... not just a way of being. There can be a mental being and mental activity and, for instance, a thought that is completely independent of the brain, whereas the materialistic theories say that it is the brain which creates mental activity. But this is not correct. The brain is the material transcription of the mental activity, and mental activity has its own domain; the mental domain has its reality, its... exactly here ( gesture ); the mental activity was generated there, and no longer in the head. And he had cured a considerable number of people, considerable, some hundreds, who used to suffer from terrible headaches; he had cured them in this way. I have tried it, it is quite easy, precisely because, as I told you a while ago, the mental force, mental activity is independent of the brain. We are... using the brain but we can use something else or rather, concentrate the mental force elsewhere, and have the impression that our mental activity comes from there. One can concentrate one's mental force in the solar plexus, here ( gesture ), and feel the mental activity coming out from there. That man used to say, "Haven't you noticed that all men who have great power have a big belly? ( Laughter ...
... And Sri Aurobindo puts reason at the summit of man's mental activity; he tells us that in the development of the mind, reason is the surest guide, the master, so to speak, who prevents you from deviating from the path or taking the wrong one, from straying away and losing your common sense. He makes reason the arbiter of man's mental activity, which guides and controls; and so long as you have to... me, come along. It is the knowledge acquired through outer studies. It is obviously that. It is everything that can be learnt through the study of outer phenomena and in all fields of mental activity, all that can be learnt by material observation and technical studies in different subjects, scientific, artistic, philosophical, literary; in fact all that the human mind has produced through... section is that the reflection Sri Aurobindo makes about the mental being, the intellectual activity of man, he also makes for the vital activity, the power of action and realisation. He takes mental activity as the basis of human life, for it belongs to man in his own right, exclusively; and in the process of life, that is, of human existence, human realisation, thought normally comes first. Man, because ...
... knowledge, are the cows of the milking; the constant stream of thought-forms are their yield. For the aim of the Yogin is to avoid the confusion which comes from an abundant but hurried and ill formed mental activity and to effect a perfect distinctness in the forms of his knowledge—the rashmín vyùha of the Isha Upanishad. We are given, finally, an object for this calling of Indra and this abundance of mental... is obviously meant by its position to be a part of the idea conveyed in the description of Indra, a good fashioner of forms like a good milker in the milking of the cows of light; but neither mental activity nor abundance of thought-forms has anything to do with protection. We must seek for a more appropriate significance. The only other received value of ùti, enjoyment, will make good sense in this... class which express the idea of wish and desire. Growth or expansion in richness & substance of the individual being, (the primary object of all Rigveda), is the purpose for which this luminous mental activity & abundant formation is desired by the Rishi,—growth especially of mental force, fertility and clearness. Again, this processwith its resultant growth is desired, dyavi dyavi, from day to day ...
... modes of mental activity. After all, mental activity has been enormously intensified during evolution. And we simply do not yet know the basic relation between mental activity and physical brain activity. It is extremely important to try to find out whether under certain conditions mental activity may be detached from physical; we can be sure that many possibilities of mind or mental activity are still ...
... change is the more easily done. Let us not exaggerate anything. It is not so much getting rid of mental activity as converting it into the right thing. Krishnaprem has mental activity, but it is a mind that has gone inside and sees things from there, an intuitive mind; I have mental activity (in the midst of silence) whenever necessary, but it is a mind that has gone up and sees things from above... from outside only by analysis and inference—when it does not do it rather by taking a hasty look and saying "So it is" or "So it is not". But you can't get the inner or upper mind unless the old mental activity becomes a little quiet. A quiet mind does not involve itself in its thoughts or get run away with by them; it stands back, detaches itself, lets them pass, without identifying itself, without making ...
... not just a way of being. There can be a mental being and mental activity and, for instance, a thought that is completely independent of the brain, whereas the materialistic theories say that it is the brain which creates mental activity. But this is not correct. The brain is the material transcription of the mental activity, and mental activity has its own domain; the mental domain has its reality, its ...
... which immediately recalls the dhiyam ghritáchím sádhantá of the second hymn. In both passages mental activity & a rich luminosity of mind are suggested as the preliminary necessity of the sacrifice; in both we find the progression from this idea to the expression ritávridho. This luminous mental activity perfected, it is to be used for the increase of Truth, of ritam, of the ideal self-revealing knowledge... sacrifice. At present Page 63 we have to observe only the recurrence of the psychological note in the description of the sacrifice, this reiteration of the idea of bright & purified mental activity as its condition & increase of ideal Truth as a large & important part of its method or object. In the next hymn the word ritam does not occur, but the continual refrain of its strophes is the... attachment, today & now for the sacrifice.” We find once more, so fixed are the terms & associations, so persistently coherent is the language of the Veda, ghritaprishtha in connection with mental activity, ghritaprishtham placed designedly before maníshinah, just as we find elsewhere ghritaprishthá manoyujah, just as we find in the passage from which we started dhiyam ghritáchím sádhantá. Have we ...
... intermediate and working psycho-physically, is at the basis of all mental activity, and Prana, pure and working psychically is at the basis of all psychical activity. The third outstanding fact of Yoga is that while in its earlier processes it stimulates mental activity, in its later stages it Page 254 overpasses mental activity. At first the mind drawn inward from active reactions to external... resumption of its functions by Prana is inevitably attended by Page 253 the resumption of physical activity. The second outstanding fact is the peculiar effect of Pranayam and Yoga on mental activity. The first condition of Yogic exercises is, as has been said, the stillness of the body, which implies the suspension of the five indriyas or potencies of action, grasp, locomotion, utterance ...
... ? Ah, there is the rub. Let us not exaggerate anything. It is not so much getting rid of mental activity as converting it into the right thing. Krishnaprem has mental activity, but it is a mind that has gone inside and sees things from there, an intuitive mind; I have mental activity (in the midst of silence) whenever necessary, but it is a mind that [has] gone up and sees things from... outside only, by analysis and inference — when it doesn't do it rather by taking a hasty look and saying "so it is" or "so it is not". But you can't get the inner or upper mind unless this old mental activity becomes a little quiet. A quiet mind does not involve itself in its thoughts or get run away with them by them; it stands back, detaches itself, lets them pass without identifying itself, without ...
... watching it reading or writing or talking, just as you watch the body acting or moving. I try to separate myself from the mental activity, but what happens is that, instead of the witness Purusha, the mental consciousness gets separated from the mental activity! It is, I suppose, because you have not yet got the mental Purusha separate from the mental Prakriti - so when you pull the... allow the sadhaks to keep their minds constantly active in learning languages? Or has it created for them such a climate that they can keep their minds calm and quiet somehow, in spite of this mental activity? One can go on without anything except a little rice daily and some water - without clothes even or a house to shelter. Is that what you call true Yoga and what should be followed in the... working as adequately as it does during an inactive period? Or should I put a will on my consciousness to make it capable of responding to the higher working at the same time as it carries on the mental activity? Page 65 The latter course is the best. I have sanctioned your studying because it is good for you to study - so you can go on with it. Making ...
... out of it—the external mind always remains calm.' 18 Eckhart teaches a remedy that is more readily accessible. It consists simply in being present, becoming a conscious witness of the mental activity instead of unconsciously identifying with the mind. Page 12 Perceiving through the Veil of Mind This teaching about mental noise is to be found in various schools of discipline... the quieting of the mind. What is new in Eckhart's teaching is his broader and deeper view of what constitutes "mental noise." It includes not only the constant stream of thought but also all mental activity in perceiving reality, including even the rudimentary activity of the mind involved in labeling whatever one perceives. For instance, perceiving a flower and recognizing it, say, as a rose, and... Eckhart's viewpoint, mental noise. One does not see the being that is the rose but only the superficial form of the rose through the veil of a label that is a mental abstraction. Thus all mental activity in the form of labeling, judging, analyzing, comparing, classifying, interpreting, theorizing, and the like constitutes mental noise, which prevents one from seeing the reality as it truly is ...
... times, by means of a dream, we participate in all the mental activity in its smallest details. Only the cerebral transcription of this activity is often so childish that we normally pay no attention to it. From this point of view, it is interesting to note that there is nearly always a considerable disparity between what our mental activity is in fact and the way in which we perceive it, and especially... strictest scientific methods, was published some twenty years ago by Dr. Vaschid in a book entitled "Sleep and Dreams". The doctors who carried out these experiments were led to the conclusion that mental activity never really ceases; and it is this activity which is more or less confusedly transcribed in our brains by what we know as dreams. Thus, whether we are aware of it or not, we always dream. Certainly ...
... and the old mental activity starts up (an activity of the mind of the cells, the most material mind), immediately that consciousness comes out of its rest with a jerk : "Ah, no! Not that, not that, not that!" Instantly the mental activity is stopped, and there is an aspiration for the Presence—"Not that, not that!" This morning, I had the experience twice; a very slight mental activity, and almost ...
... forward basing itself at every step on the fallible crutches of hypotheses and inferences. Let us listen to what Sri Aurobindo has to say on this basic insufficiency of mind: "... a mere mental activity will not bring a change of conscious-ness, it can only bring a change of mind. And if your mind is sufficiently mobile, it will go on changing from one thing to another till the end without arriving... and breaking of rules and principles wenever a genuine need is felt for this operation, is a very important part of the sadhana of the mind. As the Mother has pointed out: "... the more mental activity one has, the more does one indulge in this little game. And there are ideas to which one clings! hooked on to them as though all life depended upon that! I have known people who had fixed upon... most difficult for man the mental creature who is passionately proud of his mental possession. The fact is that the mind of man, because of its inherent nature, is always engaged in a mental activity whose different element s are ideations, imaginations, beliefs, judgments, opinions, and many others. Now, in its undisciplined functioning the mind of man is stubbornly attached to all these ...
... has just been said, however, concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, at least as important, is the constructive faculty, the capacity to give form and therefore prepare for action. This part of mental activity, although very important, has rarely been the subject of any special study or discipline. Only they who want, for some... the other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and this rest it will not have unless we know how to give it. The art of giving rest to one's mind is a thing to be acquired. Changing mental activity is a way of rest; but the greatest possible rest lies in silence. And in the matter of mental faculties, a few minutes passed in the calm of silence mean a more effective rest than hours of sleep ...
... has just been said, however, concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, at least as important, is the constructive faculty, the capacity to give form and therefore prepare for action. This part of mental activity, although very important, has rarely been the subject of any special study and discipline. Only those who want, for... the other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and this rest it will not have unless we know how to give it. The art of giving rest to one's mind is a thing to be acquired. Changing mental activity is a way of rest; but the greatest possible rest lies in silence. And in the case of mental faculties, a few minutes passed in the calm of silence mean a more effective rest than hours of sleep ...
... reads the first part of her article "Energy Inexhaustible" ( On Education ). How is it that as mental activities increase, the capacity to renew one's energies diminishes? In adults mental activity tends to paralyse the spontaneous movement of exchange of energies. Till he is fourteen, every child, apart from a few rare exceptions, is a little animal; he renews his energies spontaneously... that wants to know, to regulate, to decide, etc., and to get back this capacity to renew spontaneously one's energies, one must rise to a higher rung above the instincts, that is, from ordinary mental activity one must pass directly into intuition. "Yet there is a source of energy which, once discovered, never dries up, whatever the circumstances and the physical conditions in life. It is the energy... professes to lead a yogic life or not matters little, provided it makes the necessary effort for progress. What is the difference between meditation and concentration? Meditation is a purely mental activity, it interests only the mental being. One can concentrate while meditating but this is a mental concentration; one can get a silence but it is a purely mental silence, and the other parts of the ...
... been said concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, which is at least equally important, is the Page 27 constructive faculty, the capacity to form and thus prepare action. This very important part of mental activity has rarely been the subject of any special study or discipline. Only those who want, for some reason... other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and it will not have this rest unless we know how to provide it. The art of resting one's mind is something to be acquired. Changing one's mental activity is certainly one way of resting; but the greatest possible rest is silence. And as far as the mental faculties are concerned a few minutes passed in the calm of silence are a more effective rest ...
... continuity, yet a prevailing persistence. The enemy cannot prevent the persistence. The condition of success appears to be perfect passivity. If there is any arambha, any setting about to know, mental activity with its tangled web of error starts again; Truth, the satyam, is idea true in itself, self-revealing[,] atmaprakasha, not acquired, not in any way arrived at. The mind with all its guessing, inferring... Disorder—at once; yes. The last script had reference to the prolonged attack on the first two chatusthayas & also on the new siddhis of the third which had produced in the annam some disorder, mental activity & vague uneasiness; it predicted the immediate removal of the disorder by restoration of passivity & was at once fulfilled. The attack lasted or recurred throughout the day until this script appeared... becoming more frequent (called in the prophetic script lipikaushalya). Along with this successful issue from a long & weary struggle the details of the lipi are becoming more & more independent of mental activity,—eg. le resultat decisif where the annamaya mind had blunderingly suggested decisive; the words suggested by the mental thought voice are increasingly rejected and other unexpected words substituted ...
... putting more & more of itself into the body which is being made ready for it, that also is possible & conceivable. We are indeed led to see, as we progress in self-knowledge, that there is a great mental activity belonging to us only part of which is imperfectly expressed in our waking thoughts & perceptions—a sub-conscious or super-conscious Self which stores everything, remembers everything, foresees... movement and forward attention, we are apt to regard its essential & common action to be rather receptivity Page 305 of objects, than research of objects. The scientific explanation of mental activity helps to confirm this notion. Fixing its eye on the nervous system & the brain, the physical channels of thought, Physiology insists on the double action of the afferent and the efferent nerves ...
... that in a man's sleep his true nature is revealed. They are a part of the body's functioning. Dreams are as natural as the activities of the day... From experiments, it is concluded that mental activity never really ceases; and it is this activity which is more or less confusedly transcribed in our brains by what we know as dreams. Thus, whether we are aware of it or not, we always dream. We... coming from outside and give you dreams.... Some people have a very conscious mental life... these people have mentally objective nights. But most people are incapable of doing this; it is their mental activity going on during sleep and assuming forms, and these forms give them what they call dreams. ...If you like, there is an experience, a fact, something happens—there is also translation in your ...
... state of consciousness; thoughts become a servant of a deeper, silent consciousness. Generally, however, Eckhart speaks of stillness as a state that is totally devoid of all mental activity, including the basic mental activity of Page 100 interpreting and labeling in terms of concepts and ideas whatever one perceives. Such a state of absolute stillness seems to be what Sri Aurobindo ...
... image of my dreams. "Reflex" the noun (or adjective) is accented on the first syllable. I am glad you are taking up writing again. I always think that it is a mistake at this stage to give up mental activity— that it should be done as the exercise of a god-given talent to be used for the true purpose is quite the right thing and my experience is that it can help rather than hinder the purification... perfect at once, but progress comes by ever new waves of the same Power. It is the same method that the Mother proposed to you for your meditation—if meditation it must be called—not a strain of mental activity, but a restful opening to the Force that is there all the time above and aroundbyou, so that it may flow freely and do its work in peace and illumination and Ananda. The way has been shown to you ...
... means both to rest and to enjoy. They are the powers of Truth entering into the outpourings of the Ananda in man as soon as that movement has been prepared by the vital and mental activity of the Ashwins and the pure mental activity of Indra. Page 89 "O fosterers who uphold the doer in his work, O all-gods, come and divide the Soma-wine that I distribute. "O all-gods who bring over to us ...
... adverse pressure in the body & in the kriti & the failure of confirmed decisive results in the third chatusthaya. The ritam has ceased to develop & the thought & action are of the brihat of the mental activity. Rig Veda II 5 to 8 12 June 1914 S. [Sortilege] इन्द्रापर्वता बृहता रथेन वामीरिष आ वहंत सुवीराः Script. There has been, as predicted in the lipi, a suspension of the effective activity... fulfilled or would be fulfilled but for the intervention of another force. Some are more remote being only intentions in the subconscious being that are kept from emergence by the overt nervous & mental activity or thoughts which cannot fulfil themselves in the actual state of the Prakriti. Sort 3) बृहव्ददेम विदथे सुवीराः Aishwaryas in Kriti fulfilled. 1) Irish National Volunteers 2) Stress ...
... relax, relax all one's nerves—I have explained this to you already, one relaxes all the nerves and lets oneself go... like this... you know—well, at that moment, one must relax very carefully all mental activity and make that quiet, as quiet as possible, and not go off to sleep until the mind is quite calm. Then you escape quite a long period of useless excitement which is extremely tiring. If you can... out from your physical consciousness and enter a more subtle consciousness, you put your vital to Page 185 sleep, you say to it, "Rest now, keep very quiet", and then you enter your mental activity and say to the mind, "Rest now, remain very quiet", and you put it to sleep also; and then you come out of the mind into a higher region, and there, if it begins to interest you, for instance, ...
... being able to see or feel directly their thought, their mental activity, who can enter the mental atmosphere of others without needing to use words to make themselves understood, can easily differentiate between someone whose soul is active and someone whose soul is asleep. The activity of the soul gives a special colouring to the mental activity—it is lighter, more comprehensive and luminous—so that ...
... before retiring to bed one has talked a lot or had a lively discussion, if one has read an exciting or intensely interesting book, one should rest a little without sleeping in order to quieten the mental activity, so that the brain does not engage in disorderly movements while the other parts of the body alone are asleep. Those who practise meditation will do well to concentrate for a few minutes on a lofty... or not. And among the higher species, it is in the self-sacrificing devotion of the female to her young. This brings us quite naturally to the human race in which, with the triumphant advent of mental activity, this association reaches its climax, for it has become conscious and deliberate. Indeed, as soon as terrestrial development made it possible. Nature took up this sublime force of love and put ...
... so that we see the starting-point and the result without following the whole process in detail, the whole development Page 399 of the mental activity. People who have a very quick mind and can grasp things very fast, people whose mental activity is extremely swift, immediate, can give the impression that they have intuition but this is only an outer form and almost an imitation of true intuition ...
... 314 The experience must come first and the explanation afterwards. That is why Sri Aurobindo has said: Never distrust your experience; but you may distrust your explanation, which is a mental activity. 19 It is very important to take note of one's experiences and remember them. To construct a system of development is secondary and sometimes harmful. 17 March 1965 Sweet Mother... unless one has obtained this calm and indifference through a very intense sadhana resulting in a perfect equality for which good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant no longer exist. But in that case, mental activity is replaced by an intuitive activity of a much higher kind. 25 May 1966 Page 335 Sweet Mother, How can one get out of this mental laziness and inertia? By wanting ...
... It's by doing the work as we should that the body is put in the condition necessary for it to benefit from the... As for me, my impression was that mental activity acted as a "buffer," if you like, and prevented ... No, no! No. This mental activity is what the Supreme Lord is expecting of you. That's it. That's it. So then, instead of being an obstacle, it's THROUGH this activity that the work ...
... as co-ordinate to the phenomena of external nature. According to Tichner the ' subject ' is a group of phenomena. All values and judgments of human utility and purpose must be eschewed and all mental activity should be investigated structurally with a view to discover the qualities possessed by them and the laws regulating their functions, just as physics or chemistry or other sciences, study various... logy. The psychological phenomena, they urge, is not at all co-ordinate with the material. Facts of psychologjcal life are fundamentally of a different order from those of natural Science. A mental activity has always without exception a personal reference. It is somebody's. How can one understand a mental process divested from value ? Value is created by the "subject." A physical object such as ...
... within ourselves a pure, luminous and powerful intellectual synthesis. For this purpose we must bring down into ourselves the highest thoughts within our reach, that is, within the field of our mental activity, and make them our own. But since thoughts are living beings, they have, as we do, their likes and dislikes, their attractions and repulsions. We must therefore adopt a special attitude towards... brief, a long and sometimes painful task. Indeed we are very seldom disinterested with regard to ideas; there are some which we prefer to others and which, consequently, occupy a place in our mental activity which they do not always deserve. And if we must replace them with others that are more precise, more true, we often hesitate long before doing so, we cling to them as indispensable friends ...
... have perfect control over our mental activity, these thoughts are nothing but reflexes coming from every outside influence (sensations and suggestions). Thus we do not possess ourselves and can in no way be responsible for ourselves so long as we are not the masters of our thought. Second condition . To will persistently an effective direction of our mental activity. Third condition . To observe ...
... your brain may produce minute, trivial thoughts about this small, insignificant sensation.... This is how most human lives are spent; this is what human beings most often call thinking ─a mental activity that is almost mechanical, unreflecting, out of our control, a reflex. All thoughts concerning material life and its many needs are of the same quality. Here we face the first difficulty to... which brings us into relation with the infinite source of knowledge. These are only exercises for training ourselves gradually to an individualising control of our thoughts. For control of the mental activity is indispensable to one who wants to meditate. I cannot speak to you in detail today about meditation; Page 26 I shall only say that in order to be genuine, to serve its full purpose ...
... 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 has deteriorated. It may no longer manifest its intelligence ...
... act of kindness towards them, whilst men, ninety-eight times out of a hundred, begin to reason and ask themselves what interest one could have in being good. This is one of the great miseries of mental activity. Animals are free from this and when you are kind to them they are grateful to you, spontaneously. And they have trust. So their love is made of that, and it turns into a very strong attachment... there are those who don't have it. The unselfish movement, uncalculating, is one of the most beautiful forms of psychic consciousness in the world. But the higher one rises in the scale of mental activity, the rarer it becomes. For with intelligence come all the skill and cleverness, and corruption, calculation. For instance, when a rose blossoms it does so spontaneously, for the joy of being beautiful ...
... and writing and thinking—with the result that I live mostly in my mind. This constant preoccupation in mental activity stands in the way of the opening of the psychic centre. It has also made my life very dry and top-heavy. You have said in the "Bulletin" that this sort of constant mental activity is not good for receiving the New Consciousness that is now manifesting. But, then, Page 213 ...
... at and witnessing and knowing, the other executive and instrumental and doing. This gives not only freedom but power—and in this inner being one can get into touch with the Divine not through mental activity but through the substance of the being, by a certain inward touch, perception, reception, receiving also the right inspiration or intuition of the work. Page 256 If one feels a... bhakti. Otherwise it may become a delicate and ticklish job. Obstacles, (1) normal habit of relying on outward means for everything, (2) ego, substituting its suggestions for the right answer, (3) mental activity, (4) intruder nuisances. I think you need not be eager for this, but rely on the growth of the inner consciousness. The above is only by way of general explanation. A constant aspiration ...
... in the inner the mantra is the meditation or the sacred formula, the tantra the putting forth of the power generated by mantra to bring about some successful spiritual, intellectual, vital or mental activity of which the gods have their share. (12) The mantra consists of gayatra, brahma and arka, the formulation of thought into rhythmic speech to bring about a spiritual force or result, the filling... qualities, psychological conditions. Page 38 Saraswati has the power of firm plenty, vajini, by means of or consisting in many kinds of plenty, copious stores of mental material for any mental activity or sacrifice. But first of all she is purifying, pavaka. Therefore she is not merely or not essentially a goddess of mental force, but of enlightenment; for enlightenment is the mental force that ...
... passes, but one remains quiet for the next flood and at its time surely it comes. Here too all is not perfect at once; but progress comes by ever new waves of the same Power. Not then a strain of mental activity, but a restful opening to the Force that is there all the time above and around you, so that it may flow freely and do its work in peace and illumination and Ananda. The way has been shown to you... you for a fairly long time now and it is in the cheerful states that it is the most active. Japa, thinking of the Divine is all right, but it must be on this basis and in company with work and mental activity, for then the instrument is in a healthy condition. But if you become restlessly eager to do nothing but japa and think of nothing but the Divine and of the "progress" you have or have not made ...
... consciousness. No mental activity was left. And from that day in 1914 she never lived in the mind. Ideas got formed not on a mental initiative but in response to the Truth and in order to make the Truth mentally comprehensible and in order to transmit some experience of the truth to the ordinary world. Sri Aurobindo had known in 1908 the cessation of all mental activity in an utter Nirvana ...
... Remember, Interpret By means of a dream, we participate in all the mental activity in its smallest details. Only the cerebral transcription or this activity is often so childish that we normally pay no attention to it. It is interesting to note that there is nearly always a considerable disparity between what our mental activity is in fact and the way in which we perceive it, and especially the ...
... of consciousness. No mental activity was left. And from that day in 1914 she never lived in the mind. Ideas got formed not on a mental initiative but in response to the Truth and in order to make the Truth mentally comprehensible and in order to transmit some experience of the truth to the ordinary world. Sri Aurobindo had known in 1908 the cessation of all mental activity in an utter Nirvana which ...
... for the correction of any erroneous movement and sometimes in order to point out the right road. It is not meant except at a very early stage to satisfy mental questionings or to stimulate a mental activity. A seeker of this Yoga must guard himself against a rigid, dry and self-assertive mind. A wrongly developed intellect realises its own truth in its crooked ways. It builds a... externalising yourself. After I wrote to you about study. I find I cannot keep reading properly because I am unable to put aside the pressure. The pressure goes on during the mental activity. So much the better. The reading must learn to accommodate itself to the pressure — that is, be done by the outer mind while the inner being remains in concentration. ...
... meditations there are several inner attitudes which I can take and each one generates certain vital currents. What attitudes, for instance? I can try to take the stand of witness of the mental activity ; I can attempt to climb higher and hold fast to the uppermost position of my being. I can call the force down. In my last meditations, for instance, it was not above the head that I was centred... Since my coming here my mind has gone through a whole process. Now, I don't feel much inclined towards space and time and towards reading books. The only thing that remains as a part of mental activity is the business of ordinary life. This is sometimes troublesome; however, I generally succeed in keeping it away during meditation. In the vital I feel the same working. Are there two centres ...
... mental reasoning but by something from above – intuition. At a certain stage the substance of the mind itself is transformed into the intuitive mind. Then it is found impossible to resume the old mental activity. Intuition is an image to the Supermind ; materials collected by the mind are Page 213 there, of course, but they don't enter into the final decision. They are not the chief... Disciple : What is Manas ? What is the difference between Buddhi and Manas ? Sri Aurobindo : When we use Manas in the general and wider sense it means the mind, meaning the whole mental activity – reflection, emotion and mental sensation, all taken together. But when we use Manas in Philosophy we mean by it the "sense-mind". It is located near the heart. For instance, sometimes when ...
... could feel that it was made up of a subtle substance. I could feel everything as the working of that substance. That was far from your carbon-dioxide! Disciple : Did you find any change in mental activity when breathing completely stopped ? Sri Aurobindo : I do not know about complete stopping of the breath, but at the time of Pranayama the breath becomes something regular and rhythmic. ... How is it that Pranayama develops mental capacities? What part does it play in bringing about the higher consciousness? Sri Aurobindo : It is the Pranic – vifal – currents which sustain mental activity. When these currents are changed by Pranayama, they bring about a change in the brain. The cause of dullness of the brain is some obstruction in it which does not allow the higher thought to be ...
... and the theme was - What is the best way of surmounting the ordinary mental activity? If the whole objective of the Yoga was to exceed the mental and penetrate the overhead levels of consciousness - ultimately even the supramental - the central problem, in education and sadhana alike, was to surmount the ordinary mental activity. Meditation was a help, but meditation posed difficulties of its own ...
... sense. In the defective alpa state (of the siddhi) the taking up of the mind into vijnana is being effected for the mental being ( मतुप् ) by the ascending movements of thought constituting his mental activity. It is even suggested that उड् & मतुप् were actual words used in this sense in pre-Vedic Sanscrit. Sleep yesterday seven hours. The dream images occurred, but they were scattered among pale ...
... although mind can & does play in the other sheaths, it can only be by becoming awake & living in his mental body as well as his physical that he can realise the utmost potentialities of pure mental activity. It is because he has these other bodies, that he can, if he will, communicate with the other worlds and have relations with the Gods. This then is the arrangement of the created universe, and ...
... other work in the different tongues of both the first and the second excellence,—must surely be counted among the greatest civilisations and the world's most developed and creative peoples. A mental activity so great and of so fine a quality commencing more than three thousand years ago and still not exhausted is unique and the best and most undeniable witness to something extraordinarily sound and ...
... rapture. His far reaching contributions in many fields of human knowledge fill me with wonder. As an apologist for the Aurobindonian world-view he stands second to none. And behind all this protean mental activity the sadhak - ever cheerful, never complaining, complete in his surrender to the Mother, alive to his human limitations; all this makes me feel that I am in the presence of a great soul. I dedicate ...
... had a feeling he was close to pinning it down — but it kept wriggling itself out, teasing his mind to near breaking point, his nerves tensed. The Mother then intervened. She told him to stop all mental activity — no maths, no chess even. She, as part of the cure, told him to come to pick up balls when she played tennis. She also told him to relax, go sit under a big tree. She said that a tree emanates ...
... machine does not positively imply man's mind acting the logician and mathematician independently of it and making "true results" possible to it. Since this machine does positively imply independent mental activity of a logico-mathematical order, we can only compare certain modes of mechanism in the calculator and the human brain, but never argue that the truth-quality of our beliefs can come about independently ...
... object of his Sadhana should be the purification and calming of the mind, the vital being and the body. After returning to Bhawanipur I see that just the contrary has happened: a feverish psycho mental activity and a much too eager attempt at rapid progress. Instead of calmly receiving he has been seizing at everything that came and trying to translate it and throw it out into form. He has also been pulling ...
... body even before having transformed their intellect, and this produces a total discrepancy, it unbalances them completely. One must first transform one’s thought, one’s whole mind, one’s whole mental activity, and organise it with the higher knowledge. At the same time one must transform one’s character, all the movements of the vital, all impulses, all vital reactions. Finally, when both these things ...
... ideas but of inner spiritual experience. Merely to be attracted to any set of religious or spiritual ideas does not bring with it any realization. Yoga means a change of consciousness; a mere mental activity will not bring a change of consciousness, it can only bring a change of mind,’ 9 Sri Aurobindo wrote tersely. And also, ‘Yoga is not a field for intellectual argument or dissertation. It is ...
... Stannard 5 ) The problem of the whole and its parts is a problem of the mind, and hence cannot be solved by science itself as it recognizes only matter. Science is an exercise of the mind, a mental activity – a blatant truth which is often negated or overlooked. “Mind establishes this fiction of its ordinary commerce that [the given objects] are things with which it can deal separately and not merely ...
... its prejudices, its fixed notions and its ignorant reason may shut the doors to the inner light and prevent the full tide of bhakti from flooding everything; it may also cling to a surface mental activity and refuse to go inside and allow the psychic vision and the feelings of the inner heart to become its guides, though it is by this vision and this feeling that bhakti grows and conquers. So ...
... mystical interpretation of his theory or see any religious concept figuring in his postulates and in this respect differs from Newton, he definitely makes something of a spiritual or mystical mode of mental activity a fundamental ingredient of scientific methodology. Here is a permanent pointer in the body of science itself in the direction of spirituality. Elucidating the development of science, Einstein ...
... at work.’ 36 A year later she had talked about ‘the new substance that is spreading and active in the world,’ a substance with ‘a warmth, a power, such an intense joy that in comparison all mental activity seems cold and dry.’ 37 In that same year she said to her usual audience at the Playground: ‘I can tell you that, by the fact that you are now living on earth — whether you are aware of it or ...
... of these three elements in the being. As a result of their separate formulation in Nature, man has open to him a choice between three kinds of life, the ordinary material existence, a life of mental activity and progress and the unchanging spiritual Page 20 beatitude. But he can, as he progresses, combine these three forms, resolve their discords into a harmonious rhythm and so create in ...
... animate perfection of strength, speed, physical beauty, courage or animal fidelity, affection, intelligence, perfection of art, music, poetry, literature,—perfection of the intellect in any kind of mental activity, the perfect statesman, warrior, artist, craftsman,—perfection in vital force and capacity, perfection in ethical qualities, character, temperament,—all have their high value, their place as rungs ...
... then the animal, then Man in a regular succession out of Matter. What is involved is not Man, but mind and life and spirit. "Involved" means that they are there even though there seems to be no mental activity (as in the tree) and no mental or vital activity (as in the stone); as the evolution goes on the involved life appears and begins to organise itself and the plants appear and then the animals; ...
... and movement of the physical machinery to the shock of the thought-force and will-force from above. All will be originated from above; from above, all that corresponds in gnosis to our present mental activity takes place. 1 But this centre and this action are free, not bound, not dependent on the physical machine, not clamped to a narrow ego-sense. It is not involved in body; it is not shut up ...
... terms of Veda. Moreover, Sayana's tendency, is to obliterate all fine shades and distinctions between words and to give them their vaguest general significance. All epithets conveying ideas of mental activity mean for him simply "intelligent", all words suggesting various ideas of force, and the Veda overflows with them, are reduced to the broad idea of strength. I found myself on the contrary impressed ...
... no longer the broken and limited activity Page 119 of desires and instincts, all about the life of the Waters (vs. 4-5). The sevenfold Waters thus rise upward and become the pure mental activity, the Mighty Ones of Heaven. They there reveal themselves as the first eternal ever-young energies, separate streams but of one origin—for they have all flowed from the one womb of the superconscient ...
... the intellect. The chief movement has been the development of the ideality, its increasing hold on the rebellious & self-acting intellectuality in the outer swabhava and the transfer of the mental activity to the ideal plane. Telepathy has increased to a considerable extent and embraces now the thoughts also, but is not always evenly active; in the use of the trikaldrishti it has become something ...
... over-stress, effort,) which still persist in the mental environment. All the vijnana siddhis are now permanently active and effective, but with defects and limitations & subject to the continued mental activity of mixed truth & falsehood which is still successfully maintained in the mental environment by the opposing tendencies of Prakriti and successfully thrust upon the mind in the form of suggestions ...
... smallest details & shades of perception. There were still suggestions ill understood, intentions unfulfilled or refusals of intention contradicted in fact, but these were only a small part of the mental activity. The type of union of knowledge & tapas, manomaya more than vijnanamaya, was almost entirely achieved. Dream Fantastic; not of this world. Siddhi Vijnana is hastening towards ...
... man can avoid eating and breathing unless he wishes to leave his body; for these things are the natural action of the vijnana, the plane of ideal consciousness, to which he is rising, just as mental activity and physical motion are the natural action of man's ordinary life. All the ancient Rishis used these powers, all great Avatars and Yogins and vibhutis from Christ to Ramakrishna have used them; ...
... ideas, its prejudices, its fixed notions and its ignorant reason may shut the doors to the inner light and prevent the full tide of bhakti from flooding everything; it may also cling to a surface mental activity and refuse to go inside and allow the psychic vision and the feelings of the inner heart to become its guides, though it is by this vision and this feeling that bhakti grows and conquers. So too ...
... 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 possible; one gets the inner Silence. After that this inner Silence can remain even when there is activity of any kind; the being remains silent within, the action goes on in the instruments ...
... for the correction of any erroneous movement and sometimes in order to point out the right road. It is not meant except at a very early stage to satisfy mental questionings or to stimulate a mental activity. 26 March 1935 Once I asked you to give some advice as regards the treatment of a patient. You replied: "I have no medico in me, not even a latent medico." 1 Of course not. If it ...
... too many contradictions close together lest they clash! It must make a proper organisation) and they tell you, "Now, I know!"—They know nothing at all! It is quite interesting, for the more mental activity one has, the more does one indulge in this little game. And there are Page 202 ideas to which one clings! One hangs on to them as though all life depended upon it! I have known people ...
... more than thousands of words that have no meaning—this anybody can understand—but it is also said that the word that gives you peace is worth more than thousands of words that can satisfy the mental activity but have no psychological effect on your being. Indeed, when you have found something which has the power to help you in gaining a victory over your unconsciousness and inertia, you must, till ...
... field, then becomes vital, then physical. I want to make it clear that it is not a question of the pure mind here, but of the physical mind; for in the physical consciousness itself there is a mental activity, a vital activity and a purely material activity, and all that takes place in your physical consciousness, in your body consciousness and bodily activity, penetrates first in the form of vibrations ...
... it possible to be... To be unreasonable? Unfortunately that happens very often! Page 372 Is it possible to disregard reason?... It is possible only when you have passed beyond mental activity. It is possible only when you have achieved a surrender, a total giving of yourself. It is possible only when you no longer have any desires. So long as you have desires, have an ego and a will ...
... that if one knows how to use it in the right way, one gets a good result. He observed—and I think it is true, my observation agrees with his—that people spend their time thinking wrongly. Their mental activity is almost always half pessimistic, and even half destructive. They are all the time thinking of and foreseeing bad things which may happen, troublesome consequences of what they have done, and ...
... 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 concerning thought, mental activity, the understanding of things, the observation of things, thought, deduction, reasoning, the contact Page 350 with teaching, knowledge, the result of this knowledge on your understanding—all ...
... if he doesn't control himself. In his case too the mind must act to prevent him from doing things which will cause him serious trouble. This is the nature of the human being: to have a kind of mental activity in him which governs the rest of his being, more or less. And his level of civilisation depends exactly on the point this control has reached, and naturally, as I said, on the value of the controlling ...
... send along quite simply something like a concentrated mental consciousness and that goes forward and touches the thing. Only, if you do this without completely detaching yourself from your own mental activity, I am afraid you will see only what is in your own head! Instead of seeing the thing as it is, perhaps you take a walk in your own brain and see only what is there—it is a danger. You must be able ...
... so great that he cannot go farther. There are people who have necessarily to come out of their religion if they do not want to be halted in their progress. But those who have practically no mental activity, who do not ask themselves any questions, who have only an intense devotion in their heart and an urge to give themselves to something that is infinitely greater, for these it does not matter whether ...
... of mental development. We tend to call “natural” any spontaneous manifestation which is not the result of a choice or a preconceived decision, that is to say, without the intrusion of any mental activity. This is why when a man has a vital spontaneity which is very little mentalised, he seems more “natural” in his simplicity. But this naturalness is very much like that of the animal and is at the ...
... your minds so that your thoughts harmonise and become complementary to each other and your intellectual preoccupations and discoveries are shared between you; in a word, to make your spheres of mental activity identical through a broadening and an enrichment acquired by both at the same time: it is good, it is absolutely necessary, but it is not enough. Beyond all that, in the depths, at the ...
... unless one has obtained this calm and indifference through a very intense sadhana resulting in perfect equality for which good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant no longer exist. But in that case, mental activity is replaced by an intuitive activity of a much higher kind. 25 May 1966 * Page 22 Sweet Mother, How can one get out of this mental laziness and inertia ...
... 12 July 1964 Never believe that you know. Always try to know better. Blessings. 12 July 1964 First Seminar: 9 August 1964 What is the best way of surmounting the ordinary mental activity? 1 My answer: Keep silent. Second Seminar: 22 November 1964 How to be steady and sincere in our aspiration for the Divine Life. 2 Consider the Divine Life as the most important ...
... June 1949 Page 283 If I understand well what you have written, you mean that by concentrating one's attention on the physical activity one is doing, it automatically stops all mental activity and this increases the efficiency of the body. This is true provided the concentration is total which is rather rare. Blessings. 2 June 1949 ( A captain, who had begun teaching athletics ...
... one has obtained calm and indifference through a very intense sadhana resulting in a perfect equality for which the good and bad, the pleasant and unpleasant no longer exist. But in that case, mental activity is replaced by an intuitive activity of a much higher kind. 25 May 1966 How can one get out of this mental laziness and inertia? By wanting to, with persistence and obstinacy. By doing ...
... would lead us really too far tonight. On the other hand, to do this, we would have to devote ourselves to lengthy metaphysical speculations, and there is nothing I dread more than this form of mental activity. Faithful in this matter to the teaching of the Buddha, I am convinced that we can make a far better use of our time and minds than in hazardous excursions into the intellectual realm which, in ...
... this country, though it may be quite Page 182 unsuitable here. They take all political cants and catch phrases and they adopt them in their talk, not in work. They have too much mental activity—have all sorts of ideas and forms in their brains, which have very little practical value. Why is this so? That is all due to Mayavada [the doctrine of Illusion]—our men have ...
... intellectual speculation to any supramental vibration. Perhaps it is the word that misleads us! Perhaps it is because we call it "supramental" that we expect to reach it through a higher intellectual mental activity? But the fact is very different. With this very high, very pure, very noble intellectual activity, one seems to move towards a kind of cold, powerless abstraction, a frozen, an icy light which ...
... we have just said, this inspiration from regions far above the mind surpasses in value and quality the highest achievements of the mind, such as reason. Reason is certainly at the apex of human mental activity. It can review and control the knowledge acquired with the help of the senses. It has often been said that the senses are altogether defective instruments of knowledge, that they are incapable ...
... imagination are what could be called higher imaginations. And now, to come down to a more ordinary level, everyone has in him, in a greater or lesser measure, the power to give form to his mental activity and use this form either in his ordinary activity or to create and realise something. We are all the time, always , creating images, creating forms. We send them into the atmosphere without even ...
... highest, most luminous aspiration. All that we want to become, that is the Divine." He was so happy, he told me: "Oh! That way it becomes easy!" But when you look—as you look coming out of the mental activity and as you look at the experience which you have—and you say to yourself: "How to say this? How to explain this?", then what is nearest, most accessible is this: into this "something" which we ...
... the spiral of mental development. We tend to apply the word 'natural' to all spontaneous manifestation not resulting from a choice or a preconceived decision—that is, with no intrusion of mental activity. That's why a man with an only slightly mentalized vital spontaneity seems more 'natural' to us in his simplicity. But this naturalness bears a close resemblance to the animal's and is quite low ...
... no longer doing anything but what the Divine wanted—it was the consciousness that the divine Will was all-powerful and that there was no longer any personal will, although there was still some mental activity and everything had to be made silent. In 1914, it was silenced, and the consciousness was established above the head. Here ( the heart ) and here ( above the head ), the connection is constant ...
... spell that?' It took me half a minute to remember. It was really funny! Coming at the end of the night as it did, it means that it's an exploration in some part or another of a subconscious mental activity. And you can make so many discoveries there ... it is unbelievable! But it's lovely. And rarely unpleasant. There was a time when it was very unpleasant, oppressive, full of effort and resistance ...
... of the earth and the Descent of the Force. And that went on consciously throughout the war. Page 271 The body was built for that purpose. At the time, there was still a lot of mental activity, and those experiences took all the forms the mind gives to things—very nice, very literary! Now, all that is over—happily, thank God! A complete silence—I don't make speeches on the thing. But ...
... experiences interpenetrate, combine with each other, complement each other—it's wonderful. At the same time, I am little by little learning from demonstration the true use that must be made of mental activity. Its purpose is easy to understand: it has been used to educate, awaken and so on; but it's not something that after having done its duty and fulfilled its purpose will disappear. It will be used ...
... but it is not enough. To unite your minds, to harmonise your thoughts and make them complementary, to share your intellectual preoccupations and discoveries; in short, to make your sphere of mental activity identical through a widening and enrichment acquired by both at once—that is good, that is absolutely necessary, but it is not enough. Beyond all that, in the depths, at the centre, at the summit ...
... that: it's only in the form, especially in the line of precision); the first expression is a little hazy, then it becomes more precise. And I don't try to find it, I don't strive, there isn't any mental activity: it's always like this ( even, still gesture to the forehead ), and it's always in this [stillness] that it comes: suddenly it comes—plop! plop! I say, "Oh!" and note it down. This is my experience ...
... looking after me Page 244 and I am looking after you, it's not that: we meet because we work together. And there are vast movements of consciousness. To tell the truth, I don't like mental activity—I have never liked it. I worked a lot in the mind for a time: it was a phase, the phase of mental development when I did philosophy—all philosophies, comparative philosophies—in order to make the ...
... Mother laughs )... And if he brought it to my room! But animals really have a lot of charm. I must say we are on very good terms. The whole perversion brought into the human consciousness by mental activity isn't there (except in those that have lived with man), but those that come straight from outside have a simplicity, a sort of ingenuousness which is very charming. And an uncanny receptivity, ...
... intellectual speculation to any supramental vibration. Perhaps it is the word that misleads us! Perhaps it is because we call it 'supramental' that we expect to reach it through a higher intellectual mental activity. But the reality is quite different. With this very high and pure and lofty intellectual activity, one seems to go towards a kind of cold, powerless abstraction, an icy light that is surely very ...
... physical is regarded as the prime reality. The inner self is still viewed as an outcome and a dependent of the outer. The psychology current in Soviet Russia is Behaviourism: it looks on all mental activity as the sum-total of the throat's muscle-movements—to think is simply to talk loudly or Page 48 under one's breath! There is for the Marxist nothing else than phases of physical ...
... difficulties of the occidental nature are born of the dominant trend of the European mind in the immediate past. A greater readiness of essential doubt and sceptical reserve; a habit of mental activity as a necessity of the nature which makes it more difficult to achieve a complete mental silence; a stronger turn towards outside things born of the plenitude of active life; a habit of mental ...
... his fundamental axioms by generalization from observed phenomena through a kind of inductive reasoning. In the place of that picture has come the mode of mental activity which Karl Popper calls "hypothetico-deductive". A scientist builds a hypothesis (often resting on a "hunch"), then makes deductions from it and submits ...
... and the silent mind are not clear. SRI AUROBINDO ( after reading the letter): A quiet mind is not necessarily free from thoughts. Thoughts can come but the mind is free from disturbance. The mental activity can go on in a quiet mind without the mind getting disturbed in any way. It is a negative state, you may say. In the silent mind also, thoughts can come but they are on the surface, while the silence ...
... epidemic of, 58 Integral perfection, 269-72 Integral yoga, 68-73, 251, 262, 269, 271 Page 283 Intuition,79,245-6, 249, 264-5, 268 1914 (Silence of Mental activity), 50-1, 52-3 Involution, 257-9 1915 (Departure for France), 57 Japa,117 1916-20 (Stay in Japan), 57-64 Japan, 41, 57-62, 64 1920 (Return to Pondicherry) ...
... over the face of the Truth, the Sight, the divine Ideation. When that is removed, sight replaces mental thought, the all-embracing truth-ideation, Manas, Veda, D ṛṣ ti, replaces the fragmentary mental activity." (Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, pp. 166-67.) 32. Rig-Veda, X. 37-8. 33. Rig-Veda, I. 50-10. Page 137 ...
... Consequently, "he wears light as a robe about all the life of the Waters and formed in himself glories vast and without any deficiency". At the next higher stage, the sevenfold Waters become the pure mental activity, the Mighty Ones of Heaven: They then reveal themselves as the first eternal ever-young energies — separate streams but of one origin, the seven words, sapta Vanih. There is a further ascent ...
... descending through writing) is now something fixed and normal to the consciousness. KNOWLEDGE AND MIND The knowledge seems to be obstructed by the mental Page 244 activity. Whenever a little of it descends the mechanical mind catches it and goes on chewing it endlessly. That is why sometimes I have to stop the flow of even the higher thought to ...
... At present what I often feel is the silence and the Force. They are the two first things that have to be frequent till they are stabilised. If I do not allow any mental activity, through which agency will the Force act? It creates its own activities in the mind or elsewhere. There is a pressure on the head. Perhaps a higher Force is trying ...
... human endeavour, its achievements and realisations form a single collective activity: it is one force, one energy realising itself in and through many vehicles and instruments. Not even man's mental activity that seems so free and autonomous is outside the compass of the universal gravitational field where everything is appointed and determined in a compact tensile global unity. Each individual ...
... 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 possible; one gets the inner Silence. After that this inner Silence can remain even when there is activity of any kind; the being remains silent within, the action goes on in the instruments ...
... the third layer will be Intuitive Mind. The fourth will be Overmind, and Overmind directly puts one in contact with the Supermind. The movement of ascent from mind often begins by stopping all mental activity,— there is no thinking. In the Higher Mind, one does not reason as he does in the mind. The action of the Higher Mind is like coming down of knowledge-light rather than darkness trying to pierce ...
... attempt to explain to the human mind what is really behind it. But to the western mind thought is the highest thing. If you can think out an explanation of the universe you have reached the goal of mental activity. They use the mind for the sake of using it – that leads nowhere. (Turning to X) So, you see, the universe is not a question of logic but of consciousness. Disciple : But is the story of ...
... hour. Formerly my memory was dull, but afterwards when the inspiration came, I could remember the lines in their order and write them down conveniently at any time. Along with this enhanced mental activity I could see an electric energy all around the brain." ² On another occasion he spoke of Pranayama as follows: "The results were remarkable. Many visions of scenes and figures I used to see ...
... mantric utterances of the rishis, meaning but limped behind the expression. 67 In other words, the overhead inspiration is unpredictable, and comes without any antecedent mental activity; once the wonder of poetic expression has been spontaneously accomplished, the meddling intellect can, if it likes, try to anatomise the poetry. It would, perhaps, be wiser on the whole to surrender ...
... therefore described as Truth-consciousness or even as supramental Truth-consciousness, and it operates between the unitarian and indivisible Sachchidananda above and the analytic and dividing Mind or mental activity below. This mediating Supermind is both the child of Sachchidananda and the parent of the Mind; by its poise of identity it has total comprehension, and by its power of differentiation it precipitates ...
... For each season there are flowers and for each flower there are gardens. 10 Nature's largesse was doubtless there, but equally in evidence was artful human contrivance, the result of mental activity in the miniature. The daintiness, the doll-like clarity and cleanliness, the surface perfection, the infallible artistic sense, the neat exquisite finish: True art is a whole and an ensemble; ...
... retain their effective strength even when translated from the original French into English. She wrote, or she spoke, even as she breathed, or walked or attended to her multiple chores; the normal mental activity was generally withdrawn, and only the consciousness Divine was the originator of her actions, speech and writing. Writing on 2 February 1949 on "Youth" the Mother said: Youth does not depend ...
... Yoga and in Essays on the Gita. Is it possible to have a correct conception of the Divine? No conception of the Divine can be correct; for conceptions are mental activities, and no mental activity is fit to manifest the Divine. It is only by experience that one can know Him, and the experience cannot be translated into words. 20 June 1960 * * * Sweet Mother, Are You with ...
... your own being contact with the Divine Presence. So you must concentrate in silence and try to enter deep within to discover the Divine Presence in the depths of your consciousness, beyond all mental activity. 16 December 1971 * * There comes a moment when life becomes intolerable without the Divine Presence. Give yourself, therefore, entirely to the Divine and you will rise up into the ...
... orgiastic force of the intellect is at least as noticeable as the impulse of moral or immoral enthusiasm behind each great action of the Ramayana. Throughout the poem the victorious and manifold mental activity of an age is prominent and gives its character to its civilisation. There is far more of thought in action than in the Ramayana, far less of thought in repose; the one pictures a time of gigantic ...
... have now arrived, in the thought of the Sukta, at a stage when the strength & delight supported by the Soma, taken up through the mantras into the understanding, poured into a strong & many-sided mental activity can be utilised for action and poured out on the world. Therefore the next invocation is to the Visve Devah, to whom also three riks are devoted: Omásaś charshanídhrito, viśve devásah ágata ...
... different parts. Quietness and calm cannot come all at once—always at the beginning thoughts come and the mind interferes with its activity. One has to persevere, to detach oneself from the mental activity till one feels oneself as separate from it. 29 July 1936 You can write whatever is in your mind—but these are outward things and you should not allow outward things to interfere with your ...
... minds constantly active in learning languages? Or has it created for them such a climate Page 748 that they can keep their minds calm and quiet somehow behind and in spite of this mental activity? One can go on without anything except a little rice daily and some water—without clothes even or a house to shelter. Is that what you call true Yoga and that should be followed in the Asram ...
... never the same thing - never. It's always either a different viewpoint or a different motive. So the angle is changed. [passage omitted] ... What gets in the way for most people is mental activity — this body is really infinitely grateful that it's been liberated from the mental presence so as to be able to be ENTIRELY under the influence of this Consciousness, without all that accumulated ...
... that had come to it. There you are. Indeed there are many things in Nature. There is this, there is perhaps ill-will also. But I am not quite sure that it is not one of those presents that mental activity has given to man... as soon as he was separated from his instinct and wanted to act independently.... What exactly is instinct? It is the consciousness of Nature. Nature is conscious of ...
... their body before even having transformed their intelligence, and this produces a complete displacement, it unbalances them totally. One must first transform his thought, all his mind, all his mental activity, organise it with higher knowledge; and at the same time one must transform his character, all the movements of the vital, all impulses, all reactions. And finally, when these two things are done ...
... So, if you are very quiet in your mind, sometimes they bring an indication of what they mean. Many things are possible and you must observe very attentively, but very quietly, without any mental activity, without seeking to understand at that time; because as soon as your mind becomes active and tries to understand, it will jam everything and probably you will not see anything any more. But ...
... And the next minute or the next day, crash! It is undone. How can we get rid of these witnesses? Ah! From the practical point of view, you must be in a state of inner silence, with a mental activity exclusively occupied with forming the thing you want to do, the progress you want to accomplish, that is to say, the mental construction you need for your work. And your capacity for observation—it ...
... help. As for your reading these books, we have no objection at all, so long as you feel the need of it. When the inner life becomes more active again, you can either drop them again or make all mental activity a part of the sadhana according to your condition and inner impulse at the time. 25 October 1934 I have felt bound to explain so much [ about the behaviour of certain sadhaks ] though I would ...
... object of his Sadhana should be the purification and calming of the mind, the vital being and the body. After returning to Bhowanipore I see that just the contrary has happened,—a feverish psycho-mental activity and a much too eager attempt at rapid progress. Instead of calmly receiving he has been seizing at everything that came and trying to translate it and throw it out into form. He has also been pulling ...
... conscious or not? and, among the higher species, in the self-sacri6cing devotion of the female for her young ones? This naturally leads us to the human species where, with the triumphant advent of mental activity this association attains its climax, for it is there conscious and deliberate. Indeed, as soon as the terrestrial development made it possible, Nature took up this sublime force of love to put ...
... present relations which are necessarily Page 183 not the future relations between all the elements of the terrestrial problem. Deducing future circumstances from present ones is a mental activity of the nature of reasoning, even if the deduction takes place in the subconscient and is translated in the being into the form of intuition; but reasoning is a human faculty, that is, it is individual; ...
... thing—you must sincerely want it. The first condition is not to begin thinking about the subject and building all sorts of ideas: opposing ideas, possibilities, and entering into a formidable mental activity. First of all, you must put the problem as though you were putting it to someone else, then keep silent, remain like that, immobile. And then, after a little while you will see that at least three ...
... liberate humanity"? (1) In ancient times, as in our own day, each religion had its own particular kind of meditation and worship. And yet everywhere, always, meditation is a special mode of mental activity and concentration, only the details of the practice vary. Worship is a series of ceremonies and rites that are scrupulously and exactly performed in honour of a deity. Here Sri Aurobindo refers ...
... efforts. Calm the vital. Silence the mind. Keep the brain silent and still like an even surface turned upwards and attentive. And wait.... 29 September 1967 It is not by mental activity that you can quiet your mind, it is from a higher or deeper level that you can receive the help you need. And both can be reached in silence only. 18 December 1971 Page 140 ...
... less measure. Those of the occidental nature are born of the dominant trend of the European mind in the immediate past. A greater readiness of essential doubt and sceptical reserve; a habit of mental activity as a necessity of the nature which makes it more difficult to achieve a complete mental silence; a stronger turn towards outside things born of the plenitude of active life (while the Indian commonly ...
... to be finished there and then. I suppose this can be remedied only by one's becoming more conscious within as one does in sadhana, till one can see and counteract the wrong movement of inferior mental activity by bringing down of one's will again the right inspiration and perception. Page 252 Thoughts of Sadhana during Work Thoughts of sadhana can go on very well along with work. To combine ...
... sensational activism is still its driving force. Modern education has not in the mass redeemed the sensational man; it has only made necessary to him things to which he was not formerly accustomed, mental activity and occupations, intellectual and even aesthetic sensations, emotions of idealism. He still lives in the vital substratum, but he wants it stimulated from above. He requires an army of writers ...
... rich and bright state or activity of the brain-power, medhā , as basis and substance of illuminated thought. By dhiyaṁ ghṛtācīm is meant, therefore, the intellect full of a rich and bright mental activity. Varuna and Mitra who accomplish or perfect this state of the intellect, are distinguished by two several epithets. Mitra is pūtadakṣa , possessed of a purified judgment; Varuna is riśādas ...
... the presence of error. The fullness, the manhaná of this viveka is the foundation & safeguard of Ritam or Vedas. The first great movement of Agni Jatavedas is to transform by the divine will in mental activity his lower smoke-covered activity into the bright clearness & fullness of the ideal discernment. Agne adbhuta kratwá dakshasya manhaná. This, then, is the path. It is the development by divine ...
... itself with sense and moves in the sense-forces, the indriyas, instead of occupying itself in all purity with its own function. Hence the confusions of our intellect and the stumblings of our mental activity in its grappling with the contacts of the outer world. But when we rise from our mortal nature to the nature of godhead, devayantah, amritam sapantah, then the first change is the passage from ...
... ideas but of inner spiritual experience. Merely to be attracted to any set of religious or spiritual ideas does not bring with it any realisation. Yoga means a change of consciousness; a mere mental activity will not bring a change of consciousness, it can only bring a change of mind. And if your mind is sufficiently mobile, it will go on changing from one thing to another till the end without arriving ...
... इमं नु मायिनं हुव इंद्रमीशानमोजसा । मरुत्वंतं न [वृज्मसे] 9 । अयमिंद्रो मरुत्सखा वि वृत्रस्याभिनच्छिरः । वज्रेण शतपर्वणा ।। By this it seems to be indicated that the mental activity of the Tapas has to be admitted and used to destroy the obstruction. Page 822 At present there are all sorts of brilliant formations of the nervous mentality which seem to have ...
... the Sight, the divine Ideation, the Truth-Consciousness. When that is removed, sight replaces mental thought, the all-embracing truth-ideation, Mahas, Veda, Drishti, replaces the fragmentary mental activity. True Buddhi (Vijnana) emerges from the dissipated action of the Buddhi which is all that is possible on the basis of the sensemind, the Manas. Vijnana leads us to pure knowledge (Jnana), pure ...
... ascends we have the full scale of one hundred. It is therefore a complex energy of consciousness which is to be the result of Vayu's movement; it is the emergence of the fullest movement of the mental activity now only latent and potential in man,—the ninety and nine steeds that are yoked by the mind. And in the next verse the culminating unit is added. We have a hundred horses, and because the action ...
... higher grades into the mind of Ignorance. It is true that in human mind its action is largely hidden by the interventions of our normal 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 ...
... ego-sense is imperfect and that no knowledge founded upon it alone or primarily or on a reaction against it can be secure or assured of completeness. First, it is a knowledge of our superficial mental activity and its experiences and, with regard to all the large rest of our becoming that is behind, it is an Ignorance. Secondly, it is a knowledge only of being and becoming as limited to the individual ...
... and costly victory for the Mind in which it conquers, represses or even slays the vital cravings, impairs the physical force and disturbs the balance of the body in the interests of a greater mental activity and a higher moral being. It is in this struggle that the impatience of Life, the disgust of the body and the recoil from both towards a pure mental and moral existence take their rise. When man ...
... and will. Buddhi takes up and deals with all the rest of the action of the mind and life and body. It is in its nature thought-power and will-power of the Spirit turned into the lower form of a mental activity. We may distinguish three successive gradations of the action of this intelligence. There is first an inferior perceptive understanding which simply takes Page 651 up, records, understands ...
... of all other ideas and mental activities, then to the prolonged absorption of the mind in this object, finally, to the complete ingoing of the consciousness by which it is lost to all outward mental activity in the oneness of Samadhi. The real object of this mental discipline is to draw away the mind from the outward and the mental world into union with the divine Being. Therefore in the first three ...
... which the true possession of Nature by the soul in its divine existence offers to the eternal seeker in man. Uplifted into the Spirit the soul is no longer subject to Nature; it is above this mental activity. It may be above it in detachment and aloofness, udāsīna , seated above and indifferent, or attracted by and lost in the absorbing peace or bliss of its undifferentiated, its concentrated spiritual ...
... to take another point of view, consciousness being the determining fact and not the bodily existence which is only a result, the man still belongs normally to the status of human, or at least mental activity and this cannot be abrogated by the fact of passing out of the physical body; to get rid of mortal body is not to get rid of mortal mind. Nor is it sufficient to have a dominant disgust of the ...
... supermind when it takes possession of the waking consciousness, dematerialises it, delivers it from its limits, converts the material and the psychic into the nature of the spiritual being. The mental activity that can be most readily organised is, as has been already indicated, that of pure ideative knowledge. This is transformed on the higher level to the true jñāna , supramental thought, supramental ...
... on quite easily, without your noticing it, or else a struggle against a GREAT difficulty. It's only now, because I want to say it, that I observe it and try to express it, otherwise there is no mental activity. Those things have imposed themselves. ( Mother plunges in ) Shall we put a title to these notes on Auroville?... For instance, "Auroville's Stand on Religions"? What about "We Want ...
... There must be a clear instinctive intelligence of the truth about everything due to vishuddhi & prakash—freedom from mental or moral tamas—but no attempt to understand or throw off tamas by mental activity. Fundamental Knowledge - Sraddha 1) Nothing can happen but mangalam. 2) The yoga as laid down cannot fail to be fulfilled. 3) Every detail of the Yoga is arranged by Srikrishna. ...
... come when it will slow down and stop altogether. This is the moment towards which the process moves. Na kinchid api chintayet:—the Yogin should not think of anything at all. Blank cessation of mental activity is aimed at leaving only the sakshi, the witness watching for results. If at this moment the Yogin entrusts himself to the guidance of the universal Teacher within himself, Yoga will fulfil itself ...
... wrote something in a letter to D., and as soon as the letter was sent, I said to myself, "No, that's not the way you should have put it, it's this way...." Because I do it hurriedly and with a mental activity next to me [in those around Mother]: it doesn't express itself with noises but it's there, and that makes it difficult for me to catch "the thing." Then it comes afterwards [when people have left] ...
... manifestation must become: Divine. "Divine," one puts into the word the reflection of all that one has put into the word "Supreme." But as I told you in the beginning, the slightest mental activity lessens the power; there must be a thrust of the whole being, with as little thought as possible. I can give you this ( Mother gives her note to Satprem ). You can keep it. You know the three ...
... Otherwise it may become a delicate and ticklish job. Obstacles; (1) normal habit of relying on outward means for everything; (2) ego, substituting its suggestions for the right answer; (3) mental activity; (4) intruder nuisances. I think you need not be eager for this, but rely on the growth of the inner consciousness. The above is only by way of general explanation. * May 10, 1943 ...
... For there is a spiritual knowledge which is independent of and more true than scientific materialism, bound by the limitations of the human mind. Spiritual insight is based on direct knowledge; mental activity remains inexorably restricted by the human constitution, as has been recognized by philosophers like Plato, Berkeley and Kant. Another example of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s “foreknowledge” ...
... force of logical argument that it is done, but by a clear vision of the relations and sequences of the Knowledge.’ 9 Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, ca. 1918-1920 This enormous ‘mental’ activity, which we can witness for almost seven full years thanks to the Arya, used as its instruments a completely inactive brain (since the realization with Lele in Baroda) and fingers that typed directly ...
... the procedure which we should adopt to retain the memory of our nights, let us listen to the words of the Mother: "...There is almost always a considerable divergence between what our mental activity actually is and the way in which we perceive it, and especially the way in which we remain conscious of it. In its own sphere, this activity determines what vibrations are to be transmitted ...
... the Sight, the divine Ideation, the Truth Consciousness. When that is removed, sight replaces mental thought; the all-embracing truth-ideation, Mahas, Veda, D ṛṣṭ i, replaces the fragmentary mental activity." 41 The Vedic mystics (otherwise called the Rishis or the Seers, for they did not think out the Truth but rather 'saw' it) always sought and eulogised this supra-mental faculty of constantly ...
... the face of the Truth, the Sight, the divine Ideation, the Truth Consciousness. When that is removed, sight replaces mental thought, the all-embracing truth-ideation... replaces the fragmentary mental activity." (The Upanishads, Part One, p. 96) But still the question remains: Are thought and speech intrinsically barred from becoming the vehicles of expression of the spiritual Reality? But ...
... for a fairly long time now and it is in the cheerful states that it is the most active. Japa, thinking of the Divine is all right, but it must be on this basis and in company with work and mental activity, for then the instrument is in a healthy condition. But if you become restlessly eager to do nothing but japa and think of nothing but the Divine and of the "progress" you have or have not made ...
... egoism in certain people which is complicating the situation—otherwise everything would be very simple. 30 April 1938 O Mother, why don't I feel Your presence? It is an excess of mental activity that prevents you from feeling my presence. 3 May 1938 Page 164 One part of my being has started to think about X's faults. I fear that in this you are under influences ...
... Page 237 Sweet Mother, Is it possible to have a correct conception of the Divine? No conception of the Divine can be correct; for conceptions are mental activities, and no mental activity is fit to manifest the Divine. It is only by experience that one can know Him, and the experience cannot be translated into words. 20 June 1960 Page 238 ...
... contact with the Divine Presence. So you must concentrate in silence and Page 426 try to enter deep within to discover the Divine Presence in the depths of your consciousness, beyond all mental activity. 16 December 1971 There comes a moment when life becomes intolerable without the Divine Presence. Therefore, give yourself entirely to the Divine and you will emerge into the Light. ...
... the mental plane and move about in it with the same independence they have in physical life; these people have mentally objective nights. But most people are incapable of doing this: it is their mental activity going on during sleep and assuming forms, and these forms give them what they call dreams. There is a very common example—it is amusing because it is rather vivid. If you have quarrelled with ...
... of mental development. We tend to call "natural" any spontaneous manifestation which is not the result of a choice or a preconceived decision, that is to say, without the intrusion of any mental activity. This is why when a man has a vital spontaneity which is very little mentalised, he seems more "natural" in his simplicity. But this naturalness is very much like that of the animal and is at the ...
... highest, most enlightened aspiration. All that we want to become—that's the Divine." He was so happy! He told me, "Oh, that way it becomes easy!" But when you look at it—when you emerge from mental activity and look at the experience you have, you wonder, "How to say it? How to explain it?" ... The nearest, most accessible, is this: into that "something" we aspire to become, we instinctively, spo ...
... in isolation, like miracles (small miracles, but they look like miracles). So I have wondered if it was going to make others capable of the same inner work?... The hindrance in most people is mental activity—truly, this body is infinitely grateful that it has been liberated from the mental presence so it may be ENTIRELY under the influence of this Consciousness, without this whole accumulated farrago ...
... speak of yourself—that goes without saying. But what can I talk about now, if not about my experience? Because nothing exists any more—all the so-called "objective" knowledge is to me a useless mental activity. So let's just leave it at that. Otherwise, truncated publications... I find that very bad; better nothing at all, because they are, as it were, drained. Yes, drained of all power. ...
... your mentalities, your thoughts harmonising and becoming complementary to each other, your preoccupations and intellectual discoveries shared between you; in a word, to realize your spheres of mental activity identical through broadening and an enrichment acquired by the two at the same time — it is good, it is absolutely necessary — but it is not enough. Beyond it all, at the bottom, at the centre ...
... longer doing anything but what the Divine wanted—it was the consciousness that the divine Will was all-powerful and that there was no longer any personal will, although there was still some mental activity and everything had to be made silent. In 1914, it was silenced, and the consciousness was established above the head. Here (the heart) and here (above the head), the connection is constant ...
... the preparation of the earth and the Descent of the Force. And that went on consciously throughout the war. The body was built for that purpose. At the time, there was still a lot of mental activity, and those ____________________________________ ¹When Satprem suggested publishing this passage in the Bulletin... she observed, 'I don't want to speak of that now, it isn't yet time. We ...
... state. But it is the trance experience that is bringing this separateness. Sometimes a strong pressure to go into sleep or samadhi is felt. It is so compelling that no physical or mental activity can be Page 194 attended to; but when I lie down, I can't sleep, nor do I go into samadhi. It is probably because there is a pressure from above but a ...
... is quite the best ground for experiences and everything else. Can you tell me why no experience is coming to me and why those that I had long, long ago, have stopped? Too big a riot of mental activity and vital jumping. If no joy is felt out of a creation after so much labour, what's the use, can you say? The use of having no joy? It is no use. I am thinking—after all what am I to ...
... a flood in D's? Of course, I want to see also if any better things are possible. See how? If better things come, it is all right; but if you try to find out better things, then that is mental activity. But if you say whatever comes should be transcribed, I don't know, for I have to wait and wait for an expression. Waiting is all right. Should one then keep absolutely silent and go ...
... nothingness, so to say. But is it harmful to test the experience as I did? Should I have remained absolutely silent and calm? It is best to remain silent. To test the experience may lead to a mental activity which will break it. That it did not do so in this case, shows that the power of silence that came down must have been very strong and imperative. You said before that this condition was of ...
... dedicates her "sovereign will...to God's timeless calm". Her mind itself is calm, as if a dynamo has ceased to work, and it is this condition that "men call quietude and prize as peace". Presently, mental activity is not only stilled but wholly ceases; the body is like a stone, although still excluding "eternity's hush", for now and then a stray thought, like a leaf floating from afar, falls on the surface ...
... missing an opportunity and failing in what you have to do. You bring a sincerity of heart in your search and the aptitude of your mind for learning (for reserving your judgment). But your mental activity is harmful ; you must make your mind silent. A new consciousness is seeking expression in you. There are in India people, yogis, who can help you in this and give you a new birth. But there ...
... interested her as much as the outer one. For, playing with the Divine meant an aspiration, opening, right attitude, reception of her force through the game, as through other means like physical and mental activity. Here, of course, the manner is more direct and more joyful. In other words, it was used more as a means of sadhana. When someone had some inner difficulties, she would invite him for a game with ...
... attempt to explain to the human mind what is really beyond it. But to the Western mind thought is the highest thing. If you can think out an explanation of the universe, you have reached the goal of mental activity. The Westerners use the mind for the sake of using the mind. That leads nowhere. (To Nirodbaran) So you see, the universe is not a question of logic but of consciousness. NIRODBARAN: But is ...
... an hour. Formerly my memory was dull, but afterwards when the inspiration came, I could remember the lines in their order and write them down conveniently at any time. Along with this enhanced mental activity I could see an electric energy all around the brain, I could write prose and poetry with a flow. That flow has never ceased since then. The moment I want to write it is there. I also began seeing ...
... and communicates with higher mental realms: illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind, etc. (2) The Mind , with two centers: one between the eyebrows, which controls the will and dynamism of our mental activity (it is also the center of subtle vision, the "third eye" certain traditions speak of); the other, at throat level, controls all the forms of mental expression. (3) The Vital , with three centers: ...
... future in the images of the past or present: It is always wrong to want to evaluate the future or even to foresee it by the thought we have about it, for this thought is the present ... a mental activity of the nature of reasoning .... 42 What we need is the capacity to work without attachment, and "to develop the capacities of individual manifestation without living in the illusion of ...
... their intention, the meaning,-while in that of the original Rishis the meaning runs after their speech." That is to say, the expression of overhead inspiration comes spontaneously without any mental activity, and it acquires its intellectual meaning subsequently. Thus, "voyaging through seas of thought, alone" is concrete expression of a glimpse of overhead level. "I saw Eternity the other night ...
... considers it dangerous to give up the help of reason so long as one lives in the mind and acts from the mind. "It is possible”, she says, "to give up reason only when you have passed beyond the mental activity. It is possible only when you have given yourself totally to the Divine. It is possible only when you have no more desires. Reason must be the ruler until you have gone beyond the state where it ...
... mental consciousness. Thus the outer court of the "Imperishable Inhabitant" is nicely painted with many frescoes. This beautiful image brings out into clear relief, the place and the value of all mental activity, in relation to the Self. The self of man, the real inhabitant of his nature, is im- perishable because it is one in essence with the Divine. There is, thus seen, an enormous thought-content: the ...
... beginnings in the basic citta; it is the intelligence with its power of knowledge and will.... It is in its nature thought-power and will- power of the Spirit turned into the lower form of a mental activity." There are three steps of the action of Page 228 the buddhi: (1) understanding, (2) reason and (3) intelligence proper. The understanding is only a form of the thought-mind ...
... of the present inter-relations which inevitably are not the future inter-relations of all the elements of the terrestrial problem. To deduce the future from the present circumstances is a mental activity of the order of reasoning, even if the deduction takes place in the subconscient and is translated in the being under the form of intuition; and reason is a human, that is to say, an individual ...
... I have tried to follow a mental rule, without success. Perhaps it is the inner consciousness that remembers while the outer is busy? One starts by a mental effort—afterwards it is an inner consciousness that is formed which need not be always thinking of the Mother because it is always conscious of her. 31 May 1933 Page 258 During mental activities my outer being never remembers... Mother. Please show me the way to remain conscious of her in the midst of intellectual pursuits. It can be done when you become the witness detached from the mental actions and not involved in them, not absorbed in them as the mental doer or thinker. 20 March 1934 Since yesterday I have always been in touch with the Mother during work. Not only do I remember her but the connection with her... got through it nor can I remember that I am doing the Mother's work; whereas in poetry, though I may be unlucky as regards experiences, when one writes a poem one does try to think of her, at least mentally. I can even say that it is only by thinking of her that I can compose the lines. Many find it easy to think of the Mother when working; but when they read or write, their mind goes off to the ...
... uhate is proleptic; the result of Indra or mind force becoming entirely luminous with the solar light of the ideal knowledge is to perfect the mental power of the Yogin so that he is Page 1319 strong to support & hold all the activities of mental knowledge & of the temperament in their fullness. "Be rapturous in us and a dwelling for the sacrifice, enter with mastery into Indra, O Soma;... up thy activities. Experienced, Dec 14 & 15th 1913. There are Powers of pure mind which are indifferent, equal to all things, as in possession of the samata,—but they are void of active delight; they do not press out the wine of immortal delight, they possess man in that state when, his hopes oppressed, he takes refuge in a passive & equal indifference, and is no longer in love with mental activities... activities. In this state man takes this enemy of Indra & of his own perfection as a friend and helper. Mental force becoming entirely luminous in knowledge, súrih, is to pierce this dangerous disguise & make clear to the inner eye the true nature of this harmful agency, sama indeed, but asunvan, sama because dunasha & not because of equal delight. He is to be slain in the pure mind where he dwells by Indra ...
... all his energies without calculating, joyfully and freely. But in most human beings, as they grow up, this faculty is blunted by the worries of life, as a result of the predominant place which mental activities come to occupy in the consciousness. However, there is a source of energy which, once discovered, Page 261 is never exhausted, whatever the outer circumstances and physical conditions ...
... that you cannot separate yourself from your mental consciousness in its activity. Naturally, if you take your mental consciousness off the reading, you can't understand what is being read, for it is with the mental consciousness that one understands. You have not to make the mental consciousness separate from the reading, but yourself separate from the mental consciousness. You have to be the Witness... way. The only way [ to separate oneself from mental activities such as reading ] is to separate the Prakriti and Purusha. When you feel Page 64 something within watching all the mental activities but separate from them, just as you can watch things going on outside in the street, then that is the separation of Purusha from mental Prakriti. That [ inability to understand what... sadhana, sadhana must come first—reading and mental development can only be subordinate things. I don't know that it [ mental development ] helps the sadhana and I don't quite understand what is meant by the phrase. What is a fact is that mental like physical work can be made a part of the sadhana,—not as a rival to the sadhana or as another activity with equal rights and less selfish and egoistic ...
... mean that only one part of the mind expresses itself, the rest remains unexpressed behind — it is that unexpressed part with which you have to get into union. In what way are our mental activities divided from the Truth and are a deformation of the Divine Knowledge? Page 34 They work for themselves, not for the Divine, and they follow their own ignorant light... general point of view. You have to learn by experience. Mental information (badly understood, as it always is without experience) might rather hamper than help. In fact there Page 36 is no fixed mental knowledge for these things which vary infinitely. You must learn to go beyond the hankering for mental information and open to the true way of knowledge. You... because to form mental notions beforehand does not help, it becomes an obstacle to getting the the real thing — you either remain with the idea only or you get something limited by the idea you have formed, not the force and full action of the power. The object of the writing should be not to get replies, but to put what passes in you before the Mother and get help— not merely mental but spiritual ...
... has created within her mental unity, formed in the universal Mind separate-seeming dynamos as it were of mentality, constant centres for the generation, distribution and reabsorption of mental force and mental activities, stations as it were in a system of mental telegraphy where messages are conceived, written, sent, received, deciphered, and these messages and these activities are of many kinds, s... vital movements and desires, get rid of the life-sense. We say, finally, "I am not the mind, the motion, the sense, the thought" and by concentration on this knowledge and renunciation of the mental activities, get rid of the mind-sense. When we thus constantly create a gulf between ourselves and the things with which we identified ourselves, their veils progressively fall away from us and the Self... becomes conscious of the current of persistence of mental personality, it thinks of itself as a mental soul occupying the body whether Page 337 once or repeatedly and returning from earthly living to mental worlds beyond; the persistence of this mental being mentally enjoying or suffering sometimes in the body, sometimes on the mental or vital plane of Nature it calls its immortal existence ...
... of capacities or possibilities. It is the mental conception of spiritual life which may say that one has more or less capacity to live spiritually, but this is not at all an adequate statement. What may be said is that one is more or less ready for the decisive and total reversal. In reality, it is the mental capacity to withdraw from ordinary activities and to set out in search of the spiritual life... with the outer being is completely different, cannot be deceived and cannot make a mistake. It is these people the mental being does not understand. So long as one is in the mental consciousness, even the highest, and sees the spiritual life from outside, one judges with one's mental faculties, with the habit of seeking, erring, correcting, progressing, and seeking once again; and one thinks that those... what he was; he is still an ignorant mental being misusing or not effectively using his knowledge, moved by ego and governed by vital desires and passions and the needs of the body, unspiritual and superficial in his outlook, ignorant of his own self and the forces that drive and use him.... Only a spiritual change, an evolution of his being from the superficial mental towards the deeper spiritual con ...
... There is a state in which the sadhak is conscious of the Divine Force working in him or of its results at least and does not Page 105 obstruct its descent or its action by his own mental activities, vital restlessness or physical obscurity and inertia. That is openness to the Divine. Surrender is the best way of opening; but aspiration and quietness can do it up to a certain point so long... the mind and heart remain open and the rest will follow. Clouds that pass and coverings that come cannot prevent it. It is certainly not by merely repeating "to will" and "to open" (with the mental idea), that the will or the opening will come. It is by using the will that the will becomes effective, it is by using the aspiration and the will also that the opening comes. The first thing is to ...
... In this calm the ordinary mental activities like the ordinary vital activities become surface movements with which the silent inner self is not connected. It is the liberation necessary in order that the true knowledge and the true life activity may replace or transform the activities of the Ignorance. The activity of mind is necessary so long as a higher activity cannot be reached; but if the... knowledge—for your psychic being knows. Knowledge and Mental Silence That [ incessant activity ] is always the difficulty with the mind. It must learn to be silent and let the knowledge come without trying to catch hold of it for its own play. The turmoil of mental (intellectual) activity has also to be silenced like the vital activity of desire in order that the calm and peace may be complete... waves or otherwise) seeking a mind that may embody them. One mind takes, looks, rejects—another takes, looks, accepts. Two different minds catch the same thought-form or thought-wave, but the mental activities being different make different results out of them. Or it comes to one and he does nothing, then it walks off, crying "O this unready animal!" and goes to another who promptly annexes it and it ...
... states and to the fullness of an inner change. * The turmoil of mental (intellectual) activity has also to be silenced like the vital activity of desire in order that the calm and peace may be complete. Knowledge has to come but from above. In this calm the ordinary mental activities like the ordinary vital activities become surface movements with which the silent inner self is not connected... It is the ordinary unenlightened activity of the intellect that is an obstacle to spiritual experience, just as the ordinary unregenerated activity of the vital or the obscure stupidly obstructive consciousness of the body is an obstacle. What the Sadhak has to be specially warned against in the wrong processes of the intellect is, first, any mistaking of mental ideas and impressions or intellectual... trenchant rule. * There is a state in which the Sadhak is conscious of the Divine Force working in him or of its results at least and does not obstruct its descent or its action by his own mental activities, vital restlessness or physical obscurity and inertia. That is openness to the Divine. Surrender is the best way of opening; but aspiration and quietness can do it up to a certain point so long ...
... instinct or intuition of mankind. Attempts are sometimes made to have done finally with questionings which have so often been declared insoluble by logical thought and to persuade men to limit their mental activities to the practical and immediate problems of their Page 6 material existence in the universe; but such evasions are never permanent in their effect. Mankind returns from them with a... and it drives towards a more subtle and puissant order than can normally be the result of a less difficult endeavour. The accordance of active Life with a material of form in which the condition of activity itself seems to be inertia, is one problem of opposites that Nature has solved and seeks always to solve better with greater complexities; for its perfect solution would be the material immortality... Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness. And then there seems to be little objection to a farther step in the series and the admission that mental consciousness may itself be only a form and a veil of higher states which are beyond Mind. In that case, the unconquerable impulse of man towards God, Light, Bliss, Freedom, Immortality presents itself ...
... and throw you defenceless in the arms of the devil who wants only to swallow you—and that is the source of endless sorrow and suffering. In the human beings along with the growth of the mental activities grows the subtlety of self-deception. The more they are intellectual the more they are, in their self-deception, completely candid and insincere at the same time. On the path of Truth in... one-pointed in your surrender and sincere in your aspiration and you will constantly feel the presence of the Divine's help and guidance. Among human beings, the most widely spread disease is mental narrowness. They can understand only what they think or feel and cannot tolerate the rest. To realise a progressive truth theories must be remoulded according to practice and not practice made... sentimentality. Man must understand that in spite of all his intellectual achievements he is as incapable of perceiving the supramental vibrations as the animal was incapable of perceiving the mental vibrations when they pervaded the earth before the appearance of the human species The Ideal Attitude A benevolent good will towards all worshippers. An enlightened indifference towards ...
... surrender, 52, 55, 63 time, 21, 22, 51 true self, 79 egoic self, 110, 124, 125, 144, 149, 153 continual state of waiting, 10, 11 insatiable desire for things, 9, 10 mental activities, 12—14 negative reactivity and resistance, 9 self-seeking attitude, 11, 12 vulnerability and insecurity, 8, 9 enlightenment Eckhart's teachings, 24 partial and momentary... M Mahabharata , 20, 107 Page 170 Mayavada (Illusionism) doctrine, 82 meditation, 55, 117, 118, 142, 151 mental being, 101 mental noise, 12,13 forms of perception, 12, 13 mental phenomenon vs phenom enon of consciousness, 14 and practice of witnessing Presence, 14, 15 mind higher, 95, 98 illumined, 96 ... 10, 11 dispersion, state of, 118, 119 faith, 4 fear, 8 human traits, 16 mental knowledge, significance of, 88 mental witness, meaning of, 92 the Now, 16 paradoxes in spiritual teachings, 20 practice of living in the present moment, 108 remedy to mental noise, 13, 14 self-seeking, 12 Mukti , 22, see also liberation N nature ...
... mind. Supramentalised mind: mind has become an instrument for transformation. Mental Limitations and Weaknesses Does one enter a temple with dirty feet? Likewise, one does not enter the temple of the spirit with a sullied mind. In human beings, along with the growth of the mental activities grows the subtlety of self-deception. The more they are intellectual the more they are... your mind and stop its ordinary activity, but it may still be open to ideas coming from outside and that too disturbs the calm. And for the mind to be completely silent, you must not only stop its own activity but shut out all that comes from other minds. This is not easy. Moreover, you must learn to distinguish between a phenomenon of consciousness and a mental phenomenon. One can Page 347... At 8:15 a.m. today the mental words clearly came, "You must go back to Teachers' College now." This is an idea which I have never consciously entertained. Is He behind this? Beware of fanciful mental suggestions! Love. 3 April 1965 Formative faculty in the mind: it is a natural and very spontaneous gift. Mother, sometimes when I use my mental will to become aware of Your ...
... down is wanting for oneself. Even if you have in your thought a vaster aspiration—the earth, the universe—it makes no difference, those are mental activities. ( long silence ) When things are put mentally, all those who have tried to explain things mentally have made an opposition, and so people imagine that one is the very opposite of the other [the True Thing and its distortion]; in that case... experience that you can really understand what you read. It may have the power to convey the experience (mentally that's indisputable: it has a mental effect), but what I am talking about Page 304 is the work here, in the cells of the body.... You give yourself a nice little mental explanation, but that's not it! While when you have had the vibration, ah, it's obvious. You know, you ...
... natural abilities of the child and give him the necessary help in his own line, but it may also happen that, having satisfied through a manual activity a long suppressed need, the child relaxes and begins to take a more lively interest in some mental activities, for which he had hitherto shown no bent. It is the task of the teacher to gauge and find out the needs of his pupils and to assemble or... III The Educational Environment The purpose of the school environment is to give to the child the stimuli that impel him to a self-educative activity. These stimuli are produced by the multiple objects that constitute the equipment of the class-room. In theory, they have to fulfil a double condition. Firstly, they should correspond to actual needs... equipment must not be an incongruous medley, but a careful selection of well-adapted and well-presented objects of interest. What should be the equipment of the class? Much depends on the age and mental development of the children, that is, on the level of the class. We have distinguished three stages in the relation of the children with the outer material world: manipulation, construction, observation ...
... inspiration is not the same as the inspired action of the imaginative intelligence, nor the intuitive revelation as the strong light of a purely mental close seizing and experience. It would perhaps be accurate to say that these latter activities are mental representations of the higher movements, attempts of the ordinary mind to do the same things or the best possible imitations the intellect can... which go far beyond the reason; and these are still mental regions, they have nothing of the supramental. … it is in the mind itself, without coming out of the mind, that there are all these regions which are almost inaccessible for most human beings. … Before reaching the extreme limit of the mind, there are so many regions and mental activities which are not at all accessible to most human beings... are dependent on awakenings of the basic mental ignorance to mental figures and representations of truth that may be quite valid in their own field and for their own purpose but are not necessarily and by their very nature reliable. They are dependent for their emergence on the suggestions given by mental and sense data or on the accumulation of past mental knowledge. They search for the truth as a ...
... recognize the exceptional. This disbelief is the bedrock of the consciousness. And it comes Page 491 with a ... ('thought' is too big a word for such an ordinary thing) a mental-physical activity which makes you... (I am forced to use the word) 'think' things and which always foresees, imagines or draws conclusions (depending on the case) in a way which I myself call DEFEATIST. In... In other words, it automatically leads you to imagine all the bad things that can happen. And this occurs in a realm which is absolutely run-of-the-mill, in the most ordinary, restricted, banal activities of life—such as eating, moving... in short, the coarsest of things. It's fairly easy to manage and control this in the realm of thought, but when it comes to those reactions that rise up from the ...
... and dynamic in its activity of extended consciousness; one Delight blissfully aware of its featureless infinity and blissfully aware of all feature and force and forms as itself; one creative knowledge and governing Will, supramental, originative and determinative of all minds, lives and bodies; one Mind containing all mental beings and constituting all their mental activities; one Life active in... light of the divine Knowledge-Will until it is transformed into a figure of that higher and sublime activity. This transformation cannot be complete or really executed without the awakening of the truth-mind which corresponds in the mental being to the Supermind and is capable of receiving mentally its illuminations. By the opposition of Spirit and Mind without the free opening of this intermediate... within or above, mental and material in our active and earthly living; we have to re-view and remould the lower living in the light, force and joy of the higher reality. We have to Page 421 realise Matter as a sense-created mould of Spirit, a vehicle for all manifestation of the light, force and joy of Sachchidananda in the highest conditions of terrestrial being and activity. We have to see ...
... visage expresses still deeper things than the hidden activities of consciousness. In this open book one can read not only the vices, Page 44 the virtues, the intelligence, the stupidity, the feelings, the most carefully concealed habits, of an individual, but also the constitution of his body, and his tendencies to organic and mental diseases. In fact, the aspect of bones, muscles,... consists in the adjustment of the inner state of the body to the variations of the environment. This adjustment is brought about by the mechanisms responsible for stabilizing physiological and mental activities, and for giving the body its unity. To each change of the surroundings the adaptive functions furnish an appropriate reply. Man can, therefore, stand the modifications of the outside world. The... cosmic universe, and not on the complexity of the inner mechanisms of living beings. For the moment, we cannot understand the mode of organization of our body and its nutritive, nervous, and mental activities. The laws of mechanics, physics, and chemistry are completely applicable to inert matter. Partly, to man. The illusions of the mechanicists of the nineteenth century, the childish physicochemical ...
... whether by conscious manipulation of vital force or by simple mental fiat will immensely increase. By a similar process the habit by which the bodily nature associates certain forms and degrees of activity with strain, fatigue, incapacity can be rectified and the power, freedom, swiftness, effectiveness of the work whether physical or mental which can be done with this bodily instrument marvellously increased... practical purposes we have to make a distinction between the life-energy as it acts in the body, the physical Prana, and the life-energy as it acts in support of the mental activities, the psychical Prana. For we lead always a double life, mental and physical, and the same life-energy acts differently and assumes a different aspect according as it lends itself to one or the other. In the body it produces... fact the food we take can be reduced by contrary habit and new relation to a minimum without the mental or vital vigour being in any way reduced; even on the contrary with a judicious development they can be trained to a greater potentiality of vigour by learning to rely on the secret fountains of mental and vital energy with which they are connected more than upon the minor aid of physical aliments ...
... aspiration consists in a giving, a self-giving, whereas to pull means to want for oneself. Even if in the mind you have a vaster ambition—the earth, the universe—that means nothing, these are mental activities. Page 23 ( Long silence ) You felt nothing special on the Darshan day? No. Sri Aurobindo was there from the morning till the evening. For, yes, for more than an hour... the need to sleep in the way we sleep now. But the most conscious impulse in a superior humanity, which has continued as a source of... bliss is a big word, but joy, delight—is certainly the sexual activity, and that will have absolutely no reason for existence in the functions of Nature when the need to create in that way will no longer exist. Therefore, the capacity of entering into relation with the... humanity in relation to the new or supramental creation. And it was wonderfully clear and concrete and living.... There was all the humanity which is no longer altogether animal, which has benefited by mental development and created a kind of harmony in its life—a harmony vital and artistic, literary—in which the large majority are content to live. They have caught a kind of harmony, and within it they ...
... and dynamic in its activity of extended consciousness; one Delight blissfully aware of its featureless infinity and blissfully aware of all feature and force and forms as Itself; one creative Knowledge and governing Will, supramental, originative and determinative of all minds, lives and bodies; one Mind containing all mental beings and constituting all their mental activities; one Life active in... in all living beings and generative of their vital activities; one substance constituting all forms and objects as the visible and sensible mould in which mind and life manifest and act just as one pure existence is that ether in which all Consciousness, Force and Delight exist unified and find themselves variously. For these are the seven principles of the manifest Page 382 being of S ...
... regions and mental activities which are not at all accessible to most human beings. And even for those who can reach them, they are not regions where they constantly live. They must make an effort of concentration to get there and they don't always arrive. There are regions which Sri Aurobindo has described which only very rare individuals can reach, and still he speaks of them as mental regions. He... keep the word "supermind" for a later time. For the moment let us not speak about it. Somewhere he has written a very detailed description of all the mental functions accessible to man. Well, when we read this, we say that merely to traverse the mental domain to its highest limit there are so many stages which have not yet been crossed that truly we don't need to speak about the supermind for the time... the ordinary man that we live. And to the ordinary consciousness the reason seems to belong to a very high region; and the reason for him is one of the average faculties of the human mind. There are mental regions very much higher than that, which he has described in detail. And it is quite certain that those correspondents, if they had... Suddenly they said that they were having wonderful supramental ...
... when it throws out all its forces without measuring, gladly and freely. But in most human beings, as they grow up, this faculty is deadened because of the cares of life and the predominant place mental activities come to occupy in the consciousness, Page 266 "Yet there is a source of energy which, once discovered, never dries up, whatever the circumstances and the physical conditions in... to the world that human possibilities surpass all expectations.”¹ If such are the possibilities of the human body, how is it that it suffers so much and proves such a stumbling-block to our mental and spiritual progress ? The Mother says that the mind and the life are the two "brigands' that sack and ravage the body. "The body is a marvellous instrument, it is our mind that does not know how ...
... its habitual, hampering activities. Especially, in this age of exaggerated intellectuality, we are apt to confuse spirituality with mental accomplishments and let the power of our pen or the eloquence of our tongue to duty for spiritual experience. It is not unoften that the initial fervour of our heart for spiritual progress is overlaid with a plethora of intellectual activity which revels in the analysis... unremitting mental activities either in the deluded hope of being thereby able to follow the spiritual path better or simply because they cannot overcome the force of habit. One of the reasons why we have so few original and creative thinkers in modern times is this inveterate habit of constant and promiscuous reading and thinking, which keep the surface layers of the mind in a chronic fever of activity and... until you understand that your ideal is no more than a mental principle and that a seeker of the spiritual truth should not be bound and attached to a mental rule. And when once you are free from it, you will find perhaps that all these scenes which troubled you — and were indeed sent in order to trouble you and shake you out of your mental building —have, singularly enough, ceased altogether to ...
... self to this real Self, can realise our whole being in this true Lord of our being, can give up our personality to and into this one real Person, merge our ever-dispersed and ever-converging mental activities into His plenary light, offer up our errant and struggling will and energies into His vast, luminous and undivided Will, at once renounce and satisfy all our dissipated outward-moving desires... nature of the Yoga which he is bidden to embrace, his pragmatic nature accustomed !6.33-34! to act from mental will and preference and desire is appalled by its difficulty and he asks what is the end of the soul which attempts and fails, whether it does not lose both this life of human activity and thought and emotion which it has left behind and the Brahmic consciousness to which it aspires and falling... they are in violent conflict with each other and with themselves and there is no moral standing-ground left, nothing to lay hold of and walk by, no dharma . 1 That for the soul of action in the mental being is the worst possible crisis, failure and overthrow. The revolt itself is the most elemental and simple possible; sensationally, the elemental feeling of horror, pity and disgust; vitally, the ...
... progressive transformation of all the mental into their greater corresponding supramental powers and activities. For everything in the mind derives from and is a limited, inferior, groping, partial or perverse translation into mentality of something in the supermind. But neither of these movements can be successfully executed by the sole individual unaided power of the mental Purusha in us, but needs the help... up the charge of all our activities. There will then be no separate personal will or individual energy trying to conduct our actions, no sense of a little personal self as the doer, nor will it be the lower energy of the three gunas, the mental, vital and physical nature. The divine Shakti will fill Page 760 us and preside over and take up all our inner activities, our outer life, our Yoga... all our mental action. This force we feel in ourselves also, but we can feel it too around us and above, one with the same energy in us, and can draw it in and down to aggrandise our normal action or call upon and get it to pour into us. It is an illimitable ocean of Shakti and will pour as much of itself as we can hold into our being. This pranic force we can use for any of the activities of life ...
... superficial activity of the physical mind and senses that brings to the surface the submerged or subliminal inner vital consciousness and also an inner or subliminal mental consciousness and sense capable of perceiving and experiencing directly, not only the life forces and their play and results and phenomena, but the mental and psychical worlds and all they contain and the mental activities, vibrations... the supermind and the consequent transformation of the being from the state of the mental to that of the supramental Purusha must bring with it to be complete a transformation of all the parts of the nature and all its activities. The whole mind is not merely made into a passive channel of the supramental activities, a channel of their down-flow into the life and body and of their outflow or communication... order which pursues them even more Page 880 than it pursues our more normal mental activities of 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 ...
... of millenniums. Either, then, man by his privilege as a mental being is exempt from the full burden of the tardy laws of evolution or else he already represents and with helpful conditions and in the right stimulating atmosphere can always display a high level of material capacity for the activities of the intellectual life. It is not mental incapacity, but the long rejection or seclusion from opportunity... is our foundation and the first condition of all our energies and realisations, and the Life-Energy which is our means of existence in a material body and the basis there even of our mental and spiritual activities. She has successfully achieved a certain stability of her constant material movement which is at once sufficiently steady and durable and sufficiently pliable and mutable to provide a fit... roots them out as the source Page 11 of noxious activities. Their purification, not their destruction,—their transformation, control and utilisation is the aim in view with which they have been created and developed in us. If the bodily life is what Nature has firmly evolved for us as her base and first instrument, it is our mental life that she is evolving as her immediate next aim and ...
... 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 and... finished: it's the beginning! ( Silence ) It is usually the first contact with the psychic being which brings this experience, but it is only partial, only that part of the consciousness―or of the activity in any part of the being―that part of the consciousness which is united with the psychic has the experience. And so, at the moment of that experience, the position of that part of the consciousness... is completely reversed, it is different. And that is never undone. And if you have the will or take care or are able to put into contact with this part all the problems of your life and all the activities of your being, all the elements of your consciousness, then they begin to be organised in such a way that your being becomes one unity―a single multiplicity, a multiple unity―complex, but organised ...
... passion and ignorance. Tamas is a constituional dullness or passivity which obscures the know- ledge within and creates ignorance, mental inertia, slowness, forgetfulness, disinclination to study, inability to grasp and distinguish. Rajas is an undisciplined activity which obscures knowledge by passion, attachemnt, prejudgment, predilection and wrong ideas. Sattva is an illumination which reveals... making the triple force of memory, invention, judgment comprehensive and analytic, but they greatly enlarged the range, no less than the intensity, of the absorbing, storing and generative mental activities. Hence those astonishing feats of memory, various comprehension and versatility of creative work of which only a few extraordinary intellects have been capable in Occidental history, but which... which they are in possession. And the foundation of the structure they have to build, can only be the provision of a fund of force and energy sufficient to bear the demands of a continually growing activity of the memory, judgment and creative power. Where is that energy to be found? The ancient Aryans knew that man was not separate from the universe, but only a homogeneous part of it, as a wave ...
... passion and ignorance. Tamas is a constitutional dullness or passivity which obscures the knowledge within and creates ignorance, mental inertia, slowness, forgetfulness, disinclination to study, inability to grasp and distinguish. Rajas is an undisciplined activity which obscures knowledge by passion, attachment, prejudgment, predilection and wrong ideas. Sattva is an illumination which reveals... force, making the triple force of memory, invention, judgment comprehensive and analytic, but they greatly enlarged the range, no less than the intensity, of the absorbing, storing and generative mental activities. Hence those astonishing feats of memory, various comprehension and versatility of creative work of which only a few extraordinary intellects have been capable in Occidental history, but which... which they are in possession. And the foundation of the structure they have to build, can only be the provision of a fund of force and energy sufficient to bear the demands of a continually growing activity of the memory, judgment and creative power. Where is that energy to be found? The ancient Aryans knew that man was not separate from the universe, but only a homogeneous part of it, as a wave is ...
... Integrality is an extremely difficult thing for the human consciousness, which begins to be conscious only by limiting itself. But still, with a little effort, for those who know how to play with mental activities, it is possible to widen oneself sufficiently to approach something integral. You form an idea of the Divine which suits your own nature and your own conception, don't you? So if you want to... yoga more powerful. Is it the same as the integral yoga? Not quite. An integral yoga is one which comprises all the parts of the being and all the activities of the being. But the activities of one being are not as powerful as the activities of another; and the integrality of one being is not as total as the integrality of another. You don't understand? If all your being, as it is, participates... which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula. " Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 76 Sweet Mother, what does Sri Aurobindo mean by an integral idea of the Divine? Everyone forms an idea of the Divine for himself according to his personal taste, his possibilities of understanding, his mental preferences, and even his desires. People form the ...
... subtle to do so. The Mental Physical or Mechanical Mind That is the nature of the mental physical to go on repeating without use the movement that has happened. It is what we call the mechanical mind—it is strong in childhood because the thinking mind is not developed and has besides a narrow range of interests. Afterwards it becomes an undercurrent in the mental activities. It must now have risen... Divine. Page 206 The True Activity of the Senses It [ the true activity of the senses ] is to record the divine or true appearance of things and return to them the reaction of an equal Ananda without dislike or desire. The Physical Parts of the Mind and Emotional Being Everything has a physical part—even the mind has a physical part; there is a mental physical, a mind of the body and... and superconscient to us. What we call our mind is only an outer mind, a surface mental action, instrumental for the partial expression of a larger mind behind of which we are not ordinarily aware and can only know by going inside ourselves. So too what we know of the vital in us is only the outer vital, a surface activity partially expressing a larger secret vital which we can only know by going within ...
... (2)Openness to the Divine "is a state in which the sadhaka is conscious of the Divine Force working in him or of its results at least and does not obstruct its descent or its action by his own mental activities, vital restlessness or physical obscurity and inertia." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 603) (3)"Openness is a state of consciousness which keeps it turned to the Mother, free from ...
... s behind the working. All is human knowledge that proceeds from the ordinary mental consciousness interested in the outside or upper layers of things, in process, in phenomena for their own sake or for the sake of some surface utility or mental or vital satisfaction of Desire or of the Intelligence. But the same activity of knowledge can become part of the Yoga if it proceeds from the spiritual or... precise mental rule is seldom applicable; for, even when they walk in the same direction, no two natures proceed on exactly the same lines, in the same series of steps or with quite identical stages of their progress. It may yet be said that a logical succession of the states of progress would be very much in this order. First, there is a large turning in which all the natural mental activities proper... perfection, that the Divine himself has become the Knower and all the inner movements, including the activities of what was once a purely human mental action, have become his field of knowledge. There will be less and less individual choice, opinion, preference, less and less of intellectualisation, mental weaving, cerebral galley-slave labour; a Light within will see all that has to be seen, know all ...
... same as the inspired action of the imaginative intelligence, nor Page 813 the intuitive revelation as the strong light of a purely mental close seizing and experience. It would perhaps be accurate to say that these latter activities are mental representations of the higher movements, attempts of the ordinary mind to do the same things or the best possible imitations the intellect can... the highest leading or absorbing into its own body the others. It is at this point, when the intuitive mind has been fully formed in the mental being and Page 817 is strong enough to dominate if not yet wholly to occupy the various mental activities, that a farther step becomes possible, the lifting of the centre and level of action above the mind and the predominance of the supramental... almost say, upside down of the whole activity. At present we live in the mind and mostly in the physical mind, but still not entirely involved like the animal in the physical, vital and sensational workings. On the contrary we have attained to a certain mental elevation from which we can look down on the action of the life, sense and body, turn the higher mental light on them, reflect, judge, use our ...
... written sufficiently about the mental and moral parts of perfection to which these pursuits can contribute and this I need not repeat here. For Page 705 the body itself the perfections that can be developed by these means are those of its natural qualities and capacities and, secondly, the training of its general fitness, as an instrument for all the activities which may be demanded from it... was striving to shape itself or the brain finds it more easy to lend itself to a less radiant stimulus or else it labours and constructs or responds to poetic artifice. Even in the most purely mental activities the fitness, readiness or perfect training of the bodily instrument is a condition indispensable. That readiness, that response too is part of the total perfection of the body. The essential... their shaping influence. The life and activities involved in the new endeavour are not identical but they too must be an action upon the world and a new creation in it. It must have contacts and connections with it and activities which take their place in the general life and whose initial or primary objects may not seem to differ from those of the same activities in the outside world. ... (...)The ...
... I have written sufficiently about the mental and moral parts of perfection to which these pursuits can contribute and this I need not repeat here. For the body itself the perfections that can be developed by these means are those of its natural qualities and capacities and, secondly, the training of its general fitness as an instrument for all the activities which may be demanded from it by the mind... was striving to shape itself or the brain finds it more easy to lend itself to a less radiant stimulus or else it labours and constructs or responds to poetic artifice. Even in the most purely mental activities the fitness, readiness or perfect training of the bodily instrument is a condition indispensable. That readiness, that response too is part of the total perfection of the body. The essential... their shaping influence. The life and activities involved in the new endeavour are not identical but they too must be an action upon the world and a new creation in it. It must have contacts and connections with it and activities which take their place in the general life and whose initial or primary objects may not seem to differ from those of the same activities in the outside world. In our Ashram ...
... I have written sufficiently about the mental and moral parts of perfection to which these pursuits can contribute and this I need not repeat here. For the body itself the perfections that can be developed by these means are those of its natural qualities and capacities and, secondly, the training of its general fitness, as an instrument for all the activities which may be demanded from it by the mind... was striving to shape itself or the brain finds it more easy to lend itself to a less radiant stimulus or else it labours and constructs or responds to poetic artifice. Even in the most purely mental activities the fitness, readiness or perfect training of the bodily instrument is a condition indispensable. That readiness, that response too is part of the total perfection of the body. Page 137 ... their shaping influence. The life and activities involved in the new endeavour are not identical, but they too must be an action upon the world and a new creation in it. It must have contacts and connections with it and activities which take their place in the general life and whose initial or primary objects may not seem to differ from those of the same activities in the outside world. In our Ashram ...
... ly about Page 75 the mental and moral parts of perfection to which these pursuits can contribute and this I need not repeat here. For the body itself the perfections that can be developed by these means are those of its natural qualities and capacities and, secondly, the training of its general Gtness, as an instrument for all the activities which may be demanded from it by the mind... was striving to shape itself or the brain finds it more easy to lend itself to a less radiant stimulus or else it labours and constructs or responds to poetic artifice. Even in the most purely mental activities the fitness, readiness or perfect training of the bodily instrument is a condition indispensable. That readiness, that response too is part of the total perfection of the body. The essential... their shaping infiuence. The life and activities involved in the new endeavour are not identical but they too must be an action upon the world and a new creation in it. It must have contacts and connections with it and activities which take their place in the general life and whose initial or primary objects may not seem to differ from those of the same activities in the outside world. In our Ashram ...
... depends on how far the inner being imposes the result of its experience on the outer. After the samadhi is over, many parts of my being continue to remain indrawn. The physical and mental activities are handed over to the Mother's force. Then I feel myself positively living and moving in quite another region, and the actions are felt as if carried out by some other person, as if it was somebody... Is it true that the point between the eyebrows is the centre of the will as well as of the inner vision? It is the centre of the inner mind - therefore also of the inner mental will and inner mental vision. I sometimes feel as if my inner being is located above and lives on the higher planes. The inner being cannot be "located" above, it can only join with the... progressing together. But why is there no love, joy and devotion? It depends on how the soul progresses. Why does my soul not progress in love, joy, happiness? Too much activity of the mind and vital - not enough self-giving. Is there no element of love and joy in my nature? There may be, but it must be free from ego and vital mixture -it must be the ...
... Yoga, pp. 347-48 That is the nature of the mental physical to go on repeating without use the movement that has happened. It is what we call the mechanical mind — it is strong in childhood because the thinking mind is not developed and has besides a narrow range of interests. Afterwards it becomes an undercurrent in the mental activities. Letters on Yoga, p. 329 The Vital... able to perceive and deal with other souls as other forms of its pure self; it is capable of sensing them by pure mental impact and communication and no longer only by vital and nervous impact and physical indications; it conceives too a mental figure of unity, and in its activity and its will it can create and possess more directly — not only indirectly as in the ordinary physical life — and in... becomes possible. For first we discover that mind is a subtle substance, a general determinate — or generic indeterminate — which mental energy when it operates throws into forms or particular determinations of itself, thoughts, concepts, percepts, mental sentiments, activities of will and reactions of feeling, but which, when the energy is quiescent, can live either in an inert torpor or in an immobile ...
... in the animal; in man it has to be humanised. The man who has learned to detach his mind from its activities can be merely a thinker observing his thoughts or creative mental activities and trying to perfect them or he may observe his vital nature also and try to perfect that by making it more mental, human and controlled by the thought and will. Obviously he can do that much better if he is detached... Some have succeeded in that way. But if one has a great activity of sex imaginations in the waking state, then it is difficult or may be so to control at night. Another thing is to accustom oneself by a will in the subconscient to wake before the emission comes. Page 122 What are mental sex imaginations? Mental sex imaginations are a form (the most subtle) of subtle... Even to make it realise that it is not the mind but something deeper and higher takes years of sadhana. It is because man is a mental being and therefore closely identified with his mind. When we try to separate ourselves from the mental activities we can't understand them properly. A man with a very developed introspective mind often identifies himself with the witness part ...
... universe. Therefore, man's development is centered on developing his own physical powers and to secure a safe and congenial physical environment; and even when his vital and mental activities begin to grow, these activities aim constantly at securing for themselves a sound civilizational framework where physical life is sought to be established on some permanent basis. But although this is the first... There is, therefore, in man an effort to work on the vital and physical and lower mental life so that that life may be transformed into modes of the higher mental and eventually the supramental harmony. The aim is not to mutilate and destroy the instruments of the vital Page 35 and physical and lower mental life but to tame them, to purify them and eventually to transform them. Man does... and exceeds itself in Man. The mental man is greatly hampered and burdened by the control of the original Inconscience, but the upward evolutionary force aims at evolving out of the mental man the fully conscious being, a divine manhood or a spiritual and supramental supermanhood which shall be the next product of evolutionary process. The transition from the mental man to supramental supermanhood ...
... from outward things; (ii) Holding of the one object of concentration to the exclusion of other ideas and mental activities — dhāranā. (iii) Prolonged absorption of the mind in the object of concentration, — dhyāna. (iv) Loss of all outward mentality, cessation of all mental modifications, in the oneness of Samādhi. Samādhi or Yogic trance retires to increasing depths as it... Mahim ā is an unhampered force in the mental being or in the physical power. In the physical, it shows itself by an abnormal strength which is not muscular and may even develop into the power of increasing the size and the weight of the body, etc. Laghim ā is a similar power of lightness, that is to say, of freedom from all pressure or weighing down in the mental, vital, or physical being. Laghim... elements which are founded on the knowledge relating to Kundalini. It takes into account the psychical or mental body of which the physical is a sort of reproduction in gross form and is able to discover thereby secrets of the physical body which do not appear to a purely physical inquiry. This mental or psychical body has also a subtle pr ā nic force in it corresponding to its own subtle nature and ...
... thought-waves or otherwise) seeking a mind that may embody them. One mind takes, looks, rejects—another takes, looks, accepts. Two different minds catch the same thought-form or thought-wave, but the mental activities being different make different results out of them. Or it comes to one and he does nothing, then it walks off, crying "O this unready animal!" and goes to another who promptly annexes it and it... active mind they have; only of course they concentrate, so the common incoherent mentalising stops and the thoughts that rise or enter and shape themselves are coherently restricted to the subject or activity in hand. But that is quite a different matter from the whole mind falling silent. If thoughts come like that [23.10.35], why is there a difference, sometimes a great difference, between the t... subconscient physical or what? I am handling the handle. Sticky! If you are absolutely in the physical consciousness, so much the better. It shows you are on the way. If you were in your uproarious mental or tragic vital, then there would be little chance for the psychic to emerge. But now that you are in the physical, there is some prospect of your finishing the circle M. V. Ph. Afterwards possibly ...
... outward things; (ii) Dhāranā — Holding of the one object of concentration to the exclusion of other ideas and mental activities. (iii) Dhyāna — Prolonged absorption of the mind in the object of concentration. (iv) Loss of all outward mentality, cessation of all mental modifications, in the oneness of Samādhi. Samadhi or Yogic trance retires to increasing depths as it draws farther... Mahimā is an unhampered force in the mental being or in the physical power. In the physical, it shows itself by an abnormal strength which is not muscular and may even develop into the power of increasing the size and the weight of the body, etc. Laghimā is a similar power of lightness, that is to say, of freedom from all pressure or weighing down in the mental, body, or physical being. Laghimā ... elements which are founded on the knowledge relating to Kundalini. It takes into account the psychical or mental body of which the physical is a sort of reproduction in gross form and is able to discover thereby secrets of the physical body which do not appear to a purely physical inquiry. This mental or psychical body has also a subtle prānic force in it corresponding to its own subtle nature and substance ...
... recognise his own true nature, position and authority. He began by being deeply interested in a small portion of his royal activity, the body. He thought "That is my kingdom." He became the tool of his bodily functions. So with the nervous, the sensational, the emotional and the mental, he identifies himself with each of them. He forgets that he is different from them and much greater and stronger. What... the Sukshma Prana and attacks it there in its native place, it can be utterly destroyed. When you have a visuddha Buddhi you will be able to distinguish these various organs and locate all your mental activities. Desire can then be isolated in the Prana and the heart and mind kept pure of its insistent inroads. For desire is only effective when it can get hold of the Chitta and Buddhi, generating Vikaras... I have mentioned them only cursorily because they are foreign to my purpose. They can all be developed if the mental siddhi is perfected and it is on this perfection that I wish you to concentrate your energy and attention. When you get that, you get everything. The centres of man's activity, at present, are the buddhi, the heart and the manas, and the body, though extremely important, is a dependent ...
... again & more perfectly the mental trikaldrishti. Power, rupa, samadhi are still in the stage of struggle, samarana , against the Vala & Vritra opposition. The mental perceptions, as distinguished from the nervous, have begun again to act, but as yet there is not the renewal of the general mental illumination which is necessary to their free activity. The decisive mental perception in trikaldrishti... with the fullness of activity of the vijnanamaya knowledge & power. There is much development yet to be done. The cloud of tamas began to be rent & drift apart after a sortilege from the Veda. त्वं ज्योतिषा वि तमो ववर्थ—ie Soma, the mental Ananda. During the rest of the day there was a struggle in which the Tamas receded without much difficulty. The vibrations of the mental Ananda are becoming more... interpretations of mental content have still to be eliminated. The movement towards pure mental trikaldrishti and ritam persists. The sense of the general Ananda Brahman (ananda akasha) long covered over is now reviving. Sort. अग्निर्यथैक एव प्रकाशात्मा सन् भुवनं—भवंत्यस्मिन्भूतानीति भुवनम्—अयं लोकस्तमिमं प्रविष्टोऽनुप्रविष्टः ie. the Divine Force at work manifesting in luminous activity is to take ...
... speaking, the "brain-mind" is to be demarcated. In the latter the externalising mind and the mental in the physical, though unlike each other in several Page 64 respects, are "in practice...mixed together" (p.327). Further, through the externalising mind still greater mental activities than its own come into play in the mind of the brain. For, as we have noted, the externalising... Mind - the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forms for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give)" (p.326). How the greater mental activities enter in may be yet more vividly seized from Sri Aurobindo's elaboration of his phrase "the true physical mind"... intelligence" (pp. 326-27). We may consider the "physical mental", which Sri Aurobindo designates "the true physical mind" (p. 328), as the high part of the physical mind, and the "mental physical" at its best operation as the low one. Page 63 Another "part of the physical mind" (p.329), a "much' lower action of the mental physical" (p.327), is "the mechanical mind...which, left ...
... subjective experience,—for we see that the subconscient physical carries in it a mental psychological content, impressions of past events, habits, fixed mental and vital formations, fixed forms of character, and sends them up by an occult process to the waking consciousness, thus originating or influencing many activities of our nature. On the same basis there would be no difficulty in under standing... becomes possible. For first we discover that mind is a subtle substance, a general determinate—or generic indeterminate—which mental energy when it operates throws into forms or particular determinations of itself, thoughts, concepts, percepts, mental sentiments, activities of will and reactions of feeling, but which, when the energy is quiescent, can live either in an inert torpor or in an immobile... discover that that which observes all this is a mental being supporting the mind substance and mind energy; without this presence, their upholder and source of sanctions, they could not exist or operate. This mental being or Purusha first appears as a silent witness and, if that were all, we would have to accept the determinations of mind as a phenomenal activity imposed upon Page 322 the being ...
... is particular and, providing points of detail, does not exactly correspond to the idea. It is like a change of code which takes place in some. Images permeate them, mingle with their ordinary mental activities and gradually replace them. They appear to be indestructible; whatever the outer being might do, they resist anything which would formerly have obscured the psyche. They come from the future and... Without leaving duality, the basis of our mental perception of the world, we would no longer live in terms of division, but of complementarily, and the peace between peoples would inevitably follow. Having eluded us as long as we were restricted to a divisive mental consciousness, an ineluctable and sovereign peace would prevail as soon as we entered a unifying mental consciousness, of which that peace would... and before us, really exists only for us. If Time can be captured and interpreted according to norms other than those of the terrestrial mental, it follows that everything which belongs to the terrestrial and, in the final analysis, to the cosmic mental, can change value in our eyes. There is, to begin with, the principle which apparently obliges us to do things according to what we have previously ...
... failure of mental tejas. Mental dhairya, physical dhairya & pranic tejas assured, mental tejas has to be rendered equally permanent and invincibly active so that the physical brain may not flag in its response to the stimulus from above. The quaternary, Tejo balam pravrittir mahattwam, will then be assured in all the parts of the system. Vijnana is now beginning to assert its constant activity, pausing... The weakness of the kamachakra is the chief obstacle. Dasya has already passed into the fourth degree, but there is a lingering sanskara of the tertiary dasya in some of the physical, mental & emotional activities the stamp of the Master is not yet everywhere. But the lipi which has recently been promising the "death of the difficulties", is being amply fulfilled in the three first chatusthayas and... assimilation and kamachakra. Secondary utthapana, established in its generalised activity, has to increase the force of pure mahima and of anima. Saundarya must still struggle with its obstacle without as yet prevailing and the Aishwarya with the obstacle to the equipment. Letter from Biren showing an improved mental state and a vague dawning of vyapti & speculative trikaldrishti. An instance of ...
... becomes possible. For first we discover that mind is a subtle substance, a general determinate — or generic indeterminate — which mental energy when it operates throws into forms or particular determinations of itself, thoughts, concepts, percepts, mental sentiments, activities of will and reactions of feeling, but which, when the energy is quiescent, can live either in an inert torpor or in an immobile... discover that that which observes all this is a mental being supporting the mind substance and mind energy; without this presence, their upholder and source of sanctions, they could not exist or operate. This mental being or Purusha first appears as a silent witness and, if that were all, we would have to accept the determinations of mind as a phenomenal activity imposed upon the being by Nature, by Prakriti... it is accepted and assimilated into the self-expression of the individual mental being, the personal Prakriti of the Purusha. But still, in view of these complexities, the question remains entire whether all this evolution and action is a phenomenal creation by some universal Energy presented to the mental being or an activity imposed by Mind-Energy on the Purusha's indeterminate, perhaps indeterminable ...
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