... the Asuras represent the dark side of God on the vital plane – does this dark side exist on every plane ? If so, are there beings on the mental plane which correspond to the dark side ? Sri Aurobindo : The Asura is really the dark side of God on the mental plane. Mind is the very field of the Asura. His characteristic is egoistic strength, which refuses the Higher Law. The Asura has got Self-control... Supramental yoga likely to exert on them when it is perfected ? Sri Aurobindo : What do you mean ? Do you refer to the mental in men or to beings who have no bodies but are living on the mental plane ? If you say that a plane is Supramentalised then all the beings on that plane also must be Supramentalised. Then by that time the Pushwala also may have his being transformed. You can't expect... These planes and the beings on them change in relation to you or in so far as they come in contact with you. But they cannot change by your doing Sadhana. Disciple : How do the beings on the mental plane come in contact with us and how do they undergo change or do Sadhana ? Sri Aurobindo : These distinctions between the various grades of being are bound to remain; otherwise there would be ...
... I know some people make such constructions as the "Yoga-pitha and so on. One can always find these things, because many things from the mental plane are always trying to realise themselves here. These constructions are generally on the mental plane and they may even have some truth behindthem – notintheformsand constructions themselves. But even where there is some truth behind them it gets... reflected in the mind. The world and all people appeared as in a cinema; all these things appeared very small. What Bucke and some of the other people get is some sense of the Infinite on the mental plane and they begin to think that it is everything. Page 69 His whole book is a generalisation from one experience which lasted only a few seconds. One ought not to rush into print... evil and good are both equal. Everything is, in the last analysis, the working of the Divine, but you have not therefore to accept everything. It may not matter very much so long as you are on the mental plane, but on the vital plane if you accept everything as the working of the Divine you are sure to fall. It is a very dangerous movement because the Sadhaka may justify the play of lower impulses in ...
... higher mental plane. E.g. the light of pink colour might be that of some influence or godhead of love or bhakti in contact with the mental being. In some cases it may be the figure of a formation of the mental being itself. The flowers, diamonds and gems etc. would seem to indicate contact with Radha, Mahalakshmi and Mahakali influences. The vision of writing is also frequent on the mental plane—it is... Page 99 that have to be rejected. The visions you describe are those which come in the earliest stages of sadhana. At this stage most of the things seen are formations of the mental plane and it is not always possible to put on them a precise significance, for they depend on the individual mind of the sadhak. At a later stage the power of vision becomes important for the sadhana... on the mental or vital plane which presents itself to the sadhak in the hope of being accepted and helped to realise itself. The visions and experiences you have described are all of the mental plane and show a great openness and purity of the inner mental being free from unfavourable influences. But it is difficult to tell the precise significance of those that are in the nature of colours ...
... and a mental plane, not materialised, in which the principle of Mind is at home and not as here at strife with a world which is alien to it, obstructive to its freedom and corruptive of its purity and clearness. All the higher faculties of man, his intellectual and psycho-mental Page 470 being and powers, his higher emotional life awaken and increase in proportion as this mental plane in him... spiritual life predominates, destroys his earthward tendency and breaks its ties and limitations. Spiritualised, he places his real existence beyond in other worlds, in the heavens of the vital or mental plane; he begins to regard life on earth as a painful or troublesome incident or passage in which he can never arrive at any full enjoyment of his inner ideal self, his spiritual essence. Moreover, his... him presses upon him. For the more it manifests, the more it influences the physical parts, the more it enriches and elevates the corresponding mental plane of the embodied nature. At a certain pitch of its increasing sovereignty it can make man truly man and not merely a reasoning animal; for it gives then its characteristic force to that mental being within us which our humanity is in the inwardly ...
... another and what may be clear on one plane of consciousness may be on another pretty obscure, at least at the start. If we take the mass of men as our criterion we confine ourselves to the mental plane which is at present our general status. There are many other planes deeper and higher than the little bit of individualised mind which homo sapiens enjoys, and they have their own concrete and ... it is then that he produces spurious word-manufacture and mechanism instead of creation and organism. Not otherwise. And this holds for non-mystical poetry no less than mystical: poetry of the mental plane as well as of planes beyond the mind. I do realise that we must spare no trouble to bring our vision to a focus, we must not luxuriate in the hazy and the slipshod. The point I am trying to make... which, in the case of the large run of poetry, are never substantially stimulated but which in a kind of surface- Page 25 projection are always evoked by all genuine poems of the mental plane since it is always on what we vaguely name the soul that poetry presses for essential appreciation and absorption. "After difficult contact", I have said. Counterbalancing the difficulty ...
... consciousness, the spiritual and the materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge rejects the lower and draws back to the supreme plane, dwells there,... than the material which is now all in all to us. What has been said of the life-world applies with the necessary differences to still higher planes of the cosmic existence. For beyond that is a mental plane, a world of mental existence in which neither life, nor matter, but mind is the first determinant. Mind there is not determined by material conditions or by the life-force, but itself determines... right it awakes in us the purer powers of our psychical and intellectual existence. But our surface mentality is only a secondary result of a larger subliminal mentality whose proper seat is the mental plane. This world of mental existence also is constantly acting upon us and our world, has its powers and its beings, is related to us through our mental body. There we find the psychical and mental heavens ...
... more important. "At present your experiences are on the mental plane..." This is in reply to someone, I don't know to whom. Someone who wrote a letter and to whom Sri Aurobindo has replied: "At present your experiences are on the mental plane." I don't know what letter it was nor this person. But what does "only on the mental plane" means? What does it mean? Well, these are experiences ...
... those who attain the Universal manifest perfection? Sri Aurobindo : Generally, these are men who want to escape into the Universal – that is, into the Infinite, – Satchidananda, – on the mental plane. The Universal, as I told you, is full of all kinds of things, good and bad. Page 33 The Sadhaks, who enter into it and look upon it as their goal, accept whatever comes from... point of view. For example, it is necessary to spread our literature because it spreads the new thought. Some men may receive it correctly and some incorrectly. A movement is set up in the universal mental plane. So also in social work the whole frame is shaken by the new thought and inasmuch as it moves men out of the old groove it is useful. But we have to act from the inner motives. 9–8–1923 ... V : It is at present duller than it was before my physical illness. Sri Aurobindo : What is the kind of experience you are getting ? V : At first the Power was working on the mental plane. Now it is working on the vital and even below the vital plane. Sri Aurobindo : How do you know that it is working on the vital plane ? V : When the mind becomes peaceful I am able ...
... there are no hostile forces or beings there. But there are others—and they are many—that can be touched or penetrated by the vital forces." Questions and Answers 1929 ( 26 May ) Which mental plane are you speaking of? Of the physical mind. Certainly not of the higher mind, for there are no adverse forces there. The reference is to the mind that deals with material things. Are there... themselves upon earth, but these are generally created by human beings; they then continue to work in the mental world with the intention of influencing the mind of human beings. But the beings of the mental plane proper are generally creators, and because they are creators of form, they are not much concerned with influencing other forms—they are satisfied with expressing themselves through the forms they... understanding comes.... "But here in this higher region of the unexpressed mind and its purer altitudes you are free; when you enter there, you go out of yourself and penetrate into a universal mental plane in which each individual mental world is dipping as if into a huge sea. There you can understand entirely what is going on in another and read his mind as if it were your own, because there no ...
... Then the human group and its poetry move on the mental plane: that is to say, the movement of their being and consciousness is to interpret outward and inward existence to the reasoning intelli-gence. Most poetry is either of the subtle-physical, the vital or the mental plane - and most poetry, by the very turn of ... surface thought and character and feeling as obviously emerges in a strong and single and natural speech and action." 21 Such a poet does not typify the mental plane, even as he does not typify the plane of the Life-force - or, rather, since man is characteristically a mental being, we should say that Homer's is the subtle-physical ...
... physical plane returns to the Jiva which is all along supporting the insect in the physical consciousness. When it is ripe, it is taken up on the vital plane and there it gathers experience till the mental plane is reached in man. There is the Supramental plane also. What we do in our yoga is to bring down the Supramental plane so that the Soul may return with the full experience to the higher plane... physical plane you will find that there is life and even mind in the cells of the body. Of course, the life and mind we find in the physical world are not the same as we find on the vital or the mental plane. But you can't deny that there is mind in it. It is that which performs the mechanical operations of the body with such a precision. The physical mind is the mind which sees only the physical and... each plane of being – the physical, the vital and the mental – looking at the world ? Sri Aurobindo : The Purusha looks at the world as Prakriti i.e. Nature, represents it to be. On the mental plane Prakriti represents thoughts, ideas – in short, all mental movements. On the vital plane Prakriti represents itself as desires – in short, as action of the vital force. On the physical plane ...
... we say that Mind in some such secret and suppressed form is not already existent in Matter, we must then suppose that it exists outside Matter and embraces it or enters into it. We must suppose a mental plane of existence Page 35 which presses upon the physical and tends to possess it. In that case the mental being would be in its origin an entity which is formed outside the material world;... reign of the physical principle. In fact, the emergence of such a latent Mind might well depend upon and would certainly profit by the aid and pressure of forces from a supraphysical kingdom, a mental plane of existence. There are always two possible views of the universe. The one supposes, with modern Science, Matter to be the beginning of things and studies everything as an evolution from Matter; ...
... 99 The Spirit of Mind, like the Holy Ghost brooding over the waters of consciousness, reflects on the blue lotus which is a semiotic representation of the divine consciousness in the mental plane. This brooding takes place in the clear glowing 'amethyst air'—because the air itself is charged with forces of protection. Whenever the spirit functions in this manner it wishes to be unhindered... strikingly new images. For instance, "topaz walls" or the "form of living gold" are not merely literary imaginations or decorations; rather they present the solidity of abstract images beyond our mental plane. Similarly, "sun-gold" or "moon-gold" are not intended for mere embellishment. They reveal the nuances of light, truth and beauty which some other word or term would have portrayed less intensely ...
... from the dream experiences that one has on the vital or mental plane which are themselves not ordinary dreams but actual experiences on the mental, vital, psychic or subtle physical planes. You have had several dreams which were vital dream experiences, those in which you met the Mother and recently you had one such contact on the mental plane which, for those who understand these things, means that ...
... a city dedicated to the Sun and called ‘Horizon of the Sun’ (which means physical presence of the Sun on Earth) had to be undertaken ‘to assure the continuity of its existence in the mental plane.’ What mental plane? In occultism, the existence of an ‘ether’ in which all events are recorded that ever have taken place and are to take place, is well-known. It is the basis of the belief in a Doomsday ...
... vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul's home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are situated in the consciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter... formula something that corresponds to the superior power and its action. The material world has evolved life in obedience to a pressure from the vital plane, mind in obedience to a pressure from the mental plane. It is now trying to evolve supermind in obedience to a pressure from the supramental plane. In more detail, particular forces, movements, powers, beings of a higher world can throw themselves on ...
... take place? what would be the soul's other habitat? It might seem that it ought to be on a mental plane, in mental worlds, both because on man the mental being the attraction of that plane, already active in life, must prevail when there is not the obstacle of the attachment to the body, and because the mental plane should be, evidently, the native and proper habitat of a mental being. But this does not ...
... from the dream experiences that one has on the vital or mental plane which are themselves not ordinary dreams but actual experiences on the mental, vital, psychic or subtle physical planes. You have had several dreams which were vital dream experiences, those in which you met the Mother, and recently you had one such contact on the mental plane which, for those who understand these things, means that ...
... hundreds of sadhaks in all times have had the realisation of the Atman on the higher mental plane, buddheḥ parataḥ , but the supramental realisation was not theirs. One can get partial realisations of the Self or Spirit or the Divine on any plane, mental, vital, physical even, and when one rises above the ordinary mental plane of man into a higher and larger mind, the Self begins to appear in all its conscious ...
... the field or nature of their effort, the height to which they have arrived, the consciousness with which they have contact or into which they enter. Do not scientists go sometimes beyond the mental plane? It is said that Einstein found his theory of relativity not through any process of reasoning, but through some kind of sudden inspiration. Has that inspiration anything to do with the Supermind... Supermind? Page 93 The scientist who gets an inspiration revealing to him a new truth, receives it from the intuitive mind. The knowledge comes as a direct perception in the higher mental plane illumined by some other light still farther above. But all that has nothing to do with the action of Supermind and this higher mental level is far removed from the supramental plane. Men are too easily ...
... service of the Divine, it is not only formative but also creative. There is, however, no such thing as an unreal formation, because every image is a reality on the mental plane. The plot of a novel, for instance, is all there on the mental plane existing independently of the physical. Each of us is a novelist to a certain extent and possesses the capacity to make forms on that plane; and, in fact, a good ...
... the Divine Will that acted directly on Matter to give to the world the required form, it is by passing through layers, so to say, planes of the world, as for example, the mental plane—there are so many beings on the mental plane who are form-makers, who have taken part in the formation of some beings who have incarnated upon earth. On the vital plane also the same thing happens. For example, there ...
... All arts in general and poetry and painting in particular belong to the vital plane. Disciple : Does not poetry – like, that of Tagore – come from the mental plane? Sri Aurobindo : No. It does not come from the mental plane; at best it is from the vital mind – or vital mental – that it comes. Page 218 22-6-1924 (An article on Modern Indian Painting by 0. C. ...
... that Page 193 something will be done this time. The doubt is there somewhere in the mental – some uncertainty. The whole thing is ready behind. If it were a certainty on the mental plane then the thing would have been achieved. When there is the certainty there is no room for struggle. Till now it was not done, probably because the hostile forces were very strong." ¹ 4 April... consciousness on all the planes you can become an ideal sadhaka of this yoga." ¹ + + + On another occasion Sri Aurobindo referred to his sadhana as follows: "When I was doing sadhana on the mental plane things came so easily. It was child's play. With the vital being, though it was not easy, yet it was interesting. But this physical is absolutely hard. It has been left untried by the ancient Yogis ...
... . But when you introduce the vital determinism into the determinism of the physical, that produces a kind of combination that changes everything. And above the vital plane there is the mental plane. The mental plane also has its own determinism where all things are linked together rigorously. But that is the movement which could be called "horizontal". If you take a vertical movement, the mind ...
... a physical character. He must understand the character of his higher psychic experiences. These, including the voice, are not direct from the supra-mental but psychic and intuitive on the whole mental plane from the higher mind downwards. That is no reason to belittle them. Page 338 Only in the transcription in his mind there is a mixture of his own mental and other suggestions which is... the consciousness makes any response to these forces of the lower plane that the victory and transformation are absolutely complete. 4) His experience that whenever he gains a conquest in the mental plane the forces of past Karma,—that is to say, really of the old nature,—come back upon him with a double vigour is again a common experience. The psychological explanation is to be found in the preceding ...
... a higher condition, you begin to see that you are an instrument of the one consciousness; you take a step upward and you rise to a higher conscious level. Do hostile forces attack one on the mental plane as they do in the vital world? Page 60 It is difficult to give a precise answer without going into a number of explanations into which we cannot now enter. Mind is one movement,... own reflection in things. But here in this higher region of the unexpressed mind and its purer altitudes you are free; when you enter there, you go out of yourself and penetrate into a universal mental plane in which each individual mental world is dipping as if into a huge sea. There you can understand entirely what is going on in another and read his mind as if it were your own, because there no ...
... service of the Divine, it is not only formative but also creative. There is, however, no such things as unreal formation, because every image is a reality on the mental plane. The plot of a novel, for instance, is all there on the mental plane existing independently of the physical. Each of us is a novelist to a certain extent and possess the capacity to make forms on that plane; and, in fact, a good ...
... to the needed change. Page 123 At present your experiences are on the mental plane, but that is the right movement. Many sadhaks are unable to advance because they open the vital plane before the mental and psychic are ready. After some beginning of true spiritual experiences on the mental plane there is a premature descent into the vital and great confusion and disturbance. This has ...
... the vital must always be kept under the control of the intelligence, the psychic or when that becomes dynamic, the higher spiritual consciousness. An Experience on the Mental Plane The vision you had was of the mental plane and symbolic. It symbolised not so much your own position as the general difficulties which lie in the way of one's going deep inside into the psychic centre and living there ...
... the power with which She came ... But I can tell you one thing: even before Her coming, when, with Sri Aurobindo, I had begun going down (for the Yoga) from the mental plane to the vital plane, when we brought our yoga down from the mental plane into the vital plane, in less than a month (I was forty years old at the time—I didn't seem very old, I looked less than forty, but I was forty anyway), after ...
... the mind and vital become active. On the mental plane all the formations made by the mind—the actual "forms" that it gives to the thoughts—return and appear to you as if they were coming from outside and give you dreams. Most dreams are like that. Some people have a Page 308 very conscious mental life and are able to enter the mental plane and move about in it with the same independence ...
... Gita, Sri Aurobindo means in all these instances the higher intelligence or superior mind in man, the Buddhi or intellect, what he also called "the intelligent will". Here is no going beyond the mental plane. It is not easy to pinpoint the time of the radical distinction which Sri Aurobindo later habitually made between the two beyond-mind ranges of consciousness concerned. The earliest published... Gods: you cannot approach "the true Gods" with "your ego".² Then he says that "Gods" is a very wide term and there are Gods on every plane: e.g., vital Gods.³ Subsequently he mentions the higher mental plane as the one up to which goes the conception of the Gods worshipped by the Hindus. 4 But about "the true Gods" there are two illuminating snatches of conversation confirming each other. One is ...
... of a physical character. He must understand the character of his higher psychic experiences. These including the voice are not direct from the Supramental but psychic and intuitive on the whole mental plane from the higher mind downwards. There is no reason to belittle them. Only in the transcription in his mind there is a mixture of his own mental and other suggestions which is almost inevitable at... the consciousness makes any response to those forces of the lower plane that the victory and transformation are absolutely complete. (4) His experience that whenever he gains conquest in the mental plane the force of past Karma, that is to say, really of the old nature, comes back upon him with a double vigour is again a common experience. The psychological explanation is to be found in the preceding ...
... estimate for Rs.570 for repairs! How to reduce it? If it can't be reduced, well, it will be difficult to offer Rs.300 even — (Sri Aurobindo's note :) One may have the experiences on the mental plane without this knowledge coming—for there Mind and Idea Predominate and one does not feel the play of Forces—it is only in the vital that that becomes clear. In the mind plane they manifest at most... matter—here one has to use discrimination and separate the true suggestion from the less reliable mental matter. Intuition and discrimination must always go together so long as one moves in the mental plane—and for some time after. P.S. From tonight I have resolved (subject to your approval of course) of meditating, japaing, praying, etc. at night—that is not reading and writing at all at ...
... disconnected from the will and reason, the buddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the brain-memory, partly of reflections from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflections which are, ordinarily, received without intelligence or co-ordination, widely distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, with brain-memories and... said here about 'dream-formations' and actual 'dream happenings'. Some dreams are very obviously mere formations, devoid of any reality, which one meets mostly on the vital plane, at times on the mental plane. Sri Aurobindo has this to say about these 'dream formations': Sometimes they are the formations of your own mind or vital; sometimes they are the formations of other minds with an exact ...
... determinism, which is its own. And when you bring the vital determinism into physical determinism, that makes a combination which changes everything. Above the vital plane lies the mental plane. The mental plane too has its own determinism in which all mental things are chained together in a rigorous sequence. Each of these planes has what may be called a horizontal determinism. But ...
... distinct character that indicated another origin than the ordinary mental images. It is still a mental image, and all mental images have the same character. Only it may come from the higher mental plane. Once you open to them you receive knowledge of things you do not know in the ordinary mind. The image of a road is a very common image of the higher mental; its meaning is that of the path... location of my consciousness. As soon as I try to think of this location in space I find myself again within the body. Is this movement to be encouraged ? I suppose it is a movement on the mental plane, but we have to see. As I said I am conscious of the dissolving power of the force coming from above. It goes down to the navel centre and works from there. I cannot say yet how it works. ...
... this I can say : "Something will be done this time." There is a doubt somewhere in the mental being, some uncertainty. The whole thing is ready behind. If there had been the certainty on the mental plane the work would have been done. It was not done till now because probably the hostile forces were very strong. You do not know how strong they are, I alone know it, you have only a glimpse of it... to me the Supermind : it is a perfect shape. Disciple : How did you know that the square is the symbol of the Supermind ? Sri Aurobindo : It might have been already found on the mental plane by somebody or might have come into my mind by some force. I did not pursue its meaning; it indicated to me the Supermind and I was satisfied. The triangle indicates the world formed by the three ...
... beginning, in others the spiritual. If it is the spiritual opening, then after some time it has to stop to bring the psychic element into the sadhana. Of course one can stop with the realisation in the mental plane, the psychic element not being necessary for it. But for complete transformation, both things are needed. PURANI: In case of a weakening of the nervous envelope, can one replenish it by drawing... subconscient and the pressure on the physical, they will have to share the atmosphere—unless they isolate themselves from the atmosphere. There is a case of someone who made very good progress on the mental plane. He kept himself isolated—I mean inner isolation—from the atmosphere. But, as soon as he came to the vital, he couldn't go further, all his progress stopped. SATYENDRA: The Newcomers can't make ...
... his heart, or to the yogi concentrated in his mind. For one does not actually go higher as one enters Nirvana; one merely opens a passageway and goes out. Sri Aurobindo had not gone beyond the mental plane when he experienced Nirvana: I myself had my experience of Nirvana and silence in the Brahman long before there was any knowledge of the overhead spiritual planes. 120 It is after ascending... revelation have not conceived it from nothing: the overmind is their source. It is also the source of the higher artistic creations. But we must remember that, although it is the summit, it is still a mental plane. When consciousness rises to that plane, it no longer sees "point by point," but calmly in great masses. 197 There is no longer the diffused light of the illumined mind or the isolated flashes ...
... semblance alive or keep a dead form alive, the real thing takes time to come into existence. Q : We won't get away from this, will we, until we get off the mental plane and into a higher plane ? There will always be dogmatism on the mental plane, isn't that natural ? A : Well, it is a question of allowing the Higher Power to work out. We see that the religious impulse is working out in forms that ...
... hand subtly one with my own. * During the last visit of mine of the Ashram before I came back to settle in it at the beginning of 1954, the Mother said to me in effect: "The mental plane is so vast and so varied that one can go on and on in it and be lost in its wonders and surprises, its vista upon vista of search and discovery. Feeling at home in it, one may never turn to the ...
... objectivised and seen, and that is one of the most common explanations for dreams.... When you are asleep, your eyes are closed, the physical is asleep and the mind and vital become active. On the mental plane all the formations made by the mind—the actual “forms” that it gives to the thoughts return and appear to you as if they were coming from outside and give you dreams.... Some people have a very ...
... not come as easily to intellectuals as it does to men with a strong life-power or the emotional and the imaginative. At this early stage of sadhana most of the things seen are formations of the mental plane and it is not always possible to put on them a precise significance, for they depend on the individual mind of the sadhak. At a later stage the power of vision becomes important for the sadhana ...
... Interpretations) Visions of Champaklal Blue Lotus What is the meaning of this blue lotus? It can be taken as the (Avatar) incarnation on the mental plane. Sri Aurobindo ...
... humanity that had become a prey to several ills due to involution. Must this repetitive death-birth-death cycle go on for ever? When can mankind step upwards leaving behind the darknesses of the mental plane? Aswapati had seen all the future possibilities for this marvellous tiny dot in eternity called Man. Already in the far distant was he not watching the Hunters of Joy, the 40 Ibid., ...
... due to the physical mind having positive side. We have to see, what is the source of faith. There is no absolute rule or law. 2) Spiritual being is Sachchidananda, which can be realised on the mental plane. One need not go to the Supermind at all. 3) First the whole physical being must be opened up; the Supermind must come and change the whole being from top to bottom: supramentalise it; then you ...
... the consciousness makes any response to those forces of the lower plane that the victory and transformation are absolutely complete. (4) His experience that whenever he gains conquest in the mental plane the force of past Karma, that is to say, really of the old nature, comes back upon him with a double vigour is again a common experience. The psychological explanation is to be found in the preceding ...
... of psychic 30 and spiritual experience and gives no room for the descent of the true illuminating knowledge or else deforms it as soon as it touches or even before it fully touches the human mental plane. 31 Eckhart attaches little importance to mental knowledge in spiritual teaching, whereas Sri Aurobindo regards an intellectual preparation as a possible "first step in a powerful Yoga" ...
... due to the physical mind having positive side. We have to see, what is the source of faith. There is no absolute rule of law. 2) Spiritual being is Sachchidananda, which can be realised on the mental plane. One need not go to the Supermind at all. 3) First the whole physical being must be opened up; the Supermind must come and change the whole being from top to bottom; supramentalise it; then you ...
... harmonious, concomitant, unified, but are one being of consciousness and power of consciousness. It is this Chit which modifies itself so as to become on the Truth-plane the supermind, on the mental plane the mental reason, will, emotion, sensation, on the lower planes the vital or physical instincts, impulses, habits of an obscure force not in superficially conscious possession of itself. All ...
... of a physical character. He must understand the character of his higher psychic experiences. These including the voice are not direct from the Supramental but psychic and intuitive on the whole mental plane from the higher mind downwards. There is no reason to belittle them. Only in the transcription in his mind there is a mixture of his own mental and other suggestions which is almost inevitable at ...
... which disturbs the spontaneous accuracy of psychic and spiritual experience and gives no room for the descent of the true illuminating knowledge or else deforms it as soon as it touches the human mental plane. Always, it is substituting its own representations and constructions and opinions for the true knowledge. But if the intellect is surrendered, open, quiet, receptive, there is no reason why it ...
... the theme of you play? 1 I do not remember that I have ever written anything on this subject. In any case I do not wish to write anything about it now. people discuss these matters from a mental plane on which I no longer stand, their ideas about it on either side have nothing to do with inner truth of things which is alone of any importance. ________________________ 1. Apad and Jalatanka ...
... in the human soul towards a goal that surpasses them and attempts to eliminate them. According to the Indian tradition there are in descending order the asuras , the great hostiles of the vital-mental plane, sometimes compared to the Titans of Greek mythology; then there are the rakshasas, the ugly ogres of the vital plane, which are nevertheless perfectly capable of taking on the most seductive ...
... kind of opening which makes the vital experiences possible. In any case, to begin with the vital is a hazardous affair; the difficulties in there are more numerous and more violent than on the mental plane and the pitfalls are innumerable. The access to the soul, the psychic being is less easy because it is covered up with a thick veil of ego, passion and desire. One is apt to be swallowed up in ...
... substantially. In 1926 he ceased meeting with them and withdrew into his private chambers where for 24 years he pursued his extraordinary adventure of consciousness into what he called the Supra-mental plane, his attempt being to bring down this great force and fix it in the real consciousness so that it could help in speeding up the evolutionary destiny of humanity. Interestingly, there ...
... epistemological inquiry -what exactly is knowledge and what is the raison d'etre of man's insatiable urge to search for it?" Over and above or rather behind and beyond the push of the typal mental plane to pursue ideas and theories for their own sake, there is one aspect of the Divine Nature, the Divine Existence, responsible for this urge. The ultimate reality is Omniscience (All-Knowledge) along ...
... like the following apostrophe to the transcendent divine Force which he visions as drawing the quintessence of a triple Absolute of Being, Consciousness, Delight, and reigning from on high over the mental plane like a Sun-kingdom of Knowledge, is, like those verses about Truth's solitude that is perfectly withdrawn from the mind's "fragmentary mood", the most memorable of Chadwick's poetic victories: ...
... use an Aurobindonian label — and comes suffused with a fathomlessness of suggestion and harmony absent in the mystical snatch from Myers, the vigour and wideness of which derive from a mental plane, imaginatively and not abstractly so, yet mental all the same. The manner, the form, of the "overhead" line may be described as directly mystical, while that of the non-"overhead" is indirect in ...
... rest is well done, but—There is too much play of the mind, not the hushed intense receptivity of the seer which is necessary for the Mantra." (Does "poetic eloquence" belong only to the mental plane which you have called "the poetic intelligence" and more generally "the creative intelligence"? Can it be part also of "the Higher Mind" or "the Higher Thought" which is an "overhead" plane?) ...
... for planes, if we may go by Sri Aurobindo's evaluations elsewhere, the cast of vision, word and rhythm in the lines marked by a cross suggests overhead poetry. The remaining lines belong to the mental plane. * (Once the consciousness is aware of a certain vibration and poetic quality, it is possible to reach out towards its source of inspiration. As poetry for us here must be a way ...
... draw a delegated dynamism for their cosmic functions. The poetic word hailing from the Overmind is the Mantra. We have already spoken of its characteristics. Leading up to its source from the mental plane are the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuition. Unlike the Mind proper, the Higher Mind carries a natural awareness of the One Self everywhere and knows and sees through a lofty and com ...
... still more suggestive remark soon follows: "Just as in the physical plane the germ of man works in the background while woman carries it within her and nurses it into life, so in the mental plane the inspiration of woman must first implant its seed in man's subconscious in order that his creative impulses may bear fruit.... It is not for nothing that man turns with relief to her in ...
... important on the vital plane is the force or feeling and the form expresses it. A vital being has a characteristic form but he can vary it or mask his true form under others. What is primary on the mental plane is the perception, the idea, the mental significance and the form expresses that and these mental forms too can vary—there can be many forms expressing an idea in different ways or on different ...
... then man appears. Everything here that belongs strictly to the earth plane is evolved out of the Inconscient, out of Matter—but the essential mental being exists already, not involved on the mental plane. It is only the personal mental that is evolved here by something rising out of the Inconscient and developing under a pressure from above. What is meant here 2 is the Divine in its essential ...
... mind is turned towards the Divine and the Truth and feels and responds to that only or mainly, it can be called a psychic mind—it is something formed by the influence of the psychic being on the mental plane. Psychic mind and mental psychic are the same thing practically. When there is a movement of the mind in which the psychic influence predominates, it is called the psychic in the mind or ...
... of the Yoga can be fully understood. The Being is one throughout, but on each plane of Nature, it is represented by a form of itself which is proper to that plane, the mental Purusha in the mental plane, the vital Purusha in the vital, the physical Purusha in the physical. The Taittiriya Upanishad speaks of two other planes of the being, the Knowledge or Truth plane and the Ananda plane, each with ...
... the first condition for human self-perfection. The aesthetic sense is equally indispensable, for without that the self-perfection of the mental being cannot arrive at its object, which is on the mental plane the right and harmonious possession and enjoyment of the truth, power, Page 100 beauty and delight of human existence. But neither can be the highest principle of the human order. We ...
... merely harmonious, concomitant, unified, but are one being of consciousness and power of consciousness. It is this Chit which modifies itself so as to become on the Truth-plane the supermind, on the mental plane the mental reason, will, emotion, sensation, on the lower planes the vital or physical instincts, impulses, habits of an obscure force not in superficially conscious possession of itself. All is ...
... disconnected from the will and reason, the buddhi , weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the brain-memory, partly of reflections from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflections which are, ordinarily, received Page 521 without intelligence or coordination, wildly distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, with ...
... another plane than material man's, in contact with a subtler existence, a greater light of knowledge than the terrestrial, a far rarer and yet more sovereign energy; we are in touch in fact with the mental plane, aware of the mental worlds, can be in communication with its beings and powers. From that plane we behold the desire-world and the material existence as if below us, things that we can cast away ...
... arms & affirm thy two shining steeds that are the two powers of perception of the Sun of Truth. केतु. Intuition & discrimination, the powers of the Truth consciousness most readily active in the mental plane, or else the higher or revelatory divine perception & the lower This is a decisive passage for the right interpretation of Indra’s brilliant pair of horses. उशंतं—or the lighting that gleams; ...
... The mantra, though it expresses thought in mind, is not in its essential part a creation of the intellect. To be the sacred and effective word, it must have come as an inspiration from the supra-mental plane, termed in Veda, Ritam, the Truth, and have been received into the superficial consciousness either through the heart or by the luminous intelligence, manīṣā . The heart in Vedic psychology is ...
... d on the other,—the sensational, aesthetic and emotional mind, the pure intellect and the divine intelligence. The fullness and perfection of these triple worlds of mind exists only in the pure mental plane of being, 3 where they shine above the three heavens, tisro divaḥ , as their three luminosities, trīṇi rocanāni . But their light descends upon the physical consciousness and effects the c ...
... Rakshasa, then Asura, then Deva, then Siddha. So he ascends the ladder of his own being towards the Sat Purusha. Manu, the first Prajapati, is a part of Mahavishnu Himself descended into the mental plane in order to conduct the destinies of the human race. He is different from the four Manus who are more than Prajapatis, they being the four Type-Souls from whom all human Purushas are born; they ...
... out the light, still less the veil of Vritra preventing the activities. Anima Agni is now manifesting in all the seven planes of consciousness of the physical being with a reference back to the mental plane. Persist in the will for perfection; give no consent to an imperfect fullness. Ananda. The persistence of ahaituka tivra increased greatly today, but the vishaya had somewhat receded ...
... sadhaks in Dhyana. When the consciousness is liberated, whether in the mind or other part, there is always this sense of the wide infinite emptiness. From the top of the head to the throat is the mental plane of the being—a similar opening and emptiness or wideness here is the sign of the mind being freed into the Universal. From the throat to the stomach is the higher vital or emotional region. Below ...
... light Sun = the higher Truth light They [ gold stars in the sky ] are simply indications of divine Truth in the mind—the sky is a symbol of mind very often. The sky is always some mental plane. The stars indicate beginnings or promises of Light—the various lights indicating various powers of the consciousness: gold = Truth, blue = higher Page 146 spiritualised mind, violet ...
... consciousness towards the Truth. The red lotus signifies the presence of the Divine on the Earth. Page 179 It [ the blue lotus ] can be taken as the (Avatar) incarnation on the mental plane. Other Flowers The red rose is the flower of love and surrender, the white is the purity of psychic love. Reddish pink rose = psychic love or surrender. White rose = pure spiritual ...
... which makes the Page 689 vital experiences possible. In any case, to begin with the vital is a hazardous affair; the difficulties there are more numerous and more violent than on the mental plane and the pitfalls are innumerable. The access to the soul, the psychic being, is less easy because it is covered up with a thick veil of ego, passion and desire. One is apt to be swallowed up in ...
... accuracy of psychic and spiritual experience and gives no room for the descent of the true illuminating knowledge or else deforms it as soon as it touches or even before it fully touches the human mental plane. There are also of course the usual vices of the intellect,—its leaning towards sterile doubt instead of luminous reception and calm enlightened discrimination; its arrogance claiming to judge things ...
... of the yoga can be fully understood. The Being is one throughout, but on each plane of Nature, it is represented by a form of itself which is proper to that plane, the mental Purusha in the mental plane, the vital Purusha in the vital, the physical Purusha in the physical. The Taittiriya Upanishad speaks of two other planes of the being, the Knowledge or Truth plane and the Ananda plane, each with ...
... the Yoga I meant by it [ the phrase "a far greater Truth" ] the descent of the supramental Consciousness upon earth; all truths below the supramental (even that of the highest spiritual on the mental plane, which is the highest that has yet manifested) are either partial or relative or otherwise deficient and unable to transform the earthly life, they can only at most modify and influence it. The ...
... said, each understands it in a different way; for what he catches is not the thing that has been spoken but something he has in his own head. But it is a truth that belongs to the movement of the mental plane and holds good only there. For the mind is an instrument of action and formation and not an instrument of knowledge; at each moment it is creating forms. Thoughts are forms and have an individual ...
... accuracy of psychic and spiritual experience and gives no room for the descent of the true illuminating knowledge or else deforms it as soon as it touches or even before it fully touches the human mental plane. There are also of course the usual vices of the intellect, - its leaning towards sterile doubt instead of luminous reception and calm enlightened discrimination; its arrogance claiming to judge ...
... or influences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come. * There is a vital plane (self-existent) above the material universe which we see; there is a mental plane (self-existent) above the vital and material. These three together, - mental, vital, physical, - are called the triple universe of the lower hemisphere. They have been established in the earth- ...
... experience which will be the occasion of a living teaching. And for a question to be alive, it must answer an inner need for progress, a spontaneous need to progress on some plane or other—on the mental plane is the most usual way, but if by chance it answers an inner aspiration, a problem one is tackling and wants to solve, then the question becomes interesting and living and truly useful, and it can ...
... formula something that corresponds to the superior power and its action. The material world has evolved life in obedience to a pressure from the vital plane, mind in obedience to a pressure from the mental plane. It is now trying to evolve supermind in obedience to a preSSure from the supramental plane. In more detail, particular forces, movements, powers, beings of a higher World can throw themselves on ...
... A Far Greater Truth I meant by it the descent of the supramental consciousness upon earth; all truths below the supramental (even that of the highest spiritual on the mental plane, which is the highest that has yet manifested) are either partial or relative or otherwise deficient and unable to transform the earthly life; they can only at most modify and in uence it. The ...
... know or can conceive of it while in this universe. This Nothing is merely a something beyond positive conception. Asura —the strong or mighty one, Titan; a hostile being or force of the vital mental plane, known in traditional Indian legends as the dark Titan or demon; see also Adversary. Asuric —of the nature of the Asura. Atman —Self; Spirit; the original and essential nature of Existence ...
... central being—the Jivatman which is not born nor evolves but presides over the individual birth and evolution—puts forward a representative of himself on each plane of the consciousness. On the mental plane it is the true mental being, manomaya puruṣa , on the vital plane the true vital being, prāṇamaya puruṣa , on the physical plane the true physical being, annamaya puruṣa . Each being, therefore ...
... It saturates the atmosphere almost materially, in the subtle physical, and extends to the Lake, ten kilometres from here. Farther, my consciousness can be felt in the material vital, then on the mental plane and the other higher planes, everywhere. When I came here for the first time, I felt the atmosphere of Sri Aurobindo, felt it materially at a distance of ten miles, ten nautical miles, not kilometres ...
... gradation in human consciousness: the higher one rises in the scale the greater the number of elements or personalities that one possesses. Whether one lives mostly or mainly on the physical or vital or mental plane or on any particular section of these planes or on the planes above and beyond them, there will be, accordingly, differences Page 334 in the constitution or psycho-physical make-up of ...
... those papers—for most people they had no interest at all. Well—au revoir, mon petit. × Asura : demon of the mental plane embodying the forces of division and darkness. × The reader will remember the formation of the ...
... have received it. We'll see what happens. It's better not to speak of it because it might... speaking is too external. On other occasions (as I have told you) I had difficulties with X on the mental plane; now all that has cleared up, cleared up very well. But this present situation is on another plane, so let's wait. Perhaps... probably it will clear up. ( silence ) Page 145 I probably ...
... distributed to the disciples their needs for the month. × Asuras : the demons or dark forces of the mental plane. × The experience of Nature's collaboration (November 8, 1957). ...
... the sole and exclusive truth. The absolute, infinite, eternal Truth is unthinkable for the mind which can only conceive that which is spatial and temporal, fragmentary and limited. Thus, on the mental plane, the absolute Truth is divided into innumerable fragmentary and contradictory truths which strive in their entirety to reproduce the original Truth as best they can―for each is a truth that attempts ...
... Heaven. A Titanism is articulate in the lines, but, however misdirected, the sheer sense of the mind's independence is magnificent: this independence is celebrated in language hailing from the mental plane itself. It would be difficult to excel the poetic quality of this passage where thought and not sight or music is the main feature. But we may observe that nothing is abstract: we feel a movement ...
... a dharma [= inherent law] of the nature." The Aurobindonian supra-mentalisation has to be an intrinsic permanent state of the body by the junction of the descending free Supermind from above the mental plane with the Supermind evoked from matter where, according to Sri Aurobindo, it lies involved. Both the spiritual vision and the spiritual dynamics of his Integral Yoga differ from those recognisable ...
... must have gathered how during my search for God I was disappointed by his followers and was convinced that some occult power was using him with the gift of a certain semi-Buddhist experience on the mental plane to fix down to an ambiguous imitation of the Witness self (sakshi purusha) the many-sighted far-venturing soul of the world, particularly plastic and versatile in its Indian mood. Through him ...
... not a dharma [=inherent law] of the nature." The Aurobindonian supramentalisation has to be an intrinsic permanent state of the body by the junction of the descending free Supermind from above the mental plane with the Supermind evoked from matter where, according to Sri Aurobindo, it lies involved. Both the spiritual vision and the spiritual dynamics of his Integral Yoga differ from those recognisable ...
... equally successful in every line. And it is successful as a poem, not as a thesis, because by being a poem it confutes its own thesis. I may add that its success is only on a certain plane — a rich mental plane. The intuitive stabs are not very frequent, yet the expression is quite competent almost throughout. Of course, mental poetry can be full of inspiration. I don't see why just by being an expression ...
... Flung my diffuse life-blood more richly in! From the rude love-lacking visage we may slide into a vision of occult abnormal life brought by an inspiration of the Inner Mind guided from above the mental plane to a clear discernment of dreadful details: A march of goddess figures dark and nude Alarmed the air with grandiose unease; Appalling footsteps drew invisibly near, Shapes that were ...
... still more suggestive remark soon follows: "Just as in the physical plane the germ of man works in the background while woman carries it within her and nurses it into life, so in the mental Page 176 plane the inspiration of woman must first implant its seed in man's subconscious in order that his creative impulses may bear fruit... It is not for nothing that man turns with relief to ...
... to be a derivation from the universal mental, vital and physical. The individual must realise also his identity with the transcendental or the cosmic Divine, whatever you may call it. From the mental plane, when one rises and realises the Spirit, it is generally the mental sense of ego that goes, not the entire ego sense. The dynamic nature retains ego, especially the vital ego. When the psychic attitude ...
... SRI AUROBINDO: What I call the Superconscient. It belongs to the Vijnana or Supermind. SATYENDRA: Meher Baba declares that one has to go beyond the Karana Sharira and he identifies it with the mental plane. SRI AUROBINDO: What he and others mean is that it belongs to the Higher Mind or Higher Intelligence, not to the Manas or ordinary lower mental consciousness but to the Buddhi. SATYENDRA: ...
... great difference in their mental and moral consciousness so much so that at the lowest end of the human mental development, men represent more or less animal consciousness and are almost on the same mental plane with the animals of developed intelligence. These men represent the physical mind and belong in the terminology of the Gita to the class of tamasic type. Tamas is the principle of inertia and ignorance ...
... Intuition in Mathematics "The scientist who gets an inspiration revealing to him a new truth, receives it from the intuitive mind. The knowledge comes as a direct perception in the higher mental plane illumined by some other light still farther above." 17 Mathematicians have not only discarded the vain hope of enthroning reason as the sole arbiter of Reality and Truth; as an instrument ...
... of Yoga, Vol. 20, SABCL, pp. 378-9) According to Sri Aurobindo, this chasm has to be bridged, and it is by the process of Integral Yoga in which the Infinite is experienced not merely at the mental plane and even at the overmental plane, but at the supramental plane that all the varieties of yogic experiences, even their conflicts can be harmonised. For the mind, the process of integralisation is ...
... It saturates the atmosphere almost materially, in the subtle physical and extends to the Lake, 10 kilometres from here. Farther, my consciousness can be felt in the material vital, then on the mental plane and other higher planes, everywhere. When I came here for the first time, I felt the atmosphere of Sri Aurobindo, felt materially, at a distance of ten miles, ten nautical miles, not kilometres ...
... reading and writing which had been given up earlier. And lo! I was cured. Why do I not have the same result now? One gets often a result more easily when the consciousness is in the mental plane than when it is down in the physical. Why is there no abating of the external troubles like the sciatica, stomach-upset and eye-strain? It is like the rest — part ...
... adhar — I mean mind, vital and subtle physical— when the psychic being returns to the psychic plane for rest? It is dropped off—unless the being has become strongly individualised on the mental plane or both on the mental and vital. Then it keeps its mental and vital sheaths — otherwise they disintegrate and everything essential is drawn back into the psychic. Why has the psychic ...
... wideness. One can become conscious of it and deal with what passes through it. A man without it would be without contact with the rest of the world. Can the hostile forces attack us on the mental plane as they do on the vital plane? Yes — the physical mind especially can be made easily their prey — they can also invade the thinking mind. Our sense mind is active all the ...
... above mind? Even Overmind is far above him. When one becomes one with the Divine, what exactly is the function of the Supermind? One can become one with the Divine on the mental plane. The Supermind is necessary for manifesting the Divine on earth. Page 7 ...
... principle. Out of the rock and mineral came the plant, out of the plant the animal, out of the mere animal man has come and out of man the Superman will come inevitably. Standing on the mental plane, immured within the dimensions of Reason and mental intelligence, it is not Page 67 easy to contemplate the type of consciousness that will be; even as it was difficult for the ...
... 'One Being', purusam ekam. That is the person who alone brings about harmony, unity and oneness in the diverse, innumerable and variegated life of India. The unity of India does not lie in the mental plane alone, gradually it is taking shape in the vital and is going to get embodied even in the physical. It is the descent of the soul-power of India that is pressing to fuse India into a single nation ...
... all flow out into activities and enterprises of a new achievement. Page 220 When the truth takes birth and grows considerably in the soul then only it can reveal itself in the mental plane. Reason and intelligence seize on h and apprehend it to know its meaning and endeavour to bring it to the fore of the critical perception of an enlightened intelligence. We have already said ...
... ruling principle. Out of the rock and mineral came the plant, out of the plant the animal, out of the mere animal man has come and out of man the Superman will come inevitably. Standing on the mental plane, immured within the dimensions of Reason and mental intelligence, it is not easy to contemplate the type of consciousness that will be; even as it was difficult for the ape to envisage the advent ...
... similar virtues many people possess or may possess, but that is no indication that they have an opening to the true spiritual life, to the life divine that we seek. Just as accomplishments on the mental plane, – keen intellect, wide studies, profound scholarship even in the scriptures do not entitle a man to the possession of the spirit, even so capacities on the vital plane, – mere self-control, patience ...
... is immense. The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation ...
... the supramental realisation was not theirs. One can get partial realisations of the Self or Spirit or the Divine on any plane, mental, vital, physical even, and when one rises above the ordinary mental plane of man into a higher and larger mind, the Self begins to appear in all its conscious wideness. It is by full entry into this wideness of the Self that cessation of mental activity becomes ...
... itself and produced life. Animate forms have developed progressively in the vegetable and animal kingdoms throughout prehistoric Page 32 times. In the animal, the forces of the mental plane have successfully fashioned an instrument permitting them to establish contact with matter: thought is born in the physical world. Consciousness buried in the substance of the mineral kingdom has ...
... Matter - but the essential mental being exists already, nor involved, in the ___________________________ 11On Yoga II, Tome One, P. 310 12 Ibid, P. 310-311 Page 156 mental plane. It is only the personal mental that is evolved here by something rising out of the Inconscient and developping under a pressure from above. The tendency to inquire and know is in itself ...
... the other, the indications and injunctions received by her from the Divine regarding her own rôle on Earth. Let us first have a glimpse of the identification—a full view is impossible on the mental plane of consciousness—and then we shall be all the better able to apprehend the dumb but unquenchable yearning of the Earth-soul, its sublime possibilities and their inevitable fruition : "When ...
... knows". It is always disturbed, receiving messages from the external world through the senses. It also receives mental messages. Even in sleep it is disturbed. The human being then flies into the mental plane "in imagination's car" and is able to conceive "ideals". But this mental being is not the true Self of man; true Self is hidden and lives within. Human nature holds within itself both the divine ...
... not unnaturally, seldom sustained over a passage of considerable length. It is generally a sudden blaze, a momentary swell. For even poets are but human beings and ordinarily function on the mental plane, although this plane itself is no uniform dry desert of reason but has its own sensuous arbours, delectable oases, and the towered castles of the imagination. It is interesting to watch the sudden ...
... Surely you must be knowing?" He laughed. "Not in the way you know," he said looking intently at me. He paused for a split second, then added, tantalisingly: "For I stand no longer on the mental plane. I do not decide from the mind." "But still," I insisted, "You can't really mean to say that a radiant personality like you will be cooped up in this small room till the – the end of time ...
... anomalies and discords of the human nature, and forges its divergent parts into a more or less harmonious unity; but that is not enough, so long as the synthesis, thus attained, is confined to the mental plane, however high and wide it may be; the synthetic sacrifice has to ascend beyond mind and, invoking a descent of the supernal Light, achieve, first, a reproduction of itself and then a reproduction ...
... the impression of moving to go from one place to another, and that necessarily, as one moves, a certain time intervenes; but it is an extremely short time compared with physical time. On the mental plane the notion of Time disappears almost totally. For example, you are in your mental consciousness, you think of someone or something or of a place, and immediately you are there. There is no need ...
... that. So you see, there are many people who say, "It is impossible", but that's because they remain on a certain plane. It is obvious that if you remain only on the material plane or even on the mental plane, you cannot know the universe, because the mind is not universal; it is only a means of expression of the universe; and it is only by an essential Page 315 identification that you can ...
... subject on which I was writing. 6 November 1935 Yesterday you said that the Supermind descent into Matter is what is being attempted. If that is so, has the Supermind already conquered the mental plane, the vital plane and the subtle physical plane? There can be no conquest of the other planes by the supermind, but only an influence, so long as the physical is not ready. Besides the Supermind ...
... there has been a feeling of nearness to the Mother, almost as if there were no difference between us. But how can that be possible, as there is such a great gulf between her and me? I am on the mental plane and she is on the highest Supramental. But the Mother is there not only on the Supramental but on all the planes. And especially she is close to everyone in the psychic part (the inner heart) ...
... spontaneously, you will know what divine Love is. The Mother Questions and Answers (1950 - 1951): 24 March 1951 On the physical plane the Divine expresses himself through beauty, on the mental plane through knowledge, on the vital plane through power and on the psychic plane through love. When we rise high enough, we discover that these four aspects unite with each other in a single con ...
... to do with Avatarhood or anything of the kind. I meant by it the descent of the supramental Consciousness upon earth; all truths below the supramental (even that of the highest spiritual on the mental plane, which is the highest that has yet manifested) are either partial or relative or otherwise deficient and unable to transform the earthly life, they can only at most modify and influence it. The ...
... central being—the Jivatman which is not born nor evolves, but presides over the individual birth and evolution—puts forward a representative of himself on each plane of the consciousness. On the mental plane it is the true mental being, manomaya puruṣa , on the vital plane the true vital being, prāṇamaya puruṣa , on the physical plane the true physical being, annamaya puruṣa . Each being therefore ...
... vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul‘s home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are situated in the consciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter ...
... knew that. Sri Aurobindo has explained this in many places. "Imperial Maheshwari is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will...." 1 Is there a plane of will, as there is a mental plane, a vital plane, etc.? I have explained that to you in connection with Sachchidananda. Sachchidananda exists at the very origin of the worlds, but there is a Sachchidananda behind all the other ...
... dogmas the most dangerous ones? The absolute, infinite, eternal Truth is unthinkable for the mind, which can conceive only what is spatial, temporal, fragmentary and limited. Thus, on the mental plane the absolute Truth is divided into innumerable fragmentary and contradictory truths which, in their entirety, strive to reproduce, insofar as possible, the original Truth. Page 66 If ...
... too limited—too short. The problem is no longer perceived from a psychological point of view at all; there are only vibrations. If we consider it from the psychological point of view... on the mental plane, it is very easy; on the vital plane it is not very difficult; on the physical plane it is a little heavier, for it takes the form of "needs"; but here too there has been a field of experience these ...
... ses the rest of the first part. This passage has a seizing originality and authenticity in it—it is here that one gets a pure inevitability. In the last lines the intuition descends towards the mental plane with a less revelatory power in it but more precise in its illumination. That is the difference between sheer vision and thought. But the poem is exceedingly fine as a whole; the close also is of ...
... themselves lead to transformation or realisation—it is by the quietude of the mind and the psychic opening that these greater things can come. Experience in the sadhana is bound to begin with the mental plane,—all that is necessary is that the experience should be sound and genuine. The pressure of understanding and will in the mind and the Godward emotional urge in the heart are the two first agents ...
... our will to be and our power of living is the secret which our nature is seeking to discover. All that we have done hitherto is some half-successful effort to transfer this will and power to the mental plane; our highest endeavour and labour has been to become the mental being and to live in the strength of the idea. But the mental idea in us is always intermediary and instrumental; always it depends ...
... concealed & brought out for man, like the waters, by Indra. He dug out from the darkness the disc of Surya that moves in the fixed level above of the Mahat or Vijnana and brought it down to the mental plane for Man मनवे. The two verses, then, form a connected & logical development of thought. विश्र्वायु. Sy. takes आयु = अयन from इ or अय् to go or move = all-pervading. But we have also आयु = life ...
... matter—here one has to use discrimination and separate the true suggestion from the less reliable mental matter. Intuition and discrimination must always go together so long as one mixes in the mental plane—and for some time after. Mental intuitive knowledge catches directly some aspect of a truth but without any completeness or certitude and the intuition is easily mixed with ordinary mental ...
... persistently till the lower is changed. The Three Planes of the Lower Hemisphere and Their Energies There is a vital plane (self-existent) above the material universe which we see; there is a mental plane (self-existent) above the vital and material. These three together,—mental, vital, physical,—are called the triple universe of the lower hemisphere. They have been established in the earth-consciousness ...
... portion of the Divine. The universal self or Atman which is the same in all, is not a portion but an aspect of the Divine. The Divine and the Supermind One can become one with the Divine on the mental plane. The Supermind is necessary for manifesting the Divine on earth. The Divine can be and is everywhere, masked or half-manifest or beginning to be manifest, in all the planes of consciousness; ...
... beings that attach themselves to a man if he accepts them. Page 468 × One may have the experiences on the mental plane without this knowledge coming—for there Mind and Idea predominate and one does not feel the play of Forces—it is only in the vital that that becomes clear. In the mind plane they manifest at most ...
... Reading good books can be of help in the early mental stage—they prepare the mind, put it in the right atmosphere—can even if one is very sensitive bring some glimpses of realisation on the mental plane. Afterwards the utility diminishes—you have to find the right knowledge and experience in yourself. This [ inclination to meditate while reading books on spiritual life ] is quite a normal ...
... makes Nirvana the goal, if one is tied to the mind and accepts its dissolution into the Infinite as one's own dissolution or if one has not the capacity to reorganise experience on a higher than the mental plane. But otherwise what was superconscient becomes conscient, one begins to possess or else be the instrument of the dynamis of the higher planes and there is a movement, not of liberation into Nirvana ...
... follow. Your first experience is an opening into the inner mental self—the space between the eyebrows is the centre of the inner mind, vision, will and the blue light you saw was that of a higher mental plane, a spiritual mind, one might say, which is above the ordinary human mental intelligence. An opening into this higher mind is usually accompanied by a silence of the ordinary mental thought. Our ...
... mental, vital or subtle physical plane. From there one goes into the corresponding worlds or else one rises up into higher planes superconscious to us—to the ranges above our mind or to the spiritual mental plane in which one can unite with the Sachchidananda consciousness or to the Supramental. What you describe seems to be the subconscient, but that may be only a first step in the going inside. ...
... of the nature into a higher consciousness. It was these powers that you saw passing in your vision. Parvati-Shankara It is probably the realm of the dynamic creative Spirit on the highest mental plane which you saw as the world of ParvatiShankara. Narayana, Vishnu, Brahma, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ananta Narayana is usually taken as a name of Vishnu—to the Vaishnavas he is the Supreme as Shiva ...
... It can be acquired or come of itself by sadhana. All dreams of this kind [ indicating future events ] are very obviously formations such as one often meets on the vital, more rarely on the mental plane. Sometimes they are the formations of your own mind or vital; sometimes they are the formations of other minds with an exact or a modified transcription in yours; sometimes formations come that ...
... ns of our mortal existence. × Trita Aptya, the Third or Triple, apparently the Purusha of the mental plane. In the tradition he is a Rishi and has two companions significantly named Eka, one or single, and Dwita, second or double, who must be the Purushas of the material and the vital or dynamic con ...
... good exists as a counterpart and corrective to evil and has evil always for its shadow, complement, almost its reason for existence. But the spiritual consciousness belongs to a higher than the mental plane and there the dualities cease; for there falsehood confronted with the truth by which it profited through a usurping falsification of it and evil faced by the good of which it was a perversion or ...
... a relative imperativeness so long as we rest satisfied in the stages of transition, content with the physical and vital life, attached to the mental movement, or even fixed in the ranges of the mental plane that are touched by the spiritual lustres. But beyond is the unwalled wideness of a supramental infinite consciousness and there all temporary structures cease. It is not possible to enter utterly ...
... we shall do with this relative freedom depends on our aspiration, our idea of the relation we must have with our highest self, with God and Nature. It is possible for the Purusha to use it on the mental plane itself for a constant self-observation, self-development, self-modification, to sanction, reject, alter, bring out new formulations of the nature and establish a calm and disinterested action, a ...
... utilisation for action from a greater light beyond which is the real knowledge. This light is the self-awareness and all-awareness of Spirit. The essential self-awareness he can arrive at even on the mental plane of being, by reflection in the soul of mind or by its absorption in spirit, as indeed it can be arrived at by another kind of reflection or absorption in soul of life and soul of body. But for ...
... the very character of the Truth-Consciousness and its dynamic realisation of the spiritual unity of all being. This realisation, the key to the perfection of life, difficult to arrive at on the mental plane, difficult even when realised to dynamise or organise, would be naturally dynamic, spontaneously self-organised in all gnostic creation and gnostic life. This much is easily understandable if ...
... comes to the individual consciousness when it breaks its bonds and flows upward towards the Transcendent and on every side into the Infinite. In a Yoga lived entirely on the spiritualised mental plane it is possible and even usual for these three fundamental aspects of the Divine—the Individual or Immanent, the Cosmic and the Transcendent—to stand out as separate realisations. Each by itself ...
... the surface, and they become the harmonious play of the universal inner mind and soul in us, assume their true law and right forms and relations and reveal their just significances. Even on the mental plane one can get by the spiritualising of the mind at some realisation of soul oneness, but it is never really complete, at least in its application, and does not acquire this real and entire law, form ...
... life and builds out of it and upon it creative ideas that become dynamic for farther life development: on the other side it receives Page 842 new thought and mental experience from the mental plane or more fundamentally from the idea power of the Infinite and immediately turns it into mental idea force and a power for actual being and living. The whole turn of this pragmatic idea mind is towards ...
... Just as the Overmind, the world of the greatest Gods, seems to be the archetype of our universe, so also the Supermind is the archetype of the "over- Page 68 mental" plane. In other words, as compared to "life here the Overmind is perfection; but, as compared to what is still beyond, the Overmind is imperfect Nature rounded off in general without a flawless ...
... possibility of their running away from it and causing a genuine fissure between it and them as well as among themselves - the fissure which is the ignorance, the lack of Light, on our human mental plane. On the other hand, in the Overmind, though there is no ignorance yet and Light prevails, the ominous stress occurs: the Many are allowed to run to the utmost distance, so to speak, from the ...
... that here we have the keyword to the setting apart of Plato from Pythagoras on the one hand and from Aristotle on the other: "intuitions." It points to flashes of truth which hail from above the mental plane and which are to be distinguished from "realisations" that Page 15 are established spiritual experiences as well as from the mental plane's typical seekings to build truth by its ...
... of the nineteenth century and usually called Romantic is entitled to that name because of complex factors at play which are lacking in the creations of the subtle-physical or of the Classically mental plane and Sri Aurobindo does refer to it as "Romanticism of the modern type"; 14 yet for him the speci- Page 49 fically Romantic remains a certain sight and sensibility and speech of ...
... or even to our highest Self,—unless that be nothing more than a magnified reflection of our ego; for then it will be willing enough to surrender. And even our highest spiritual achievement on the mental plane is tainted and limited, when it is not distorted, by this ever unredeemed element in our nature. Page 354 Our only safety is to push on beyond the mind to a Truth-consciousness with ...
... now have been coming in from the outside. The Ananda-darshana is also passing through the same phase, but has not yet altogether got rid of the recurrence of mental vijnana and Ananda on the mental plane. These are associated with certain forms, the latter Ananda being inspirational in its idiom, persist repeatedly in attaching themselves to them, and can as yet only be rejected by second thought ...
... overcome, owing to deficiency of the multiple concentration. Immense development of the samadhi. Only towards the end some lapse into nidra. Inexhaustible abundance of rupa, especially of the mental plane, but also of the pranic and chhayamaya, scenes of all kinds, figures, action, lipi, dialogue etc: for the most part a high ideal level. The chhayamaya scenes now attain to an absolute stability ...
... form, though with variety in that narrow limit. Continuity and intensity of ahaituka k. increase, but not yet sufficiently to conquer the interruption of exclusive forgetfulness. Tapas on the mental plane is being abandoned; trikaldrishti also must be abandoned. It is finally seen even by the intelligence that there can be here no absolute certainty of foresight or result, since it is the play of ...
... small, too narrow, too limited—too short. The problem isn't seen from a psychological standpoint at all: it's nothing but vibrations. If we look at it from a psychological standpoint... On the mental plane, it's very easy; on the vital plane, it's not too difficult; on the physical plane, it's a little heavier, because desires are passed off as "needs." But there too, there has been a field of experience ...
... rest of the first part. This passage has a seizing originality and authenticity in it—it is here that one gets a pure inevitability. In the last lines the intuition descends towards the higher mental plane with á less revelatory power in it but more precise in its illumination. That is the difference between sheer vision and thought. But the poem is exceedingly fine as a whole, the close also is ...
... rest is well done, but— There is too much play of the mind, not the hushed intense receptivity of the seer which is necessary for the Mantra." (Does "poetic eloquence" belong only to the mental plane which you have called "the poetic intelligence" and more generally "the creative intelligence"? Can it be part also of "the Higher Mind" or "the Higher Thought" which is an "overhead" plane ...
... to what you are wearing now [dhoti]: not European—they wear the costume of no particular country. It's usually white, but not made of cloth. It's all on a VERY luminous, very orderly, very clear mental plane-no objects lying around, only things like Page 321 sheets of paper, which seem to be ideas or compositions of ideas, but no clutter. It's vast, vast, so vast you can see no end to it ...
... The vision begins with Champaklal having, a very sincere aspiration to attain or reach a realm of consciousness (place) guided by Sri Aurobindo. He seems to be sitting on the verge of the higher mental plane (indicated by 'thought') which readily responds to the call from his psychic being and immediately the help comes in the form of a vehicle driven by the Divine Force (Sri Aurobindo). After this ...
... ” He smiled. “I don’t know,” He said. “How do you mean ? Surely you must be knowing.” Page 53 “Not in the way you know” He said, “for I stand no longer on the mental plane. I do not decide from the mind.” “But still,” I said emboldened, “you can’t really mean to say that a radiant personality like you will be cooped up in this small room always?” ...
... vital plane have plenty of experience of the hostile forces. However, you need not personally concern yourself with them so long as they remain incognito... One may have the experiences on the mental plane without this knowledge coming — for there mind and idea predominate and one does not feel the play of Forces — it is only in the vital that this becomes clear. In the mind plane they manifest at ...
... her totality. "Woman's function in life", he said, "is not really confined to the physical plane: she is indispensable to man's mental creation as man is to her physical. It is only because on the mental plane she works from behind the screen that we do not visualise her contribution. But that is only because we are unimaginative"* I well remember how, in the first flush of my youth, this idea of ...
... manifestation. This attempt, the Mother added, was premature, for the human mind was not yet ready for it. It had, however, to be undertaken in order to assure the continuity of its existence in the mental plane.’ 26 Joan the Maid The Mother has referred several times to facts and situations from the life of Jeanne d’Arc (1412/13-1431 ad) which came back to her on many occasions and ‘with ...
... else you want to ask me, perhaps it will come.... ( silence ) After reading your letter, I had a very strong feeling that you put the problem like that because you were considering it from a mental plane, which is the only plane where it exists; if you go beyond, there are no more oppositions or problems. These things are subtle, you know, and as soon as you try to formulate them, they elude yo ...
... single thing. The manifestation is just this diversity. It is the One that unfolds itself in the Many—endlessly. On the physical plane the Divine expresses himself through beauty, on the mental plane through knowledge, on the vital plane through power and on the psychic plane through love. When we rise high enough, we discover that these four aspects unite with each other in a single con ...
... Tapasya : asceticism, austerities, severe discipline. × Asuras : demons of the mental plane. ...
... it was that I had never studied or pursued certain ancient Indian disciplines. Because, for example, when Sri Aurobindo and I were working to bring down the supramental forces, a descent from the mental plane to the vital plane, he was always telling me that everything I did (when we 'meditated' together, when we worked)—all my movements, all my gestures, all my postures, all my reactions—was absolutely ...
... work is immense. The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender 1 ). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the tran ...
... showing with extreme precision that black magic is at the root of all this ( Mother is speaking of both general and personal difficulties, in the Ashram and in her body ). First of all, on the mental plane (the physical-mind, the material mind) I saw an individual.... I am not entirely certain of his identity (when I saw him last night I didn't associate him with anyone in particular) but from his ...
... Tapasya : ascetic or yogic discipline. × Asura : demon of the mental plane embodying the forces of division and darkness. × Tlemcen: a town in northern Algeria. ...
... yond it. The very name I have been given by them — "Amal Kiran", meaning "The Clear Ray" — is meant to point not only towards clarity but also towards radiancy — towards being on the mental plane the manifestation of a light above it, a sun of Truth from which a revealing ray acts in the mind. Another pointer to the state in which my mental personality should be — a rather difficult and ...
... not appear to be the highest, short of the all-fusing inconceivable status of the single reality projecting the "multiverse". Mystical experience, if it is to be believed, goes clean beyond the mental plane to not only that all fusing state but also a state in which all stands integrated in a harmony of perfect equals - a balanced play of perfect matter, perfect life, perfect mind, brought about by ...
... draw a delegated dynamism for their cosmic functions. The poetic word hailing from the Overmind is the Mantra. We have already spoken of its characteristics. Leading up to its source from the mental plane are the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuition. Unlike the Mind proper, the Higher Mind carries a natural awareness of the One Self everywhere and knows and sees through a lofty and ...
... soul became a fiery ocean of felicity." (p. 237) This Paradise of the Life-Gods he is to overpass and leave until the Highest is gained. Now, the Sadhana of the Traveller in the vital and mental plane ceases and the Soul's seeing commences. In this spirit's realm the 5 Ibid., pp. 95-96. Page 409 soul finds its source. Here one can feel himself as a citizen of ...
... disconnected from the will and reason, the buddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the brain-memory, partly of reflections from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflections which are, ordinarily, received without intelligence or coordination, wildly distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, with brain-memories ...
... Prakriti, Sri Aurobindo writes: The Being is one throughout, but on each plane of Nature, it is represented by a form of itself which is proper to that plane, the mental Purusha in the mental plane, the vital Purusha in the vital, the physical Purusha in the physical. 24 The Purusha is the silent witness consciousness which observes the actions of Prakriti — Prakriti is the ...
... rest of the first part. This passage has a seizing originality and authenticity in it—it is here that one gets a pure inevitability. In the last [6] lines the intuition descends towards the higher mental plane with a less revelatory power in it but more precise in its illumination. That is the difference between sheer vision and thought. But the poem Page 99 is exceedingly fine as ...
... careful against hostile suggestions (first dream) or interferences (second dream). Sri Aurobindo What is the meaning of this blue lotus? It can be taken as the (Avatar) incarnation on the mental plane. Sri Aurobindo I keep the book The Mother under my pillow at night, and I feel I benefit more than by reading the book. I am helped even during the night. I have not read this book ...
... disconnected from the will and reason, the buddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the brain-memory, partly of reflections from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflections which are, ordinarily, received without intelligence or coordination, wildly distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, with brain-memories and ...
... 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 lives simultaneously on the physical plane, vital plane, mental plane and spiritual plane, even though he might not experience all the planes with equal force of vividity. The main point is that man's satisfaction cannot arrive unless he constantly progresses, and ...
... self-realization. In the larger sense of the term, occultism is a science of secrets, and in that larger sense, the secret knowledge of physical sciences, of the sciences of the vital plane and the mental plane, and the sciences of those domains which are beyond mind and which are domains of the spiritual powers and realities, can all be considered to be the domains of occultism. A study of the phenomena ...
... Mahabharata calls them 'p ū rve dev ā h', the 'former gods'. They were godly in nature at one time but subsequently revolted against the Divine and became Asuras. The Asuras are generally found on the mental plane. Rakshasas and Pishachas function in the lower vital. A few hostiles are active in the physical consciousness: the Theosophists call them 'obscure elementals''. But what is noteworthy is that the ...
... consciousness, the spiritual and materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge rejects the lower and draws back to the supreme plane, dwells there ...
... is immense. The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental Plane, unless one practised a perfect surrender). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation ...
... intense and fiery. They have divine powers in them. You said that "the Supermind descent into Matter is what is being attempted". In that case, has the Supermind already conquered the mental plane, the vital plane and the physical now that it is attempting to conquer Matter? There can be no conquest of the other planes by the Supermind but only an influence, so long as the physical ...
... The years 1933 to 1935 When one becomes one with the Divine, would Super mind be still far from him? One can become one with the Divine on the mental plane. The Supermind is necessary for manifesting the Divine on earth. You have said in your book The Mother: "It is only the very highest supramental Force descending from above and ...
... to Matter is Ignorance — an Ignorance growing at each level nearer to the full Knowledge. Below Supermind there may be Knowledge but it is not All Knowledge. The Overmind is part of the mental plane. Is not the Overmind a centre of all dynamic movements? It is not a centre at all — it is a plane far above the mind — above and organising the terrestrial existence ...
... "aspiration"? It is the call of the being for higher things — for the Divine, for all that belongs to the higher or Divine Consciousness. I think many aspire only on the mental plane in the beginning. How can I bring down this aspiration into the heart, so that it may have an effect more easily and quickly? By concentrating on the heart while aspiring. ...
... communicated with through the seventh centre, the Sahasradala padma. The Over mind and the Supermind—are they the sixth and seventh planes? No. The Overmind is part of the mental plane. The Supermind is the fourth not the seventh plane. After attaining to the fourth centre—with the psychic behind it — does one still lapse back into the three lower centres? ...
... the form it could 'or should have had. There are layers and planes, graded intermediaries through which the Will has had to act. I spoke of the overmental and the vital plane. There is also the mental plane between them. There are mental beings who are also creators, giving form to some beings that have taken body upon earth. Page 39 Thus, there is a tradition which says that the ...
... India Radio Delhi Station on 4th December, 1942. Page-116 example, charity and service and philanthropy. Nothing higher than ideas and ideals confined to the moral, that is to say, the mental plane, could be brought into play in the world and its practical life—even, the moral and mental idea itself has often been mistaken for true spirituality. Thus the very ideal of governing or moulding ...
... in human consciousness: the higher one rises in the scale the greater the number of elements or personalities that one possesses. Whether one lives mostly or mainly on the physical or vital or mental plane or on any particular section of these planes or on planes above and beyond, there will be accordingly differences in the constitution or psycho-physical make-up of the individual personality. ...
... similar virtues many people possess or may possess, but that is no indication that they have an opening to the true spiritual life, to the life divine that we seek. Just as accomplishments on the mental plane, —keen intellect, wide studies, profound scholarship even in the scriptures do not entitle a man to the possession of the spirit, even so capacities on the vital plane,—mere self-control, patience ...
... represents the mode of sattwa in action. But the conception of duty too has its limitations. Even apart from the misuses of the ideal to which we have already referred, the ideal itself, is of the mental plane; it is more or less an act of mental will that seeks to impose a rule of co-operation upon the mutually excluding and conflicting entities. The result is bound to be imperfect and precarious. For ...
... the sphere of the moral and the conventional, took such forms as, for example, charity and service and philanthropy. Nothing higher than ideas and ideals confined to the moral, that is to say, the mental plane, could be brought into play in the world and its practical life,—even the moral and mental idea itself has often been mistaken for true spirituality. Thus the very ideal of governing or moulding ...
... Aurobindo : What do you mean by "true”? On the vital plane there is nothing that you cannot see : you can recast Page 180 the whole history of the world. It is not the mental plane – really speaking it is the mental-vital. I was in that condition for ten days and any number of things came at that time. Disciple : You could have written them down. Sri Aurobindo ...
... of the Supermind corresponding to the three activities of the Intuitive mind. First is what I call the Interpretative Supermind. I call it interpretative because what is a possibility on the mental plane becomes a potentiality on the Supramental plane. The Interpretative Supermind puts all the potentialities before you. It shows the root cause of events that may come true on the physical plane ...
... and the conventional, took such forms as, for example, charity Page 67 and service and philanthropy. Nothing higher than ideas and ideals confined to the moral, that is to say, the mental plane, could be brought into play in the world and its practical life –even the moral and mental idea itself has often been mistaken for true spirituality. Thus the very ideal of governing or moulding ...
... about the mind sense? In a full and solid experience of this kind will there be any trace of the mind's existence? That depends on the experience. It is usually had on the spiritual mental plane. There may be no active thinking mind, but the stuff of consciousness is still mental, even though it may be mind spiritual and liberated. Of course there may be the sense of pure spiritual existence ...
... and vision it would be different. But remaining withdrawn need not lift one into the spiritual consciousness: one may very well be in the mental consciousness. Philosophical writings are of the mental plane. NIRODBARAN: Calm and peace may be there behind. SRI AUROBINDO: That is not sufficient. There must be the spiritual dynamism too, which would be projected into all the activities. SATYENDRA: ...
... may produce a corresponding effect on the outer as well. NIRODBARAN: He used to read other people's thoughts by separating the mind from the body. SRI AUROBINDO: That is done by going to the mental plane. NIRODBARAN: When asked if he remembered the circumstances in his Mother's womb just prior to his present physical birth he replied, "All I remember is that at a certain stage I felt a great ...
... of the physical consciousness. So, when anything is gained there, it is solid and stable. Experiences may be exhilarating but they don't always solve difficulties. H had many experiences on the mental plane but his vital revolted when it was touched. NIRODBARAN: When one is unconscious of what is happening one doesn't get the push. One swings back and forth, no steady progress can be maintained ...
... in human consciousness: the higher one rises in the scale the greater the number of elements or personalities that one possesses. Whether one lives mostly or mainly on the physical or vital or mental plane or on any particular section of these planes or on planes above and beyond, there will be accordingly Page 238 differences in the constitution or psycho-physical make-up of ...
... the form it could or should have had. There are layers and planes, graded intermediaries through which the Will has had to act. I spoke of the over-mental and the vital plane. There is also the mental plane between them. There are mental beings who are also creators, giving form to some beings that have taken body upon earth. Thus, there is a tradition which says that the world of insects is the ...
... Knowledge and Love. At a still higher or supramental level, the siddhis could mean, on the physical plane a transcendence of the law of causation, on the vital plane a cracking of the ego-shell, on the mental plane a rise into the overhead gnostic consciousness, and on the psychic plane to the realisation of Poise and Power and Peace and Ananda. Page 841 X But of course Sri Aurobindo's ...
... and achieve the highest. I fully share your admiration for De Chardin. Whereas Paul Tillich, Northrop, Sorokin, Allport etc. have been striving to catch a glimpse of the new Light on the mental plane, this intrepid scientist has shot beyond the bounds of matter and mind and, by the help of his intuitive vision, looked into the future of man and been able to divine something of the glorious destiny ...
... bodies is kosha or 'sheath.' You leave your 'food sheath,' or the material body, on the material plane; then you enter the vital plane in your vital sheath; there you unsheath again to enter the mental plane. And so forth. "I did the same thing," said Mother. "With great dexterity even. I could halt on any plane, do what I had to do there, move around and look, study, and then tell and record what ...
... Chapter III Sky, Weather, Night and Dawn Sky The sky usually symbolises a plane of consciousness mental or higher than the ordinary mental—stars are formations of light on that plane. The sky is a symbol of the mental consciousness (or the psychic) or other consciousnesses above the mind—e.g. the higher mind, intuition, overmind etc. Akasha... heart, that means the opening of the heart to the higher consciousness. The blue sky is that of the Higher Mind—the nearest of the planes between human mentality and the Supermind. The moon here [ in a vision ] is the symbol of spirituality in the mental planes. The world of the Higher Mind is above those directly connected with the body consciousness. The higher consciousness on any of... probably a symbol of the consciousness in a condition of purity, silence and peace like a snowy ground; in that a new life (psychic, spiritual as indicated by the flowers) appears in place of the old mental and vital life which has been covered by that mantle of snowy whiteness. Clouds are a symbol of obscurity. The lightning is a symbol of the dynamic force of the higher consciousness acting ...
... Page 537 × The felicity or happy wealth of the wide Truth-Consciousness manifested not only in the higher mental planes of our consciousness, but in our physical being. × The straight impulsion which the gods possess; ...
... solution to the truths of religion on mental planes as is evident from the differing philosophies. Under the circumstances it is best to. follow one you prefer as we have done in choosing the integral philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and find out the truth by your own personal experience. Science deals with laws of physical nature. But we have a vital nature, a mental nature. Psychology is an effort at... Dwaita, Adwaita and Visisthadwaita philosophies each true in its own sphere and you can have realisation on any one or all three of these planes but ultimately as Vivekananda says, all the other two lead to Adwaita which is the highest truth on the spiritual plane. I am not competent to say anything about the teachings of different Philosophies but I shall only quote from Mahabharata the answer... truths given or recorded in mental forms. The Life Divine of Sri Aurobindo, for example, which has been acclaimed as the greatest philosophical work of this Century, is according to Sri Aurobindo himself not philosophy but record of his own experience seen and realised and lived. You see the truths of religion or Philosophy and Theology differ according to the differing mental and intellectual per ception ...
... on × Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III: Experiences on the Subtle Physical, Vital and Mental Planes ... Introduction Our Many Selves Sri Aurobindo on Our Many Selves: Planes and Parts of the Being "Man is in his self a unique Person, but he is also in his manifestation of self a multi-person ... " 14 In this statement Sri Aurobindo makes a distinction which is fundamental in understanding his explanation of the nature of the human being—the distinction ...
... Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual consciousness where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although highly spiritual in its essential substance; and its instrumentation is through an elevated thought-power and comprehensive mental sight — not illumined... yet can open to its influence more easily than the outer intelligence. All the same, between the reflected realisation in the mind and the automatic and authentic realisation in the spiritual mental planes there is a wide difference." Distinguishing the general mode and the typical turn of the Inner Mind's poetry from those of the Higher Mind's, Sri Aurobindo wrote of a poem: "Not from the... remarked about that line: "It is strong and dignified, but it impresses me as too mental and Miltonic. Milton has very usually—in 'Paradise Lost'—some of the largeness and rhythm of the Higher Mind, but his substance is, except at certain heights, mental—mentally grand and noble. The interference of this mental Miltonic is one of the great stumbling-blocks when one tries to write from 'above' ...
... stubborn. I pleaded with him to leave me. When I woke up, I actually felt that I was saved from death. Does this have any meaning? The first part of the dream is an experience of the mental -vital plane and indicates the saving power of an absolute faith. The other shows the ascent to the highest levels of the earth-consciousness, but there is still something of the old self and nature clinging ...
... both of us would fall. He remained stubborn. I pleaded with him to leave me. When I woke up, I actually felt that I was saved from death. The first part of the dream is an experience of the mental-vital plane and indicates the saving power of an absolute faith. The other shows the ascent to the highest levels of the earth consciousness, but there is still something of the old self and nature clinging ...
... After death one passes through various vital and mental planes till the psychic being drops its vital and mental sheaths and enters into rest on the psychic plane till the time comes for rebirth. Page 530 At the time of death the being goes out of the body through the head; it goes out in the subtle body and goes to different planes of existence for a short time until it has gone through... journey together for a space, then part to meet again perhaps hereafter—often they meet to help each other on the journey in one way or another. As for the after death period, the soul passes into other planes of existence, staying there for a while till it reaches its place of rest where it Page 527 remains until it is ready for another terrestrial existence. This is the general law, but for... reached a stage of her development marked by a predominance of the sattwic nature, but not a strong vital (which works towards a successful or fortunate life) or the opening to a higher light,—her mental upbringing and surroundings stood against that and she herself was not ready. Her early death with much suffering may have been the result of past (prenatal) influences or they may have been chosen ...
... this does not mean that one should not recognise other planes. There is the vital plane whose law is force and success. If you have force you win; if you have speed you outrun others. The laws of the mind come in to act as a means of balance. They balance diverse things to make a mental-vital standard. It you go above the vital and mental planes, you come to a point where the Gita's "Sarvadharman ... moral. There is no question of right or wrong there. One goes above all standards and looks from a higher plane. But then it is essential to have the perception and feeling of the Divine in all. One can see the Divine in all behind the veil of the Gunas, the Nature qualities. From the spiritual plane one finds that the Gita is right about the Gunas and that man is made to do one thing or another by the... Light, Truth, Purity. When you observe discipline, it is for the Spirit, not for the sake of a mental rule. If you want to attain the standard of Purity, you have to reject what comes in the way. So also about lying. You have to stop lying if you want the Spirit's Truth; you stop not because of the mental principle of right and wrong but for the sake of the Spirit. There are many parts in one's nature ...
... mediator or paraclete between earth and the beyond) rises from the mental to the overhead planes, it becomes successively higher thought, illumined thought, intuitive thought, overmental thought, and so, ever climbing higher still and higher, vanishes into the transcendental. First, thought rises above the vital and mental planes: As some bright archangel in vision flies Plunged in... opening: like an archangel winging homeward to God, my Thought raced beyond the green seas (the vital) and the orange skies (the mental horizons) and plunged into the vasts of God (the overhead planes of consciousness). The next movement covers the planes upto the Overmind: Sleepless wide great glimmering wings of wind Bore the gold-red seeking of feet that trod Space and... short; and, above all, free modulation should be permitted. 73 These rules really make one basic rule: "If we are to get a true theory of quantity, the ear must find it; it cannot be determined by mental fictions or by reading with the eye." 74 This is not the place to go into any great detail about the Aurobindonian theory of true quantity or even to discuss how far Sri Aurobindo has really succeeded ...
... Do you think that they all can be fundamentally separated without the help of the supra-mental planes, the planes above the human mind? There are many planes above man's mind — the supra-mental is not the only one, and on all of them the self can be realised, — for they are all spiritual planes. Mind, vital and physical are inextricably mixed together only on the surface... Naturally. While referring to the supramental planes lately, I did not mean the supermind, but simply the spiritual planes above the human mind. To separate mind, vital and physical from each other, is there no need of the higher spiritual planes? Spiritual and supramental are not the same thing. The spiritual planes from higher mind to overmind are accessible to the old sadhanas... latter implied ill the former? Is not the Divine greater than the Supermind ? The Divine can be realised in any plane according to the capacity of that plane, as the Divine is everywhere. The Yogis and Saints realise the Divine on the spiritualised mind plane, that does not mean they become supramental. Did the ancient Yogis make no distinction between the realisation ...
... states of consciousness and their powers by which the mental being rises towards the superconscient as well as its ultimate and supreme possibility of union with the Highest. Moreover, the Yogin, while in the body, is not always mentally inactive and sunk in Samadhi, and an account of the powers and states which are possible to him on the higher planes of his being is necessary to the completeness of the... in an ascending scale to the summit where there is the thousand-petalled lotus from which all the mental and vital energy flows. Each of these lotuses is the centre and the storing-house of its own particular system of psychological powers, energies and operations,—each system corresponding to a plane of our psychological existence,—and these flow out and return in the stream of the pranic energies... psychological planes and are able to put ourselves in communication with the worlds or cosmic states of being which correspond to them; all the psychic powers abnormal to physical man, but natural to the soul develop in us. Finally, at the summit of the ascension, this arising and expanding energy meets with the superconscient self which sits concealed behind and above our physical and mental existence; ...
... self-manifesting spirit, that intervene between our normal mind and the Truth-Consciousness of Supermind. Of course, it is true that without actually ascending to these higher spiritual mental planes and permanently living there, if we can open ourselves from below to their knowledge and spiritual influences, we can somewhat spiritualise our normal waking being and consciousness. But the spiritual... earth-nature. But that can come about only when a prior ascent to the plane of Supermind is followed by the supramental descent in the field of terrestrial manifestation. But what precisely are the difficulties offered by our present being and nature, that cannot be satisfactorily met even by the highest spiritual-mental powers ? What are the lacunae involved in the process of spiritual ... supermind, because the instrumentation in all other [lower] planes is inferior and there is therefore a disparity between the fullness of the static experience and the incompleteness of the dynamic power, knowledge, result of the inferior light and power of other planes. This is the reason why the consciousness of the other spiritual planes, even if it descends, can make no radical change in the ...
... opening to the universal mental, vital, physical existence and, if the sadhak responds more to these than to the higher consciousness, then he does not get free. Sometimes even the ego gets aggrandised. But if the psychic is awake, then there is not this danger; one finds one's true being in place of the ego. She has had experiences but on the mental and vital plane. It is only a real descent... certitude. These are some of the differences. I speak of these planes in themselves—for when they act in the human consciousness, they are necessarily much diminished in their working, for they have to work with and depend on the human instrumentation or man's smaller seeking mental intelligence, his passionate turbid vital and mental, his cabined and narrow physical intellect—their workings get badly... is not the sole power as it is in its own plane but works under mental, vital or physical conditions. Its power is more subjective than objective—it is easy for it to change our view and experience of the object and our knowledge about it, but not so easy for it to change the object or its nature or circumstances or the outward state of things in that plane. It is perfectly simple, it is the ...
... I implored Thee in vain, for that which speaks to Thee is Thyself in me...”¹ The Mother knew early in life that the divine Vibhutis, the divine Powers and Personalities of the spiritual-mental planes, even of the Overmind, would not be capable of conquering the resistance of Matter and dispelling the darkness of Inconscience. That was why she prayed: "...O Sweet Master, it is a Love more wonderful ...
... suggestions and impulsions and pervert the inner life. Many are those who, attracted by these powers and beings of the vital plane, have ended in a definitive spiritual fall or in mental and physical perversion and disorder. One comes inevitably into contact with the vital plane and enters into it in the expansion of conscious ness which results from an inner opening, but one ought never to put oneself... s very high up with a feeling of divinity, a sense of considerable light and spiritual authority—perhaps in one of those higher spiritual mental planes of which I speak in The Life Divine and the letters. The diamond light could well be native to these planes; it is usually white, but there it might well be blue: it is a light that dispels or drives away all impure things, especially a demoniac ... Yoga is to establish direct contact with the Divine above and bring down the divine consciousness from above into all the centres. Occult powers belonging to the Page 573 mental, vital and subtle physical planes are not our object. One can have contact with various Divine Forms and Personalities on the way, but there is no need to establish them in the centres, though sometimes that happens ...
... the nature of this unifying movement of progress, and what is that plane of consciousness on which the final reconciliation between the One and the many, between Time and Eternity, silence and activity, and Spirit and Matter can be effected? We are awake on the physical, vital and mental planes of consciousness, all of them planes of the separative ignorance, which makes us see and feel things,... than the universe of His own creation and "higher than the highest Immutable". He takes His stand upon the plane of the Truth-Consciousness, the rta-cit of the Vedic description, the plane of the Truth, the Right and the Vast, which is the eternal home of unity and harmony. Basing this plane of the creative Truth-consciousness is His own being of Sat, Chit and Ananda, which is the ultimate definition... simultaneously in five sheaths or koshas, but in most human beings, it is awake only in the three lower sheaths—the material or the food sheath, the vital sheath, and the mental; it has yet to awake in the supra- mental or Vijnâna sheath, and the sheath of Bliss (ānanda- maya kosa). This awakening, unaccompanied by any ataxy or catalepsy in any part of the lower being, is what is known as ...
... high up with a feeling of divinity, a sense of considerable light and spiritual authority – perhaps in one of those higher spiritual mental planes of which I speak in the Life Divine and the Letters. The diamond light could well be native to these planes; it is usually white, but there it might well be blue; it is a light that dispels or drives away all impure things, especially a demoniac... cannot be easily defined in mental terms, they are usually insufficient to express it. If it is some impressions about himself or his spiritual person or his more outward personality that you are thinking of, there too I find them difficult to put into language; these things in a moment like that are felt rather than thought out and it may not be easy to throw them into mental form at once. Perhaps... acquisition and forward movement and many-sided largeness. A closer perception of the spiritual person behind all that is perhaps the one thing that I could add to it, but that is something more than a mental impression. I think this is all I can write at present and I hope it will be enough for you. December 3, 1948 It seems to me that Krishnaprem has seen very clearly with his usual ...
... higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi. By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action... action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on Page 36 its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon... which we have to bring our mental and spiritual gains. Especially is the spiritual life, in this system, too much associated with the state of Samadhi. Our object is to make the spiritual life and its experiences fully active and fully utilisable in the waking state and even in the normal use of the functions. But in Rajayoga it tends to withdraw into a subliminal plane at the back of our normal e ...
... workings of Mind, Life, Body are viewed from the calm and peace of the spiritual planes of the mental being and are filled with that calm and peace; they are not possessed by and subjected to the law of the all-mastering Spirit. All this is when the mental being takes its station in its own spiritual planes, in the mental planes of Sat, Chit, Ananda, and casts down their light and delight upon the lower... of the transcendent Sachchidananda. And these results, which obtained on the supramental plane itself or beyond, would be the highest perfection of the human being, we can attain to partially, in a very modified way, in a sort of mental figure by awakening into activity on the corresponding plane of the mental nature. We can get a luminous shadow of that perfect harmony and light. But this belongs... helpfulness, but it does inhibit the human and animal sorrow and suffering. The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijñāna and which we may describe in our modern turn of language as the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or supermind. There the One and the Many meet and our being is freely open to the revealing light of ...
... of the detail and of the whole. Deeper in, we come to perfectly coherent dreams recording the experience of the inner vital and inner mental planes; there are also true psychic dreams — the latter usually are of a great beauty. Some of these mental or vital plane dream-experiences, however, are symbolic, very many in fact, and can only be understood if one is familiar with or gets the clue to the... Letters on Yoga, p. 1486 It is the subconscient that is active in the ordinary dreams. But in the dreams in which one goes out into other planes of consciousness, mental, vital, subtle physical, it is part of the inner being, inner mental or vital or physical that is usually active. Letters on Yoga, p. 1487 There are such things as dream inspirations — it is rare, however... meaning which is difficult to find and not very much worth knowing even if it is found. Other dreams are either simply happenings of the mental, vital or subtle physical worlds or else belong to the wider mental, vital Page 240 or subtle physical planes and have a meaning which the figures of the dream are trying to communicate. Letters on Yoga, p. 1491 It is a very small number ...
... the divine Presence in the psychic being. For example, this work of self-development and organisation and being aware of all the elements is not within the reach of the beings of the vital and mental planes, nor even of the beings who are usually called "gods"; and when they want to do it, when they really want to organise themselves and become completely conscious, they have to take a body. And... aspiration to have an answer, it always comes. For, in books of this kind ( Mother shows "The Synthesis of Yoga"), books of revelation, there is always an accumulation of forces―at least of higher mental forces, and most often of spiritual forces of the highest knowledge. Every book, on account of the words it contains, is like a small accumulator of these forces. People don't know this, for they don't... This is indeed very fine. (Another disciple) I had prepared a question. (He takes the Synthesis and reads:) " The central Consciousness in its turn will take up more and more the outer mental activities of knowledge and turn them into a parcel of itself or an annexed province; it will infuse into them its more authentic movement and make a more and more Page 168 spiritualised ...
... the divine Presence in the psychic being. For example, this work of self-development and organisation and being aware of all the elements is not within the reach of the beings of the vital and mental planes, nor even of the beings who are usually called “gods”; and when they want to do it, when they really want to organise themselves and become completely conscious, they have to take a body. And... and a seeker of beauty through these things. There is the mental-vital personality which when it saw the vital standing in the way insisted on a grim struggle of Tapasya, and it is no doubt that also which approves vairagya and Nirvana. There is the physical-mental personality which is the Russellite, extrovert, doubter. There is another mental-emotional personality all whose ideas are for belief in... the Spirit’s mastery over its members. The musician and poet stand for a truth, it is the truth of the expression of the Spirit through beauty. There is a truth behind the mental Affirmer; even there is a truth behind the mental doubter, the Russellian, though far behind him—the truth of the denial of false forms. Even behind the two vital personalities there is a truth, the truth of the possession ...
... an ascent in life. It is the same progress as that of the growing child; there comes a time when it is at the summit of its growth and then, unless it changes the plane of progress, unless the purely physical progress turns into a mental progress, a psychic progress, a spiritual progress, it goes down the curve and then there will be a decomposition and it will not exist any longer. It is just because... Inspirations come from very many different places. There are inspirations that may be very material, there are inspirations that may be vital, there are inspirations that come from all kinds of mental planes, and there are very, very rare inspirations that come from the higher mind or from a still higher region. All inspirations do not come from the same place. Hence, to be inspired does not necessarily... times that it reaches proportions very unpleasant to themselves and to their surroundings. And then there are those who live in the mental consciousness; their mental receptivity grows very much. All who create mentally, study and live in mental activity, if the mental activity is constant, can progress indefinitely. Mind in the human being does not stop functioning even when the physical instrument ...
... both of the detail and of the whole. Deeper in, we come to perfectly coherent dreams recording the experience of the inner vital and inner mental planes; there are also true psychic dreams—the latter usually are of a great beauty. Some of these mental or vital plane dream-experiences, however, are symbolic, very many in fact, and can only be understood if one is familiar with or gets the clue to the symbols... etc., come from the spiritual consciousness from above... Power can be everywhere, on any plane. What descends from above is power of the higher Consciousness—but there is a Power of the vital, mental, physical planes also. Power is not a special characteristic of the psychic or of the spiritual plane. February 16, 1937 So you also fail to tell the precise meaning of the poem! ... they need no aid of imagination to be converted into poetry. If they are significant, imagination in the sense of a free use of mental invention might injure their truth and meaning—unless of course the imagination is of the nature of an inspired vision coming from the same plane and filling out or reconstructing the recorded experience so as to bring out the Truth held in it more fully than the dream ...
... articulating at once, and, at the other end, hearing and seeing at once. When yoga gave Sri Aurobindo this power of vision, the rhythmic word often came unbidden as it were from the overhead—the above-mental—planes of consciousness, and all he had to do was to listen and to transcribe. "There are poets", he once said, "who neither experience nor even understand what they have written. They merely transcribe... overmental level. Poems like Thought the Paraclete and Rose of God and, of course, the greater Page 42 part of Savitri could only have been written from an overhead plane of global consciousness. Aside from the mystic note (or at least alongside of it, for it is really the Great Bass in Sri Aurobindo's poetry), other notes too are occasionally heard. When ...
... Letters on Yoga, pp. 10-11 By divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation — the realisation of Self, Bhagwan or Brahman on the mental-spiritual plane or else the overmental plane. That is a thing (at any rate the mental-spiritual) which thousands have done. So it is obviously easier to do than the supramental. Also nobody can have the supramental realisation who has not... redemption of the soul from the physical vesture be the object, then there is no need of supramentalisation. Spiritual Mukti and Nirvana are sufficient. If the object is to rise to supraphysical planes, then also there is no need of supramentalisation. One can enter into some heaven above by devotion to the Lord of that heaven. But that is no progression. The other worlds are typal worlds, each... Cosmic Self or full of ecstatic bhakti or Ananda. But one may and usually does still go on in the outer parts of Nature thinking with the intellect or at best the intuitive mind, willing with a mental will, feeling joy and sorrow on the vital surface, undergoing physical afflictions and suffering from the struggle of life in the body with death and disease. The change then only will be that the ...
... both of the detail and of the whole. Deeper in, we come to perfectly coherent dreams recording the experience of the inner vital and inner mental planes; there are also true psychic dreams—the latter usually are of a great beauty. Some of these mental or vital plane dream-experiences, however, are symbolic, very many in fact, and can only be understood if one is familiar with or gets the clue to the symbols... they need no aid of imagination to be converted into poetry. If they are significant, imagination in the sense of a free use of mental invention might injure their truth and meaning—unless of course the imagination is of the nature of an inspired vision coming from the same plane and filling out or reconstructing the recorded experience so as to bring out the Truth held in it more fully than the dream... degree,—a new way of looking at things in poetry, but not essentially superior to the impressions created on the heart or the mental imagination by the object. All the same there is behind, but still not successfully achieved, something real, an attempt to get away from ornate mental constructions about things to the expression of the intimate truth of the things themselves as directly seen by a deeper ...
... of which the key is a limitation by the plane we inhabit and by the present predominant principle of our nature. The plane we inhabit is the plane of Matter; the present predominant principle in our nature is the mental intelligence with the sense-mind, which depends upon Matter, as its support and pedestal. As a consequence, the preoccupation of the mental intelligence and its powers with the material... by describing wider circles on the plane where we began, but by transcendence. It is for this reason that, after the first necessary foundation in life and matter, we have to heighten our force of consciousness, deepen, widen, subtilise it; we must first liberate our mental selves and enter into a freer, finer and nobler play of our mental existence: for the mental is much more than the physical our... level of awareness are included the higher planes of mental being as well as the native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being. The first indispensable step in an upward evolution would be to elevate our force of consciousness into those higher parts of Mind from which we already receive, but without knowing the source, much of our larger mental movements, those, especially, that come with ...
... hour. It always feels as if something wants to tear the life out of the body. It takes that form. ( silence ) It is quite evident that X and I are not on the same plane. His power and his action are on a mental-physical plane ( gesture below ), and this may bring me some complications by making me do a work I usually have nothing to do with. You have often told me that each time he comes... It's ridiculous! No, it's not! I tell you, he can't understand. To him, sadhana.... I sent him word that I was fully engrossed in sadhana, and then I Page 344 immediately saw his mental image of me sitting cross-legged doing a perpetual puja! You get the idea. For him, sadhana means certain fixed rules, and if you let the rules go, you let go of the sadhana. But it doesn't matter ...
... touch" and "mental Overmind touch".) "Yes—the Overmind proper has some gnostic light in it which is absent in the mental Overmind." * (From what plane are the substance and rhythm of this phrase from Shakespeare?— ... the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come. Are they really from what you have considered his usual plane—the vital... the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual consciousness where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although highly spiritual in its essential substance; and its instrumentation is through an elevated thought-power and comprehensive mental sight-—not illumined by... yet can open to its influence more easily than the outer intelligence. All the same, between the reflected realisation in the mind and the automatic and authentic realisation in the spiritual mental planes there is a wide difference." Distinguishing the general mode and the typical turn of the Inner Mind's poetry from those of the Higher Mind's, Sri Aurobindo wrote of a poem: "Not from the ...
... cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes,—towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process. Again, there is not an entire absence of penetration from above into our mental limits. The phenomena of genius are really the result of such a... intelligence; a pure intuition is a rare occurrence in our mental activity: for what we call by the name is usually a point of direct knowledge which is immediately caught and coated over with mental stuff, so that it serves only as an invisible or a very tiny nucleus of a crystallisation which is in its mass intellectual or otherwise mental in character; or else the flash of intuition is quickly replaced... inaudible and invisible or at least indistinguishable, so is it with his scale of Page 287 mental consciousness, confined at either extremity by an incapacity which marks his upper and his nether limit. He has no sufficient means of communication even with the animal who is his mental congener, though not his equal, and he is even capable of denying mind or real consciousness to it because ...
... concluding our present discussion than to cite a few mantric utterances made by the greatest Seer-Poet of the age? These revelatory verses, characterizing the sight-attributes of the supernal supra-mental planes of the Being, are taken from his Savitri, the spiritual epic of the birth and the growth and the consummating fulfilment of the divine Flame, an epic which, in the words of the Mother, enshrines... once we outgrow the "mortal mind's half-look on things", 90 we are sure to encounter on our ascending climb a series of hierarchised luminous planes of consciousness that offer the pilgrim soul an ever hightening and deepening power of sight. These planes, "Exposed to the lustre of Infinity," 91 are in the ascending order: (i) the Higher Mind, whose action, in terms of the Vedic image of the... gaze but somehow covers with its luminous corona, with its brilliant golden lid (hira ṇ mayena p ā tre ṇ a 95 ), the face of the supreme Truth; (v)and finally the Supermind or Gnosis, the plane of absolute Light and Sight, that transcends altogether the apar ā rdha or the lower hemisphere of existence. It is only with the attainment of this divine Supermind that the ascent of Sight ...
... much working of the Power as he can bear and assimilate. Power can be everywhere, on any plane. What descends from above is power of the higher Consciousness—but there is a Power of the vital, mental, physical planes also. Power is not a special characteristic of the psychic or of the spiritual plane. The Descent of Fire The fire is the divine fire of aspiration and inner tapasya. When the... instead, the feeling may be of heat, Agni-power. Most people feel these two things; they are not imagination. I did not say it [ a descent of Ananda ] was vital and mental, but that it was Ananda manifesting itself in the mental and vital—a quite different thing—for the one Ananda (the true thing) can manifest in any part of the being. The Flow of Amrita It [ a flow of sweet liquid in the... get an opening into the cosmic consciousness first but without the basis of the higher Peace and Light it brings only a mass of unorganised experiences. Page 449 It is not really the plane that descends, it is the Power and Truth of it that descends into the material and then the veil between the material and it no longer exists. Peace, Calm, Quiet as a Basis for the Descent Peace ...
... All the same between the reflected realisation in the mind and the automatic and authentic realisation in the spiritual mental planes there is a wide difference. ... There is also a plane of dynamic Vision which is a part of the inner Mind and perhaps should be called not a plane but a province. There are many kinds of vision in the inner Mind and Page 21 not this dynamic vision alone... rather than mentally definable. A certain spontaneous intensity of vision is usually there, but that large or rich sweep or power which belongs to the illumined Mind is not part of its character. Moreover it is subtle and fine and has not the wideness which is the characteristic of the planes that rise towards the vast universality of the Overmind level. ... That is why the lower planes cannot express... overhead plane or has the Overmind touch, I do not mean that it is superior in pure poetic excellence to others from lower planes—that Amal's lines outshine Shakespeare or Homer for instance. I simply mean that it has some vision, light, etc. from up there and the character of its expression and rhythm are from there. You do not appreciate probably because you catch only the surface mental meaning ...
... hemisphere of existence: this knowledge by direct contact is the main character of the highest supraphysical mental planes of consciousness, those to which our surface being is closed in by a wall of ignorance; in a diminished and more separative form it is a property of the lesser supraphysical planes of mind; it is or can be an element in all that is supraphysical. It is the main instrumentation of our... our subliminal self, its central means of awareness; for the subliminal self or inner being is a projection from these higher planes to meet the subconscience and it inherits the character of consciousness of its planes of origin with which it is intimately associated and in touch by kinship. In our outer being we are children of the Inconscience; our inner being makes us inheritors of the higher heights... the thought does not engross, entirely when the thinker acquires the faculty of stepping back into the mental self and standing apart there from the mental energy. Instead of being absorbed in the thought with at most a vague feeling of the process of thinking, we can see the process by a mental vision, watch our thoughts in their origination and movement and, partly by a silent insight, partly by ...
... But there are those who have ideas only on the intellectual plane and no idea of anything behind and there are those who have spiritual experience but no power to embody or materialise. These give us no sufficient hope, whatever they may do for the moment. It is where there is the spiritual experience or the ideas that give it a mental body and along with that a strong will to materialise from whom... another. When that is done, he will act for a Page 1425 time on the intermediate plane probably until he is satisfied that the idea governing him is in good train towards success or until he has worked out the force of the attacking idea in his own consciousness. I speak of the personal mental part of it that still feels the effect of the life vibrations.—— That can only be done by the... course in a changed form. One would have to count their origin perhaps by tens of thousands of years. There are things also that were believed in old times, forgotten and again recovered from the mental planes. It is difficult to disentangle the various materials and say which dates from what time. The theory of the Kalpas has existed in one form or another from times lost in the mist of oblivion. ...
... the sequences and make out the significance which is often very profound or very striking. Deeper in we come to perfectly coherent dreams recording the experience of the inner vital and inner mental planes or the psychic—the latter usually are of a great beauty. Some of these however are symbolic, many in fact, and can only be understood if one is familiar with or gets the clue to the symbols.... they need no aid of imagination to be converted into poetry. If they are significant, imagination in the sense of a free use of mental invention might injure their truth and meaning—unless of course the imagination is an inspired vision coming from the same plane and filling out or reconstructing the recorded experience so as to give more fully the Truth held in it. (4) The word psyche is... flow by his own mental volition. In many modernist poets there may be labour and a deliberate posturing, but it is not so in his case. I interpret his poems because he wants me to do it, but I have always told him that an intellectual rendering narrows the meaning—it has to be seen and felt, not thought out. Thinking it out may give a satisfaction and an appearance of mental logicality, but the ...
... The powers of the higher mental and pranic planes fulfil themselves much more frequently, powerfully and [ ] 6 they have more of the truth in them. But in all this there is no absolute certainty of future trikaldrishti, though prevision after prevision may be fulfilled with unvarying accuracy for a long time; still it is only even then a prevailing certainty, a mental and moral, not an absolute... longer false trikaldrishtis, but perceptions of thought, tendency, intention, impulse, either belonging to the object or working on it from the environmental physical Virat or from the pranic and mental planes. Yesterday the inspirational thought was busy observing them and giving them their right place and scope. They have to be replaced by the intuitional telepathies. 2) The next largest element... possibilities that are not yet in action, but may or will be in action. It can see which will prevail, provided no higher idea or will intervenes. Secondly, there are the forces of the lower mental and pranic planes. These it sees before they at all touch the physical; that they are true, it can see by feeling their reality and also because they translate themselves subsequently into Page 1063 ...
... extended series of experiments in yoga." 23 In the Yogic parlance we may say that this was the period when Sri Aurobindo's attempts were chiefly directed towards supramentalisation of the mental planes that presently govern our evolutionary consciousness. There was soon to follow the supramentalisation of the vital. The last stage of the great triple transformation was to be preceded in 1926... from the overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a largeness that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is bom out of the Infinite and disappears into it... and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values... there no mental rule can really be applied. Style and technique are an integral part of the poet's inspiration and one has to go entirely by its force; obviously any critical appreciation has to be fully cognisant of it. We are dealing with Overhead Poetry which Sri Aurobindo explained in great detail in his letters on poetry. It is an utterance that comes from some higher plane carrying ...
... masquerade as certain result, is being eliminated from T³. The same movement is being rapidly applied to Page 1100 the forces of the vital rajasic and mental sattwic planes which stand behind the mechanism of forces of the physical plane. This will complete the present trikaldrishti, except for the right perception of the states of unseen objects which is still backward. This movement is setting... yet the highest intuivity has not been separately handled for finality. The next difficulty is the insistence of a mental intuivity responding to the gnosis or rather catching at it before it is formed on its own plane. This is possible because that was always the real nature of mental thought and the whole mentality is not yet possessed by the gnosis. This action is henceforth mainly that of the highest... up; the decisive trik. now manifests in the intuitive form through an obstructing veil of mentality; it is correct when it is not modified by the mental stuff; modified it gives the general fact accurately but not the circumstance. The pure intuitive mental trik. is often accurately correct up to a certain point, but often errs in some details of the circumstance, but always in arrangement, not in fact ...
... should aspire for the Divine realisation only. By Divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation—the realisation of Self, Bhagawan or Brahman on the mental-spiritual or else the overmental plane. That is a thing (at any rate the mental spiritual) which thousands have done. So it is obviously easier to do than the supramental. Also nobody can have the supramental realisation who has not had... kind of transformation? I think there is a difference, because you speak of a complete transformation—of mind, life and body. Obviously then, those whose realisation of the Divine was on the mental-spiritual plane did not have the physical consummation. There are different statuses (अवस्था) of the Divine Consciousness. There are also different statuses of transformation. First is the psychic tra... If he had led the ordinary life, he would have been a great organiser, conqueror and creator. If a man rises to a higher plane of consciousness, it does not necessarily follow that he will be a greater man of action or a greater creator. One may rise to spiritual planes of inspiration undreamed of by Shakespeare and yet not be as great a poetic creator as Shakespeare. "Greatness" is not the object ...
... as we have said. Unfortunately the mind has seized this one, as it seizes everything, and has pressed it into the service of its mental, vital or spiritual ego. It has discovered certain powers of meditation or concentration, more refined energies, higher mental planes that were like the divine source of our existence, lights that were not from the moon or stars, more direct and almost superhuman... more, cast off the earthly burden, soar off in the enchanted little rocket of light we are beginning to sense, and come upon freer realms of consciousness, explore airy ranges, discover higher mental planes that are like the pure source of everything that Page 34 takes place, distorted and approximate here, the angel face of what is looking more and more like a caricature. 7 It is very... among the apes – its great rebellion against the Machine, its general strike against mental knowledge, mental power and mental fabrications – against the mental prison – its mass defection from the old groove of pain, and its calling out for what has to be, its simple cry for truth amidst the rubble of the mental age: the truth, the truth, the truth, and nothing but the truth. Then Truth shall ...
... physical body. It is vibration alone which has a direct effect on the physical body, not visions and experiences, etc., — all that belongs to the mental or rather to the vital, you understand? The visions, etc. belong to the vital-physical or the mental-physical plane and have a somewhat subtle and vague effect and are not so direct. They come and pass and leave a small imprint and that’s all; whereas the... activity fixed for this particular hour. Ordinarily, man cannot go beyond this. He is upset if something does not correspond to the fixed hour. That is why I come down in this plane to work with them. If I remain in that plane of consciousness which is absolutely natural for me, that is to say, above time or its human classification, then no one could have access to me as I would always be inaccessible... with the Supreme truth. It is only by the vibrations that I work with the individual in the physical plane because this is the most true and pure means which comes directly from the Supreme. It is this that can radically change the consciousness, and because it is on the most material physical plane, therefore it has a greater influence on the other parts of the body, and it is this which is the basis ...
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