a foreign invasion. The rule of these Page 515 things is that they have to be extruded outside the individual consciousness. Rejected by the mind and higher vital, they still try to hold on to the lower vital and physical. Rejected from the lower vital, they still hold the body by a physical desire. Rejected from ...
... observation of your condition. Sometimes a part of the consciousness is seen in the image of a pond, lake or sea. The fish must be the vital mind. The lake is the being in its individual consciousness, the sea is the same being with a universalised consciousness which can hold the universe and its cosmic forces in itself—the one (individual) merges into the other (the universal). The boat ...
... Consciousness or Hiranyagarbha is a selection from the wider Sleep Consciousness, and the Waking Consciousness Virat or Vaisvanor is a selection from the wider Dream Consciousness; similarly each individual consciousness is only a selection from the wider Universal Waking Consciousness, each step involving a narrower & ever narrowing consciousness until we come to that extremely narrow bit of consciousness ...
... the race in their political or ethico-legal systems. Such were Lycurgus, Confucius, Menes, Manu. For in those days individual greatness and perfection commanded a sacred reverence from the individual consciousness, because in each man it was to this greatness and perfection that individuality impelled to achieve its complete emancipation was painfully striving forward. Thus in the subtamasic state even ...
... floods or currents and either they are broken to pieces as inadequate things under its convicting stress or compelled to transmute themselves into the forms of the Divine Ananda. Thus for the individual consciousness a Force is manifested which can deal sovereignly in it with the diminutions and degradations of the values of the Ignorance. At last it begins to be possible to bring down into life the immense ...
... nothing in the original nature of Mind, Life or Matter necessitates a fall from Knowledge. It has been shown indeed that division of consciousness is the basis of the Ignorance, a division of individual consciousness from the cosmic and the transcendent of which yet it is an intimate part, in essence inseparable, a division of Mind from the supramental Truth of which it should be a subordinate action, ...
... bound to self-ignorance because it regards itself by an exclusive concentration as a separate self-existent individuality and regards all cosmic action only as it presents itself to its own individual consciousness, knowledge, will, force, enjoyment and limited being instead of seeing itself as a conscious form of the One and embracing all consciousness, all knowledge, all will, all force, all enjoyment ...
... individual and in the whole which the individuals constitute—of its self-existence, of its power and consciousness and of its delight of being. But such completeness is not possible in the individual consciousness concentrated within the limits of the individual formation; absolute completeness is not feasible in the finite because it is alien to the self-conception of the finite. Therefore the only ...
... both are in their outer formulation incomplete terms of the Transcendence, but they are that in their essence, and it is only by becoming conscious of that essence that Page 1062 individual consciousness or universal consciousness can come to its own fullness and freedom of reality. Otherwise the individual may remain subject to the cosmic movement and its reactions and limitations and miss ...
... possession of the oneness of our mind and soul with the minds and souls of others and the mind and soul of universal Nature. For always the effect of the supramental growth is to universalise the individual consciousness. As it makes us live, even in our individual vital movement and its relations with all around us, with the universal life, so it makes us think and feel and sense, although through an individual ...
... paper had published it]. ( Mother smiles and goes within ) Do you have anything? When one looks at world events, 1 and even at what is happening Page 74 in people's individual consciousness, one more and more gets the impression that there is a radical change.... ( Mother nods vigorously ) It's no longer the Falsehood attacking the Truth, the Truth is attacking the Falsehood ...
... "Agenda" about a similar experience you had. Oh? You said that the goal of creation is to join within the individual the total Consciousness (the consciousness of the whole) and the individual consciousness—the two together. 7 Yes, something like that, but here it was clearer, more precise.... It's not that I "think," mind you. Of course! That's not how it works. I am as though ...
... experience that the four stages he speaks of correspond to four states of consciousness that stem from the inner development and the degree of union with the divine consciousness obtained by the individual consciousness. When the union is perfect, there only remains the 'fiercer form of delight.' "If he refers to physical pain endured by the body, the experience does not follow so clearly defined an order ...
... one, but not necessarily without beginning and ending somewhere. "A joy for ever" has a free triumphant flow as if from beyond one's birth to beyond one's death — the flow of a larger than individual consciousness, larger than even any time-consciousness, I might say. It is as if not merely our appreciation of an object but also our sense of an inviolable "archetype" of it on a divine plane were suggested ...
... into a trance, while the world goes on around him just as before essentially unaffected and not at all annulled by his unconsciousness of it. But in the first place this highest power of the individual consciousness cannot be peculiar to it, for it must be a power of the general and universal; the individual reflects the universal, for it is only the law of the universal that can be repeated with individual ...
... thought. So it is with Brahman & the universe, the Thing in itself and its symbols with their fixed conventional values, some of which are relative to the general consciousness & some to the individual consciousness of the symbol-being. Matter, Mind, Life for instance are general symbols with a fixed general value to God in His cosmic consciousness; but they have a different individual value, make a different ...
... have not the truth-substance. It is only when the object is entered into, seen with an inner and surrounding vision, possessed in experience, taken into our living universal & identifying individual consciousness, made one with us in the Truth that is, holds, comprehends, actuates all things,—only then is there the characteristic process of the supermind, the way of directness, the sincerity and power ...
... head ) it all seems quite simple! And looking up THERE, I tell you, I am sure there is no difference between "subjective" and "objective"—except when you give your individuality and your individual consciousness an independent reality; that is, when you cut everything into little bits with your imagination.... Then, of course.... Page 204 × ...
... constant and conscious relationship what is missing is an intermediate zone between the existing physical world and the supramental world as it exists. This zone has yet to be built, both in the individual consciousness and in the objective world, and it is being built. When Page 137 formerly I used to speak of the new world that is being created, I was speaking of this intermediate zone. And ...
... but this thing, and yet there was a sensation. I can't explain it! When I went back to bed, the transitional period lasted 45 minutes. During this time, I tried to locate the role of the individual consciousness on earth. In a flash, I understood its purpose. For you see, as long as the experience lasted, I did not feel any necessity at all of an individuality for this supreme flood to manifest. Then ...
... The relationship between yoga is implicit in all the objects of yoga stated above. The first object - union or abiding contact with the Divine - implies "the contact of the human and individual consciousness with the divine [consciousness]". 5 The relationship between yoga and psychology can be seen here because psychology, from the viewpoint of yoga, is the science which deals with the nature ...
... have accepted that the world should know the Supramental Truth … and it will be expressed totally, integrally.” Yes, yes … ‘And the thing is done .’ Then, after a long silence: ‘The individual consciousness came back: just the sense of a limitation, a limitation of pain; without that, no individual.’ All of a sudden she switched to French: ‘And we set out again on the way, sure of Victory ...
... worlds to unite in a constant and conscious relation 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 ...
... two worlds to join in a constant and conscious relation is an intermediate zone between the physical world as it is and the supramental world as it is. This zone is to be built both in the individual consciousness and in the objective world, and it is being built … “I was on a huge ship which was a symbolic representation of the place where this work is going on. This ship, as large as a city, is ...
... March 11, 1932 The cosmic consciousness does not belong to overmind in especial; it covers all the planes. 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 and by interpreting the contacts with the world. By yoga there can open in him a consciousness which ...
... returns and tries to take possession of its lost territory, but that is a foreign invasion. The rule of these things is that they have to be extruded outside the Page 388 individual consciousness. Rejected by the mind and higher vital, they still try to hold on to the lower vital and physical. Rejected from the lower vital, they still hold the body by a physical desire. Rejected from ...
... still there is something in it that drives towards the evolutionary purpose, although it is more difficult to see, understand and follow than in the smaller and more intimate field of the individual consciousness and life. What happens at a particular juncture of the world-action or the life of humanity, however catastrophic, is not ultimately determinative. Here, too, one has to see not only the ...
... back in the moral standard of humanity. But all this is perhaps needed for evolutionary purpose. Unless man's consciousness changes from his narrow, selfish, ignorant and limited egoistic individual consciousness to an enlarged, liberated, universal, impersonal Page 25 and Unitarian consciousness which is the spiritual or Divine consciousness which sees things in their essence of ...
... to believe. Sleep plays a much profounder role with far-reaching implication and importance. It is, in fact, in its essential nature an act of response to the demand and need of individual consciousness to go inward, even in the commonalty of men devoid as yet of any spiritual awakening 1 N. Kleitman, op. cit., p. 794. 2 3 Vide Everyman's Encyclopaedia, Vol. II ...
... its self-ignorance considers itself as a separate self-existent individuality — although in reality it is never so — and "regards all cosmic action only as it presents itself to its own individual consciousness, knowledge, will, force, enjoyment and limited being instead of seeing itself as a conscious form of the One and embracing all consciousness, all knowledge, all will, all force, all enjoyment ...
... 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 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 ...
... constant and conscious relation is an intermediate zone between the physical world as it is and the Supramental world as it is. It is this zone that remains to be built, simultaneously in the individual consciousness and the objective world, and is being built. When I used to speak formerly of the new world which is being created, it was of this intermediary zone that I was speaking. And in the same ...
... accepted that this world should know the Supramental Truth... and it will be expressed totally, integrally." Yes, yes.... Page 131 And the thing is DONE. ( long silence ) The individual consciousness came back, just the sense of a limitation, limitation of pain; without that, no individual. 2 And we set off again on the way, certain of the Victory. The heavens are ringing with ...
... came: "You have accepted that the world should know the Supramental Truth... and it will be expressed totally, integrally." Yes, yes.... And the thing is done . ( Long silence ) The individual consciousness came back: just the sense of a Page 391 limitation, a limitation of pain; without that, no individual. And we set out again on the way, sure of Victory. The skies are full ...
... virtue and morality. 1 Do you have a question? How can one collaborate in curing the evil and ugliness seen everywhere? By loving? What is the power of love? What effect can an individual consciousness, acting alone, have on the rest of mankind? How to collaborate in curing evil and ugliness?... We can say that there's a kind of hierarchic scale of collaboration or action; a negative ...
... in all the small details, it is that... In the microscopic. In the microscopic... And it is exactly what I was seeing, I understand why. The problem was there this morning: the individual consciousness, even when it is very wide, is not able to realise, that is to say, understand concretely, that it is possible to become conscious of all at the same time. For it is not of that kind. It has ...
... Three years earlier, in 1958, Mother had told Satprem that February and March were 'bad months,' and she had spoken of cyclical movements in Nature like those in the individual consciousness, with alternating periods of difficulty and progress. × Four times a year, for 'darshan ...
... wasn't that we would take a decision: it was automatic. I noticed this several times and found it wonderful.... It so happens that in a few psychological cases, that is, when it has to do with individual consciousness, since quite recently (it hasn't been like that very long), when someone is sincere (one must be sincere) and expresses an aspiration, for instance, a hope, or a vision of how he or she should ...
... material substance of the earth becomes its own—which may be expressed by all sorts of things (it depends on the day, on the occasion). I had known for a long time that it was no longer the individual consciousness; it isn't the collective consciousness of mankind: it's a terrestrial consciousness, meaning it also contains the material substance of the earth, including the unconscious substance. Because ...
... there has been a whole work of preparation for the transformation.... What could I call it?... A transfer of power. The cells, the whole material consciousness, used to obey the inner individual consciousness—the psychic consciousness most of the time, or the mental (but the mind had been silent for a long time). But now this material mind is organizing itself like the other one, or the other ones ...
... ( very long silence ) Yes, the ordinary consciousness is like an axis with everything revolving around it. An axis fixed somewhere, and everything revolves around it—that's the ordinary individual consciousness. And if the axis shifts, one feels lost. It's like a big axis (more or less big, it can also be tiny) planted straight up in time, with everything revolving around it. The consciousness may ...
... about the soul, are you talking about the psychic being (which is first an embryo and eventually becomes a conscious, perfectly independent being), or are you simply talking of the life of an individual consciousness after death? Because that's yet another thing. There are proofs of that; but in that case, it's a quite vital consciousness of an inferior order, and it may happen to immediately come back ...
... through the ego capsule is to overflow to all beings, to comprehend all existence, to be world-wide, and even world-transcendent. In Jungian language, we may say that it is that part of the individual consciousness which is the outward crest of the "individual unconscious" and, through the latter, a participant in the "collective unconscious". It is what Jung considers the "inner core" of our individuation ...
... And this brings me not only to my subject but also to the Yoga here. Isn't it the aim of the Yogic life to convert what is a "h-o-l-e" into a "W-h-o-l-e", the limited fragmentary individual consciousness into the divine All, the cosmic abundance, the transcendent plenitude? But how is the conversion to be done? I may approach the answer by recalling what Vasari, an Italian painter of the ...
... mystics or indeed the confidences of many apparently quite ordinary men, one has to ask oneself seriously whether there is not a sort of cosmic consciousness in our soul more diffused than individual consciousness, more intermittent, but perfectly well defined - a sort of feeling of the presence of all beings at once, not perceived as multiple and separate but as sharing in the same unity - at least ...
... and depending upon the Page 52 context may even be harmful. For, to be unduly impressed by someone is to come directly or indirectly under the influence of the person's individual consciousness, and if the individual has arrived at some higher perfection, he is still but one filter through which the Divine consciousness pours Itself and Its energies upon the world. We have to be ...
... receiving more and more complete manifestations till the whole and integral Divine Plenitude is established in him. This process is prevented or stopped only by the play of the separative individual consciousness with its ambitions in its ignorant and perverted state, and with its pride of knowledge and self-righteousness in its comparatively enlightened but none-fhe-less unregenerate state. The true ...
... "You have accepted that the world should know the Supramental Truth... and it will be expressed totally, integrally." Yes, yes... And the thing is done. (Long Silence) The individual consciousness came back, just the sense Page 167 of a limitation, limitation of pain; without that no individual. 1 And we set out again on the way, sure of Victory. The skies ...
... ledge, from darkness through half-light to Light, from death to Immortality, from suffering to the Divine Bliss. Suffering is due first to the Ignorance, secondly to the separation of the individual consciousness from the divine Consciousness and Being, a separation created by the Ignorance—when that ceases, when one lives in the Divine and no more in one's separated smaller self, then only suffering ...
... stage, the perception of essential oneness begins to emerge: One Matter, one Life, one Mind, one Soul plays in many forms. One perceives one's Self in all bodies multiplying itself in individual consciousness. One sees also all minds, all forms of life, all bodies to be active formations of the same existence in the extended being of the Self. This is the vision of all existences in the Self ...
... in the truth and law of the collective existence. It is for this reason that secularism should insist on individual freedom, on individual initiative, individual thought, individual will, individual consciousness. In the course of the rationalistic age of modern times, momentous experiments have been conducted in democracy, socialism and democratic socialism. These experiments have not been entirely ...
... and action, it still belongs to the domain of multiplicity and therefore subject to the ignorance of the underlying unity and of the essential knowledge of the true relationship between the individual consciousness, universal consciousness and transcendental consciousness. Great perils of occultism arise from great mixtures of knowledge and ignorance that are found in the domains in which occultism normally ...
... consciousness, (ii) the subconscient, (iii) the intraconscient and circumconscient subliminal, and finally (iv) the superconscient. Apart from a very small and restricted part of our waking individual consciousness, we are normally totally ignorant of the rest of our being — so appalling indeed is the extent Page 314 and intensity of our present psycho-constitutional ignorance. ...
... tremendous role in our lives. But is there also a universal subconscient by tackling which you can tackle the individual's subconscient? What will then be the meaning of these impressions in individual consciousness, a simple interchange between universal and individual? So many questions come up! Of course the subconscient is universal as well as individual like all the other main parts of the ...
... necessary. But the misfortune is that the steel has got rusted and worn out from inside. In other words, a diminution of public morality and collective honesty has set in, an ebbing of the individual consciousness too that made for rectitude and justice and equity and fair dealing. Men who are limbs of that frame, who by their position ensure the strength of that frame—the bolts and nuts, screws and ...
... the surroundings generally also; for one lives and moves through mutual interchange in the midst of others. A collective change takes more time than individual change. So it is no longer an individual consciousness, but the collective consciousness that has to do the work. The world progresses. And being in the world you too must progress. It is a progress, however, which the Divine effects in ...
... continent has a soul. One can speak of the soul consciousness of Europe, of Asia or of Africa. Indeed each cell of an organism has a consciousness of its own; it may be said to be the unit individual consciousness. Many such cells combine to form the organism, the individual (who in this way may be viewed as a composite or collective being). Many individuals form the family—-each family with its group ...
... that he has no more. But man wanted to act freely and independently! What is instinct exactly? It is Nature's consciousness. Nature is conscious of her action; it is not an individual consciousness. It is a global or collective consciousness. There is also a consciousness of the species. Each species has its consciousness which is called sometimes the spirit of the species, that is to ...
... consciously transcended, lifted, transmuted—worked out into the super-consciousness. Such is Nature's evolutionary nisus and such is the truth and fact man is being driven to face in his inner individual consciousness as well as outer collective life. We can thus note, broadly speaking, three stages in the human cycle of Nature's evolution. The first was the period of emergence of self-consciousness ...
... to the ends of polarity – sex – male and female, positive and negative, attraction and repulsion, good and evil etc. 4 corresponds to will and creative action ; 7 is said to represent individual consciousness contacting the universe, unfolding its powers ; 8 is related to Karma ; 9 is related to life and cyclic evolution . Has this idea of symbolism of numbers any true foundation ? Or, in other ...
... that will which can govern the vital, the mind and also the physical? Does it belong to the Divine? All individual will is a limitation and a deformation of the Divine Will; just as the individual consciousness is a limitation and a deformation of the Divine Consciousness. April 26, 1951 * Mother, Would it not be better to sit for meditation and to devote one part of the day to concentrate ...
... AUROBINDO: How? SATYENDRA: When you realise the Divine, you act from the Cosmic Consciousness. SRI AUROBINDO: Who is this "you"? SATYENDRA: I am putting it in that form.. He means the individual consciousness is identified with the Cosmic Consciousness SRI AUROBINDO: Then it is all right. SATYENDRA: But it is the Cosmic Consciousness that acts through the individual. NIRODBARAN: In Europe ...
... and people, living and moving in me, trees and plants and even inanimate objects as part of myself, limbs of my body: I was the earth-consciousness incarnate." But the point is to be this individual consciousness anywhere I or everywhere and still to maintain the higher, the universal and transcendent, the supreme consciousness, to be simultaneously conscious in both the modes to the utmost degree ...
... also; for one lives and moves through mutual interchange in the midst of others. Page 377 A collective change takes more time than individual change. So it is no longer an individual consciousness, but the collective consciousness that has to do the work. The world progresses. And being in the world you too must progress. It is a progress, however, which the Divine effects in you ...
... below the feet. That would make the total number of centres as twelve-the mystic number for completeness or integrality. The centre at the bottom of the spine, which is the basis of the individual consciousness is seen as a serpent – a serpent coiled up and asleep, with perhaps just the head sticking up in a very somnolent manner. It represents the normal human consciousness, bottled up, narrow, ...
... continent has a soul. One can speak of the soul consciousness of Europe, of Asia or of Africa. Indeed each cell of an organism has a consciousness of its own; it may be said to be the unit individual consciousness. Many such cells combine to form the organism, the individual (who in this way may be viewed as a composite or collective being). Many individuals form the family – each family with its group ...
... but by a living and dynamic need. This is the secret of constant growth and endless progress. 29 What was done in those early years - the thirties especially - was to prepare the individual consciousness to admit and recognise the necessity for a collective individuality, to help the sadhaks to shed their superficial angularities and egoistic separativities, and to tune themselves to the ...
... radiating two rays of light, the rays being white, vertical and immobile—what is its significance, sweet Mother? When the beings or forces of invisible worlds manifest themselves before an individual consciousness, they put on Page 15 forms suitable to the symbolism of each one—that is what makes it difficult to explain the visions of someone unless his symbolism is known in detail. ...
... "Supermind” (if we wish to name it by this word), continuous, uninterrupted from top to bottom, full and round like a sun, but veiled, sealed off, eclipsed by the intermediate layers. The individual consciousness is like a big curtain: transparent and luminous at the top, then changing to silver gray to flaxen yellow to a deeper and deeper blue (in the various strata of the Mind) to a deeper and deeper ...
... existence, outwardly as a human being, on this bank, and she had a supramental existence on that bank; what had been lacking was a bridge, an intermediate zone. It was this zone "both in the individual consciousness and the objective world" - that had to be built, and was in fact being built. Of her experience of the 3rd February afternoon, the Page 657 Mother reminisces as follows: ...
... since the 15th there was in the process of the transformation of her body what could be called "a transfer of power". Until then "the cells, the whole material consciousness obeyed the inner individual consciousness - most often the psychic or the mental (but the mind has been silent since long) But now this material mind is busy organising itself...." Significantly, unlike the physical mind, the new ...
... the wiping out of Being altogether as the radical remedy. The question is, is it possible to transcend the ego formation here with all its imperfections by opening the individual Page 48 consciousness to the Universal and to the Divine Consciousness ? It is hard to convince the ordinary mind, though it is not impossible to give a rationale of it because man is a mental being ...
... though ...to act and be beyond the act...to act through and for individuals but see only the oneness, the oneness of Thy Love, Thy Knowledge and Thy Being...”¹ An egoless, impersonal, individual consciousness, basing and supporting God-impelled action through the transfigured natural personality and its sublimated faculties, each in its place and at its proper task, none depressed or repressed ...
... the Yoga of Knowledge meditation is similarly used for discrimination of the True from the apparent, the Self from its forms, and concentrated contemplation for communion and entry of the individual consciousness into the Brahman. Page 446 An integral Yoga would harmonise all these aims. It would have also at its disposal other processes for the utilisation of thought and the mastery of ...
... principles of individual persistence and mutual fusion have to be harmonised and this can only be done by the emergence and full development of mind which alone is subtle enough to persist in individual consciousness beyond all fusion and dissolution of forms. Here the union and harmony of the persistent individual and the persistent aggregate life become possible.—Love is the power by which this union ...
... out the right material method and process of a material transformation. For this, no doubt, the spirit's supreme light and power and creative joy must have manifested on the summit of the individual consciousness and sent down their fiat into the body, but still the body may take in the working out its spontaneous part of self-discovery and achievement. It would be thus a participator and agent in ...
... consciousness, presenting in its nature and laws of working a close analogy to its parent is the power of imagination,—the power of bodying forth images which may either be reabsorbed into the individual consciousness which gave them forth or outlast it. Of the latter kind poetical creation is a salient example. At a certain time in a certain country one named Shakespeare created a new world by the force ...
... y. What is the practical value of this conception of vijnana? The thing we call mind is the knowledge of the individual about himself and of the world only as it affects or reaches his individual consciousness. It is the view of things which a man shut up in a dungeon with glazed & coloured windows may have about the world and his own dwelling place. In the colours of the senses he sees the objects ...
... 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 of the universe; this is because there is in all these states ...
... called upon to be all of them together — and something enormously extra. No wonder Sri Aurobindo once said that where the other Yogas terminate we make our beginning. The release of the individual consciousness into Eternity, Infinity, Divinity, is the basis for us of the release of Eternity, Infinity, Divinity into all the parts of our being for a total transformation of mind, life-force and ...
... influence the laws of heredity. They will be constituted of our substance and will assist us in its transformation. Page 79 According to Sri Aurobindo, from the moment in which individual consciousness has united with the supreme Consciousness, three hundred years will be required for the transformation of our human substance to bring forth the new beings. The first phase of this great work ...
... along your lines. All I can say is that the ears, according to Sri Aurobindo, symbolise the medium through which spiritual messages and inspirations come from the Cosmic Consciousness to the individual consciousness. Your question on the turtle ( kurma ) calls for a two-fold answer. The turtle as one of the primal supports of the earth in Indian mythology is different from the turtle that belongs to the ...
... with the function of the brain; just as little as one can conceive of life as an epiphenomenon of the chemistry of carbon." - "We can very well determine with sufficient certainty that an individual consciousness with reference to ourselves has come to an end in death. Whether, however, the continuity of the psychic processes is thereby broken remains doubtful, for we can today assert with much less ...
... and its purpose must be there as part of the instrumentation,... 9 To fulfil the evolutionary intent, spiritual growth needs to be a double movement of ascent and descent; the individual consciousness must ascend to progressively higher levels of consciousness and then must bring down the dynamism of the higher levels into the mental, vital and physical consciousness so as to transform ...
... product. We are blinded to this truth because when we think of consciousness, it is of the individual we think. We look at the world in the way and speak of it in the terms of individual consciousness; but it is of the universal consciousness that the world is a creation. 22 Conclusion and Summary Science can only describe the processes of things. To try to explain ...
... of the human psyche. However, the most significant resemblance between the concepts of the subliminal and the collective unconscious lies in that both are regarded as extending beyond the individual consciousness, though the subliminal has also its separate formation for each individual. The Superconscient As stated previously, the superconscient is the starting point of the involution ...
... still there is something in it that drives towards the evolutionary purpose, although it is more difficult to see, understand and follow than in the smaller and more intimate field of the individual consciousness and life. What happens at a particular juncture of the world-action or the life of humanity, however catastrophical, is not ultimately determinative. Here, too, one has to see not only the ...
... in a constant and conscious relation is an intermediate zone between the physical world as it is and the supramental world as it is. It is this zone which remains to be built, both in the individual consciousness and in the objective world, and which is being built. When formerly I used to talk of the new world that is being created, it was this intermediary zone that I meant. And similarly, when I ...
... and its cells. The body as a whole has its own consciousness; this is known in practice, if not in theory, to all athletes, for it lies at the basis of their training. Each organ too has its individual consciousness; it is the lack of equilibrium, of harmony between the consciousness of the organs that causes illness, physical distress and deterioration. And the cells of which the organs, and therefore ...
... then it came: “You have accepted that the world should know the Supramental Truth and it will be expressed totally, integrally.” Yes, yes. ‘And the thing is done. [long silence] ‘The individual consciousness came back: just the sense of a limitation, a limitation of pain; without that, no individual. [Then the Mother switched to her native French, of which we give here the translation:] ‘And ...
... converting every part of human nature into a form of its own divine perfection which pre-exists archetypally in the Supermind. He was interested also in establishing the Supermind as not only an individual consciousness but as a part of earth's collective being. Provided he did these things he never bothered whether the doing of them made people look at him Page 135 as at an Avatar or as ...
... "It seems necessary that a whole set of things must change, at least, in relative proportions, so that one exists and continues to exist. This brings much complication, for it is no more one individual consciousness that has to do the work, it becomes a collective consciousness. And it is much more difficult." 2 Yes, a greater difficulty but nothing beyond that. No impossibility, not even improbability ...
... ..: and to that rapture is added the ecstatic realization that the universal Thing from which everything emerges and to which everything returns... is a living, loving Being, in which the individual consciousness, when it is lost, attains an accentuation and an illumination that extends to the furthest limit of what is contained in its own personality. God, who is as immense and all-embracing as matter ...
... transformed in the context of a middle world that it is hard to trace the memory of Sethna's Master. By and large, this is a new rhetoric discovered in a fresh situation and coloured by an individual consciousness. Rhetoric for Sethna is a way of "beyonding". One has the impression that the poet is involved in a process of purification, and unlike Tagore and Whitman Sethna is singularly free ...
... Mother was in Tlemcen and deeply involved in occult practices, the ‘king of the cats’ made a covenant with her that gave her special powers over the members of his species. Human beings have an individual consciousness, developed in various degrees, but animals have a collective consciousness that is mostly called instinct and centered in the ‘king’ of their species – which goes to show how much truth there ...
... February 20, 1932 Your experience means manifestly the uniting of the Ishwara-Shakti sides of the manifestation—as in the Hara-Gauri figure—with the result of a universalization of the individual consciousness indicated by the shooting out towards infinite distances. The currents are of course, the currents of the double force working to make this liberation. The blue and gold must be the blue of ...
... can perfect himself in the Knowledge. Page 719 For the initiation of the evolutionary emergence from the Inconscient works out by two forces, a secret cosmic consciousness and an individual consciousness manifest on the surface. The secret cosmic consciousness remains secret and subliminal to the surface individual; it organises itself on the surface by the creation of separate objects and ...
... action. However Monistic may be our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity. For the contact of the human and individual consciousness with the divine is the very essence of Yoga. Yoga is the union of that which has become separated in the play of the universe with its own true self, origin and universality. The contact may ...
... one might ask, if the higher planes or if the Overmind itself were to manifest their consciousness with all that power, light, freedom and vastness and these things were to descend into an individual consciousness here, would not that make unnecessary both the cosmic negation or the Nirvanic push and the urge towards some Divine Transcendence? But in the result, though one might live in a union with ...
... Yes. Is there nothing constant called "beauty"? There are two kinds of beauty. There is that universal beauty which is seen by the inner eye, heard by the inner ear etc.—but the individual consciousness responds to some forms, not to others, according to its own mental, vital and physical reactions. There is also the aesthetic beauty which depends on a particular standard of harmony, but ...
... conscious purpose of our embodied existence. To be conscious of him in all parts of our being and equally in all that the dividing mind sees as outside our being, is the consummation of the individual consciousness. To be possessed by him and possess him in ourselves and in all things is the term of all empire and mastery. To enjoy him in all experience of passivity and activity, of peace and of power ...
... d in Maya. But this nullification cannot be compelled to stop short in its devastating advance at the boundary fixed for it by a spiritual Illusionism. For if all other experiences of the individual consciousness in the universe are illusions, then what guarantee is there that its spiritual experiences are not illusions, including even its absorbed self-experience of the supreme Self which is conceded ...
... order to remove the veil of the Ignorance the conscious Force of being in us uses a reverse action of its power of exclusive concentration; it quiets the frontal movement of Prakriti in the individual consciousness and concentrates exclusively on the concealed inner being,—on the Self or on the true inner, psychic or mental or vital being, the Purusha,—to disclose it. But when it has done so, it need ...
... and the circumference. But the moment we study ourselves, we find that the self experience which we thus co-ordinate and consciously utilise for life, is a small part even of our waking individual consciousness. We fasten only upon a very limited number of the mental sensations and perceptions of self and things which come up into our surface consciousness in our continual present: of these again ...
... the being. Here, in mind, consciousness is delivered out of its imprisonment in the act and form of its own force; but it is not yet master of the act and form because it has emerged as an individual consciousness and is aware therefore only of a fragmentary movement of its own total activities. The whole crux and difficulty of human life lies here. Man is this mental being, this mental consciousness ...
... action of ignorance and division it is held back in the subliminal and the superconscient being; on our surface it lacks and has to be sought for, found and possessed by the development of the individual consciousness towards universality and transcendence. We may, therefore, if we will, pose eight 1 principles instead of seven, and then we perceive that our existence is a sort of refraction of the ...
... scope, it can no longer see truth even as Page 525 in a dream, but passes into the blank incomprehension and non-reception of slumber. This border-line varies with the power of the individual consciousness, with the degree and height of its enlightenment and awakening. The line may be pushed up higher and higher until it may pass even beyond the mind. Normally indeed the human mind cannot be ...
... but to which he is irrevocably commanded and can no more recoil from it,—for to recoil would be the negation and denial of the divine will and sanction within him already expressed in his individual consciousness but soon to assume the appearance of the greater cosmic sanction. For now the world Being appears to him as the body of God ensouled by the eternal Time-spirit and with its majestic and dreadful ...
... Inner Being and the Inner Consciousness Letters on Yoga - III Chapter II Inner Detachment and the Witness Attitude Inner Detachment It [ the individual consciousness ] is not by its nature detached from the mental and other activities. It can be detached, it can be involved. In the human consciousness it is as a rule always involved, but it has developed ...
... spiritual. The white and red are symbols of the Mother and the incarnating Divine. The white lotus is the symbol of the Mother's consciousness,—it does not indicate any part of the individual consciousness. The red lotus is the flower of the Divine Presence. The red lotus is the presence of the Divine on earth—the sun is the Divine Truth. It indicates the Divine manifestation on ...
... and other parts and by them transform the physical. The Ascent of the Being The being is here on the physical plane although in touch with the mental and vital. The being that is the individual consciousness has to ascend and become conscious of all the planes (vital, mental and those above the mental) until it reaches the Divine Oneness which is above all the planes and from which they emerge ...
... still there is something in it that drives towards the evolutionary purpose, although it is more difficult to see, understand and follow than in the smaller and more intimate field of the individual consciousness and life. What happens in a particular juncture of the world-action or the life of humanity, however catastrophical, is not ultimately determinative. Here too one has to see not only the outward ...
... beyond our consciousness (I cannot say spatial), our terrestrial consciousness (not even positively terrestrial, but rather individual), each time one has an experience which transcends the individual consciousness, that is to say, transcends the consciousness of the part to enter a consciousness of the Whole, when one wants to translate this experience, one finds all words empty of sense, because language ...
... reach a state of consciousness in which ego has no reason for existing, you cannot hope to attain the goal. The ego seems to have been indispensable at one time for the formation of the individual consciousness, but with the ego were born all the obstacles, sufferings, difficulties, all that now appears to us as adverse and anti-divine forces. But these forces themselves were a necessity for attaining ...
... out the right material method and process of a material transformation. For this, no doubt, the spirit's supreme light and power and creative joy must have manifested on the summit of the individual consciousness and sent down their fiat into the body.... " Page 106 The Supramental Manifestation, SABCL, Vol. 16, pp. 15-16 Mother, will the transformation of the body come after ...
... effective. A certain vibration is given out in silence, with a special purpose, to obtain a definite result, but according to the mental receptivity of each person it is expressed in each individual consciousness exactly in the form which can be the most effective, the most active, the most immediately useful for each individual; while if it is formulated in words, this formula has to be received by ...
... The individual is only an element in the whole, even as the earth is a part of the solar system, and the solar system makes a part of all the systems of the universe. So just as there is an individual consciousness, there is a group consciousness and a consciousness of the system, a universal consciousness which is made up of the set of all the consciousnesses composing it, Page 232 plus ...
... material consciousness the necessary aspiration and plasticity. It is obvious that the most dominant characteristic of matter is inertia, and that, if there were not this violence, perhaps the individual consciousness would be so inert that rather than change it would accept to live in a perpetual imperfection.... That is possible. Anyway, this is how things are made, and for us who know a little more, ...
... told her that our will is only an expression or echo of the universal Will.... Perhaps I had said somewhere before that there is only one Will and it is translated or rather deformed in the individual consciousness and this Will is taken as one's own will. I must have said something like that, and that our will becomes truly our own will by the fact that it separates itself from the initial universal ...
... and time, and something that exceeds this cosmic formula or any cosmic formula. There is a cosmic consciousness experienced by many which is quite different inits scope and action from the individual consciousness, and if there is a consciousness beyond the cosmic infinite and essentially eternal, not merely extended in Time, that also must be different from these two. And if the Divine is or manifests ...
... individually, instead of being for only an individual progress, will spread, so to say, or have very important collective results. But I said nothing because for months I wanted to prepare the individual consciousness to admit, I might say, even perhaps to recognise, this necessity for a collective individuality. This is what must be explained now. There is no other reason for this kind of apparent fall ...
... inevitably precedes death. Page 341 Must each cell be conscious of its oneness with the centre? It is not like that. It is still a semi-collective consciousness, it is not an individual consciousness of the cells. Does decentralisation always occur after death, or can it start before? It often starts before. Do the cells disperse in space or in the body itself? If they disperse ...
... and rules change, but our faith and our aim remain the same. 30 October 1954 Ours is neither a political nor a social but a spiritual goal. What we want is a transformation of the individual consciousness, not a change of regime or government. For reaching that goal we put no confidence in any human means, however powerful; our trust is in the Divine Grace alone. For us here there is only ...
... oneself from one's ego. 24 February 1971 ( Message for the third anniversary of Auroville ) To all Aurovilians My blessings for the progress and the growth of the collective and individual consciousness. 28 February 1971 To be an Aurovilian one must at least belong to the enlightened portion of humanity and aspire for the higher consciousness which will govern the species of tomorrow ...
... strongly and fully, with more intensity and precision, Thy own delight of being and self-manifestation? Suddenly all was lit with the inexpressible beauty of Thy Truth, and in the mirror of the individual consciousness Thou didst reflect all the infinitely varied modes of self-expression of Thy Page 120 being of Love, Pain and enjoyment united and fused in an ecstasy which seemed as if it must ...
... is very noticeable, for example, that when men gather in a group or collect in great numbers, the level of consciousness falls a great deal. The consciousness of crowds is much lower than individual consciousness, and the collective consciousness of society is certainly lower than the consciousness of the individuals constituting it. There it is a necessity. In ordinary life, an individual, whether ...
... It takes years and years and years of silent, quiet and extremely careful work before there can be any visible and tangible results, before anything can be noticed, even for the [Mother's] individual consciousness. As for those who want to go quickly, if they try going quickly in this realm, they'll be thrown off balance. You can't go quickly. Once, when I saw how it was, I complained a bit ...
... Mother makes a horizontal motion ) this kind of connection doesn't exist; it's like this ( Mother makes a vertical motion which towers over and embraces everything at once ). And so, in an individual consciousness it's expressed by an infinitesimal point—a physical body and everything dependent on it; but it's exactly the same thing as the Supreme Point and everything depending on that. It's the same ...
... but partially, momentarily, like flashes of lightning behind the dark clouds of egoism, Page 338 it appears in all who have a vast and generous heart. However, most often, in the individual consciousness it is mixed with that mean and petty self-pity which is the cause of depression and weakness. Nevertheless, when one is vigilant enough to refuse this mixture or at least to reduce it to a ...
... process of descent, 1 and the Voice was explaining it to me—I lived through it all in detail, and it wasn't pleasant. It took an hour and a half to change from that true Consciousness to the individual consciousness. Because throughout the experience this present individuality no longer existed, this body no longer existed, there were no more limits, I was no longer here—what was here was THE PERSON. ...
... vital and physical) around this centre, so that all the activities of the being may be the correct expression of the will of the Divine Presence. Unless and until the whole of the individual consciousness is organised around the central Divine Presence, the movements are fugitive, although recurrent, and we cannot expect them to have any permanence. Nothing is permanent in a terrestrial ...
... be conscious of its unity with the center?" That's not how it is. ( after a long silence ) It's hard to make them understand.... It's still a semicollective consciousness, not an individual consciousness of the cells. Then? Anand Arya asks this: "Does the decentralization always take place after death, or can it begin before?" ( Laughing ) It often begins before! Dilip M. asks ...
... everything down to the smallest detail? That's the... In the microscopic. In the microscopic. That's just what I was seeing, I understand why. This morning the problem was there: the individual consciousness, even very vast, cannot realize, that is to say, cannot concretely understand the possibility of being conscious of everything at the same time. Because that's not the way it is. So it finds ...
... zed. So, if I look—if I LOOKED—with the old consciousness, it would be rather... rather unpleasant, you can say, but the old consciousness: gone. It's something... something that isn't an individual consciousness, but it is not just a collective consciousness either: there's "something" up there—THAT, up there—which sees, knows, decides.... That, up there, is quite all right, it hasn't moved—it hasn't ...
... gnostic transformation of our waking existence. Occult-spiritual precondition : We have seen that in its essential nature our body's sleep is the response to the demand of the individual consciousness to go inward and awake in planes of existence not at present accessible to the waking awareness which is still in the grip of an involutionary half-sleep. So, unless and until this spiritual ...
... consciousness, (ii) the subconscient, (iii) the intraconscient and circumconscient subliminal, and finally (iv) the superconscient. Apart from a very small and restricted part of our waking individual consciousness, we are normally perfectly ignorant of the whole of the rest of our being — so appalling indeed is the extent and intensity of our psychological sleep! The waking consciousness ...
... The whole sense of the evolution of Matter has been a growth from a first state of unconsciousness to an increasing consciousness.... A fixed form was needed in order that the organised individual consciousness might have a stable support. And yet it is this fixity of the form that made death inevitable. (Conversations of the Mother, p. 58) How could that escape death which lives ...
... mind this essentially consists of three elements: *The first and the most important aspect is the relationship of the individual to the total. Each person should know the nature of the individual consciousness and the way it is related to the cosmic consciousness. This creates the understanding of the nature of consciousness, the evolutionary process, the need for taking a step forward towards super ...
... not say that usually sensual parents have sensual issues, etc., etc.,? Another point—even if this subconscient is managed, is there not also universal nature which acts and reacts on individual consciousness and brings back from somewhere what is thrown away from here? There are three sources of our action—the superconscient, the subliminal, the subconscient of which we are not aware. What ...
... Cosmic consciousness has many levels: it can be of mind, vital and matter; of Overmind too. So what does he mean by relation between them? Cosmic consciousness is a term used in contrast to individual consciousness. Through it you get to know about the universe. Overmind is a power of cosmic consciousness just as mind, vital and body are. Only, you can have body, vital and mind without any knowledge ...
... heart, is not the external thing which is the seat of emotion or passion; it is the secret heart that is behind, the inner heart - antarhrdaya of the Upanishad – which is the centre of the individual consciousness, where all the divergent lines of that consciousness meet and from where they take their rise. That is what the Upanishad means when it says that the heart has a hundred channels which feed ...
... we normally know of ourselves is not all we are: it is no more than 'a bubble on the ocean of our existence.' Indeed, apart from the very insignificant and restricted part of our waking individual consciousness, we are normally perfectly ignorant of the whole of Page 70 the rest of our being, 'the immense more', that lies hidden in apparently inaccessible "reaches of being which ...
... infinite omnipotence. But these two urges cannot be simultaneously satisfied on the basis of a fragmented consciousness. For the absolute completeness is not feasible in the finite ego-bound individual consciousness concentrated within the limits of the individual formation, because it is alien to the self-conception of the finite. Indeed "though Life is Power and the growth of the individual life means ...
... Mother immediately after the formal establishment of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Here are his words: "What was done in those early years - the thirties especially - was to prepare the individual consciousness to admit and recognise the necessity for a collective individuality, to help the sadhaks to shed their superficial angularities and egoistic separativities, and to tune themselves to the music ...
... glance this may come as an assertion altogether unbelievable but still it Page 40 remains a fact that apart from the very insignificant and restricted part of our waking individual consciousness, we are normally perfectly ignorant of the whole of the rest of our being, "the immense more", that lies hidden in apparently inaccessible "reaches of being which descend into the profoundest ...
... status and poise in which there is no vibration of action. It is the discovery of that free will and of the method Page 18 by which that will can be made operative through our individual consciousness that constitutes the methodology of Karma Yoga. It is because that operation is inconsistent with the vibration of desire that Karma Yoga proposes those steps by which desire can be eliminated ...
... equality, more and more elevating and more and more luminous experiences of equality are attained by the perception of the interplay of the transcendental consciousness, universal- consciousness, individual consciousness and also the interplay of the action of Para Prakriti and Apara Prakriti. With these experiences, there comes about the annihilation of desire and also of ego. Sri Aurobindo in his The Synthesis ...
... collide with each other, and there is, therefore, the necessity of developing a still higher vision of right action. That higher vision, according to the Gita, cannot be obtained except when the individual consciousness expands into cosmic consciousness and! even into transcendental consciousness. It is for this reason that the Gita's emphasis on the development of that vision is a part of the search for ...
... This effort at spiritual evolution is provided by the systems of Yoga. Here is what Sri Aurobindo has to say: WHAT IS YOGA The contact of the human and individual consciousness with the Divine is the very essence of Yoga. Yoga is the union of that which has become separated in the play of the universe with its own true self, origin and universality. The contact may ...
... 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 reaction has started in nature, that is to say, one is no more content with playing the role of a slave executing helplessly what is ...
... (muladhara), Page 129 of centres as twelve—the mystic number for completeness or integrality. The centre at the bottom of the spine, which is the basis of the individual consciousness is seen as a serpent —a serpent coiled up and asleep, with perhaps just the head sticking up in a very somnolent manner. It represents the normal human consciousness, bottled up, narrow ...
... 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 reaction has started in nature, that is to say, one is no more content with playing the role of a slave executing helplessly what is demanded ...
... – feels herself one with the Supreme Shakti and declares her mightinesses. Here also the woman-singer, filled with the divine afflatus, intones her inexpressible experiences. Her individual consciousness is identified with the universal Mother consciousness. And as such while she casts her glance into herself, into the depth of her womb, she finds the entire universe there and it comes out ...
... doing the work while it is being done; whatever the nature of the work I remain aware all the time that it is I who am doing the work. But the "self" that becomes conscious may also be the individual consciousness of the particular organ or limb that does the work; it too becomes conscious in the course of the work that is being done. When, for instance, I run, not only do I remain aware that I am running ...
... mystic heart, is not the external thing which is the seat of emotion or passion; it is the secret heart that is behind, the inner heart— antarhrdaya of the Upanishad—which is the centre of the individual consciousness, where all the divergent lines of that consciousness meet and from where they take their rise. That is what the Upanishad means when it says that the heart has a hundred channels which feed ...
... evil, they destroy for the sake of destroying, they have the delight of negation. What is instinct exactly? It is Nature's consciousness. Nature is conscious of her action; it is not an individual consciousness. It is a global or collective consciousness. There is also a consciousness of the species. Each species has its consciousness which is called sometimes the spirit of the species, that is to ...
... necessary. But the misfortune is that the steel has got rusted and worn out from inside. In other words, a diminution of public morality and collective honesty has set in, an ebbing of the individual consciousness too that made for rectitude and justice and equity and fair dealing. Men who are limbs of that frame, who by their position ensure the strength of that frame - the bolts and nuts, screws and ...
... Certainly there were voices of protest, independent spirits who refused to drown themselves, lose themselves in the general current. That is to say, a separate and separative growth of the individual consciousness had to proceed at the same time under whatever duress and compression. An Antigone stood alone in the inviolable sanctity of the individual conscience against the established order of a mighty ...
... forms that are of local and temporal interest and importance. Their significances vary according to time Page 10 and place. Finally, there are symbols which are true of the individual consciousness only; they depend on personal peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, on one's environment and upbringing and education. Man being an embodied soul, his external consciousness (what the Upanishad ...
... consciously transcended, lifted, transmuted – worked out into the superconsciousness. Such is Nature's evolutionary nisus and such is the truth and fact man is being driven to face in his inner individual consciousness as well as outer collective life. We can thus note, broadly speaking, three stages in the human cycle of Nature's evolution. The first was the period of emergence of self-consciousness ...
... individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos. The commencement of yoga is characterized by the point of contact of the human individual consciousness with the higher and profounder states of consciousness that can ultimately lead to the universal and transcendent Existence. That contact normally takes the form of concentration, and con ...
... increasing consciousness. And in this process of growth dissolution of forms became an inevitable necessity, as things actually took place. For a fixed form was needed in order that the organised individual consciousness might have a stable support. And yet it is the fixity of Page 15 the form that made death inevitable. Matter had to assume forms; individualisation and the concrete embodiment ...
... Grace is descending from on High in a continuous stream, thus is obliterated the sense of Being and Non-Being, all doubts and difficulties as to whether It exists or not. On the screen of the individual consciousness there arises a strange Form, like Uma-Haimavati of the Upanishad. Bhusuku, this is your true Natural Form. Once you know and recognise It, all the bonds of sense are broken, the heart fills ...
... consciously transcended, lifted, transmuted—worked out into the superconsciousness. Such is Nature's evolutionary nisus and such is the truth and fact man is being driven to face in his inner individual consciousness as well as outer collective life. We can thus note, broadly speaking, three stages in the human cycle of Nature's evolution. The first was the period of emergence of self-consciousness ...
... inexpressible mystery of the deepest rapture of union-in-difference between the Divine and the human soul. This rapture is implied but not felt in the Sâyujya of the Adwaitin, in which the individual consciousness is abolished in the supreme Consciousness, and there is no persistence of the relation of the knower and the object of knowledge to admit of a human enjoyment of the bliss of the perfect union ...
... of Sachchidananda, Sachchidananda the self-manifestation of a supreme Unknowable.... We perceive the soul in all bodies to be this one Self or Sachchidananda multiplying itself in individual consciousness.... This is the vision of all existences in the Self and of the Self in all existences.... 41 * But Sachchidananda is also the Lord: in its impersonal infinite existence ...
... all definition. It is the Nought, but a Nought which is real and can last eternally .... 8 And the result of it all is that, divorced or withdrawn from the body as it were, Mirra's individual consciousness has merged with the universal or cosmic consciousness, making nonsense of the fret and fever and hectic movements of the phenomenal world. Page 137 III The meditation ...
... has to be prepared. When I met the Mother, I shared my experience with Her and said that all the people who had come for these official meetings would be able to do only that which their individual consciousness and personal interest would allow them to do. Even though they could not quite comprehend the significance of Sunil-da's music, the various radio stations all over India had broadcast talks ...
... al suits no longer exists. The line of demarcation becomes as unreal as barbed wire on the slopes of the Alps. It no longer exists, as everything exists simultaneously. The purpose of the individual consciousness, so laboriously carved out by evolution, is simply to focus a ray on a certain point of that totality, to allow the movement of force to flow in a certain direction according to the needs ...
... timeless time in which everything is known. A spaceless space where everything is together. The ordinary consciousness is like an axis with everything revolving around it. That's the ordinary individual consciousness. And if the axis shifts, one feels lost. Its like a big axis (more or less big, it can also be tiny), it is planted in time, with everything revolving around it. The consciousness may be spread ...
... this: There has been a whole work of PREPARATION for the transformation. What could I call it?... A transfer of power. The cells, the whole material consciousness, used to obey the inner individual consciousness—the psychic consciousness most of the time, or the mental (but the mind had been silent for a long time). But now this material Mind is organizing itself like the other one, or the other ones ...
... Brahman and the world, which is practically and essentially the same split that is made by Sânkhya, and regarding the world or phenomenal Nature as illusory and dream-like, seeks to lead the individual consciousness to the undifferentiated unity, and ¹ This is a description' of Karmayoga as propounded by Sri Aurobindo and made an important part of his Integral Yoga. Page 25 ...
... disorder and confusion. And in that Order (that essentially true Order), the greatest contradiction is precisely Falsehood. But those are all vibrations. They're not individual wills or individual consciousnesses: within one individual aggregate, you find the whole range, and not only the whole range, but it changes constantly: the proportion of the vibrations changes; only the appearance remains what... receptivity. That's just what Sri Aurobindo was saying: that "inwardness." Not to depend exclusively on outward means, but to lean more on the universal Will ( gesture above the head ) than on the individual will; that way, you always have an inexhaustible source instead of depending on what you eat, how much rest you get, this and that. That's the method exactly: to broaden your receptivity indefinitely... Light, Order, Harmony, which enter that ( Mother draws movements of forces ), and it all resists, it all works. It's something that lives untrammeled, constantly, everywhere, every second, and in a consciousness... if I use the word "love," it won't be understood, because... That's what is everywhere, constantly, eternally and immutably; nothing exists but by That and in That—in fact, only That exists ...
... of life; it is always unfolding new norms and forms of its light and power, ever new degrees of realisation. The individual human consciousness has to recognise that progressive flux and march along with it. Human consciousness, the complex of external mind and life and body consciousness, has the habit of halting, clinging to the forms, experiences and gains of the past, storing them in memory, agreeing... vital so gloriously hymned by Bergson, the inmost consciousness, the central truth of being, the soul é lan has always a forward-looking reference. And it is precisely because the normal instrument of the body and life and mind has always a backward reference, because it slings ,back and cannot keep pace with the march of the soul-consciousness that these members stagnate, wear away, decay and... If one arrives at a striking realisation, a light is revealed, a Voice, a mantra heard, a norm disclosed, it is simply to be noted, taken in the stuff of the being, made part and parcel of the consciousness; Page 364 you leave it at that and pass and press on. You must not linger at wayside illuminations however beautiful or even useful some may be. The ideal of the paryataka – the ...
... which has become each individual. This Consciousness contains all and is in all. I used to feel that each is a part of me since I am that vast Consciousness. I felt that whatever I was doing, I was doing for myself, which is above. Will you tell me what all this means and why you warned me to take care? Was there a chance of making an error? The experiences were all right—but they give only one side... often make when the cosmic consciousness opens. If there is the psychic opening with its surrender and the higher opening with its wideness and self-realisation, the two together, there is little danger of any such error. 11 October 1934 You have told me to keep on my guard against errors. What is your opinion of my recent higher experiences? I used to feel a Consciousness, a vast Wideness which... the Mother, that the personal "I" is a child of the Mother with whom I am one, yet different, her child, servant, instrument. I have said that you should not stop realising the Self or the cosmic consciousness, but should at the same time remember that all this is the Mother. 13 October 1934 ...
... world. In this perception, the earth isn't very large. And there is a precision in details for tiny things, like what goes on in an individual's consciousness, for instance, or the response to certain events. It's very, very precise. But there is always a ban Page 159 on saying things so as not to give them a power of concretization. But the work is being done like that, on all the... someone to think [of Mother] without there being a response in the consciousness—a response, a perception. So, imagine what it is... It's rather vast and rather complicated. And there are kinds of rungs or stages—stages in the response of the consciousness; rungs and stages according to the degree of development and consciousness. It makes for, oh, not an immensity, but still a rather extensive world... in comparison, but even that appears vague in comparison with HERE. This is truly why the world was created: it's to add to that essential Consciousness something so concrete and so solid, so real, and with such tremendous power! Only, to the body consciousness it seems long. Up above, of course, there is a smile, but for the body... And strangely enough, there isn't in the body that joy of the memory ...
... (tat). And sometimes they described it negatively by saying, "Not this, not this" (neti neti). They also realised that reality in itself is consciousness; and perhaps the most important realisation they claimed to have reached is that there is in each individual man that same reality which is identically present in the universe. This realisation was enshrined in two famous formulae of the Upanishads:... seers, like modern scientists, developed a method of arriving at knowledge which can be verified through experience. They cultivated the faculty of intuition or illumination through which an individual's consciousness can be so Page 25 enlarged as to experience universal and transcendental reality by a kind of identification or identity. Knowledge by identity was the special method of the... it whatever meaning one is led to derive, in a spirit of free and impartial inquiry. It is not necessary to fall in line with one commentary or another. The aim of life must be discovered by each individual. Each one must cultivate the necessary patience so as not to rush to conclusions but rather to pursue one s goal by considering various affirmations and negations that have been pronounced by seekers ...
... four lamps on the four corners of the Dhara Patthi. With this help and guidance the basic physical consciousness becomes steady and rises higher and higher, first slowly and then with a surprising rapidity. But the progress is first through the universal counterpart of the individual physical consciousness. And here it is as if from the ordinary ignorance there is a movement into the subconscient or ... the Mother's must be Champaklal's own inmost or highest being calling to his outer consciousness. It may be his psychic being speaking, because it is telling him, “Come with me”. “The Dhara Patthi seems to symbolise the gross physical basis of our earth-life, the inconscient or subconscient. The hidden consciousness proper to it is pulled upward. This is a phenomenon to which it is not accustomed... the process of rising is repeated and now there is no passing through different degrees of darkness. A straight experience of the Supramental Sun of golden light comes and from the perception of an individual illumination there arises the perception of the whole universe pervaded by the golden light. His body is now a part of this transformed cosmos and is no longer the matter that it was but is a pure ...
... translated in Matter and is figured there by what we call Psychic Sorrow. It is, as it were, a reversed image of the original reality. The Divine's compassion, translated in the individual physical consciousness, becomes a sorrow that is not egoistic, a sorrow that is an expression of one's identification with the universal sorrow through sympathy. I have described the experience at some length... moment in the life of every one, there is a moment when this need of perfect sincerity comes as a matter of ultimate choice. There is a moment in the life of the individual and there is a moment in the life of the group also to which the individual belongs, when that choice has to be made, the final purification has to be performed. It is a question then almost of life and death, the progress has to be... into those tears as it were, melt into them. That will open the door and it will bring you an experience, a very unique experience Page 54 that leaves always a deep mark upon the consciousness. It is never blotted out altogether even if the door closes again and you become once more what you are in your ordinary movements. That experience, that mark remains behind and you can recall it ...
... is translated in Matter and is figured there by what we call Psychic Sorrow. It is, as it were, a reversed image of the original reality. The Divine's compassion, translated in the individual physical consciousness, becomes a sorrow that is not egoistic, a sorrow that is an expression of one's identification with the universal sorrow through sympathy. I have described the experience at some length... moment in the life of everyone, there is a moment when this need of perfect sincerity comes as a matter of ultimate choice. There is a moment in the life of the individual and there is a moment in the life of the group also to which the individual belongs, when that choice has to be made, the final purification has to be performed. It is a question then almost of life and death, the progress has to be... me at the moment, enter into those tears as it were, melt into them. That will open the door and it will bring you an experience, a very unique experience that leaves always a deep mark upon the consciousness. It is never blotted out altogether even if the door closes again and you become once more what you are in your ordinary movements. That experience, that mark remains behind and you can recall it ...
... divided into an army of the Divine and an army of the Diabolic. Further, the Indian genius is not democratic in the superficial modern manner. The whole world is indeed to be embraced by the individual's consciousness and the good of mankind at large has indeed to be worked for by every member of organised society; but the foundation of this democracy is in realising the God who is the One Superhuman in... have dipped their imagination sufficiently into the true heart of our land. The Flags that are Inspired Only a few flags in the world seem to rise out of the depths of a nation's consciousness. The Union Jack is a true symbolic creation. When its lines are seen as running towards the centre, it finely expresses the meeting of many strands of race and culture that constitutes the being... over the whole earth. And the sun as red light depicts the life-force thrilling at the same time with a bliss of beauty and a sense of all conquering power: the predominant motives of the Japanese consciousness – the aesthetic and the martial motives – authentically shine out in the depiction. In the red banner, with the hammer and sickle and star, the Soviet Union has impressively figured itself ...
... it that will make it understand. All depends on the degree of development of the individual’s consciousness. The Mother Questions and Answers (1955): 25 May 1955 “Late, I learned that when reason died then Wisdom was born; before that liberation, I had only knowledge.” Once again I must repeat that the form of these Aphorisms is purposely paradoxical in order to give the mind a little shock... related instincts, anger, fear, greed, lust etc. that belong to this field of the nature. Mind and vital are mixed up on the surface of the consciousness, but they are quite separate forces in themselves and as soon as one gets behind the ordinary surface consciousness one sees them as separate, discovers their distinct action and can with the aid of this knowledge analyse their surface mixtures. It is... a knowledge that comes from the mind, it is a knowledge which comes, as I said, from the mystic depths of the soul or from a higher consciousness; and the mind concentrates it in the physical world and organises it to give a basis of action to the higher consciousness. One has this experience very clearly when one wants to organise one’s life. Then, there is another use. When one is in contact ...
... the greatest iconoclastic movement ever thrown up by the human consciousness. First of all, it denied the tradition itself; it did not recognise the authority and sanctity of the purve pitarah , the ancient fathers, nor their revealed knowledge, the Veda. Buddhism enjoined the priority and supremacy of the individual's own consciousness, own effort and own realisation. Be thou thy own light. Work out... inferior power of the mind or consciousness, but it is a strong ¹ Wordsworth, "We Are Seven". Page 281 power and has its use and utility. It is the power that gives the form and pattern for the display of consciousness and intelligence in outward expression and external living; it is a firm weapon that gives control over these inferior ranges of consciousness. The leap from the se... sense-consciousness or the elements of consciousness, from a mental growth just adequate and not too specialised, straight into the supra-sensuous and the transcendent had been an inevitable necessity, so that the human consciousness might get the first taste of its supreme status and value: a similar necessity brought to the fore this element of the mind, the mind's own power - of judgement and will-so ...
... something upon it that will make it understand. All depends on the degree of development of the individual's consciousness. It is a purely individual question. Mother, when you speak of the suprarational domain, is it a domain higher than the reason or is it a special domain? It is rather a state than a domain. In the physical it is possible to have a suprarational domain, in the vital it is possible... master and judge, it is perfect. But for this the growing consciousness must already be developed enough in a suprarational domain to be able to Page 169 act on the reason from above and make it understand the thing, because that domain is not a part of reason. So naturally it denies it unless there is a part of the consciousness which is sufficiently developed to be able to put something... have a suprarational domain, and there are suprarational regions which lie beyond all these domains. In a certain part of the consciousness and of life it is rather a state than a region. It is a mode of being. It is something which goes beyond the state of ordinary consciousness. But even physically it can be experienced, vitally also. Suddenly one may feel that one is in contact with something surpassing ...
... , happy or unhappy or indifferent. This tortuous journey of the individual can only end when his impure and limited ego-consciousness transforms itself and attains to the status of the supernature of the divine Consciousness. Now along this long long track of this meandering adventure of the individual's evolving consciousness, he is bound to encounter many obstacles at different stages of his... are not accidentally brought about in an individual's life. Their appearances are governed by a supreme wisdom which has been surely leading the individual on to his divine destination. Now every individual's nature is shot through and through with a legion of weaknesses, of which only a few are barely known to the individual's surface consciousness but most of them remain submerged below and... long route of the traveller. Now consider the case of any individual sadhaka at random. His consciousness has been advancing forward, however slowly, following the course of the universal evolutionary movement. This movement forward can be split up into two distinct phases. The first phase concerns the progress of the individual, registered in the course of a single life-time limited between ...
... There are different statuses of the divine consciousness. There are also different statuses of transformation. First is the psychic transformation, in which all is in contact with the Divine through the individual psychic consciousness. Next is the spiritual transformation in which all is merged in the Divine in the cosmic consciousness. Third is the supramental transformation in which... entire consciousness and power of Being, it is altogether indispensable that we gather up our consciousness and rise out of the sphere of ignorant mind into the radiant higher altitudes of the Spirit. And these ascents must be made in full awareness and not merely in the immobile trance-state of absorbed superconscience. For in the latter case, on the return to the waking consciousness from... widening into immense ranges of new being, new consciousness, new potentialities of action." 1 But this ascension of our consciousness to these higher luminous planes, even if permanently centred there, does not suffice for the spiritual transformation of our being and nature. The permanent ascent from the lower to the higher consciousness must be followed by the complementary process ...
... only a beginning; spiritualisation and the descent of the higher consciousness is not enough, it is only a middle term; the ultimate achievement needs the action of the supramental Consciousness and Force. Something less than that may very well be considered enough by the individual, but it is not enough for the earth-consciousness to take the definitive stride forward it must take at one time or... There are different statuses (avasthā) of the Divine Consciousness. There are also different statuses of transformation. First is the psychic transformation, in which all is in contact with the Divine through the individual psychic consciousness. Next is the spiritual transformation in which all is merged in the Divine in the cosmic consciousness. Third is the supramental transformation in which... a putting on of the spiritual consciousness, dynamic as well as static, in every part of the being down to the subconscient. That cannot be done by the influence of the Self leaving the consciousness fundamentally as it is with only purification, enlightenment of the mind and heart and quiescence of the vital. It means a bringing down of the Divine Consciousness static and dynamic into all these ...
... could have remained unaffected by it. Thus we have numerous proofs to establish the fact that a collective refinement emanates from the individual refinement while the quality of the individual model's consciousness remains as inexplicable as the phenomenon of consciousness itself. Why were such models unlike any other self-centred man? Why must a Dadhichi, instead of enjoying life, sacrifice it so that... in the conduct and actions of the people concerned. With this scope of Culture in view, as said earlier, we can broadly identify two streams of it: individual and collective. Often an example in refinement or nobility set by an individual becomes a star to which the society hitches its wagon. Let us take the instance of King Harishchandra. He promised to grant anything a sage asked of him and... depression and violent upheavals of raw pas sion. The latter (the elevation which Culture brings) culti vates right intelligence, poise and calm, the elements required for progress in consciousness. Progress in consciousness - that is the purpose of our life's journey. Let me quote Sri Aurobindo again: The whole aim of a great culture is to lift man up to something which at first he is not ...
... its polyphonic nature. In the ancient and mediaeval ages, the ages of separatism and exclusiveness of clans and tribes and regions, even in the later age of the states and nations, the individual group-consciousness was strong and sedulously fostered. Languages and literature grew and developed more or less independently and with equal vigour, although always through some kind of give and take. But... expression even for the few, must have some living contact with the many, the people themselves. Some kind of atmosphere is needed where the few can breathe and live the language they adopt. Even for an individual when he takes to a foreign tongue, it is necessary in order to be perfectly at home and master in that language that he should live sometime (seven years is the minimum given by a French critic)... given word conveys. Of course, double entendre or suggestiveness is a quality or capacity that all languages that claim a status must possess; it is necessary to express something of the human consciousness. Still, in French that quality has a limited, if judicious and artistic application; in English it is a wild growth. French expresses better human psychology, while meta-physical realities find ...
... of aspiration and tapasya, burning under the earth, that is to say, in the subconscient. It opens the earth, the physical consciousness to the Divine Light. Moonlight may symbolise the spiritual consciousness and the room your own personal being or individual physical consciousness. With these clues it will be easy for you to understand the significance of your experience. The fire you saw was... depths of the inner consciousness due to the pressure for the change. The wideness of light you saw was the wideness of the true consciousness liberated from the narrow limits of the human mind, human vital, human body consciousness. It is true that the mind is narrow, not only yours, but all human minds even the most developed,—compared with the wideness of the true consciousness which has no limits... some association in the mind probably coupling Agni with the psychic. Of course the individual Agni fire has its starting-point in the psychic, but the mere burning of the fire does not show that the psychic is coming forward. When it burns in the heart, it is the fire in the psychic. The psychic fire is individual and takes usually the form of a fire of aspiration or personal tapasya. This Fire is ...
... real, must be the workings of an active Power felt in the individual's consciousness and the transcriptions of an eternal Truth powerful to transform mind, life and body. And because it is thus real, effective, imperative, the generalisation of the supramental consciousness and the spiritual life is the sole force that can lead to individual and collective perfection in earth's highest creatures. Only... discovered by the individual in his mind and will and psychic sense and then extended to the race. The supreme law also must be discovered by the individual in his spirit. Then only, through a spiritual influence and not by the mental idea, can it be extended to others. A moral law can be imposed as a rule or an ideal on numbers of men who have not attained that level of consciousness or that fineness... relations and their inevitable execution in the act. The quarrel between the individual and society or disastrous struggle between one community and another could not exist: the cosmic consciousness imbedded in embodied beings would assure a harmonious diversity in oneness. In the actual state of humanity, it is the individual who must climb to this height as a pioneer and precursor. His isolation will ...
... one aspires without asking, it is the Supreme Consciousness Page 87 that hears and answers immediately by the most favourable conditions for the most rapid integral progress. 4.5.1969 May I be like a new-born in the Mother's arms! All individual consciousnesses are like babies in the infinite arms of the Supreme Consciousness. Only there is a great difference between those... contraries, the oppositions have been the great means employed by Nature to awaken the inconscient to consciousness and the inertia to movement of progress. When inconscience and inertia would have disappeared, the alternations will no longer be necessary. 29.11.1969 Can the individual rise above the alternations of light and darkness while the universal inconscience and inertia exist... having fixed hours of meditation. I aspire to live more and more in the true consciousness at Your feel. . . It is good. Yesterday I asked this Consciousness what was the condition required to be able to receive it without deforming it. It replied, "One must be able to stand in the light of the Supreme Consciousness without casting a shadow." This means the absence of ego. 14.4.1969 ...
... psychic world". There, in the psychic world, will take place the proper assimilation of the past experiences of the individual being and the preparation for its next earthly life. Such, then, is the general line of movement. But in the case of those individuals whose consciousness has not yet been sufficiently developed, who are tied down to the pleasures and enjoyments of the physical world,... provide these undeveloped individuals with new physical bodies as soon as possible, may be at times immediately after the dissolution of the just preceding body, so that they may continue their needed development. Such is the case with the undeveloped beings. But the general line may be infringed and another line followed even in the case of those individuals whose consciousness is sufficiently evolved... the spheres of existence, the earthly-physical world and the supraphysical worlds, bring their own separate significant contributions. Now, just as in the case of an individual human being there are planes of consciousness like the physical, the vital, the mental and others, so also in the cosmic field there exist beyond the physical-material world other worlds like the vital, mental, etc. And ...
... real soul. When we meet these great beings, we look at them each with our own limited individual ignorant consciousness, that is, through our own unconsciousness. Then again, these great souls, when they come on earth they take up a human form representing an aspect of human consciousness or terrestrial consciousness. And naturally this outer form is an aspect of that ignorance. All souls, big or... a great soul. Because we love them we love to retain the little touches and impressions on our consciousness. In fact, each of us has a personal perception or impression of the contacts we had with them. And we must also remember that no individual soul, big or small, is complete in his own individual evolution—all souls are parts of the same One, the Unique Divine. As in their human outer being... or small, come on the earth for the same purpose: to accept and illumine this ignorance or self-forgetfulness and thereby to dissolve it and regain the original state of Divine consciousness. Naturally big souls have a big responsibility—the greater the soul, the greater its share of work here. And we who are not yet conscious of and established in our own soul, cannot perceive other souls. We simply ...
... the divine birth that descends into the movements of upward will of the offering. It is by the junction of the two that the divine will is injected into the aspiring individual; it is then in the purity of the individual's consciousness that the divine will begins to operate. That will is the transcendental will, the will that constantly unifies all the workings of Para Prakriti and Apara Prakriti,... does not imply continuous withdrawal into some deep sleep of Samadhi away from all world consciousness, nor is it the preparatory movement for a dissolution of the natural being and the individual soul into some absolute Self, since that state of brahma-nirvana can exist simultaneously with world-consciousness and it is even in its own way included. For it is stated that the sages who have won nirvana... divine, all the manifestation of the divine in human being, is essentially an influx of the divine from its transcendence and universality, and each individual who receives in his being this influx is a recipient of the descent of the divine consciousness and therefore of divine incarnation, divine avatarhood. But Sri Krishna goes farther and describes certain conditions under which the world-situation ...
... neither can be claimed as the truth. The consciousness by which we affirm the featureless sole Reality can be as fallacious as that by which we affirm our individual self and the universe. If consciousness is the self-awareness of the eternal Existence, it can only be this self-awareness seeing its own power and the works of its power as a real world. If consciousness is a creation of the evolution, 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 worst enigma. What is the sense and justification of the individual, his consciousness, his feeling of self, his personality? Is our individuality... universal Inconscience, Consciousness appears to come in as only an incident, a development, a strange consequence of some ill-understood operations of Energy in inconscient Matter. It arises out of an original Inconscience, it dissolves or sinks back into the Inconscience. Once it has appeared it persists indeed but as a general phenomenon precariously manifested in individual living beings. It has ...
... discover its larger truth as the cosmic Individual, to get beyond itself and know and live in some supreme Being, Consciousness and Bliss of existence. For this immense task it is equipped only with the instruments of its original Ignorance. Its limited being is the cause of all the difficulty, discord, struggle, division that mars life. The limitation of its consciousness, unable to dominate or assimilate... something above our normal and usual being; it is something into which we strive to grow, but it does not seem to be the normal stuff, the natural being or atmosphere of the individual and the society in their ordinary consciousness and their daily life. That life is practical and not idealistic; it is concerned not with good, beauty, spiritual experience, the higher truth, but with interests, physical... transformation to life. Instead of peace they seem to bring rather a sword; for they increase the number and tension of conflict of the unreconciled forces, ideas, impulses of which the individual human consciousness and the life of the collectivity are the arena. The ideal and practical reason of man labours to find amidst all this the right law of life and action; it strives by a rule of moderation ...
... which aims at building a body capable of serving as a fit instrument for the higher consciousness Page 135 demands very austere habits; a great regularity in sleep, food, physical exercises and in all activities. One should study scrupulously the needs of one's body — for these vary according to individuals — and then fix a general programme. Once the programme is fixed, one must stick to... 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... of action, the value of an idea is in proportion to its pragmatic power. This power, it is Page 147 true, varies much according to the individual in whom it acts. A particular idea that has a great driving force in one individual fails totally in another. But this power itself is contagious. Certain ideas are able to transform the world. It is these that ought to be expressed; they ...
... A physical culture which aims at building a body capable of serving as a fit instrument for a higher consciousness demands very austere habits: a great regularity in sleep, food, exercise and every activity. By a scrupulous study of one's own bodily needs—for they vary with each individual—a general programme will be established; and once this has been done well, it must be followed rigorously... 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 had thus... supramental oneness. The mental liberation or liberation from ignorance will establish in the being the mind of light or gnostic consciousness, whose expression will have the creative power of the Word. The vital liberation or liberation from desire gives the individual will the power to identify itself perfectly and consciously with the divine will and brings constant peace and serenity as well ...
... Cent. Ed., pp. 754-55) (i)"...rebirth is an indispensable condition for any long duration and evolution of the individual being in the earth-existence." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., pp. 735-36) (ii)"...[by it alone the ascent of the] individual soul-consciousness in the body... can... take place... within the ascending order..." (Ibid., p. 758) Page 158 (iii) Necessity... we shall discover that there is in each of us a consciousness that has been living throughout the ages and manifesting in a multitude of forms." (CWM, Vol. 15, p. 134) "What we see of Nature and of human nature justifies this view of a birth of the individual soul from form to form until it reaches the human level of manifested consciousness which is its instrument for rising to yet higher... purpose in its evolution is accomplished." (Ibid., p. 439) (Q. 19): What progresses from life to life? (A. 19): "... within the individual, contained in each form, there Page 156 is an organisation of consciousness which is closer to and more directly under the influence of the inner divine Presence,... [and] has a life independent of the physical form - this is ...
... Disturbances Associated with the Physical The most prominent characteristic of physical consciousness is inertia or Tamas. Therefore an individual with a predominantly physical consciousness is slow in reacting to stimulation. An intense stimulus is needed to produce an emotional reaction in tamasic individuals. As the Mother remarks about such persons: "... they always need new excitements, dramas... little, makes you come out of yourself." 21 Because of the inertia of physical consciousness, what is experienced as a pleasant stimulus by the average person is too feeble or dull for the individual whose consciousness is chiefly that of the physical. In order to feel a pleasant stimulation, such a tamasic individual needs a much more intense stimulus, such that an average person would experience... weaknesses of body, vital and mind in the individual that provide an opening for the action of the vital forces, the underlying causes of all disturbances are seen to exist within the individual. Freedom from psychological disturbances can therefore be attained only by developing a state of consciousness other than the physical, vital and mental consciousness which characterizes the "normal" state of ...
... ty in each name and form, a single life of many impermanent individuals. There would be a self-shaping of the one consciousness in correspondence with the type of each created being, but it could very well begin in each individual body with the appearance of the physical form and end with its cessation. Individual would follow individual as wave follows wave, the sea remaining always the same; 4 ... self-existence: the creation of a world of individual beings by Maya is an imposition on this self-existence; it takes place, perhaps, in a sort of self-absorbed sleep of consciousness, Page 775 suṣupti , 1 out of which yet all active consciousness and modification of phenomenal becoming emerge, just as in the modern theory our consciousness is an impermanent development out of the ... 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 which started without consciousness and without individuality in an ...
... too the same at a further remove is not subjectivism in the ordinary philosophical sense, for it does not reduce matter to the individual's sensation and perception and idea. Although it opens up the possibility of the individual consciousness's partaking in a consciousness which is cosmic and by which matter is not experienced as an extraneous foreign substance, it asserts merely the relation between... but pushes towards an ever greater efficiency and ever keener consciousness it has a vague kind of goalful striving, an undefined aim of higher and higher and is therefore still finalistic though in a broad and unspecific sense. Some finalists take up the peculiar position that there are no élan vital, no mind-force, no individual "souls" apart from the body, nothing except matter, but God, while... into physics and the field of relativity theory and quantum theory. In an earlier series of scientific essays we have already tackled the problem of consciousness and the brain, explored the implications of extrasensory perception, touched on the individual and cosmic subliminal and stopped at the threshold of the mystical. To round off our scientific survey we should glance at modern physics and examine ...
... are different statuses ( avasthā ) of the Divine Consciousness. There are also different statues of transformation. First is the psychic transformation, in which all is in contact with the Divine through the individual psychic consciousness. Next is the spiritual transformation in which all is merged in the Divine in the cosmic consciousness. Third is the supramental transformation in which... only what is needed to be brought forward so that the working is done.¹ 13-8-1933 The Mother's consciousness and mine are the same, the one Divine Consciousness in two, because that is necessary for the play. Nothing can be done without her knowledge and force, without her consciousness – if anybody really feels her consciousness, he should know that I am there behind it and if he feels... the earth-consciousness; I see it above and know what it is – I feel it ever gleaming down on my consciousness from above and I am seeking to make it possible for it to take up the whole being into its own native power, instead of the nature of man continuing to remain in half-light, half-darkness. I believe the descent of this Truth opening the way to a development of divine consciousness here to be ...
... could remain vitally and physically ln the untransformed individual human consciousness, in unchanged contact with it, satisfy its demands, and yet be immune under all circumstances and in all conditions against strain and struggle and illness. If I want to divinise the human consciousness, to bring down the supramental, the Truth-Consciousness, the Light, the Force into the physical to transform it... not only the mind, but the vital and physical consciousness can be imbued with this faith, dejection will become either impossible or so evidently an outer thing thrown from outside and not belonging to the consciousness that it will not be able to keep its hold at all. A faith of that kind is a very helpful first step towards the reversal of consciousness which makes one see the inner truth of things... symbols of what is going on in the inner being, in the consciousness behind, and the results well up from time to time in the external or surface consciousness in such feeling as the awareness of a softening and opening which you had, devotion/joy, peace, Ananda, etc. When the opening is complete, there is likely to be a more direct consciousness of the working that is going on behind till it is no ...
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