... spiritual force. This is a fundamental idea of Vedic thinking; and if we keep it well in mind, we shall be able to understand the peculiar imagery of the Veda. Earth is the image of the material being; material being, delight, action etc are the growths of earth; therefore their Page 693 image is the forests, the trees, plants, all vegetation, वन, वनस्पति, ओषधी. Agni is hidden in the trees... difficulty to the god of physical fire; they are of a striking appropriateness if we take a larger view of the divine nature and functions of the god Agni. He is a god of the earth, a force of material being, अवमः; but he seems too [to] be a vital (Pranic) force of will in desire, devouring, burning through his own smoke; and again he is a mental power. Men see him द्यामिव स्तृभिः, heaven and the midworld... and Heaven, and there is a word which seems to combine both meanings. Are not the two Aranis then a symbol of earth and heaven, Agni born for mortals from the action of the diviner mental on the material being? The ten sisters are his mothers,—the ten fingers, says the scholiast; yes, but the Veda describes them as the ten thoughts or thought-powers, दश धियः. The seven rivers, the mighty ones of heaven ...
... In other things it is subject to the limitations of the material being with whom it is associated and can only refine it to some extent without being able to change it. The intuitive Power works chiefly in that domain and is not sufficiently concerned or active in the rest. For him you can do much, but I don't know whether the material being will allow you. Still you can bring an influence on the... me favourable, I don't know about the material elements.. Cousins Yes. He is a soul of the middle regions, of what might be called the psychic and aesthetic world, associated with a very material being into which the soul has got rather thickly encased. There is an aesthetic devata enlightened by a Power of the intuitive intelligence, and its light burns inside and radiates through the material ...
... descending scale by which universe is created or made sensible to embodied soul. But in the material world, all is first involved in matter and has to find itself by a development from material being and with material being as its support and basis. The evolving process of this self-discovery of the universal existence produces the phenomenon of evolution of higher and greater from lower and lesser principles... field, yet appears to be derived from it, to be a resultant, development or deformation from physical experience. The life in the body is the necessary modification of the first fact of material being, without whose intervention consciousness is unable to manifest in any material form. The atom is a form of matter, the stone is a material body, but life in these things is either nil or not developed... physiological states, but may also follow as first clues to a greater truth and possibly a higher tone or tones of the scale of being. In that case, mind appears as a larger thing than life and material being. Though apparently an evolution from life and the body, it may have been in reality a prior power, life and body only its occasions and means for self-manifestation on the material plane of being ...
... Anima. Sat manifests as Chit, pure consciousness, and Chit has two sides—consciousness and energy, that is to say knowledge and power. Consciousness in one material being communicates with the same consciousness in another material being by certain fixed methods such as speech, gesture, writing etc. and unconscious mental communication. But these limitations are mere habits [and other methods are ...
... deep and momentous distinction which is the practical basis of all its Yoga, the distinction between the two Natures, the phenomenal and the spiritual Nature. "The five elements (conditions of material being), mind, reason, ego, this is my eightfold divided Nature. But know my other Nature different from this, the supreme which becomes the Jiva and by which this world is upheld." Here is the first... their terms, which it keeps and extends, a Vedantic significance. An eightfold Nature constituted of the five bhūtas ,—elements, as it is rendered, but rather elemental or essential conditions of material being to which are given the concrete names of earth, water, fire, air and ether,—the mind with its various senses and organs, the reason-will and the ego, is the Sankhya description of Prakriti. The ...
... Chit, pure consciousness [,] and Chit has two sides—consciousness and energy, that is to say knowledge and Page 241 power. Consciousness in one material being communicates with the same consciousness in another material being by certain fixed methods such as speech, gesture, writing, etc. and unconscious mental communication. But these limitations are mere habits [and other methods ...
... where "matter and soul in conscious union meet". After the death of the gross body, the subtle body of man persists which, in fact, existed before the gross was created. On the level of the subtle material being there is a perfection of form and a perfection of expression. On the lower level, this subtle material world "...has dangerous nether planes" and though on the height it is immortal, still, it... Man's life has added care, reflection and discontent to itself, and he has become an insatiate seeker. All the original fire and might of pure life is brought down here into the littleness of the material being; and life is feeling here a push, an urge towards unattained conditions. For "She brought into Matter's dull tenacity Her anguished claim to her lost sovereign right, Her tireless ...
... encompassing all these godheads with the greatness of his being. Then indeed all accept and cleave to the Will (or the Work) when, O godhead, thou art born a living soul from the dryness (i.e. from the material being, the desert, as it is called, unwatered by the streams of the Truth); Page 200 all enjoy godhead attaining to the truth and the immortality by their movements, bhajanta viśve devatvaṁ... becoming and achievement. "Now also, even as our supreme ancient fathers, O Agni, seeking to possess the Truth, expressing the Word, travelled to the purity and the light; breaking open the earth (the material being) they uncovered the ruddy ones (the Dawns, the Cows); perfected in works and in light, seeking the godheads, gods, forging the Births like iron (or, forging the divine births like iron), making ...
... own plane of being and to our own part in the mundane manifestation. We do not create God as a myth of our consciousness, but are instruments for a progressive manifestation of the Divine in the material being. We do not create the gods, his powers, but rather such divinity as we manifest is the partial reflection and the shaping here of eternal godheads. We do not create the higher planes, but are ... word of the ascent; as the powers of all these planes, worlds, grades, degrees are involved in the material existence, so are they all capable of evolution out of it. It is for this reason that material being does not begin and end with gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but evolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually supermind and ...
... render:— "Sustain me, O Agni, with strength for the Soma; thou hast made me the bearer of it in the knowledge (Vidya) for action of sacrifice; flaming up towards the gods I yoke to them my (material) being and grow still within. Cleave, O Agni, to my body." The sense is clear and each word bears the unvarying sense I give it in the theosophic rendering of the Veda. Soma is the symbol of Ananda... Then these activities in us of mentalised infinite being, mentalised infinite force, mentalised infinite beatitude, mentalised ideality, mind pure in itself, mentalised life-energy, mentalised material being work perfectly & without harm to us or deficiency in themselves; they do not devour & break up the life & body by their unharmonised intensities, neither are they dominated by the lower energies ...
... word of the ascent; as the powers of all these planes, worlds, grades, degrees are involved in the material existence, so are they all capable of evolution out of it. It is for this reason that material being does not begin and end with gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but evolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually supermind and... only must these principles manifest from below in a qualified and restricted emergence, but also from above they must descend in their characteristic power and full possible efflorescence into the material being; the material creature must open to a wider and wider play of their activities in Matter, and all that is needed is a fit receptacle, medium, instrument. That is provided for in the body, life ...
... life-soul whose action is through many individual life-beings. When it dwells in the principle of matter, it knows itself as a consciousness of matter acting under a similar law of the energy of material being. In proportion as it leans towards the side of knowledge, it is aware of itself more or less clearly as a soul of mind, a soul of life, a soul of body viewing and acting in or acted upon by its... its nature; but where it leans towards the side of ignorance, it knows itself as an ego identified with nature of mind, of life or of body, a creation of Nature. But the native tendency of material being leads towards an absorption of the soul's energy in the act of formation and material movement and a consequent self-oblivion of the conscious being. The material universe begins from an apparent in ...
... are transitional beings. And well, transitional beings.... But the consciousness of the inner being ultimately gets stronger, you follow? Stronger even than the consciousness of the material being. So the material being can be dissolved, but the inner consciousness remains stronger. It is of that consciousness that we can say, "This is me." Yes. There you are. THAT is the important thing. ...
... will overcome the resistance of the material plane in course of time and the rest will follow naturally ? Sri Aurobindo : It does not necessarily follow. Disciple : Suppose the material being does not change ? Sri Aurobindo : If it does not, then it would become an insuperable obstacle. Disciple : Is there no other obstacle to the success except the resistance of Matter... your habits you still remain yourself. Disciple : Can a few persons by their Sadhana change the laws of the material world ? Sri Aurobindo : We do not intend to change the external material being. Only, in certain cases where the man is open to the Higher Power, this change would take place and not in everybody's case. Its success would not mean success for all and equally for all. ...
... indeed, fulfilment must be sought only in worlds beyond. But there are other states even ofMatter and an ascending series of the gradations of substance, and their higher law is possible to the material being because it is there in it already latent and potential. Page 484 ...
... his hand the oblation. Page 400 × The Mother and Father are always either Nature and the Soul or the material being and the pure mental being. × As the Purohita who leads and conducts the work of the sacrifice ...
... repeated, a tendency to deny those, eg quadrupeds, which it has been in the habit of denying. Formerly, the principle was to form by mental-physical pressure images out of akashic material, the material being of seven kinds,—chhaya, dhuma, tejas, jyoti, varna, agni, prakasha. The result was a blur of material shaping itself into forms. A second method was sudden manifestation of form partial or complete ...
... इत्वरः formed from a lost इत्व, so we shall have अध्वन् & अध्वरः formed from this lost अध्व, & meaning descending or descended, lower. अध्व must also have been capable of the sense substantial or material being, like अन्नम् a kindred root, but अध्वर in the Veda evidently refers to more than the annamaya existence. It embraces the whole aparardha or lower hemisphere of existence believed in by the Vaidic ...
... convergent & divergent whirl and shock of all these cosmic forces, and this multiform correlation of an inert substance of energy and an apparently inanimate driving force of energy has constituted material being & established for its purposes both a general nature, swabhava or own being of matter and particular fixed processes of inherent self-action, the vratáni of the Veda, which present themselves to ...
... something not translatable by mind into its own terms, much less into those of life and action. Therefore we have the intransigent absolutists of the spirit who reject the mental and condemn the material being and yearn after a pure spiritual existence happily purchased by the dissolution of all that we are in life and mind, a Nirvana. The rest of spiritual effort is for these fanatics of the Absolute ...
... fear and with perfect trust, making no formations by expecting one thing or another but following the uplifting lead of the soul-consciousness. Ultimately, it will lead to a divinisation of the material being by the Power from which the soul has come into the evolutionary process.” ...
... mind quiet and filled with the sweetness of thoughts exclusively turned towards the Divine is the gate through which there will be the constant connection between the supramental light and the material being . 29.10.1929 Be simply sincere in your obedience to the Divine . This will take you far on the way to transformation . 30.10.1929 The Power in the mind , complete mastery ...
... beautifully and graphically in a perfect dramatic form by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri. The refusal comes one by one from the three constituent parts of the human being. First of all man is a material being, a bodily creature, as such he is a being of ignorance and misery, of brutish blindness. He does not know that there is something other than his present state of misfortune and dark fate. He ...
... and the mind-nature from there. Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient to us and supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature, so the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature. Men are not ordinarily conscious of either of these planes of their own being, but by sadhana they can become aware. The s ...
... state, with the world situation linking itself to the memory of the past. The fourth dream seems to be made up of old impressions mostly. The last dream indicates a tendency, in some part of the material being, towards material comfort and a pleasant indolence, which is suppressed in the waking state, but comes up in sleep from the subconscient. The two servants may be small vital entities who take pleasure ...
... self-absorption of conscious being into the density and infinite divisibility of substance, for otherwise there can be no finite variation. Next, an emergence of the self-imprisoned force into formal [material] being, living being, thinking being; and finally a release of the formed thinking being into the free realisation of itself as the One and the Infinite at play in the world and by the release its recovery ...
... own plane of being and to our own part in the mundane manifestation. We do not create God as a myth of our consciousness, but are instruments for a progressive manifestation of the Divine in the material being. We do not create the gods, his powers, but rather such divinity as we manifest is the partial reflection and the shaping here of eternal godheads. We do not create the higher planes, but are ...
... defect, not even the root of the matter. The sum of the world's imperfections is not made up only of these two deficiencies; there is more than the fall, if fall there was, of our spiritual or material being from good and from happiness or our nature's failure to overcome evil and suffering. Besides the deficiency of the ethical and hedonistic satisfactions demanded by our being, the paucity of Good ...
... to make its way upward from the lower to the higher gradations, taking up what it was into what it is and preparing to take up both into what it will be. Thus, having first laid down a basis of material being, material forms, forces, existences in which it seems to be lying inconscient, though in reality, as we know now, always subconsciently at work, it is able to manifest life and living beings, to ...
... it an inferior dependent reality or even an unsubstantial and evanescent reality. For in this view these things so great to our subjective vision are valid only as the reactions of an objective material being to an objective material existence; they are valid only in so far as they deal with objective realities and make themselves effective upon them: the soul, if it exists, is only a circumstance of ...
... that all knowing was in its real origin and nature only a memory of inwardly existing knowledge. The supermind is eternally and on all levels truth-conscious and exists secretly even in mental and material being, surveys and knows the things, even obscurest, of the mental ignorance and understands and is behind and governs its processes, because everything in the mind derives from the supermind—and must ...
... ce in its being; in its becoming it would be a free play of immortal life uninvaded by death and birth and change of body because unclouded by ignorance and not involved in the darkness of our material being. It would be a pure and unlimited consciousness in its energy, poised in an eternal and luminous tranquillity as its foundation, yet able to play freely with forms of knowledge and forms of conscious ...
... of the vital plane, for the gods have given all the life's fifty steeds of swiftness; Agni is there as the light and flame of its far-extended existence which has broken the limitations of the material being and he is full of the joys of this new and rich supra-physical life. Now the third state, the free mental being, is to be perfected by a richly varied and luminous play of thought and word ending ...
... is this lower satisfaction in itself a thing evil and unprofitable; it is rather the condition for the upward evolution of our human nature out of the tamasic ignorance and inertia to which its material being is most subject; it is the rajasic stage of the graded ascent of man towards the supreme self-knowledge, power and bliss. But if we rest eternally on this plane, madhyamā gatiḥ of the Gita, our ...
... Grace shall be there, real and effective. And the first condition is Page 372 that the Truth shall be accepted within you entirely and without reserve before it can be manifested in the material being and Nature. A total surrender, an exclusive self-opening to the divine influence, a constant and integral choice of the Truth and rejection of the falsehood, these are the only conditions made ...
... All truth is yours indeed, O ye two full and mighty Ones, and the waters of being cannot contain or measure your action. Come ye, O Indra and Brihaspati, like two steeds in one yoke, towards our material being that we make into offering. (13) Swiftest bearers of our sacrifice have audience of knowledge according (to your law of action), and the illumined soul in its hall of wisdom gathereth him rich ...
... insuperable obstacles to the descent. Only a calm, pure and surrendered physical consciousness, full of the psychic aspiration, can be its field; this alone can make an effective opening of the material being to the Light and Power and the supramental change a thing actual and practicable. It is for this that we are here in the body, and it is for this that you and other sadhaks are in the Asram near ...
... even if he were shut up in a prison and saw nobody and never moved out, still would he do the work, because it is a work in the consciousness, a work of connection between the Supermind and the material being. He does not need to be recognised, he need have no outward power in order to be able to establish this conscious connection. Once, however, the connection is made, it must have its effect in the ...
... vital and the mind-nature from there. Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient to us and supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature, so the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature. Men are not ordinarily conscious of either of these planes of their own being, but by sadhana they can become aware. The subconscient ...
... through asceticism, but rather because the attention, the concentration of the being shifts fields.... One can very well imagine Page 190 that only material things please the purely material being; and the interest of all those who live in the emotional being and the outer mind is turned towards... for example, things of beauty, like those who need to live surrounded with beautiful things ...
... tears in it, this envelope is a magnificent protection. 4 And it's not dependent on any spiritual or intellectual rationale, but on a harmony with Nature and life, a kind of stability in the material being. People with strong envelopes are almost always in good health and succeed in what they do. It isn't something mental—when they do a work it comes out nicely, if they want to meet someone, they ...
... get rid of the habit of feeling that I own the material things that belong to me? If you belong entirely and totally to the Divine, then all that belongs to you, all that forms part of your material being, belongs to the Divine. 16 May 1967 Sometimes I think that the Agni You have kindled in me is going to burn up everything that separates me from You. What should I do to contribute to ...
... the Force left to itself, directly under the supreme Impulsion, worked things out far better and far more accurately. But over these last months, there have come a will and a tendency to make the material being [of Mother] participate consciously in the details of execution. It has a kind of passive obedience, and so, once that was willed [the need for Mother's material intervention], it began to happen ...
... proportion to the spiritual growth. Not (as Sri Aurobindo said), not through asceticism, but because the focus of attention and concentration of the being moves to a different domain.... The purely material being, quite conceivably, finds only material things pleasing; with all those who live in the emotive being and the outer mind, the interest of the being is turned to... for instance, things of beauty ...
... the necessity and practicableness of making the kāraṇa śarīra totally active in the open. When the substance, form, law and force of that body are brought into play within our present material being, there is no reason why our components, freed from their imperfections, should not perpetually hold together in unmarred health. We are mortal simply because we have not yet discovered how ...
... goes even beyond all past realisation and expression of them, so much so that he will not reject any part of our nature as lying for ever outside the possibility of divinisation: even our most material being has, for him, a supporting truth or archetype in the Divine Reality and can be Page 43 transformed by a descent of that archetype. If many-sidedness and c ...
... Divine as object.... There are, quite certainly, other states even of Matter itself; there is undoubtedly an ascending series of the divine gradations of substance; there is the possibility of the material being transfiguring itself through the acceptation of a higher law than its own which is yet its own because it is always there latent and potential in its own secrecies." 4 "There must be ...
... As a foundation of this integral knowledge, the Gita makes a deep and momentous distinction between two Natures, the phenomenal and the spiritual Nature: "The five elements (conditions of material being), mind, reason, ego, this is my eight-fold divided Nature. But know my other Nature different from this, the Supreme, which becomes the Jiva and by which this world is upheld." 71 If we ...
... very beautifully and graphically in a perfect dramatic form by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri, The refusal comes one by one from the three constituent parts of the human being. First of all man is a material being, a bodily creature, as such he is a being of ignorance and misery, of brutish blindness. He does not know that there is something other than his present state of misfortune and dark fate. He is ...
... it with the force of the Mind, even though in some cases, the mind was a high or even the highest spiritual mind. To touch the roots of the malady that extend into our deepest fibres, our most material being, dead inconscience, one must rise to the very source of consciousness, the creative truth-consciousness: the Supermind alone can transform the earth, transfigure the earthly life. In the second ...
... very beautifully and graphically in a perfect dramatic form by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri. The refusal comes one by one from the three constituent parts of the human being. First of all man is a material being, a bodily creature, as such he is a being of ignorance and misery, of brutish blindness. He does not know that there is something other than his present state of misfortune and dark fate. He is ...
... Sri Aurobindo said) through asceticism, but rather because the attention, the concentration of the being shifts fields.... One can very well imagine that only material things please the purely material being; and Page 29 the interest of all those who live in the emotional being and the outer mind is turned towards... for example, things of beauty, like those who need to live surrounded ...
... is face to face with the God of Death. And in the description which the poet gives of Savitri at that time, with her four aspects, like a human person, you will find that it is not simply some material being that the poet describes, but a being with a charge of divinity in her. And the poet gives you her four aspects in a way which shows that although divine she is also a person in flesh and blood ...
... but you don't well assess the importance of the gesture that you have made. It is very important. It is as important as the laying of the first stone of the Matrimandir. It means that your material being has understood a little what Mother's presence on earth means. It is like a direct bridge that you have thrown between your physical being and the Grace of the future. What you don't know ...
... action a sacrifice to the master of our action and an expression of the greater self in man and of all life a Yoga. The West has made the growth of the intellectual, emotional, vital and material being of man its ideal, but it has left aside the greater possibilities of his spiritual existence. Its highest standards are ideals of progress, of liberty, equality Page 425 and ...
... this doubtful fourth vyahriti is Mahas. Now the mystic vyahritis of the Veda are the shabdas or sacred words Page 130 expressing objectively the three worlds, subjectively mentalised material being, mentalised vital being & pure mental being, the three manifest states of our phenomenal consciousness. Mahas, therefore, must express a fourth state of being, which is so much superior to the ...
... also has to follow the law of natural progression which has governed our evolution in this world from Matter into Life and Life into Mind. For just as Life-consciousness is beyond the imprisoned material being and unattainable by it through its own instruments, so this supramental consciousness is beyond the divided and dividing nature of Mind and unattainable by it through its own instruments. But as ...
... nearly two feet high. Afterwards, out of this image the Mother emerges. She is in meditation. The sunlight falls just behind the Mother's body. What does it signify? Rocks = the physical (most material) being. An opening in the material making room for the formation of the spiritual consciousness there. Stone image of Shiva = the realisation of the silent Self or Brahman there (peace, silence ...
... The Mother's Force The Mother with Letters on the Mother The Mother's Force and the Body When can it be said that the material being is ready for the Divine? If the material consciousness is open, feels the Mother's Force working in it and responds, then it is ready. 11 June 1933 I feel the Mother's light, peace, beauty, joy and love descending ...
... psychic change and until that has progressed sufficiently, supermind is a far-off thing and people need not think of it at all. 124 * It is the supramental alone that can transform the material being, but the physical mind and the physical vital can be very much changed by the action of the psychic and of the overmind. The entire change however is made only when there is the supramental influence ...
... theory of this traditional knowledge is perfectly rational and verifiable by inner experience, and it imposes itself if we admit the supraphysical and do not cabin ourselves in the acceptation of material being as the only reality. As there is a cosmic Self and Spirit pervading and upholding the universe and its beings, so too there is a cosmic Force that moves all things, and on this original cosmic ...
... the physical is in this condition and the work creates such reactions in it, it is no use forcing it violently and putting an overstrain upon it. It is better to educate and train the external material being slowly by bringing calm and peace and light and strength persistently into the nervous system and cells of the body. A violent compulsion on the body may well defeat its own object. Probably your ...
... the natural order described by the Upanishad in the profound apologue of the seekings of Bhrigu, son of Varuna. For first the seeker found the ultimate reality to be Matter and the physical, the material being, the external man our only self and spirit. Next he fixed on life as the Reality and the vital being as the self and spirit; in the third essay he penetrated to Mind and the mental being; only ...
... front of the days,—the same image is used with a similar Vedantic sense in the opening of the Brihad Aranyak Upanishad; but the horse here is not, as in the Upanishad, Aśwa, the horse of vital & material being in the state of life-force, but vájí, the horse of Being generally, Being manifested in substance whether of mind, life, body or idea or the three higher streams proper to our spiritual being. ...
... differently in the sevenfold movement of Nature according to the dominant principle of the consciousness in the individual being. Page 32 In the physical consciousness Atman becomes the material being, annamaya puruṣa . In the vital or nervous consciousness Atman becomes the vital or dynamic being, prāṇamaya puruṣa . In the mental consciousness Atman becomes the mental being, manomaya ...
... in effecting an obscure, moderate & preparatory success & in strengthening the force of their sukshma vaja or subtle material substance, of which, however, shansa, the actual bringing out into material being has not yet been realised. Chitraratha and Madira still increase. Programme—Trikaldrishti to widen still farther and begin to get rid of variability and uncertainty; rupadrishti & samadhi to ...
... Page 387 The psychic when sufficiently developed can be strong enough to make the preliminary clearance [ of the lower vital ]. It is the supramental alone that can transform the material being, but the physical mind and physical vital can be very much changed by the action of the psychic and of the overmind. The entire change however is made only when there is the supramental influence ...
... plasm or what you will, of matter, one aspect or force is selected which is called Akash and of which ether is the visible manifestation; this akash or ether is the substratum of all form & material being. Out of ether a narrower force is selected or let loose which is called Vaiou or Matariswun, the Sleeper in the Mother, because he sleeps or rests directly in the mother-principle, Ether. This ...
... sacrifice to the master of our action and an expression of the greater self in man and of all life a Yoga. The West has made the growth of the intellectual, emotional, Page 509 vital and material being of man its ideal, but it has left aside the greater possibilities of his spiritual existence. Its highest standards are ideals of progress, of liberty, equality and fraternity, of reason and science ...
... they are the male and female powers and energies of the universe and it is this external aspect of them as gods of the Sun, Fire, Air, Waters, Earth, Ether, the conscious-forces ever present in material being which gives us the external or psycho-physical side of the Aryan worship. The antique view of the world as a psycho-physical and not merely a material reality is at the root of the ancient ideas ...
... limiting conclusion. There are, quite certainly, other states even of Matter itself; there is undoubtedly an ascending series of the divine gradations of substance; there is the possibility of the material being transfiguring itself through the acceptation of a higher law than its own which is yet its own because it is always there latent and potential in its own secrecies. Page 265 ...
... manifestation of the Supernature, but this would be its general character and principle. This is the whole sense and the inherent law and necessity of the passage from the purely mental and material being and life to the spiritual and supramental being and life, that the liberation, perfection, self-fulfilment for which the being in the Ignorance is seeking can only be reached by passing out of ...
... sole term of our becoming, but as merely having a subordinate value in relation to the higher terms of mind and spirit, it increases by that diminution instead of losing in value. We see that our material being, life, nature are only one poise of the Purusha in relation to its Prakriti and that their true purpose and importance can only be appreciated when they are seen not as a thing in itself, but as ...
... November 24 of that year a descent of what Sri Aurobindo terms the Overmind, the highest dynamic divine consciousness that had been realised so far in the world: he brought it down into the very material being, thus carrying one step forward the work done by the previous Avatar Sri Krishna who had brought down its influence into earth-life. With the descent of this consciousness into Sri Aurobindo ...
... its obedience, docility and so on, is what needs to be abolished. How can I explain?... The development through the mind is a constant and general awakening of the whole being—even the most material being—an awakening as a result of which there is also something that's the opposite of sleep. But to receive the supreme Force, what's needed is, on the contrary, the equivalent of stillness—the stillness ...
... there, a permanent light in what we may pinpoint as the physical mind, so that an immediate and settled action of the Supramental Consciousness instead of a come-and-go of it might develop in the material being. Only in 1950 — when 12 years again had elapsed — this kind of action became a part of earth-life — but as a result of Page 121 Sri Aurobindo's sacrifice of his own body. ...
... really no comparison. The power is INFINITELY greater... yet the body is going to pieces—it's really something unspeakable. So a way has to be found to bridge this gap between the vital and the material being. Not that the problem hasn't been partially solved: hatha yogis have solved it, partially—provided you do nothing else (that's the trouble). Yet having the knowledge, we should have the power ...
... any special effect of physical nearness to the Mother? A. It is indispensable for the fullness of the sadhana on Page 252 the physical plane. Transformation of the physical material being is not possible otherwise. Sri Aurobindo's answer should put a finis to all talk of anyone undergoing the physical and material being's transformation on his own. Even by itself the ...
... they'll just be that way. Yes, you're right. You are right, that's correct. How many times, you know, it comes, it swells up like a tide, like a rising wave, that aspiration of all, all the material being, of all the cells, towards the Supreme: "All depends on You—all depends on You." A sense of total helplessness and total incapacity, which in a second can be transformed through an Intervention ...
... days, - the same image is used with a similar Vedantic sense in the opening verse of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad; but the horse here is not, as in the Upanishad, aśva, the horse of vital and material being in the state of life-force, but vāji, the horse of Being generally, Being manifested in substance whether of mind, life, body or idea or the three higher streams proper to our spiritual being ...
... consisting of higher levels of consciousness, lies above normal mind, and from these higher ranges, things descend into the lower parts of the being. Whereas the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature, the superconscient supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature. "The role of the superconscient has been to evolve slowly the spiritual ...
... November 24 of that year a descent of what Sri Aurobindo terms the Overmind, the highest dynamic divine consciousness that had been realised so far in the world: he brought it down into the very material being, thus carrying one step forward the work done by the previous Avatar Sri Krishna who had brought down its influence into earth-life. With the descent of this consciousness into Sri Aurobindo the ...
... universal, and in it all fulfill their workings, rtasya preśā rtasya dhītir viśvayur viśve apāmsi cākruh. (c) The process of yoga implies the rising of the soul from the dryness of the material being, from the desert which is unwatered towards the increase of eagerness of the soul for beatitude, for the delight of the presence of the divine consciousness, which is the essence of Bhakti. The ...
... machine. "No, I do not think there are any simple or ready-made basis of unity, mutuality and harmony for the common life of the people. If man consisted only of one part, if he were only a material being, if he were only an economic man, if he could live merely by bread, there could, of course, be a simple and straightforward solution. But the essential point is that man is a complex being. He ...
... beings who have or take forms... ( Ibid., p. 775) "These worlds are not evolutionary but typal..." ( Ibid., p. 784) "[Thus,]... premier importance cannot be given to our own plane of material being..." ( Ibid., p. 780) "Their [of the other worlds] existence and influence are a fact of primary importance for the possibility of an evolution here. (Ibid., p. 785) [Adapted] (Q ...
... organisation and live there have for their basic and primary goal in life (i) to seek liberation from Ignorance, self-fulfilment and perfection; (ii) to ascend from the present purely mental and material being to the spiritual-supramental being and life; (iii) to outgrow the state of ignorance and half-knowledge and acquire instead a nature of self-knowledge and world-knowledge. Sri Aurobindo ...
... worse and worse", it will remain a long time. Is it our own material being's resistance that comes up or the resistance of the whole material Nature? One's own material being responding to material Nature. It is the inability to react that you must get rid of. You once said about the physical, "It was at that time something quite below. Since then ...
... was no better than that of one suffering from a high fever. Such higher pressures I have never had before. It seemed like burning coal pressing down! Was there really any descent that gave the material being a cause for such strong resistance? It must have been if you felt it so. The feeling of fever, as of headache, can often be the body's misinterpretation of the tapas heat and pressure ...
... very beautifully and graphically in a perfect dramatic form by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri. The refusal comes one by one from the three constituent parts of the human being. First of all man is a material being, a bodily creature, as such he is a being of ignorance and misery, of brutish blindness. He does not know that there is something other than his present state of misfortune and dark fate. He ...
... there occurred a movement, a stirring, which meant a division in the indivisibility. This urge to division sent the Being rushing head forward, as it were, right down into its opposite, the dead material being, inconscient matter where it pulverised itself into infinite infinitesimal particles, the two standing as though at opposite poles. But the original division – apart from its first downward rectilinear ...
... through and the thread to be scattered into the infinity of the deepest and of the widest being. The last barrier at the base of the human consciousness is the hard crust of the physical and the material being. It is closed to the regions behind, the occult sources of all external movements. This too has to be pulled down and thrown into the gulfs of nonexistence—primal Prakriti, out of which they are ...
... through and the thread to be scattered into the infinity of the deepest and of the widest being. The last barrier at the base of the human consciousness is the hard crust of the physical and the material being. It is closed to the regions behind, the occult sources of all external movements. This too * A greater force than the earthly held his limbs, Unwound the triple cord of mind and freed ...
... final achievement the very thing which no Yoga had ever even conceived as possible. We are all out to turn an apparent impossibility into a complete, concrete triumph—the transformation of the material being and consciousness! It is evident, then, that no half-hearted effort or lax and faltering will can avail in this Yoga. The Divine, and nothing but the Divine—unless this is the one overmastering ...
... substances are involved in the substance of matter. And the when division has reached the last point the evolution begins because the substance begins to manifest that which is involvedin it. Therefore material being does not stop with gases, suns, nebulae and systems of atoms, and aggregations only, but evolves life. If matter was only matter life would not have come out of it. Therefore it evolves mind, and ...
... This power is the supreme Power of the Divine and therefore she is "One who has all infinity to waste". She tackles the seemingly impossible task of transformation of the material being into the Divine. In Savitri's case it was the inner spiritual being that formed her body, it was like "the glowing arc of a charmed unseen whole". Very soon the link between her soul and physical ...
... perfectly leads small birds and big stars as well. How can I explain? Mother further said ... The development through the Mind is a constant and general awakening of the whole being—even the most material being— an awakening as a result of which there is also something that’s the opposite of sleep. But to receive the supreme Force, what’s needed is, on the contrary, the equivalent of stillness—the stillness ...
... "The theory of traditional knowledge is perfectly rational and verifiable by inner experiences, and it imposes itself if we admit the supraphysical and do not cabin ourselves in the acceptation of material being as the only reality." Under the able tutorship of Max Théon, Mirra the apt pupil was learning. She learned how to go in and out of the supraphysical worlds at will. She learned the art of ...
... additional letters (humorous ones for the most part) were published in Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo (Part III) and Sri Aurobindo's Humour. In this new edition, nearly half of the material is being published for the first time. Parts of the edition were serialised in the Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education (November 1971 to August 1975) and Mother India (May 1980 ...
... affirming that they were the sole people with a soul. The Roman-Latin-Welsh, together with the coloured and all other kinds of peoples, were on the contrary “materialists”, not much more than material beings in an animal-like state, Untermenschen, i.e. subhumans, or lower humans, or half-humans, and even non-humans although human in appearance (such as the Jews). The German stage was set for Martin... building up and would be finally compensated by the conviction of being a special, superior kind of humans. In psychological language: an inferiority complex was compensated and turned into a complex of superiority. Luther also made the German mother tongue into an honoured, well-sounding and malleable means of expression. “I thank God for being able to hear and find my God in the German language, for neither... thinking for oneself in the way the ancient Greeks and Romans had done, but this was a very suspect exercise in the eyes of the powers-that-be. They did not like questions because they did not like being put into question. The movement called “Renaissance” was much more complex than commonly realized. Nowadays it is superficially associated with the art of geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo ...
... The defect was a characteristic of impermanence, often of disorder, especially of defencelessness against the onslaught of larger organisations, even of an insufficient capacity for widespread material well-being. Therefore this earlier form of collective life tended to disappear and give place to the organisation of nations, kingdoms and empires. And here we notice, first, that it is the groupments... which transcended the limits of the nation, and its advantages and disadvantages are there perfectly typified. The advantages are admirable organisation, peace, widespread security, order and material well-being; the disadvantage is that the individual, the city, the region sacrifice their independent life and become mechanical parts of a machine; life loses its colour, richness, variety, freedom and... the intellectual and material circumstances of the age have prepared and almost impose it, especially the scientific discoveries which have made our earth so small that its vastest kingdoms seem now no more than the provinces of a single country. Page 280 But this very commodity of the material circumstances may bring about the failure of the ideal; for when material circumstances favour ...
... something else and comes from elsewhere: it is not directly proportional to material well-being. Unhappiness too is a psychological entity and consists in a special vibration of mind and vitality—and consequently of the physical being—due to a warp in the consciousness itself, in the core of the inner personality. The material conditions serve only to manifest it, maintain or aggravate it, but do not... Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 5 VIII TRUE CHARITY Charity is commonly understood to consist in rendering material help to your fellow man, giving alms to the poor, medicine to the sick, money or material to those who need them and physical service also where that is required. All this is well and good. The world is ridden with diseases and privations and... spiritual consciousness, the inalienable bliss of one's status in the Spirit. One becomes identified with each Page 39 and every object—person or thing—in one's own self, in the true being and substance: and the light and happiness that one possesses there inalienably goes out in a spontaneous flow to others who are not really others but integral parts and portions of the same self. ...
... something else and comes from elsewhere: it is not directly proportional to material well-being. Unhappiness too is a psychological entity and consists in a special vibration of mind and vitality – and consequently of the physical being – due to a warp in the consciousness itself, in the core of the inner personality. The material conditions serve only to manifest it, maintain or aggravate it, but do not... Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 True Charity CHARITY is commonly understood to consist in rendering material help to your fellow men, giving alms to the poor, medicine to the sick, money or material to those who need them and physical service also where that is required. All this is well and good. The world is ridden with diseases and privations and... power is in the spiritual consciousness, the inalienable bliss of one's status in the Spirit. One becomes identified with each and every object – person or thing – in one's own self, in the true being and substance; and the light and happiness that one possesses there inalienably go out in a spontaneous flow to others who are not really others but integral parts and portions of the same self. ...
... ciousness. We are all familiar with the modern concept of the material particle being concentrated energy: it is tremendously concentrated and that is why it looks as though dead solidity. In reality its stilled high potency harbours almost an immeasurable force of creation and destruction. The release of energy, material energy, in matter, is the business of Science and the scientist;... s and an exhilarating delight in the expression of the newfound selfhood, even as also in the case of the individual human being when he is freed from serfdom and slavery and bondages, he attains, realises the dignity of self-consciousness and self-power, even so the material body too becomes illumined with its freedom and rejoices in its power and energy to express its own truth. The first effect... the awakening is not confined to itself, but it extends gradually, extends to all its constituent cells and even to contiguous cells. The process in this way permeates the whole body and the entire material content of the body is filled with. consciousness and with its radiant energy. There is however a basic preliminary necessity, a preparatory condition: the first essential condition ...
... energy-consciousness. We are all familiar with the modern concept of the material particle being concentrated energy: it is tremendously concentrated and that is why it looks as though dead solidity. In reality its stilled high potency harbours almost an immeasurable force of creation and destruction. The release of energy, material energy, in matter, is the business of Science and the scientist; the... and an exhilarating delight in the expression of the newfound selfhood, even as also in the case of the individual human being when he is freed from serfdom and slavery and bondages, he attains, realises the dignity of self-consciousness and self-power, even so the material body too becomes illumined with its freedom and rejoices in its power and energy to express its own truth. The first effect... the awakening is not confined to itself, but it extends gradually, extends to all its constituent cells and even to contiguous cells. The process in this way permeates the whole body and the entire material content of the body is filled with consciousness and with its radiant energy. There is however a basic preliminary necessity, a preparatory condition: the first essential condition under which ...
... I saw those beings. The main thing is that when that being in his demonstration touched me with his finger, it made me scream—I screamed materially. Yes, he touched you. Ah, yes—he was ABLE to touch me. All that because of the "doctors." Yes, they pretended to be doctors. Ah, materially one isn't well protected, otherwise things wouldn't be like that.... Materially I am protected... happened often to me. A being who claims he comes to cure you: a "doctor." I think that's it, I think there are beings from the vital who use... who use what's left of unconsciousness in doctors. ( silence ) But once it happened to Sri Aurobindo: at night—once at night—he screamed. And afterwards he said it was in the material world: beings from the most material vital, but which are in the... last long, a few hours); I had caught that when I went to a gathering of workers doing a puja or something. 1 I had caught a fever. But Sri Aurobindo was there. And I saw, I saw all the beings of the most material vital charging ( gesture of onslaught on the body ). I remember that, it was in Sri Aurobindo's time (quite a long time ago). I saw them, and I said to Sri Aurobindo, "So that's what gives ...
... signified the concentrated prayer-perfumed dedication of the soul in us.) This dedication would cover every kind of matter we may set before God and give it a sanctified air in spite of some materials being our baser characteristics. It would be natural to the Parsi in me to project the process of purification instead of introjecting it. The Mother said to me that it was all the same whether I... only by practising the presence of God - an interiorisation of the consciousness until the deep heart opens and one grows aware of oneself as a being that has been put forth by the Divine - and this Divinity is a constant Presence by the side of that being and the very essence of oneself is love and worship of the Greatness and the Grace ever before one in the deep heart's temple.The best way I know... one we are a composite bundle, a whole of consciousness holding numerous movements and offering them as all being ourselves. In the other we take separately our defects and put each at the Mother's feet while dissociating it from our identity as the giver. The second way strikes me as being more systematic and also as involving in its very act a helpful detachment from the troublesome part or trait ...
... encouraged and become the favourites of the princes. It may be military aggrandizement and adventure - then soldiers and sailors will be needed. It may be industrialization as a means towards material well-being - the need will be for engineers and technicians. There are other ways, less direct but equally powerful, in which the social outlook influences education. For instance, our society is still... Money is therefore in great demand and, becoming scarce, is in a position to dictate its terms and to exact an interest in return for its loan. Thus money has become the indispensable condition for material achievement and the gauge of success, with the result that everything is evaluated in terms of money. Even the few who are most ready to work disinterestedly for a good cause are in practice obliged... society has also a strong bearing on education itself so that education can only be reformed when a corresponding change has already begun in society, or at least when the necessity for such a change is being felt. This is the case especially in a period of crisis, when the established order of things is Page 7 crumbling, when the ancient ideals have lost their hold, and youth is desperately ...
... not a formed individuality, fully conscious and having its own qualities, you would all be fused into one another and be indistinguishable. Even if we go only a little inwards, into the most material vital being, there is such a mixture between the vibrations of different people that it is very difficult to distinguish any of you. And if you did not have a body, it would be a sort of inextricable pulp... what one does, why one does it, how one does it. One does it by habit. All those who are born in a certain environment, a certain country, automatically take the habits of that environment, not only material habits but habits of thought, habits of feeling and habits of acting. They do it without watching themselves doing it, quite naturally, and if someone points this out to them they are astonished.... And it must have represented quite a considerable labour to make this multiplicity conscious of being multiple. And if one observes very attentively, if creation had kept the memory of its origin, it would perhaps never have become a diverse multiplicity. There would have been at the centre of each being the sense of perfect unity, and the diversity would—perhaps—never have been expressed. Through ...
... as ‘the original race’. Still close to the ways of their tribal warrior-ancestors, they were free of Latin, French and Jewish individualism, obsession with property, and the crass pursuit of material well-being. We alone, Fichte said, still feel as did the ancient Germanic tribes: duties and rights are derived from subordination to the common will. Only Germans are fit for the new era of social cooperation... are elementary aspects of the human make-up. This consists of an emotional, a mental and a spiritual part, in whatever way they are mixed and expressed. To these three elements should be added the material domain of the human personality, which is its basis on this Earth, and which in most cases remains its principal interest. Intellect and emotion went on affirming themselves in the centuries following ...
... not a formed individuality, fully conscious and having its own qualities, you would all be fused into one another and be indistinguishable. Even if we go only a little inwards, into the most material vital being, there is such a mixture between the vibrations of different people that it is very difficult to distinguish any of you. And if you did not have a body, it would be a sort of inextricable pulp... occupation being the same for a successive number of slaves, they all had the same name. One lives by a kind of habit which is barely half-conscious—one lives, does not even objectify what one does, why one does it, how one does it. One does it by habit. All those who are born in a certain environment, a certain country, automatically take the habits of that environment, not only material habits but... And it must have represented quite a considerable labour to make this multiplicity conscious of being multiple. And if one observes very attentively, if creation had kept the memory of its origin, it would perhaps never have become a diverse multiplicity. There would have been at the centre of each being the sense of perfect unity, and the diversity would—perhaps—never have been expressed. Page ...
... must never forget if you wish to learn how to lead a wise life. It is true that we are, in our inner being, a spirit, a living soul that holds within it the Divine and aspires to become it, to manifest it perfectly; it is equally true, for the moment at least, that in our most material external being, in our body, we are still an animal, a mammalian, of a higher order no doubt, but made like animals... slaves than masters of their physical being. Yet it is the contrary that should be, for the truth of individual life is quite another thing. We have in us an intelligent will more or less enlightened which is the first instrument of our psychic being. It is this intelligent will that we must use in order to learn to live not like an animal man, but as a human being, candidate for Divinity. And the... disposal of a conscious will. This programme is excellent for all human beings equally, and there is no point in wanting to adopt another one for girls. What roles should man and woman play in our new way of life? What shall be the relation between them? Why make at all a distinction between them? They are all equally human beings, trying to become fit instruments for the Divine Work, above sex ...
... must never forget if you wish to learn how to lead a wise life. It is true that we are, in our inner being, a spirit, a living soul that holds within it the Divine and aspires to become it, to manifest it perfectly; it is equally true, for the moment at least, that in our most material external being, in our body, we are still an animal, a mammalian, of a higher order no doubt, but made like animals... slaves than masters of their physical being. Yet it is the contrary that should be, for the truth of individual life is quite another thing. We have in us an intelligent will more or less enlightened which is the first instrument of our psychic being. It is this intelligent will that we must use in order to learn to live not like an animal man, but as a human being, candidate for Divinity. And the... disposal of a conscious will. This programme is excellent for all human beings equally, and there is no point in wanting to adopt another one for girls. 9) What roles should man and woman play in our new way of life? What shall be the relation between them? Why make at all a distinction between them? They are all equally human beings, trying to become fit instruments for the Divine Work, above sex ...
... sadhaks who were with Sri Aurobindo. There was no Ashram at that time - it was a sort of 'club', if I may use the term! (Laughter) She took charge of Sri Aurobindo's physical and material Page 283 well-being also, since His friends were not taking good care of Him. She started building up the Ashram, step by step, which is now flourishing like a Banyan tree on all sides - till, as... 323 Leela is the Divine Creation of the Cosmos. The Lord creates out of Joy, Bliss, so it is His play. Page 287 material plane what Mother is doing with Her superb and supreme powers of organisation. The West is master in the material field, and India, at the present, is weaker in that field. So it was destined that Mother should be born in the West, and Sri Aurobindo in... domination of the earth. The Ashram is for Her the chosen field where the ancient combat between the army of Light and the Hosts of Darkness shall at last be decided. The Adversary has all the means of material power, wealth and numbers at his disposal. She has only one means which is at once Her weapon and Her armour: LOVE. With sheer Love, She has come into this world of hate and falsehood to ...
... conducive to material well-being, and not attempting to transcend it, he would remain a mere human-animal being, and falsify the high hopes cherished of him. The élite of his race have, however, risen beyond it to the intellect or the buddhi, and acquired the capacity of moving, more or less freely, in the ether of thoughts, untrammelled by the senses and their material pursuits. This is a... subjective developments of the instrumental being of man in the Ignorance. It comprises, as we said in the last chapter, citta or the basic consciousness, manas or the sense-mind, buddhi or the intelligence, and ahankāra or the ego-sense. Citta is the primal consciousness, the basic stuff of our psychological being, as it evolves from the material in conscience. It is mostly subconscient and... the three guṇas. It is an intermediary between the Light of the Infinite and the life of the material world. THE THREE TRUTHS Three things emerge from this study of the hierarchical order of the faculties of the mind. (1) Each successive step of the evolutionary psychology of the being is an ascent to a wider and clearer consciousness, and a progressive freedom from subjection ...
... avoided only if, having satisfied the immediate material needs of the masses and being con- fronted with a growing uneasiness and sense of emptiness in the lives of people, they awaken to the necessity of a deeper life and give to Progress a wider meaning. The so-called under-developed countries will follow the same path. They have to catch up in material development - that is, in the scientific, ... They have confidence in themselves and in the social order they are creating. They also believe that historic and other forces (including God) are on their side. They have achieved the highest material well-being hitherto attained upon earth, what may justly be called a civilization of plenty, with an abundance of consumer goods of all descriptions, food, houses, motor cars and aeroplanes, gadgets of... long road that the industrial nations of the West have trodden, pass through the same experiences and the same disappointments. The defects and dangers of a conception of progress restricted to material well-being and to social adjustments are now sufficiently evident to urge us to aim farther and higher. One may reasonably doubt whether the ideal of a welfare society will carry India a long way through ...
... to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material. It is not yet realised what this soul is or that the true secret, whether with child or man, is to help him to find his deeper self, the real psychic entity within... common man himself begins to look at the future as if hidden by a big question mark. Looking around us we see that the most developed nations have already achieved a very high standard of material well-being - what really forms the beginning of a civilization of plenty or affluent society - with an abundance of amenities of all description, food, houses, motor cars and aeroplanes, gadgets of all... nothing but the break-up of the past, indispensable to the forward movement. The word "progress" assumes a new significance. It is not simply an increase in the technological development and material well-being. It is the opening of a new world, the dawning of a New Age, the beginning of a new life. And the faith of man's unlimited perfectibility, the fundamental optimism of man's heart and mind are ...
... पृथिव्याः सानौ, the material world being the first level of the three त्रिषु सानुषु (cf I.10.2. सानोः सानुमारुहत्); the vital and mental worlds follow, when these three open out, are manifested in their wideness रोदसी उर्वी (स्तुषे वां पृथिवि), the soul is त्रिवयाः, it has the wideness of the three births; but there is also the स्थातुर्वयः, the manifested extension or state of being of the Stable, the... thunderbolt, the fire burning from the fuel or perhaps the forest fire. In the psychological, the fire of the seven sacred rivers, the fire from the thunderbolt of Indra, the fire that feeds on the material of the physical and vital life. अश्मनः. This may mean “from the stone all round”, but more naturally it means “thou art born about (all round) the thunderbolt”. For अश्मा in this sense of [ incomplete... Brihaspati. 10 Brihaspati. 11 Maruts. Page 473 II.31. 1 Image of the birds around the nest with double meaning वयः—“birds” and “births in the being, souls” वस्मनः = home, dwelling-place, the nest of the birds, the embodied being of the man. श्रवस्यवो. श्रवः = the call of the birds (cf हृषीवंतो), their joyous cries, and the voices of the truth; the divine hearing वनर्षदः “sitting ...
... nature as human beings, the knot must be hidden somewhere in our minds, and, particularly, it should be sought in the emotional part of our minds. For where the centre of our active being is, there must be the knot of our bondage, and there also must we seek for the secret of its unloosing. If we had been material beings or centred in matter, the knot would have been in some material habit and the release... intended by God in the human being; for material enjoyment & possession He created this world and made matter its formal basis; but eventually He intends the enjoyment of the object as a symbol of the spirit in the spirit, freely. God in us is the poet, is the musician who throws out some few forms of the infinite world within him into symbols of word or sound, so that the material enjoyment of the sound... ether in which & by which it lives. He has done that for which the world of form was created. He has seen & enjoyed God in the symbol of the material object. He has embraced & possessed in his soul through the material organ one becoming of the only & eternal Being. Page 482 × I have written on this point at a ...
... many things. And it's going on. I've made discoveries.... Diseases, accidents, catastrophes, wars, all that, is because the human material consciousness is so small, so narrow that it has a rabid taste for drama. And of course, behind there is the vital being having fun, influences too... anyway all that enjoys an opportunity to delay the divine Work and make things difficult. And all that takes... Oh, always the taste for drama!). There we are. So the problem narrows down more and more.... If your most material vital being goes out, it doesn't make you die—it puts you in catalepsy, but it doesn't make you die. What makes you die?... There are two things that make you die. One (the one that precedes the dramatic human existence) is wear and tear. What does wear and tear come from? From... again. Those who have the material knowledge tell you that during a few... I don't know if it is a few seconds or a few minutes, the heart can start up again; after that, decomposition sets in. With decomposition it's over, naturally. Therefore, we could correctly say that there are kinds of GRADATIONS in death. Gradations in life and gradations in death: there are beings that are more or less alive ...
... the tendency to codification; philosophy was being codified, morals were being codified, knowledge of any and every sort was being codified; it was on one side of its nature an age of scholars, legislatorss, dialecticians, philosophical formalisers. On the other side, the creative and aesthetic enthusiasm of the nation was pouring itself into things material, into the life of the senses, into the pride... large in its view though it has not the cosmic breadth of the earlier poets and it is sustained at every step in its execution. The hand of the artist never fails in the management of its material, — exception being made of a fault of composition marring one, the least consider- Page 97 able of his works, — and his imagination is always as equal to its task as his touch is great... are pictures at once minute and grandiose of three moods of our Aryan civilisation, of which the first was predominatingly moral, the second predominatingly intellectual, the third predominatingly material. The fourth power of the soul, the spiritual, which can alone govern and harmonise the others by fusion with them, had not, though it pervaded and powerfully influenced each successive development ...
... part and parcel of himself, it is himself in one of his functions and phases. Consequently, his work in and upon the material world and life may be viewed as that of self-purification and self-illumination, self-discipline and selfrealisation. Also, the horrors of material existence, being part of the cosmic play and portion of his infinity, naturally find shelter in the individual divine incarnation... sufficient weight, the spiritual light disdained to reach it (vijigupsate). The integral Divine not merely suffers (as in the Christian tradition) a body material, He accepts it in his supernal delight, for it is his own being and substance: it is He in essence and it will become He in actuality. When he comes into the world, it is not as though it were a foreign country; he comes to his... of pure Existence, Being or Substance up there. Life-force, vital dynamism here is the energy of Consciousness there. The pleasure of the heart and emotions and enjoyment is divine Delight. Finally, our mind with its half-lighted thinking power, its groping after knowledge has at its back the plenary light of the Supermind. So the aim is not to reject or withdraw from the material, vital and mental ...
... and they only so much transient thinking matter, a view of existence in the midst of which however helpful it might be to a victorious concentration on physical science and social economy and material well-being, neither religion nor philosophic wisdom could renew their power in the fountains of the spirit nor art and poetry, which are also things of the soul like religion and wisdom, refresh themselves... effort which was the soul of the Vedic or at least the Vedantic mind that we almost appear to be on the point of turning back in the circle of our course. Now that we have seen minutely what is the material reality of the world in which we live and have some knowledge of the vital reality of the Force from which we spring, we are at last beginning to seek again for the spiritual reality of that which... of the great poet will seize on some truth of being, some breath of life, some power of the spirit and bring it out with a certain supreme force for his and our delight and joy in its beauty. But nevertheless the poetry which can keep the amplitude of its breadth and nearness of its touch and yet see all things from a higher height will, the rest being equal, give more and will more fully satisfy the ...
... a state of technological development and increase of material well-being, as it is still generally understood. The faith in man's unlimited perfectibility, the fundamental optimism of man's heart and mind are completely justified. Terrestrial evolution has so far proceeded under the pressure of nature, without any participation of the beings drawn along this evolution. But man has now attained... 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 within himself through his own individual being, therefore is a certain growing measure... On the crest of an evolutionary wave man has to yield place to a new type of being. Can one form an idea of what the new being is going to be? It is no doubt a difficult task. Man is probably incapable of forming a true picture of what his successor will be. He would be prone to imagine him as a glorified man, a being in whom the characteristic human faculties (intelligence, will, memory, etc ...
... contacts there. In the psychic being one gets the sense of oneness by psychic sympathy, but not any unification, for the psychic is the individual soul and must unify itself with the Divine before it can through the Divine unify with others. In spiritual realisation there are two quite opposite forms—one in which one withdraws from all outer things including all material beings in the world to merge in the... ignorant vital nature. The love which human beings feel for one another is also usually an egoistic vital love and these other movements, claim, demand, jealousy, abhiman, anger etc., are its common accompaniments. There is no place for them in Yoga—nor in true love, psychic or divine. In Yoga all love should be turned towards the Divine and to human or other beings only as vessels of the Divine—abhiman... psychic is trying to express itself through the vital. It is through the emotional being that the psychic most easily expresses, for it stands just behind it in the heart centre. But it wants these things to be pure. Not that it rejects the outward expression through the vital and the physical, but as the psychic being is the form of the soul, it naturally feels the attraction of soul to soul, the nearness ...
... to understand that the Divine knows better than we what is good for us and what we truly need, not only for our spiritual progress but also for our material well-being, the health of our body and the proper functioning of all the activities of our being. Naturally, this is not the opinion of the ego, which thinks it knows better than anyone else what it needs, and claims for itself independence of... complete, conscious and free being. This process of development goes on tirelessly through innumerable lives, and if one is not conscious of it, it is because one is not conscious of one's psychic being—for that is the indispensable starting-point. Through interiorisation and concentration one has to enter into conscious contact with one's psychic being. This psychic being always has an influence on... possible, to cultivate a perfect sincerity in all the activities of one's being—these are the essential conditions for the growth of the psychic being. 10 September 1959 Sweet Mother, How can one draw energy into oneself from outside? That depends on the kind of energy one wants to absorb, for each region of the being has a corresponding kind of energy. If it is physical energy, we absorb ...
... advantages and disadvantages are there perfectly typified. The advantages of unity that mere forged by that great Empire were its admirable organisation, peace, widespread security, order and material well being. But the disadvantages arose from its tendency to centralise, to impose uniformity, and, as a result, the individual, the city, the region had to sacrifice their independent life and they became... merely to gain the knowledge of the world and nature and to use them for material human ends but also to know the spirit in the world and the ways of the spirit in its masks and behind them. Ethics would be pursued not to establish a rule of action, supplementary to the social law but to develop the divine nature in the human being. Art would be pursued to reveal the Truth and Beauty of things visible... and thoroughgoing, namely, "the eater eating is eaten". And Sri Aurobindo describes it in the following words: "War and destruction are not only a universal principle of our life here in its purely material aspect, but also of our mental and moral existence. It is self-evident that in the actual life of man intellectual, social, political, moral we can make no real step forward without a struggle, a ...
... large in its view though it has not the cosmic breadth of the earlier poets and it is sustained at every step in its execution. The hand of the artist never fails in the management of its material,—exception being made of a fault of composition marring one, the least considerable of his works,—and his Page 359 imagination is always as equal to its task as his touch is great and subtle. ... or excessive learning that mars the art of some other Sanskrit poets, he knows how to subdue all his matter to the spirit of his art and to make the scholar and observer no more than a gatherer of materials for the poet, but the richness of documentation is there ready and available and constantly brought in as part of incident and description and surrounding idea and forms or intervenes in the brilliant... of that period of her culture. The rest of the poetry of the times is of one fundamental type with Kalidasa's; for it has with individual variations the same thought mind, temperament, general materials, poetic method, and much of it has a high genius or an unusual quality and distinction though not the same perfection, beauty and felicity. The literary epics of Bharavi and Magha reveal the beginning ...
... would produce materialized supramental beings. As on all previous occasions in the evolution, the manifestation of such beings would happen in stages, as the enormous evolutionary change gradually worked itself out and produced the corresponding material beings. This is what Mother called le surhomme (the overman) – who may consist of various types of beings with a supramentalized consciousness but... ‘producing new beings without having to use the old animal method, and these beings, who will have a truly spiritual birth, will constitute the elements of the new race, the supramental race.’ 42 A new species requires a new body, a new material body. ‘It seems – it is even certain – that the very substance which will constitute the intermediate world that is already being built up, is richer... future embodiment of the supramentally conscious being beyond Man, of the divine Superman, was now assured, as it was assured that the human aspiration throughout countless millenniums was being fulfilled: the world would not always be a place of frustration, suffering and death. Like everything else in the One Divine it would be able to materially develop its essential divine nature. K.D. Sethna wrote ...
... involved Supermind, which puts Mind in front of it as the immediately active special form of its knowledge-will subconscious in Force and uses material Force or Will subconscious in substance of being as its executive Nature or Prakriti, has created this material universe. Page 187 But we see that here Mind is manifested in a specialisation of Force to which we give the name of Life. What... process of metempsychosis or new ensouling of body. All renews itself, nothing perishes. It could be affirmed as a consequence that there is one all-pervading Life or dynamic energy—the material aspect being only its outermost movement—that creates all these forms of the physical universe, Life imperishable and eternal which, even if the whole figure of the universe were quite abolished, would itself... well as a will to grow and be, indicative of a submental, a vital-physical organisation of consciousness-force hidden in the form of being. The fact would seem to be, then, that as there is a constant dynamic energy in movement in the universe which takes various material forms more or less subtle or gross, so in each physical body or object, plant or animal or metal, there is stored and active the same ...
... political movement could count was that of the spirit, a faith in the spirit of Indian culture, a living faith in India's destiny. The need for political freedom is not merely for securing material well-being. The chief aim is to have freedom for the expression of the nation's Soul. Just as the individual has a soul so the collectivity or nation has a soul. Nearly thirty years after the movement... the expense of the precious golden ore of the human material." ____________________________ 23 The Life Divine, P. 763. 24 The Foundations of Indian Culture, P. 22 Page 47 Man, today, is trying to overcome the limits of outer i space without overcoming the limitations of his consciousness. Man seems to be on the point of being overcome by his own achievements unless he changes... it turned out, and it always turns out in such great causes ... " not failure but low aim was crime. " It was a not a time for logic; there are times in the history of nations when the logic of material facts has to be laid aside. And Sri Aurobindo in those days did concede to the Page 30 moderate argument and wrote : " Yes, externally we are nothing "; but he argued ...
... individual can attain through freedom his self-realisation and fullness. That Empire provides a historical illustration of advantages of organisation, peace, widespread security, order, and material well-being. But the disadvantages arose from its tendency to centralise, to impose union, and as a result the individual, the city, the region had to sacrifice their independent life and they became mechanical... collective means for his intellectual, aesthetic and material satisfaction. Man has created a system of civilisation which has become too big for his limited mental capacity and understanding and his still more limited spiritual and moral capacity to utilise and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites. ...A greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power is needed to weld... all; not to subordinate or lose himself in the mass, but to find and express that truth of being in himself and help the community and humanity in its seeking for its own truth and fullness of being must be his real object of existence." 2 Indeed, Sri Aurobindo acknowledges that so long as human being is undeveloped, he has to subordinate in many ways his undeveloped self to whatever is greater ...
... of knowledge must necessarily result in an increase of power, and that any new mastery over Nature must sooner or later bring about an improvement in man's condition, his moral as well as his material well-being. For me, as for all other thinkers who have their roots in the last century, the century of Page 479 the foundations of science, ignorance was the primary if not the only evil. It... instrument par excellence . It has just the consistency to embody and to express, neither so fluid as to be vague, nor so concrete as to be opaque. The word pertains to two worlds at once. It is of the material world and therefore can give a form of matter: and it is sufficiently immaterial to be in contact with subtle things, forces and vibrations, principles and ideas. It can materialise the immaterial... processes, in order to express a new kind of beauty that is higher and purer, truer and nobler. So long as I still feel bound to human animality, I cannot free myself completely from the forms of material Nature. The aspiration was there, but the knowledge, the vision was lacking. And now that we are about to die, I feel that I have produced nothing of what I wanted to produce, I have created nothing ...
... philological notes came out in the journal Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research between 1977 and 1985. The rest of the material is being published here for the first time. A new title, Vedic and Philological Studies , was created to accommodate the published and previously unpublished material collected in this volume. Page 742 ... notes found in his notebooks have been selected and arranged here according to the ten Mandalas of the Rig Veda. Sri Aurobindo himself sometimes identified this material as “Vedic Notes” or “Notes on Veda”. Some of these notes resemble material in Part Three, but they generally contain fewer passages of discursive prose and are less systematically arranged and developed than the commentaries in that part... paragraph of philological speculations occurs along with several pages of rough lists of Sanskrit and Greek words belonging to the n -family. This material was written in the available space in part of a notebook previously used first in Baroda and then for material related to the Record of Yoga which can be dated January – February 1911. Roots in p . Circa 1911 – 12. This attempt to reconstruct “OS” ...
... – for example unheard of material possibilities and individual freedom to a high degree? “No political ideology is able to fire the masses any longer. Postmodern society has no more idols or taboos, no glorious image of itself, no animating historical project. Henceforward we are dominated by emptiness,” 42 writes Lipovetsky. An explanation may be that material well-being as such is no fulfilment... even here in the terrestrial embodiment as his own self and spirit, and is, at its summits and in its essence, and infinite and eternal Being, Consciousness and Bliss [Sachchidananda] of existence. But what we seem to see as the source and beginning of the material universe is just the contrary – it wears to us the aspect of a Void, an infinite of Non-Existence, and indeterminate Inconscient, an insensitive... fulfilment of the needs and the growth of the soul, and that full individuality can be realised only when the human being will be recognised for what it is, in all its aspects. This should be kept in mind when reflecting on the generalised malaise humanity is subject to at a time that, materially, people never had it so good. “Peace we do not have, but we do have abundance!” says the Frenchman Jacques Lacarrière ...
... ’ 75 The Mother also said that materially embodied beings which have the psychic being – what we call humans – exist only on the Earth. As we know, the psychic being is much more than a ‘divine spark.’ Everything contains a divine spark, without which it could not exist. ‘The divine spark is at the centre of each atom,’ said the Mother. 76 ‘The psychic being is organized around the divine spark... basis of this education was her knowledge of the different aspects of the human being – the material, vital, mental, psychic and spiritual parts. This knowledge, gained from age-long yogic and mystical experience, is in itself new and revolutionary compared to the way the human being is chiefly seen in the West: as a material body mysteriously functioning in tandem with an intangible mind, and which has... this transformation to succeed, all human beings – even all living beings as well as their material environment – must be transformed. Otherwise things will remain as they are: an individual experience cannot change terrestrial life. This is the essential difference between the old idea of transformation – that is, the becoming conscious of the psychic being and the inner life – and transformation as ...
... one's own centre of being in accordance with one's own law of being, svadharma, is the first necessity. Not to be able to do that means disintegration of the life; not to do it sufficiently means languor, weakness, inefficiency, the danger of being oppressed by the environing forces and overborne; not to be able to do it wisely, intuitively, with a strong use of one's inner material and inner powers... points out that ordinarily - in the Indian way of life - moksa (spiritual liberation) comes as a feat of transcendence out of the fullness of the other three, kāma (enjoyment), artha (material well-being) and dharma (right conduct); "there was no preaching of a general rush to the cave and the hermitage". 9 Again, was the characteristic Indian attitude corrosively pessimistic - or more p... forms, ways of living work to bring that harmony out, manage its rhythmic play and secure its continuance or the development of its motives. A civilisation in pursuit of this aim may be predominantly material like modern European culture, predominantly mental and intellectual like the old Graeco-Roman or predominantly spiritual like the still persistent culture of India. 3 The present contrast ...
... they found that the transcendent absolute Self of things was also the Self of living beings, the Self too of man, that highest of the beings living in the material plane on earth. The Purusha or conscious Ego in man which had perplexed and baffled the Sankhyas, turned out to be precisely the same in his ultimate being as Prakriti the apparently non-conscious source of things; the non-consciousness of... all the rest possible. This difference grows as the manifestation of Brahman proceeds. In the world of gross matter, it is complete; the difference is so acute, that it is impossible for the material sensual being to conceive of the Supreme Soul as having any point of contact with his own soul and it is only by a long process of evolution that he arrives at the illumination in which some kind of identity... is Bliss and cannot be separated from Bliss. I think we feel this even in the very finite existence and cramped consciousness of life on the material plane. Conscious existence at least cannot endure without pleasure; even in the most miserable sentient being there must be pleasure in existence though it appear small as a grain of mustard seed; blank absolute misery entails suicide and annihilation ...
... the sacrificer encompass with his beings all of them as the sacrifice” or “and the sacrifice”,—neither of which renderings makes any tolerable sense. × Sayana renders “Let none torture thee”; but it refers to the extension in the gross and obscure material of being natural to the covering darkness, as... the state of Yoga. (10) We know thee for most supreme in the substantial strengths of being, a hearer of our call; because thou art thus supreme we call to thee for expansion of being strong in stability. (11) O Indra of the sheaths, drink then the Soma, be steadfast in delight, give us wholly a new being and create for us the Knowledge that preserveth utterly our force. (12) O delighter in... in our words, may these our words be all around thee; may all increase follow the increase of our being and all love cling to it. SUKTA 11 (1) Indra, cleaver of the ocean, all words increase; most rapturous of the blissful; master of being and lord of stable strengths. (2) In thy friendship, who art stable and strong, we have no fear, O Indra lord of the various light, towards thee we move ...
... pervasive life & movement to Vayu, the god of wind, breath & the life principle. Cf अन्, अनुः, अनिलः, प्राणः. अ The first letter of the Onkára, representing material world being; from a to be, & bearing the sense of initial & pervasive being. अ, अन् (1) a negative prefix, expressing defect, absence or opposition. (2) a prohibitive particle. (3) an interjection of (a) address, O! (b) pity... letter of the sacred syllable; both rather proceed from a single & common origin, अ to be, in the widest sense of the idea, being primal, all pervading, vague and indefinable. Hence it is applicable to any of the three great deities who occupy & represent infinite & universal being, Vishnu, Shiva or Brahma; by a natural figure emphatic of the sense of व्याप्ति it became applicable to Vaiswanara or Virat... उ (ऊन etc) may derive (a) from the idea of unfinished & therefore imperfect being, (b) from the use of अ as a separative & therefore exclusive enclitic, lit. = let be, exclude that, not that. अंश् 10 U. to divide, distribute, share. Page 603 [3] An— अन् to breathe अन् the soul, being Rv. विश्वे चनेदना to move, go about to live (to gasp, pant ...
... extremely coherent, free from ego but deformed by present associations. 16 June 1914 St. Raw materials (Fr. D.). Script. It is the raw materials (áma) that are now being brought forward for pachana . This exactly describes the defect in the siddhi of the mental consciousness which was being strongly felt all the morning & especially at the moment of the sortilege. Neuralgia with a... to be destroyed by substi[tu]tion of the free, joyous & unillumined Tapas proceeding direct from the Ishwara. The raw material is being progressively turned into ripe & utilisable forms. This is evident in the knowledge in which the most apparently false suggestions are being reduced to terms of the Truth even in the difficult processes of the trikaldrishti. It is proceeding also, at a less advanced... the intense kamananda will should no longer be used; only smarana & involuntary hetu. The power of rupa & samadhi is really growing. Suspension of its activity is being used in order to break down limiting habits formed by the material Prakriti in the ether and allow larger forms of fulfilment to manifest out of the Avyakta. At night there was an attempt in the swapna at organising itself, but ...
... indication of what the "chain" in The Tyger must signify beyond something with which to tug at the bellows or even to control the material during its shaping. Fuzon's act of unloosing his tygers implies both their being joined to the chariot as if by a chain and their being held on a chain-like rein to be set moving against any foe. Nor is this all that the picture has in store for us. Blake tells... But the original defection of Urizen from the heavenly unity and his getting a place in the North, creating a material universe, being chained by Los and then getting free are recounted in The First Book of Urizen which followed Europe in the same year. Los's own entry into the material universe, the entry which is a fact in Europe, is pictured not before 1795 when The Book of Los is produced... chain is of special interest. For it partly elucidates a point which we were left to guess in The Tyger. the function of the chain. Now the function is suggested to be control over the material while it is being heated and moulded. We may remember that, just as here the hammer-beating and the Furnace-heating accompany the mention of the "chain'd Orb", we have in The Tyger the statement effecting ...
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