... this life into that inner life and gradually reshape the present life in the mould of the inner life. That is your duty, your task, particularly you who are students, boys and girls, that is your central work; study and learning and all else is secondary. What you should do and what you can do is to breathe a new air, live in a better, more beautiful way. You can have this inner life; it is already there... there, this inner life, without much difficulty; it is already there, a collective inner life, which is so beautiful as I say, filled with the fragrance of the Mother's Presence. It is a collective life in which you all are not only brothers and sisters but one body and soul unified in the Mother's loving and living substance. That inner life you have to bring out in your body and all the external... into it. Now our task is to come more and more in contact with that reality even in our waking moments, to be conscious of that which is nothing but the Mother's Presence. Half of you, your inner life, is already there, bathing there in that Page 43 luminous happy air. Only try to be conscious of that: if you are conscious of it even a little, you will feel immensely happy, feel ...
... historicity or biography comes to, does it not?) but what he was and did within; it is only that that gives any value to his outer life at all. It is the inner life that gives to the Page IX outer any power it may have and the inner life of a spiritual man is something vast and full and, at least in the great figures, so crowded and teeming with significant things that no biographer ... consent to a disciple for helping a writer of his biography, he wrote in his inimitable way, "I do not want to be murdered by my own disciples in cold print." How could one probe into such an inner life — infinitely rich not only in its human content of intellectual, emotional and volitional movements, but filled with many varied spiritual experiences which transcend the human consciousness?... Mind to Supermind, from the human to the Divine, is accompanied in his case by a descent with that Light and Power into the human instrumentation, — mind, life and body. A Yogi's real life is his inner life, — in fact, that is his only real life. Even from the external point of view the writing of Sri Aurobindo's life presents a very great difficulty due to his versatility. He was a professor, ...
... can be divine in that inferior sense, the life of the infraspiritual superman, mental demi-god or vital Titan, Deva or Asura. This inner life once created, to convert our whole surface being, our thought, feeling, action in the world, into a perfect power of that inner life, must be our other preoccupation. Only if we live in that deeper and greater way in our dynamic parts, can there be a force for creating... existence. There can undoubtedly be a spiritual life within, a kingdom of heaven within us which is not dependent on any outer manifestation or instrumentation or formula of external being. The inner life has a supreme spiritual importance and the outer has a value only in so far as it is expressive of the inner status. However the man of spiritual realisation lives and acts and behaves, in all ways... externalised surface existence, it is the world that seems to create us; but in the turn to the spiritual life it is we who must create ourselves and our world. In this new formula of creation, the inner life becomes of the first importance and the rest can be only its expression and outcome. It is this, indeed, that is indicated by our own strivings towards perfection, the perfection of our own soul ...
... this life into that inner life; and gradually reshape the present life in the mould of the inner life. That is your duty, your task, particularly you who are students, boys and girls, that is your central work – study and learning and all that is secondary. What you should do and what you can is to breathe a new air, live in a better, more beautiful way. You can have this inner life, that is already... there, this inner life not with much difficulty, for it is already there, a collective inner life, which is so beautiful as I say, filled with the fragrance of the Mother's Presence. It is a collective life in which you all are not only brothers and sisters but one body and soul unified in the Mother's loving and living substance. Page 107 That inner life you have to... enter into it. Now our task is to come more and more in contact with that reality even in our waking moments, to be conscious of that which is nothing but the Mother's Presence. Half of you, your inner life is already there, bathing there in that luminous happy air. Only try to be conscious of that: if you are conscious of it even a little you will feel immensely happy, feel that you are beautiful, ...
... which it can easily open and so feel the unseen dynamic forces and realities behind the material universe. There is an inner life-mind which does not need for its perceptions the evidence of the physical senses, is not limited by them; for on this level our inner life and the inner life of the world become real to us independent of the body and of the symbols of the physical world which alone we call... we are in direct contact with the infinite, in touch with the self and highest reality of things, Sachchidananda. In ourselves, behind our surface natural being, there is a soul, an inner mind, an inner life-part which can open to these heights as well as to the occult spirit within us, and this double opening is the secret of a new evolution; by that breaking of lids and walls and boundaries the co ...
... allowed to run and exhaust itself if it could while its possessor professed to be untouched and unconcerned by it. When none of these solutions could be attained, the sadhaka simply led a double inner life, divided between his spiritual experiences and his vital weaknesses to the end. If you want a true mastery and transformation of the vital movements, it can be done only on condition you allow your... would have to marry legally and socially with the consent of the father, live for twenty years or more together outside and then come for admission to the Asram with the resolution to develop an inner life independent from each other and turned to the Divine alone. What you propose as described in your letter is something quite different—it might stand in a Vaishnava sadhana or in some form of Karma... which does not fit in with the surroundings, of marriages imposed that are unsuitable and where there is no meeting-point between husband and wife, of an environment hostile and intolerant of one's inner life and on the other hand the innate tendency of the Indian mind to seek a refuge in the spiritual or religious escape will sufficiently account for the new development. If society wants to prevent it ...
... other an inner life. The first gets restless because the inner life is not a life of outward expansion; the other becomes miserable because its aim is not realised. Neither personality need be thrown away in this yoga; but the outer vital one must allow the inner to establish itself, give it the first place and consent to be only an instrument of the soul— and to obey the law of the inner life. This... This is what H's mind still refuses to understand; he thinks one must be either all gloomy and cold and grave or else bring the bubble and effervescence into the inner life. A quiet happy and glad control of the vital by the inner being is a thing Page 35 he is not able as yet to conceive. The check on your poetry can only be a temporary one— something there needs adjustment I suppose ...
... significant power and form of itself the whole common existence. In all spiritual living the inner life is the thing of first importance; the spiritual man lives always within, and in a world of the Ignorance that refuses to change he has to be in a certain sense separate from it and to guard his inner life against the intrusion and influence of the darker forces of the Ignorance: he is out of the world... whole way of being, thinking, living, acting would be governed by the power of a vast universal spirituality. All the trinities of the Spirit would be real to his self-awareness and realised in his inner life. All his existence would be fused into oneness with the transcendent and universal Self and Spirit; all his action would originate from and obey the supreme Self and Spirit's divine governance of... individual self with the total self, of his individual will with the total will, of his individual action with the total action. For what we most suffer from in our outer life and its reactions upon our inner life is the imperfection of our relations with the world, our ignorance of others, our disharmony with the whole of things, our inability to equate our demand on the world with the world's demand on us ...
... give me Immortality? The truth then is this: the stronger the inner life a nation builds up and organises, the longer it lives and the greater the power it acquires to revive when it falls for a time into decline. Naturally, a good deal depends upon the nature and quality of this inner life. There are certain types of inner life which mean the very source of life, there are others that are only... only secondary sources. Ancient Greece or even modern France has had a well-developed inner life, but this inner life was very strongly wedded to and welded into the outer life, it lay at least at one remove farther from the true source of life. Ancient Egypt less intellectual, less mentally cultivated, was in contact with the occult, the subliminal base of life, more potent and dynamic springs of co... in mortality, as the Vedic Rishis say. The stone monuments bear a significance and a message even to us, because they embody and point to what moved, inspired and fashioned the consciousness, the inner life of these races. And it is that that outlives the glories of governments and rulers. What happened usually in ancient times among more ancient peoples, and in Asia generally, happened with ...
... If the decline lasts long, it generally ends in death. But there resides, in the vast subtleties of the collective being of a people, a power of self-renewal with the help of its inner life-idea. The inner life-idea is the key to a nation's psychology and is more tenacious than the outer form. If it is great and intense and the body is strong enough and the surface mind plastic and adaptive without... many cycles run their courses before the final collapse. Certain of the ancient civilisations had this kind of continuity and resurrection. But even they could not last indefinitely. For, the inner life-idea itself of a super-organism is only a projection of the authentic soul behind, a principle of that soul's manifestation. This soul in turn is a manifestation and vehicle of the eternal Spirit... whose expression in time is the whole universe. The Cosmic Self or "Virat", as the Rishis called it, acting through its particularised representative, the soul, is the true source and support of the inner life-idea of the collective Page 16 being, as it is of the individual. And if the source and support is not sufficiently contacted in consciousness through the soul, the eternal is never ...
... Page 30 relative silence, the moment we set foot outside our room or retreat, we fall right back into the usual turmoil as well as into the familiar separation between inner and outer self, inner life and worldly life. What we need is a total life; we need to live the truth of our being every day, at every moment, not only on holidays or in solitude, and blissful meditations in pastoral settings... psychic being has participated in our outer life; the more we have "colonized" the outside, the more Page 91 memories we take with us. Unfortunately, we are often content to have a so-called inner life, while we live outer life in any old way, without paying much attention to it – but this is the opposite of an integral yoga. If, however, from the very beginning, we embrace everything in our search... psychic and its consciousness-force, are formed and impart some coherence and continuity to this volatile mixture. But from the moment the body ceases to be the main center, and one begins to have an inner life independent of physical circumstances and physical life, and especially when one does yoga, which is a process of accelerated evolution, life truly changes, as do death and sleep; one begins to exist ...
... soul and an inner rebirth. A radical change of outlook on life was their motive force for the change, if any, of outward conduct; a complete revolution & renovation of the soul was its demand on the inner life of man. Troubling themselves little with the management of conduct & feeling always for the springs of life & action, they left the care of ethics to other Shastras; neglecting comparatively the... stands on a strong affirmation of the ego-sense & it has no meaning in a gospel of divine life & universal consciousness. The phrase can only stand here, not as an ethical rule, but a rule of the inner life, tending not to the confirmation but to the annulment of the ego. The Mosaic commandment is consistent in itself & with the spirit of the Decalogue. These Judaic moral Ten Tables start from ... felicity. Nayati ráye asmán. Bodily action is useful as a pressure on the materialised mind, but the better way is to act from within outwards, not from outwards within. To the man who lives the inner life, mind-state is all-important, bodily action only a variable symbol or a theatrical demonstration. Great spirits have yearned after Sannyasa as a symbol of inner renunciation and freedom; but the ...
... accurate, it may express only one part of the nature,—and this one, you say, is not reliable. The best thing would be for her to write to you the letter she proposed to write—"at length about her inner life and spiritual seeking." That might give better grounds for judging whether she can or cannot undertake this kind of Yoga. Page 88 Yes, certainly, I liked your poem immensely. It is... stiffness of the limbs. This was the P. of the consciousness retiring from the body inwards under the pressure of a force from above,—that pressure stabilising the body into an immobile support of the inner life in a kind of strong and still spontaneous ā sana. Next, the feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, almost, as you say, making you unconscious. This was the ascendinq of the lower... you is already a Yogin and bhakta and since that is so and it has shown itself, the spiritual turn of your outer life too is predestined and inevitable. It shows also that you have already a deep inner life, Yogic and spiritual, which is veiled only because of the strong outward turn your education and past activities have given to your thinking mind and lower vital parts. It is precisely to correct ...
... and chisel the meaning of its great words to represent precisely the inner life. I suppose French is worse stilt: spirituel means in it "mentally sparkling" - even an atheist and materialist and sensualist can be spirituel! The Protestant Reformation had much to do with befogging the English language in regard to the inner life. The Roman Catholics had more or less accurate notions about the ... preferably in both, as the composers of the Veda did. You have asked about Tagore. If Page 6 he attained, on the plane proper to him, a supreme creative pitch in his poetry of the inner life or of mystical and spiritual realities, he could be hailed as a rishi. In a general sense, the poet who gives sovereign expression from the inside, so to speak, to any plane becomes a rishi, no matter ...
... and chisel the meaning of its great words to represent precisely the inner life. I suppose French is worse still: "spirituel" means in it "mentally sparkling" -even an atheist and materialist and sensualist can be "spirituel"! The Protestant Reformation had much to do with befogging the English language in regard to the inner life. The Roman Catholics had more or less accurate notions about the ... of things, either in word or action, preferably in both, as did the composers of the Vedas and the Upanishads. If Tagore attained, on the plane proper to him, a creative pitch in his poetry of the inner life or of mystical and spiritual realities, he could be hailed as a rishi. In a general sense, the poet who gives sovereign expression from the inside, so to speak, to any plane becomes a rishi, to matter ...
... tree "Unity". The Mother expressed her wish to have marble seats around the banyan tree so that people could meditate there quietly. The Mother has written about the "Inner Life": Once a man has tasted the joy of inner life, nothing else will ever satisfy him . ... see the squirrels, the deer and the rabbit. She made small happy exclamations, pointing at various details, and laughed. Then on a sheet of paper, after a little concentration, she wrote: The Inner Life I was amazed to see the reproduction of this painting in The Matrimandir Newsletter No. 66, May-June 1990. Hindu mythology reveals that the banyan tree Ficus religiosa is the sacred ...
... is what historicity or biography comes to, does it not?) but what he was and did within; it is only that that gives any value to his outer life at all. It is the inner life that gives to the outer any power it may have, and the inner life of a spiritual man is something vast and full and, at least in the great figures, so crowded and teeming with significant things that no biographer or historian could... could ever hope to seize it all or tell it. Whatever is significant in the outward life is so because it is a symbol of what has been realised within himself and one may go on and say that the inner life also is only significant as an expression, a living representation of the movement of the Divinity behind it. That is why we need not enquire whether the stories about Krishna were transcripts, however ...
... by the same forces and the same Page 288 processes, one in the physical worlds and the supraphysical, that our inner life and its development are governed, the Rishis adopted the phenomena of physical Nature as just symbols for those functionings of the inner life which it was their difficult task to indicate in the concrete language of a sacred poetry that must at the same time serve for... and utilised, all things produce good for the soul, increase its welfare, enlarge its felicity. And this divine revolution is effected both in the lower physical existence and in the more complete inner life which uses the physical for its manifestation. "The Seer takes to himself all forms, he brings out (creates or manifests) good for the twofold (two-footed), for the fourfold (four-footed)." 4 ...
... Chapter IV Speech and Yoga Outer Speech and the Inner Life Even those who have a strong inner life, take a long time before they can connect it with the outer speech and action. Outer speech belongs to the externalising mind—that is why it is so difficult to connect it with the inner life. Talk is more external than writing, it depends more on the physical and ...
... weakness and poverty in this respect. Perhaps it was due to the necessity of an exclusive preoccupation with and concentration on the inner life. Only one or two Rishis like Yajnavalkya for instance had demanded an equal fullness and power in the outer as in the inner life. Yajnavalkya's great dictum that he had need for both, ubhayam eva, was indeed uttered in no uncertain terms and without hesitation... example of a man who, though a Rishi with a true knowledge of the Reality and a powerful realisation, is in other respects, in normal life, a perfectly incapable and helpless man; his capacity for an inner life seems to be matched by his incapacity in the outer. He had to bring himself down to the level of an abject beggar in his ordinary life; at every step he had to depend on his wife's assistance, without ...
... resolution and sincerity that is a greater obstacle than the circumstances. One has to give priority to the growth of inner life and arrange other objectives of life in their proper place. One should not yield to the pressure of society or other conventions when it concerns one's inner life. Q : The spiritual undercurrent in India is with you, while in Europe it is against you. A : Yes—all... support is always there. Q : Such opposition may provide conditions for a quicker spiritual growth, don't you think ? A : Yes, one must never compromise on fundamentals so far as the inner life is concerned. In mamiaining the inner growth if one receives a knock one should learn to bear it. Generally one should try to create as much goodwill as possible. One should guard against the ...
... whole way of being, thinking, living, acting would be governed by the power of a vast universal spirituality. All the trinities of the Spirit would be real to his self-awareness and realised in his inner life... all his action would originate from and obey the supreme Self and Spirit's divine governance of Nature. 59 Supramentalisation or gnosticisation would not, of course, mean a sudden or... "critical mass" of such individuals too would be necessary: The inner change can begin to take shape in a collective form only if the gnostic individual finds others who have the same kind of inner life as himself and can form with them a group with its own autonomous existence or else a separate community or order of being with its own inner law of life. 62 With the appearance of the gnostic... Life Divine is the recordation of his own adventures and realisations in the invisible realms of consciousness that a direct description of the book becomes, in effect, a portrait as well of his inner life. The great aim of the Arya was "the formation of a vast synthesis of knowledge, harmonising the divers religious traditions of humanity, occidental as well as oriental", and The Life Divine ...
... the outer state to which it gives attention only when it chooses. It is good. Fasten on the true thing, the concentration in the inner being and the inner life. All these outer things are of minor importance and it is only when the inner life is well established that the difficulties with which they are hampered can get their true solution. That you have seen several times when you went inside... This is the sign of the consciousness retiring from the body inwards under the pressure of a force from above,—that Page 215 pressure stabilising the body into an immobile support of the inner life, in a kind of strong and still spontaneous āsana . There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of... Yogin and the bhakta and if it can fully emerge and take the lead, the spiritual turn of your outer life is predestined and inevitable. In the initially successful sadhak it has already built a deep inner life, Yogic and spiritual, which is veiled only because of some strong outward turn the education and past activities have given to the thinking mind and lower Page 218 vital parts. It is ...
... other an inner life. The first gets restless because the inner life is not a life of outward expansion; the other becomes miserable because its aim is not realised. Neither personality need be thrown away in this Yoga; but the outer vital one must allow the inner to establish itself, give it the first place and consent to be only an instrument of the soul and to obey the law of the inner life. This is... is what X 's mind still refuses to understand; he thinks one must be either all gloomy and cold and grave or else bring the vital bubble and effervescence into the inner life. A quiet, happy and glad control of the vital by the inner being is a thing he is not able as yet to conceive. Happiness and Contentment Happiness in the ordinary sense is a sunlit state of the vital with or without cause ...
... vigorous, society found itself baffled by an insurmountable difficulty; it could control his outward acts by its rigour, but it could not ultimately control his mental and spiritual life, yet this inner life psychical and spiritual tended irresistibly to master and mould outer physical actions. No sanction by which society could enforce its decrees, is of any ultimate utility against the victorious advance... direct coercion of his words and acts. In the later stages of the subtamasic social period we find that society has to a less or greater extent contracted its demands on the individual. Over his inner life and a certain part of his conduct, it exercises no other coercive influence than that of social disapproval expressed but not enacted; over another part of his conduct it exercises the right of enacting... social penalties more or less severe. Social disapproval unenacted is, Page 292 however, an ineffective control over mind and spirit. Society therefore, by no means content to leave the inner life of the individual free from the demands of its moral code, since any such abdication of its rule would lead, it instinctively felt, to moral anarchy, sought to dominate the individual intellect and ...
... e, ripeness and decline. The decline generally ends in death. But there resides in the vast subtleties of the collective being of a people a power of self-renewal with the help of its inner life-idea. The inner life-idea is the key to a nation's psychology and is more tenacious than the outer form. If it is great and intense and the body is strong enough and the surface-mind plastic and adaptive without... For, the inner life-idea itself of a super-organism is only a projection of the authentic soul-principle behind, which is meant to serve as a vehicle of the eternal Spirit whose manifestation in time is the whole universe. The cosmic Self or Virat, as the Rishis called it, acting through its particularised representative, the soul-principle, is the true source and support of the inner life-idea of the ...
... union of soul with soul are the things that are Page 211 to it most abiding and concrete- Mind, vital, body are means of expression and very precious means of expression, but the inner life is for it the first thing, the deepest reality and these have to be subordinated to it and conditioned by it its expression, its instruments and channel. I do not think that in my emphasis on the... things have always been stressed from the beginning and the more the human being is evolved, the more they take an importance. I do not. see how Yoga can be possible without this premier stress on the inner life, on the soul and the spirit. The emphasis on the mastery of the vital, its subordination and subjection to the spiritual and the psychic is also nothing new, strange or exorbitant. It has been insisted... It is a mistake to do so out of asceticism or with the idea of tapasya. One can stop these -things when they drop of themselves, because one is in full .experience and so interested in one's inner life that one has 310 energy to spare for the rest. Even then, there is no rule for .giving up; for there is no reason why the poetry etc. should mot be a part of sadhana. The love of applause, of fame ...
... increasing nearness to the higher and divine Self in humanity. There is a method of explaining the Gita in which not only this episode but the whole Mahabharata is turned into an allegory of the inner life and has nothing to do with our outward human life and action, but only with the battles of the soul and the powers that strive within us for possession. That is a view which the general character... Kutsa has grown into such an exact likeness of his divine companion that he can only be distinguished by Sachi, the wife of Indra, because she is "truth-conscious". The parable is evidently of the inner life of man; it is a figure of the human growing into the likeness of the eternal divine by the increasing illumination of Knowledge. But the Gita starts from action and Arjuna is the man of action and... with a mingled Page 26 word: speak one thing decisively by which I can attain to what is the best." It is always the pragmatic man who has no value for metaphysical thought or for the inner life except when they help him to his one demand, a dharma , a law of life in the world or, if need be, of leaving the world; for that too is a decisive action which he can understand. But to live and ...
... vigour and verve and interest in the details of the Asram work and life as well as in an inner life; the physical vital was carried in the stream. But for many this has dropped; they live in the unsatisfied vital physical and find everything desperately dull, gloomy and without interest or issue. In their inner life the tamas from the Inconscient has created a block or a bottleneck and they do not find... it is plainer sailing. There can be no question of our withdrawing protection and help. As for your reading these books, we have no objection at all, so long as you feel the need of it. When the inner life becomes more active again, you can either drop them again or make all mental activity a part of the sadhana according to your condition and inner impulse at the time. 25 October 1934 I have ...
... the Mother or Sri Aurobindo. But all can make a beginning in the inner life. By the inner life I do not mean merely the practice of religion — going to Church or temple, saying prayers or doing puja. I do not here envisage even the adoption of the life of a priest or a sadhu. No doubt, a priest or a sadhu is nearer the inner life than the ordinary religious person, yet the critical threshold may ...
... what historicity or biography comes to, does it not ?) but what he was and did within; it is only that that gives any value to his outer life at all. It is the inner life that gives to the outer any power it may have and the inner life of a spiritual man is something vast and full and, at least in the great figures, so crowded and teeming with significant things that no biographer or historian... could ever hope to seize it all or tell it. Whatever is significant in the outward life is so because it is a symbol of what has been realised within himself and one may go on and say that the inner life also is only significant as an expression, a living representation of the movement of the Divinity behind it. That is why we need not enquire whether the stories about Krishna were transcripts ...
... silence or peace or any pressure of force or anything else. But even those who have a strong inner life, take a long time before they can connect it with the outer speech and action. Outer speech belongs to the externalising mind — that is why it is so difficult to connect it with the inner life. What is lacking in my self-control is an ability to remain detached during... within and is supported and carried on by the inner being? If one is aware of one's inner being at all, one knows. It is an automatic result of consciousness. Of course if one has no inner life or spiritual experience then the question does not arise since then everything, thought, feeling, speech is external. Page 101 I don't think I am without inner being ...
... weakness and poverty in this respect. Perhaps it was due to the necessity of an exclusive preoccupation with and concentration on the inner life. Only one or two Rishis like Yajnavalkya for instance had demanded an equal fullness and power. in the outer as in the inner life. Yajnavalkya's great dictum that he had need for both, ubhayam eva, was indeed uttered in no uncertain terms and without hesitation... example of a man who, though a Rishi with a true knowledge of the Reality and a powerful realisation, is in other respects, in normal life, a perfectly incapable and helpless man; his capacity for an inner life seems to be matched by his incapacity in the outer. He had to bring himself down to the level of an abject beggar in his ordinary life; at every step he had to depend on his wife's assistance, without ...
... consciously to master this life energy, to possess and use it as he wills. The Yogi, the true Yogi, aims at a higher quality, a deeper potentiality of the life energy: it may be called the Inner Life Energy. This inner life energy is in a line with, is one with the universal life energy; therefore it is said when one possesses and controls this power one has command over the universal power. All other e... movements. By his side, Rama-krishna would appear quite tame—inactive, "introvert": fewer physical displacements or muscular exercises marked his life. And yet, ask anyone who is in touch with the inner life of these great souls, he will tell you, Vivekananda is only a spark from the mighty and concentrated Energy that Ramakrishna was. What is this spiritual or Yogic Energy? Ordinary people, ...
... consciously to master this life energy, to possess and use it as he wills. The Yogi, the true Yogi, aims at a higher quality, a deeper potentiality of the life energy: it may be called the Inner Life Energy. This inner life energy is in a line with, is one with the universal life energy; therefore it is said when one possesses and controls this power one has command over the universal power. All other e... movements. By his side, Ramakrishna would appear quite tame—inactive, "introvert": fewer physical displacements or muscular exercises marked his life. And yet, ask anyone who is in touch with the inner life of these great souls, he will tell you, Vivekananda is only a spark from the mighty and concentrated Energy that Ramakrishna was. What is this spiritual or Yogic Energy? Ordinary people, people ...
... consciously to master this life energy, to possess and use it as he wills. The Yogi, the true Yogi, aims at a higher quality, a deeper potentiality of the life energy: it may be called the Inner Life Energy. This inner life energy is in a line with, is one with the universal life energy; therefore it is said when one possesses and controls this power one has command over the universal power. All other energies... movements. By his side, Ramakrishna would appear quite tame – inactive, "introvert": fewer physical displacements or muscular exercises marked his life. And yet, ask anyone who is in touch with the inner life of these great souls, he will tell you, Vivekananda is only a spark from the mighty and concentrated Energy that Ramakrishna was. What is this spiritual or Yogic Energy? Ordinary people, people ...
... are in the mood of receiving the guest. One adopts the same attitude in the inner life keeping open to the Divine and receptive to Him. The results of these may not be noticeable at first—they depend upon sincerity of the aspiration— but some working may begin even unconsciously in the aspirant. Difficulties of inner life may tend to become less, what one thought impossible may become possible, one... And cannot fill the Spirit's sacred thirst. Then one begins to seek the Reality, seek the Truth, the Purpose in life. When this seeking becomes steady it becomes an aspiration, a flame of inner life rising up to meet the Truth, to know and surrender to a Power that is felt, and a contact is established. For those who know and have some understanding of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, it is easier ...
... Stalagmite of flame, The integral spirit climbs The dark in light for ever". Live you by love confined The spirit even though surrounded by darkness ascends to the heights of inner life "in light for ever". Stephen Spender also gives us remarkable touches of this in- ward subjective turn and of his perception of the worlds that are subliminal. Dissatisfied with the present European... natural phenomenon with a symbolic significance of human events, in another poem, 'Winter Garden', he makes the natural phenomenon itself a living thing and turns it into a suggestive symbol of man's inner life. He describes "The Winter Garden", perhaps symbolising a desolate heart, as follows:— "The season's anguish, crashing whirl-wind, ice, Have passed"— and yet says the author, "In... That man is not the master of his acts, his likes and dislikes and that events on the physical plane are mostly manipulated by subtle powers behind or above the physical is a truth of the inner life of man which is gradually finding its way in the realm of poetic creation. Peter Yates in his "Invocation" and "Word of Death" gives us the two most characteristic poems embodying the inmost ...
... one nameless Ineffable. But the greatest power of the Vedic teaching, that which made it the source of all later Indian philosophies, religions, systems of Yoga, lay in its application to the inner life of man. Man lives in the physical cosmos subject to death and the "much falsehood" of the mortal existence. To rise beyond this death, to become one of the immortals, he has to turn from the falsehood... sacrifice. The psychic and spiritual mystic endeavour which was the inner sense of the Vedic hymns, disappeared into the less intensely luminous but more wide and rich and complex psycho-spiritual inner life of Puranic and Tantric religion and Yoga. The Purano-Tantric stage of the religion was once decried by European critics and Indian reformers as a base and ignorant degradation of an earlier and ...
... and the scrupulous application of thought and scientific reason to the machinery of life, he would miss in it his own later attempt at the clear and noble application of the ideal reason to the inner life of the mind and the soul. He would find that in this civilisation beauty had become an exotic and the shining ideal mind in some fields a debased and exploited slave and in others a neglected stranger... upon the working of human society as a whole. Much has been diminished or lost, but it Page 82 can be recovered, eventually, if not with ease. Once restored to its true movement, the inner life of man will find that it has gained in materials, in power of plasticity, in a new kind of depth and wideness. And we shall have acquired a salutary habit of many-sided thoroughness and a sincere ...
... surrender to the Supreme Presence — surrender of our own selves, our thoughts and impulses, the work in hand, the environmental set-up of fellow-creatures and situation-complexes. In this manner our inner life goes on being not only intensified, deepened and heightened but also widened to cover the world which is the Divine's field of action. Again, the widening extends not merely to the subtle psy... dispose of the problem according to the Will of Its Wisdom. Mentioning a poise of general goodwill and the Will of the Divine's Wisdom, I am led to the memory of a strange incident in my own inner life. A situation had arisen in which I had felt extremely harassed by a certain person, I did not know what step to take. I went to the Samadhi and sent up my prayer to the Mother to guide me. I ...
... to emanate from Brahmoism. If the Brahmos held sway in East India, the Arya-Samaj dominated the North and part of the West. Swami Dayanand Saraswati is another example of a person whose inner life reflected nation-building activity. In 1875 he established the Arya Samaj in Bombay and the Samaj spread to other parts of the country. His Satyarth Prakash is a defence of Vedic religion and... twin features of intense personal feeling and intense community feeling, both of which exercised an important influence on Tagore. Tagore's example complements the Mahatma's. Both had a deeply felt inner life and in both, this inwardness co-existed with a deep concern for the people at large.Jn Gandhiji it took the form of an austere sense of Duty. In Tagore it took an aesthetic form, a love of Beauty ...
... contact, as opposed to those who dealt with her on a daily basis for business and the like. What has life been like for you since Mother left her body? In what way has your sadhana changed? My inner life, devotion and aspiration are now more concentrated. Naturally, with age, one develops more deeply the spiritual sense. What changes do you see taking place in the Ashram in the future? In the... good future and a very important role to play. America has more physical space than Europe and this is useful and helpful to the human spirit. An expansion of physical space is more helpful for the inner life. Also the Western world is burdened by an over-emphasis on mental constructions. It seems that Science drags its mental feet with no sense, yet, of exploration of the higher regions of the mind ...
... about your spiritual life and your difficulties. First, I should like you to get rid of the idea that that which causes difficulties is so much a part of yourself that a true inner life is impossible to you. The inner life is always possible if there is present in the nature however much covered over by other things, a divine possibility through which the soul can manifest itself and build up its ...
... surface being. Thus he states: "There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self." 30 The outer being is connected with the subliminal and, though unaware of it, receives from the subliminal its inspirations... subliminal] can be thus known by a penetration and looking within or a freer communication, it is only by going inward behind the veil of superficial mind and living within, in an inner mind, an inner life, an inmost soul of our being that we can be fully self-aware,- by this and by rising to a higher plane of mind than that which our waking consciousness inhabits. An enlargement and completion of ...
... and interest in the details of the Ashram work and life as well as in an inner life; this physical vital was carried in the stream. But for many this has dropped; they live in the unsatisfied vital physical and find everything desperately dull, gloomy and without interest or issue. Page 139 In their inner life the tamas from the Inconscient has created a block or a bottle-neck and ...
... Nature, of the world-consciousness and the play of its forces, of one's own self and real nature and the inner nature of things, the power of these things growing in one till they are a part of one's inner life and existence. As for instance, the realisation of the Divine Presence, the descent and settling of the higher Peace, Light, Force, Ananda in the consciousness, their workings there—the realisation... to it without repining and not grudge the time, difficulty or labour. Again, you speak of your experiences as vague and dream' like. In the first place the scorn of small experiences in the inner life is no part of wisdom, reason or common sense. is in the beginning of the sadhana and for a long time, the small experiences that come on each other and, if given the full value, prepare the field ...
... when you can leave everything for Him. The woman who has left her home for her lover has the right to say, "Won't you provide for me? I shall make you provide for me"?] Page 154 the inner life. Krishna did great things and was very clearly a manifestation of the Divine. But I remember a passage of the Mahabharata in which he complains of the unquiet life his followers and adorers gave... think that to speak of chef, chauffeur and day-labourer in this way might be taken as throwing a slur on three very estimable classes? After all, a chef, a chauffeur or a day-labourer may have an inner life and it would not do to appear to suggest otherwise. I don't quite know what to put—for the names would suggest nothing to the general reader. Perhaps something like "Ramaswamy the chef or Joseph ...
... to take care of me in my flat visits me twice a day for some hours and devotedly ministers to my needs, including mechanical exercise and massage to my legs. A particular friend interested in my inner life takes notes from me on it besides assisting in general with genuine concern. The Ashram Nursing Home is a remarkable place. The doctors and the nurses - all of them dedicated to Sri Aurobindo... to take care of me in my flat visits me twice a day for some hours and devotedly ministers to my needs, including mechanical exercise and massage to my legs. A particular friend interested in my inner life takes notes from me on it besides assisting in general with genuine concern. The Ashram Nursing Home is a remarkable place. The doctors and the nurses - all of them dedicated to Sri Aurobindo ...
... a great and critical situation in life, its constant keeping of that in view and always returning upon it, and to its method which is to seize on a spiritual experience or moment or stage of the inner life and throw it into the form of thought; and this, though a delicate operation, can well abide within the limits of the poetic manner of speech. Only where it overburdens itself with metaphysical matter... senses and the observing reason, is not true to the soul. It is not the integral truth or the whole vision of things, for it gives only their process and machinery and mechanic law, but not their inner life and spirit. That is the error in realism,—in its theory, at least, for its practice is something other than what it intends or pretends to be. Realistic art does not and cannot give us a scientifically ...
... activities. It is a mistake to do so out of asceticism or with the idea of tapasyā . One can stop these things when they drop of themselves, because one is in full experience and so interested in one's inner life that one has no energy to spare for the rest. Even then, there is no rule for giving up; for there is no reason why the poetry, etc., should not be a part of sadhana. The love of applause, of fame... at once and, if one does not, that proves incapacity for Yoga. I myself never gave up poetry or other creative human activities out of tapasyā ; they fell into a subordinate position because the inner life became stronger and stronger slowly: nor did I really drop them, only I had so heavy a work laid upon me that I could not find time to go on. But it took me years and years to get the ego out of ...
... cal doctrine is well enough satisfied to seize on certain great and vital aspects of truth and turn them into utilisable dogma and instruction, method and practice for the guidance of man in his inner life and the law and form of his action; it does not go farther, it does not open doors out of the circle of its own system, does not lead us out into some widest freedom and unimprisoned largeness. This... but the form has been changed and renovated in the light of a developing spiritual experience. This teaching does not evade the difficult problem of reconciling the full active life of man with the inner life in the highest self and spirit; it advances what it holds to be the real solution. It does not at all deny the efficacy of the ascetic renunciation of life for its own purpose, but it sees that that ...
... but the psychic being is always behind it; it intervenes and throws its self-expression into what is written. There comes an utterance with an inner life in it, a touch perhaps even of the spiritual, easily felt by those who have themselves an inner life, but others may miss it. The World of Word-Music Nishikanta seems to have put himself into contact with an inexhaustible source of flowing ...
... internal life, without any test of the transformation and unity by external contact and the ordeals of the external work and life? Thoroughness includes external work and relations and not a retired inner life only. It is only by the vital ego giving up its demands and claims and the reactions these produce when not satisfied, that the transformation and unification can come, and there is no other way... discriminating along with constant experiences which it is able to put in the right place. But some get absorbed in inner experiences which they get lost in and get passionately attached to and this inner life becomes for them the sole reality without the outer to poise it and keep it under check and test—there lies a danger. Again if one remains isolated without the support of a settled inner poise and ...
... the Page 284 union of soul with soul are the things that are to it most abiding and concrete. Mind, vital, body are means of expression and very precious means of expression, but the inner life is for the soul the first thing, the deepest reality, and these have to be subordinated to it and conditioned by it, its expression, its instruments and channel. I do not think that in my emphasis... things have always been stressed from the beginning and the more the human being is evolved, the more they take on importance. I do not see how Yoga can be possible without this premier stress on the inner life, on the soul and the spirit. The emphasis on the mastery of the vital, its subordination and subjection to the spiritual and the psychic is also nothing new, strange or exorbitant. It has been insisted ...
... September 1936 If you have no abhiman against the Mother, that also is surely very desirable. Abhiman, disturbance, etc. may be signs of life but of a vital, not of the inner life. They must quiet down and give room for the inner life. At first the result may be a neutral quiet, but one has often to pass through that to arrive at a more positive new consciousness. 2 January 1937 Why am I suffering ...
... at least one of the greatest painters,—although his art did not stop at painting alone. Music too is an essentially spiritual art and has always been associated with religious feeling and an inner life. But, here too, we have turned it into something independent and self-sufficient, Page 110 a mushroom art, such as is operatic music. Most of the artistic productions we come across are... Iseult and most in its last great Act. Look again at what the moderns have made of the dance; compare it with what the dance once was. The dance was once one of the highest expressions of the inner life; it was associated with religion and it was an important limb in sacred ceremony, in the celebration of festivals, in the adoration of the Divine. In some countries it reached a very high degree ...
... least one of the greatest painters,—although his art did not stop at painting alone. Music too is an essentially spiritual art and has always been associated with religious feeling and an inner life. But, here too, we have turned it into something independent and self-sufficient, a mushroom art, such as is operatic music. Most of the artistic productions we Page 111 come across... Iseult and most in its last great Act. Look again at what the moderns have made of the dance; compare it with what the dance once was. The dance was once one of the highest expressions of the inner life; it was associated with religion and it was an important limb in sacred ceremony, in the celebration of festivals, in the adoration of the Divine. In some countries it reached a very high degree ...
... of what he knows, until he finally becomes wise Page 62 and realises that many hours of silent concentration are needed to be able to speak usefully for a few minutes. Moreover, where inner life and spiritual effort are concerned, the use of speech should be subjected to a still more stringent rule and nothing should be said unless it is absolutely indispensable. It is a well-known fact... people; it would be a serious mistake. If they were unfortunate enough to listen to you, they would lose the balance they have without being able to find a new one. They are not ready to have an inner life, but they are Nature's favourites; they have a very close alliance with her, and this realisation should not be needlessly disturbed. To a lesser degree, and above all, in a less durable way, ...
... Words are the fragile ghosts of things that die In being named.... She means that when you try to express a thing in language the thing does not exist any more. It loses its genuine inner life, it dies, and when it dies all that you catch is only a ghost of it. By the use of names, by the use of words, you never catch the reality of a thing. You get something out of it which is not its... of true vitality. And I suppose the difference according to us between true poetry and mere verse lies precisely in that. Sri Aurobindo has said that the true intuitive word of poetry catches the inner life-thrill of an object, a person, a situation and embodies it in terms of sound and it is that life-thrill which gives us the true rhythm, the rhythm which is expressive and not just decorative, the ...
... abstraction from real relationships between real people. In concrete it is an ensamble of individuals in dynamic relationship with each other. But if these individuals are conflict-ridden in their inner life, can they relate to each other in peace and harmony in the outer society? Can a crowd of confused, agitated, fragmented individuals create in relationship a truly human society? Can there... own errors and defects, knowing very well that he cannot demand from his students what he himself cannot practise. The example expected from the teacher is not merely his outward behaviour, but his inner life, his aims and the sincerity with which he pursues those aims. It is sometimes argued that what should be expected from the teacher is professional competence and a power of communication, and ...
... artists, philosophers, law-givers; sages and seers. It is they who made the glory that was Greece or Rome or China or India or Egypt. Indeed they are the builders of Culture, culture which is the inner life of a civilisation. The decline of culture and civilisation means precisely the displacement of the "cultured" man by the economic man. In the present age when economic values have been grossly e... drawn away and to falsify oneself is not unoften the withdrawal of the bare necessities of life, in certain cases sheer destitution. A Keats wasting his energies in a work that has no relation to his inner life and light, or a Madhusudan dying in a hospital as a pauper, are examples significant of the nature of the social structure man lives in. It is one of the great illusions – or perhaps ...
... whatever of the phenomenon, and it may have no significance for the subject's usual inner life, to which as it were, it makes a mere interruption. Mystical states strictly so called, are never merely interruptive. Some memory of their content always remains, and a profound sense of their importance. They modify the inner life of the subject between the times of their recurrence. Sharp divisions in this region ...
... there is, according to the Vedas, triple Infinite, and in this Infinite, the godheads put on their highest nature and are Names of the one nameless Ineffable. This teaching was applied to the inner life of man, and the application may be regarded as its greatest power. Consciousness of the godheads can be built, according to the Vedic teaching, within man, and affirmation of these powers leads to... see them in the Puranic and Tantric religion and yoga, were less lofty than the Vedic nucleus of spiritual experience, but they were wider, richer, complex and more suitable to the psycho-spiritual inner life. Page 24 The Purano-Tantric stage was marked by an effort to awaken the inner mind even in the common man, to lay hold on his inner vital and emotional nature, to support all by an awakening ...
... fulfil. In preparation for this mission, she consciously pursued a life of inner development at an age when other children spend their time playing. Perhaps because of her preoccupation with the inner life she was late in learning to read and write but when she did begin the progress was rapid and her thirst for learning, understanding and knowing things was endless. Also, she had the keenest powers... and historical buildings of France and Italy and, generally, her culture acquired a breadth, refinement and diversity, altogether rare. Through all these experiences her preoccupation with the inner life continued, but she never made the usual distinction between the spiritual and the mundane, separating the two into watertight compartments. All life is Yoga', Sri Aurobindo has said, and truly it ...
... universe as it is without my coloured glasses of my ego." My mother smiled. She said : "Your father is no more what he was two years ago. There has been an upheaval in his Page 206 inner life, and even his outer nature has changed a great deal, — although his exterior seems very much as before. But that is a long story and this is not the moment to tell you that story. My advice to you... but invited her to meet her everyday during her stay in Dwarka. Kamalini-ji and her group taught Mira a number of devotional songs, and within a week a great transformation came upon Mira's inner life. During one of these days, she told me : "Girish, would you believe if I told you that I had the vision of Sri Krishna?" I looked at her sharply but did not reply. Then she smiled ...
... there is, according to the Vedas, triple Infinite, and in this Infinite, the godheads put on their highest nature and are Names of the one nameless Ineffable. This teaching was applied to the inner life of man, and this application may be regarded as its greatest power. Power of the godheads can be built, according to the Vedic teaching, within man, and affirmation of these powers leads to the ... the Puranic and Tantric religion and yoga were less luminous than the Vedic nucleus of spiritual experience, but they were more wide and rich and complex and more suitable to the psycho-spiritual inner life. The Purano-Tantric 17 stage was marked by an effort to awaken he inner mind even in the common man, to lay hold on his inner vital and emotional nature, to support all by an awakening of the ...
... the two were practically co-workers. This family had helped Barin a good deal by their offers of money and advice. But what I had in mind was not these external things but an inner life. Manoranjan Guhathakurta had an inner life, a life of sadhana. His wife in particular was known for her sadhana. In his eyes the service of the country was an occasion and a means for the service of God. But his saintliness ...
... Bengali book, Nirvasiter Atmakatha (Autobiography of an Exile), is a vivid and authentic record of Sri Aurobindo's life as a prisoner. Sri Aurobindo's Uttarpara Speech gives us a glimpse of his inner life, the sudden flood of spiritual experiences he had in the jail; but Upendra Nath's book admits us to the physical presence of the Master and a close view of his outer life and nature. Sri Aurobindo's... Gita, the paths of knowledge, devotion and work - these are different ways to the same goal. The aim is the conquest of the body, the shaking off of the dominance of the gross, the freedom of the inner life.... The real difference between an animal and a man is this, that the animal state is a complete submission to the slavery of the body, and the evolution of manhood consists in the endeavour to ...
... artists, philosophers, law-givers, sages and seers. It is they who made the glory that was Greece or Rome or China or India or Egypt. Indeed they are the builders of Culture, culture which is the inner life of a civilisation. The decline of culture and civilisation means precisely the displacement of the "cultured" man by the economic man. In the present age when economic values have been grossly e... drawn away and to falsify oneself is not unoften the withdrawal of the bare necessities of life, in certain cases sheer destitution. A Keats wasting his energies in a work that has no relation to his inner life and light, or a Madhusudan dying in a hospital as a pauper, are examples significant of the nature of the social structure man lives in. Page 113 It is one of the great illusions—or ...
... say, life is accepted in this yoga. But we regard the inner life as more important, the outer only as an expression, a form, of it. Disciple : Can one not take up the outer action – say political – in the yoga? Sri Aurobindo : External action can also be taken up in this yoga but it must be in keeping with the inner life. The Page 122 outside world regards ...
... the first great period of the Ashram's expansion and consolidation (1929-38); and throughout its history Sri Aurobindo or the Mother have been supervising and guiding - directly or indirectly - the inner life of their disciples. In their writings, too, they give abundant evidence of the fact that they were fully acquainted with the latest researches in science and psychology. They had themselves been... live from there outward' governing henceforth his outer life by the inner light and force. It is the intensity of this turning, the sureness of the inner opening and the purity and fullness of the inner life that will determine the progress in the sadhana: The power of aspiration of the heart, the force of the will, the concentration of the mind, the perseverance and determination of the applied ...
... hymns are clearly no more than Agni's chameleonic impersonations in the course of his progress in the inner life of the litanist-Rishi. As Kapali Sastry has pointed out: While the Agni hymns are used in the ritual as a preliminary to the animal sacrifice, its significance in the inner life of the Rishi is quite clear in that it invokes the help and presence of the Gods whose advent is vouchsafed ...
... is what historicity or biography comes to, does it not?) but what he was and did within; it is only that that gives any value to his outer life at all. It is the inner life that gives to the outer any power it may have and the inner life of a spiritual man is something vast and full and, at least in the great figures, so crowded and teeming with significant things that no biographer or historian ...
... infinite of her inner life, and at different moments they strike us differently: now seemingly austere and resigned when the sky is overcast with threatening clouds, now radiant in their rainbow magnificence when the Sun shines gloriously. The diary-entries are rather like pointer-readings, and help to give us a sense of the rhythm, the richness and the complexity of her inner life. Even at the grimmest ...
... incapacity for mutual understanding and even a positive enmity or dislike. The emphasis of the Western mind is on life, the outer life above all, the things that are grasped, visible, tangible. The inner life is taken only as an intelligent reflection of the outer world, with the reason for a firm putter of things into shape, an intelligent critic, builder, refiner of the external materials offered by... action or else for a fine satisfaction of the mind's play and vigour. But here the type proposed for admiration is the self-possessed sattwic man for whom calm thought, spiritual knowledge and the inner life are the things of the greatest importance and action is chiefly of consequence not for its own sake, not for its rewards and fruits, but for its effects on the growth of the inner nature. Here too ...
... is what historicity or biography comes to, does it not?) but what he was and did within; it is only that that gives any value to his outer life at all. It is the inner life that gives to the outer any power it may have, and the inner life of a spiritual man is something vast and full and, at least in the great figures, so crowded and teeming with significant things that no biographer or historian could ...
... differences (it is to be presumed, differences of idea and mental outlook) with the workers. How is it sure that there will be agreement here? In any case, it is the capacity for a special kind of inner life or the inner call to it that can alone be a reason for admittance to the Asram here. This is what you must explain to him. I do not know what sadhana he has been doing or what experiences he may... were outside, would be dealing not with two or three selected patients but with many—he speaks of hundreds in the past—and would be living a much fuller vital life. But for one who has the assured inner life, there is no dullness. Realisation within must be the first object; work for the Divine on the basis of the true inner self and a new consciousness, not on the basis of the old, is the result that ...
... value of his knowledge, until finally he becomes wise and realises that a good many hours of silent concentration are needed to be able to speak usefully for a few minutes. Besides, in the matter of inner life and spiritual effort, the use of speech should be put under a still more stringent rule: nothing should be spoken unless it is absolutely necessary to do so. Page 149 It is a very... must never try to "convert": it would be a serious blunder. If, by mischance, they were to listen to you, they would lose their present poise without getting a new one. They are not ready for an inner life. But they are Nature's favourites; they have a very intimate alliance with her and this achievement must not be uselessly disturbed. At a lesser degree and to a less durable extent, there ...
... awakened somewhere upon earth a receptivity and openness sufficient to bring down in its purity something of the Divine Consciousness, this descent and manifestation in matter can change not only the inner life, but the material conditions also, the physical expression in man and Nature. This descent does not depend for its possibility upon the condition of humanity as a whole. If we had to wait for the... what he had done. What he brought was a change in the consciousness, a peace of a kind unknown till then or a capacity for liberation that was not there before. But these movements belonged to the inner life and brought no tangible external change in the world. Perhaps the intention to change the world externally was not there; perhaps there was not the necessary knowledge; but still something was effected ...
... acquisition of a few ingenious mechanisms, a few encouragements to physical laziness, the acquisition of instruments and gadgets that lessen the effort of living, we have renounced the reality of the inner life. It is that sense which has been lost and it needs an effort for you to think of learning the meaning of life, the purpose of existence, the goal towards which we must advance, towards which all... Nature, and had the sense of the profound beauty and that peace which a simple life gives! It is very unfortunate that one has to give up one thing in order to gain another. When I speak of the inner life, I am far from opposing any modern inventions, far from it, but how much these inventions have made us artificial and stupid! How much we have lost the sense of true beauty, how much we burden ourselves ...
... knew children who were quite sincere but could not distinguish whether a thing was going on in their imagination or in reality. For them the inner life was as real as the external life. They were not telling stories, they were not liars; simply the inner life was as real as the external life. There are children who go night after night to the same spot in order to continue the dream they have begun—they ...
... very commendable state or at any rate a very high one. Well, in the field of inner development this corresponds to the same thing. When one is in a very rudimentary state, when one has no intense inner life, one needs to read novels or to create novels for oneself, and then one indulges in experiments of this kind and believes one is doing very interesting things.... This has the same interest as novels—not... that these are very valuable occupations. They are pastimes, amusements. And this has never served to prove anything to anybody. One could say, "Oh! It is to make you understand that there is an inner life, an invisible life, and it puts you in touch with things you don't see and proves to you that they exist". That is not true. Unless you have a spiritual being within you, capable of awakening ...
... does not follow. How much they work on the outer depends on how far the individual has an inner life. E.g. the poet, musician, artist, thinker, live much from Page 91 within—men of genius and those who try to live according to an ideal also. But there are plenty of people who have very little inner life and are governed entirely by the forces of Nature. As one gathers experience from ...
... great progress. If you have no abhiman against the Mother, that also is surely very desirable. Abhiman, disturbance etc. may be signs of life, but of a vital, not of the inner life. They must quiet down and give room for the inner life. At first the result may be a neutral quiet, but one has often to pass through that to arrive at a more positive new consciousness. When the mind thus falls quiet the thoughts ...
... "disturbed" by the reading or distracted by it from the concentrated Yoga-consciousness but is able to make the right use of what is read from the point of view of the inner consciousness and the inner life. Merely following external rules cannot of course be sufficient. They are only an aid to the inner effort until the inner consciousness is thoroughly established. Usually much reading of ... and not able to Page 67 do without them or to think of them as a matter of main importance. The all-important thing must be the sadhana, the growth into a new consciousness and a new inner life. The rest must be done with detachment and without getting absorbed in them. The feeling must be such that if the Mother were to tell you never to see a newspaper at all, it would be no deprivation ...
... your spiritual life and your difficulties. First, I should like you to get rid of the idea that that which causes the difficulties is so much a part of your self that a true inner life is impossible to you. The inner life is always possible if there is present in the nature, however much covered over by other things, a divine possibility through which the soul can manifest itself and build up its ...
... in most, by the outer waking self. There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self. This inner self once awake opens in its turn to our true real and eternal self. It opens inwardly to the soul, called in the language... in number, clearness, coherence, accuracy and after some growth of experience and consciousness, we can, if we observe, come to understand them Page 260 and their significance to our inner life. Even we can by training become so conscious as to follow our own passage, usually veiled to our awareness and memory, through many realms and the process of the return to the waking state. At a ...
... French soldiers is a figure of some disturbance on the vital plane which wants to happen and affect the inner life. The import of the dream is the readiness of the vital inner consciousness to put its reliance on the Mother and take refuge in her against all possible disturbances or perils of the inner life. These dreams are of the vital plane. Those about going home come from a part of the vital ...
... vigour and verve and interest in the details of the Asram work and life as well as in an inner life; the physical vital was carried in the stream. But for many this has dropped; they live in the unsatisfied vital physical and find everything desperately dull, gloomy and without interest or issue. In their inner life the tamas from the Inconscient has created a block or a bottleneck and they do not find ...
... height when the spiritual becomes also the supramental level and then also it is possible not only to feel it in essence but realise it dynamically as a Power for the transformation of the whole inner life and the whole outer existence. It is not altogether difficult for the mind to envisage, even though it may be difficult for the human will with its many earth-ties to accept, this transformation... greater purity, truth, height, range. All depends on the psychic awakening in us, the completeness of our response to her and our growing surrender. But all this can only constitute a greater inner life with a greater possibility of the outer action and is a transitional achievement; the full transformation can come only by the ascent of the sacrifice to its farthest heights and its action upon ...
... literary and philosophic sensorium, has spoken - in his introduction to Chadwick's works - of "the delicate dream-like beauty" of the poems as well as of their dealing "with the mysteries of the inner life". Passing beyond the bounds of permissible liberty in translation is not to cease being the mind that Chadwick was. In a recent letter to the TLS (December 11-17, 1987, p. 1377) you imply essentially... compared Sri Aurobindo to Pope John Paul II who, though reckoned a holy man, can make no impression with the verses he writes. Here is just the general principle that one who is eminent for his high inner life is not necessarily successful in channelling it into art. But you forget that there is no intrinsic impossibility in combining art with holiness or visionary inwardness. So the argument by analogy ...
... and answers” at the Playground, she sometimes talked on appropriate occasions about her personal yogic experiences and progress. The word that crops up time and again in those brief glimpses of her inner life and work is “cells”: their consciousness, aspiration and transformation. Might Sri Aurobindo have expanded on the transformation of the body cells if he had had the time to complete his last series... the Mother talked about illness and its relation to the physical body. What came up in these “questions and answers”, twice a week at night, was always something happening in her own Yoga or in the inner life of the people around her – for all that was interconnected, it was one and the same process. This is an important observation for any reader of the Entretiens : their spiritual range went far beyond ...
... new names were given to these places: `Eternal Bliss' to the area holding the Amphitheatre, and 'The Inner Life' to the Banyan tree. Nolini-da and Shyamsunder had approved of these names. Here they are written in the Mother's own hand: I thought these Names: "Eternal Bliss" and "Inner Life" could be engraved on white marble slabs and placed in their proper places. During this time I received ...
... Master and you are the same. All that's necessary is ... to know it INTEGRALLY, and nothing must belie it. That's the way out. When I tell people that their health depends on their inner life (an intermediate inner life, not the deepest), it's because of this. During the last two years, I've been accumulating experiences IN THEIR MINUTEST DETAILS, things that might seem most useless. You have to ...
... body, if your mind and vital remain in a state of desire, inconscience, darkness, passion and all the rest, that won't be of any use at all. Only, your body will become weak, dislocated from the inner life and one fine day it will fall ill." 6 The point I would like you to note is that as we are pretty 4. Vignettes of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: Three Hundred and Sixty True Stories, Compiled... regime. "Oh, he is sometimes taking fish, he goes in occasionally even for meat!" This kind of exclamation must wait for a long while indeed to become relevant and carry significance. Surely the inner life can be as intense with these "lapses" or "peccadillos" as without them. But, of course, one must not veer in the opposite direction and cock a snook at the Ashram regime, as if it were a mere su ...
... general sweep of my writings but savoured specific individual parts of them and quoted the turns of phrase that struck you as most true to the various movements of the inner life. Here to be "true" is to be "beautiful", for the inner life has an enchantment which cannot be caught in language unless the language has a felicitous form. That is why poetry whose concentration is on beauty is best able to ...
... bring in the occult in its larger and deeper ranges but the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, the inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty 63 Ibid., p. 804. 64 Ibid., p. 802. 65 Ibid., pp. 813-14. Page 303 and reality... It might even enter into the domain... the poem was in some measure — perhaps in substantial measure — his own spiritual autobiography. In an epic pronouncedly psychological, the poet must necessarily draw upon the reserves of his inner life. Aswapati's Yoga takes up 22 Cantos or about 370 pages (out of a total of 714). There is the Yoga of the 76 Ibid., p. 785. 77 ibid., p. 750. Page 308 King (itself ...
... our secret air of self A subtle pattern of the universe. 11 The living symbols of these conscious planes, their influences and godheads have been fixed as slow-scaled degrees in our inner life. So Aswapati's odyssey is in fact a journey of the inner regions of his own consciousness. And this is what is described in the fifteen cantos of Book II. Nor are experiences of the Kingdom of... existence becomes possible when we break the wall between our external and our subliminal self. What we then discover are the secret parts of ourselves—an inner being, a soul, an inner mind, an inner life which are more plastic, more powerful, more capable of a manifold knowledge than our surface mind, life and body. The inner parts of ourselves are capable of a direct communication with the universal ...
... are in the depths of mental and vital despondency, as soon as you write the psychic being intervenes and throws its selfexpression into what you write. It is that, that has made people with some inner life in them, those who have some touch of the spiritual, feel these poems of yours so much. That too is the main reason (there are others) why I have given unstinted encouragement to your poetry, because... something from life as it is. Life as it is has nothing to give except to those who are satisfied with surface pleasure. The inner view can only come from a change of consciousness which sees the deeper inner life behind appearances—and it is that change of consciousness which was preparing in you because you were drawing back from the vital view of things—the vair ā gya was only an outward and negative ...
... Kutsa has grown into such an exact likeness of his divine companion that he can only be distinguished by Sachi, the wife of Indra, because she is "truth-conscious". The parable is evidently of the inner life of man; it is a figure of the human growing into the likeness of the eternal divine by the increasing illumination of Knowledge. But the Gita starts from action and Arjuna is the man of action and... t my understanding with a mingled word: speak one thing decisively by which I can attain to what is the best." It is always the pragmatic man who has no value for metaphysical thought or for the inner life except when they help him to his one demand, a dharma, a law of life in the world or, if need be, of leaving the world; for that too is a decisive action which he can understand. But to live and ...
... noticed this while washing early in the morning. I go into the bathroom before turning the light on.... and suddenly, I saw that phenomenon of a bottle in the cupboard becoming so clear, so... with an inner life (gesture as if the bottle lit up from inside). 'Oh!' I said—the next minute, it was over.... ... this is clearly the preparation for a vision through the inner light rather than projected light... a protection (which can just barely be imagined) against infiltration and admixture.... From the social or organizational standpoint, these problems are not difficult, nor from the standpoint of inner life; the problem is the relationship with what is not supramentalized—preventing infiltration or admixture, keeping the nucleus from falling back into an inferior creation during the transitional period ...
... My inner concentration and quietude seem to be extending outwards. I feel quietude and can concentrate with eyes open. Now I would like to ask you one question. When one leads an inner life, how does one deal with the outer activities? They are dealt with by the Force that works through the being. When I feel drawn into the inner being my consciousness still... peace can descend and establish itself there in such a way that the vital movements of the surface may be there, but will not be able to break the inner peace. When one lives an inner life, does not one come in touch with the psychic and bring about its leadership? Not always at once. There is the inner mind, vital, physical. Many live a long time in that. The psychic is ...
... two were practically co-workers. This family had helped Barin a good deal by their offers of money and advice. But what I had in mind was not these external things but an inner life. Manoranjan Guhathakurta had an inner life, a life of sādhana. His wife in particular was known for her sādhana. In his eyes the service of the country was an occasion and a means for the service of God. But his ...
... Astrology is not yet an exact science ; it is not purely mental. It is the man whose mind can touch the forces that are behind the stars who can make correct predictions. What is important for man is the inner life and on that the stars have little influence. 18-6-1926 Disciple : There are two ways of foretelling the future : the astrological calculations which are based upon the Page... upon me and I felt I ought to give up selfishness and I tried in my own way – of course, imperfectly – to put it into practice. But Page 166 that was a sort of turning-point in my inner life. The last came just before I left England. It was the mental rather than the spiritual experience of the Atman. I felt the One only as true ; it was an experience absolutely Shankarite in its sense ...
... functions". In the life of the Ashram, the first decisive turn was taken on 24 November 1926, when Sri Aurobindo retired into the background asking the Mother to shape anew the outer and inner life of the community of sadhaks. Sri Aurobindo himself was now rather like the Witness Spirit behind the scenes, and, besides, his advice was always available to the Mother. As he wrote on 25 February... Sadhana issuing in efficient work, and work in its turn awakening the soul within and charging it with power and purpose: integral progress is the result of this zigzag reversible reaction between inner life and outer activity. The whole Ashram, then, has been a theatre of action with a push towards perfection; and the whole Ashram is also a laboratory of research in Yoga where the progressive gains ...
... bring in the occult in its larger and deeper ranges but the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, the inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality. ... It might even enter into the domain of the infinite and inexhaustible, catch some word of the Ineffable, show us Page 679 revealing... that the poem was in some measure - perhaps in substantial measure - his own spiritual autobiography. In an epic pronouncedly psychological, the poet must necessarily draw upon the reserves of his inner life. Aswapathy's Yoga takes up 22 Cantos or about 370 pages (out of a total of 814). There is the Yoga of the King (itself divided into three stages), there is the exhaustive exploration of the occult ...
... Without reading the Gita to be able to realise in the Bible the spirit of equality, renunciation of the desire for fruit, to see the Divine in all things, etc., is the index of a not negligible inner life or spiritual capacity, s ādhan ā . Dharani was not as intelligent as Nagendra, but he was obedient and tender by nature, temperamentally a devotee. He was always wrapt up in the idea of Divine... fault of their own, by their own qualities or by virtue of their training they had been able to reject the supremacy of external joys and sorrows and succeeded in preserving the freedom of their inner life. ( Original in Bengali ) Front “The Aryan Ideal and the Three Gunas” The inner freedom… was a natural quality of my companions. During the days we were lodged together in a big verandah ...
... force to know myself, to choose the right thing from among a confused heap of falsehoods. Our whole life she cast into a new mould to prepare it for a divine life, a new birth of consciousness, an inner life. Nolini had written to me before I came to the Ashram, “Here the resources of ordinary life will be of no use at all.” Its meaning became gradually clear to me. The Mother visited our house on... of it may also be grasped. What we usually write about are the events of the outer existence which may not give any true picture of the basic character of our life. Still, many hints regarding the inner life can be seen in the incidents of the outer existence. However, to write about sadhana is not my object. What I want to do is to write about the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. So let me present them through ...
... in seclusion, for he seldom came out of his room, and only a few had ready access to him. He read books and newspapers, he wrote for the Arya, he received friends or visitors, but there was an inner life too, and thee were the ardours and the adventures of the sadhana; and Thought raced through "spirit immensities" - "past the orange skies of the mystic mind" - to be one with the "vasts of God"... all, Nolini, is of considerable significance: We do not always notice how very disorderly we are: our belongings and household effects are in a mess, our actions are haphazard, and in our inner life we are as disorderly as in our outer life.... If the brain is a market-place, the heart is no better than a mad-house.... One of the things the Mother has been trying to teach us both by her word ...
... veils & in our remote & secret places. On the mental temperament of our people, the long struggle had a disastrous effect; for it has deprived all except the few of the higher supra-intellectual inner life of our forefathers, it has made impossible any general resort to that discipline which gave them the use to a certain extent, at least, of the higher intuitive mentality, the satyadrishti, the direct ...
... centuries of the Christian era. But none of them developed the aggressive spirit and the conquering and widely organising capacity of the Roman republic; they were content to preserve their own free inner life and their independence. India especially after the invasion of Alexander felt the need of a movement of unification and the republics were factors of division: strong for themselves, they could do ...
... fundamental, lacked in their realisations what earth cannot do without except by letting penury fall upon it amidst all mystical riches. A compromise appears to be called for. But oh how watery gets the inner life, the spiritual aspiration, the mystical state, if a compromise is accepted! Can we ever have a lascivious Christ or a lustful Buddha? Can Mirabai sleep with mortals or any earthly kiss echo on the ...
... CONCRETE REALISATION Ever since the hymns of the oldest scripture in history, the Rigveda, began to be sung, it has been dinned into Indian ears that the way of the inner life is not blind belief or vague speculation. We have to pierce the veil of earth's appearances and seize the hidden Beauty as no less real than the universe to which we are accustomed. To rest content ...
... proper reality, takes hold of our hearts and minds and with wide-open eyes understands that the building of God's body on earth is the whole purpose of existence Then we get the via mystica, the Inner Life, the pursuit by the Hound of Heaven, God-intoxication, Page 86 Yoga — but all this with a view to earth's transfiguration and not earth's rejection. So different in its intensity ...
... Marxist and started versifying proletarian slogans is haunted by the Unknown as puissantly as anything composed by Tagore. His lyrics are a colourful subtlety that lays keen fingers on truths of the inner life, yet instead of plucking the word native to those truths the fingers bring back a creative impress for handling spiritually the speech of ideas and feelings in our normal mind and heart. Except in ...
... misleaders allows his usual modesty to be set aside a little and recounts the numerous terrible hardships he has gone through and then reminisces in a style at once direct and indirect about his inner life: "... I will move on to the visions and revelations I have had from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who, fourteen years ago, was caught up - whether still in the body or out of the body, I do not ...
... students leave the Ashram, whereas in past years they stayed on and became Ashramites. But mentally they are clearer. They know exactly what they want. Mostly they are taken up with external things. The inner life has to be encouraged. They feel shy about inner things. They are so much more mental and of course technology has produced this. They all want to go out of the Ashram and obtain MBAs, go into business ...
... only "bring in the occult in its larger and deeper ranges but the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality." 12 Inconscience, subconscience, all the planes of consciousness beyond the mind, even the transcendental Truth-Consciousness, the Supermind, go ...
... 43 Page 92 There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self. 44 It is the inner mind just mentioned—which is perhaps what some Zen Masters call "Zen mind" or the "deeper mind"—that ...
... Kutsa has grown into such an exact likeness of his divine companion that he can only be distinguished by Sachi, the wife of Indra, because she is 'truth-conscious'. The parable is evidently of the inner life of man; it is a figure of the human growing into the likeness of the eternal divine by the increasing illumination of Knowledge." The Lady of the Rik, nārī, who could not distinguish between the ...
... touched by Mother? You are always carrying it and it remains with you all the time. Nobody can take it away from you. Is it not? HE: Yes, you have opened my eyes today. I now understand how the inner life is more important than the outer. On a similar occasion, another person said to me: Of course she has blessed me with both the hands. And more. First she placed her hand on her own heart and ...
... mind, the vital being and the body-consciousness. Subconscious mind — the inner or subliminal mind. the Subliminal —comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; (sometimes) all that lies outside the surface consciousness, including the subconscient, the subliminal proper and the superconscient ...
... experiences increase in number, clearness, coherence, accuracy and after some growth of experience and consciousness, we can, if we observe, come to understand them and their significance to our inner life. Even we can by training become so conscious as to follow our own passage, usually veiled to our awareness and memory, through many realms and the process of the return to the waking state. At ...
... us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge ...
... extract which alludes to mastery: "There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self. This inner self once awake opens in its turn to our true real eternal self. It opens inwardly to the soul, called in the language ...
... an introvert? And is Russell's ideal man interested in externals for their own sake, Cheloo, for instance, or Joseph, homo externalis Russellius, an extrovert? Or is an introvert one who has an inner life stronger than his external one,—the poet, the musician, the artist? Was Beethoven in his deafness bringing out music from within an introvert? Or does it mean one who measures external things by ...
... its directions the guiding indications given by it to the mind and life. The ship is the psychological structure of ideas, beliefs, spiritual and psychic experiences, the whole building of the inner life in which one moves onward in the voyage towards the goal. Page 175 When the storm comes, a storm of doubts, failures, disappointments, adverse circumstances and what not, ...
... ideal man 'interested in externals for their own sakes' — a Ramaswami the chef, or Joseph, the chauffeur, for instance — homo extemalis Russellius, an extrovert? Or is an introvert one who has an inner life stronger than his external one — the poet, the musician, the artist? Was Beethoven in his deafness bringing out music from within an introvert? Or does it mean one who measures external things by ...
... you are in the depths of mental and vital despondency, as soon as you write the psychic being intervenes and throws its self-expression into what you write. It is that which makes people with some inner life in them, those who have some touch of the spiritual, feel these poems of yours so much." Such judgments of his were often challenged by many, but words such as "many", "multitude" or "majority" ...
... except to those who are satisfied with surface pleasures." Then, fully endorsing Chadwick's view, he went on to add: "The inner view can come only from a change of consciousness which sees the deeper inner life behind appearances and it is that change of consciousness which was developing in you because you were drawing back from the vital view of things — the vairagya was only an outward and negative sign ...
... application to it of its spiritual knowledge. 54 – Sri Aurobindo It is evident, at this decisive turn in the history of humanity, that the West desperately seeks to fill up the emptiness of its inner life since the erosion of the certainties of the medieval faith, and that therefore it is more and more turning towards the treasures of spirituality preserved in the East, more particularly in India ...
... des Beaux-Arts, the yearly official grand exhibition, in 1903, 1904 and 1905. She considered herself nonetheless “a very ordinary artist”. In the meantime, parallel to her outward activities, an inner life had been developing since her early childhood about which she could confide in nobody. Both her parents were materialists and atheists, and her husband does not seem to have been interested either ...
... discovered note of his. Surrender had been the beginning and the foundation of his own journey of discovery. About his meeting with Lele, he narrates: ‘In my own case I owe the first decisive turn of my inner life to one who was infinitely inferior to me in intellect, education and capacity and by no means spiritually perfect or supreme; but, having seen a Power behind him and decided to turn there for help ...
... 1966 Why does man always need someone in order to express his feelings? Not all men and not always. It is those who are weak and live on the surface, those who have not developed their inner life who are like that. 29 October 1966 ...
... its directions the guiding indications given by it to the mind and life. The ship is the psychological, structure of ideas, beliefs, spiritual and psychic experiences, the whole building of the inner life in which one moves onward in the voyage towards the goal. When the storm comes, a storm of doubts, failures, disappointments, adverse circumstances and what not, the crew — let us say, the powers ...
... the Vaishya as well as of the Brahmin and Kshatriya. It is in his view quite possible for a man to do business and make money and earn profits and yet be a spiritual man, practise yoga, have an inner life. The Gita is constantly justifying works as a means of spiritual salvation and enjoining a Yoga of Works as well as of Bhakti and Knowledge. Krishna, however, superimposes a higher law also that ...
... stand in the way of the greater psychic and spiritual truth or prevent it from being true. X is perfectly right when he says that this is his true mother; for she has given him a new birth in an inner life and is creating him anew for a diviner existence.’ 14 ‘By remaining psychically open to the Mother, all that is necessary for work or Sadhana develops progressively, that is one of the chief ...
... are: an individual experience cannot change terrestrial life. This is the essential difference between the old idea of transformation – that is, the becoming conscious of the psychic being and the inner life – and transformation as we conceive it and speak of. Not only an individual or a group of individuals, or even all individuals, but life – the overall consciousness of this more or less developed ...
... her action had also a tinge of the other movement. I noted the whole incident in my diary soon after its occurrence. It was April 10, 1954. The day proved one of the most decisive in my inner life. I took to the Mother some suggestions with regard to Savitri. I had written them down. The Mother looked strange and said "I can answer without even reading your note. I won't allow you to ...
... Lalita and I asked Dyuman to let me have it because while I was sitting next to Lalita's dead body the picture spoke to me very forcefully through its eyes and the message made a deep difference in my inner life. At both times there was no precise verbal formulation: my mind translated the message into the appropriate words according to the drive of the communication. But even a clear-cut formulation in ...
... Appearance lead us to Reality, From Darkness lead us to Light, From Death lead us to Immortality. "New Country" is a very powerful, very perfect poem working out its details of the inner life in a vein at once visionary and concrete within a small compass which is yet packed with vivid significances and leaves nothing essential unsaid - a small compass raised to the nth degree of e ...
... miracle happen when the Mother was in her physical body, though I have the faith that in all circumstances an answer from her was always there in some form or other we didn't immediately recognise. Our inner life is helped in however secret a way and sooner or later we discover the benefit. Her apparent denials are still acts of grace, for her love is ever present to bring our souls closer to felicity and ...
... society to the extent that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother wish. Surely they do not want us to live only for our own egos. While ultimately concentrating on self-dedication to the Divine by both an inner life and an outer one, we do works in the world involving benefiting our fellow-beings. Most of these fellow-beings are our fellow-sadhaks and working for their good is certainly tantamount to a kind ...
... reflects something of this triple intensity because his English mind has more consistently steeped itself in Yoga and caught a breath from what we may call the luminous spaces of Sri Aurobindo's inner life. If we wish to find among English-writing poets a match to that pair of lines ending with the full yet far-away gong of the word "alone" we shall have to pick out from Wordsworth his noblest ...
... Apropos of this reference I may quote to you a poem of mine which you will be the first to read. It expresses the culmination of a long-drawn-out experience and marks a crucial moment of the inner life. It was written on May 15 this year (1986) and looks as if only on that day what is said took place. Actually, it focuses with a finality a truth to which I have always been feeling my way with a ...
... bring in the occult in its larger and deeper ranges but the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, the inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality. It would bring in the concreteness, the authentic image, the inmost soul of identity and the heart of meaning of these things, so that it could never ...
... the spiritual aspects of the Ashram life. They are also about Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, their Avatarhood , about life, literature and yoga and about the vexing questions all seekers of the inner life face. Compared to the often dense style that Sethna employs in many of his scholarly works, books like Aspects of Sri Aurobindo , Waterford, U.S. A., 1995, reprinted 2000, Our Light and Delight ...
... of extraordinary body-postures and of an altered breath-rhythm to activate certain psycho-physical powers. It can do without these things altogether and is essentially a methodised movement of the inner life, a concentrated progression of the consciousness towards the Highest Reality. 10. Huxley, op. cit., pp. 59-60. 11. On Yoga (Letters), Vol. II, Tome Two, (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry ...
... of the ships of the Messageries Maritimes with final destination Calcutta and Pondicherry as a port of call. ‘I was on the boat, at sea, not expecting anything – I was of course occupied with the inner life, but I was living physically on the boat – when all of a sudden, unexpectedly, about ten 91 nautical miles from Pondicherry, the quality of the atmosphere, of the air, changed so much that I knew ...
... was attracted by the beauty of the Banyan Tree. I went near its root, and the tree was singing and dancing with its leaves in the moonlight and the wind; there was such a joy—full presence of the "inner Life", so that in spite of all the present difficulty and disharmony of Auroville, I felt a hope for the future, and the Mother's smile behind our human game. I do not remember if I have thanked you ...
... creation, as in Shakespeare, or by the compulsion of an intuitive artistic will, as with the Greeks. This interpretative vision and seeing idea have in the presentation to seem to arise out of the inner life of a few vital types of the human soul or individual representatives of its enigma and to Page 74 work themselves out through an evolution of speech leading to an evolution of action ...
... of scepticism and of denial or else of a doubtful and tormented, a merely intellectual or a conventional clinging to the residuum of past beliefs. They have not formed a real and vital part of its inner life and what is not real or vital to thought, imagination and feeling cannot be powerfully creative. At first this ebb of positive faith was to some extent compensated by the ideal element of a philosophic ...
... which does not fit in with the surroundings, of marriages imposed that are unsuitable and where there is no meeting-point between husband and wife, of an environment hostile and intolerant of one's inner life and on the other hand the innate tendency of the Indian mind to seek a refuge in the spiritual or religious escape will sufficiently account for the new development. If society wants to prevent it ...
... ever spoke of supermind plane poetry. Is Savitri all from overhead plane? I don't know. You lay down certain features of overhead poetry, e.g. greater depth and height of spiritual vision, inner life and experience Page 186 and character of rhythm and expression. But it won't necessarily outshine Shakespeare in poetic excellence. Obviously if properly done it would have a deeper ...
... overcoming this difficulty is the opening up of the inner being and its centres of action; for there the task that the surface mind could not achieve begins to be more possible. The inner mind, the inner life-consciousness and life-mind, the subtle-physical consciousness and its subtle-physical mentality, once liberated into action, create a larger, finer, greater mediating awareness able to communicate ...
... task has led naturally to the pursuit of easy and trenchant solutions; it has generated and fixed deeply the tendency of religions and of schools of Yoga to separate the life of the world from the inner life. The powers of this world and their actual activities, it is felt, either do not belong to God at all or are for some obscure and puzzling cause, Maya or another, a dark contradiction of the divine ...
... most outward psychological form of these things is the mould or trend of the nature towards certain dominant tendencies, capacities, characteristics, form of active power, quality of the mind and inner life, cultural personality or type. The turn is often towards the predominance of the intellectual element and the capacities which make for the seeking and finding of knowledge and an intellectual creation ...
... to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge ...
... weakness of the life-force or an unsteadiness in it or want of balance, he is likely to be seized on through these deficiencies and to be frustrated or to deviate, misled from the true way of the inner life and seeking into false paths, or to be left wandering about in an intermediate chaos of experiences and fail to find his way out into the true realisation. These perils were well-known to a past ...
... existence of mental beings in the material universe. But why then are we not normally aware of so much that is behind us and always pressing upon us? For the same reason that we are not aware of the inner life of our neighbour, although it exists as much as our own and is constantly exercising an occult influence upon us,—for a great part of our thoughts and feelings come into us from outside, from our ...
... integration and openness of the vital being on Page 853 the surface would alone make possible a similar survival of the life-part in us, the outer vital personality representative of the inner life-being, the vital Purusha. What would really happen then is that the wall between the inner self and the outer man would have broken down and the permanent mental and vital being from within, the ...
... and even become, instead of the mental being dominated by the physical soul and nature, the gnostic being or the bliss-self and assume the gnostic or the bliss nature. And by this raising of the inner life we can transform our whole outward-going existence; instead of a life dominated by matter we shall then have a life dominated by spirit with all its circumstances moulded and determined by the purity ...
... create the gods in themselves by the mantra. Again, that which we have created in our consciousness by the Word, we can fix there by the Word to become part of ourselves and effective not only in our inner life but upon the outer physical world. By expression we form, by affirmation we establish. As a power of expression the word is termed gīḥ or vacas ; as a power of affirmation, stoma . In either ...
... The larger working of consciousness and power in the being by which the rigid limitations of the ordinary mind and life and physical being are broken and man is able to experience a full inner life and open himself to communication with all the planes of his own and of the cosmic existence. × ...
... Gods, the creators of the order of the world, to be the power by which he aspires and calls the other divine Forces into his being and consecrates his knowledge, will, joy and all the wealth of his inner life as a sacrificial action to the Lords of the Truth. These first words then amount for the initiate to a statement of the fundamental idea of the Vedic mysteries, the meaning of the sacrifice, the ...
... through it to the supracosmic Reality eternal and luminous above this mutable Nature. This truth is the secret of being which the Gita is now going to apply in its amplitude of result for our inner life and our outer works. What it is going to say is the most secret thing of all. 1 It is the knowledge of the whole Godhead, samagraṁ mām , which the Master of his being has promised to Arjuna, ...
... external humanity has for its inner truth the same manifestation of the eternal Avatar within in our own inner humanity. That which has been done in the outer human life of earth, may be repeated in the inner life of all human beings. This is the object of the incarnation, but what is the method? First, we have the rational or minimising view of Avatarhood which sees in it only an extraordinary manifestation ...
... spiritual development which was then regarded as the whole real object of life, war destructive within certain carefully fixed limits of the bodily life of individual men but constructive of their inner life and of the ethical elevation of the race. That war in the past has, when subjected to an ideal, helped in this elevation, as in the development of knighthood and chivalry, the Page 51 ...
... its action and its possibilities. This has hitherto been a greatening of forms and never gone so far as to make a radical change and override its first nature. It is only by a transformation of our inner life that we can get beyond the magnified, mentalised, reasoning and consciously willing animal that for the most part the greater number of us are and only by raising it up to unity with some spiritual ...
... heritage. We possess many symbolic forms of religious application by which we enter into possession of the eternal truth through the emotions, through the intellect or through active experience in our inner life & outward relations. We possess numerous methods & forms of psychological discipline by which we repeat old profound experience and do even actually possess many apparently lost details of Vedic ...
... explain with regard to Blake's poetry, though he seems to me to miss altogether the real nature of the response. It is not the mere sensation to which what he calls pure poetry appeals but to a deeper inner life or life-soul within us which has profounder depths than the thinking mind and responds with a certain kind of soul-excitement or ecstasy—the physical vibrations on which he lays stress are merely ...
... al spiritual consciousness which can alone give the basis for a spiritualised life of the race and the realisation of its diviner potentialities. The meaning of spirituality is a new and greater inner life of man founded in the consciousness of his true, his inmost, highest and largest self and spirit by which he receives the whole of existence as a progressive manifestation of the self in the universe ...
... there is a mixture of the two things that makes the poet. Fundamentally he is a medium for the creative Force, which acts through him and uses or picks up anything stored up in his mind from its inner life or its memories or impressions of outer life and things, or anything subconscious, subliminal or superconscious in him, anything it can or cares to make use of and it moulds it as it chooses for ...
... movement. There is no need that you should apologise for anything; what we should advise is to bury the past episode and its mistakes and return to normal undisturbing relations. Fix yourself more in an inner life and its opening to your soul's future. It is better not to involve oneself in the dispute and to leave the combatants to throw their brahmastras at each other, oneself safe in a calm and judicious ...
... being remains invulnerable. Either of these two things is sufficient in itself—and in proportion as they grow, even the existence of the hostile forces becomes less and less of a phenomenon of the inner life—though they may still be there in the outer atmosphere. Reliance on the Power or Force About the contact with the world and the hostile forces, that is of course always one of the sadhak's ...
... control you, it is you who have to control the vital. Be careful about vital movements and formations—when you allow them, you are on a dangerous slope. If you want the Divine and the inner life, the old vital moorings must be cut. It is certainly the abrupt and decisive breaking that is the easiest and best way for these things—vital habits. People are here to change what ...
... been selected and arranged by the editors in four parts dealing with four broad subject areas: (1) Sri Aurobindo's outer life, his writings, his contemporaries, and contemporary events; (2) his inner life before and after his arrival in Pondicherry; (3) his role as a spiritual leader and guide; and (4) his ashram and the sadhana practised there. A fifth part contains mantras and messages that Sri ...
... persons that has to be rejected because it draws away from full consecration to the Divine. But this helps the growth of the soul into the Mother's consciousness and helps the work and helps also the inner life to grow. 10 February 1936 ...
... or knowledge, one lives in a great light and receives a knowledge deeper and truer than any the normal mind of man can acquire; if it [is] strength or power, one gets a spiritual strength for the inner life or Yogic power to govern the outer work and action; if it is happiness, one enters into a beatitude far greater than any joy or happiness that the ordinary human life can give. There are many ...
... from the first; but in Page 201 most nowadays this attitude seems to come with difficulty after much hesitation and delay and trouble. In my own case I owe the first decisive turn of my inner life to one who was infinitely inferior to me in intellect, education and capacity and by no means spiritually perfect or supreme; but, having seen a Power behind him and decided to turn there for help ...
... life to it without repining and not grudge the time, difficulty or labour. Again you speak of your experiences as vague and dreamlike. In the first place the scorn of small experiences in the inner life is no part of wisdom, reason or common sense. It is in the beginning of the sadhana and for a long time the small experiences that come on each other and, if given their full value, prepare the field ...
... to do what is best. Pranam and the rest have their Page 552 importance, but they ought not to feel upset or frustrated by the smallest change. Each ought to learn to have a sufficient inner life and inner connection to fall back on that whenever the outer is changed or interrupted. 14 June 1934 What to write of my miserable condition? Today, when I expected the Mother to hold me up ...
... but it is rather vague, isn't it? But to have this precise perception.... Listen, as I had when I came from Japan: I was on the boat, at sea, not expecting anything (I was of course busy with the inner life, but I was living physically on the boat), when all of a sudden, abruptly, about two nautical miles from Pondicherry, the quality, I may even say the physical quality of the atmosphere, of the air ...
... The Signature Of Truth THE WORLD OF HARMONY Music too is an essentially spiritual art and has always been associated with religious feelings and an inner life. But, here too, we have turned it into something independent and self-sufficient, a mushroom art, such as is operatic music. Most of the artistic productions we come across are of this kind and at best ...
... cultivate this field of action, how can we become conscious of our nocturnal activities? We shall find the way to do so very broadly outlined in a passage from a book devoted to the study of our inner life: "The same discipline of concentration which enables man not to remain a stranger to the inner activities of the waking state also provides him with a way to escape from his ignorance of the even ...
... are: an individual experience cannot change terrestrial life. This is the essential difference between the old idea of transformation—that is, the becoming conscious with the psychic being and the inner life—and transformation as we conceive it and speak of it. Not only an individual or a group of individuals or even all individuals, but life, the overall consciousness of this more or less developed ...
... The Synthesis of Yoga - I: Self-Consecration … why then are we not normally aware of so much that is behind us and always pressing upon us? For the same reason that we are not aware of the inner life of our neighbour, although it exists as much as our own and is constantly exercising an occult influence upon us,—for a great part of our thoughts and feelings come into us from outside, from our ...
... I: The Physical Consciousness There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self. This inner self once awake opens in its turn to our true real and eternal self. It opens inwardly to the soul, called in the language ...
... Silence ) ( Mother unfolds a sheet of paper. ) Here I have a question Page 369 referring to what we said last time about effort, personal effort. The question is this: "In the inner life, why are there periods when one can no longer make a conscious effort, and if one enforces it, parts of the nature revolt or else everything in the being seems to become petrified; effort becomes ...
... exclusively towards the sadhana, controlling your actions, turning them exclusively towards the sadhana, abolishing all desires and all useless, external, ordinary activities, living a more intense inner life, and separating yourself from ordinary things, ordinary thoughts, ordinary reactions, ordinary actions; then you create a kind of atmosphere around you. For example, instead of reading any odd ...
... body, if your mind and vital remain in a state of desire, Inconscience, darkness, passion and all the rest, that won't be of any use at all. Only, your body will become weak, dislocated from the inner life and one fine day it will fall ill. One must begin from inside, I have already told you this once. One must begin from above, first purify the higher and then purify the lower. I am not saying ...
... and replied: "Oh! you are too perfect to be here. It would be better for you to go away." "Music too is an essentially spiritual art and has always been associated with religious feeling and an inner life. But, here too, we have turned it into something Page 337 independent and self-sufficient, a mushroom art, such as is operatic music. Most of the artistic productions we come across ...
... curtain; and then there are others which are fastened, locked up, doors closed so well that they cannot be opened. Indeed, this is already an indication, it gives an indication of the strength of the inner life, the sincerity and transparency of the being. And so, through these doors that are open I enter and identify myself with the person within. And I see what he sees, understand what he understands ...
... which you have to find in order that you may come in contact with the Divine in you. It is the intermediary between the Divine Consciousness and your external consciousness; it is the builder of the inner life, it is that which manifests in the outer nature the order and rule of the Divine Will. If you become aware in your outer consciousness of the psychic being within you and unite with it, you can find ...
... nt is a nether diminished consciousness, the subliminal is an inner consciousness larger than our surface existence. the subliminal —the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical, with the soul or psychic entity supporting them. The subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature; it is not subconscient, but conscient and greater than the waking consciousness ...
... protection to obtain—and against infiltration, mixture. But if need be, one can conceive of that. From the social point of view, from the point of view of organisation, from the point of view of inner life, these are not problems; the problem is the relation with what is not supramentalised, to prevent infiltration, mixture, that is, to prevent this nucleus from falling back into an inferior creation—it ...
... your choice is. 24 January 1971 According to my experience people fall into tamas when they go into solitude. October 1971 To be by oneself very much needs a certain force of inner life. It may be better to vary solitude with some kind of its opposite. But each has its advantages and disadvantages and it is only by being vigilant and keeping an inner poise that one can avoid the ...
... by the thinking and reasoning mind, a form or ceremony by the aesthetic temperament or other parts of the infrarational being, a set moral code by man's vital nature in their turn towards the inner life. But these things are aids and supports, not the essence; precisely because they belong to the rational and infrarational parts, they can be nothing more and, if too blindly insisted on, may even ...
... necessarily bring an improvement in your health. It is here where.... It's not something I see imperatively. And to go back to ordinary life would be the end of everything—of your physical life and your inner life too. I have absolutely no desire to do that! That's quite obvious—you've had the experience. But it may not be unimportant to take a few precautions and make use of certain external aids ...
... itself, quite naturally. And here ( umbilical region ): something like a quiet ease (there's no equivalent in French). A quiet ease. It has been all cramped up, and now it must widen. The inner life of the prana must be widened (the inner vital, the true vital, the being that has the experiences I told you about—the piece of glass, the glimpse of the sea); that's what must widen. And vast, vast ...
... is a condensation of dynamic and active peace, so much so that all those who come from outside feel as if they were in another world. It is indeed something of another world, a world in which the inner life governs the outer, a world where things get done, where work is carried out not for a personal end but in a selfless way for the realisation of an ideal. The life we lead here is as far from ascetic ...
... to obtain) and against infiltration and admixtures. But if necessary, one can conceive of that. From the social point of view, from the point of view of organisation, from the point of view of the inner life, these are not problems. The problem is the relation with what is not supramentalised, to prevent the infiltration, the admixture: that is to say, to prevent the nucleus from falling back into an ...
... a protection (which can just barely be imagined) against infiltration and admixture.... From the social or organizational standpoint, these problems are not difficult, nor from the standpoint of inner life; the problem is the relationship with what is not supramentalized—preventing infiltration or admixture, keeping the nucleus from falling back into an inferior creation during the transitional period ...
... but with no inner unity—there's not ONE thing, not one, that is true, essentially and always true. We know it is like that outwardly, of course; but I have always felt that with people who have an inner life, one could attain a kind of identity of vibration and knowledge—but no! 'Very well,' I said, 'if that's how it is.....' All yesterday evening I was wondering, 'Is it... hopeless ?' That's ...
... foolishly, it strains at the leash. Page 110 I doubt that a new experience outside can really resolve things, but I believe it might help me make it to the next stage and consolidate my inner life. And if you wish, I would return in a year or two. I shall soon have completed the revision 1 of The Life Divine and The Human Cycle , so I believe I shall have done the best I could, at ...
... es, hardships and sufferings; this is a common fact and each one has to face his own lot of them. The only way to face them properly is to endure and to put one's interest, hope and faith in the inner life and consciousness turned towards the Divine, aspiring for the Divine and capable of receiving the Divine's Force and Help. But often the vital being or some part of it takes a kind of perverse pleasure ...
... deepen and accentuate beauty, the poet will not and should not hesitate to do so. His purpose, his ideal, is obviously not to photograph the mere outer life; it is not even to be faithful to his own inner life; he is essentially a revealer of shines and shadows from a supernormal plane. All poetry is a marriage of known symbols with unknown modes of Page 108 being. When the Elizabethan ...
... That went to "World-Union"! 2 A last note or reflection of Mother's on her present yoga: "When, through those around me, the outer world tries to impose its will on the rhythm of the inner life, it creates an imbalance which the body does not always have the time to overcome." × An estate on the bank of the ...
... uninteresting!" And I started thinking (not thinking, but becoming aware of one thing or another), and suddenly, I saw that phenomenon of a bottle in the cupboard becoming so clear, so... with an inner life ( gesture as if the bottle lit up from inside ). "Oh!" I said—the next minute, it was over. But I seemed to be told, "Yes, you can. You no longer see this way, but you can see that way; you no ...
... August 7, 1963 You look tired.... The difficulties are continuing. There's a keen struggle against the constant Negation of all inner life—higher life, rather. That is to say, the general Disbelief [in the body]. It's giving me the same kind of nights again. But it's odd, I don't know what it means, last night there were buildings ...
... Some were taken away like that, and they fell so gravely ill that once they recovered sufficiently, the doctors said to send them back here. It has happened at least a dozen times. Those who have an inner life Page 61 feel at home here. Well... ( Just before the end, Mother comes back to her experience at the balcony: ) The balcony is quite interesting. Because it suddenly made ...
... bring in the occult in its larger and deeper ranges but the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, the inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality. It would bring in the concreteness, the authentic image, the inmost soul of identity and the heart of meaning of these things, so that it could ...
... This undated handwritten note of Mother, found later, puts the problem in clear terms: "When, through those around me, the outer world tries to impose its will on the rhythm of inner life, the result is a disequilibrium which the body does not always have the time to overcome." ...
... not versify bare philosophy and mere spirituality. Besides, a Yogi such as Sri Aurobindo is much more than cither a philosopher or a spiritual teacher. Vivid concrete visions and experiences of the inner life are the stuff of a Yogi-poet's expression. Philosophy and spiritual teaching are byproducts of his verse. Also, before launching on an exploration of "unknown modes of being", he was neither a p ...
... vanished or even was an "illusion": Reality or dream What difference? I have seen. This is a triumph-cry of joy although the mouth may be wrung. It is possible only if there has been an inner life which can capture some touch of the Eternal from things that live a day. A poet who is dedicated to the Sacred, however far he or she may be from the full mystical life cannot help having the grace ...
... even though what is said and the fashion of saying may not appeal to the mood in which we habitually live. One may aver that Savitri with its constant vastnesses and strange intensities of a new inner life does not make an immediate appeal to us. Still, we should answer to it aesthetically Page 105 enough to grant that a future humanity is sure to appreciate it. Dante, in the last ...
... the lyric cry or the narrative, in the drama or the epic, should not merely be an instrument of forces which work through him by passing inspirations. It must represent the continuous rhythm of an inner life in which the meaning of the universe shall be unfolded in the individual and the Spirit manifested, with constant integrality, even through the prose of daily intercourse with the world. Page ...
... which that peak has become communicative of its truth, its power, its delight. Savitri has to be taken as Sri Aurobindo's poetically spiritual autobiography which is meant to make us re-live his inner life of both poetic creativity and creative spirituality. Further, we must attend to some details of these two creativities, keeping in view Sri Aurobindo's disclosure: "there have been made several ...
... Immortality — a mystical adventure in which Gods are helpers and Demons hinderers. Objects of the physical world are spoken of in such a way that to the initiates they represent realities of the inner life while to the common herd they appear in a literal sense. This sense is associated with a ritualistic religion devoted to a worship of personified Nature-powers by means of an elaborate "sacrifice" ...
... confined to the physical world. Also, even more than there, entropy is irrelevant here where the uni-directionality of time is an immediate datum of our inner life. Mr. Alvares comes a cropper at all points. What one can Page 249 really say ...
... To allow the outward or objective to rule one's motives and ideas is to be a scientist, not an artist. The outer or objective is to the artist a source of interest as a mould of expression of an inner life and spirit: he is not concerned primarily with its process and machinery and the mechanic law of things. Always the natural world and the human drama call him to their depths through his own inner ...
... hundred times"). 5 Letters on Yoga, p. 355. Page 170 The subliminal : The subliminal proper in us comprises our inner being, that is to say, our inner mind and inner life and inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them. It is of the nature of a secret intraconscient and circumconscient awareness, only sub-conscious in the specific sense that ...
... conformity with his material achievements. Millions of years have passed from the stone and iron age which marked his step by step advance in conquering the domain of matter but he is even now in his inner life what he was in those primitive times. He has conquered outer nature but his inner nature remains the same, beyond his control. His passions, instincts, desires and impulses still dominate him. He ...
... continuity or return of such experiences as you had. It seems to me that it was as well that it should come up and you should deal with it consciously and directly. If you want the Divine and the inner life, the old vital moorings must be cut. In short, I am thinking of going out somewhere for a month. I can only think of A at Bombay who may be willing to keep me. That is 'D's proposition all ...
... and her sadhana must be very good, as she has no depression... You forget that for a long time she was often keeping much more to herself, to Y's great anger. During that time she built up an inner life and made some attempt to change certain things in her outer—not in the outward appearance but in the movements governing it. There is still an enormous amount to be done before the outward change ...
... connection with changing houses. He gets warnings about accidents also. SRI AUROBINDO: Such voices are good for the external life and they can be beneficial but they don't carry one far in the inner life. PURANI: And this voice about special personality? I can't believe that at all. He must have wanted to hear such a voice. SRI AUROBINDO: Wish-fulfilment? (Laughter) SATYENDRA: The voices ...
... oneself and can lead to moroseness and melancholy. One can forgo the ordinary freedom of vital interchange only if one has something to support one within, peace or joy or the satisfaction of the inner life. When this inner peace, sukha, or satisfaction (atma-rati) is there, then the need of social talk etc. disappears and it becomes even disturbing or lowering to the consciousness - only talk from ...
... active! The male is active, strong and self-reliant. That, at any rate, is what the word "male" suggests in English. SATYENDRA: Receptiveness includes these things and is a way of representing the inner life and working. PURANI: Even if you accept that, you can't say that the male aspect is without love. SRI AUROBINDO: The male aspect also loves—it is devoted to a woman—but in a different way. ...
... till I read the other day what Barin babu has written about you. Now I really know what is meant by the phrase "living dangerously." Of course, I was not referring to anything about yoga or the inner life. But why put me to shame by dragging my poor self into it ? My dangers don't prove anything, do they? Sri Aurobindo: Wait a sec. I have admitted nothing about Barin babu - only to having ...
... opened a new direction of man's growth, opened and then closed also apparently. I am referring to the tragedy of the League of Nations. That was an attempt on the part of man (and Nature) to lift the inner life and consciousness to the level of the outer achievements. The attempt failed. Man could not rise to the height demanded of him. Now the second World War became logically more devastating and shattering; ...
... inlay this raw material with some fine worshipping figures. While thus experimenting, she dreamt of the future, of towns and houses whose walls would reflect the higher aspiration of man and his inner life. She also decorated pottery - plates, vases, lamps. Her designs were not simply ornamental; each line and shade had a deep meaning. A spiral of tiny circles of different colours would suggest ...
... Capelle, op. cit. Page 13 and depravity of the soul. The great task for man is, therefore, to effectuate 'the complete withdrawal of the soul from the outer world to its own inner life'. From this summary survey it becomes clear that the human body has been generally regarded as not possessed of any great spiritual possibility. It is rather an obstacle, a heavy weight ...
... subtle self is throned within In its viewless palace of veridical dreams. 3 Thus, the subliminal reach of our being comprises our inner existence, that is to say, our inner mind, inner life and inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them all. It is of the nature of a secret intraconscient and circumconscient awareness in full possession of a brilliant mind power ...
... Supernature, - for it is the nature of our true self, our still occult, because unevolved, whole being. A nature of unity will then bring inevitably its life-result of unity, mutuality, harmony. An inner life awakened to a full consciousness and to a full power of consciousness will bear its inevitable fruit in all who have it, self-knowledge, a perfected existence, the joy of a satisfied being, the happiness ...
... own errors and defects, knowing very well mat he cannot demand from his students what he himself cannot practice. The example expected from the teacher is not merely his outward behavior, but his inner life, his aims and the sincerity with which he pursues those aims. It is sometimes argued that what should be expected from the teacher is professional competence and a power of communication, ...
... play a minor role, but dynamic methods should play a major role. Instruction is less important than the example of the teacher, example, not only of outer behaviour but much more importantly of the inner life; and more important than example is the influence that the teacher can exercise, not by virtue of the authority of teacherhood but by virtue of the power to contact the inner soul of the pupil. But ...
... far as instruction is concerned; far more important than instruction is the example of the life of the teacher, — not so much the example of outer behaviour of the teacher, but the example of the inner life of the teacher. And more important than example is the influence of the teacher; but this influence does not and ought not to emanate from the authority and status of the teacher but it emanates ...
... But now? Let the following poem composed by him on May 15, 1986, answer the question. "It expresses", says K.D.S., "the culmination of a long-drawn-out experience and marks a crucial moment of the inner life." Page 37 AT LAST Felt mine yet sought afar In the flowering of forms That proved At last the unfading Rose — but surface-sheens, Mirrors of a mystery . That never ...
... govern and direct. The shreshtha was required in his mind wisdom and intelligence and love of learning, openness to poetry, art, and beauty, and dedicated capacity and skill in works. In his inner life, he had the urge to seek after the highest and nourish the spiritual turn. In his social relations and conduct, he was strict in his observance of all social यद्यदाचरति श्रेष्ठस्तत्तदेवेतरो जनः ...
... inconscient, Page 31 comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge ...
... which makes him such a remarkable student. He allows it to influence his life and studies. At particularly significant stages of his life, the feeling of awakening intensifies. Joseph treasures his inner life and follows its indications at every stage, even when it finally calls him to transcend Castalia and its ideals. Throughout this life-long process of awakening, Joseph comes into contact with ...
... through the higher being, that is to say, through the things of the mind, religion, thought, art, and literature. It is true that in all these India reached extraordinary heights and wideness in the inner life, but she could not in the outward life go beyond certain very partial realizations and very imperfect attempts. All that she could manage to do was to create a general spiritualising ...
... and Titans. It is no doubt an eternal truth of creation, this conflict between the divine and the anti-divine, and it has been going on in the heart of humanity since its advent upon earth. In the inner life of the world this is a fact of the utmost importance, its most significant principle and mystery. Still it must be said that never in the annals of the physical world has this truth taken such momentous ...
... she was saved and that was how she acquired a new merit and a fresh lease of life. Unlike Britain, France bowed down and accepted what should not have been accepted and cut herself adrift from her inner life and truth, the result was five years of hell. Fortunately, the hell in the end proved to be a purgatory, but what a purgatory! For there were souls who were willing to pay the price and did pay it ...
... outside — well, perhaps the thing can be done, but destruction of form is not elimination of the life or spirit behind it. The past still in its present form continues because it maintains its own inner life and spirit. So long as that inner spirit is there you may break one form but another or many others will appear inspired by the same spirit. That is why the French proverb says: "The more it changes ...
... spiritual life, those alone who were chosen by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and permitted to live here. And here is the natural psychological reason: it was a select group who had already had an inner life and spiritual aspiration. And so they were ready for a life of surrender and self-giving, obedience and allegiance to the guru. They did not come ignorant and innocent of the rudimentary elements ...
... have thought and experienced otherwise. Apart from the well-recognised fact that only in distress does the normal man think of God and non-worldly things, the real matter, however, is that the inner life is a thing apart and follows its own line of movement, does not depend upon, is not subservient to, the kind of outer life that one may happen Page 49 to live under. The Bible says indeed ...
... body, but the mind and the vital remain full of desire and inconscience and obscurity and all the rest, your care will serve no purpose. Your body will become perhaps weak, disharmonious with your inner life and drop off one day. You must begin from within. I have said a hundred times, you must begin from above. You must purify first the higher regions and then purify the lower ones. I do not mean ...
... not dependent on any outer manifestation or instrumentation or formula of external being. According to Sri Aurobindo, this view is valid and there can undoubtedly be a spiritual life within, and inner life has a supreme spiritual importance and the outer has a value page - 107 only in so far as it is expressive of the inner status. The Gita, too, states that the man of spiritual realization ...
... to note that the meaning and significance of the vast effort of Indian spirituality and culture began to be understood only in the context of what is happening since the turn of the century in the inner life of India. It is, in fact, through the life and work of Sri Aurobindo that India has taken not only a new course of an integral endeavor, but also in doing so, it has embraced quintessence of the ...
... or Light or Bliss that the realisation of Him gives than to bring in these minor things which can divert us from the one thing needful. The divinisation of the material life also as well as the inner life is part of what we see as the Divine Plan, but it can only be fulfilled by an outflowing of the inner realisation, something that grows from within outwards, not by the working out of a mental ...
... action. It is a wonderful and exhilarating experience. Naturally you cannot repeat too often or carry too far an experiment of this kind on the physical plane. But you can freely deal with your inner life and consciousness. You can make your mind and your vital a clean slate, as much as you like; not once in your life, but every moment of your life. And then see how the world impinges upon your ...
... precisely this business of putting our things in order. We do not always notice how very disorderly we are: our belongings and household effects are in a mess, our actions are haphazard, and in our inner life we are as disorderly as in our outer life, or even more. Indeed it is because we are so disordered within that there is such disorder in our outer life. Our thoughts come to us pell-mell and our ...
... not entirely heartless men, that is, atheistic and given wholly to a materialistic philosophy. It had been part of our plan to devote some time to Page 348 the cultivation of an inner life too in that solitude. I remember how we would get up an hour before sunrise and sitting down in that calm atmosphere in a meditative pose we would recite aloud with deep fervour and joy the mantra ...
... man's growth, opened and then closed also apparently. I am referring to the tragedy of the League of Nations. That was an attempt Page 21 on the part of man (and Nature) to lift the inner life and consciousness to the level of the outer achievements. The attempt failed. Man could not rise to the height demanded of him. Now the second World War became logically more devastating and shattering; ...
... inner), keeping a cheerful and poised state with a motto of moderation in everything. Strong and determined will and a constant aspiration for endless progress will be developed by living an inner life and applying in life the teachings of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. At the age of 17 you ought not to be satisfied with the work you were doing when you were 12 or 14, you should progressively ...
... that work is to find the divine Self in the individual and the collectivity and to realize spiritually, mentally, vitally, materially its greatest largest, richest and deepest possibilities in the inner life of all and their outer action and nature, Page 40 The spiritual life is the flower not of a featureless but a conscious and diversified oneness. Each man has to grow into the Divine ...
... the cosmic or universal delight. Psychic being is the flame of the Lord, an inextinguishable flame. It is the witness that is concentrated; it is a control that is in us; it is the guide; it is an inner life; it is a divine voice imperishable. It is not the unborn self, because the psychic being accepts to work in ignorance and therefore the psychic being is not the unborn self but the self that has ...
... back to Aswapathy before the birth of Savitri. After the first two Cantos the poet goes back upon the story to connect it up with the central incident by creating the vast background of Aswapathy's inner life, its struggles, its achievements and the circumstances under which the birth of Savitri becomes possible. The results of his individual sadhana lead him to the knowledge of the planes of being, the ...
... not with their own self, but with the not-self; who have to fight and conquer not themselves but others, in order to establish the Kingdom of God, realised by them in the relations of their own inner life, in the actualities and appointments of the life of their own people or of humanity at large. They are, so to say, the chosen of God. They are born leaders of men. Commissioned to serve special ...
... sound vibrations, which corresponds to some vibration of consciousness. "Music too," says Sri Aurobindo, "is an essentially spiritual art and has always been associated with religious feeling and an inner life. But, here too, we have turned it into something independent and self-sufficient, a mushroom art." This turning away of music from its original aim and function has tended, perhaps, to a great advance ...
... drawn on self, A dream of images:... —Book VII, Canto 6 Compare: "Nirvana" a poem by Sri Aurobindo. also: "It watched the figure of the cosmic game, But the thought and inner life in forms seemed dead "A hollow physical shell persisted still. All seemed a brilliant shadow of itself, A cosmic film of scenes and images: The enduring mass and outline of the hills ...
... which you have to find in order that you may come in contact with the Divine in you. It is the intermediary between the Divine Consciousness and your external consciousness; it is the builder of the inner life; it is that which manifests in the outer nature the order and rule of the Divine Will. If you become aware in your outer consciousness of the psychic being within you and unite with it, you can ...
... Savitri had been left behind to carry on the fight with the forces of darkness. 104 One of the disciples, Nirodbaran, has also posed the leading question: "What is, after all, Savitri if not the inner life-episodes of the Mother and the Master?" 105 Page 412 ...
... with him to write such lyrics. His Urvashi am Parash Pāthar have got that creative force – there he Page 248 has created something, not a character, but some reality of the inner life of man. What I mean is it is not simply a description. Also Nishikanta in the Gorur Gadi has created something. You see there that the "cart" is a real cart and man in it is a real man; and ...
... meetings...and, above all, the sense of its goal... this represents more truly than any combat in a champclos the perennial strangeness, the adventurousness, and the sinuous forward movement of the inner life." 134 It is not true in all cases that an Odyssey is better than an Iliad, a Pilgrim's Progress better than a Holy War. Besides, as Dr E.M.W. Tillyard points out, by way ...
... bring the Page 15 power from the Divine so that you will be able to prevent suffering." The Madonna of Might is the second power whom Savitri meets when she goes into inner life. The Madonna of Might is the will working in the cosmic life, in the whole of human life; it keeps a sort of rough order in the evolutionary movement, keeps the upward trend. The Madonna of Might ...
... married Swarnalata Devi, aged twelve and the eldest daughter of Rishi Rajnarain Bose, according to the rites of Adi Brahmo Samaj. It was the alliance of two authentic and forceful currents in the inner life of Bengal. A contemporary of Michael Madhusudan Dutt, a student of Henry Derozio and David Hare, Rajnarain Bose was an early synthesis of the East and the West, and in the heyday of his hallowed ...
... important need is to put each thing in its place .... We do not always notice how very disorderly we are: our belongings and our household effects are in a mess, our actions are haphazard, and in our inner life we are as disorderly as in our outer life, or even more .... One of the things the Mother has been trying to teach us both by her word and example is this, namely, that to keep our outer life and ...
... 1920, the boat approached the shores of Pondicherry. As she was to recall her experience thirty years later: I was on the boat, at sea, not expecting anything (I was of course busy with the inner life, but I was living physically on the boat), when all of a sudden, abruptly, about two nautical miles from Pondicherry, the quality, I may even say the physical quality of the atmosphere, of the air ...
... those high ranges of experience, what happened to her, what happened to him, had accordingly the same contours, the same colours, the same force of impulsion. Savitri thus became essentially the inner life-history of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. As the Mother has succinctly put it, Savitri is: 1) The daily record of the spiritual experiences of the individual who has written. 2) A ...
... sure of victory but for nothing less than that. That is what I call being sincere. 10 Not only insinceritiess , but one's dual or multiple personalities can also cause havoc and turn one's inner life into a chaos following an insurrection. The body is "like a bag with pebbles and pearls all mixed up" - a canker could be hidden somewhere in the deceptively alluring fruit - and the false doubles ...
... you need a very good teacher. We don't have anybody of that level here. Besides, India is full of classical music. Now that you have come here, your primary purpose in life is the growth of this inner life. It is fine that you are learning music with Dilip and Sahana. The Mother once again became silent. Then with great force and firmness, She said, "What I want from you is music, but the music ...
... her seeing and hearing, it was not a physical decline, for she understood and heard people clearly "only when they think clearly what they say. And I see only that which is... which expresses the inner life", but otherwise it was hazy or veiled. As for the body, would it change too - and to what extent? Would the transformation of the body follow "quite naturally" the transformation of the physical ...
... ever since. It was with my father Prithwi Singh Nahar and my brother Abhay that I went to Sri Aurobindo and Mother. My father was in his late thirties and already knew a great deal about the inner life and assorted subjects, as his natural inclination was towards spirituality. It was in 1924, when he was in his mid-twenties, that he came under the influence of Thakur Anukulchandra (1888-1969) ...
... of the thing seen while you are seeing it! For instance, I saw this phenomenon early this morning, in the bathroom before turning the light on: a bottle in the cupboard became so clear, with such inner life! “Oh, look!” I said — the next minute, it was over. This is clearly the preparation for a vision through the inner light rather than projected light. And it is ... oh, it's warm, living, intense ...
... constraint. Yet this other way of being is not without logic, and that logic is what we should try to capture, if possible, if we want to pass consciously into the other state, not only in our inner life but in our outer one as well. We must know the rules of the passage. To tell the truth, they do not reveal themselves easily – because they are too simple. It takes tireless Page 50 ...
... exaggerated vital nature ( e . g . exaggerated spiritual ambition) which are too strong for the mind to bear. That is not your case. You have had long experience of inner peace, wideness, Ananda, an inner life turned towards the Divine and one who has had that ought not to speak of general incapacity, whatever the difficulties of the external nature, — difficulties common in one form or another to all ...
... lackluster, it's completely uninteresting!" And I started becoming aware of one thing or another. And suddenly, I saw that phenomenon of a bottle in the cupboard becoming so clear, so... with an inner life. "Oh!" I said—the next minute, it was over. This is clearly the preparation for a vision through the inner light rather than projected light. And it is... oh, it's warm, living, intense—and of such ...
... precisely this business of putting our things in order. We do not always notice how very disorderly we are; our belongings and household effects are in a mess, our actions are haphazard, and in our inner life we are as disorderly as in our outer life, or even more. Indeed, it is because we are so disorderly within that there is such disorder in our outer life. Our thoughts come to us pell-mell and our ...
... Sri Aurobindo found him to be a Bhakta with a limited mind but with some experience and evocative power. "In my Page 438 own case," he wrote, "I owe the first decisive turn of my inner life to one who was infinitely inferior to me in intellect, education and capacity and by no means spiritually perfect or supreme; but, having seen a Power behind him and decided to turn there for help ...
... communication and loosely organised inter-tribal existence. All the principal features of that outward life which they saw around them the mystic poets took and turned into significant images of the inner life. The life of man is represented as a sacrifice to the gods, a journey sometimes figured as a crossing of dangerous waters, sometimes as an ascent from level to level of the hill of being, and, thirdly ...
... between the Gods and their dark opponents, between the Masters of Light, sons of Infinity, and the children of Division and Night, a battle in which man takes part and which is reflected in all his inner life and action. This was also a fundamental principle of the religion of Zoroaster. The same idea is prominent in later literature. The Ramayana is in its ethical intention the parable of an enormous ...
... the status of the Purushottama, there are two necessities, two conditions which must be satisfied before that can be possible. He must have Page 294 moulded towards that ideal his whole inner life in his earthly living; and he must be faithful to his aspiration and will in his departing. "Whoever leaves his body and departs" says Krishna "remembering me at his time of end, comes to my ...
... working determines its relations to the Spirit. This is, indeed, the justification of Karmayoga as a practical means of the higher self-realisation. We start from this foundation that the present inner life of man, almost entirely dependent as it is upon his vital and physical nature, only lifted beyond it by a limited play of mental energy, is not the whole of his possible existence, not even the whole ...
... the occasion arises that forces us to stand arrested before the Veil. Page 18 And the action in which this divine figure moves is the whole wide action of man in life, not merely the inner life, but all this obscure course of the world which we can judge only by the twilight of the human reason as it opens up dimly before our uncertain advance the little span in front. This is the dist ...
... or hear his voice, to dwell in his presence, we must truly tell ourselves that, inasmuch as it seems Page 114 indispensable to us, this shows that we are still little conscious of the inner life, the true life. Even if we do not attain to the marvellous depths of the divine life, of which only very rare individuals are constantly conscious, already in the domain of thought we escape the ...
... happens all the time. For instance, take someone who is studying, working—a scientist making discoveries. He progresses in his studies, he knows more and more. But as he does not take any care of his inner life or private life or outward life, he may become more and more backward or unconscious or even full of nasty defects; even though he progresses from the scientific point of view, as a man he may become ...
... of the Vaishya as well as of the Brahmin and Kshatriya. It is in his view quite possible for a man to do business and make money and earn profits and yet be a spiritual man, practise Yoga, have an inner life. The Gita is constantly justifying works as a means of spiritual salvation and enjoining a Yoga of works as well as of Bhakti and Knowledge. Krishna, however, superimposes a higher law also that ...
... I can under these circumstances. First, let me say, that the absorption of ideas and the remoulding of the mental aims and attitude is one thing and the Page 388 remoulding of the inner life and consciousness and eventually also of the outer life, which is the aim of Yoga, is quite another. The first can be done to some extent by the method of dissemination you indicate. But as you rightly ...
... have done perhaps from the first; but in most nowadays this attitude seems to come with difficulty, after much hesitation and delay and trouble. In my own case I owe the first decisive turn of my inner life to one who was infinitely inferior to me in intellect, education and capacity and by no means spiritually perfect or supreme; but, having seen a Power behind him and decided to turn there for help ...
... and a protection (which can just barely be imagined) against infiltration and admixture... From the social or organizational standpoint, these problems are not difficult, nor from the standpoint of inner life; the problem is the relationship with what is not supramentalised preventing infiltration or admixture, keeping the nucleus from falling back into an inferior creation during the transitional period ...
... consciousness is centred in the physical, outer life, it is a purely physical disturbance of equilibrium, of the functioning of the different organs. But when behind this purely superficial life, an inner life is being fashioned, the causes of illness change; they always become the expression of a disequilibrium between the different parts of the being: between the inner progress or effort and the outer ...
... recognise the other. Only the Divine can know the Divine, and because we carry the Divine in ourselves we are capable of seeing Him and recognising Him. But if we try to understand something of the inner life by using our senses and external methods, the result is sure to be total failure and we shall also deceive ourselves totally. So when you imagine that you can know the secrets of Nature and still ...
... it was not a physical decline, it was simply this: I understand and hear Page 281 people only when they think clearly what they say. And I see only that which is... which expresses the inner life, otherwise it is... hazy or veiled; and it is not that the eyes do not see, it is "something", it is some other thing—everything is new. ( Silence ) It is true, the body must have much g ...
... conclusion; it is contrary to all experience. Europeans throughout the centuries have practised with success spiritual disciplines which were akin to Oriental Yogas and have followed too ways of the inner life which came to them from the East. Their non-Oriental nature did not stand in their way. The approach and experiences of Plotinus and the European mystics who derived from him were identical, as has ...
... cannot accept these ideas or these results, for it does not sound to me like a successful meeting of the Divine and the sadhak on the physical plane , however successful it might have been for the inner life. Krishna did great things and was very clearly a manifestation of the Divine. But I remember a passage of the Mahabharata in which he complains of the unquiet life his followers and adorers gave ...
... not changed and made full of peace and strength and quiet. You forget that for a long time she was often keeping much more to herself, to X 's great anger. During that time she built up an inner life and made some attempt to change certain things in her outer—not in the outward appearance but in the movements governing it. There is still an enormous amount to be done before Page 23 ...
... Truth that the poet cannot make his material, even if it seems to belong to other provinces of the mind, because all forms of human experience approach each other on their sides of intuition and inner life and vision and all meet in the spirit. The condition, the limitation is only in the way and manner,—but that means enormously much,—the necessity of the purely poetic way of seeing and the subjection ...
... the character, whether profusely filled in in detail in the modern fashion or simply and strongly outlined in the purer ancient method, will not be mistaken for the person, but accepted as only an inner life notation of the spirit: the passions, which have hitherto been prominently brought forward as the central stuff of the drama, will be reduced to their proper place as indicative colour and waves ...
... ideal man, interested in externals for their own sake, Cheloo the day-labourer, for instance, or Joseph the chauffeur, homo externalis Russellius , an extrovert? Or is an introvert one who has an inner life stronger, more brilliant, more creative than his external life,—the poet, the musician, the artist? Was Beethoven in his deafness bringing out music from within him an introvert? Or does it mean ...
... Peace or Light or Bliss that the realisation of Him gives than to bring in these minor things which can divert us from the one thing needful. The divinisation of the material life also as well as the inner life is part of what we see as the Divine Plan, but it can only be fulfilled by an outflowing of the inner realisation, something that grows from within outward, not by the working out of a mental principle ...
... contacts is sufficient. Some kind of activity and service to the Divine is also a very necessary element in the integral spiritual life. To be by oneself very much needs a certain force of inner life. It may be better to vary solitude with some sort of its opposite. But each has its advantages and disadvantages and it is only by being vigilant and keeping an inner poise that one can avoid the ...
... Nature, of the world-consciousness and the play of its forces, of one's own self and real nature and the inner nature of things, the power of these things growing in one till they are a part of one's inner life and existence,—as for instance, the realisation of the Divine Presence, the descent and settling of the higher Peace, Light, Force, Ananda in the consciousness, their workings there, the realisation ...
... and mechanical processes, has usually and indeed almost by a practical necessity to go through a process of internal contraction before the unit can indulge again in a new and free expansion of its inner life; for its first need and instinct is to form and secure its own existence. To enforce its unity is its predominant impulse and to that paramount need it has to sacrifice the diversity, harmonious ...
... relative, feels the large and serene presence of the infinite in the finite, discovers the reconciling law of a perfect unity in all divisions and differences. The spiritual will in his outer as in his inner life and formulation must be to effect a great reconciliation between the secret and eternal reality and the finite appearances of a world which seeks to express and in expressing seems to deny it. Our ...
... itself in obedience, subordination, faithful service, a disinterested attachment. But these more and more cease to have a living root in the clear psychological idea or to spring naturally out of the inner life of the man; they become a convention, though the most noble of conventions. In the end they remain more as a tradition in the thought and on the lips than a reality of the life. For the typal ...
... nal law. There is only the fear of defeat and the fear, recently, of a disastrous economic disorganisation; but experience after experience has shown that these checks are ineffective. In its inner life this huge State egoism was once little better than in its outer relations. 1 Brutal, rapacious, cunning, oppressive, intolerant of free action, free speech and opinion, even of freedom of conscience ...
... work would be to find the divine Self in the individual and the collectivity and to realise spiritually, mentally, vitally, materially its greatest, largest, richest and deepest possibilities in the inner life of all and their outer action and nature. For it is into the Divine within them that men and mankind have to grow; it is not an external idea or rule that has to be Page 257 imposed ...
... force of the infrarational man, as he develops, is an inferior intuition, an instinctively intuitional sight arising out of the force of life in him, and the transition from this to an intensity of inner life and the growth of a deeper spiritual intuition which outleaps the intellect and seems to dispense with it, is an easy passage in the individual man. But for humanity at large this movement cannot ...
... needed by the thinking and reasoning mind, a form or ceremony by the aesthetic temperament or other parts of the infrarational being, a set moral code by man's vital nature in their turn towards the inner life. But these things are aids and supports, not the essence; precisely because they belong to the rational and infrarational parts, they can be nothing more and, if too blindly insisted on, may even ...
... itself and behind life through the intensities of creative sight. It brings in a look upon Nature which pierces beyond her outsides and her external spirit and lays its touch on the mysteries of her inner life and sometimes on that in her which is most intimately spiritual. It awakens rare outbreaks of mysticism, a vein of subtler sentiment, a more poignant pathos; it refines passion from a violence of ...
... s that surround us. Perfect equality 2 of soul is established. The Vision of the Self in its Becomings Vision is not sufficient; one must become what inwardly one sees. The whole inner life must be changed so as to represent perfectly in all parts of the being what is understood by the intellect and seen by the inner perception. Page 36 In the individual soul extending itself ...
... its motives of energy from the ordinary consciousness and its desires and activities that if it loses them, it loses all joy and charm and energy of existence. But if one has a spiritual aim and an inner life and the vital part accepts them, then it draws its energies from within and there is no danger of one's being tamasic. Morality The principle of life which I seek to establish is spiritual ...
... establish their own control over him or take possession of him for their own purpose. Often, representing themselves as divine powers, they mislead, give erring suggestions and impulsions and pervert the inner life. Many are those who, attracted by these powers and beings of the vital plane, have ended in a definitive spiritual fall or in mental and physical perversion and disorder. One comes inevitably into ...
... by it; for it is only old Nature running on by a past impetus and will drop off with the fall of the body. When none of these solutions can be attained, the sadhaka sometimes simply leads a double inner life, divided between his spiritual experiences and his vital weaknesses to the end, making the most of his better part, making as little as may be of the outer being. But none of these methods will do ...
... It is solved in this sadhana by a sort of harmony being established by which even in doing one's work and keeping the necessary outer activities one can still live within in the fullness of the inner life and experience. Rely on the Mother always. These things are the first beginnings of Yogic experience and the difficulties of the mind and vital (which are not the old ones you had but simply the ...
... is not the right kind of quietude. The peace of Nirvana would have some meaning in it, but death into the quietness of exhausted Prakriti is no release at all. The real rest 3 is in the inner life founded in peace and silence and absence of desire. There is no other rest—for without that the machine goes on whether one is interested in it or not. The inner mukti is the only remedy. Page ...
... spiritual experiences and make progress without any entire cessation of the sex-activity. The mind separates itself from the outer vital (life-parts) and the physical consciousness and lives its own inner life. But only a few can really do this with any completeness and the moment one's experiences extend to the life-plane and the physical, sex can no longer be treated in this way. It can become at any ...
... activities. It is a mistake to do so out of asceticism or with the idea of tapasya. One can stop these things when they drop of themselves, because one is in full experience and so interested in one's inner life that one has no energy to spare for the rest. Even then, there is no rule for giving up; for there is no reason why the poetry etc. should not be a part of sadhana. The love of applause, of fame ...
... exaggerated vital nature (e.g. exaggerated spiritual ambition) which are too strong for the mind to bear. That is not your case. You have had long experience of inner peace, wideness, Ananda, an inner life turned towards the Divine and one who has had that ought not to speak of general incapacity, whatever the difficulties of the external nature,—difficulties common in one form or another to all. ...
... stand in the way of the greater psychic and spiritual truth or prevent it from being true. X is perfectly right when he says that this is his true mother; for she has given him a new birth in an inner life and is creating him anew for a diviner existence. The idea of spiritual Motherhood is not an invention of this Asram; it is an eternal truth which has been recognised for ages past both in Europe ...
... transformed or refuses to be part of a divine consciousness he will abandon without hesitation, but not from any preconceived prejudgment of its unfitness or its incapacity to be an element of the new inner life. There can be no fixed mental test or principle for these things; he will therefore follow no unalterable rule, but accept or repel an activity of the mind according to his feeling, insight or experience ...
... duty, but solely for the sake of the Lord of works and because it is felt or known to be the Divine Will that the social law or rule or relation as it stands can still be kept as a figure of the inner life and the minds of men must not be disturbed by its infringement. If, on the other hand, the social law, rule or relation is disregarded, that too will not be for the indulgence of desire, personal ...
... symmetry of the system and cut it into two movements of life in opposition to each other, the normal life of interests and desires with an ethical and religious colouring and the abnormal or supernormal inner life founded on renunciation. The old synthesis in fact contained in itself the seed of this exaggeration and could not but lapse into it: for if we regard the escape from life as our desirable end, if ...
... securely only within its normal limits,—but in either way, safe or unsafe, the thing can be done. What we discover within this secret part of ourselves is an inner being, a soul, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner subtle-physical entity which is much larger in its potentialities, more plastic, more powerful, more capable of a manifold knowledge and dynamism than our surface mind, life or body; especially ...
... parts of it can be thus known by a penetration and looking within or a freer communication, it is only by going inward behind the veil of superficial mind and living within, in an inner mind, an inner life, an inmost soul of our being that we can be fully self-aware,—by this and by rising to a higher plane of mind than that which our waking consciousness inhabits. An enlargement and completion of our ...
... self-experience of the self-observing inner being, the object is always some state or movement or wave of the conscious being, anger, grief or other emotion, hunger or other vital craving, impulse or inner life reaction or some form of sensation, perception or thought activity. The act is some kind of mental observation and conceptual valuation of this movement or wave or else a mental sensation of it in ...
... is therefore through the utmost possible unification of Spirit and Matter that we shall best arrive at their reconciling truth and so at some strongest foundation for a reconciling practice in the inner life of the individual and his outer existence. We have found already in the cosmic consciousness a Page 29 meeting-place where Matter becomes real to Spirit, Spirit becomes real to Matter ...
... mortality and exists or works dully or pettily in the ruck of its earthly habits. The complete redemption comes by the descent of the divine Power into the human mind and body and the remoulding of their inner life into the divine image,—what the Vedic seers called the birth of the Son by the sacrifice. It is in fact by a continual sacrifice or offering, a sacrifice of adoration and aspiration, of works, of ...
... hearing, I've noticed that it's not a physical deterioration: it's simply that I understand and hear people only when they think clearly what they say. And I see only what is... what expresses the inner life, otherwise things are... hazy or veiled. It's not that my eyes don't see, it's "something," it's something else—everything is new. ( silence ) It was what Sri Aurobindo told me when I asked ...
... College and the association with European Jesuits from early boyhood at the same time that I steeped myself in Zoroastrian lore. It is clear from your book that the wideness and richness of your inner life is due to the fact that you came to Catholic Christianity from the outside. If you had been born to it, you would never have sought out so much that is non-Catholic to form the many-sidedness of ...
... ascent that Sri Aurobindo had accomplished was matched by the crossing of a critical point of descent. This day was the culmination of year on long year of travel along uncharted ways of the inner life - travel far beyond the goals of Nirvana, Moksha, Cosmic Consciousness, Krishna-realisation, union with the World-Creatrix which were reached before he withdrew from the political field of ...
... was summed up in the formula: "Il faut etre soi", which signified that all one's duty lay in being one's self without contradiction, without any other need than to attain one's own happiness. The inner Life which the utilitarian philosophers had scorned and towards which Rousseau directed men's minds came to be intended by him not, as by the Saints, to put men into contact with their supreme origin ...
... itself and behind life through the intensities of poetical sight" and brings in "a look upon Nature which pierces beyond the outsides and her external spirit and lays its touch on the mysteries of her inner life and sometimes on that in her which is most intimately spiritual" 23 At its intensest this Celticism "fitrives to rise beyond the English mould, seems about to disengage itself and reveal through ...
... he has applied to his mystical penchant, the public cannot adequately appreciate what Yoga did for him. But even these meagre volumes are packed with supreme qualities. The poems are of an intense inner life figured forth in several styles. The most prevalent is a lyric fluency simple to the point of spoken speech yet alive with the most rich and profound suggestion. Perhaps this style is best illustrated ...
... heaven out of what seems most earthy, the other is convinced that there is no great cause for disappointment and that the pantheistic realisation is sufficient refuge and that by its building up an inner life the sharp need is removed for wishing away the many rigidities and angularities of outer fact. Nature, in Wordsworth's eyes, has in her deep breast an asylum here and now for the anguish that frequently ...
... mutable and multiform thing we call Hinduism. Sticking fast where you are like a limpet is not the dharma, neither is leaping without looking the dharma. The eternal religion is to realise God in our inner life and our outer existence, in society not less than in the individual. Esha dharmah sanatanah . God is not Page 53 antiquity nor novelty: He is not the Manava Dharmashastra, nor Vidyaranya ...
... life. Yet the spiritual life finds its most potent expression in the man who lives the ordinary life of men in the strength of the Yoga and under the law of the Vedanta. It is by such a union of the inner life and the outer that mankind will eventually be lifted up and become mighty and divine. It is a delusion to suppose that Vedanta contains no inspiration to life, no rule of conduct, and is purely ...
... continues. This [radical change] didn't make any difference. ( then another sentence ) "I understand and hear people only when they think clearly what they say. And I see only what expresses the inner life." Well, some people come to see me, they come in: I see only a silhouette. Then suddenly it becomes clear-cut. Then off it goes again—DEPENDING ON THEIR THOUGHT. It's extremely interesting ...
... really to be done with this 'me'. It will be a joy to be with you again and resume the work. Here, I am sparing as many hours as I can to correcting The Human Cycle ... I follow X perfectly in his inner life, unreservedly, but I have to force myself to follow him in his outer life. Mother, I am at your feet, with my love and my gratitude. Your child, Signed : Satprem Page 365 ...
... Time on your side. I worry myself over being exact and regular and punctual. If I ever miss being so, even a little, I get upset and feel that I must hurry all the more. In matters of the inner life also, I incline to do the same. I think this tendency is to be discouraged. Yes, it is not good to be impatient and agitated―you must do everything peacefully and quietly without excessive ...
... It must be strong enough to pull me from my concentration or my activity. If' I knew when you concentrate or do your puja , 1 I could tune into you, and shell I would know more; otherwise, my inner life is too ... l am not at all passive inwardly, you see, I am very active, so I don't usually receive your vibrations unless they impose themselves strongly or unless I have decided beforehand to be ...
... of gulf between the two. I feel well only when I stop everything and sit. Then everything is fine. Ahh! But as soon as I touch material things... it's awful. There's no bridge between the inner life and Matter—none AT ALL, a complete chasm. ( after a silence ) From what Nirod is now reading me from his correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, it seems to have been the same with Sri Aurobindo ...
... not always to be dated according to the time-sequence of his books. Things might exist in his mind at one time and get recorded at another, and we have no chronological gauge in some matters of his inner life in "Eternity". Considering all this, we need not hesitate to align in fundamental spirit Blake's later mythology with The Tyger. (h) We may now make a few comments on The Tyger ...
... clearly be no point in returning to the grooves of the past and recovering old forms and spirit in a new guise. As he explains succinctly: The meaning of Spirituality is a new greater inner life of man founded in the consciousness of his true, his inmost, highest and largest Self and Spirit by which he receives the whole of existence as a progressive manifestation of the Self in the ...
... gods in themselves by the mantra. Again, that which we have created in our consciousness by the Word, we can fix there by the Word to become part of ourselves and effective not only in our inner life but upon the outer physical world. By expression we form, by affirmation we establish." Firmly established in the Ananda of a divine ambience, and powered by prosodic control, the mantra ...
... I entered into fantasy play there and had long conversations with flower fairies and the God, Shiva, who became my personal God. This life was so real to me that I thought everyone had a similar inner life. As I grew up, I realized that in my life with the fairies and Shiva I was not like everyone else, so there was a remote search for something of which I was not fully aware at that time. The fairies ...
... to be the approved and relished bhoga or offering." India the seeker of the Supreme Spirit can very well consider the mango as suggestively summing up at the same time the high ideal of her inner life and the sacrificial, the dedicative, the detached attitude which is commanded to the idealistic soul by Krishna in the famous phrase of the Gita: "Thou hast a right to the work but not to to the ...
... meeting of the two represents the coming together of the necessary creative powers by whom a new age would be born. And it is to be noted that both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had been pursuing the inner life on essentially identical lines which would unite Spirit and Matter. So their joining of forces was the most natural thing. And it was not only a doubling of strengths but also a linking of compl ...
... them is not lacking in spirituality; the lordly strength behind the lion and the fiery energy behind the tiger are part of the Divine's manifestation, but they belong to another dimension of the inner life than the psychic and, when that dimension merges with this, they will be realised. Note the reply of the boy, “The Mother has said that the time has not yet come for us to go where they are.” ...
... paid the unseen price; The fire, the strife, the wrestle are within. … A million wounds gape in his secret heart. … Antagonist forces crowd across his path; A siege, a combat is his inner life. … His large identity and all-harbouring love Shall bring the cosmic anguish into his depths … 49 4. The Mother Avatar Outspoken or not, the avatarhood of the Mother has been ...
... excluded. … It is therefore through the utmost unification of Spirit and Matter that we shall best arrive at their reconciling truth and so at some strongest foundation for a reconciling practice in the inner life of the individual and his outer existence.” 3 True to this attitude, Sri Aurobindo followed with constant interest the goings-on in the world, including the main discoveries in science, where ...
... All these he converts into a fuel to the fire of his aspiration and thus emerges, an effulgent phenomenon. What is it that makes a Yogi or an illuminate? Spiritual life is essentially an inner life which is difficult to appraise from the surface. It is not the clothes, the food, the outer detachment, the rituals that really matter. But then I have asked myself how shall one know? I do not ...
... initiate to change character (to flower), less if surrender as baby cat. 14. Rest of sentence not clearly audible. 15. "When as a result of a life of tapasya, there is a blooming of the inner life and when desire and ego are destroyed, this supreme Reality can be realised, in a deep silence..."Gangadhar in Mother India Mar 1953:54. 16. "To comprehend in a deep-seated silence the ...
... has been worshipped as God by the religions. It is not a mere guess or fantasy, but a reality that can actually be experienced. When, as a result of a life of tapasya, there is a blooming of the inner life and when desire and ego are 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 ...
... point of view, of the physical mind, we have come a long way since the Stone Age,’ she said on 5 October 1955. ‘It is said that we haven’t made much progress because there’s something else [i.e. the inner life] which has not been much developed, because we were much too busy playing with the new instrument [the mind]. For it is so interesting to have a new game 91 … [It was] like children in a playground: ...
... or around us while in those subliminal realms of our existence. The subliminal in us, as we have mentioned before (Chapter III), is our concealed inner being comprising an inner mind and inner life and inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them all. It "is not, like our surface physical being, an outcome of the energy of the Inconscient; it is a meeting place of the ...
... feelings, desires, and what not. Indeed, "everything that is not speakable thought is feeling..." 22 They cannot be subjected to the symbolization of thought: they can but convey the "symptoms of the inner life, like tears and laughter, crooning, or profanity." 23 Has not the well-known linguistic philosopher Rudolf Carnap declared: "Many linguistic utterances are analogous to laughing in that they have ...
... admire the delicate dream-like beauty of these poems, but, unless his insight is more than merely literary, he will go no deeper, for they deal with the mysteries of Page 318 the inner life and only he who can read their symbols will be able to penetrate to their heart. For Arjava,, as is shown in the poem entitled Correspondences, Nature was a shrine in which each form seen in the ...
... tried to confide in him very often.) And to her positivist mother all unusual inner experiences were ‘brain disorders,’ to be treated without further ado by the family physician. Her conscious inner life began when she was five years old. ‘I started at the age of five … I was five or six years old; at the age of seven it became very serious.’ 9 ‘She went and sat in a small armchair, specially ...
... years before. When are you going to have your house there and take the charge? It means I like to know the progress of Matrimandir and Auroville. Your pictures on the Spirit of Auroville and the Inner Life are quite symbolic. We are now in the manifesting stage of our sadhana and it remains to be seen how far matter associated with human environment can embody the spiritual dynamics in form and how ...
... you take the right attitude. Joy comes from submission to the divine command. 6 May 1933 Joy of spirituality: the reward of sincere effort. Once a man has tasted the joys of inner life nothing else will ever satisfy him. No joy is comparable to the feeling of the eternal Presence in one's heart. 4 July 1954 Joy of integral peace: calm and tranquil, a smile which does ...
... make it still more difficult. You should read first and understand the "Life Divine" and make sure that your resolution is on a firm basis and your mind and vital being ready to enter into a new inner life. Our help will be with you and our blessings. 24 February 1941 It is true that I have pardoned X, for the Divine Grace pardons everything, but it is true also that the coming of X's ...
... it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation. Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for ...
... for some and against others, one is necessarily far from the Truth . "All present politics is based on falsehood, and no nation can entirely escape this falsehood. "De Gaulle has an embryo of inner life, he knows that there is a force higher than the physical and mental forces—and that is why he is more receptive than many others. "But he has ideas, principles, preferences and so on, and as such ...
... contrary, the farther you go into the past, there's a jumble, a clutter of quite uninteresting things—which disappear. They disappear, they are destroyed. There only remains what had an interesting inner life. So the past seems to us much more interesting than the present, but from our age all the clutter will also disappear and be dissolved in the same way, and only the best will remain, except if they ...
... that vision with Amrita, and associated with a work I was doing. I no longer go there because... you understand, there's only the body, it's the BODY'S activity; it's interesting: it's the body's inner life. So then, I see you now and then, but it's because of the thing I concern myself with, it's not as it was before. There, in that domain above the mind, you seem to be there every night: a very ...
... Page 229 towards the Master and the Mother in our little hearts as an exquisite ache that is sweeter than all the throbs of pleasure the earth can give. (6.8.1991) The inner life lately has been as usual a series of brights and vagues and fortunately no darks except one of an uncommon kind which had nothing to do with my own shortcomings but came like a gigantic thunder-cloud: ...
... struggle between the gods and their dark opponents, between masters of Light, sons of Infinity, and the children of Division and Night, a battle in which man takes part and which is reflected in all his inner life and action. This was also a fundamental principle of the religion of Zoroaster." Again, in The Secret of the Veda, while referring to the contending powers on both sides, the gods and ...
... It's gladdening news that you are physically better. Perhaps your friends and your family were interested in your health problems, but I would expect them to make at least a faint inquiry about your inner life - what they might consider your erratic rush to the hellish heat of unknown India from the equable climate of that familiar paradise: Lausanne. Maybe they feel it wouldn't be tactful to refer to ...
... formulation without a flaw, while already existent in the empyrean as the guide of "our human grope", is waiting to descend with its "almighty" artistry to refashion the outer no less than the inner life of earth. In short, every authentic poem prefigures in one way or another in the world of words the Integral Yoga we are striving to practise in order to bring, into the evolutionary products ...
... is hoped that the third volume of Life-Poetry-Yoga will prove welcome not only to old readers but also to new ones into whose hands it may chance to fall - fellow-souls who are on a path of the inner life in the midst of worldly concerns and literary interests. 1996 Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna) ...
... true movement is changed into a movement that is... not false but distorted. I was speaking to Sri Aurobindo and he was answering, then I turn my head away like this (not physically—all this is an inner life, naturally), I turned my head as if to see the [vibratory] effect. Then I turn back and send Sri Aurobindo the movement necessary to carry on with the experience, and I receive a reply which surprises ...
... wish the supreme happiness of one day finding themselves face to face with a unified universe." No tactics of any sort are in view: "a fundamental intuition", which is the true basis of the inner life, is begun with. A genuine psychological evolution and not a manoeuvre at converting an unbeliever is the contents of the essay. The picture of such an evolution is defined as the sole Teilhardian ...
... of living, is to open ourselves to two kinds of forces: the spiritual ones that come to help our aspiration and the anti-spiritual that endeavour to block it by creating difficulties - in both the inner life and the outer. Psychologically one has to develop the state which Sri Aurobindo describes Aswapati as having achieved: A wide unshaken look on time's unrest. "Time's unrest" is, of course ...
... Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 1) 21 Your account of your various experiences is a clear sign to me that you have a fine inner life. The darshans of gods and goddesses must have brought great joy to you. Even to read about them brings a sparkling smile to my thought. I was specially interested in your experiment with a flower. I The ugly things you see at ...
... is hoped that the first volume of Life-Poetry-Yoga will prove welcome not only to old readers but also to new ones into whose hands it may chance to fall - fellow-souls who are on a path of the inner life in the midst of worldly concerns and literary interests. 1994 Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna) ...
... trees ready to be covered with blossom. Though your return to Singapore prevented you from viewing the fullness of the English spring, you will not miss what will come to flower and fruit in your new inner life, for this garden will be your own true self discovering naturally its own supernature. Whatever help I am capable of giving will surely be given most happily. (10.5.1984) It is ...
... of Yoga in 1905. Within a few years he achieved several fundamental spiritual realizations. In 1910 he withdrew from politics and went to Pondicherry in French India in order to concentrate on his inner life and work. During his forty years there, he developed a new spiritual path, the Integral Yoga, whose ultimate aim is the transformation of life by the power of a supramental consciousness. In 1926 ...
... In it the "rhythmic revelation or intuition arising out of the soul's sight of God and Nature and the world and the inner truth—occult to the outward eye—of all that peoples it, the secret of inner life and being" 41 gives value to our life and thought and to our aesthetic existence. In the completeness of its expression poetry is not only word and rhythm but is also vision. In it has to be the ...
... Kutsa has grown into such an exact likeness of his divine companion that he can only be distinguished by Sachi, the wife of Indra, because she is 'truth-conscious'. The parable is evidently of the inner life of man; it is a figure of the human growing into the likeness of the eternal divine by the increasing illumination of Knowledge." The Lady of the Rik, nāri , who could not distinguish between ...
... of the infrarational man, as he develops, is an inferior intuition, an instinctively intuitional sight arising out of the force of life in him, and the transition from this to an intensity of inner life and the growth of a deeper spiritual intuition which outleaps the intellect and seems to dispense with it, is an easy passage in the individual man. But for humanity at large this movement cannot ...
... ai Tells Me Nagin never spoke to me about his experiences. We were quite close to each other and would speak about every kind of thing. But he never mentioned to me anything about his inner life. Just one or two small incidents I know, as narrated to me by him. But these are of a general nature. It was a Christmas day. In those early days, it used to be celebrated in the Playground ...
... in the occult in its larger and deeper ranges hut the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, the inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality. It would bring in the concreteness, the authentic image, the inmost soul of identity and the heart of meaning of these things, so that it could ...
... the Master of the Integral Yoga and the benedictory hand of his spiritual co-worker whom the Ashram called the Mother. Their joint aim was not simply to find the illuminations and beatitudes of the inner life but also to fulfil by their aid all the high hopes of outer living and to initiate in the world a new age of human harmony. I was to be prepared for that age under a new evocative Sanskrit name from ...
... parts of it can be thus known by a penetration and looking within or a freer communication, it is only by going inward behind the veil of superficial mind and living within, in an inner mind, an inner life, an inmost soul of our being that we can be fully self-aware, — by this and by rising to a higher plane of mind than that which our waking consciousness inhabits. An Page 77 enlargement ...
... or knowledge, one lives in a great light and receives a knowledge deeper and truer than any the normal mind of man can acquire; if it is strength or power, he gets a spiritual strength for the inner life or Yogic power to govern the outer work and action; if it is happiness, he enters into a beatitude far greater than any joy or happiness that the ordinary human life can give. Supplement, ...
... — mental, vital, physical. Thus "There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self." 6 Figure 1. The Concentric System The vertical system consists of various levels or gradations ...
... develops, this power of detachment also develops. 2 The witness consciousness implies some degree of detachment from mental and other inner activities. All those in whom some growth of an inner life has taken place have developed to a smaller or greater extent the ability to detach oneself and to stand back as observer of one's thoughts and feelings. They are said to have a witness consciousness ...
... There was no motion in this inner world, All was a still and even infinity. In her the Unseen, the Unknown waited his hour. 6 All spiritual sadhana or cultivation of inner life involves the cleansing, enlarging, deepening and heightening of the instruments of perception in man's personality. Every instrument—the senses, the vital, the mental or the subliminal—is just a ...
... moved to express in Savitri. Once he had taken up this theme, he found himself compelled, as it were, by the creative impetus with which he began, by his constantly enlarging experience and by the inner life of the ancient myth itself, to go on expanding, heightening and deepening his treatment of it. What Sri Aurobindo wrote in 1916 was a minor poem compared to the final epic. Yet this uneven ...
... we should be inclined to speak of Milton artistically labouring over the second half of Pa radise Lost and scrupulously keeping up the Page 37 sublimity of style even when the inner life-breath was comparatively feeble. We would conceive of keen art mating with inspiration in the first half and acting almost alone in part of the second. But, though the two halves are unequal on ...
... Speaks Inner Knock 1944-12-29 Mother told Sri Aurobindo about J: “He must have got a knock due to his ambition, not in external life but in his inner life. Outwardly, it has been going on nicely.” ...
... , you will be surprised to find that what you initially disliked you will begin to like and, as you concentrate, it will gradually take you deeper and deeper, revealing many wonderful secrets of inner life. I repeat that you will have to keep your consciousness completely free from all narrowness. By Her infinite Grace, the revelation came to me spontaneously. That darshan gave me unbounded ananda ...
... touched by Mother? You are always carrying it and it remains with you all the time. Nobody can take it away from you. Is it not so?” He: “Yes, you have opened my eyes today. I now understand how the inner life is more important than the outer.” On a similar occasion, another person said to me: “Of course she has blessed me with both her hands. And more. First she placed her hand on her own heart and ...
... Aurobindo. And write they did, often daily. With inexhaustible patience, Sri Aurobindo would soon spend most of his nights answering every one of them, explaining his Yoga, guiding them in their inner life, encouraging them to overcome doubt, depression, even revolt, and, with the poetically inclined, teaching them the craft, commenting upon and often correcting their poems, and prodding them to use ...
... ideals and values. The Gurukula system provided to the teacher natural opportunities to teach through instruction, example and influence. Instruction had a role lesser than the living example of the inner life of the teacher. But more important than instruction or example was the influence of the teacher, emanating not from any arbitrary authority but from the nearness of the soul of the teacher to the ...
... which are seen as Becomings. One realizes the eternal act by which the One manifests itself in the multiple forms of the universal motion. One begins to become what inwardly one sees. The whole inner life undergoes a radical change so that life begins to represent perfectly in all parts of the being what is understood by the intellect and seen by the inner perception. The limits of the individual ...
... not dependent on any outer manifestation or instrumentation or formula of external being. According to Sri Aurobindo, this view is valid and there can undoubtedly be a spiritual life within, and inner life has a supreme spiritual importance and the outer has a value only in so far as it is expressive of the inner status. The Gita, too, states that the man of spiritual realization dwells in the divine ...
... made into an exclusive gospel of right education, and in stressing this activity or that, the inner heart of learning is missed, namely, the growth of inner consciousness, inner concentration, and inner life of sincerity. Outer action may and often does help the inner; the outer perfection has undoubtedly to be a part of the total; but the foundation has to be inward, and if this is not centrally understood ...
... direct. The shreshtha was required to develop in his mind wisdom and intelligence and love of learning, openness to poetry, art and beauty, and dedicated capacity and skill in works. In his inner life, he had the urge to seek after the highest and nourish the spiritual turn. In his social relations and conduct, he was strict in his observance of all social responsibilities as father, son, husband ...
... substitution by others. The psychic and spiritual endeavour of the Vedic hymns disappeared into intense luminosity, but there grew up at the same time more wide and rich and complex psycho-spiritual inner life of Puranic and Tantric religions and Yoga. III It has been said that Puranas existed in ancient times in the Vedic age itself, but it was only in the post- Vedic age that they were entirely ...
... spiritual aim and practice. When we come to the third stage, we find that the greatest leaders, the greatest saints and bhaktas developed a larger synthesis that could facilitate both the outer and inner life, not only of individuals but even of larger collectivities, to participate in a more generalised spiritual life. Indeed, spiritual solution is the true solution, and no human crisis of a great magnitude ...
... the psychic and spiritual mystic endeavour is clearly perceptible in the esoteric practice; but this disappeared into the less intensely luminous but more wide and rich and complex psycho-spiritual inner life of Puranic and Tantric religion and Yoga. Even then, it must be emphasised that the so- called henotheism of the Vedic ideas was prolonged and heightened in the larger and simpler worship of Vishnu ...
... circumstances in an effort either to escape from the burden of life and its responsibilities or to refashion the inner psychological complexities of the being so as to control, master and perfect the inner life, outer life and the world. This feeling is, in the beginning, evanescent or temporary; but in due course, it grows under various pressures of experience, and one begins to suspect one's ignorance ...
... life-forces and mind-forces, even though they attempt to enter also into the phenomena of the inmost soul or psychic being that is claimed to be discoverable by transcending the deeper depths of the inner life and inner mind. Occultism also aims at application of the knowledge that it gathers of the subjective inner being as also of the corresponding objective reality which can be contacted by the inner ...
... than instruction, and he strives not only to keep his ideals in front of him but also to progressively embody them. The example expected from the teacher is not merely his outward behaviour, but his inner life, his aims and sincerity with which he pushes these aims.... A good pupil realizes that both body and mind should be developed vigorously and rigorously. *Today educational systems almost everywhere ...
... 109. Page 138 At the same time, Zen teachers warn their students against regarding the koan as an end in itself, and forgetting that the true object of Zen is the unfolding of the inner life and consciousness. To avoid this danger, the student Daiye burned up the book of one hundred koans compiled by his master, Yengo. The total number of koans is traditionally estimated at 1700, but ...
... own errors and defects, knowing very well that he cannot demand from his students what he himself cannot practise. The example expected from the teacher is not merely his outward behaviour, but his inner life, his aims and the sincerity with which he pursues those aims. It is sometimes argued that what should be expected from the teacher is professional competence and a power of communication, and ...
... section of humanity was still living in a half-awakened consciousness primarily concerned with physical well- being, there grew a small nucleus of illumined teachers who could traverse domains of inner life and could speak in an extraordinary language packed with meanings which to us seem difficult to understand. Today, Vedic knowledge is considered to be a secret, and indeed, the language of the Vedas ...
... individualisation, integration and openness of the vital being on the surface would alone make possible a similar survival of the life part in us, the outer vital personality representative of the inner life being, the vital Purusha. What would really happen then is that the wall between the inner self and the outer man would have broken down and the permanent mental and vital being from within, the ...
... they are not on that account entirely valueless. For one thing, they testify to the confidence of the human spirit that reason can support the claims of faith, that the God who is necessary to the inner life can also be justified by reflective thinking. The Theistic Proofs are, in their own fashion, a witness to a persisting conviction on man's part that his religion is not a non-rational attitude of ...
... experiences increase in number, clearness, coherence, accuracy and after some growth of experience and consciousness, we can, if we observe, come to understand them and their significance to our inner life." 2 Kamalaben learned the art of painting after coming to the Ashram. She particularly received full encouragement from Champaklal. But Sri Aurobindo and the Mother also gave their guidance ...
... made into an exclusive gospel of right education, and in stressing this activity or that, the inner heart of learning is missed, namely, the growth of inner consciousness, inner concentration, and inner life of sincerity. Outer action may and often does help the inner; the outer perfection has undoubtedly to be a part of the total; but the Page 186 foundation has to be inward, and if this ...
... outside much better, to which I would reply that here [in this Ashram] we don't believe in appearances. And life is precisely inner here." Sri Aurobindo: "Is it? If people here were leading the inner life, these things [hyper-sensitivity, jealousy, hatred, meanness, caddishness, etc.] would soon disappear." (p. 1048). Page 30 And Sri Aurobindo made these observations in 1938, twelve ...
... in dumb automatic necessities of our obscurest parts of nature." (The Life Divine, p. 559) The 'subliminal' proper in us comprises our inner being, that is to say, our inner mind and inner life and inner physical with the soul or the psychic entity supporting them. It is of the nature of a secret intraconscient and circumconscient awareness which functions behind the veil but is not at ...
... It saw impartially the world go by, But in the same supreme unmoving glance Saw too its abysmal unreality. It watched the figure of the cosmic game, But the thought and inner life in forms seemed dead Abolished by her own collapse of thought: A hollow physical shell persisted still. ⁂ Once sepulchred alive in brain and flesh She had risen ...
... penetration, we seek to break asunder the wall separating our subliminal self from our present surface existence, leave the surface consciousness and live entirely in the realm of our inner mind, inner life, inner subtle-physical and finally in the inmost soul of our being. This inmost soul or the psychic being is the Purusha in the secret heart, hṛdye. guhāyām, a portion of the Divine Self supporting ...
... work would be to find the divine Self in the individual and the collectivity and to realise spiritually, mentally, vitally, materially its greatest, largest, richest and deepest possibilities in the inner life of all and their outer action and nature." Religion inconsistent with the spiritual society "The ambition of a particular religious belief and form to universalise and impose itself is ...
... ever vigilant, devoid of the encumbrance of the physical body. One day the sacrifice will bear fruit, what he had depicted in Savitri , will come true. For, what is, after all, Savitri if not the inner life- Page 24 episodes of the Mother and the Master? What he had pictured in the great epic has been faithfully enacted on the world-stage. The veil has fallen on the first part of that wonderful ...
... selfish and then something came upon me and I felt I ought to give up selfishness. I tried in my own way — of course imperfectly — to put it into practice. But that was a sort of turning point in my inner life.' This shows how perceptive and sensitive he was, and endowed with an inner strength rare in a boy of that age. In September 1884 Manmohan and Sri Aurobindo were admitted to St. Paul's School ...
... ever spoke of supermind plane poetry. Is Savitri all from overhead plane? I don't know. ... You lay down certain features of overhead poetry, e.g. greater depth and height of spiritual vision, inner life and experience and character of rhythm and expression. But it won't necessarily outshine Shakespeare in poetic excellence. Obviously if properly done it would have a deeper and rarer substance ...
... as he meets our eyes? It may be—to minimise interchange. As if he has seen a "sin"—to quote D; and which D deeply resents and complains of. D could never bear that Yoga and spiritual inner life could have any claims as against social intercourse. Is that the way to "build a wall" against anything undesirable? It is a wall of consciousness that one has to build. Consciousness is ...
... back. For a man who has knocked about so much he is astonishingly candid and easily deceived by appearances. —And life is precisely inner here... Is it? If people here were leading the inner life, these things would soon disappear. Since we have to lead a life in a concentrated atmosphere, all the ugly things become at once prominent, and add to it the action of the Force on the subconscient ...
... everything in you. For that, you have to be pure and sincere, and the psychic should come to the forefront to govern your life. All your actions must be the expression of your deeper being, of your inner life. Then my light will be able to penetrate from above and communicate with your psychic and bring about a radical change in your consciousness. It is in this way that you could invite me and I could ...
... The inner concentration and quietude seem to be extending outwards. I feel quietness and I am now able to concentrate with the eyes open. When one Page 195 leads an inner life, how does one deal with the outer things? They are dealt with by the Force that works through the being. May I request you to elaborate your above answer? ...
... shadowing and suspecting you. Now that it is confirmed by you. I know (not by experience) what is meant by the phrase "living dangerously". Of course I was not referring to anything about Yoga or the inner life. But why put me to shame by dragging my poor self into it? My dangers don't prove anything, do they? Wait a sec. I have admitted nothing about "Barinbabu"—only to laving inspired and started ...
... self-consciousness, has taken up many of nature's contrivances, refined and condensed them to be made immediately and more thoroughly effective without waste of time or material, even so, in the inner life too there has come the possibility of an intenser and quicker change, an evolution that is likely to be a revolution. With man came also the sense of what is beyond man, the superman, the divine ...
... the way place, we were not entirely heartless men, that is, atheistic and given wholly to a materialistic philosophy. It had been part of our plan to devote some time to the cultivation of an inner life too in that solitude. I remember how we would get up an hour before sunrise and sitting down in that calm atmosphere in a meditative pose we would recite aloud with deep fervour and joy the mantra ...
... which that peak has become communicative of its truth, its power, its delight. Savitri has to be taken as Sri Aurobindo's spiritual autobiography which is meant to make us re-live his inner life of both poetic creativity and creative spirituality." (Amal Kiran [K.D. Sethna] "Questions and Answers on Savitri" in Aspects of Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Life Foundation, USA 1995.) In fact ...
... body, but the mind and the vital remain full of desire and inconscience and obscurity and all the rest, your care will serve no purpose. Your body will become perhaps weak, disharmonious with your inner life and drop off one day. You must begin from within. I have said a hundred times, you must begin from above. You must purify first the higher region and then purify the lower. I da not mean by ...
... for the spiritual life; those alone were chosen by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and permitted to live here. And here is the natural psychological reason: it was a select group who already had an inner life and spiritual aspiration, so they were ready for a life of surrender and self-giving, of obedience and allegiance to the guru. They did not come ignorant and innocent of the rudimentary elements ...
... she was saved and that was how she acquired a new merit and a fresh lease of life. Unlike Britain, France bowed down and accepted what should not have been accepted and cut herself adrift from her inner life and truth, the result was five years of hell. Fortunately, the hell in the end, proved to be a purgatory, but what a purgatory! For there were souls who were willing to pay the price and did pay ...
... what we have suggested, a national language flowers in one way, an international language flowers in another way. The atmosphere if not the soil, will be, in the new international consciousness, the inner life of mankind. That will become a more and more vivid, living and concrete reality. And minds open to it, soaked in it will find it quite natural to express themselves in a language that embodies that ...
... given names to about 900 flowers, revealing their true significance, explaining what they represent in the earth consciousness, their spiritual value and their deeper meaning corresponding to the inner life. The Mother has said that flowers are very receptive, and She used them as a means to transmit to us the needed help, communicating with our psychic by giving us particular flowers with ...
... effusive, always full of warmth. In comparison I found Amma withdrawn to the point of appearing cold." But would Amma’s heart have borne so much for so long, with such equanimity, without a deepening inner life and a growing love for Her alone through her growing faith and surrender behind that seeming ‘coldness’? In March, regretting a previous letter to a friend, I spent a whole day writing an ...
... you like a cinema in which you do not participate. You observe the events and the things, you survey them, you are the master — and you have control over all the circumstances. Then starts the inner life. You plunge within yourself, to the very depths, — moreover there is no end, — to discover, to feel, to absorb, to realise and to rejoice in finding an inconceivable new world which cannot be expressed ...
... and "Urvasie" have the creative force, though it is not usual for him to have it. Tagore has created something here, not character but a world, not an outer world but an inner one, a reality of the inner life of man. It is not simply a description. And in Nishikanto's poem, "Gorurgadi" ("Bullock Cart"), the cart is real and the man in it is real, yet the cart is both a personal one and a world-cart. ...
... Since the Supermind wants to change the world, the group will have to take up the outer life of the society and the individual has to throw himself into the outer life. I am not speaking of the inner life. Either the individual has to live secluded and isolated from the life of the society or take up its own outer life in order to change it. Without group action the individual will have to give way ...
... reflex action. It is a wonderful and exhilarating experience. Naturally you cannot repeat too often or carry too far an experiment of this kind on the physical plane. But you can freely deal with your inner life and consciousness. You can make your mind and your vital a clean slate, as much as you like: not once in your life, but every moment of your life. And then see how the world impinges upon your c ...
... together through his last twelve years. The programme remained, on the whole, constant till the end except for some minor variations due to exigencies of circumstances. I have said nothing about his inner life, for I was not given a vision or perception of that vast secret field; nor had I Arjuna's unique privilege of seeing his Viśvarūpa , except some glimpses of his God-like stature. Sri Aurobindo had ...
... outside – well, perhaps the thing can be done, but destruction of form is not elimination of the life or spirit behind it. The past still in its present form continues because it maintains its own inner life and spirit. So long as that inner spirit is there you may break one form but another or many others will appear inspired by the same spirit. That is why the French proverb says: "The more it changes ...
... work would be to find the divine Self in the individual and the collectivity and to realise spiritually, mentally, vitally, materially its greatest, largest, richest and deepest possibilities in the inner life of all and their outer action and nature". 36 In such a future spiritualised humanity there could be no room for racism or white-coloured tensions or West-East confrontations. The life ...
... deepening of consciousness. Sadhana issuing in efficient action, and action tempering, purifying and awakening the soul within - integral progress was the result of this zigzag reversible swing between inner life and outer activity. In other words, the outer material activity and the inner spiritual growth were but the two sides of the same arc of evolution, the inner progress promoting outer efficiency, ...
... sun-realms of knowledge, power and love, bringing about an interiorisation - and integralisation - of experience so that there could emerge infallible global understanding and concord. If in our inner life the rift between man and god, matter and spirit, could be healed, then inevitably the healing of the rift between man and nature, man and collective man, would follow as a matter of course. ...
... Hill near Rhotasgarh to select a site for Bhavani Mandir. A severe hill fever turned him back. August 30 : Sri Aurobindo's famous letter to Srimati Mrinalini, disclosing his inner life and his i~tended work for India's freedom.October 16 : Partition of Bengal. Sri Aurobindo's direction to workers to utilise the situation as a fillip to revolutionary work. December: ...
... that I completed my little book, On the Mother, in mid-1950, a few months after the publication of the second edition of my biography of Sri Aurobindo. Something like a rough first outline of the inner life a quick graph connecting certain significant pins of light in that multi-dimensional world was all that I could attempt relying mainly on the Mother's writings, notably her Prayers and Meditations ...
... No, he wanted another kind of life. As it was, from his childhood he had been greatly attracted to sadhus and sannyasins. So now he went in search of a Master, someone who could guide him to his inner life, who could reveal to him the purpose of his being on earth. He started travelling all over India. On his way down south, to the magnificent temple of Rameswaram, he halted at Pondicherry. There ...
... the right inspiration: A man like Leonardo da Vinci was a Yogi and nothing else .... Music too is an essentially spiritual art and has always been associated with religious feeling and an inner life.... ... Beethoven, when he composed the Ninth Symphony, had the vision of an opening into a higher world and of the descent of a higher world into this earthly plane .... There is a domain ...
... spread covering a whole lifetime. But very occasionally a sadhak might set down his reactions in a diary, in a letter or a poem, and these could be pointer-readings that indicated the climate of his inner life. Even an apparent disappointment could inspire a genuine poet-sadhak to revealing utterance. Thus Amal Kiran, on finding himself ignored by the Mother when he awaited her coming on 11 May 1955, read ...
... feeling for the invisible, or to "see a world in a grain of sand". Our preoccupation with the outer habiliments of life, our gadgets and pretty possessions, has driven us to renounce "the reality of inner life". "To become a little more conscious of oneself," says the Mother, "to enter into relation with the life behind the appearances, does not seem... to be the greatest good." The unschooled shepherd ...
... meeting of the two represents the coming together of the necessary creative powers by whom a new age would be born. And it is to be noted that both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had been pursuing the inner life on essentially identical lines which would unite Spirit and Matter. So their joining of forces was the most natural thing. And it was not only a doubling of strengths but also a linking of co ...
... the past, and make all work equally an offering to the Divine. "The Mother was moulding our entire life for a God-oriented existence," says Sahana Devi, "a birth into a new consciousness, an inner life." 3 And the best way this could be done was to entrust each sadhak with a piece of work - be it ever so seemingly insignificant or ever so crushingly responsible - that is relevant to the dayto-day ...
... exceeded, leaving only "Thou everywhere and always; nothing but Thou in the essence and in the manifestation." 11 Two days later, Mirra meditates on the interconnection between outer and inner life. Meditation, contemplation; outer effort, achievement these are complementary activities, one stimulating the other. Through the forge of "works" to illumination; and through inner enlightenment ...
... all human activities are for life. Only the question is: What is life ? Art also exists for life. Sri Aurobindo says: "Art is the rhythmic voice Page 92 of Life—but a voice of inner life." (Future Poetry) Life is not what it appears. In fact, the outer aspect of life is a mask. To reach out to and express that which is behind the mask is the business of art. We have to ...
... Future Poetry. Page 75 activities are for life. Only the question is: What is life? Art also exists for life. Sri Aurobindo says: "Art is the rhythmic voice of Life—but a voice of inner life."4 Life f not what it appears. In fact, the outer aspect of life is mask. To reach out to and express that which is behind the mask is the business of art. We have to bear in mind that art is ...
... he seems to read his own mind into the text but that is not poetry – it is metaphysics. I have explained the terms myself: "star" is the star of creation, and "moon" is the sudden upheaval of the inner life, and "ocean-self" is true-being. There is no philosophy in it. Page 246 5th January, 1940 Disciple : I am trying to get intuition but I fail. Sri Aurobindo : ...
... * In your last letter you have referred to the "essential nature" of man. This essential nature or Svabhava is the nature of the psychic being which evolves by means of the inner mind, inner life and subtle or inner physical and seeks to express itself in the outer nature of the mind, life & body of man. It is not the nature of the ego. Arjun was not aware of his essential nature, he was ...
... : There is no reason to associate these with the feminine aspect because he associates these with it. Disciple : Receptivity includes these things; it is only a way of representing the inner life of the woman. Sri Aurobindo : Because the female is passive, dependent, (passively active) while the male is active, strong and self-reliant. Disciple : The Vaishnavas look upon all ...
... this period of Sri Aurobindo’s life? If even before the day of siddhi his life was not on the surface for men to see', what could one hope to say about these years when his concentration on the inner life was much more complete? But to say nothing about this span of twenty-four years would be to leave a considerable gap. We will therefore give here a summary account of the life of Sri Aurobindo from ...
... never felt?" Even if there be no outward participation in the world's suffering still "he carries the suffering world in his own breast". "A siege, a Page 300 combat is his inner life", because he has to meet "an ancient adversary Force". 'In the fight against the antidivine Force "the weeping of the centuries visits his eyes", "the poison of the world has stained his throat" ...
... appearance! It's very interesting, you know! People are so accustomed to... travestying everything—all that is gone; there, it's gone. It’s the BODY'S activity; it's interesting: it's the body's inner life. 20 It is the body, the consciousness of the body that discovers the secret of the earth. Matter discovering the secret of Matter. The other side is right here—it is we who are totally ...
... preparing to invade India—it all was one single movement; everything was always one single movement, a sort of general body: There's a keen struggle against the constant Negation [in the body] of all inner life—higher life, rather.... But outwardly, difficulties are coming back, in the sense that the Chinese seem to be seized again with a zeal to conquer—they are massing troops at the border. At bottom ...
... cloaked by the cunning of a mere word. Imperialism. The worship of the gods of external life had led the West (and those who had followed the Western lead) to a bleak desert of parched inner life. On the contrary, poverty and squalor and slothful underemployment as were (and still are!) prevalent in India couldn't prove favourable soil for the cultivation of inner health and happiness ...
... inspiring visions of the future. Like the poems, the dramas too were a part of Sri Aurobindo's life: the outer projections of the richer or quintessential part of his life - the imponderables of his "inner" life. II Perseus the Deliverer is something of a tour-de-force - for it asked for not a little boldness on Sri Aurobindo's part to embark upon this adventure of rendering a greek myth ...
... great social ideals... 9 The 'ideals' - the Brahmin's, the Kshatriya's, the Vaishya's, the Shudra's - do not long retain their original purity; and becoming progressively unrelated to the inner life, they dwindle into protestations or the emptiest formalities without sincerity, without substance, without truth. And so the 'typal' gives place to the 'conventional' stage: The conventional ...
... of the Vaishya as well as of the Brahmin and Kshatriya. It is in his view quite possible for a man to do business and make money and earn profits and yet be a spiritual man, practise Yoga, have an inner life." There, put succinctly, is the traditional Indian attitude towards money and wealth and property. Let us end this chapter with some quotations from Sri Aurobindo's The Mother. "Money ...
... pursuits is that they are dangerous." She put forth another argument. "Besides, they have never served to prove anything to anybody. One might say, 'Oh, it's to make you understand that there is an inner life, an invisible life, that it puts you in touch with things you don't see and proves to you their existence.' It's not true," she averred. "I have known people ... I knew one man in particular ...
... of this book contains the guidance of the Mother to a young child on leadership, character building and helping to arouse an aspiration for constant progress with simultaneous development of the inner life. The ideal and the goal She always put before us was progress, progress, progress and perfection in all that we did. Although I did not understand it then but I now realise that through her detailed ...
... insight on the inner plane. It was the realisation of the Gita or part of it which he had built up in himself, peace, equanimity, the sense of the Divine within, and the atmosphere of peace was so strongly formed and living and real in him that he could convey it to others. On the other hand, he was externally a very worldly man, accepting the not very exalted outward personal life and surroundings... s he had as the milieu given him and not in the least wishing to change it. It was his theory that this was the teaching of the Gita—to feel Krishna within, to have the inner spiritual life and realisation,—the rest was the Lila and could be left as it was unless or until the Divine himself in the automatic movement of his play chose to change it. This explains the double character of the impression... Letters on the Mother Letters on the Mother The Mother: Some Events in Her Life The Mother with Letters on the Mother Meeting Jnan Chakrabarti I never met Chakrabarti personally and know nothing about Krishnaprem's Guru. Chakrabarti's father came here to see me, but even that I had forgotten till the Mother reminded me of it. I know Chakrabarti only through ...
... spiritual life that shall take up all human activities and avail to transfigure the world for the great age that is coming. India, she that has carried in herself from of old the secret, can alone lead the way in this great transformation of which the present sandhyā of the old yuga is the forerunner. This must be her mission and service to humanity,—as she discovered the inner spiritual life for the... necessity and group together all who accept it and are ready to strive sincerely to fulfil it: our second shall be to build up not only an individual but a communal life Page 510 on this principle. An outer activity as well as an inner change is needed and it must be at once a spiritual, cultural, educational, social and economical action. Its scope, too, will be at once individual and communal... narrow for the great steps she has to take in the future. Nor is ours the spirituality of a life that is aged and world-weary and burdened with the sense of the illusion and miserable inutility of all God's mighty creation. Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit. It is to accept the world as an effort of manifestation of the Divine ...
... he himself seems to understand, that the "we" referred to in the phrase does not mean humanity in general that 'splashes about in the lower ooze' but those who have a sufficiently developed inner spiritual life. There is a quotation from Lao Tzu put under the heading "Grace and Free Will": "It was when the Great Way declined that human kindness and morality arose". Page 132 We fear... exclusion may be a painful and mortificatory process, the fact remains that it is less arduous than the process of inclusion, by which we come to know the fullness as well as the heights of spiritual life. Where there is exclusive concentration on the heights within, temptations and distractions are avoided and there is a general denial and suppression. But when the hope is to know God inclusively –... for it but to give them copies with some writing on.' " A sage can smile and smile delightfully! The parable illustrates the well-known Biblical phrase, 'the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life'. The monkey is symbolical of the ignorant, arrogant, fussy human mind. There is another Buddhistic Page 133 story about the monkey quoted in the book and it is as delightful; but being ...
... nation was not yet sufficiently trained to carry out his policy and programme. Moreover, as his twelve month's detention in the Alipur Jail was spent entirely in the practice of Yoga, his inner spiritual life was pressing upon him for an exclusive concentration. So in April, 1910, he sailed for Pondicherry in French India. Sri Aurobindo had left Bengal with some intention of returning to the political... Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading to the Spirit and, in the end, away from life; Sri Aurobihdo's rises to the Spirit to re-descend with its gains bringing the light and power and bliss of the Spirit into life to transform it. Man's present existence in the material world is in this view or vision of things a life in the Ignorance with the Inconscient at its base, but even in its darkness and... Spiritual bouquets to a friend Life of Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872. At the age of seven, he was taken with his two elder brothers to England for education, and he lived there for fourteen years. In 1890 he passed the open competition for the Indian Civil Service, but as he had no intention of accepting ...
... related to the subliminal consciousness consisting of the inner mind, inner vital force and subtle physical consciousness. Spiritual experiences relate to the realm of super-consciousness or of psychic consciousness which is the consciousness of the inmost being which governs body, life and mind and which has the power of integrating body, life and mind under its own integrating power. Super-consciousness... means are distinctively spiritual. Distinguishing features of what we call spirituality are toe following: (a) Awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, Page 1 Self, Soul, which is other than our mind, life and body; (b) An inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that; (c) A quest for entering into the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which... legitimately called yogic. Page 2 William James, in regard to the experiences that he has presented in his book, brings us certain vivid descriptions of certain stages and aspects of the inner yogic life and yogic fate and succeeds in inviting us to some kind of proof of the spiritual reality, its mystery, its wonder, and the vividity of the reality o-f the Unseen. One relevant experience, which ...
... living but with a sort of inner super-life. To be able to write at will from this plane is sufficiently rare,—though a poet habitually writing from some other level may stumble into it from time to time." "The plane of dynamic vision is a part of the inner Mind and perhaps should be called a province rather than a plane. There are many kinds of vision in the inner Mind and not dynamic vision... true native form and power of speech exactly reproducing the inspiration, while the outer consciousness is entirely passive and transmits without alteration what it receives from the godheads of the inner or the superior spaces. When the vital mind and emotion are too active and give too much of their own initiation or a translation into more or less turbid vital stuff, the poetry remains powerful... vision only. So, to fix invariable characteristics for the poetry of the inner Mind Page 59 is not easy or even possible. It is a thing to be felt rather than mentally definable." (I don't know what to do with this mind of mine. As a poetic instrument it is extremely variable. Why can't it always get successfully inspired?) "Perhaps one reason why your mind is ...
... Sri Aurobindo retired from active public and political life, he had cut off all connection with the outside world on account of his pre-occupation with the inner spiritual life which became more and more of absorbing interest to him not only for his own but also for the life of the whole humanity for his life had by now become one with the life of the world. Page 101 A fourth dimension... ess for the transformation of earthly life. This initiates a new principle in the earth life like the mental principle and will be generalised in humanity in those sections that are ready for the new transformation. He himself was the pioneer Page 102 and set the example for all mankind to follow. Sri Aurobindo probed the problems of life to their utmost depths and was not .content... spiritual consciousness which found a solution for all the malaise of earth life in a spiritual liberation of the soul alone while its instruments, the body, mind and life remained unchanged and tied to an ignorant separative consciousness which constitutes the individual ego, the root cause of all the ills and sufferings of earthly life. He found the inconscience or the nescience at the base of existence ...
... " In it Sri Aurobindo opens for us a wide space of inner spiritual life, and shows us the boundless and innumerable riches that lie hidden and unexplored. "The door that has been shut to all but a few may open; the kingdom of the Spirit may be established not only in man's inner being but in his life and works." Savitri traverses world after inner world, following the God of Death who is carrying away... quoting extensively, but I do hope to whet it! Of outward action there is not much, so to say; it is all inner movement. Through the Page 201 Yoga of King Aswapati, through the inner lands where Savitri adventures, Sri Aurobindo has expressed his own experiences of the uncharted inner worlds; over the years he cast and recast this poetic creation twelve times at least! Because he wished... Love and Death. It is a stirring poem in blank verse; this plot also is taken from the Mahabharata. Ruru descends into Hades to bring back to Earth and life his beloved Priyumvada —snatched untimely away by Death —in exchange for half his life span. "The poem itself was written in a white heat of inspiration during Page 202 14 days of continuous writing—in the mornings ...
... movements had not come and that he himself was not their destined leader. Moreover, since his twelve months' detention in the Alipur Jail, which had been spent entirely in the practice of Yoga, his inner spiritual life was pressing upon him for an exclusive concentration. He resolved therefore to withdraw from the political field, at least for a time. In February, 1910, he withdrew to a secret retirement... Most of his more important works, those published since in book form, the Isha Upanishad, the Essays on the Gita, and others not yet published, the Life Divine, the Synthesis of Yoga, 5 appeared serially in the Arya . These works embodied much of the inner knowledge that had come to him in his practice of Yoga. Others were concerned with the spirit and significance of Indian civilisation and culture... of Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading to the Spirit and, in the end, away from life; Sri Aurobindo's rises to the Spirit to redescend with its gains bringing the light and power and bliss of the Spirit into life to transform it. Man's present existence in the material world is in this view or vision of things a life in the Ignorance with the Inconscient at its base, but even in its darkness and nescience ...
... between the forest and the city; it is possible to reconcile the two — the rural and the urban — even as it is necessary to effect a reconciliation between the inner and the outer life, between the consciousness within and the conditions of life without. Page 18 ... to be in large measure free and self-reliant. It would rather bring external Nature under its own control than be guided by its Page 17 influence. As in our outer so in our inner spiritual life, we are becoming city-dwellers in place of the old forest recluses. Even when we repair to the forest we try to make it as far as possible akin to the city. But this need not give rise to a... Bird went on, "I shall give you the knowledge of the fourth aspect of the fourfold Brahman." Satyakama replied in all humility, "Tell me, my Lord." The Bird said, "The four limbs of this aspect are the Life-force, the Eyes, the Ears and Mind. These four combined make Brahman the All-Form. He who knows this becomes the All-Form and wins here itself the All-Form." By now Satyakama arrived at his master's ...
... between the forest and the city; it is possible to reconcile the two – the rural and the urban – even as it is necessary to effect a reconciliation between the inner and the outer life, between the consciousness within and the conditions of life without. Page 132 ... be in large measure free and self-reliant. It would rather bring external Nature under its own control than be guided by its Page 131 influence. As in our outer so in our inner spiritual life, we are becoming city-dwellers in place of the old forest recluses. Even when we repair to the forest we try to make it as far as possible akin to the city. But this need not give rise to a... went on, "I shall give you the knowledge of the fourth aspect of the fourfold Brahman." Satyakama replied in all humility, "Tell me, my Lord." The Bird said, "The four limbs of this aspect are the Life-force, the Eyes, the Ears and Mind. These four combined make Brahman the All-Form. He who knows this becomes the All-Form and wins here itself the All-Form." By now Satyakama arrived at his master's ...
... Nature-worship. It harks back to the psychology of the cult of "Mysteries" — the ancient mind's resort to a set of symbols which, to the adept, signified realities and realisations of the inner mystical or Yogic life while to the Page 61 commoner it stood for external objects and forces and a religious ritual, a sacrifice at which professional priests officiated. The unearthliness... which was put into it, the cow, the horse, the wealth, the hills, the rivers existed as physical counterparts to their psycho-spiritual originals and served as symbols for the processes of the inner Yogic life, so too an actual plant whose juice was pressed out must have been present for the exoteric sense to have some bearing here as everywhere else. However, it would be a mistake to look for a sort... nidhapatih. Men therefore protected by the lord of the Ananda governing this inner nature are able to accord their thoughts and actions with the inner truth and light and are no longer made to stumble by the forces of the outer crookedness; they walk straight, they become entirely perfect in their works and by this truth of inner working and outer action are able to taste the entire sweetness of existence ...
... full work, to take possession of all the impulsions and energies given to our inner psychic life for fulfilment in this existence, to hold them and to be a means for carrying them out with strength, freedom, perfection. Many of the things we Page 734 need for our perfection, courage, will-power effective in life, all the elements of what we now call force of character and force of personality... spoken of the supermind and its influence on the rest of the being. The body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all inner action. All working of mind or spirit has its vibration in the physical consciousness, records itself there in a kind of subordinate corporeal notation and communicates itself to... psychic soul, from the greater life behind our physical life cannot come in freely, cannot develop their high, powerful and proper strain. This condition must be reversed; the body and the physical consciousness must develop the habit of admitting and shaping themselves to these higher strains and not they, but the nobler parts of the nature must determine the music of our life and being. Page 730 ...
... blossom which shall crown his life. There is, without question, an earth-self in AE which takes interest in the passing phenomena of time; it is drawn by human faces, but in them also he is ever visionary enough to trace the hidden Beauty. Along the rays shot here in the mutable world he travels home to the centre of light in the inner heaven. Sometimes the inner meanings call so imperiously... recurrence an impression of tenuity no less than monotony, and the greatest poets have, besides the direct touch of intuition, a life and strength of language, a palpable motion of that word-body as well as the soul's sign from afar. This means that not merely the subtle mind or the inner vision but at the same time the energy of the full waking consciousness is employed to catch inspi- Page 320 ... thrill. Nevertheless, what remains is destined to mark the beginning of a novel epoch in verse, an effort to clothe sense and sound with strange radiances or shadowy raptures drawn from an inner mystical life lived constantly by the poet unlike the fitful dips made on rare occasions into the unknown by former bards. There will be, ultimately, a tremendous outburst of spiritual fire, poems that bear ...
... spiritual planes. Mind, vital and physical are inextricably mixed together only in the surface consciousness—the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical are separate from each other. Those who seek Page 404 the self by the old Yogas separate themselves from mind, life and body and realise the self apart from these things. It is perfectly easy to separate mind, vital and physical from... in hewing out a road and in thirty years of search and inner creation when I could have hastened home safely to my goal in an easy canter over paths already blazed out, laid down, perfectly mapped, macadamised, made secure and public. Our Yoga is not a retreading of old walks, but a spiritual adventure. Towards a Transformation of Earth Life I believe Krishnaprem's comment was on a passage in... which he is in entire agreement. But in the phrase "to its heights we can always reach" very obviously "we" does not refer to humanity in general but to those who have a sufficiently developed inner spiritual life. 3 It is probable that Sri Aurobindo was thinking of his own experience. After three years of spiritual effort with only minor results he was shown by a Yogi the way to silence his mind. ...
... blossom which shall crown his life. There is, without question, an earth-self in AE which takes interest in the passing phenomena of time; it is drawn by human faces, but in them also he is ever visionary enough to trace the hidden Beauty. Along the rays shot here in the mutable world he travels home to the centre of light in the inner heaven. Sometimes the inner meanings call so imperiously... recurrence an impression of tenuity no less than monotony, and the greatest poets have, besides the direct touch of intuition, a life and strength of language, a palpable motion of that word-body as well as the soul's sign from afar. This means that not merely the subtle mind or the inner vision but at the same time the energy of the full waking consciousness is employed to catch inspiration. What is thus created... remains is destined to mark the beginning of a Page 39 novel epoch in verse, an effort to clothe sense and sound with strange radiances or shadowy raptures drawn from an inner mystical life lived constantly by the poet unlike the fitful dips made on rare occasions into the unknown by former bards. There will be, ultimately, a tremendous outburst of spiritual fire, poems that bear ...
... standard .until I got that which I felt to be absolutely right." VII "There may still be a place for a poetry which seeks to enlarge the field of poetic creation and find for inner spiritual life of man and his now occult or mystical knowledge and experience of the whole hidden range of his and the world's being, not a comer and a limited expression such as it had in the past, but a... of himself and...it as best he can with a limited mind and senses. The door that has been shut to all but a few may open; the kingdom of the Spirit may be established not only in man's inner being but in his life and his works. Poetry also may have its share in that revolution and become part of the spiritual empire." Page 371 APPENDIX II SAVITRI'S APPEARANCE Savitri... ng with a sweet and nectarous wine. Thou hast not spoken with the kings of pain. Life's perilous music rings yet to thy ear Far-melodied, rapid, grand, a Centaur's song, Or soft as water plashing mid the hills, Or mighty as a great chant of many winds. Moon-bright thou livest in thy inner bliss. Thou comest like a silver deer through groves Of coral flowers and buds of ...
... When you respond to poetry, words and rhythms seem to remain for you a little in the background. I do not deny that to write with striking phrases and euphony and effective metre without any inner word-life and rhythm-movement getting expressed is to construct verse rather than to create poetry. But, conceived as inwardly animated and determined, form cannot occupy "a secondary place" and for the... realised a divine cosmicity full of a myriad glimmerings and thrillings of intuition. What did happen, most probably, is that such an Immense existing within the hitherto unexplored profundities of your inner and higher self found you sympathetic to its presence, stirred your imagination and used you as a verbal medium. Of Page 31 course, if one were possessed of the full experience one... aspire to do is to write things in which the mind's garments are set aside and the Spirit's body grows visible and vibrant. Nor is that body most desired by them as it appears on certain inner planes. An exquisite or dynamic Occultism catches the Spirit naked; so too does a radiantly piercing and sweet Psychism — but neither the habitat of God's magician nor that of God's saint holds the ...
... Then we have the thinking mind swiftly and sweepingly powerful as in To the Sea, 1 with its challenge to circumstance from a depth of immense self-awareness—outer infinity defied by the inner infinite. Life's debate with the ultimate mystery becomes massive and majestic in that colloquy, The Rishi: ... Rishi, thy thoughts are like the blazing sun Eye cannot face. How shall our... or outer, the subtle or inner, the causal or higher. The first consists of the physical Page 86 elements, the shapes, the visible organic functioning. Here it is the rapid rivers and the glimmering orchards, the winds and the harvests waving, the moon-magical nights in forest and on riverside. A transition from the outer body of the Nation-Mother to the inner is through the human p... populations, the warrior men who are the physical instruments of the fine frenzy of freedom that is hers. Their teeming vitality is the cry of independence she sends forth from the inner to the outer—the inner that is a formation of beautiful disciplined powers, an inspired energy, a pure passion, an illumined thought, a righteous will, an aes-thesis enchanting and refining. This subtle sheath of her ...
... "sound" I mean the inner subtle life-throb of the vision or experience that articulates itself through the intelligible words. The poet's depths swim up in the rhythm. And the finer the poetry the more crucial are the details of the rhythmic interrelations of a line. This involves a quick response to the word-order and its suggestive concords. Thus there is a world of difference in inner suggestion between... you doing so - all this suggests the intimacy between us deriving from our inner recesses and not floating merely on the day-to-day surface. The fact which you mention, that you "took a piece of sweet" from me, indicates not only our intimacy but also the quality of the substance, as it were, of all interchanges in that inner plane: sweetness in addition to light. 'Your dream was indeed a ... Mother" she gave you her blessing and later looked intently into your eyes. All this seems to me to presage most graciously as well as forcefully a very long life for my bosom-friend. Both of us may have our life's length, but what about our life's depth? I believe it will be easier to have it if we have each other's enkindling company. Now to your dream of September 28. The date is very likely to ...
... built upon freedom, not conformity, and is a state of the heart or inner consciousness, not an outer condition of labels and slogans. The West has emphasized external freedom, which has given it a sense of pluralism in the outer aspects of life; Hinduism teaches inner freedom, without which outer freedom has no real meaning. This inner freedom allows for the full flowering of the soul so that our entire... Absolute. 3. The third idea of the strongest consequence at the base of Indian religion is the most dynamic for the inner spiritual life. It is that while the Supreme or the Divine can be approached through a universal consciousness and by piercing through all inner and outer Nature, That or He can be met by each individual soul in itself, in its own spiritual part, because there is something... is not based on a single experience however overwhelming that may be. Another important point to note is that in Hinduism, the ultimate goal of life is freedom or liberation - Moksha. By this is not meant an outer freedom to fulfil all our desires but an inner freedom to go beyond all external limitations. This freedom is the real unity behind the diversity of Hinduism and the key to its many sides. ...
... restless and daring spirit of Man Besieging the mute heavens with his thousand queries. Aspiring men and women, young and old seeking their souls, Burning day and night in an inner fire, life after life, In this miraculous Hour of Grace, leave their humanity behind, And lightened for ever from the burden of the tormenting night Invade the Earth with a supernal delight and a... other insects Crawl, hop and fly attracting birds and animals From near and far creating a stir of noisy life. When the wind of Grace passes over a burning planet, Little by little the fire goes out, water appears Announcing the million guests of life. As from a seed grows the tree, so too the earth Reveals all the hidden treasures she holds in her bosom... of a landscape frozen in immobility. Who art Thou, 0 Wonderful Master of the house of my life? Am I a fiction, a figment of Thy imagination! Who cares! Thou, O wonderful Lord art only real, I am an ephemeral spark thrown out by an Effulgent Sun. This marvelous split-second of my life is filled with Thy Glory. 60 - 61 Adoration ...
... with what we may call the more obscure and darker movements of our being. What is then the origin of the higher movements? Where do they remain lodged—inner mind, life and body? Do all the higher impulses—service, fame, ambition, etc., come from these inner planes? In the making of a being, I suppose then, the subconscient impressions and sanskaras of previous lives are carried forward. In that case, how... speaking, as it was the brow, it means trying to get into the inner mind and light it up a little. You said on the previous day that the quick emerging of a faculty depends on a favourable adhar. But on what does this favourableness depend? I thought it is all an asset of a past life due to which it becomes easily manifested in the present life... How can one say on what it depends? It depends on... how far will it be right if I say that my desires, my impulses, formations and tendencies of lower nature are mostly due to old debts of past life, some due to impressions of this life? What about heredity then? Do we 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 ...
... the Divine had chosen for him a life of sadhana at the Ashram and so he did not achieve any success in the life outside. Whatever he took up failed. We can see this sort of divine lila in some people's lives. Even after having everything one meets but failure in the outside life. This happens because the Divine has reserved for him success in the inner spiritual life. He on whom the Divine bestows... In the outside world there is a need for discipline and control over many things in ordinary life: the social, collective control, the legal control, mental and ethical do's and don'ts. Thanks to this the various temperaments of human nature, the different inner urges and movements are kept in check. Life thus goes on undisturbed with a superficial calm and order. But for us here, especially... ed out of sorrow. One day Chimanbhai while telling me about his inner anguish said: "Pranab, if ever you come to the Ashram then never get married." The one who walks on the spiritual path doesn't know what his fate will be, how his life will unfold. How can one take the responsibility of another person's life? It is very painful both for oneself and for the person one marries. ...
... ience of the Absolute. The third idea of strongest consequence at the base of Indian religion is the most dynamic for the inner spiritual life. It is that while the Supreme or the Divine can be approached through a universal consciousness and by piercing through all inner and outer Nature, That or He can be met by each individual soul in itself, in its own spiritual part, because there is something... living and thinking human being. All life and thought are in the end a means of progress towards self-realisation and God-realisation. Indian religion never considered intellectual or theological conceptions about the supreme Truth to be the one thing of central importance. To pursue that Truth under whatever conception or whatever form, to attain to it by inner experience, to live in it in consciousness... it make spirituality the highest aim of life, but it even tried, as far as that could be done in the past conditions of the human race, to turn the whole of life towards spirituality. But since religion is in the human mind the first native, if imperfect form of the spiritual impulse, the predominance of the spiritual idea, its endeavour to take hold of life, necessitated a casting of thought and action ...
... it; for he had been assured from within and knew that he would be acquitted. During this period his view of life was radically changed; he had taken up Yoga with the original idea of acquiring spiritual force and energy and divine guidance for his work in life. But now the inner spiritual life and realisation which had continually been increasing in magnitude and universality and assuming a larger place... mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was happening in the world and in India... Autobiographical Notes Corrections of Statements Made in Biographies and Other Publications Autobiographical Notes A General Note on Sri Aurobindo's Political Life There were three sides to Sri Aurobindo's political ideas and activities. First, there was the action with which he started, a secret revolutionary propaganda and organisation of which the ...
... living but with a sort of inner super-life To be able to write at will from this plane is sufficiently rare,—though a poet habitually writing from some other level may stumble into it from time to time." The plane of dynamic vision is a part of the inner Mind and perhaps should be called a province rather than a plane. There arc many kinds of vision in the inner Mind and not dynamic vision... true native form and power of speech exactly reproducing the inspiration, while the outer consciousness is entirely passive and transmits without alteration what it receives from the godheads of the inner or the superior spaces. 1 When the vital mind and emotion are too active and give too much of their own initiation or a translation into more or less turbid vital stuff, the poetry remains powerful... vision only. So, to fix invariable characteristics for the poetry of the inner Mind is not easy or even possible. It is a thing to be felt rather than mentally definable." (I don't know what to do with this mind of mine. As a poetic instrument it is extremely variable. Why can't it always get successfully inspired?) "Perhaps one reason why your mind is so variable is because it has learned ...
... but a few may open; the kingdom of the Spirit may be established not only in man's inner being but in his life and his works. Poetry also may have its share in that revolution and become part of the spiritual empire. I had intended as the main subject of this letter to say some thing about technique and the inner working of the intuitive method by which Savitri was and is being created and of... absolute and decide that the waste-paper-basket is not the proper place for Savitri . There may still be a place for a poetry which seeks to enlarge the field of poetic creation and find for the inner spiritual life of man and his now occult or mystical knowledge and experience of the whole hidden range of his and the world's being, not a corner and a limited expression such as it had in the past, but a... "self-expression" replacing Das's. The sea to the Indian imagination is a symbol of life,—one speaks of the ocean of the saṁsāra and Indian Yoga sees in its occult visions life in the image of a sea or different planes of being as so many oceans. Das's poem expresses his communing with this ocean of universal life and psychic intimacies with the Cosmic Spirit behind it and these have a character of ...
... related the subliminal consciousness consisting of the inner mind, inner vital force and certain physical consciousness. Spiritual experiences relate to the realm of super-consciousness or of psychic consciousness which is the consciousness of the inmost being which governs body, life and mind and which has the power of integrating body, life and mind under its own integrating power. Superconsciousness... practice of an inner change of consciousness by which one can perceive and realise the inner and higher self and transform the workings of the outer instruments of Nature. Nor can Yoga be practised in a casual way or only as a part-time preoccupation. Yoga, to be properly practised, must be taken as a sovereign and central occupation and must govern and permeate every aspect of life and every pursuit... Pondicherry, Vol.20, p.2 4 Isha Upanishad, 6,7 5 Distinguishing features of spirituality are the following: (a) awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, Self, Soul, which is other than our mind, life and body; (b) an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, (c) a quest for entering into the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also ...
... other people's ideas have no relevance. I have read with interest your account of Baron's talk with you. I am quite willing to help him in his aspiration if he decides to take up the inner spiritual life. We shall see him on the 21 st and see what he is—everybody seems to be favourably impressed by him already. Mother will see B. and hear his music tomorrow at 12.30. So you will come... she is indeed what you described her to be. I hope her contact with India and with here will plant in her the seed of a peace which, as it develops, will heal the sufferings of life she has under- gone and give her the inner spiritual happiness and release. I have read Baron's poem-letter. One would gather from it that his poetry must have one characteristic in common with the "citronnelle"... have read Madame Miller's letter. I suppose circumstances are such that she cannot stay longer in India, but I hope that the impression she has received will help her in her life there in Europe and be the beginning of an inner development of something that will be a constant support and refuge. As for Baroda and Raihana we will see how you feel about it when the Gramophone Co. decides the date ...
... he had been assured from within and knew that he would be acquitted. During this period his view of life was radically changed; he had taken up Yoga with the original idea of acquiring spiritual force and energy and divine guidance for his work in life. But now the inner spiritual life and realisation which had continually been increasing in magnitude and universality and assuming a larger... is, an instrument for what? ¹ April 1935 Everything depends on the inner condition, and the outward action is only useful as a means and a help for expressing or confirming the inner condition and making it dynamic and effective. If you do or say a thing with the psychic uppermost or with the right inner touch, it will be effective; if you do or say the same thing out of the mind... have done it if such a condition had been demanded of me.¹ 8-3-1935 It took me four years of inner striving to find a real Way, even though the divine help was with me all the time, and even then, it seemed to come by an accident; and it took me ten more years of intense yoga under a supreme inner guidance to trace it out and that was because I had my past and the world's past to assimilate and ...
... the famous Alipore Bomb trial went on, Sri Aurobindo, defended by Chit-taranjan Das, spent a year in jail, during which he had crucial experiences and revelations; as he wrote later, "Now the inner spiritual life and realisation which had continually been increasing in magnitude and universality and assuming a larger place took him up entirely and his work became a part and result of it and besides far... omit none---- What Nationalism asks is for life first and above all things; ___________ * Sri Aurobindo seldom used the words "Extremism" or "Extremist Party," which were the British government's and the Congress Moderates' derogatory designation of the Nationalist movement. Page 32 life, and still more life, is its cry. Let us by every means get rid of the... ourselves and not Europe. We have sought to regain life by following the law of another being than our own. We must return and seek the sources of life and strength within ourselves. We must know our past and recover it for the purpose of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India's eternal life and nature____" We say to the individual and ...
... from the Dawn of inner revelation and are not mundane milk-givers, even if the Dāsa-Dasyus are no human plunderers but demoniac beings, and their forts metaphors for occult centres of massive resistance to the Aryans' quest of soul and God, must we be prevented from seeing behind the mystic poetry a struggle on the physical plane? Just as the Rishis took the details of the material life around them to... to the "Mysteries", it had an exoteric or outer side in which circumstances of the life of the common folk were suggested and ordinary material gains and benefits conjured up though hardly ever without a religious atmosphere around them and rarely without a hint in a number of places that there was an esoteric or inner aspect in the hymns. On the exoteric side what may we legitimately conclude? ... position in regard to the Rigveda. If I have established that the Rigveda cannot be post-Harappan and does not speak of human enemies subjugated but of gods subduing demoniac opposers in the inner spiritual life of ancient mystics, what we may take Parpola as urging on us is simply two waves of considerably post-Rigvedic Aryans entering India in the first half of the second millennium B.C. There can ...
... Of course, all this seemingly surface business has to be tackled with the inner yogic consciousness. All has to be an offering to the Divine - and now there is the varied crowd of apparently ordinary things of life to be woven into the spiritual practice. I have always called my path the Integral Yoga and held that all life is Yoga, but now in a more extended sense this yogic integrality has to come... Mother, nor have you explained why you went into seclusion, and how the Ashram was begun. Then there was your accident - how did that happen?" "All these things are closely connected with our inner spiritual life. Otherwise, in themselves they are simple enough and could be described in very few words." "All the same, do tell us something about the Mother." Sri Aurobindo smiled and said, "Ah, for... help? Don't even those who live in far-off lands? And doesn't the help reach you?" "Oh yes, it does!" "Help is of two kinds, the outer and the inner. The external help is often expressed by money, for instance. But in order to understand the inner help, you have to go within, because it is of a subtler kind. Haven't I told you that even when the Mother was in France, she used to have the vision ...
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