... vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food-sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind-sheath or mental vehicle 6 , a third, supreme and divine status of supra-mental being, termed Page 259 the causal body and composed of a fourth and a fifth vehicle 7 which are described... of existence. But the bodily life in man is a base, not the aim, his first condition and not his last determinant. In the just idea of the ancients man is essentially the thinker, the Manu, the mental being who leads the life and the body, 4 not the animal who is led by them. The true human existence, therefore, only begins when the intellectual mentality emerges out of the material and we begin... men seem to need, in favourable circumstances, only a few generations to cover ground that ought apparently to be measured in the terms of millenniums. Either, then, man by his privilege as a mental being is exempt from the full burden of the tardy laws of evolution Page 258 or else he already represents and with helpful conditions and in the right stimulating atmosphere can always ...
... that in this little life, so inconspicuous amid the immensities, in one sole species out of this petty multitude, a mental being would emerge, a mind serving life still but also making life and matter its servants, using them for the fulfilment of its own ideas, will, wishes,—a mental being who would create all manner of utensils, tools, instruments out of Matter for all kinds of utilities, erect out of... conscious animal, as the animal mind is astir with the movements of feeling and perception and the rudiments of conception that are the first ground for man the thinker, so Page 883 man the mental being is sublimated by the endeavour of the evolutionary Energy to develop out of him the spiritual man, the fully conscious being, man exceeding his first material self and discoverer of his true self... of the mental evolution, a special operation of man's mentality; the spiritual element is not a distinct or separate entity and cannot have an independent emergence or a supramental future. The mental being can develop a spiritual interest or preoccupation and may evolve perhaps in consequence a spiritual as well as an intellectual mentality, a fine soul-flower of his mental life. The spiritual may ...
... concentration of the mental being in the Yogic trance at the moment of putting off the body, the soul can pass away without return into the supreme existence. For the man's normal consciousness is still subject to what the Buddhists call the chain or the stream of Karma; it is still creating energies which must continue and have their effect in a continued life of the mental being which is creating them... The Yoga of Integral Knowledge The Synthesis of Yoga Chapter XIII The Difficulties of the Mental Being We have come to this stage in our development of the path of Knowledge that we began by affirming the realisation of our pure self, pure existence above the terms of mind, life and body, as the first object of this Yoga, but we now affirm that this... of both these aids. These difficulties in the way of the integral knowledge, the integral realisation, the integral becoming we have to state succinctly before we can proceed farther. Realised mental being and realised spiritual being are really two different planes in the arrangement of our existence, the one superior and divine, the other inferior and human. To Page 392 the former belong ...
... The true nature of the pure thought-power is to reveal the mental being by degrees. It is in the true mental being that the real existence and nature of a creature abide. The mental being becomes more and more manifest by fresh flowerings of the pure thought-power. The pure thought power, being manifest, shapes a form of the mental being. Then it plunges into the heart of the aspirant and emerges... awakes in him the divine mental being in all its virtues. And the pure thought-powers or the Maruts turn the flow of knowledge and power towards an inner spiritual discipline. Page 109 3. It is the power of pure-thoughts that manifests the light of knowledge in the darkness of Ignorance. With the gradual development of such thoughts the true mental being takes birth in the aspirant... Earth, mid-region, sky and svar , that is the body, life, mind and the vast Truth beyond mind become manifest in their divine essence in the human aspirant inhabited by the mental being. Indra is the divine mental being and Indra is the power of revealing the truth. NOTE The remaining suktas of Madhuchchhandar Mantramala also deal with Indra. So there is hardly any necessity of ...
... to have taken place in the past history of material Nature: in order to happen it would seem to need either the conscious intervention of an invisible mental being to form the body he intended to inhabit or else a previous development of a mental being in Matter itself Page 872 who would be already able to receive a supraphysical power and impose it on the rigid and narrow formulas of his... into it of a mental being. But this would suppose a previous evolution of mind in body to the point at which such a receptivity would be possible. It is quite conceivable that such an evolution from below and such a descent from above cooperated in the appearance of humanity in earth-nature. The secret psychical entity already there in the animal might have itself called down the mental being, the mind... conscious instinct; it develops slowly till in more organised forms of living Matter it reaches its climax of intelligence and exceeds itself in Man, the thinking animal who develops into the reasoning mental being but carries along with him even at his highest elevation the mould of original animality, the dead weight of subconscience of body, the downward pull of gravitation towards the original Inertia ...
... most some limited spiritual glimpses, as the whole truth of existence. Page 466 Man is a spirit, but a spirit that lives as a mental being in physical Nature; he is to his own self-consciousness a mind in a physical body. But at first he is this mental being materialised and he takes the materialised soul, annamaya puruṣa , for his real self He is obliged to accept, as the Upanishad expresses... and not merely a reasoning animal; for it gives then its characteristic force to that mental being within us which our humanity is in the inwardly governing but still too hampered essence of its psychological structure. It is possible for man to awaken to this higher mental consciousness, to become this mental being, 1 put on this mental nature and live not only in the vital and physical sheaths... earth-life go beyond through the gateways of the sun, do not return hither. The mental being exceeding his sphere does not return because by that transition he enters a high range of existence peculiar to the superior hemisphere. He cannot bring down its greater spiritual nature into this lower triplicity; for here the mental being is the highest expression of the Self. Here the triple mental, vital and physical ...
... 389. Page 114 possible for the mental being in his actually evolved status to embrace at once, equally and fully, both the world and the being, both consciousness and action? The Intrinsic Incapacity: To answer the above question we must first note that between the normal consciousness of man the mental being and a truly spiritual supra-mental consciousness, there... arduous Tapasya or by an act of Grace from above, when the mental being succeeds in putting off the veil, it sees the Divine "as something above, beyond, around even in a sense, but with a gulf between that being and our being, an unbridged or even an unbridgeable chasm. There is this infinite existence; but it is quite other than the mental being who becomes aware of it....There is this great, boundless... spoke only of the Buddhi as the highest thing with the Purusha or Self just above, but there was no clear idea of these planes." 1 Now, so long as these higher spiritual planes of the mental being and finally the plane of Supermind are not consciously possessed and made active and organised in the normal consciousness of the embodied being, so long as the spiritualised mind approaches ...
... co-operation movement by resorting to ascetic practices. But his weakness was not more than what other people have got. His chief defects were in the mental and the vital being. He has a very narrow mental being – practically no mind at all, only conventional ideas about religion and spirituality. But he had a remarkable aspiration and intensity in the vital being. He progressed more than any one. But he... Yes, and without proclaiming aloud that they are the highest in the scale of creation because they do it. It is the same animal nature; what happens in man's case is that he raises it up to the mental being and there weaves all kinds of things around it – thoughts, emotions, ideals etc. and this justifies to his mind the vital-animal nature. Disciple : The Gita says dhy ā yato viş qyān... as I have already told you, man has simply woven a web round them. Animals also have the same vital feelings, emotions and even thoughts. But in man they work in a different way, because he is a mental being. Man raises up all these things, and forms what I call the "vital mind" or what you call "emotions". Emotions according to my classification are the vital part of the mind. Man simply has raised ...
... all these things and self-knowledge and self-control,—that has been reserved for Man, Nature's mental being. That he may better do the work she has given him, she compels him to repeat physically and to some extent mentally stages of her animal evolution and, even when he is in possession of his mental being, she induces him continually to dwell with an interest and even a kind of absorption upon Matter... sometimes even to something like her earlier conditions so that he may start afresh on a larger curve of progress and self-fulfilment. It would seem at first sight that since man is pre-eminently the mental being, the development of the mental faculties and the richness of the mental life should be his highest aim,—his preoccupying aim, even, as soon as he has got rid of the obsession of the life and body... the mental life of the senses, sensations and emotions in which the subjective purpose of Nature predominates although with the objective as its occasion, and the active or dynamic life of the mental being concerned with the organs of action and the field of conduct in which her objective purpose predominates although with the subjective as its occasion. We have next in the scale, more sublimated ...
... psychic, spiritual. Letters on Yoga, p. 686 Planes of the Mental Being In mind itself there are grades of the series and each grade again is a series in itself; there are successive elevations which we may conveniently call planes and sub-planes of the mental consciousness and the mental being. The development of our mental self is largely an ascent of this stair; we... consciousness and a superconscience. The Life Divine, p. 494 Page 41 The "Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this yoga the words "mind" and "mental" are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence... maintain herself while she attempts her higher human developments; but in this mental formation there is no power for progress or only for a material progress. It is our first mental status, but the mental being cannot remain always at this lowest rung of the human evolutionary ladder. Above physical mind and deeper within than physical sensation, there is what we may call an intelligence of the ...
... Mahopanishad. (V. 2.) One in many births, a single ocean holder of all streams of movement, sees our hearts. Rig Veda. (X. 5. 1.) The direct self-consciousness of the mental being, that by which it becomes aware of its own nameless and formless existence behind the flow of a differentiated self-experience, of its eternal soul-substance behind the mental formations of that... present; it is that in it which is ever the same and unaffected by the mental distinction of past, present and future. It is also unaffected by the distinctions of space or of circumstance; for if the mental being ordinarily says of itself, "I am in the body, I am here, I was there, I shall be elsewhere", yet when it learns to fix itself in this direct self-consciousness, it very soon perceives that this... surroundings is not so insistently obvious or not so obviously rapid as the swift mutation of Time; yet it is equally real from moment to moment and equally impossible to arrest. But we see that the mental being only regards all this mutation so far as it produces effects upon its own mental consciousness, generates impressions and changes in its mental experience and mental body, because only through the ...
... The Yoga of Self-Perfection The Synthesis of Yoga Chapter IV The Perfection of the Mental Being The fundamental idea of a Yoga of self-perfection must be, under these conditions, a reversal of the present relations of the soul of man to his mental, vital and physical nature. Man is at present a partly self-conscious soul subject to and limited by mind... soul. The liberation from an externalised ego sense is the first step towards the soul's freedom and mastery. When we thus draw back into the soul, we find ourselves to be not the mind, but a mental being who stands behind the action of the embodied mind, not a mental and vital personality,—personality is a composition of Nature,—but a mental Person, manomaya puruṣa . We become aware of a being... for although the Purusha feels his mind to be involved in life and body, yet he is aware that even if the physical life and body were to cease or be dissolved, he would still go on existing in his mental being. But the sense of difference from the mind is more difficult and less firmly distinct. But still it is there; it is characterised by any or all of three intuitions in which this mental Purusha lives ...
... of humanity itself there might well arise a new and greater order of mental human beings; for the directly intuitive or partly intuitivised but not yet gnostic mental being, the directly or partly illumined mental being, the mental being in direct or part communion with the higher-thought plane would emerge: these would become more and more numerous, more and more evolved and secure in their type... which are yet potentialities of a growing gnosis lifted beyond our human mentality and partaking of the light and power of the Divine and an ascent through these planes, a descent of them into the mental being might seem to be the natural evolutionary course”. (What those “powers of the nature still belonging to the mental region” are we will see in the next section.) Sri Aurobindo stresses once again... being, a creator in the light, a discoverer in the depths, an illuminant in the darkness, helping perhaps to penetrate even the Inconscient with the rays of Superconscience. There would be a new mental being not only capable of standing enlightened in the radiance of Supermind but able to climb consciously towards it and into it, training life and body to reflect and hold something of the supramental ...
... is the 'mental being' which is put forth from life to life—that it is the reincarnating soul But would not the mental being be a part of the personality—the mental, nervous and physical composite—which in the popular conception is the thing that is carried over or which takes a new body in the next life? And the 'Self' here is quite different from the 'mental being'....Is the 'mental being' then the... the same thing as the 'psychic being' which is carried over to the next life?" The mental being spoken of by the Upanishad is not part of the mental-nervous-physical composite—it is the manomaya purusha prana-sharira-neta, the mental being leader of the life and body. It could not be so described if it were part of the composite. Nor can the composite or part of it be the Purusha,—for the composite... composite is composed of Prakriti. It is described as manomaya by the Upanishads because the psychic being is behind the veil and man being a mental being in the life and body lives in his mind and not in his psychic, so to him the manomaya purusha is the leader of the life and body,—of the psychic behind supporting the whole he is not aware or dimly aware in his best moments. The psychic is represented ...
... to have taken place in the past history of material Nature: in order to happen it would seem to need either the conscious intervention of an invisible mental being to form the body he intended to inhabit or else a previous development of a mental being in Matter itself who would be already able to receive a supraphysical power and impose it on the rigid and narrow formulas of his physical existence.... into it of a mental being. But this would suppose a previous evolution of mind in body to the point at which such a receptivity would be possible. It is quite conceivable that such an evolution from below and such a descent from above cooperated in the appearance of humanity in earth-nature. The secret psychical entity already there in the animal might have itself called down the mental being, the Mind-Purusha... and machinery of the divergence or transition. Or there may have been, on the contrary, not an upsurgence but a descent of mentality from a Mind-plane above us, perhaps the descent of a soul or mental being into terrestrial Nature. The difficulty would then be the appearance of the human body, too complex and difficult an organ to have been suddenly created or manifested; for such a miraculous speed ...
... self-discovery, that Man, the mental being, has entered into the material body." The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 82-83 Why has the mental being taken a material body? Is that what you are asking? Sri Aurobindo says, "leading in the end to a supreme divine self-discovery". The divine discovery is the discovery of the Divine in oneself. So man, that is, the mental being—for what we call man is... is a physical body with a mental being within, a mental being manifested in a body, a physical body—so the mental being has incarnated and become man in order to find within himself the divine Being, the divine Presence. Why? Are you asking why? It's a funny way of going about it! ( Laughter ) I don't know if he is going to explain it here, I don't remember now, but one thing is certain, that... some idea of the way in which the earth has developed—to explain to them that this something which is going to be beyond all this, and superior to human creation, to man, whom he always calls the mental being—this something which is going to come will be greater and better than man; and so he calls it supramental in order to make himself understood. But we could just as well say that it is something ...
... existence as the atoms of which it is composed. Only a mental being, supported by the psychic nodus within which expresses or begins to express the secret soul, can hope to persist by his power of linking on the past to the future in a stream of continuity which the breaking of the form may break in the physical memory but need not destroy in the mental being itself and which may even by an eventual development... continuity runs as one of its fibres. This which is evident to physical Science in the terms of heredity, becomes otherwise evident to the developing soul behind the mental being in the terms of persistent personality. The mental being expressive of this soul-consciousness is therefore the nodus of the persistent individual and the persistent aggregate life; in him their union and harmony become possible... of life and love and mutual help to perceive that the natural individual is a minor term of being and exists by the universal. Once this is discovered, as it is inevitably discovered by man the mental being, his destiny is determined; for Page 212 he has reached the point at which Mind can begin to open to the truth that there is something beyond itself; from that moment his evolution, ...
... and evolving; it evolves through growth of consciousness even as consciousness evolves through greater organisation and perfection of life: a greater consciousness means a greater life. Man, the mental being, has an imperfect life because mind is not the first and highest power of consciousness of the Being; even if mind were perfected, there would be still something yet to be realised, not yet manifested... inner life of the spirit, it is obvious that no outer divine living can become possible. Unless, indeed, it is a mental or vital godhead that we perceive and would be,—but even then the individual mental being or the being of power and vital force and desire in us must grow into a form of that godhead before our life can be divine in that inferior sense, the life of the infraspiritual superman, mental... single power in Page 1072 perfect unison with the truth of things; this inborn character of supernature is the foundation of the perfect unity, mutuality, harmony of its action. In the mental being there is a discord of its constructed knowledge with the real or the whole truth of things, so that even what is true in it is often or is eventually ineffective or only partially effective. Our ...
... sensorial impressions often give rise to vivid images which are a cause of trouble. Do you have the feeling of being a mental being ? Whilst I remain on the level of the mind, yes; but when I can raise myself above it, the being (?) that I am is not mental. The mental being is a mask assumed by the true self. I see the way clearly. And I know that if I could make the total and definitive... all levels. Then, those you are destined to meet can also influence you, often without their knowing it. When the psychic being has opened and has set foot on spiritual ground, it can judge. The mental being cannot. Monday, January 18, 1926 I have succeeded in keeping my mind absolutely empty of thought for a few minutes. All the waves have stopped. But still my consciousness is fixed all... continuing the separation of my self from the mind. I can easily enough place myself as inactive spectator of the movements of the individual being. In these conditions I exist nevertheless as a mental being, endowed with the `I ' and centred in the brain. But behind this mental self I can discern another state, free from all relation with the manifested activity. There lies my true self which uses ...
... that it ought to be on a mental plane, in mental worlds, both because on man the mental being the attraction of that plane, already active in life, must prevail when there is not the obstacle of the attachment to the body, and because the mental plane should be, evidently, the native and proper habitat of a mental being. But this does not automatically follow, because of the complexity of man's being;... being so strongly individualised that it has got as far as the human consciousness. Even at his lowest normality the human individual is still a soul Page 827 acting through a distinct mental being, however ill-formed his mind may be, however limited and dwarfed, however engrossed and encased in the physical and vital consciousness and unable or unwilling to detach itself from its lower formations... being; he has a vital as well as a mental existence,—his vital part often more powerful and prominent than the mental,—and behind the mental being is a soul of which it is the representative. There are, besides, many planes or levels of world-existence and the soul has to pass through Page 829 them to reach its natural home. In the physical plane itself or close to it there are believed to ...
... put himself into waking relations with the physical universe. Physical, nervous and sensory reactions are his means for entering into that relation. Page 302 He,—but who is he? The mental being in his mentality. Who is it that feels himself to be separate from the world or things in the universe to be outside his being? Not the Spirit, for the Spirit contains the universe, creates and... does not regard them as something outside its own being, as we regard physically objects. Mind is a delegation from supermind, which primarily regards existence as an object fronting its vision. Mental being also need not regard the universe as quite separate from or outside its own being. Subliminal mentality is capable by extension of a comprehensive relation with cosmic things and of entering into... scale. The simplest elementary psychology deals with three notes of a limited scale,—the body and physical field and its impacts, the life and body and biological and physiological processes, the mental being and its conscious experience and action. This is a scale of ascension. The nature of the physical field is the first fact; it determines everything else; it gives the impacts which awaken ...
... by them? ... This more essential form is or seems to be in man the mental being or mental person which the Upanishads speak of as the mental leader of the life and body, manomayaḥ prāṇa-śarīra-netā." 14 Would not the mental being be part of the human personality—the mental, nervous and physical composite? The mental being spoken of by the Upanishad is not part of the mental nervous physical... manomayaḥ puruṣaḥ prāṇa-śarīra-netā , the mental being leader of the life and body. It could not be so described if it were part of the composite. Nor can the composite or part of it be the Purusha,—for the composite is composed of Prakriti. It is described as manomaya by the Upanishad because the psychic being is behind the veil and man being the mental being in the life and body lives in his mind... anything, that smacks too much of a too narrow humanistic standpoint. I stop here for today. 29 December 1934 "This concentration proceeds by the Idea ...; for it is through the Idea that the mental being rises beyond all expression to that which is expressed, to that of which the Idea itself is only the instrument. By concentration upon the Idea the mental existence which at present we are breaks ...
... dynamis, Tapas. The first part of this discipline and change can be firmly done in principle by the will of the mental being in us; but its full execution and the subsequent transformation can be done only when the deeper psychic soul increases its hold on the nature and replaces the mental being as its ruler. When this happens, he will be ready to make, not only with an aspiration and intention and an... which a superior mind energy works through us or upon us. Finally we 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... observing Purusha. But afterwards we find that the Purusha, the mental being, can depart from its posture of a silent or accepting Witness; it can become the source of reactions, accept, reject, even rule and regulate, become the giver of the command, the knower. A knowledge also arises that this mind-substance manifests the mental being, is its own expressive substance and the mental energy is its own ...
... it is freed also from its own limitation of form because mind can be quite free from the limitations of life and body. The crux of the difficulty is here—that man is a mental being and has a mental consciousness, and as a mental being and as a mental consciousness he is aware of universal forces. He is aware of the universal force, of a universal life and then he knows that he is only a part of it.... mental person and there is a mental force. If you carefully observe, the force that is working as mental energy is not the same as the conscious being who holds himself as the mental being or mental person. Between the mental being, the subjective self, and mental power or mental nature, there is always a division. Whatever the subjective being knows, nature does not always confirm, whatever it wills the... which it started. Its business first was to create a conscious centre of experience, a subjective being which could receive the whole universe. Having created such a centre in life, that is, the mental being, it forces the mind to go back, to reverse the process of individualizing into a necessity of accepting collective life, the need for interchange, the need for exchange, the need for "other" in ...
... to the subliminal mental being in the depths, the inner mental being who is master, if he wills, of the nerves and the body. But this freedom which is effected by hypnosis abnormally, rapidly, without true possession, by an alien will, may equally be won normally, gradually, with true possession, by one's own will so as to effect partially or completely a victory of the mental being over the habitual... experiences supporting them by its inalienable delight and effecting by its movement the variations of pleasure, pain and neutral indifference in our sensational existence. That is our real self; the mental being subject to the triple vibration can only be a representation of our real self put in front for the purposes of that sensational experience of things which is the first rhythm of our divided con... something in us,—much vaster, profounder, truer than the superficial consciousness,—which takes delight impartially in all experiences; it is that delight which secretly supports the superficial mental being and enables it to persevere through all labours, sufferings and ordeals in the agitated movement of the Becoming. That which we call ourselves is only a trembling ray on the surface; behind is all ...
... there might well arise a new and greater order of mental human beings; for the directly intuitive or partly intuitivised but not yet gnostic [i.e. supramentalised] mental being, the directly or partly illumined mental being, the mental being in direct or part communion with the higher-thought plane would emerge; these would become more and more numerous, more and more evolved and secure in their type... most drastic changes made by these means change nothing; for the old ills exist in a new form: the aspect of the outward environment is altered, but man remains 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... descent need not be limited to those who could thus open themselves entirely and it need not be limited to the supramental change; there could also be a minor or secondary transformation of the mental being within a freed and perfected scope of the mental nature. In place of the human mind as it now is, a mind limited, imperfect, open at every moment to all kinds of deviation from the truth or missing ...
... non-animal forms of life in matter, consciously evolving but greatly limited and hampered in mind housed in a living body, destined to be fully evolved by the awakening of the supermind in the embodied mental being and nature. Page 734 To each grade in this series achieved by the evolving Consciousness belongs its appropriate class of existences,—one by one there appear material forms and forces... consider his farther possibilities. It must be so not because of any false and pitiful imaginative illusion in him, but, Page 744 first, because he is the imperfect, still developing mental being and must strive for more development, for perfection, and still more because he is capable, unlike other terrestrial creatures, of becoming aware of what is deeper than mind, of the soul within... there are grades of the series and each grade again is a series in itself; there are successive elevations which we may conveniently call planes and sub-planes of the mental consciousness and the mental being. The development of our mental self is largely an ascent of this stair; we can take our stand on any one of them, while yet maintaining a dependence on the lower stages and a power of occasional ...
... its instruments until all is ready for the union with the Divine. I don't know that I can add anything to that. The mental being spoken of by the Upanishad is not part of the mental nervous physical composite—it is the manomayaḥ puruṣaḥ prāṇa-śarīra-netā , the mental being leader of the life and body. It could not be so described if it were part of the composite. Nor can the composite or part... and desire-nature controls the consciousness to a large extent in most men because men are governed by desire. But even in the surface human nature the proper ruler of the consciousness is the mental being, the manomayaḥ puruṣaḥ prāṇa-śarīra-netā of the Upanishad. The psychic influences the consciousness from behind, but one has to go out of the ordinary consciousness into the inmost being to find... truth of ourselves. On the surface in the Ignorance, it is the mental, vital, physical Prakriti that acts and the Purusha is disfigured, as it were, in the action of Prakriti. It is not our true mental being, our true vital being, our true physical being even that we are aware of; these remain behind, Page 111 veiled and silent. It is the mental, vital, physical ego that we take for our ...
... body-bound and life-bound mentality; for the Purusha there is the pure mental being and his relations with Prakriti are determined by that purer mentality, Nature there is mental rather than vital and physical. Both the life-world and indirectly the material are a projection from that, the result of certain tendencies of the mental Being which have sought a field, conditions, an arrangement of harmonies... intuitive mind awaken in us as a result of the pressure of these highest worlds on the mental being in life and body. But this causal body is, as we may say, little developed in the majority of men and to live in it or to ascend to the supramental planes, as distinguished from corresponding sub-planes in the mental being, or still more to dwell consciously upon them is the most difficult thing of all for... material things like the animal, plant and metal, but is still not real freedom and mastery. Therefore we have had to speak of different planes of our consciousness and of the spiritual planes of the mental being; for if these did not exist, the liberation of the embodied being would have been impossible here on earth. He would have had to wait and at most to prepare himself for seeking it in other worlds ...
... to the subliminal mental being in the depths, the inner mental being who is master, if he wills, of the nerves and the body. But this freedom which is effected by hypnosis abnormally, rapidly, without true possession, by an alien will, may equally be won normally, gradually, with true possession, by one's own will so as to effect partially or completely a victory of the mental being over the habitual... experiences supporting them by its inalienable delight and effecting by its movement the variations of pleasure, pain and neutral indifference in our sensational existence. That is our real self; the mental being subject to the triple vibration can only be a representation of our real self put in front for the purposes of Page 136 that sensational experience of things which is the first rhythm... something in us, — much vaster, profounder, truer than the superficial consciousness, — which takes delight impartially in all experiences; it is that delight which secretly supports the superficial mental being and enables it to persevere through all labours, sufferings and ordeals in the agitated movement of the Becoming. That which we call ourselves is only a trembling ray on the surface; behind is all ...
... which we are not yet, but have to become and which is not the strong and enlightened vital Will hymned by Nietzsche, but a spiritual self and spiritual nature that will use the mental being which we already are, but the mental being spiritualised, and transform by a spiritual ideality the aim and action of our vital and physical nature. For this is the formula of man in his highest potentiality, and safety... complementary powers,—first, an implicit will central to the life and inherent in the main power of its action and, secondly, whatever modifying will can come in from the Idea in mind—for man is a mental being—and operate through our as yet imperfect mental instruments to give this life force a conscious orientation and a conscious method. Life normally finds its own centre in our vital and physical being... is seeking to discover. All that we have done hitherto is some half-successful effort to transfer this will and power to the mental plane; our highest endeavour and labour has been to become the mental being and to live in the strength of the idea. But the mental idea in us is always intermediary and instrumental; always it depends on something other than it for its ground of action and therefore although ...
... desire-free unbound action watched by the unparticipating inner Witness. The mental being becomes the eremite soul alone in the world and careless of all human ties or the saint soul that lives in a rapturous God-nearness or felicitous identity and in joyful relations of pure love and ecstasy towards all creatures. The mental being may even realise the Self in all three planes together. Then he is all these... Infinite. On the other planes to which the mental being has easier access, man finds God in himself and himself in God; he becomes divine in essence rather than in person or nature. In the gnosis, even the mentalised gnosis, the Divine Eternal possesses, changes and stamps the human symbol, envelops and partly finds himself in the person and nature. The mental being at most receives or reflects that which... in the world, but a double possession, by the freedom and delight of the mental-spiritual infinite within and without by the happy, natural and unregulated play of the mind-Nature. But since the mental being is capable of receiving the gnosis in a way in which the life soul and physical soul cannot receive it, since he can accept it with knowledge though only the limited knowledge of a mental response ...
... part of humanity itself there might well arise a new and greater order of mental human beings; for the directly intuitive or partly intuitivised but not yet gnostic mental being, the directly or partly illumined mental being, the mental being in direct or part communion with the higher-thought plane would emerge: these would become more and more numerous, more and more evolved and secure in their type... since it is the supermind that determines the cosmic relations and the relations of the individual with the universe, determines them freely and sovereignly as a power of the Transcendence. In the mental being even the pressure of the cosmic consciousness overpowering the ego and an awareness of the transcendent Reality might not of themselves bring about a dynamic solution; for there might still be an... supramental life. In the other grades of the gnostic being, although a truth of spiritual being and consciousness would fulfil itself, the instrumentation would be of a different order. A Higher-Mental being would act through the truth of thought, the truth of the idea and accomplish that in the life-action: but in the supramental gnosis thought is a derivative movement, it is a formulation of truth-vision ...
... dynamis, Tapas. The first part of this discipline and change can be firmly done in principle by the will of the mental being in us; but its full execution and the subsequent transformation can be done only when the deeper psychic soul increases its hold on the nature and replaces the mental being as its ruler. The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 218 The static freedom of the soul, no longer witness... state and action, an inherent principle of response and a secret consciousness, the greatest portion of its rajasic motions is contributed by the life-power and all the overt consciousness by the mental being. The principle of rajas has its strongest hold on the vital nature. It is the Life within us that is the strongest kinetic motor power, but the life-power in earthly beings is possessed by the... vehement pleasures insecurely bestowed by the satisfaction of rajasic desire and passion. Light and happiness are the characteristics of the sattwic guna. The whole nature of the embodied living mental being is determined by these three gunas. But these are only predominant powers in each part of our complex system. The three qualities mingle, combine and strive in every fibre and in every member ...
... beyond itself, into a self-exceeding, a transformation of the mental being, but Sri Aurobindo points out that we have to judge the development of a species in terms of the law of the action of evolutionary Nature and that in terms of that law, the self exceeding and transformation of the mental being cannot be expected until the mental being has sufficiently developed up to its utmost capacity, and unless... when human progress demands imperatively an upward curve of the spiritual progress, and this progress impels the race to be carried beyond itself, into a self-exceeding, a transformation of the mental being and even mutation of the human species so as to establish on the earth the rule of the divine life in the divine body. But before the appearance of the divine body, there will have to come about... could provide solutions to the problems of humanity may be questioned; it may be argued that whatever has been achieved so far in the course of nature's evolution of the spiritual man in the human mental being cannot be regarded as the true evolution of consciousness; the evolution of spiritual consciousness may even be stigmatized as a sublimated crudity of ignorance deviating from the true human evolution ...
... creation; Indra is the eldest of all, because the primal form of the external manifestation appears first in the heart of the mental being. Later on it becomes manifest in the outward nature. After his very birth Indra wants to be the eldest of all, i.e., as soon as the pure mental being awakes Page 107 in the aspirant, it becomes the master and guide of his sadhana and his new spiritual... profound and sublime Truth. So the sadhaka also has to manifest in his being and nature this immensely diverse play. The manifoldness of Form is revealed consciously through the mind. When the true mental being awakes, all the formations lose their divided and mortal nature and appear as immortal, cadences and expressions of the Truth. That is why the mental Purusha or Indra is called Purutamam Purunam... accordance with the Will of the Purusha all the forms of Prakriti take shape. The vessel and foundation which Indra is shaping anew in the aspirant is firmly established on Truth and Knowledge. Pure mental being is endowed with knowledge which makes an object stand revealed to the knower. This knowledge of Indra is many-sided. The real function of Indra is to harmonise the hidden truth of all objects and ...
... All forms of life-energy in this world are thus formations of mental force in which the principle of mind broods self-absorbed in work of life and concealed in form of life to emerge in man, the mental being. Just as life, working but form-absorbed and concealed in the clod & metal, has emerged in the plant and the animal to organise its full character and activity, so it is with mind. Mind is omnipresent;... into mind they pass away & enter in." For as all forms that dissolve go back into the life-forces that constitute and build their shapes, so all forces that dissolve must go back into the sea of mental being by which and out of which they are formulated, impelled and conducted. We arrive, by reason investigating the essential causes, governance and constituting intelligence of all these energies & forms... its highest & most complex potentialities even of mental development & organisation only when it is invaded, possessed & raised by that which is higher than itself. Man is, here, the typical mental being. Imprisoned in the vitalised matter he has invaded & struggling, with his real being in Swar and aided by the gods of Swar, to impose the mastery of Mind on the material world, he has, for the ...
... which a superior mind energy works through us or upon us. Finally we 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... observing Purusha. But afterwards we find that the Purusha, the mental being, can depart from its posture of a silent or accepting Witness; it can become the source of reactions, accept, reject, even rule and regulate, become the giver of the command, the knower. A knowledge also arises that this mind-substance manifests the mental being, is its own expressive substance and the mental energy is its own... there if 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 in ...
... mental. Sri Aurobindo often stressed that the human being is specifically the mental being, the typical embodiment of the mental gradation of the universal manifestation. “The mind pre-eminently is man; he is a mental being and his human perfection grows the more he fulfils the description of the Upanishad, a mental being, Purusha, leader of the life and the body.” 47 Not only are there in the human... (mammal), Man-Lion (transitional beings between the animal kingdom and the hominids), Dwarf (first hominids), Rama-with-the-Ax ( homo habilis ), Rama-with-the-Bow, the hero of the Ramayana (the mental being, the human as we are), Krishna, protagonist of the Mahabharata (representing the Overmind, the world of the gods and religion), Buddha (shooting straight up to the indefinable Absolute) and Kalki... Evolution henceforth means the evolution of the consciousness, of mind and, if any such thing there be, of what is beyond mind, – and in that case as its last stride has been the evolution of the mental being, man, out of the vital being, the animal, so its next stride will be to evolve out of mental man a greater spiritual and supramental creature.” 50 “Man is an abnormal who has not found his ...
... first condition of this change that the mental Man we now are should become inwardly aware and in possession of his own deeper law of being and its processes; he must become the psychic and inner mental being master of his energies, no longer a slave of the movements of the lower Prakriti, in control of it, seated securely in a free harmony with a higher law of Nature. An increasing control of the individual... the course she was taking, a growing understanding or intuitive idea of the methods that had to be followed for a more rapid and more conscious self-evolution. As his inner psychic or occult inner mental being came more to the front, there would be a strengthened power of choice, of sanction, a beginning of authentic free will which would grow more and more effective. But this free will would be mostly... assent of the Purusha is needed and there must be too the consent of each part of the nature to the action of the higher power for its change. There must be then a conscious self-direction of the mental being in us towards this change, this substitution of Supernature for the old nature, this transcendence. The rule of conscious obedience to the higher truth of the spirit, the surrender of the whole ...
... plane of mental being and from that secure basis realise spiritually under the conditions of his mentality the process by which the self-existent becomes all existences, but without that descent into the self-divided egoistic consciousness which is a circumstance of evolution in the Ignorance. Thus identified with Sachchidananda in the universal self-existence as the spiritualised mental being, he may... The Yoga of Integral Knowledge The Synthesis of Yoga Chapter XIV The Passive and the Active Brahman The difficulty which the mental being experiences in arriving at an integral realisation of true being and world-being may be met by following one or other of two different lines of his self-development. He may evolve himself from plane to plane of his... is only for the mind an unknowable That, unknowable to the mental consciousness and without any possible kind of actual connection or commerce with world-existence. It can even be realised by the mental being as a Nihil, Non-Existence or Void, but a Void of all that is in the world, a Non-existence of all that is in the world and yet the only Reality. To proceed farther towards that Transcendence by ...
... Yoga, and not for the Yoga only. One cannot be in fully developed mental being even, if one has not control of the thoughts, is not their observer, judge and master,—the mental Purusha, manomaya purusa, sāksi, anumantā, īswara [the mental Being, the witness, the giver of sanction, the Master]. It is no more proper for the mental being to be the tennis ball of unruly and uncontrollable thoughts than... principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free to choose what it willed in this vast sight-empire and thought-empire. I mention this only to emphasise that the possibilities of the mental being are not limited ...
... perfection of the capacity of the triple time knowledge so far as that is possible in the mental being. It is by the progressive extrusion of the ordinary action of the intelligence, the acquiring of a complete and total reliance on the intuitive self and a consequent intuitivising of all the parts of the mental being that the mind of ignorance can be, more successfully, if not as yet wholly, replaced... diffused in an Infinite where there is perhaps a sense of supra-physical space, a vastness, a boundless extension of consciousness, but no time self, time movement or time order. And if then the mental being is still mechanically aware of things in time, it is yet unable to deal with them in its own manner, unable to establish a truth relation between the timeless and things in time and unable to act... as infinite and as the same Infinite, and can bring out, sustain and develop in the one what it holds supernally in the other. Its time consciousness therefore will be different from that of the mental being, not swept helplessly on the stream of the moments and clutching at each moment as a stay and a swiftly disappearing standpoint, but founded first on its eternal identity beyond the changes of time ...
... have to start; he is our index and our foundation. The Self of man is a thing hidden and occult; it is not his body, it is not his life, it is not—even though he is in the scale of evolution the mental being, the Manu,—his mind. Therefore neither the fullness of his physical, nor of his vital, nor of his mental nature can be either the last term or the true standard of his self-realisation; they are... lower self that Nature accomplishes the great strides of her evolutionary process. To learn by what he has been, but also to know and increase to what he can be, is the task that is set for the mental being. The time is passing away, permanently—let us hope—for this cycle of civilisation, when the entire identification of the self with the body and the physical life was possible for the general... soon as the commercial period of modern progress has been overpassed, and with that recovery, not yet in sight but inevitable, we shall have all the proper elements for the development of man as a mental being. The old Hellenic or Graeco-Roman civilisation perished, among other reasons, because it only imperfectly generalised culture in its own society and was surrounded by huge masses of humanity ...
... मानुषः । Sayana’s dealings with मानुष & अमानुष are truly amazing. It is Indra as the human or mental being who slays the Coverer, & for this reason men are described as carrying the thunderbolt in the two arms of Indra. See v. 4. Vritra is, Page 399 on the other hand, the non-mental being, the non-human. He represents in man those formations of consciousness मायाः which belong properly... properly to the infra-mental material & animal world out of which man has come. Man’s struggle is to rise above these formations which prevent his progress as the mental being. मायाः । This means mental formation, consciousness that creates forms. Both Indra & Vritra are मायिनः which does not mean deceitful; but the formations of Indra are mental & of the Truth, those of Vritra non-mental, sensory, physical... मनस्वान् S. preeminent among the intelligent. Again, this rendering is not warranted by the text. मनस्वान् = one who has mind. प्रथमो मनस्वान् means therefore the Supreme Thinker or the supreme mental being. पर्यभूषत् S. took to protect or overpassed, outstripped. रक्षकत्वेन पर्यग्रहीत् । भूष अलंकारे भुवादिः । लडि रूपं । यद्वा पर्यभवत् । अत्यक्रामत् । अस्मिन्पक्षे भवतेर्व्यत्ययेन क्सः । क्ष्युकः ...
... the movements of one's body—for the Yoga, and not for the Yoga only. One cannot be a fully developed mental being even, if one has not a control of the thoughts, is not their observer, judge, master,—the mental Purusha, manomaya puruṣa, śakṣī, anumantā, īśvara . It is no more proper for the mental being to be the tennis ball of unruly and uncontrollable thoughts than to be a rudderless ship in the storm... principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought or a labourer in a thought-factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free too to choose what it willed in this vast sight-empire and thought-empire. I mention this only to emphasise that the possibilities of the mental being are not limited... mind, even a clear or luminous empty mind, will be intuitive. Anything, any blessed kind of idea, can come in. One has to be vigilant and examine the credentials of the visitor. In other words, the mental being must be there, silent but vigilant, impartial but discriminating. That is, however, when you are in search of truth. For poetry so much is not necessary. There it is only the poetic quality of the ...
... pure and perfect; in it is an instrumental Force for all divine realisations. It is the true vital being that has become awake and come in front within you. In the same way there is too a true mental being, a true physical being. When these are manifest, then you are aware of a double existence in you: that behind is always calm and strong, that on the surface alone is troubled and obscure. But if... parts can be dealt with more potently and they are also made free and perfect. * The "Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this Yoga the words "mind" and "mental" are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with... obstinately on its way of desire, passion and attraction to the ordinary life. Their division or their conflict is the cause of most of the more acute difficulties of the Sadhana. * The mental being within watches, observes and passes judgment on all that happens in you. The psychic does not watch and observe in this way like a witness, but it feels and knows spontaneously in a much more direct ...
... evolved out of Matter, it did not deny or escape from Matter; it only energised Matter and made it conscious or semi-conscious in animal and plant life. When likewise Mind evolved out of Life, man the mental being did not - indeed he could not - deny either Life or Matter; he only achieved a new integration, a harmony of all three, with the "psyche" as the true master of the ceremonies. This is why Sri Aurobindo... two; in other words, from the port of Mind to the bridgehead of Supermind or vijñāna. As V. Chandrasekharam has pointed out: What the Taittiriya teaches is the discovery by man the mental being of vijñānamaya purusa who is his self..... And the entire teaching of Sri Aurobindo is hinged on the true conception of this Upanishadic vijñāna. ... He (man) is to bring down the power of ... differences vanish and only the unity remains. The progeny of Evil are real enough, but they are not the ultimate Truth; there are higher and more puissant realities than they, although man the mental being isn't ordinarily aware of them but chooses to be weighed down by the weary burden of the lower dualities. Of course Evil is not outright illusion, and the pictures we form with the aid of our mental ...
... the movements of one's body—for the Yoga, and not for the Yoga only. One cannot be a fully developed mental being even, if one has not control of the thoughts, is not their observer, judge, master,—the mental Purusha, manomaya puruṣa, sākṣī, anumantā, īśvara . It is no more proper for the mental being to be the tennis ball of unruly and uncontrollable thoughts than to be a rudderless ship in the storm... principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought or a labourer in a thought-factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free too to choose what it willed in this vast sight-empire and thought empire. I mention this only to emphasise that the possibilities of the mental being are not limited ...
... Emergence of the Psychic Section Five Emergence of the Psychic Being Man is a mental being and the mind is the leader of his life and body; but this is a leader who is much led by his followers and has sometimes no other will than what they impose on him. Mind in spite of its power is often impotent before the inconscient and subconscient which... control them, sanction or cancel their functioning: he does not as yet know the secrets of his being well enough to be aware of himself decisively and Page 81 with certitude as a mental being in a life and body, but he has that impression and can take inwardly that position. So too at first soul in man does not appear as something quite distinct from mind and from mentalised life; its... and is aware of itself as the spirit supporting life, or separates itself from the body-sense and knows itself as a spirit ensouling Matter: this is the discovery of ourselves as the Purusha, a mental being or a life-soul or a subtle self supporting the body. This is taken by many as a sufficient discovery of the true self and in a certain sense they are right; for it is the Self or Spirit that so ...
... or of mind, but dissolution of the form or body. Page 358 The dissolution of body is not true death for the mental being called man; it is only a change of media & of the surroundings of consciousness. Matter of body changes its constituents and groupings, mental being persists both in essence and personality and passes into other forms & environments. Page 359 ... of pure universal being. These are the two movements that govern world-existence, adhogati, the descent towards matter or mere form and urdhwagati, the ascent towards Spirit and God. Man is a mental being, manu or manomaya purusha, who has entered into a vitalised material body and is seeking to make it capable of infinite mentality & infinite ideality so that it may become the perfect instrument... values forms the stuff of our waking consciousness. This waking consciousness accepted by the manomaya purusha as itself & organised round a central I-sense is the waking ego. The Jiva or embodied mental being is in its consciousness much wider than the waking ego; it has a wide range of knowledge & experience of the past, present and future, the near & the distant, this life & other lives, this world ...
... . The psychic being is therefore evolutionary, not like the Jivatman, prior to the evolution. But man is not aware of the self or Jivatman, he is aware only of his ego, or he is aware of the mental being which controls the life and the body. But more deeply he becomes aware of his soul or psychic being as his true centre, the Purusha in the heart; the psychic is the central being in the evolution... not descend into the being but is above it—it holds together the mental, vital and physical being and all the various parts of the personality and it controls the life either through the mental Page 58 being and the mental thought and will or through the psychic, whichever may happen to be most in front or most powerful in action. If it does not exercise its control, then the consciousness... which is not born nor evolves, but presides over the individual birth and evolution—puts forward a representative of himself on each plane of the consciousness. On the mental plane it is the true mental being, manomaya puruṣa , on the vital plane the true vital being, prāṇamaya puruṣa , on the physical plane the true physical being, annamaya puruṣa . Each being therefore is, so long as the Ignorance ...
... constituent principles of manifested existence. According to the state of consciousness which we reach here in the body, will be our state of consciousness and the surroundings organised by it when the mental being passes out of the body. For the individual soul out of the body must either disappear into the general constituents of its existence, merge itself into Brahman or persist in an organisation of ... But it is an important intermediate object so long as the soul is in a state of growth and self-enlargement and has not attained to liberation. The obligation of birth and death is a sign that the mental being has not yet unified itself with its true supramental self and spirit, but is dwelling "in Avidya and enclosed within it". 1 To attain that union the life of man upon earth is its appointed means... AND HELL The enjoyment of beatitude in a heaven beyond is also not the supreme consummation. But Vedantic thought did not envisage rebirth as an immediate entry after death into a new body; the mental being in man is not so rigidly bound to the vital and physical,—on the contrary, the latter are ordinarily dissolved together after death, and there must therefore be, before the soul is attracted back ...
... activities, whatever its other concessions to the lower Karma, lives for the sake of the true values, the true demands of a mental being, even though one imprisoned in a body and set to wrestle with the conditions of life in a material universe. The innate demand of the mental being is for mental experience, for the mind's manifold strengths, its capacities, joys, growth, perfections, and for these things... the emotional mind for love and the joy of relation with our fellow-beings, the demand of the will for self-mastery and mastery of things and the world and our existence. And the values which the mental being holds for supreme and effective are the values of truth and knowledge, of right and good, of beauty and aesthetic delight, of love and emotional joy, of mastery and inner lordship. It is these things... wideness, and not only to discover the Truth and the Law and set up a system and an order, but to enlarge continually its lines and boundaries. And therefore in these fields, as in life, man, the mental being, cannot stop short too long in the partial truth of an established system and a temporary mistaken for an eternal order—here least, because as he advances he is always tempted still farther forward ...
... vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind sheath or mental vehicle, 5 a third, supreme and divine status of supra-mental being, termed the causal body and composed of a fourth and a fifth vehicle 6 which are described as those of knowledge and bliss... of existence. But the bodily life in man is a base, not the aim, his first condition and not his last determinant. In the just idea of the ancients man is essentially the thinker, the Manu, the mental being who leads the life and the body, 3 not the animal who is led by them. The true human existence, therefore, only begins when the intellectual mentality emerges out of the material and we begin... mass men seem to need, in favourable circumstances, only a few generations to cover ground that ought apparently to be measured in the terms 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 ...
... principle of limitation, of seeking without secure finding, the same constant association and dissociation of its gains and of the constituents of its works, so that the knowledge gained by man, the mental being, seems never to be final or free from doubt and denial and all his labour seems condemned to move in a rhythm of action and reaction and of making and unmaking, in cycles of creation and brief ... self-embodying spirit. This is the whole basis of the pessimist theory of the world,—optimist, it may be, as to worlds and states beyond, but pessimist as to the earthly life and the destiny of the mental being in his dealings with the material universe. For it affirms that since the very nature of material existence is division and the very seed of embodied mind is self-limitation, ignorance and egoism... with chains which it has itself forged. And if it be true that the dividing Mind is the first principle of creation, then it must be also the ultimate attainment possible in the creation, and the mental being struggling vainly with Life and Matter, overpowering them only to be overpowered by them, repeating eternally a fruitless cycle must be the last and highest word of cosmic existence. But no such ...
... of all existence. The workings of Mind, Life, Body are viewed from the calm and peace of the spiritual planes of the mental being and are filled with that calm and peace; they are not possessed by and subjected to the law of the all-mastering Spirit. All this is when the mental being takes its station in its own spiritual planes, in the mental planes of Sat, Chit, Ananda, and casts down their light... outgoing, immanent, all-embracing, all-constituting self-knowledge and self-creative power. The immanent, silent Self in all is the foundation of this cosmic consciousness for the experience of the mental being. It Page 409 is the Witness pure and omnipresent who as the silent Conscious Soul of the cosmos regards all the activity of the universe; it is Sachchidananda for whose delight universal... whence shall he have grief who knows entirely 2 and sees in all things oneness." But this can be only when there is perfection in the cosmic consciousness, and that is difficult for the mental being. The mentality when it arrives at the idea or the realisation of the Spirit, the Divine, tends to break existence into two opposite halves, the lower and the higher existence. It sees on one side ...
... deeper kinds of samadhi; but, as there is no other word, we have to use it for all kinds. Letters on Yoga, pp. 742-43 ...since mind-consciousness is the sole waking state possessed by mental being,... it cannot ordinarily quite enter into another without leaving behind completely both all our waking existence Page 211 and all our inward mind. This is the necessity of the Yogic... one returns to the mental consciousness, one is back again in the lower being. Therefore it has been said that complete liberation from the human birth, complete ascension from the life of the mental being is impossible until the body and the bodily life are finally cast off. The ideal upheld before the Yogin who follows this method is to renounce all desire and every least velleity of the human... it is therefore a state of consciousness or rather of super-consciousness without habitation or level. There is more than one kind of Nirvana (extinction or dissolution) possible. Man being a mental being in a body, manomaya puruṣa, makes this attempt at retreat from the cosmos through the spiritualised mind, he cannot do otherwise and it is this that gives it the appearance of an extinction ...
... Aurobindo 21 September 1931 The Witness of whom you have become aware is not the psychic but the inner mental being which has come to the front as the psychic came before. It is this mental being in you which watches, observes and passes judgement on all that happens in you. The psychic does not watch and observe in this way like a witness, but it... once what are the right and what the wrong movements. It is evident that the psychic is still active in you, not prominently in front, but shedding its native light on the mental; otherwise the mental being would not be so sure in its observation and judgement but might make mistakes and be misled by the outer vital or clouded by the physical nature. I have already told you that while the psychic... being uses a conscious will to control and organise the movements of the nature it is then that one has a real, a spiritual self-mastery. But in the meanwhile it can and often does use the inner mental being for the purpose. This is what is happening in you just now and that is why you feel the conscious will coming forward to obey and execute the instructions of the witness. It is the beginning of ...
... thought-perception. There is also an act of mental observation and valuation of this wave in the sense-mind. There is also the subject or mental being who thus modifies his mental becoming and observes and values it by an act of mind. It is when the mental being stands back from the mental becoming and even from the mental act that he begins to perceive himself as something different from all becoming... —The ego-sense is a mental device by which the mental being develops towards knowledge of that which experiences as well as of that which is experienced. Memory only tells us that the successive experiences have happened in the same field of conscious being; it is the coordinating and distinguishing mind which tells us that it is the same mental being who experiences.—Mind-substance suffers the changes ...
... reasoning animal upon earth, the thinking race; he is essentially the mental being in a terrestrial body, the manu . Quite apart from the existence of a soul or self one in all creatures, the body is not even the phenomenal self of man; the physical life also is not himself; both may be dissolved, man will persist. But if the mental being also is dissolved, man as man ceases to be; for this is his centre... exists outside Matter and embraces it or enters into it. We must suppose a mental plane of existence Page 35 which presses upon the physical and tends to possess it. In that case the mental being would be in its origin an entity which is formed outside the material world; but it prepares in that world bodies which become progressively more and more able to house and express Mind. We may... possessing the body, breaking into it, as it were,—as the Purusha in the Aitareya Upanishad is said to form the body and then to enter in by breaking open a door in Matter. Man would in this view be a mental being incarnate in the living body who at its dissolution leaves it with full possession of his mentality. The two theories are far from being incompatible with each other; they can be viewed as c ...
... were a substance of eternal and indestructible peace. 54 In the passage just quoted, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the substance of the mental being that continues to exist even when thoughts cease, for thoughts are simply the activities of the mental being, not part of its substance. As he explains to a disciple: Thoughts are not the essence of mind-being, they are only an activity of mental... mind is vacant, there is no thought, no conception, no mental action of any kind, except an essential perception of things without the formed idea; but in the calm mind, it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they do not rise at all out of the mind, but they come from outside and cross the mind as a flight of birds crosses... mental nature; if that activity ceases, what appears then as a thought-free existence that manifests in its place is not a blank or void but something very real, substantial, concrete we may say—a mental being that extends itself widely and can be its own field of existence silent or active as well as the Witness, Knower, Master of that field and its action. ... an emptiness there is, but it is an emptiness ...
... thenceforward be the leader of that Nature. This is because the principle of spirituality has yet to affirm itself in its own complete right and sovereignty; it has been up till now a power for the mental being to escape from itself or to refine and raise itself to a spiritual poise, it has availed for the release of the Spirit from mind and for the enlargement of the being in a spiritualised mind and... Ignorance seeking for Knowledge and growing into Knowledge, so supermind must be established here on a basis of Knowledge growing into its own greater Light. But this cannot be so long as the spiritual-mental being has not risen fully to supermind and brought down its powers into terrestrial existence. For the gulf between mind and supermind has to be bridged, the closed passages opened and roads of ascent... It is more difficult because life and body are the first powers and, if they are in the least strong, can impose themselves with an almost irresistible insistence on the mental ruler. Man is a mental being and the mind is the leader of his life and body; but this is a leader who is much led by his followers and has sometimes no other will than what they impose on him. Mind in spite of its power is ...
... is indeed the process of Purusha-Prakriti everywhere; it is the key-movement of all the hierarchy and graded harmonies of manifested existence. In the mental being mind-sense or intelligence is the original and dominant principle. The mental being in the mind-world where he is native is in his central and determining nature intelligence; he is a centre of intelligence, a massed movement of intelligence... capable of being seized by his mental intelligence; what he does not sense and conceive, is to him practically non-existent, or at least alien to his world and his nature. Man is in his principle a mental being, but not one living in a mind world, but in a dominantly physical existence; his is Page 488 a mind cased in Matter and conditioned by Matter. Therefore he has to start with the action... all-in-allness. The gnostic Purusha has normally the consciousness of itself as infinite, normally too the consciousness of containing the world in itself and exceeding it; it is not like the divided mental being normally bound to a consciousness that feels itself contained in the world and a part of it. It follows that a deliverance from the limiting and imprisoning ego is the first elementary step towards ...
... beyond himself and beyond the obvious and material facts of his existence. Its first essential work is to confirm and make real to him his subjective sense of an Infinite on which his material and mental being depends and the aspiration of his soul to come into its presence and live in contact with it. Its function is to assure Page 458 him too of that possibility of which he has always dreamed... informs all things even that are not mentally conscious. But in man this physical being has become vitalised and mentalised; it has received something of the law and capacities of the vital and mental being and nature. But its possession of them is derivative, superimposed, as it were, on its original nature and exercised under subjection to the law and action of the physical existence and its instruments... are the sources of our action. We are aware indeed of the life-plane and mind-plane of the physical being, but not of the life-plane and mind-plane proper or of the superior and larger vital and mental being which we are behind the veil of our ordinary consciousness. It is only at a high stage of development that we become aware of them and even then, ordinarily, only at the back of the action of our ...
... human being. But the more he looks into himself and the more he goes inward and lives intimately and pre-eminently in his mind and soul, the more he discovers that he is in his essential nature a mental being encased in body and emmeshed in the life activities, manu, manomaya puruṣa . He is more than a thinking, willing and feeling result of the mechanism of the physical or an understanding nexus of... into matter and has to act in and through this world of the vital and physical energy and to consent to and make something of the lines of the vital and physical Karma. Man, then, since he is a mental being, a means of the evolution of the mental self-expression of the spirit, cannot confine the rule of his action and nature to an obedience to the vital and physical law and an intelligent utilisation... utilisation of it for the greater, more ordered, more perfect enjoyment of his vital and physical existence, perpetuation, reproduction, possession, enjoyment, expansion. There is a higher law of mental being and nature of which he is bound to become aware and to seek to impose it on his life and his action. At first he is very predominantly governed by the life needs and the movement of the life energies ...
... " At times the Upanishad seems to describe this Self as the "mental being leader of the life and the body", which is really the subliminal mind of the psychical investigators; but this is only a relative description. The Vedantic psychology was aware of other depths that take us beyond this formula and in relation to which the mental being becomes in its turn as superficial as is our waking to our ... possibility of a farther use of her forces to which she herself has not proceeded, not finding them necessary for the mere preservation of existence and its ordinary workings, but has left to man, her mental being, to discover and utilise for the amelioration of existence and for the development of its possibilities. All this is easy to see in the realm of Matter; but mankind is not yet entirely ready... another march of the great journey. And the goal of that journey cannot be other than the "highest good" which the ancient psychologists proposed to the life and growth of the soul. Man, the mental being, once aware that there is this deep, great and hidden self, the real reality of his being, must necessarily seek to enter into it, to become conscious in it, to make there his centre instead of ...
... substance of the mental being"? My child, the substance means... how shall I put it?... it means the stuff of which the mental being is made. It could be said, for instance, that the cells are the substance of your body. It is not exactly matter, the mind is not quite material, but it is the very thing of which the mind is made. If there were no mental substance, there would be no mental being. It would... different deity, and they have an individual independent existence of their own, that they are existing realities, that they are truly real substances, that it is 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 ...
... raised questions. First, “What is the mental personality?” In each human being the body is animated by the vital being, and governed, or partially governed, by a mental being. This is a general rule, but the extent to which the mental being is formed and individualised varies greatly from one individual to the next. In the great mass of human beings the mind is something fluid which has no organisation... that, fluid, unorganised, with no cohesive life of its own and without personality, it cannot survive. What made up the mental being dissolves in the mental region when the body, the substance which made up the body, dissolves in the physical substance. But as soon as the mental being is formed, organised, individualised, and has become a personality, it does not depend, it no longer depends on the ...
... raised questions. First, "What is the mental personality?" In each human being the body is animated by the vital being, and governed, or partially governed, by a mental being. This is a general rule, but the extent to which the mental being is formed and individualised varies greatly from one individual to the next. In the great mass of human beings the mind is something fluid which has no organisation... unorganised, with no cohesive life of its own and without personality, it cannot survive. What made up the mental being dissolves in the mental region when the body, the Page 27 substance which made up the body, dissolves in the physical substance. But as soon as the mental being is formed, organised, individualised, and has become a personality, it does not depend, it no longer depends ...
... into that state, and the Raja Yogic methods, during the processes of their repeated applications, lead to the attainment of all those higher states of consciousness and the powers by which the mental being rises towards superconscient as well as its ultimate and supreme possibility of union with the highest. Raja Yoga is psychic science, and it gives an account of the powers and states which are possible... ā (including garim ā ), laghim ā and anim ā These three siddhis of being are distinguished from siddhis of knowledge and siddhis of power. 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... controller of the development of the body, life and mind. It is the caitya purusha, which is realised more and more distinguished from manomaya purusha, prānamaya purusha, and annamaya purusha (mental being, vital being and physical being). The experience of the caitya purusha is a major experience of Karma yoga,, since through that experience the entire process of Karma yoga begins to be guided ...
... Reality, which is the primary objective of this synthetic yoga. Sri Aurobindo points out that when the mental being seeks to know the Divine, it falls short as an instrument to realize the Object of realization in its entire indivisibility and integrality. As he points out: "When ... the mental being seeks to know the divine, to realize it, to become it, it has first to lift this lid, to put by this... n, - Existence, Non-Existence, Tao, Nihil, Force, Unknowable." 51 Sri Aurobindo goes farther and points out that when the Object of realization is seized in awareness by rising above the mental being, we cannot either raise ourselves to it and become it or bring it down to ourselves so that our own experience of our being and world-being can seize the blissful infinity, — the object of realization... thought and then another coming in a concrete way from outside; I flung them away before they could enter and take hold of the brain and in three days I was free. From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms ...
... the material being, the external man our only self and spirit. Next he fixed on life as the Reality and the vital being as the self and spirit; in the third essay he penetrated to Mind and the mental being; only afterwards could he get beyond the superficial subjective through the supramental Truth-Consciousness to the eternal, the blissful, the ever creative Reality of which these are the sheaths... intellectual leaders of the race can discover as the solution of the heavy problem with which we are impaled. But it is conceivable that this tendency may hereafter rise to the higher idea of man as a mental being, a soul in mind that must develop itself individually and collectively in the life and body through the play of an ever-expanding mental existence. This greater idea would realise that the elevation... waits to master them by their concessions to her own law. If mankind is to be spiritualised, it must first in the mass cease to be the material or the vital man and become the psychic and the true mental being. It may be questioned whether such a mass progress or conversion is possible; but if it is not, then the spiritualisation of mankind as a whole is a chimera. From this point of view it is an ...
... of the Divine and an ascent through these planes, a descent of them into the mental being might seem to be the natural evolutionary course. But in practice it might be found that these intermediate levels would not be sufficient for the total transformation since, being themselves illumined potentialities of mental being not yet supramental in the full sense of the word, they could bring down to the... previous animal form and its erect figure of a new power of Page 538 life and its expressive movements and activities serviceable and necessary to the principle of mind and the life of a mental being, so too a body must be developed with new powers, activities or degrees of a divine action expressive of a truth-conscious being and proper to a supramental consciousness and manifesting a conscious ...
... long as we have not the clue; once the clue is in our hands there is an admirable force, clearness & sublimity in every word & image of the sacred writings. The idea is that of the existence of the mental being man in this world made absolutely full in all its parts & harmonious by the completest power, range & complexity possible to our beings; this is the great result of the waking & working of divine... and delight the seven streams of our being, force, bliss, ideality, mind, life, body are all fattened & nourished; they stand here अत्र in this lower kingdom, receiving these life-giving nectars. Mental being & bodily being become harmonised in us, each answering to the calls of each other, not at discord, their mutual vibrations equalised, not harmful by one unevenly dominating, the other suffering;... Viswamitra now passes on to the final stage of this great movement in the Vedic Yoga, for the object of the awakening of divine Force in our mortal nature is not the perfection of our bodily & mental being on their own levels, but, as a result of Page 625 that perfection, the arising of our human life out of that mortal & materialised mentality which is now our seat & centre into the ideal ...
... bring out the spiritual light, mastery and freedom to work upon the obscurity and embarrassment of his first natural conditions and their narrow determinations, this would be the nature of man the mental being. On this basis it becomes possible to come at some clear and not wholly antinomous relation between man's necessity and man's freedom, between his earthly human nature at whirl in the machinery... law of universal Nature and the will of the seeing universal Spirit who governs the dispositions and consequences of Karma. This constrained overruled action is in patent fact the character of our mental being and action. But still there is here something which we may call a relative freedom. It does not really belong to our outward mind and will or that shadow of myself which I have put forth in my... greatest mental self-mastery a relative and precarious thing at the best. This liberty when we look down at it from a higher station, is not well distinguishable from a lightened bondage. The mental being in us can be a learner in the school of freedom, not a perfect adept. A real freedom comes when we get away from the mind into the life of the spirit, from personality to the Person, from Nature ...
... Supermind and a supramental race of beings upon the earth, it could bring about an uplifting and transforming change in mind itself and, as an inevitable consequence, in the consciousness of man, the mental being, and would equally bring about a radical and transforming change in the principles and forms of his living, his ways of action and the whole build and tenor of his life. It would certainly open... advance; its defects of methods and means are faults of its immaturity and not proper to the constitution of its being; its achievement, although extraordinary under the hampering conditions of the mental being weighed down by its instrumentation in an earthly body, is far below and not beyond what will be possible to it in its illumined future. For mind is not in its very nature an inventor of errors... creator in the light, a discoverer in the depths, an illuminant in the darkness, helping perhaps to penetrate even the Inconscient with the rays of a secret Superconscience. There would be a new mental being not only capable of standing enlightened in the radiance of the Supermind but able to climb consciously towards it and into it, training life and body to reflect and hold something of the supramental ...
... for this meaningful development of consciousness by thought, will, emotion, desire, action and experience, leading in the end to a supreme divine self-discovery, that Man, the Page 89 mental being, has entered into the material body. All the rest is either auxiliary and subordinate or accidental and otiose; that only matters which sustains and helps the evolution of his nature and the growth... spiritual life will draw its sustenance not from desire but from a pure and selfless spiritual delight of essential existence. And not only the vital nature in us whose stamp is desire, but the mental being too must undergo a new birth and a transfiguring change. Our divided, egoistic, limited and ignorant thought and intelligence must disappear; in its place there must stream in the catholic and faultless... embodied being liberates sattwa, the mode of light, and acquires a relative freedom and mastery and knowledge and with it a qualified and conditioned sense of inner satisfaction and happiness. Man, the mental being in a physical body, should be but is not, except in a few among this multitude of ensouled bodies, of this nature. Ordinarily he has too much in him of the obscure earth-inertia and a troubled ignorant ...
... self-deception is thus added to an organised self-ignorance; it is only by going within and seeing these things at their source that we can get out of this obscurity and tangle. For a larger mental being is there within us, a larger inner vital being, even a larger inner subtle-physical being other than our surface body-consciousness, and by entering into this or becoming it, identifying ourselves... their action is mixed together, confused and conflicting, here in our depths they can be seen and worked upon in their independent and separate nature and action and a harmonisation of them by the mental being in us, leader of the life and body, 1 —or, better, by the central psychic entity,—is not so difficult, provided we have the right psychic and mental will in the endeavour: for if it is with the... enlarge itself from that indistinct essential perception and limited sensation to a clear and direct intrinsic awareness of the whole entity within: we can enter into possession of our whole conscious mental being and life being and arrive at a close intimacy of direct penetrating and enveloping contact with the total movements of our mental and vital energy; we meet clearly and closely and are—but more freely ...
... the physical our true existence, because we are even in our instrumental or expressive nature predominantly mind and not matter, mental much rather than physical beings. That growth into the full mental being is the first transitional movement towards human perfection and freedom; it does not actually perfect, it does not liberate the soul, but it lifts us one step out of the material and vital absorption... itself, to know it better, to use it better, to give it nobler values, a broader range, a more sublimated action,—an extended scale, higher issues. Man is in his characteristic power of nature a mental being, but in the first steps of his emergence he is more of the mentalised animal, preoccupied like the animal with his bodily existence; he employs his mind for the uses, interests, desires of the life... now superconscient to us, by an ascension to the native heights of the Spirit. Page 764 In the superconscience beyond our present level of awareness are included the higher planes of mental being as well as the native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being. The first indispensable step in an upward evolution would be to elevate our force of consciousness into those higher parts ...
... state and action, an inherent principle of response and a secret consciousness, the greatest portion of its rajasic motions are contributed by the life-power and all the overt consciousness by the mental being. The principle of rajas has its strongest hold on the vital nature. It is Page 684 the Life within us that is the strongest kinetic motor power, but the life-power in earthly beings... vehement pleasures insecurely bestowed by the satisfaction of rajasic desire and passion. Light and happiness are the characteristics of the sattwic guna. The whole nature of the embodied living mental being is determined by these three gunas. But these are only predominant powers in each part of our complex system. The three qualities mingle, combine and strive in every fibre and in every member... appearance of her strife and imperfection. That may be true of the ordinary deputed action of the Divine in the human spirit with its present relations of soul to nature in an embodied imperfect mental being, but it is not true of the divine nature of perfection. The strife of the gunas is only a representation in the imperfection of the lower nature; what the three gunas stand for are three essential ...
... represents the gnosis and the sky, mid-air and earth the mentality, vitality, physicality of man and of the universe. Living on the earth, climbing into the mid-air or even winging in the sky, the mental being, the manomaya Purusha, would still live in the rays of the sun and not in its bodily light. And in those rays he would see things not as they are, but as reflected in his organ of vision, deformed... triplicity and each thing that is in it. He sees it not by reflection in a mental organ of vision, but with the Sun of gnosis itself as his eye,—for the Sun, says the Veda, is the eye of the gods. The mental being, even in the intuitive mind, can perceive the truth only by a brilliant reflection or limited communication and subject to the restrictions and the inferior capacity of the mental vision; but the... concentrated luminous soul nature,— Page 486 a radiant activity of the divine knowledge, will and joy perfect in the natural action of the Prakriti,—this is the fundamental experience of the mental being transformed and fulfilled and sublimated in the perfection of the gnosis. Page 487 × So the Sun is called ...
... Nature. Wherever consciousness plays, this biune reality is present in one form or another, openly concordant or apparently divided. We have thus in the realm of evolutionary existence a mental being facing mental Nature, a vital being fronting vital Nature, a physical being opposite physical Nature: these beings are experienced by us according as our consciousness assumes a mental or vital... based Sri Aurobindo's appeal to us to choose the life divine instead of the life human. He² states: "The Divine can lead, he does not drive. There is an internal freedom permitted to every mental being called 'man' to assent or not to assent to the Divine leading: how else can any real spiritual evolution be done?" If it is asked what becomes of Sri Aurobindo's assertion that only in... step, a finding of a certain side of divine reality which too was concealed, that paradoxically we have in even this attainment to follow that urge and choose good and reject evil. In man the mental being, the conscious self-evolver, the urge is an unavoidable open ingredient of his constitution and cannot help being insistent and deeply desirable. We may tend to justify the non-following of ...
... Evolution henceforth means the evolution of the consciousness, of mind and, if any such thing there be, of what is beyond mind,—and in that case as its last stride has been the evolution of the mental being, man, out of the vital being, the animal, so its next stride will be to evolve out of mental man a greater spiritual and supramental creature. Page 223 50 All mind and life... This is why material Nature does the works of a supreme and miraculous intelligence and yet there seems to be no intervention of any indwelling Seer or Thinker. 68 Because man is a mental being, he naturally imagines that mind is the one great leader and actor and creator or the indispensable agent in the universe. But this is an error; even for knowledge mind is not the only or the greatest... inanimate and inconscient objects, for in them the spirit in things is asleep, through a leisurely waking in plant and animal till it reached with difficulty a beginning of self-awareness in man the mental being, the first and only speaking, thinking, reasoning creature. But there is no ground for the idea cherished by this imperfect human being that he is the summit and last word of the evolution. Humanity ...
... longer in their appearance. To enter into some kind of union or communion or participation in that is the common object of all Yoga. But the Reality presents itself to the consciousness of man the mental being under many aspects. We seek after union or closeness to the Divine, whatever the Divine may be. We see the Divine as a personal Godhead or as an impersonal Existence. A God of Love or compassion... nature is a step towards some supernature, something natural to itself but supernatural to what is below it. Life is supernatural to Matter, Mind supernatural to Life, ideal being supernatural to mental being, infinite being supernatural to ideal being. So too man is supernatural to the animal, God is supernatural to man. Man too as soon as he has assured his natural existence, must insist on his upward... thing that symbolises itself, to realise the symbol, is our fulfilment. Being still a figure of humanity, man among men, a living body among living bodies, though housed in life & matter yet a mental being among mental beings, being & remaining all this that we are apparently, yet to exceed all this apparent manhood and become in the body what we are really, God, spirit, supreme & infinite, pure Bliss ...
... into it for their cosmic functions. This is a clear parable of the creation of more and more developed forms till one was found that was capable of housing consciousness.” (LD 837) Nature’s “mental being”, like the other fixed forms or species it has worked out, cannot by itself evolve into a higher embodiment of consciousness. “All the facts show that a type [i.e. a species] can vary within its... evolution from below and such a descent from above cooperated in the appearance of humanity in earth-nature. The secret psychical entity already there in the animal might have itself called down the mental being, the Mind-Purusha, into the realm of living Matter in order to take up the vital-mental energy already at work and lift it into a higher mentality. But this would still be a process of evolution... is no longer useful to suppose that we, as individuals, are the center of the universe, either.” (David Barash 21 ) Yet the human, evolved from the animal, is more than the animal: he is a mental being to a degree which essentially differs from that of the nascent mentality in the animal. It is the powers of the mind-world which have caused his body to walk upright, his brain to expand and his ...
... the supramental Consciousness of Unity; therefore it can only perceive aspects, aspects that are parts, flakes or chips of the One Reality. This is why Sri Aurobindo called the human so often ‘the mental being’, halfway on the ascending ladder of evolution, between the dark abyss of the Inconscient and the radiant summit of the all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful Being. Thus evolution actually... species. This has happened time and again when the lower and higher life-forms made their appearance on planet Earth, followed by the ever more mentalized animals and then by the full-grown, typical mental being, the human. All this implies that somewhere in the typal manifestation there must have existed a mental world belonging to mental beings like the human long before he became materially incarnated... of its fulfilment has now arrived, they say. The human being is inwardly mutating into a new, higher, divine being which has no name as yet, though it is sometimes called ‘superman’. Out of the mental being, whether it knows it or not, whether it consciously wants it or not, evolves NOW the supramental being. The Pioneers have already formed the archetype of the new species in themselves and prepared ...
... is that of an incarnated mental consciousness in matter and life, the lower evolutionary gradations still prevail in him to such a degree that he may still be considered to be animal man, not the mental being in its pure form which in times to come may take shape as a higher species on Earth. He is great, he is little. He is terribly vulnerable though in essence immortal. He is ignorant but has the... And he also wrote: ‘Then he [the Creator] creates out of this solar body of Vishnu the planets, each of which successively becomes the Bhumi [Earth] or place of manifestation for Manu, the mental being, who is the nodus of manifest life-existence and the link between the life and the spirit. The present earth in its turn appears as the scene of life, Mars being its last theatre.’ 15 These words... higher form of consciousness and in whom it now called for the descent of this higher form. On the other hand there was the answer from above by which a higher mental world, the world of the ‘typal’ mental being, was inserted into the evolutionary ladder, thus enabling the incarnation of a species on a higher rung of the ladder, earthman. When approximately did this take place? Paleontologists say that ...
... part of humanity itself there might well arise a new and greater order of mental human beings: for the directly intuitive or partly intuitivised but not yet gnostic mental being, the directly or partly illumined mental being, the mental being in direct or part communion with the higher-thought plane would emerge: these would become more and more numerous, more and more evolved and secure in their type ...
... times to think so. For man as he is at present "is too imperfect an expression of the spirit, mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being." (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine) What is more, even at the risk of provoking derisive laughter in some of our readers, we make bold to affirm that the... multipronged ills of man and of his society as evolved at present, also the validity and truth of each of them in its own field of research. Sri Aurobindo has defined the consciousness of man the mental being as "a many-sided Ignorance striving to become an all-embracing Knowledge." Yes, 'striving to become', but always failing to attain to its cherished end. But why? Because mind-consciousness, the... transformation even of our physical sheath, annamaya ko ṣ a, is an indispensable concomitant of a truly divine living in the world. But in the actually realised status of consciousness of man the mental being, this transformation can by no means be achieved nor even xxxi initiated on the plane of the material body. For, where is the necessary lever of transformation or the potent agent ...
... predominance of the vital nature is the chief cause of psychological disturbances. For, the human being at the present stage of evolution is primarily a mental being; therefore to be dominated by the vital being is to act contrary to one's nature as a mental being. So, in order to overcome the force of instincts, impulses, desires and feelings of the vital nature, it is necessary to have recourse to mind and... vital nature, mind needs to invoke a force greater than itself. Furthermore, the mind itself has its own inherent disturbances and limitations. To overcome the disturbances and limitations of the mental being, too, a power greater than that of the mind must be tapped, for to try to transform the mind by its own force of mental will and intelligence is, as the well-known simile goes, like trying to cut ...
... A Philosophy of Evolution for the Contemporary Man Marvel of the Mental Being If we were to go back to the stage when life had just emerged on the earth, it could not have seemed possible to us that in this little life, a mental being would emerge and create all manner of utensils, erect cities, houses, temples, theatres, laboratories, factories, chisel from... grey stuff of brain, a queer freak in a bit of inanimate Matter moving about on a small dot in the universe'. But if we were more deliberate, we might have probably concluded that man, the mental being, is sublimated by the endeavour of the Energy to evolve out of him as the spiritual man, the fully conscious being, man exceeding his first material self and discoverer of his true self and highest ...
... temporary phenomena, at worst, a downward curve, preparing for a higher curve. It is thus true that this progress has not earned the race beyond itself, into a self-exceeding or a transformation of the mental being; but this was not to be expected. All that has developed so far can be regarded, it has been concluded, as a process of developing the human type to its utmost capacity, and it is Page 49 ... emergence of consciousness that has been taking place in Nature. He is, it is stressed, too imperfect an expression of the Spirit; Mind itself is a too limited form and instrumentation. Man, the mental being, can only be a transitional being. If man is incapable of exceeding his mentality, it has been suggested, he must be surpassed, and Supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the... is cannot be the last term of that evolution: he is too imperfect an expression of the Spirit, Mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; Mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding Page 52 mentality, he must be surpassed and Supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation ...
... of the vital being are in conflict with the demands of the mind when it wants to pursue the purity of thought and knowledge and the purity of its ideals. Often the vital being tends to make the mental being the advocate of its desires and ambitions by means of rationalisation. At the same time, the pure pursuits of the mind succeed sometimes in obliging the vital being to make sacrifices, but the... values that the physical being seeks are those of health and harmony of physical beauty; the values of the development of the vital being at its highest are courage and heroism; the values of the mental being are those of clarity, impartiality and synthesis. The values of ethical being are those of goodwill and disinterested action for the sake of its intrinsic rightness; the values of the aesthetic... have ease and mastery over the increasing knowledge of the Supermind. It is for this reason that integral development of personality includes education of the physical being, the vital being and mental being. Therefore, whatever else may be the contents of education, which every individual has to pursue appropriate to his or her own seeking and to the finding of his or her own status and profession ...
... fluid, unorganised, with no cohesive life of its own and without personality, it cannot survive. What made up the mental being dissolves in the mental region when the body, the substance which made up the body, dissolves in the physical substance. "But as soon as the mental being is formed, organised, individualised, and has become a personality,... it no longer depends on the body for its existence... interpreting or explaining in its own way." (Ibid., p. 41) "... a certain state of inner organisation is necessary for this [the] psychic being to be able to have memories in the way the mental being has them..." (CWM, Vol.9 , p. 216) "...neither the mental nor the vital being can remember past lives..." because it is not they which are bom again." (CWM, Vol. 15, p. 135) "Only ...
... suicide or the execution of the rational and intellectual expression of the Human Mental Being "If this trend becomes universal, it is the end of the Age of Reason, the suicide or the execution by decapitation or lethal pressure, peine forte et durc, — of the rational and intellectual expansion of the human mental being. Reason cannot do its work, act or rule if the mind of man is denied freedom... Socialism or Governmental Communism lead to Totalitarianism? Is not Totalitarianism the denial of Reason? - Is it not the suicide or execution of the rational and intellectual expansion of the human mental being? Is Totalitarianism likely to be the inevitable end of the Age of Reason ? Or is there some other possibility? Is Collectivism not an indispensable stage of Human development? Can not the defects ...
... the earth. By balance I mean the different parts of the being adjusted to one another, or some steadiness, a quiet poise somewhere in the man, – not an unsteady inner condition. A strong mental being is also very necessary. Otherwise, when the experiences come the man turns upside down. In India, our mental development – I mean the outer man's development – is not at all proportionate. There... distorting" by the vital being seeinj to be the common malady. But it is very difficult to Set it right. Page 92 Disciple : Is there no such dodging and distorting in the mental being also ? Sri Aurobindo : There is, and it may also deviate the Sadhaka from the right path. But even then mind has after all some aspiration for the light and it is comparatively easy to enlighten... the Brahmic consciousness one must be always in drawn. But that is not quite true. I first had the silent Brahmic consciousness at Baroda as soon as I quieted my mind. It came, of course, to the mental being and I kept it for about a month. But I Was not unconscious, I saw people and things as Maya – all things only small and the One, the Reality, behind them. The experience of Shunyam – the ...
... being in us is not as conscious as the vital or the mental being. Sri Aurobindo : The physical may be said to be more inconscient than the other parts, but that would not prevent it from exerting a very powerful influence on the other parts. Besides, the decision to fast, or to do physical Tapasya, is taken by the vital and the mental being in man. It is not the body that takes the decision... 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 communicated to it. When this obstruction is removed the higher mental being is able to communicate its action easily to the brain. When the higher consciousness is attained the brain does not become dull. My experience is that it becomes illumined. All the exercises ...
... coming in a concrete way from outside; I flung them Page 42 away before they could enter and take hold of the brain and in three days I was free. From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thoughts as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms... him. He is forever tuned in elsewhere. Finally, he will see his actions becoming more clear-sighted, effective and powerful, without in the least encroaching upon his peace: The substance of the mental being... is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they... cross Page 43 the mind as a flight of birds crosses the sky in a windless air. It passes, disturbs... is cannot be the last term of that evolution: he is too imperfect an expression of the spirit, mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind ...
... Supermind and a supramental race of beings upon the earth, it could bring about an uplifting and transforming change in mind itself and as an inevitable consequence in the consciousness of man, the mental being and would equally bring about a radical and transforming change in the principles and forms of his living, his ways of action and the whole build and tenor of his life. It would certainly open to... advance; its defects of methods and means are faults of its immaturity and not proper to the constitution of its being; its achievement although extraordinary under the hampering conditions of the mental being weighed down by its instrumentation in an earthly body is far below and not beyond what will be possible to it in its illumined future. For mind is not in its very nature an inventor of errors,... discoverer in the depths, an illuminant in Page 194 the darkness, helping perhaps to penetrate even the Inconscient with the rays of a secret Superconscience. There would be a new mental being not only capable of standing enlightened in the radiance of the Supermind but able to climb consciously towards it and into it, training life and body to reflect and hold something of the supramental ...
... of his nature. In the language of Yoga we can say, it is the first, initial, tentative release of the mental Purusha from the hypnotic spell, the inexorable thralldom of Prakrit ! or Nature. The mental being or Purusha can now say "No", at least to some of tin impulses of the lower nature, though his refusal of consent is more often than not, overridden by the impetuous urges of the prāna or vital... developed before one can hope to transcend it in order to attain knowledge. She enjoins on everybody the duty of developing his reason, for it is only after he has risen to his full stature as a mental being that he can aspire to scale the spiritual heights. "The first thing that is to be taught to every human being as soon as he is capable of thinking is that he must obey reason which is a kind... super-instinct of the species. And I repeat that it is not a question of spiritual life, but the very elementary wisdom of human, purely human, life. Every child must know that he is created to become a mental being, and if he is to manifest his human nature, reason must govern his life and not vital impulses. That is the elementary education that should be given everywhere. The reign of reason should ...
... ह्रस्वनुड्भ्यां मतुबिति मतुप उदात्तत्वं । This purely grammatical formula is given a 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... 16 hours out of 18. Fatigue only dominated the system once in the day, on the occasion already recorded. Sleep for 5½ hours. Yesterday, in the samadhi, the old movement of a conscious exit of the mental being from the material centre (not a complete exit, not trance, but the usual swapnamaya departure) was resumed. It has this defect still that too strong a trend of the consciousness towards the body... is the rendering in thought of a truth of tendency, intention, or event, but everything is not yet put easily in its correct place, & uncertainty about the actual event is the normal state of the mental being who cannot distinguish between the correct decision and a false choice.. This stage has to be exceeded, before a clear & reliable trikaldrishti can be established. Physical activity 10 hours ...
... as of our inmost self, is our first, our capital ignorance. The Life Divine, p. 561 In the superconscience beyond our present level of awareness are included the higher planes of mental being as well as the native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being. The first indispensable step in an upward evolution would be to elevate our force of consciousness into those higher parts... spray of conscious-force tossed up by the infinite sea of our self-existence. In order to realise this we have to get away from our absorption in these surface habits, these petty tricks of our mental being, — and when we do get behind and away from them it is surprising how superficial they are, what ridiculously weak and little-penetrating pin-pricks they prove to be, — and we have to realise... the mental creature which at the top he is. But this evolution is really a manifestation and just as we have in us these subnormal selves and subhuman planes, so are there in us above our mental being supernormal and superhuman planes. There Chit as the universal conscious-stuff of existence takes other poises, moves out in other modes, on other principles and by other faculties of action ...
... perfectly simple; it is because the hypnotiser suspends the habitual waking consciousness which is the slave of nervous habits and is able to appeal to the subliminal mental being in the depths, Page 246 the inner mental being who is master, if he wills, of the nerves and the body. But this freedom which is effected by hypnosis abnormally, rapidly, without true possession, by an alien... alien will, may equally be won normally, gradually, with true possession, by one's own will so as to effect partially or completely a victory of the mental being over the habitual nervous reactions of the body. The Life Divine, pp. 106-07 ...there is an action of the sense-mind which is superior to the particular action of the senses and is aware of things even without imaging them in forms ...
... ion, understanding, and concentration. The mental chaos was to be expected if the view of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and the forces activated by their Work, contain any truth. Man is “the mental being” par excellence, as one finds repeated time and again in their books. If man has to be surpassed by the overman and afterwards by the supramental being, then reason, the mental being’s main means... Western thought perished because of its certainties. 14 – Michel Winock “Reason is the master of the nature of the human species,” 15 said the Mother, thus confirming that man is “the mental being” par excellence. “Reason using the intelligent will for the ordering of the inner and the outer life is undoubtedly the highest developed faculty of man at his present point of evolution; it is... It is concrete. 21 And in that picture, on that stair of the worlds, man has his place as a transitional being between the animal and the suprahuman species of the future. Man is the typical mental being, an embodiment on the Earth of the mental gradation in the universal manifestation. Keeping this in mind, let us see how Sri Aurobindo and the Mother defined Mind. 1. “Mind is not a faculty ...
... separate place and function, and all directed by a central being who is sometimes in front above the others, sometimes behind the scenes. Your mental being was observing the vital and not quite easy about its vehemence, for the natural base of the mental being is calm, thoughtfulness, restraint, control and balance, while the natural turn of the vital is dynamism, energy thrown into emotion, sensation... completeness, that the centre of the psychic is behind the heart and it is through the purified emotions that the psychic most easily finds an outlet. All from the heart above is the domain of the mental being—which also has three centres, one in the throat (the outward- going or externalising mind), one between the eyes or rather in the middle of the forehead (the centre of vision and will) and one above ...
... functionings as its instruments of perfection and realisation; its concern is with the gross body. Rajayoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power; it concentrates on the subtle body. The triple Path of Works, of Love and of Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth, Beatitude... Hathayoga attains large results, but at an exorbitant price and to very little purpose. Rajayoga takes a higher flight. It aims at the liberation and perfection not of the bodily, but of the mental being, the control of the emotional and sensational life, the mastery of the whole apparatus of thought and consciousness. It fixes its eyes on the citta , that stuff of mental consciousness in which ...
... Ananda. But all these potencies are only known to us in any definite manner, apart from the strong reality and effect of their essential presence, in so far as they are translated to our intuitive mental being and on its level and within its limits. As however we progress or as we grow into a more luminous and dynamic union with that spirit or Purusha, a greater action of knowledge and will and spiritual... supramental light is possible composed of all these powers, 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... being and by the spiritual reason and shapes all that has been created, all that has been gathered, turned into stuff of experience and made part of the consciousness, personality and nature by the mental being, into a highest harmony with the high infinite and universal life of the spirit. The mind can have the touch of the infinite and the universal and can reflect and even lose itself in them, but the ...
... in view is a self-surrender, a giving up of the human being into the being, consciousness, power, delight of the Divine, a union or communion at all the points of meeting in the soul of man, the mental being, by which the Divine himself, directly and without veil master and possessor of the instrument, shall by the light of his presence and guidance perfect the human being in all the forces of the Nature... comes the growth out of the separative human ego into the unity of the spirit, then the possession of the divine nature in its proper and its higher forms and no longer in the inferior forms of the mental being which are a mutilated translation and not the authentic text of the original script of divine Nature in the cosmic individual. In other words, a perfection has to be aimed at which amounts to the... gnostic knowledge, will and ananda are a direct instrumentation of spirit and can only be won by growing into the spirit, into divine being, this growth has to be the first aim of our Yoga. The mental being has to enlarge itself into the oneness of the Divine before the Divine will perfect in the soul of the individual its gnostic out-flowering. That is the reason why the triple way of knowledge, works ...
... Space. Time presents itself to us as a flow of dynamic movement, Space as an objective field of contents for the experience of this imperfect and developing awareness. By immediate awareness the mental being mobile in Time lives perpetually in the present; by memory he saves a certain part of his experience of self and things from streaming away from him entirely into the past; by thought and will and... to be a province? We are aware of our body and know that we have a physical existence, even very largely identify ourselves with it, and yet most of its operations are really subconscious to our mental being; not only does the mind take no part in them but, as we suppose, our most physical being has no awareness of its own hidden operations or, by itself, of its own existence; it knows or rather feels... of its being towards the realisation of self-possession and self-knowledge. A many-sided Ignorance striving to become an all-embracing Knowledge is the definition of the consciousness of man the mental being,—or, looking at it from another side, we may say equally that it is a limited separative awareness of things striving to become an integral consciousness and an integral Knowledge. Page 585 ...
... not or need not attach itself to anything in particular as the self; it does not identify itself with anything collective; it is a sort of fundamental form or power of the mind which compels the mental being to feel himself as a perhaps indefinable but still a limited being which is not mind, life or body, but under which their activities proceed in Nature. The others were a qualified ego-idea and ego-sense... entity, the self of the living creature. This Jiva is not the Page 360 mental ego-sense constructed by the workings of Nature for her temporary purpose. It is not a thing bound, as the mental being, the vital, the physical are bound, by her habits, laws or processes. The Jiva is a spirit and self, superior to Nature. It is true that it consents to her acts, reflects her moods and upholds the... becomes eternity, becomes infinity. All that is left of the personal soul is a hymn of peace and freedom and bliss vibrating somewhere in the Eternal. When there is an insufficient purity in the mental being, the release appears at first to be partial and temporary; the Jiva seems to descend again into the egoistic life and the higher consciousness to be withdrawn from him. In reality, what happens ...
... of purification is to make the whole mental being a clear mirror in which the divine reality can be reflected, a clear vessel and an unobstructing channel into which the divine presence and through which the divine influence can be poured, a subtilised stuff which the divine nature can take possession of, new-shape and use to divine issues. For the mental being at present reflects only the confusions... this externality of our being is not a binding limitation. We can raise our internal consciousness from plane to plane of the relations of Purusha with Prakriti, and even become, instead of the mental being dominated by the physical soul and nature, the gnostic being or the bliss-self and assume the gnostic or the bliss nature. And by this raising of the inner life we can transform our whole outward-going ...
... s (godheads), etc. of the higher mental plane. E.g. the light of pink colour might be that of some influence or godhead of love or bhakti in contact with the mental being. In some cases it may be the figure of a formation of the mental being itself. The flowers, diamonds and gems etc. would seem to indicate contact with Radha, Mahalakshmi and Mahakali influences. The vision of writing is also frequent... sadhak in the hope of being accepted and helped to realise itself. The visions and experiences you have described are all of the mental plane and show a great openness and purity of the inner mental being free from unfavourable influences. But it is difficult to tell the precise significance of those that are in the nature of colours, lights, a star etc., because they depend on contacts which are ...
... must be to perform the whole journey and not lie down content in any wayside stage or imperfect resting place. . . . Man cannot by his own effort make himself more than man; the mental being cannot by his own unaided force change himself into a supramental spirit. A descent of the Divine Nature can alone divinise the human receptacle. . . . If the Supramental... hast to become? That which thou hast to transcend is the self that thou appearest to be, and that is man as thou knowest him, the apparent Purusha. And what is this man? He is a mental being enslaved to life and matter; and where he is not enslaved to life and matter, he is the slave of his mind. But this is a great and heavy servitude; for to be the slave of mind is to be the slave... hast to become is that self that thou art within behind the veil of mind and life and matter. It is to be the: spiritual, the divine, the superman, the real Purusha. For that which is above the mental being is the superman. It is to be the master of thy mind, thy life and thy body; it is to be a king over Nature of whom thou art now the tool, lifted above her who now has thee under her feet. It is ...
... its place. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The True Being and the True Consciousness … man is not aware of the self or Jivatman, he is aware only of his ego, or he is aware of the mental being which controls the life and the body. But more deeply he becomes aware of his soul or psychic being as his true centre, the Purusha in the heart; the psychic is the central being in the evolution... truth of ourselves. On the surface in the Ignorance, it is the mental, vital, physical Prakriti that acts and the Purusha is disfigured, as it were, in the action of Prakriti. It is not our true mental being, our true vital being, our true physical being even that we are aware of; these remain behind, veiled and silent. It is the mental, vital, physical ego that we take for our being until we get knowledge... pure and perfect; in it is an instrumental Force for all divine realisations. It is the true vital being that has become awake and come in front within you. In the same way there is too a true mental being, a true physical being. When these are manifest, then you are aware of a double existence in you; that behind is always calm and strong, that on the surface alone is troubled and obscure. But if ...
... s. The psychic being is therefore evolutionary, not like the Jivatman prior to the evolution. But man is not aware of the self or Jivatman, he is aware only of his ego, or he is aware of the mental being which controls the life and the body. But more deeply he becomes aware of his soul or psychic being as his true centre, the Purusha in the heart; the psychic is the central being in the evolution... it does not descend into the being but is above it—it holds together the mental, vital and physical being and all the various parts of the personality and it controls the life either through the mental being and the mental thought and will or through the psychic, whichever may happen to be most in front or most powerful in nature. If it does not exercise its control, then the consciousness is in great... which is not born nor evolves but presides over the individual birth and evolution—puts forward a representative of himself on each plane of the consciousness. On the mental plane it is the true mental being, manomaya puruṣa , on the vital plane the true vital being, prāṇamaya puruṣa , on the physical plane the true physical being, annamaya puruṣa . Each being, therefore is, so long as the Ignorance ...
... is above all moral and ethical notions; it bathes in the Divine Light and manifests it, but it can truly govern the whole being only when the ego has been dissolved. Page 21 The mental being within watches, observes and passes judgment on all that happens in you. The psychic does not watch and observe in this way like a witness, but it feels and knows spontaneously in a much more direct... general course for ordinarily developed human beings. There are variations according to the nature of the individual and his development. For example, if the mental is strongly developed, then the mental being can remain; so also can the vital, provided they are organized by and centred around the true psychic being; they share the immortality of the psychic. The soul gathers the essential... one single person, a single being. But there are many beings and particularly there are concentrations on different levels: just as you have a physical being, you have a vital being, you have a mental being, you have a psychic being, you have many others and all possible intermediaries. But it is a little complicated, you might not understand. Suppose you were living a life of desire, passion ...
... all-embracing Knowledge" 1 — such is the definition, as offered by Sri Aurobindo, of the consciousness of man the mental being. Indeed, in the realm of the living, man is distinguished from all other creatures by his insatiable noetic urge. And since in his present normal status, the mental being that man is relies principally on thought for the gathering and the consolidation of his knowledge, he conceives... more authentic, more compelling and more satisfying than a mere thinking knowledge, an ever-insistent although mostly unconscious thirst for this vision, d ṛṣṭ i, invariably creates in man, the mental being, the exigence of 'visualisation' in diverse domains of his intellectual activity. It is natural, of course, that this sight-support in the fashion of a chameleon changes its aspect from domain to ...
... may remain steady and settled, as long as he wants, on one chosen field or object or idea already determined by the sadhaka' s will (2) To Make the Mind Plastic: A common weakness of our mental being is that it is very much one-sided, and stubborn in its personal opinion. As a result we lose the plasticity so much needed for genuine progress on the Path. In the absence of this plasticity,... mastery over the thought-apparatus of his mental field is a very important element of the sadhaka' s sadhana of the mind. (7) Making and Breaking of the Principles of Action: Man is a mental being. He cannot sacrifice the dignity of his mental status and act under the blind impulsions of his physical instincts and vital urges. He has to erect some well-considered principles and direct all... disastrous consequences that then follow in the sadhaka' s sadhana-life have been graphically described by Sri Aurobindo in the following telling passage of The Life Divine: "Man is a mental being and the mind is the leader of his life and body; but this is a leader who is much led by his followers and has sometimes no other will than what they impose on him. Mind Page 280 ...
... remembered that the human mind cannot be the judge of what is divine or undivine, there are things the Divine may sanction which the mental being fights shy of. It must leave into the Divine to choose His instrument and His mode of activity – it is sufficient if the mental being knows by whom it is impelled and. where it fallsas an arrow shot to its mark:kenesitampatatipresitam.¹ Yes, there is one thing... the solution given for all ages by the Gita. There will always be a problem, a difficult decision to make – a division in the consciousness – so long as one is in the realm of dualities, in one's mental being and consciousness, ruled by relativities and contingencies. There one cannot but have a divided loyalty. A part of you, for example, is loyal to your family, another to your country, a third to ...
... selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever- power. It effects a change of the ordinary fleeting mind by a process of Yama, Nīyama, Āsana, Prānāyāma, Pratyāhāra, Dhāranā, Dhyāna and Samādhi, where it can dwell constantly in a fixed poise and reflect the luminosity of the object that is pursued. The triple Path of Works, Love and Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will,... Supermind and supramental race of beings upon the earth, it could bring about an uplifting and transforming change in mind itself and as an inevitable consequence in the consciousness of man, the mental being and would equally bring about a radical and transforming change in the principles and forms of his living, his ways of action and the whole build and tenor of his life.'20 This and much more ...
... remembered that the human mind cannot be the judge of what is divine or undivine, there are things the Divine may sanction which the mental being fights shy of. It must leave it to the Divine to choose His instrument and His mode of activity— it is sufficient if the mental being knows by Page 71 whom it is impelled and where it falls as an arrow shot to its mark: keneshitam patati preshitam... indeed the solution given for all ages by the Gita. There will always be a problem, a difficult decision to make—a division in the consciousness—so long as one is in the realm of dualities, in one's mental being and consciousness, ruled by relativities and contingencies. There one cannot but have a divided loyalty. A part of you, for example, is loyal to your family, another to your country, a third to ...
... of the Divine and an ascent through these planes, a descent of them into the mental being might seem to be the natural evolutionary course. But in practice it might be found that these intermediate levels would not Ie sufficient for the total transformation since, being themselves illumined potentialities of mental being not yet supramental in the full sense of the word, they could bring down to the... modification of the previous animal form and its erect figure of a new power of life and its expressive movements and activities serviceable and necessary to the principle of mind and the life of a mental being, so too a body must be developed with new powers, activities or degrees of a divine action expressive of a truth-conscious being and proper to a supramental consciousness and manifesting a conscious ...
... nature. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, but, as is now admitted, such a radical change cannot be done in the human being. We can also call man the "Mental being", though it is a complement which the average man does not deserve as he is hardly a "mental being." All the same we can say "human consciousness" or "the mental consciousness". As a radical change in this mental consciousness cannot be brought... unerring, you will find that it stumbles even more than the rational mind. The reason why the animal mind thinks correctly is that the animals have not got the struggle between the vital and the mental being as man has got. 21-10-1925 The talk turned on the content of a letter by a Sadhika – lady Sadhaka – who said in her letter that her husband was trying to justify the lower sexual ...
... of energy of Nature. There is in the world of birth an energy of physical being and nature, arising out of the physical an energy of vital being and nature, arising out of the vital an energy of mental being and nature, arising out of the mental an energy of spiritual or supramental being and nature. And each of these forms of energy has a law of its own, lines of its own action, a right to its own... see accordingly that each in its impulse follows its Page 381 own lines regardless of the rest, each in the combination imposes as much of its domination as it can on the others. The mental being is itself a most complex thing and has several forms of energy, an intellectual, a moral, an emotional, a hedonistic energy of mental nature, and the will in each is in itself absolute for its own ...
... from whence they came; but even in these characteristics they may well be representative of the human soul which has itself descended from that world and has to reascend; for it is in its origin a mental being, son of immortality ( amṛtasya putraḥ ), a child of Heaven born in Heaven and mortal only in the bodies that it assumes. And the part of the Angiras Rishis in the sacrifice is the human part, to... Titans, Giants, Pythons, subconscient Powers who hold the light and the force in themselves, in their cities of darkness and illusion, but can neither use it aright nor will give it up to man, the mental being. Their ignorance, evil and limitation have not merely to be cut away from us, but broken up and into and made to yield up the secret of light and good and infinity. Out of this death that immortality ...
... Eternal. According to the adequacy of our perception of the Divine and the Eternal will be the way of the seeking, the depth and fullness of the union and the integrality of the realisation. Man, the mental being, approaches the Infinite through his finite mind and has to open some near gate of this finite upon that Infinite. He seeks for some conception on which his mind is able to seize, selects some power... Eternal and Infinite. Yet these things too which it restricts unduly, the potent will, the strong yearning of love, the positive light and all-embracing intuition Page 339 of the conscious mental being are from the Divine, represent essential powers of him and must have some justification in their Source and some dynamic way of self-fulfilment in him. No God-knowledge can be integral, perfect ...
... spiritual attitude towards our natural existence, and that is why the ancient wisdom laid so much stress on salvation by knowledge,—not an intellectual cognizance of things, but a growing of man the mental being into a greater spiritual consciousness. The soul's salvation cannot come without the soul's perfection, without its growing into the divine nature; the impartial Godhead will not effect it for us... nt in the lower forms of life, more and more conscient in the emergence of mentality, most conscious in the effort of the evolved intelligence figuring as will and reason in the fully developed mental being. Sattwa, the principle of understanding knowledge and of according assimilation, measure and equilibrium, which by itself would lead only to some lasting concord of fixed and luminous harmonies ...
... and its own characteristic form. So also Supermind must intervene to reveal Mind to itself, to liberate it from its absorption in its own practical motion and characteristic form and enable the mental being to realise that which is the hidden secret of all its formal practice and action. Thus shall man come to the knowledge of that which rules within him and missions his mind to its mark, sends forth... Supermind in us, it instinctively, if obscurely, knows to be its true nature and right. But, for this very reason, the feeling out, the attempt at acquisition can only succeed in proportion as the mental being abandons his characteristic mentality and its limitations in order to rise beyond to that Mind of the mind which is his origin and his secret governing principle. His mentality must admit Supramentality ...
... created by us in our emergence out of Matter, another a subliminal mind which is not hampered by our actual mental life and its strict limitations, something large, powerful and luminous, the true mental being behind that superficial form of mental personality which we mistake for ourselves. So also we have two lives, one outer, involved in the physical body, bound by its past evolution in Matter, which... function is to free and illumine, yet love is the deepest and most intense and its privilege is to be the key to the most profound and secret recesses of the Divine Mystery. Man, because he is a mental being, is prone to give the highest importance to the thinking mind and its reason and will and to its way of approach and effectuation of Truth and, even, he is inclined to hold that there is no other ...
... Mahashakti and also as the dual power of Purusha-Prakriti. The Mahashakti comes out of the Ishwara and does the work of the creation, supported by the Ishwara. 2 Man, the ignorant embodied mental being, begins to get free from his ignorance when he draws back from half-conscious substance of mind to conscious substance of Spirit. This is an overwhelming and absorbing experience to him and he cannot... that [it] is only the vital physical that is weak in you? You were nearer the supramental when you discovered your mind's entire ignorance and accepted that salutary knowledge. That humility of the mental being and the clear perception of its own incompetence is the first step towards a sound approach to the supramental Truth. Otherwise you will always live in messages, approximations and suggestions, ...
... understood but the Asura concluded that he the ego was the Divine and therefore went about trying to impose his ego on the universe. * "...if the mental is strongly developed, then the mental being can remain; so also can the vital, provided they are organised by and centred around the true psychic being; they share the immortality of the psychic." (P. 18) Does this mean that the vital... mental or vital after death. But it is not absolutely necessary that the person should have been a Bhakta or a Jnani. One like Shelley or like Plato for instance could be said to have a developed mental being centred round the psychic - of the vital the same can hardly be said. Napoleon had a strong vital, but not one organised round the psychic being. * "The ego is a formation of Nature; ...
... and then to control yourself perfectly." 3 "To perfect oneself, one must first become conscious of oneself." 4 "The distinct character of man", states Sri Aurobindo, "is that he is a mental being" 5 Therefore man naturally starts with a mental understanding of himself. A mental self-understanding lies in being able to distinguish intellectually the many different and complex parts of... towards deeper understanding. To shun all mental or intellectual understanding as mere "labelling" is to ignore the fact, stated above, that the distinct character of the human being is that of a mental being, and it is but natural for one to start with a mental understanding and gradually develop a deeper understanding. It is only rare individuals who have a deep self-understanding so as to be able ...
... is capable of gilding everything. In these conditions it is difficult to know oneself. One must be absolutely sincere to be able to do it and to see clearly into all the little falsehoods of the mental being. If in your mind you go over the various movements and reactions of the day like one repeating indefinitely the same thing, you will not progress. If this reviewing is to make you progress, you... part of human suffering would disappear. There are two things to be considered: consciousness and the instruments through which consciousness manifests. Let us take the instruments: there is the mental being which produces thoughts, the emotional being which produces feeling, the vital being which produces the power of action and the physical being that acts. The man of genius may use anything at ...
... have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge. Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar. " Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Glimpses, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 377 This is about the mental being in man, that is, his mental activities; and Sri Aurobindo contrasts knowings with Knowledge. Actually I should be the one to ask you if you know what Sri Aurobindo means by "knowings", and why... unreasonable, he says you must pass beyond reason into a higher Truth and Light. And what is interesting in the structure of this 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 ...
... of the Divine and an ascent through these planes, a descent of them into the mental being might seem to be the natural evolutionary course. But in practice it might be found that these intermediate levels would not be sufficient for the total transformation since, being themselves illumined potentialities of mental being not yet supramental in the full sense of the word, they Page 108 ...
... most drastic changes made by these means change nothing; for the old ills exist in a new form: the aspect of the outward environment is altered, but man remains 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... who have realised this reversal of consciousness in themselves, whose relation 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 ...
... down again grossly; but still it does come down, one can’t deny it. The vital being—not necessarily, nor the mental being. The vital being, if it knows how to get connected with the universal force, can very easily have no retrogression; it can continue to ascend. And the mental being, it’s absolutely certain, is completely free from all degeneration if it continues to develop normally. So these ...
... or from above on the body and its powers and its more conscious response to the higher parts of our being. The mind pre-eminently is man; he is a mental being and his human perfection grows the more he fulfils the description of the Upanishad, a mental being, Purusha, leader of the life and the body. If the mind can take up and control the instincts and automatisms of the life-energy and the subtle physical ...
... play more or less evolved or involved of the reason and a more or less crude suprarational element, a more or less disguised working of the spirit. At his lucid mental best, he is still not a pure mental being, a pure intelligence; even the most perfect intellectual is not and cannot be wholly or merely rational,—there are vital urgings that he cannot exclude, visits or touches of a light from above that... last; the mind and intellect must develop to their fullness so that the spirituality of the race may rise securely upward upon a broad basis of the developed lower nature in man, the intelligent mental being. Therefore we see that the reason in its growth either does away with the distinct spiritual tendency for a time, as in ancient Greece, or accepts it but spins out around its first data and activities ...
... (14) The Veda proper is karmakanda, not jnanakanda; its aim is not moksha, but divine fulfilment in this life & the next. Therefore the Vedic Rishis accepted plenty & fullness of physical, vital & mental being, power & joy as the pratistha or foundation of immortality & did not reject it as an obstacle to salvation. 1 (15) The world being one in all its parts every being in it contains the universe... holds firmly in their place, fixes, establishes all mental conceptions. First, therefore she has the purifying power of enlightenment, secondly, she has plenty of mental material, great wealth of mental being; thirdly, she is powerful in intellect, in that which holds, discerns, places. Therefore she is asked, as I take it, to control the Yajna—vashtu from Root vash, which bore the idea of control as ...
... the progress of time the impulse to strain beyond the mould it has realised to that which is higher than itself." In this complex arrangement of Nature where is man's exact position? He is a mental being housed in a vitalised body & he tends through pure idea towards divine beatitude. Now just as matter informed with life, no longer obeys the processes of matter only, but, even while it affects... is affected, limited and hampered by vital & bodily processes, but still governs them and would find its own liberation and theirs in the perfect conquest of life & matter by mind, so, since this mental being is really a soul imprisoned in mind, its perfect liberation comes by rising out of the mould of mind through pure idea into beatitude; escaping into beatitude, this mental existence is able to liberate ...
... to the life-force and its workings what they are to the material world. Matter does not know Mind, Mind knows Matter; it is only when the creature embodied in Matter develops mind, becomes the mental being that he can know his mental self and know by that self Matter also in its reality to Mind. So also Mind does not know That which is behind it, That knows Mind; and it is only when the being involved... know also Mind in its reality to that which is more real than Mind. How to rise beyond the mind and its instruments, enter into himself, attain to the Brahman becomes then the supreme aim for the mental being, the all-important problem of his existence. For given that there is a more real existence than the mental existence, a greater life than the physical life, it follows that the lower life with ...
... of the ego as doer. Then there is the realisation of these two entities. This is quite different from the psychic being. It is felt in the mind, vital, physical—most easily in the mind where the mental being (Purusha) is seated and controls the others ( manomayaḥ puruṣaḥ prāṇa-śarīra-netā ). 3) Prajna, Taijasa etc. are a different classification and have to do, not with the different parts of the... surface and by going deeper within. Larger mind is a general term to cover the realms of mind which become our field whether by going within or widening into the cosmic consciousness. The true mental being is not the same as the inner mental—true mental, true vital, true physical being means the Purusha of that level freed from the error and ignorant thought and will of the lower Prakriti and directly ...
... harmonise under it all the rest, changing what has to be changed. If this central being is the psychic, there is no great difficulty. If it is the mental being, Page 80 manomayaḥ puruṣaḥ prāṇa-śarīra-netā , then it is more difficult—unless the mental being can learn to be always in contact with and aided by the greater Will and Power of the Divine. Each part of the being has its own nature ...
... general course for ordinarily developed human beings. There are variations according to the nature of the individual and his development. For example, if the mental is strongly developed, then the mental being can remain; so also can the vital, provided they are organised by and centred around the true psychic being; they share the immortality of the psychic. The soul gathers the essential element... mental or vital after death. But it is not absolutely necessary that the person should have been a Bhakta or a Jnani. One like Shelley or like Plato for instance could be said to have a developed mental being centred round the psychic—of the vital the same can hardly be said. Napoleon had a strong vital but not one organised round the psychic being. What you suggest [ that certain forces from ...
... place and function, and all directed by a central being who is sometimes in front above the others, sometimes behind the scenes. Your mental being was observing the vital and not quite easy about its vehemence,— Page 197 for the natural base of the mental being is calm, thoughtfulness, restraint, control and balance, while the natural turn of the vital is dynamism, energy thrown into emotion ...
... When the concentration is at the top of the head, it means that the mental being is joining the higher consciousness there and there is not much resistance or none. The other place indicates the joining is of the psychic being to the higher consciousness, hence the greater silence, as the psychic is more central than the mental being; but also there is the attempt to join through the psychic the rest ...
... Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to... the environment or the grouping in which he is born or placed or else in one which is chosen or created for him by a divine direction. Therefore in our perfection there must be nothing left in the mental being which conflicts with or prevents our sympathy and free self-identification with the kind, the group or whatever collective expression of the Divine he is meant to lead, help or serve. But in the ...
... part of this discipline and change can be firmly Page 230 done in principle by the will of the mental being in us; but its full execution and the subsequent transformation can be done only when the deeper psychic soul increases its hold on the nature and replaces the mental being as its ruler. When this happens, he will be ready to make, not only with an aspiration and intention and an ...
... which the philosophies of the supracosmic Absolute take their stand; Illusionism itself, even if we contest its ultimate conclusions, can still be accepted as the way in which the soul in mind, the mental being, has to see things in a spiritual-pragmatic experience when it cuts itself off from the Becoming in order to approach and enter into the Absolute. But also, since the Becoming is real and is inevitable... terrestrial needs, interests, desires, ideals of the individual and the race. It could not be otherwise; for the care of the body, the sufficient development and satisfaction of the vital and the mental being of man, the pursuit of high individual and large collective ideals which start from the idea of an attainable human perfection or nearer approach to Page 700 perfection through his normal ...
... body after body and not created separately in each body and ending with it; for it is only the physical impress of mind on matter, only the corporeal mentality that is so created, not the whole mental being. This corporeal mentality is merely our surface of mind, merely the front which it presents to physical experience. Behind, even in our terrestrial being, there is this other, subconscious or subliminal... Perceived as the life being or vital being, prāṇamaya puruṣa . × The mental being, manomaya puruṣa . ...
... and depends on life in the body, supermind emerges in and lends Page 645 itself to instead of governing mind, soul itself is apparent only as a circumstance of the bodily life of the mental being and veils up the spirit in the lower imperfections. This second defect of our nature is caused by this dependence of the higher on the lower parts; it is an immixture of functions by which the impure... and will are drawn from this greater direct Truth-mind or supermind. Buddhi centres its mental action round the ego-idea, the idea that I am Page 652 this mind, life and body or am a mental being determined by their action. It serves this ego-idea whether limited by what we call egoism or extended by sympathy with the life around us. An ego-sense is created which reposes on the separative ...
... becomes absorbed in the possibilities of its own separative process and enjoyment. The soul when it dwells in the principle of mind, not yet subject to but user of life and body, knows itself as a mental being working out its mental life and forces and images, bodies of the subtle mental substance, according to its individual knowledge, will and dynamis modified by its relation to other similar beings... they are limited and bound up in the action of the lower material, which is to the ignorance of his practical surface consciousness his original principle. Mind in him, though he is an embodied mental being, has to bear the control of the body and the physical life and can only by some more or less considerable effort of energy and concentration consciously control life and body. It is only by increasing ...
... or manifestation of the higher psychic being which is necessary for the greater aims of Yoga. In order to bring about this manifestation the present nodus of the vital and physical body with the mental being has to be loosened and the way made clear for the ascent through the greater psychic being to the union with the superconscient Purusha. This can be done by Pranayama. Page 539 Asana... would seem that they are then frivolous and superfluous. But Rajayoga is a psychic science and it includes the attainment of all the higher states of consciousness and their powers by which the mental being rises towards the superconscient as well as its ultimate and supreme possibility of union with the Highest. Moreover, the Yogin, while in the body, is not always mentally inactive and sunk in Samadhi ...
... of right being, to express it in Page 374 all that we are, experience and do is the condition of right living. But rightly to know and express the Highest is not easy for man the mental being because the highest Truth and therefore the highest modes of existence are supramental. They repose on the essential unity of what seem to the intellect and mind and are to our mental experience... unattached, possesses and enjoys the play. The Mutable is the substance and immediate motive of that changing flux of personality through which the relations of our cosmic life are made possible. The mental being fixed in the Mutable moves in its flux and has not possession of an eternal peace and power and self-delight; the soul fixed in the Immutable holds all these in itself but cannot act in the world; ...
... ego. This is the new vision and sense of infinite being which we have to acquire, this the foundation of that unity with all which we have to establish. For our real self is not the individual mental being, that is only a figure, an appearance; our real self is cosmic, infinite, it is one with all existence and the inhabitant of all existences. The self behind our mind, life and body is the same as... first an abstract and unseizable idea. In the image of the ether, not physical but an encompassing ether of vast being, consciousness and bliss, he may seek to see with the mind and to feel in his mental being this supreme existence and to identify it in oneness with the self within him. By such meditation the mind may be brought to a favourable state of predisposition in which, by the rending or withdrawing ...
... stage of transition, effort and imperfection between the one and the other, between the natural and the ideal or spiritual life and it is full of uncertain seeking and disorder. It is not that the mental being cannot find or rather construct some kind of relative harmony of its own, but that it cannot render it stable because it is under the urge of the spirit. Man is obliged by a Power within him to... grades of the supermind to that infinite. But still as the supramental power emerges and enlarges its action, something of this highest way of knowledge appears and grows and even the members of the mental being, as they are intuitivised and supramentalised, develop more and more a corresponding action upon their own level. There is an increasing power of a luminous vital, psychic, emotional, dynamic and ...
... up of an altogether new subtle vehicle along with the physical by the psyche? Sri Aurobindo's answer is that, while a person with "a strong spiritual development" could certainly retain his vital-mental being, the carrying-over is possible also to "one like Shelley or like Plato for instance" who has a developed mental Page 11 personality centred around the psychic individual. 9 Here... whether by a violent leap or normally through the Ideal which put it forth. It is this that explains the imperfect reality of human existence as seen by the Mind, the instinctive aspiration in the mental being towards a perfectibility ever beyond itself, towards the concealed harmony of the Ideal, and the supreme surge of the spirit beyond the ideal to the transcendental. The very facts of our consciousness ...
... exploited planes where the inwardness necessary to all poetry plunges or rises to the directly mystical and spiritual consciousness. Since man is typically a mental being and Sri Aurobindo speaks of inspiration touching the mind at different levels, we should more correctly say that man's poetry usually comes from the su... 21 Such a poet does not typify the mental plane, even as he does not typify the plane of the Life-force - or, rather, since man is characteristically a mental being, we should say that Homer's is the subtle-physical mind and not the vital mind or the mind proper. But, as Sri Aurobindo observes, poetry "can reach great heights in ...
... on. Not every form of life organises mind, although in all forms of life mind is there, insistent, seeking for its escape and self-expression. Nor is every mental being fitted to organise the life of ideal truth, although in every mental being, in dog & ape & worm no less than in man, the imprisoned spirit of truth & knowledge seeks for its escape and self-expression. Nature in each realised state ...
... slowly too mind manifested in life, an intensely feeling, a crude thinking and planning vital mind in the animal, but in man the full organisation and apparatus, the developing if yet imperfect mental being, the Manu, the thinking, devising, aspiring, already self-conscient creature. And from Page 167 that time onward the growth of mind rather than any radical change of life became her... consciousness; there is a supermind and spirit. As Nature laboured in the animal, the vital being, till she could manifest out of him man, the Manu, the thinker, so she is labouring in man, the mental being till she can manifest out of him a spiritual and supramental godhead, the truth conscious Seer, the knower by identity, the embodied Transcendental and Universal in the individual nature. From ...
... the cause of all thy stumbling. That which thou hast to transcend is the self that thou appearest to be, and that is man as thou knowest him, the apparent Purusha. And what is this man? He is a mental being enslaved to life and Page 150 matter; and where he is not enslaved to life and matter, he is the slave of his mind. But this is a great and heavy servitude; for to be the slave of mind... thou hast to become, is the self that thou art within behind the veil of mind and life and matter. It is to be the spiritual, the divine, the superman, the real Purusha. For that which is above the mental being, is the superman. It is to be the master of thy mind, thy life and thy body; it is to be a king over Nature of whom thou art now the tool, lifted above her who now has thee under her feet. It is ...
... forth, puts in front of itself, as it were, and at the back of the changings to support and mirror them without being actually changed by them. This more essential form is or seems to be in man the mental being or mental person which the Upanishads speak of as the mental leader of the life and body, manomayaḥ prāṇa-śarīra-netā . It is that which maintains the ego-sense as a function in the mind and enables... themselves there are strata within each stratum. The analysis of the successive couches of the earth is a simple matter compared with the analysis of this wonderful creation we call the personality. The mental being in resuming bodily life forms a new personality for its new terrestrial existence; it takes material from the common matter-stuff, life-stuff, mind-stuff of the physical world and during earthly ...
... denoting a reality far surpassing our consciousness. Sri Aurobindo has often defined them in his writings.) In the view of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the Earth is an evolutionary field in which the mental being we call human must be succeeded by a supramental being, just as man has been preceded by a whole series of inframental beings. Man is a transitional creature. For every material, terrestrial embodiment... which means that on this Earth we may expect the presence of the following species simultaneously: the animal-human, which will prolong the species to which we all belong: the half rational mental being possessing an individualized soul; although the term may sound pejorative, the animal-human is not the ‘naked ape’ of the scientific positivists: he is a forward, inward and upward looking transitory ...
... instrument of knowledge. For man as he is at present "is too imperfect an expression of the spirit, mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being." 3 And the Mother declared that this evolutionary movement has very recently taken a saltus; a new principle, a higher element has been brought down into this... is cannot be the last term of that evolution: he is too imperfect an expression of the spirit, mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed 28. The Life Divine, pp. 118-121. 29. Ibid., p. 836. Page 50 ...
... life, half-awake and somewhat consciously evolving in "mind housed in a living body," 16 and ultimately destined to be fully evolved and awake "by the awakening of the Supermind in the embodied mental being and nature." 17 It is amply evident that this progressive awakening of consciousness from out of the original nescience, the starting-point of the 11. The Synthesis of Yoga, pp.... and expression, -...If a further extension of knowledge is required, he can come at it by new seeing without the slower thought processes..." 84 But in his present normal status, man, the mental being, cannot at all command this supreme vision, "the lucent clarity of a pure regard." 85 Instead, the human mind, in its search and feeling out for truth, relies at its highest on the staff of support ...
... its highest products. But Sachchidananda has yet to emerge fully in manifestation. Therefore this evolution, this spiritual progression cannot stop short with Mind and with the imperfect mental being called Man. Mind is too imperfect an expression and man too hampered and burdened a creature to be the last terms of evolution. So, in the nature of things, evolution is bound to proceed and... instinct; it develops slowly till in more organised forms of living Matter it reaches its climax of intelligence and exceeds itself in Man, the thinking animal who develops into the reasoning mental being but carries along with him even at his highest elevation the mould of original animality, the dead weight of subconscience of body, the downward pull of gravitation towards the original Inertia ...
... yours. It is always regrettable when one is open to the influence of another person. One should receive no other influence than that of the Divine. 22 March 1934 Is there a way for the mental being to avoid being influenced by the vital? Let the mind receive the light from above and refuse to be influenced. 22 March 1934 Page 28 What can I do about being influenced... once, then just do one of them. 14 October 1935 I don't understand what is meant by intellectual faith. Faith is a trust without reasoning. It is not intellectual but mental —the mental being has a faith and the vital being too can have its faith as well as the physical being. As for the psychic being, its faith is natural and spontaneous—faith is the very essence of the psychic being ...
... consciousness the descent of a higher consciousness into the mould of an already evolved lower one: this to her is a phenomenon of involution. Thus the animal nature growing human is evolutionary: a mental being, entering from above, as it were, into the semi-animal semi-human would be involutionary. In the traditional figure of the Ramayana's Hanuman, the ape- devotee, the Mother reads the symbol of "the... language as New Race, Superman, Gnostic Being, Gnostic Community. Sri Aurobindo, in his writings, conceived a further rise in the earth's evolutionary scale which has so far produced man the mental being. The answer to a question put to him gives to the earth-consciousness the capacity to receive the Supra- mental into it and finally undergo a transformation by the Supramental. It focuses at the ...
... that complete liberation from the world-existence which is called also extinction, laya, mok ṣ a, nirv āṇ a. Letters on Yoga, pp. 1164-66 The direct self-consciousness of the mental being, that by which it becomes aware of its own nameless and formless existence behind the flow of a differentiated self-experience, of its eternal soul-substance behind the mental formations of that... it is that in it which is ever the same and unaffected by the mental distinction of past, present and future. It is also unaffected by the distinctions of space or of circumstance; for if the mental being ordinarily says of itself, "I am in the body, I am here, I am there, I shall be elsewhere", yet when it learns to fix itself in this direct self-consciousness, it very soon perceives that this ...
... physical to the full truth of our spiritual nature. But when we look, not at external mechanical Nature to the exclusion of our personality, but at the inner subjective experience of man the mental being, our nature takes to us a quite different appearance. We may believe intellectually in a purely mechanical view even of our subjective existence, but we cannot act upon it or make it quite real... ourselves. On the surface, in the Ignorance, it is the mental, vital, physical Prakriti that acts and the Purusha is disfigured, as it were, in the action of the Prakriti. It is not our true mental being, our true vital being, our true physical being even that we are aware of; these remain behind, veiled and silent. It is the mental, vital, physical ego that we take for our being until we get ...
... self-deception is thus added to an organised self-ignorance; it is only by going within and seeing these things at their source that we can get out of this obscurity and tangle. For a larger mental being is there within us, a larger inner vital being, even a larger inner subtle-physical being other than our surface body-consciousness, and by entering into this or becoming it, identifying ourselves... together, confused and conflicting, here in our depths they can be seen and worked upon in their independent Page 26 and separate nature and action and a harmonisation of them by the mental being in us, leader of the life and body, — or, better, by the central psychic entity, — is not so difficult, provided we have the right psychic and mental will in the endeavour: for if it is with ...
... spiritual evolution as the meaning of our existence here. It is a series of ascents from the physical being and consciousness to the vital, the being dominated by the life-self, thence to the mental being realised in the fully developed man and thence into the perfect consciousness which is beyond the mental, into the supramental Consciousness and the supramental being.... 8 The Outer... one grows in consciousness is the difference between the mental and the vital. The "Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but... "mind" and "mental"... connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions ...
... movement of Ananda that always bestows health, youth, strength, wholeness to the physical man; it bestows capacity of action and enjoyment to the vital being; and it imparts energy of the light to the mental being. To fashion the chariot of the Ashwins is to provide to the physical, to the vital and to the mental members of the human personality with the force of the pure delight of the being. It is only... Truth, nourishing them, restoring them to youth and vigour. 51 The Ribhus pervade heaven with their workings; they bring divine consciousness and increase the divine mentality. 52 They give to the mental being and the physical being fresh and young and immortal movement. 53 From the house of the Sun, which is the home of the Truth, they bring with them perfection; they fashion the straight path of the ...
... psychic being; they have also acknowledged the possibility of the immortality of the mind, life, and body, if certain conditions are fulfilled. Immortality of the mind can come about only if the mental being of the individual comes to be so powerfully individualised on the surface consciousness and so much with the inner mind and inner mental Purusha and at the same time so open plastically to the ... inner vital Purusha and to the progressive action of the Infinite. The wall between the inner Page 51 self and the outer individuality would have broken down. The immortality of the mental being and the vital being would arrive at a continuous progressive expression of the soul; the permanent mental and vital being from within, the mental and vital representatives of the immortal psychic ...
... everywhere oneness?" 43 In the Kena Upanishad, we have a parable that describes Page 29 the process of passage from Ignorance to Knowledge. Three powers in the physical, vital and mental being, symbolised as Agni, Vayu and Indra, have grown and affirmed the Good, the Light, the Joy and Beauty, the Strength and Mastery; they have found themselves victorious in their eternal battle with... else, to use the terms of the Taittiriya Upanishad, we may perfect the faculties and activities of the annamaya purusha, pranamaya purusha, and manomaya purusha, the physical being, vital being and mental being, develop the operations and faculties of the vijnanamaya purusha and anandamaya purusha, and come to know the law in the universe of the Truth and of the Bliss, and realise the Anandabrahman. This ...
... reject the becoming, even when it is compelled to be aware of it, as a fiction of the mind and the senses or the vanity of a temporary inferior existence. Psychologically, however, there is in mental being a growing sense of "I" which continues to identify itself with what can be called non-self. That state of identification with the non-self is not something fixed and unalterable; it Page 42... that we have of our physical existence. To begin with, we find ourselves largely identified with our body, and yet we find that most of the operations of our own body are really subconscious to our mental being. Similarly, even though we may find ourselves identified with vitality working in our body, we are only partly aware of its operations. We find that our mind identifies itself to a certain extent ...
... s, and the subconsciousness. The inner or subliminal consciousness, which is the central domain of occultism, consists of the awareness of the subtle physical being, inner vital being and inner mental being, as also the awareness of what is cognized by these inner beings. It is recognized that it is always difficult for surface consciousness to open up to inner or subliminal consciousness; surface... functioning, although there are seeds in it of the powers of sight, sensibility and even of conceptions. According to occult knowledge, there is in the inner realms of consciousness, a larger inner mental being, a larger inner vital being, even a larger inner subtle physical being distinguishable from surface body consciousness. Occultists in different traditions have developed varieties of methods by ...
... fires and five fires, indicating that the soul that is fire is to be found at three levels, the level of the body, the level of the vital being, and the level of the mental being. The Kathopanishad also tells us that the mental being is not the highest, since the faculty of knowledge is even higher than the mind. It further tells us that there is even a greater self higher than the faculty of knowledge ...
... which is now dead; it has its own inherent life and is able to conduct a journey. When the psychic being leaves the body on the death of the body, it carries three elements with it, namely, the mental being, the vital being and the subtle physical being which were developed in the body during its life. The departing soul at the time of death chooses what it will work out in the next birth and determines... it is achieved, will not mean the obligation or the necessity of the soul to remain in the same body, but it will be free from the necessity or obligation to enter the state of death. The supra-mental being will have the freedom to choose to leave the body whenever it so wills. That capacity to leave the body at will is, truly speaking, what can be called icchamrityu It means that death is not a necessity; ...
... the indwelling Spirit. There are certain circumstances in which the survival of the outer mental personality representative of the inner mental Purusha could be possible. It could happen if our mental being came to be so powerfully individualised on the surface and so much one with the inner mind and inner mental Purusha and at the same time so open plastically to the progressive action of the Infinite... in the plant and associated in the animal with a, growing Mind, then Mind itself evolved and organised in Man. This evolution, this spiritual progression does it stop short here in the imperfect mental being called Man? Or is the secret of it simply a succession of rebirths whose only purpose of issue is to labour towards the point at which it can learn its own futility, renounce itself and take ...
... of our physical sheath, annamaya kosa, becomes an indispensable concomitant of a veritable divine living in the physical world. But in the actually elaborated status of consciousness of man the mental being, this transformation cannot be achieved nor even initiated on the plane of the physical body. It will then be like putting the cart before the horse. For, where is the necessary lever of transformation... form-evolution as to be the essential factor in the eventual effectuation of a resultant change of consciousness manifesting in the form. But what is noteworthy is that with the advent of man, the mental being, in the field of evolution, this old procedure has been completely superseded. Indeed, as Sri Aurobindo pas "... in man a reversal is possible, indeed inevitable; for it is through his ...
... of cosmic energies. His nature is too complex for him to grapple with it. In his apparent manifestation he seems to himself to be a multiperson. He has in him a physical being, a life-being, a mental being, all apparently seeking for their separate fulfilment. He is actuated by numberless forces, each of Page 220 them straining after its separate satisfaction. The individual feels... its dynamic action invariably proceeds upon that secure basis. Supermind being a unitarian, integralising and harmonic consciousness, the supramental being, in contrast with the present mental being, will succeed in founding all his living, whether Page 223 individual or collective, on an innate sense and effective realisation of harmonic unity in his own inner and outer life ...
... which Page 321 we enter during our body's sleep. "These have sometimes...a strong bearing on our own inner and outer life or the life of others, reveal elements of our or their mental being and life-being or disclose influences on them of which our waking self is totally ignorant..." (The Life Divine, p. 424) There is also a category of dreams which may be called 'pre-monitory'... which associate ideas, conversations and memories that come together pell-mell. Such dreams, if recalled with accuracy, are apt to reveal to the sadhaka the confusion that Secretly prevails in his mental being when the latter is not subject to the control of his will. Yes, it is the waking mind which thinks and wills and controls more or less the life in the waking state. During the body's sleep ...
... worst, what is an ideal if not 'a malady of the mind' and 'a bright delirium of speech and thought' ? Anyway, has not evolution come to an end with the appearance on the earth-scene of man the mental being? But Sri Aurobindo is unequivocal and emphatic when he asserts that the divine destiny of the body as envisaged above 1 Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation, p. 74... her, involved, it is also the overt realisation of that which she secretly is." 2 And here Sri Aurobindo sounds a note of warning to the race: "Mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his ...
... sing descents? For, in the actually elaborated evolutionary status of human consciousness, mind represents the highest cosmic principle and power of consciousness so far organised in man the mental being. But this mind-consciousness, even in its highest flights, is no more than a movement in the Ignorance: it is not inherently Truth-Conscious. And hence it is altogether incapable of possessing... striking: it is surely a long march from the insentient Matter to the self-conscious mind of man. But who can say that the evolutionary nisus has exhausted itself with the emergence of man the mental being, so that the only possible course left for the embodied soul is how to make an exit from this not too perfect world-existence and take the transcendent leap into the Unknowable and Unmanifest ...
... The evolutionary movement that we see unfolding upon earth is the appointed means for that progressive manifestation of the immortal divine life in the field of matter-bound mortality. And man the mental being has appeared at a crucial turning-point of that evolutionary ascension. For, this man, the transitional being, is destined to become the vehicle of the establishment and manifestation of divine... journey has begun from the absolute nescience of Matter and, passing through the vicissitudes of an enormously complex bio-psychical evolution, has reached at last the state and status of man the mental being. But mind is not the last possible term of this evolutionary progression. It is too limited and imperfect a consciousness to be considered that. And that explains why there is still so much ...
... selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power. It effects a change of the ordinary fleeting mind by a process of Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi, so that it can dwell constantly in a fixed poise and reflect the luminosity of the Object that is pursued. The triple Path of Works, Love and Knowledge uses some parts of the mental being, will ...
... (uttarayana, parardha). The former is also called the Lunar Path and the latter the Solar Path. 2 For the moon represents the mind, 3 and is therefore, an emblem that befits man so long as he is a mental being and pursues a dharma that is limited by the mind; the sun, on the other hand, is the knowledge and consciousness that is beyond the mind— it is the eye of the Gods. 4 Man has two aspects... however, is not completely divorced from the other. The apparent, the inferior nature is only a preparation for the real, the superior nature. The Path of the Fathers concerns itself with man as a mental being and seeks so to ordain and accomplish its duties and ideals as to lead him on to the Path of the Gods; the mind, the life, and the body consciousness should be so disciplined, educated, purified ...
... entire being. There is an idea that our yoga is an attempt at conscious evolution. The Spirit is here involved in Matter and appears subject to it. By the process of evolution the vital and the mental being have come into manifest existence here. Our effort is to evolve to the Supermind from mind. The Tattiriya Upanishad speaks of the physical being taken up into the vital, and that into the mental... I spoke about four things in the physical : (1) physical mind, (2) Physical Vital, (3) Matter proper and (4) The Supermind in the physical. The "physical mind" is, so to say, that end of mental being which comes in contact with the physical world. It is mind limited by matter, working without the help of ideas, looking only to the physical aspect of the world and taking things as they are. It ...
... Aurobindo : I know that it can be done, but I can't prophesy : I cannot say, "It will be done." But this I can say : "Something will be done this time." There is a doubt somewhere in the mental being, some uncertainty. The whole thing is ready behind. If there had been the certainty on the mental plane the work would have been done. It was not done till now because probably the hostile forces... plane e.g. the flag of a nation. Sri Aurobindo : In a sense everything here, on this earth-plane is symbolic of something that is beyond the physical plane. Our bodies, the vital being, the mental being are all a symbol – they are a whole range of symbols. There are authentic symbols like the Vedic "cow" which means "Light" and the quadruped of that name. It was something precious to the Aryan ...
... subconscient and then a conscious Life, of conscious mind first in animal life and then fully in conscious and thinking man, the highest present achievement of evolutionary Nature. The achievement of mental being is at present her highest and tends to be regarded as her final work; but it is possible to conceive a still further step of the evolution: Nature may have in view beyond the imperfect mind of man... a Supermind, as I have termed it, possessing Knowledge, not having to seek after it and constantly miss it. In one of the Upanishads a being of knowledge is stated to be the next step above the mental being; into that the soul has to rise and through it to attain the perfect bliss of spiritual existence. If that could be achieved as the next evolutionary step of Nature here, then she would be fulfilled ...
... descent need not be limited to those who could thus open themselves entirely and it need not be limited to the supramental change; there could also be a. minor or secondary transformation of the mental being within a freed and perfected scope of the mental nature. In place of the human mind as it now is, a mind limited imperfect, open at every moment to all kinds of deviation from the truth or missing... nature, of all its ways of action and living, would be no longer a dream but a truth that could be made real and humanity lifted out of the hold on it of inconscience and ignorance. The life of the mental being could be harmonised with the life of the Supermind which will then be the highest order above it and become even an extension and annexe of the truth-consciousness, a part and province . of the ...
... physical.... But usually it is the vital which goes out and still more often, the mental being." 19 The more important problem, however, is for the temporarily vacated body to be insulated from outside interference till the wandering Page 18 entity - be it the subtle physical, the vital or the mental being - returns to its tenement: It is dangerous if you sleep surrounded by people ...
... solution that Karma is the machinery responsible for suffering and pain to man, then the only answer from the metaphysical position will be that mind is the only reality in the world, that man is a mental being, that the process of the universe is led, if at all it is led, to a mental consciousness and that there is nothing more than mind at work in the cosmos. In that case, only that solution can be ... But now the gold link comes to me with thy feet And His gold sun has shone on me from thy face. Satyavan says: I did try to get into the depths of the mind, the profound secret of mental being, through Art and Beauty and life; and when the Self was there then the world was lost, and when the world was there the Self was forgotten. But now His gold sun has shone on me from thy face ...
... 48 consciousness to the Universal and to the Divine Consciousness ? It is hard to convince the ordinary mind, though it is not impossible to give a rationale of it because man is a mental being. Sri Aurobindo says : if you tell an ape and try to convince him that a being called man is possible,—man who would have the power of reasoning and judgment, of control over nature,—the ape would... Consciousness. It is a process in the direction opposite to that of involution in which there is a gradual covering of the Reality creating a world, a plane, at every downward step. Man, the mental being, is transitional. He has yet to ascend to a Higher Consciousness beyond mind. This is the great spiritual Odyssey that is now to be consciously undertaken by man. If material science lays ...
... senses. The one is Svadharma or the essential law of one's spiritual nature which is never affected by heredity, environment or any other external agency, and the other is the Dharma of the evolved mental being, a sort of crutch or prop for him to grow and develop in order to qualify for the spiritual life. Svabhava is one's essential nature & svadharma is the law of that nature. Later, when the psychic... decisive. Secondly, the lines of the closing paragraph of The Mother which you have quoted this time indicate, more clearly than any words could do, the new orientation and aspiration of your mental being. Not that this aspiration was absent, but it was, if I am not wrong, somewhat covered over by certain reactions. It has shone forth again in its original purity and intensity, and I hail it with ...
... or of universal being into which we enter: these have sometimes, like the symbolic dreams, a strong bearing on our own inner and outer life or the life of others, reveal elements of our or their mental being and life-being or disclose influences on them of which our waking self is totally , ignorant; but sometimes they have no such bearing and are purely records of other organised systems of consciousness... as the Mother says, "to have complete sleep, without dreams; but to plunge our mind into a repose analogous to that of our physical body, it is necessary to attain a per feet mastery over the mental being, which is not an easy matter. ”¹ This state of repose can hardly be called sleep, "for it is extremely conscious. In that condition you may remain for a few minutes, but these few minutes give ...
... view that acceptance of the substance of matter, by life or by mind, or by mind and life together, subjects the higher substance of life and mind to cramping limitations, is the experience of the mental being. Therefore mind wants to take up the attitude that ultimate wisdom lies in rejecting matter—rejecting physical existence or the material world or the plane of matter. This, Sri Aurobindo... whey can act independently of physical organism. And when they so act, we get what are called miraculous or occult phenomena. That is nothing else but the assertion of freedom of vital being and mental being, even when it is manifested in terms of matter. Life and mind, acting freely without depending upon instrumentation or organs that are provided by matter, produce what we call the occult or miraculous ...
... descent need not be limited to those who could thus open themselves entirely and it need not be limited to the supramental change; there could also be a minor or secondary transformation of the mental being within a freed and perfected scope of the mental nature. In place of the human mind as it now is, a mind limited, imperfect, open at every moment to all kinds of deviation from the truth or missing... nature, of all its ways of action and living, would be no longer a dream but a truth that could be made real and humanity lifted out of the hold on it of inconscience and ignorance. The life of the mental being could be harmonised with the life of the Supermind which will then be the highest order above it, and become even an extension and annexe of the truth-consciousness, a part and province of the divine ...
... which is only a selection from its wider existence and activity. It is only the physical and vital part of our existence which is, properly speaking, subconscient; the subliminal self is the true mental being and in relation to our waking mind it is rather secretly circumconscient; for it envelops as well as supports. Of all this larger part of our being we are ignorant.—We are ignorant also of the ... nature of our mind, but an ignorance full of the impulse towards self-possession and self-knowledge. A many-sided Ignorance striving to become an all-embracing Knowledge is the definition of man the mental being. Page 496 ...
... always been in reality, free in his being, swarat, samrat. It follows then that the way to liberate oneself is not to renounce works but to rise from mind to Supra-mind, from the consciousness of mental being, sambhava, to the consciousness of self-being, swayambhava or asambhuti. It is necessary to remember oneself, but it is not necessary to forget phenomena. For action is the movement of Prakriti... we halt in subjective mind, we see the objective world as a mere dream or vision of our conscious subjective activity. That is the dogma of the Idealist, nor can anyone fathom the depths of our mental being without passing through this experience. If we halt in our pure subjective existence, then not only the objective world, but the mind & its perceptions seem to be a dream, & the only truth is the ...
... action of the intellect and the intelligent Page 51 will which represent in Mind an attempt of the mental being to do what can only be done with perfect spontaneity and mastery by something higher than Mind. The intellect and intelligent will form a bridge by which the mental being is trying to establish a conscious connection with the supramental and to prepare the embodied soul for the descent ...
... Upanishads IV The Eternal Beyond the Mind The Upanishad first affirms the existence of this profounder, vaster, more puissant consciousness behind our mental being. That, it affirms, is Brahman. Mind, Life, Sense, Speech are not the utter Brahman; they are only inferior modes and external instruments. Brahman-consciousness is our real self and our true existence... changed by its origination, not affected by its instruments, not determined by its determinations, not worked upon by its enjoyings. What that is, we cannot know unless we go behind the veil of our mental being which knows only what is affected, what is determined, what is worked upon, what is changed. The mind can only be aware of that as something which we indefinably are, not as something which it definably ...
... and more subtle mode of operation of their own, and no dependence on the physical parts for instrumentation can annul their intrinsic character; there is something more and other in our vital and mental being and vital and mental forces than the functioning of a physical body. But, again, each finite is in its reality or has behind it an Infinite which has built and supports and directs the finite it... Consciousness-Force is his supreme Nature, Para-Prakriti. In each status of the gradations of Nature, the Spirit takes a poise of its being proper to that gradation; in Mind-Nature it becomes the mental being, Page 365 in Life-Nature it becomes the vital being, in nature of Matter it becomes the physical being, in supermind it becomes the Being of Knowledge; in the supreme spiritual status ...
... ss will be vaster, the present foundation of personality will be abolished. Contrary to what we might believe, their difference—their "superiority"—will not be expressed by the expansion of the mental being, or the inflation of the vital being in the limits within which we are presently confined, but in the surpassing of these limits. No exaltation of the ego, therefore, but its quashing. If they are... outwardly by our body, to this transfer of consciousness, its expansion and diffusion, as well as to its universalisation beyond corporeal limits and the more subtle limitations of the vital and mental being. Rather than consciousness being contained and restricted by the body, the body is contained in consciousness. The body thus becomes in consciousness a tranquil instrument which consciousness guides ...
... Life-mind — see vital mind under mind. Manas — mind, the mind proper [as distinct from the intellect (buddhi)], sense-mind. manomaya puru ṣ a — mental Person; the mental being. manvantara — an age or period of a Manu, an extremely long period. of time, one-fourteenth of a day of Brahmā, mātrā — measure, the quantitative action of Nature. Maya — illusion;... subliminal proper and the superconscient. the Superconscient; Superconscience — consciousness above and beyond our present level of awareness in which are included the higher planes of mental being as well as the supramental and spiritual. Supermind — the Supramental, the Truth-Consciousness, the Divine Gnosis, the highest divine consciousness and force operative in the universe ...
... At times the Upanishad seems to describe this Self as the "mental being leader of the life and the body", which is really the subliminal mind of the psychical investigators; but this is only a relative description. The Vedantic psychology was aware of other depths that take us beyond this formula and in relation to which the mental being becomes in its turn as superficial as is our waking to our ...
... does not descend into the being but is above it — it holds together the mental, vital and physical being and all the various parts of the personality and it controls the life either through the mental being and the mental thought and will or through the psychic, whichever may happen to be most in front or most powerful in nature. If it does not exercise its control, then the consciousness is in great... [the psychic's] coming to the front is simply this. The psychic ordinarily is deep within. Very few people are aware of their souls — when they speak of their soul, they usually mean the vital + mental being or else the (false) soul of desire. The psychic remains behind and acts only through the mind, vital and physical wherever it can. For this reason the psychic being except where it is very much ...
... e is struggling to evolve." 35 "In the superconscience beyond our present level of awareness are included the higher planes of mental being as well as the native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being." 36 Among the higher planes of mental being, Sri Aurobindo distinguishes various distinct levels which he terms Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Overmind, culminating ...
... philosophical, literary and artistic culture.” 7 The fact that concerns us here is the emergence of the rational mind in classical Greece. It was there that Western man fully became “the mental being”, a term defined by Aristotle as follows: “What is naturally proper to every creature is the highest and pleasantest for him. And so, to man, this will be the life of Reason, since Reason is, in... “The mind and the intellect must develop to their fullness so that the spirituality of the race may rise securely upward upon a broad basis of the developed lower nature in man, the intelligent mental being. Therefore we see that the reason in its growth either does away with the distinct spiritual tendency for a time, as in ancient Greece …” 10 The sophists were feared and loathed by the traditional ...
... Nevertheless, he almost systematically brushed aside all such questions for the simple reason that they were impossible to answer to human beings, in human language. The human is a mental being — the mental being — which cannot form an idea with its mental consciousness of that which surpasses such a kind of consciousness, not analogically but ontologically. The primates are very intelligent beings ...
... animals; next mind, first in the animal, and then man appears. Everything here that belongs strictly to the earth plane is evolved out of the Inconscient, out of Matter—but the essential mental being exists already, not involved on the mental plane. It is only the personal mental that is evolved here by something rising out of the Inconscient and developing under a pressure from above. ... suggest may be envisaged as a part of the process of the change. But the main part of the change will be the appearance of the supramental being and the organisation of a supramental nature here, as a mental being has appeared and a mental nature organised itself during the last stage of the evolution. I prefer nowadays not to speak of the descent of the higher beings because my experience is that Page ...
... but can be communicated with through the seventh centre, the Sahasradala padma. The Mind Centres This must be the psychicised higher mental being—the position above the head points to that. In other words, you have become aware of your higher mental being which is in contact at once with the Divine above and with the psychic behind the heart and is aware of the Truth and has the psychic and spiritual ...
... values; it is therefore a state of consciousness or rather of super-consciousness without habitation or level. There is more than one kind of Nirvana (extinction or dissolution) possible. Man being a mental being in a body, manomaya puruṣạ , makes this attempt at retreat from the cosmos through the spiritualised mind, he cannot do otherwise and it is this that gives it the appearance of an extinction or... more affirmative Yoga seeking transcendence but not withdrawal there would not be this indispensability, for there would be the way already alluded to of self-exceeding or transformation of the mental being. But it is possible also to pass to that through a certain experience of Nirvana, an absolute silence of mind and cessation of its activities, constructions, representations which can be so complete ...
... 1936 In his book Plato, Taylor says that "the standing Academic definition of 'man' " is "Soul using a body" and that "the soul is the man". 2 But it is not clear whether the soul is the mental being or something which uses the mind also. The European mind, for the most part, has never been able to go beyond the formula of soul + body—usually including mind in soul and everything except... have the wisdom or knowledge "which ensures that a man shall make the right use of his body and of everything else which is his". This clearly indicates that by "soul" he means the vital and the mental being. Otherwise how can the soul be not "in good or healthy state"? Can we even say that the mental Purusha is or is not "in good or healthy state"? Of course not. It is obvious that they are thinking ...
... higher ideals. It has yet to break out of its prison altogether and live in that free light, in that fragrance and large breath; only then does it breathe the natural atmosphere of the developed mental being. Not to live principally in the Page 93 activities of the sense-mind, but in the activities of knowledge and reason and a wide intellectual curiosity, the activities of the cultivated... kernel of will, character and self-discipline are almost the first condition for human self-perfection. The aesthetic sense is equally indispensable, for without that the self-perfection of the mental being cannot arrive at its object, which is on the mental plane the right and harmonious possession and enjoyment of the truth, power, Page 100 beauty and delight of human existence. But neither ...
... variation. He acquires the freedom to develop according, no doubt, to the general law of Nature and the general law of his type, but also according to the individual law of his being. Man, the mental being in Nature, is especially distinguished from her less developed creatures by a greater power of individuality, by the liberation of the mental consciousness which enables him finally to understand... moulding principle of his individual and social existence. Page 72 × It may be said that since man is a mental being limited by the mind, life and body, this development and organisation of a power beyond mind, a supramental power, would be the creation of a new superhuman race and that the use of the words human ...
... or of universal being into which we enter: these have sometimes, like the symbolic dreams, a strong bearing on our own inner and outer life or the life of others, reveal elements of our or their mental being and life-being or disclose influences on them of which our waking self is totally ignorant; but sometimes they have no such bearing and are purely records of other organised systems of consciousness... possibilities than those already admitted became potential. Moreover, through Page 452 this faculty forms and powers of other domains than that of the physical actuality communicate with our mental being. Even when the imaginations are extravagant or take the form of hallucinations or illusions, they proceed with actuals or possibles for their basis. The mind creates the figure of a mermaid, but ...
... powers of knowledge, action or experience which the uninstructed mind can easily mistake for spiritual revelations, inspirations, intuitions. An opening upward into the greater ranges of the higher mental being can bring down much light and force creating Page 283 an intense activity of the intuitivised mind and life-power or an ascent into these ranges can bring a true but still incomplete... character when it comes down into the lower nature. But none of these things is the supramental light, the supramental power; that can only be seen and grasped when we have reached the summits of mental being, entered into overmind and stand on the borders of an upper, a greater hemisphere of spiritual existence. There the ignorance, the inconscience, the original blank Nescience slowly awaking towards ...
... perfection will bring about most easily and effectively or can aid with a most powerful rapidity the perfection of the rest? Since we are the spirit enveloped in mind, a soul evolved here as a mental being in a living physical body, it must naturally be in the mind, the antaḥkaraṇa , that we must look for this desideratum. And in the mind it is evidently by the buddhi, the intelligence and the will... of action, the lower mentality is purified and ready for perfection. But that perfection depends on the possession of a purified and enlightened buddhi; for the buddhi is the chief power in the mental being and the chief mental instrument of the Purusha. Page 662 ...
... a liberation from the ignorance of the partial being in its flux of action, it is earned by putting on a luminous nescience of the dynamic Reality or a luminous separation from it: the spiritual-mental being remains self-absorbed in a silent essential status of existence and becomes either incapable of active consciousness or repugnant to all activity; this release of silence is a status through which... in each form from awareness of its own total self, of other embodied consciousnesses and of universal being. It is here that we must look for the secret of the apparent ignorance of the embodied mental being as well as of the great apparent inconscience of physical Nature. We have to ask ourselves what is the nature of this absorbing, this separating, this self-forgetful concentration which is the obscure ...
... one of the workings of consciousness as radiation is one of the workings of Light. It is Self that is the man: or, if we regard only our normal surface existence, Mind is the man,—for man is the mental being. Memory is only one of the many powers and processes of the Mind, which is at present the chief action of Consciousness-Force in our dealings with self, world and Nature. Nevertheless, it is... himself that he is mentally experiencing in the succession of Time. Time is the great bank of conscious existence turned into Page 527 values of experience and action: the surface mental being draws upon the past (and the future also) and coins it continually into the present; he accounts for and stores up the gains he has gathered in what we call the past, not knowing how ever-present ...
... 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. Or else, because the mind is a principle of light and knowledge, however imperfect, and can have some notion of what is beyond it, it sees the possibility of a dissolution of the mental being into that which is beyond, some ...
... spray of conscious-force tossed up by the infinite sea of our self-existence. In order to realise this we have to get away from our absorption in these surface habits, these petty tricks of our mental being,—and when we do get behind and away from them it is surprising how superficial they are, what ridiculously weak and little-penetrating pin-pricks they prove to be,—and we have to realise true existence... to the mental creature which at the top he is. But this evolution is really a manifestation and just as we have in us these subnormal selves and subhuman planes, so are there in us above our mental being supernormal and superhuman planes. There Chit as the universal conscious-stuff of existence takes other poises, moves out in other modes, on other principles and by other faculties of action. There ...
... really greater than Matter and ought not to submit to its obscurations, reactions, habit of inertia, habit of incapacity; he forgets that he is more even than the mind, a Power which can raise the mental being above itself; that he is the Master, the Transcendent and it is not fit the Master should be enslaved to his own workings, the Transcendent imprisoned in a form which exists only as a trifle in... things first without being overpowered and finally without being at all affected by them, dispassionately, with clear understanding but with perfect detachment. This is the initial liberation of the mental being from servitude to the body; for by right knowledge put steadily into practice liberation comes inevitably. Finally, the mind will come to know the Purusha in the mind as the master of Nature ...
... worse than the evil it seeks to combat. On the other hand, if from the first freedom of thought is denied, that means the end of the Age of Reason and of the ideal of a rational society. Man the mental being disallowed the use—except in a narrow fixed groove—of his mind and mental will, will stop short in his growth and be even as the animal and as the insect a stationary species. This is the central... because it contains in itself powers whose right satisfaction or whose final way of transformation reason cannot discover. If Reason were the secret highest law of the universe or if man the mental being were limited by mentality, it might be possible for him by the power of the reason to evolve out of the dominance of infrarational Nature which he inherits from the animal. He could then live securely ...
... deficient sraddha in the Karma. Persistent Asiddhi in Karma & Yoga is used for this purpose. It stamps nati on the most physical parts of the nervous being as it has already been stamped on the mental being. The second chatusthaya is, except in faith and in realised karmasamarthya, complete in the manomaya organisation of the self. It has now to be converted into a vijnanamaya organisation based... is in order to emphasise the danger of this defect that, for a while, the self-identification has been drawn into the background & along with it the perfect samata that came with it. The mental being passive & receptive, the Vijnanamaya tapas active, this is the formula for the Dharma and the Kriti. But the tapas is not yet entirely Vijnanamaya. Hence the element of mental stress & the appearance ...
... "protect"; Agni is अदब्धः पुरएता who burns all the Rakshasas; what need has he of protection who protects all? अवतां means "foster, increase" the Seer-Will. Let the earth and heaven, the physical and mental being, attain their full, all-embracing wideness, विश्वमिन्वे and by that wideness give full scope to the increase of the Seer-Will. सौमनसाय. Perfect or right mentality including मनीषा, right thought... 5) यथा विप्रस्य मनुषो हविर्भि- र्देवाँ अयजः कविभिः कविः सन् । एवा होतः सत्यतर त्वमद्य अग्ने मंद्रया जुह्वा यजस्व ॥ मनुषः. S. मनोः—मन जाने. मनुषः does indeed mean the thinker, but the mental being generally, not Manu. विप्रस्य. S. मेधाविनः, from विप् to be luminous—cf सूरिः which like सूर्यः means also luminous; men of knowledge are in the R.V. frequently called द्दयुमतः, luminous. ...
... communion or contact with the Divine, infinite and eternal. To reach to this union or come by this contact it is necessary to enter or at least open into a greater consciousness than that of the human mental being who is shut up in the limitations of an individualised living body. To arrive wholly at the union or the constant communion one must enter the consciousness of the Divine,—whether into its infinite... is true but it is not and cannot be the sole possible integral experience. 157 All human Yoga is done on the heights or levels of the mental Page 362 nature; for man is a mental being in a living body. But mind if it is able to reflect some light of the divine Truth or even admit some emanations from her power, is incapable of embodying her. There is an eternal dynamic Tr ...
... determined by the subconscient and is only secondarily and derivatively self-conscious. The development of human society has been no exception to the rule; for man, though in the essence of his nature a mental being, has practically started with a largely mechanical mentality as the conscious living being, Nature's human animal, and only afterwards can he be the self-conscious living being, the self-perfecting... the human mind and its development. In fact, if we examine the profound legendary tradition of India, we see that its idea of the Manu is more a symbol than anything else. His name means man the mental being. He is the divine legislator, the mental demi-god in humanity who fixes the lines upon which the race or people has to govern its evolution. In the Purana he or his sons are said to reign in subtle ...
... whether we are aware of it or not, we always dream. Certainly, it is possible to suppress this activity completely and to have a total, dreamless sleep; but to be able in this way to immerse our mental being in a repose similar to the repose of our physical being, we must have achieved a perfect control over it, and this is not an easy thing to do. In most cases, this activity is even heightened... associate ideas, conversations and memories that come together at random. Such dreams are already more significant, for these erratic activities reveal to us the confusion that prevails in our mental being as soon as it is no longer subject to the control of our will, and show us that this being is still not organised or ordered within us, that it is not mature enough to have an autonomous life. ...
... Parts of the Being Our Many Selves The Mental The “Mind“ in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this Yoga, the words mind and mental are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with... different deity, and they have an individual independent existence of their own, that they are existing realities, that they are truly real substances, that it is 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 ...
... down again grossly; but still it does come down, one can't deny it. The vital being—not necessarily, nor the mental being. The vital being, if it knows how to get connected with the universal force, can very easily have no retrogression; it can continue to ascend. And the mental being, it's absolutely certain, is completely free from all degeneration if it continues to develop normally. So these ...
... does not descend into the being but is above it — it holds together the mental, vital and physical being and all the various parts of the personality and it controls the life either through the mental being and the mental thought and will or through the psychic, whichever may happen to be most in front or most powerful in nature. If it does not exercise its control, then the consciousness is in great... emotional being; from there one goes deep to find the psychic. The more one goes, the more intense becomes the psychic happiness.... 14 — Sri Aurobindo * Man, because he is a mental being, is prone to give the highest importance to the thinking mind and its reason and will and to its way of approach and effectuation of Truth and, even, he is inclined to hold that there is no other ...
... subconscient and then a conscious Life, of conscious mind first in animal life and then fully in conscious and thinking man, the highest present achievement of evolutionary Nature. The achievement of mental being is at present her highest and tends to be regarded as her final work; but it is possible to conceive a still further step of the evolution: Nature may have in View beyond the imperfect mind of man... a Supermind, as I have termed it, possessing Knowledge, not having to seek after it and constantly miss it. In one of the Upanishads a being of knowledge is stated to be the next step above the mental being; into that the soul has to rise and through it to attain the perfect bliss of spiritual existence. If that could be achieved as the next evolutionary step of Nature here, then she would be, fulfilled ...
... subconscient and then a conscious Life, of conscious mind first in animal life and then fully in conscious and thinking man, the highest present achievement of evolutionary Nature. The achievement of mental being is at present her highest and tends to be regarded as her final work; but it is possible to conceive a still further step of the evolution: Nature may have in view beyond the imperfect mind of man... a supermind, as I have termed it, possessing Knowledge, not having to seek after it and constantly miss it. In one of the Upanishads a being of knowledge is stated to be the next step above the mental being; into that the soul has to rise and through it to attain the perfect bliss of spiritual existence. If that could be achieved as the next evolutionary step of Nature here, then she would be fulfilled ...
... it does not descend into the being but is above it—it holds together the mental, vital and physical being and all the various parts of the personality and it controls the life either through the mental being and the mental thought and will or through the psychic, whichever may happen to be most in front or most powerful in action. If it does not exercise its control, then the consciousness is in great... by [the psychic‘s] coming to the front is simply this. The psychic ordinarily is deep within. Very few people are aware of their souls—when they speak of their soul, they usually mean the vital + mental being or else the (false) soul of desire. The psychic remains behind and acts only through the mind, vital and physical wherever it can. For this reason the psychic being except where it is very much ...
... Matter, Mind an activity of Life, and it might seem to follow that what we call the soul or spirit is only a power of mentality, soul a fine form of Mind, spirituality a high activity of the embodied mental being. But this is a superficial view of things due to the thought's concentrating on the appearance and process and not looking at what lies behind the process. One might as well on the same lines have... posit is the existence of Spirit as something else than Mind and greater than Mind, spirituality as something other than mentality and the spiritual being therefore as something distinct from the mental being: Spirit is a final evolutionary emergence because it is the original involutionary element and factor. Evolution is an inverse action of the involution: what is an ultimate and last derivation in ...
... mind, even a clear or luminous empty mind, will be intuitive. Anything, any blessed kind of idea, can come in. One has to be vigilant and examine the credentials of the visitor. In other words, the mental being must be there, silent but vigilant, impartial but discriminating. That is, however, when you are in search of truth. For poetry so much is not necessary. There it is only the poetic quality of the... or tamasic with consequences that vary in each case. If I am not to "run away with the idea", you have to tell me definitely how to avoid being led into quagmires by any blessed idea. If the mental being is ignorant how will it discriminate or be impartial? Experientia docet —experience is the doctor. Also the habit of intuitivising if it is honestly done develops a discrimination that begins ...
... 26 MARCH 1940 NIRODBARAN: You have said in The Synthesis of Yoga, Volume II, in the chapter entitled "The Difficulties of the Mental Being", that there are divine planes in the mental being just as there are divine planes above into which one ordinarily enters in Samadhi. What are these planes? Higher Mind, etc.? SRI AUROBINDO: But there are divine planes ...
... mind, Below us sleeps the Inconscient dark and mute. (Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book VII, Canto II, p. 484) Since mind-consciousness is the sole waking state possessed by mental being,...it cannot ordinarily quite enter into another without leaving behind completely both all our waking existence and all our inward mind. This is the necessity of the Yogic trance. (Sri... still higher planes or degrees of consciousness. But here a serious and seemingly insuperable hitch presents itself. For mind is the sole waking consciousness actually possessed by man the mental being and this mind in its actuality completely fails to remain awake, beyond a certain line, in the really higher states of realisation where the heightened and intensified spiritual experiences are ...
... counterbalance the principle of individual growth in isolation. But although this social platform of cohesion might have operated adequately on the animal level, the self-awareness of man the mental being has prevented him from having a spontaneous sociability and a spontaneous cohesion with his fellow-men, thus making the problem of adjustment infinitely more difficult in his case. As a matter... preservating equilibrium and interruption of survival." "The terms of the problem presuppose the full emergence of Mind; for in vitality without conscious mind there can be no equation.... The mental being expressive of soul-consciousness is the nodus of the persistent individual and the persistent aggregate life; in him their union and harmony become possible." "This mental status of life is a ...
... transformation of our physical sheath, annamaya ko ṣ a, is an indispensable concomitant of a truly divine living in the world. But in the actually realised status of consciousness of man the mental being, this transformation can by no means be achieved nor even initiated on the plane of the body. It will then be like putting the cart before horse. For, where is the necessary lever of transformation... Would it not have seemed to be a sheer absurdity to foresee that "in this minute island of life,... so inconspicuous amid the immensities, in one sole species out of this petty multitude, a mental being would emerge,... who would create all manner of utensils, tools, instruments out of Matter for all kinds of utilities, erect out of it cities, houses, temples, theatres, laboratories, factories ...
... Behind the apparent unicity of his personality lie hidden many different beings with separate trends and functions of their own, such as, his physical Page 82 being, vital being, mental being and others. Also, he has not only his gross physical body, visible and sensible to us, but has other bodies too; such as, a subtle physical body, a vital body, a mental body and others. His... need not be rejected as something inert and ossified and therefore serving no further useful purpose for the progress of the individual being. The same principle applies to the case of the mental being of a person. And if any one wants to preserve his personal identity through the succession of rebirths he has no other go except to fulfil this essential, indispensable pre-condition; that is to ...
... l explorations indicate that behind what we experience as our physical being, vital being and mental being, there are as the Upanishads point out, inner sheaths supported by a kind of self-consciousness which sustains and nourishes the inner physical being, the inner vital being and the inner mental being. The data of self-consciousness further reveal to us that there are deeper presences of self- ...
... ns indicate that behind what we experience as our physical being, vital being and mental being, there are, as the Upanishads point out, inner sheaths supported by a kind of self-consciousness which sustains and nourishes the inner physical being, the Page 17 inner vital being and the inner mental being. The data of self-consciousness further reveal to us that there are deeper presences ...
... and the Raja Yogic methods, during the processes of their repeated applications, lead to the attainment of all those higher states of consciousness Page 90 and the powers by which the mental being rises towards superconscient as well as its ultimate and supreme possibility of union with the highest. Raja Yoga is psychic science, and it gives an account of the powers and states which are possible... those of mahimā (including garimā), laghimā and animā. These three siddhis of being are distinguished from siddhis of knowledge and siddhis of power. 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 ...
... temporary phenomena, at worst a downward curve, preparing for a higher curve. It is thus true that this progress has not carried the race beyond itself, into a self-exceeding or a transformation of the mental being; but this was not to be expected. All that has developed so far can be regarded, it has been concluded, as a process of developing the human type to its utmost capacity, and it is only now that... the emergence of consciousness that has been taking place in Nature. He is, .it is stressed, too imperfect an expression of the Spirit, Mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation. Man, the mental being, can only be a transitional being. If man is incapable of exceeding his mentality, it has been suggested, he must be surpassed, and Supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the ...
... uttarāyana, parārdha) . The former is also called the Lunar Path and the latter the Solar Path.² For the moon represents the mind,³ and is therefore, an emblem that befits man so long as he is a mental being and pursues a dharma that is limited by the mind; the sun, on the other hand, is the knowledge and consciousness that is beyond the mind – it is the eye of the Gods.4 Man has two aspects or... however, is not completely divorced from the other. The apparent, the inferior nature is only a preparation for the real, the superior nature. The Path of the Fathers concerns itself with man as a mental being and seeks so to ordain and accomplish its duties and ideals as to lead him on to the Path of the Gods; the mind, the life, and the body consciousness should be so disciplined, educated, purified ...
... all the obstacles of the spiritual adventure and makes the aspirant firmly established in all the accomplishments of perfection. In the last rik the nature of the divine mental being is described: In this divine mental being the vast delight of the Infinite has descended and with the help of its inspiration the aspirant goes on safely and securely from one level to another, from one shore to another ...
... this quotation from The Life Divine shows how he envisages the still greater progress of man's conquest over Matter, not merely by mind but directly by the action of the Spirit. But man, the mental being, because of his blind desires, impulses, passions, ambitions, greed, and ego, is slave of ignorance. The advance in technique has given rise to a tendency to increase his needs and to raise the... done not by simply wanting it, but by increasing the instrumental capacities of human nature. Man is given certain instruments,—senses, nervous being, vital being, emotional being and mental being. These have certain capacities and they are capable of development. Man's intellectual capacity, his reasoning power, comprehension etc. can be developed. When the powers of the instruments are ...
... infinitely varied forms and relations comes into being. In the lower kingdoms where there is no mind, the form or the organism acts with a knowledge that seems to be self-existent. Only in man, the mental being, an infinite play of possibility of choice being given, human knowledge is subjected to an uncertainty and a wrong choice which makes possible the experience of Ignorance. This Ignorance really... ch renders this miracle possible. What greater miracle could there be than this, that in a world based on the Inconscient there should occur not only the phenomena of Life and Mind but that the mental being should aspire for and conceive it possible to attain the Divine and manifest Perfection in life on earth ? This great achievement, the achievement of Divine Perfection out of terms which are the ...
... Consciousness has no need of a clear individual " I" to dispose variously the centralising stress. Wherever the stress is put, the " I " attaches itself to that, so that one thinks of oneself as a mental being or physical being or whatever it may be. The consciousness in me can dispose its stress in this way or the other way; it may go down into the physical and work there in the physical nature keeping... quiescence. "I2 ( vii ) CENTRES OR CHAKRAS "Everything here that belongs strictly to the earth plane is evolved out of the Inconscient, out of Matter - but the essential mental being exists already, nor involved, in the ___________________________ 11On Yoga II, Tome One, P. 310 12 Ibid, P. 310-311 Page 156 mental plane. It is only the personal ...
... to do is to open yourself to it. Disciple : As the Higher Power is there why does it not work in all men – consciously? Sri Aurobindo : Because man, at present, is shut up in his mental being, his vital nature and physical consciousness and their limitations. You have to open yourself. By an opening I mean an aspiration in the heart for the Page 38 coming down of the... shown to Sri Aurobindo . It made a favourable impression and he found that the psychic being could open-though he found (on reading the photograph) that there was hardly any development of the mental being and the physical being was too weak for this Yoga. He saw him seven days later and told him that he could not give this Yoga. to him : "This "is a very difficult Yoga and it makes no less demands ...
... the physical energy and speed it accurately upon its errand. There, once we bring ourselves to recognise it, lie the gates that open upon the enormous vistas of the future." But Man, the mental being, in spite of his scientific advance, is still a slave of his own nature, his blind desires, impulses, passions, ambitions, greed, ego - in short, the slave of ignorance. The advance in techniques... downward step. The process of evolution ______________ 6 ( Savitri : Book III Canto 4, P . 308. Page 8 has proceeded from Matter to Life, from Life to Mind. Man, the mental being, is transitional because he has yet to ascend to higher Consciousness beyond Mind. This is the great spiritual Odvssey that man has now to undertake consciously.If material science lays open before ...
... intended in his birth that he shall live entirely in mind, for he is here to deal with life and Matter as well and to bring as best he can a higher law into life and Matter. And since he is not a mental being in a mental world, it is not easy and in the end, we may suspect, not possible for him to impose entirely and perfectly the law of the mental absolutes, a mental good, beauty, love, truth and power ...
... the mystic vyahritis of the Veda are the shabdas or sacred words Page 130 expressing objectively the three worlds, subjectively mentalised material being, mentalised vital being & pure mental being, the three manifest states of our phenomenal consciousness. Mahas, therefore, must express a fourth state of being, which is so much superior to the other three or so much beyond the ordinary attainment ...
... III.31.6,—the rivers of the Truth, representing the outflow of its being and its movement ( ṛtasya preṣā ), descend in their rushing streams and make a channel here for their waters; heaven, the mental being, is perfected and made firm like a well-shaped pillar to support the vast Truth of the higher or immortal life that is now made manifest and the largeness of that Truth is lodged here in all the ...
... jagato niveśanīm (I.35.1), which holds the world and all its unrevealed potentialities in her obscure bosom. Night extends her realm over this triple world of ours and out of her in heaven, in the mental being, Dawn is born who delivers the Sun out of the darkness where it was lying concealed and eclipsed and creates the vision of the supreme Day in the non-existence, in the Night, asati ketum . It is ...
... personal existence is enthroned. Manomayah pranasariraneta pratisthito 'nne, a mental guide and leader of the life & body has been established in matter, and we suppose & feel ourselves to be that mental being. But what guides the mind itself? Is it the mental ego as the unreflecting thinker usually & naturally supposes? As a matter of fact, it is perfectly within our knowledge and experience that the ...
... 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 loss ...
... existences (becomings, bhūtāni ) without exception in the Self, then in Me." For the Self is that one, immutable, all-pervading, all-containing, self-existent reality or Brahman hidden behind our mental being into which our consciousness widens out when it is liberated from the ego; we come to see all beings as becomings, bhūtāni , within that one self-existence. But this Self or immutable Brahman ...
... of action, possesses it not only by powers and magnitudes, by degrees and outward faces of itself but out of its eternal self-knowledge, when the Unborn knows itself and acts in the frame of the mental being and the appearance of birth, that is the height of the conditioned manifestation; it is the full and conscious descent of the Godhead, it is the Avatara. The Vaishnava form of Vedantism which ...
... initial reactions as the mental, but is different in the constitution of its self-experience, even as that which is superconscient is in the constitution of its self-experience different from the mental being. Does the range of what we can call consciousness cease with the plant, with that in which we recognise the existence of a sub-animal life? If so, we must then suppose that there is a force of ...
... not for everything that the souls of the departed come direct to the Mother, but this is a special action of hers and usually she sees the persons whom she has to help. But she has seen only X 's mental being and it was still interested in earthly things; his vital being she has not seen and it is that that usually comes for help. Some however come at a later stage of the passage and not at first. ...
... X . 12 April 1933 Page 677 General Rules and Individual Natures It is a little difficult from the wider spiritual outlook to answer your question in the way you want and every mental being wants, with a trenchant "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not", especially when the "thou" is meant to cover "all". For while there is an identity of essential aim, while there are general broad lines ...
... like that all through their life, unless they are converted, which is not easy. There is a sort of association between the physical and the psychic and between the mental and the vital being. A mental being is very often a very vital being. A psychic being is very often a physical being. Children—just because this psychic consciousness is in front in them—live also altogether in their body. But as ...
... silent, must observe yourself very clearly. And you must be very humble; that is, be willing not to play a great part in all this story. The misfortune is that usually either the vital being or the mental being or even the physical being is very anxious to play a part, very anxious. So it swells up, takes up a lot of place, covers the rest; and it covers it so well that one can't even become aware of the ...
... one single person, a single being. But there are many beings and particularly there are concentrations on different levels: just as you have a physical being, you have a vital being, you have a mental being, you have a psychic being, you have many others and all possible intermediaries. But it is a little complicated, you might not understand. Suppose you were living a life of desire, passion and impulse: ...
... I don't know whether ignorance is the greatest obstacle on the path of humanity... We said that it was an almost exclusively mental obstacle and that the human being is much more complex than a mental being, though he is supremely mental, for he is its new creation in the world. He represents the last possibility of Nature, and in that, naturally his mental life has taken immense proportions, because ...
... must go through a process of transforming the immediate mental, vital and other connections, must it not—so why should not the process be in parts? Immortality also can come by parts. First the mental being becomes immortal (not shed and dissolved after death), then the vital, while the physical comes only last. That is a possible evolution, recognised by occult science. 27 March 1935 Above ...
... you should insist in your Calcutta centre on attention being given to what I call the Purusha side, that is to say, a basis of deep calm, strength, equality, wide consciousness and purity in the mental being, and as the vital and physical open, also in the vital and physical being. If that is attended to and successfully developed the play of the psychic, vital and physical experiences will be more ...
... grade of the evolving existence, and in the grades to higher and higher types of bodily and mental instrumentation. In this progression the psychic entity is still veiled, even in man the conscious mental being, by its instruments, by mind and life and body; it is unable to manifest fully, held back from coming to the front where it can stand out as the master of its nature, obliged to submit to a certain ...
... practise it at the Asram might easily interrupt the present movement which is the right one for him and precipitate another for which he is not ready. At present his experience is that of the mental being and mental nature opening to the Light and to some touch of a higher Ananda, with a basis of calm—the indispensable basis. This movement should continue till the heart and the vital being and vital ...
... the master of the house. And it is not a question of yoga or higher realisation, it is something which should be taught everywhere, in every school, every family, every home: man was made to be a mental being, and merely to be a man—we are not speaking of anything else, we are speaking only of being a man—life must be dominated by reason and not by vital impulses. This should be taught to all children ...
... the Gita as the Ishwara situated in the heart and by the Upanishads as the Purusha Antaratma; the second could apply also to the mental Purusha, manomayaḥ prāṇaśarīra netā of the Upanishads, the mental Being or Purusha who leads the life and the body. So your question is one which on the data I cannot easily answer. His Overself may be a combination of all these experiences, without any clear distinction ...
... Through the descent and manifestation of the supermind, a new race will be born—a new creation. But what exactly will this new creation be? The supramental being on earth, as man is the mental being, the animal the vital etc. 8 May 1934 When I hear people talking about the supramental descent it makes me somewhat sceptical. They expect that when the descent happens everything will soon ...
... blissful repose. One remains what one is, without any movement. 73 — The Mother * In this progression [of the soul] the psychic entity is still veiled, even in man the conscious mental being, by its instruments, by mind and life and body, it is unable to manifest fully, held back from coming to the front where it can stand out as the master of its nature, obliged to submit to a certain ...
... which is not born nor evolves, but presides over the individual birth and evolution—puts forward a representative of himself on each plane of the consciousness. On the mental plane it is the true mental being, manomaya puruṣa , on the vital plane the true vital being, prāṇamaya puruṣa , on the physical plane the true physical being, annamaya puruṣa . Each being therefore is, so long as the Ignorance ...
... speak very often of negative entities, that is to say, of hostile formations, of small beings formed from the disintegration of human beings after their death―the disintegration of the vital or mental being at death―but that I have never spoken of the great beings, the magnificent beings or positive entities which help the evolution. I believe I have spoken to you about these quite often, but still ...
... limitations. As he grows more and more inward, his boundaries mental, vital, spiritual begin to broaden, the bonds that held life, mind, soul to their first limitations loosen or snap, and man the mental being begins to have a glimpse of a larger kingdom of self and world closed to the first earth-life. No doubt, so long as he lives mainly on his surface, he can only build a sort of superstructure ideal ...
... give so much as an idea of what Thou art. And each new fact will be a new problem, more marvellous and mysterious than all that preceded it. Yet, faced with its own ignorance and incapacity, the mental being remains luminous, smiling and calm, even as though it possessed the supreme knowledge—that of its being Thou, innumerably, invariably, infinitely, very simply Thou. Page 287 ...
... 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 being are kept immobile and inactive ...
... summit, but in exchange he acquired intelligence, the power of reasoning, combining, constructing. Indeed with man it is the life of mind, of intellect which appeared on earth. Man is essentially a mental being; and if his possibilities do not stop there, if he feels in himself other worlds, other faculties, other planes of consciousness beyond his mental life, they are only as promises for the future ...
... material part of the being which goes out; one must go out very materially in the subtle physical body or in the most material vital. But usually it is the vital which goes out and still more often the mental being; but when it is the mind which goes out one is not aware of it at all, for the mind is like the psychic, it is very rarely within you. If you think of something or somebody, one part of your mind ...
... states of consciousness. So, to say "each one bears his cross" is true of the external consciousness (of material happenings, happenings which touch the vital being, the emotional being and the mental being); for such people there will always be a considerable number of catastrophes, all the more because catastrophes seem to be proportionate to the capacity of the individual, they seem to be dealt ...
... but these are temporary phenomena, at worst a downward curve of the spiral of progress. This progress has not indeed carried the race beyond itself, into a self-exceeding, a transformation of the mental being. But that was not to be expected; for the action of evolutionary Nature in a type of being and consciousness is first to develop the type to its utmost capacity by just such a subtilisation and ...
... is cannot be the last term of that evolution: he is too imperfect an expression of the Spirit, Mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; Mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and Supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind ...
... world; then to leave one's vital being asleep and go out mentally, acting and living in the mental world quite consciously and with similar relations—for the mental world is in relation with the mental being, as the physical world is in relation with the physical being—and so on, progressively and by a regular discipline. I knew a woman who had been trained in this way, who had quite remarkable personal ...
... case, the fact is there. Perhaps later we shall see that a certain state of inner organisation is necessary for this psychic Page 216 being to be able to have memories in the way the mental being has them—we shall speak about it later, when we come to it in the book—but in any case the fact is established: it is this double movement of evolution intersecting and complementing itself which ...
... his physical being, yet he would have also the freedom of his infinite mind and his immortal soul. " And in these contrasts something in him finds a curious attraction; they constitute for his mental being the artistry of life. It is not only the nectar but the poison also that attracts his taste and his curiosity. " Page 27 Thoughts and Glimpses, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 385 Sweet ...
... Ignorance seeking for Knowledge and growing into Knowledge, so Supermind must be established here on a basis of Knowledge growing into its own greater Light. But this cannot be so long as the spiritual-mental being has not risen fully to Supermind and brought down its powers into terrestrial existence. For the gulf between Mind and Supermind has to be bridged, the closed passages opened and roads of ascent ...
... passing beneath! In any case, the fact is there. Perhaps later we shall see that a certain state of inner organisation is necessary for this psychic being to be able to have memories in the way the mental being has them—we shall speak about it later, when we come to it in the book—but in any case the fact is established: it is this double movement of evolution intersecting and complementing itself which ...
... is capable of gilding everything. In these conditions it is difficult to know oneself. One must be absolutely sincere to be able to do it and to see clearly into all the little falsehoods of the mental being. If in your mind you go over the various movements and reactions of the day like one repeating indefinitely the same thing, you will not progress. If this reviewing is to make you progress, you ...
... the Instruments of Consciousness There are two things to be considered: consciousness and the instruments through which consciousness manifests. Let us take the instruments: there is the mental being which produces thoughts, the emotional being which produces feeling, the vital being which produces the power of action and the physical being that acts. The man of genius may use anything at ...
... in the plant and associated in the animal with a growing Mind, then Mind itself evolved and organised in Man. This evolution, this spiritual progression - does it stop short here in the imperfect mental being called Man? Or is the secret of it simply a succession of rebirths whose only purpose or issue is to labour towards the point at which it can learn its own futility, renounce itself and ...
... the master of the house. And it is not a question of yoga or higher realisation, it is something which should be taught everywhere, in every school, every family, every home: man was made to be a mental being, and merely to be a man we are not speaking of anything else, we are speaking only of being a man life must be dominated by reason and not by vital impulses. This should be taught to all children ...
... passing through this stage, he would risk making a great mistake, and of taking for perfect freedom a perfect weakness with regard to his lower nature. It is almost impossible to pass from the mental being—even the most perfect and most remarkable—to the true spiritual life without having realised this ideal of moral perfection for a certain period of time, however brief it may be. Many people try ...
... follow the path, if you act only in conformity with what can lead you to the divine realisation, if you abolish in yourself all desires and impulses turned towards external things, if you calm your mental being, appease your vital being, if you shut yourself against suggestions coming from outside and become immune to the action of people surrounding you, you create such a spiritual atmosphere that nothing ...
... all of which has the inevitable result of increasing vital desires through repression, fear or self-justification. And yet for the sake of completeness it should be added that because man is a mental being, he must necessarily in the course of his evolution leave behind this unconscious and spontaneous purity, which is very similar to the purity of the animal, and after passing through an unavoidable ...
... the Gita as the Ishwara situated in the heart and by the Upanishads as the Purusha Antaratma; the second could apply also to the mental Purusha, manomayaḥ prāṇaśarīra netā of the Upanishads, the mental Being or Purusha who leads the life and the body. So your question is one which on the data I cannot easily answer. His Overself may be a combination of all these experiences, without any distinction ...
... lower self, spiritual release. Evolving out of its first involved condition in Matter and in plant life, effecting a first imperfect organised consciousness in the animal it arrives in man, the mental being, at the possibility of a new, a conscious evolution which will bring it to its goal and at a certain stage of his development it wakes in him the overmastering impulse to pass on from mental to ...
... Divine Power takes the place of the ego and directs the action, making the mind, life and body an instrument. A receptive silence of the mind, an effacement of the mental ego and the reduction of the mental being to the position of a witness, a close contact with the Divine Power and an openness of the being to that one Influence and no other are the conditions for becoming an instrument of the Divine, moved ...
... a spiritual evolution as the meaning of our existence here. It is a series of ascents from the physical being and consciousness to the vital, the being dominated by the life-self, thence to the mental being realised in the fully developed man and thence into the perfect consciousness which is beyond the mental, into the Supramental consciousness and the Supramental being, the Truth-Consciousness which ...
... Peace, Light, Force, Ananda in the consciousness, their workings there, the realisation of the divine or spiritual love, the perception of one's own psychic being, the discovery of one's own true mental being, true vital being, true physical being, the realisation of the overmind or the supramental consciousness, the clear perception of the relation of all these things to our present inferior nature ...
... future in which a higher spiritual and supramental consciousness shall emerge and be turned upon the works of the mind. But at present it is this which is at work; a self-conscious soul in mind, mental being, manomaya puruṣa , struggles to arrive at some intelligent ordering of its self and life and some indefinite, perhaps infinite development of the powers and potentialities of the human instrument ...
... we perceive that in Matter uniformity is the sign of the group; free variation and individual development progress with the growth of Life and Mind. If then we suppose man to be an evolution of mental being in Matter and out of Matter, we must assume that he begins with uniformity and subservience of the individual and proceeds towards variety and freedom of the individual. The necessity of circumstance ...
... becomes universal, it is the end of the Age of Reason, the suicide or the execution—by decapitation or lethal pressure, peine forte et dure ,—of the rational and intellectual expansion of the human mental being. Reason cannot do its work, act or rule if the mind of man is denied freedom to think or freedom to realise its thought by action in life. But neither can a subjective age be the outcome; for the ...
... equivalence between them; it started from an indefinable quality or property in the sound to raise certain vibrations in the life-soul of the human creature, in his sensational, his emotional, his crude mental being. An example may indicate more clearly what I mean. The word wolf, the origin of which is no longer present to our minds, denotes to our intelligence a certain living object and that is all, the ...
... the inertia of its substantial forms. Man is the nodus, the agent & instrument of the gods for the full recovery of Consciousness in material Energy, universal being in particular Form. Man, the mental being in Bhu, shares with the Gods the appellation, Nri, the Purusha; he too is a guiding Soul of consciousness & not the mere gana, formal executive energy & mechanical ratio of things which is the outward ...
... becomes the material being, annamaya puruṣa . In the vital or nervous consciousness Atman becomes the vital or dynamic being, prāṇamaya puruṣa . In the mental consciousness Atman becomes the mental being, manomaya puruṣa . In the supra-intellectual consciousness, dominated by the Truth or causal Idea (called in Veda Satyam, Ritam, Brihat, the True, the Right, the Vast), Atman becomes the ideal ...
... offerer. बंधुता. Sy. बंधुतया—by friendship with thee won by my praises. I take बंधुता from बंध् to confine, limit—or as in बंधुर = crookedness, in either case referring to the limitations of the mental being. 12) अस्वप्नजस्तरणयः सुशेवा अतंद्रासो अवृका अश्रमिष्ठाः । ते पायवः सघ्र्यंचो निषद्य अग्ने तव नः पांतु अमृर ॥ Unsleeping that carry us over & are full of felicity, undrowsing, unrent ...
... the nature of reincarnation is not the same for all the old thinkers. The Upanishads, for instance, seem to teach that the physical self is dissolved at death into its principle, ether; it is the mental being that appears to be born and reborn, but in reality birth and death are merely semblances and operations of Nature,—of Aditi full of the gods, Aditi devatāmayī ; the spirit is really one in all ...
... streams, he uncovered doors concealed (opened the doors that had been closed). मनवे. Manu, the typical मनस्वी or मनोमयः पुरुषः or simply “man” with a stress upon the root idea of the word, “man the mental being”. अपिहितेव. Sayana says अन्नेवशब्दश्चार्थे. इव means originally, “thus”, “thus indeed”, “so”, and is identical with एव. It may, therefore, have like एव the sense of emphasis, or like एवं in Bengali ...
... who produces for thee the Soma, for thou art the master of heaven. (6) For thou art he who shatters, O Indra, these ranged cities and the slayer of the plunderer and the increaser of man, the mental being, and the master of Heaven. (7) So, O Indra who takest delight in the word, we set free our large desires towards thee, as men travelling by the sea who are carried forward on its waves. (8) ...
... the sound, the eye sees the form; but hearing and vision are particular operations of the life-force in us used by the mind in order to put itself into communication with the world in which the mental being dwells and to interpret it in the forms of sense. The life-force shapes them, the mind uses them, but something other than the life-force and the mind enables them to shape and to use their objects ...
... Consciousness has no need of a clear individual "I" to dispose the stress,—it can do that of itself; wherever the stress is put the "I" attaches itself to that, so that one thinks of oneself as a mental being or physical being or whatever it may be. The consciousness in me can be utterly free of any sense of an individual "I" and yet dispose its stress in this way or the other way—it may go down into ...
... that makes these differences, but that does not matter, because, through its own way of seeing and experiencing the soul or individualised consciousness or whatever you may like to call it, the mental being goes where it has to go. I hope this much is clear as the first step in the matter. (2) I do not dispute at all the fact that one can realise the Self, the Brahman or the Ishwara without going ...
... Page 977 The siddhi of the three chatusthayas still to be completed depends on the glory and power (sri) of the ideality perfecting itself and taking full possession not only of the mental being, but of the body and the life. The negative states are being replaced by the positive; quiescence by shama-tapas-prakasha, the human poise by the divine, the Brahmi by the Aishwari sthiti. ...
... you all the time, but you did not feel it because you were living on the surface altogether and the surface is all crowd and clamour. But in all men there is this silent Purusha, base of the true mental being, the true vital being, the true physical being. It was by your prayer and aspiration that the thing came, to show you in what direction you must travel in order to have the true rasa of things, ...
... [ the psychic's ] coming to the front is simply this. The psychic ordinarily is deep within. Very few people are aware of their souls—when they speak of their soul, they usually mean the vital + mental being or else the (false) soul of desire. The psychic remains behind and acts only through the mind, vital and physical wherever it can. For this reason the psychic being except where it is very much ...
... demand and to this liberation. When the mental consciousness can take its stand permanently or at will above like this, then this first liberation becomes accomplished ( siddha ). From there the mental being can open freely to higher planes or to the cosmic existence and its forces and can also act with greater liberty and power on the lower nature. What you felt was not imagination at all, but ...
... mental nature; if that activity ceases, what appears then as a thought-free existence that manifests in its place is not a blank or void but something very real, substantial, concrete we may say—a mental being that extends itself widely and can be its own field of existence silent or active as well as the Witness, Knower, Master of that Page 258 field and its action. Some feel it first as ...
... is no one there who can do this for you, you should draw back from this movement. Aspire for perfect surrender, calm, peace, light, consciousness and strength in the mind and the heart. When the mental being and psychic being are thus open, luminous and surrendered, then the vital can open and receive the same illumination. Till then premature adventures on the vital plane are not advisable. If the ...
... a spark of light. A glow means a subdued but rich light or else a sort of warm exhilaration of a luminous kind. Two Visions Explained (1) The lid of the skull opening means that the mental being has opened to the Divine Light and the flames indicate aspiration filled with the Light arising to join the mental part to what is above Mind. Page 120 (2) The Divine Light from above ...
... If they fell, it was because they preferred to follow their lower nature and side with the lower forces. The Divine can lead, he does not drive. There is an internal freedom permitted to every mental being called man to assent or not to assent to the Page 144 Divine leading—how else can any real spiritual evolution be done? If there is so serious an obstacle to your going forward, it ...
... is the thread upon which the continuity of our successive bodily lives is arranged, precisely because it is itself immortal. It associates itself with the perishable body and carries forward the mental being, the Purusha in the mind, upon his journey. WILL AND MEMORY This journey consists in a series of activities continued from life to life in this world with intervals of life in other states ...
... hides him in all her growths, her plants, herbs, trees—the forms full of her heats, the objects that keep for the soul its delights. But at last she shall yield him up; she is the lower tinder, the mental being is the upper tinder; by the pressure of the upper on the lower the flame of Agni shall be born. But it is by pressure, by a sort of churning that he is born. Therefore he is called the Son of Force ...
... × Perfect and vast energy in the vital being corresponding to the infinite and immortal light of the Truth in the mental being. ...
... their shining weapons. Our life is a horse that neighing and galloping bears us onward and upward; its forces are swift-hoofed steeds, the liberated powers of the mind are wide-winging birds; this mental being or this soul is the upsoaring Swan or the Falcon that breaks out from a hundred iron walls and wrests from the jealous guardians of felicity the wine of the Soma. Every shining godward Thought that ...
... in the material world, and as the change from the vital animal to mental man made life another thing altogether in basic consciousness, scope, significance, so this change from the materialised mental being to the spiritual and supramental being using but not dominated by matter must take up life and make it another thing altogether than the flawed, imperfect limited human, quite other in its basic ...
... function is to free and illumine, yet love is the deepest and most intense and its privilege is to be the key to the most profound and secret recesses of the Divine Mystery. Man, because he is a mental being, is prone to give the highest importance to the thinking mind and its reason and will and to its way of approach and effectuation of Truth and, even, he is inclined to hold that there is no other ...
... luminous kinship; but here the veil is opaque and the transmission of the Overmind motives to the Mind is occult and obscure. Mind separated acts as if it were an independent principle, and each mental being, each basic mental idea, power, force stands similarly on its separate self; if it communicates or combines with or contacts others, it is not with the catholic universality of the Overmind movement ...
... whether by a violent leap or normally through the Ideal which put it forth. It is this that explains the imperfect reality of human existence as seen by the Mind, the instinctive aspiration in the mental being towards a perfectibility ever beyond itself, towards the concealed harmony of the Ideal, and the supreme surge of the spirit beyond the ideal to the transcendental. The very facts of our consciousness ...
... and a constant practice, abhyāsa , of self-modification and transformation. The Purusha has that capacity; for the spirit within can always change and perfect the working of its nature. But the mental being must open the way by a clear and a watchful introspection, an opening of itself to a searching and subtle self-knowledge which will give it the understanding and to an increasing extent the mastery ...
... physical to the full truth of our spiritual nature. But when we look, not at external mechanical Nature to the exclusion of our personality, but at the inner subjective experience of man the mental being, our nature takes to us a quite different appearance. We may believe intellectually in a purely mechanical view even of our subjective existence, but we cannot act upon it or make it quite real ...
... The Yoga of Self-Perfection The Synthesis of Yoga Chapter VIII The Liberation of the Spirit The purification of the mental being and the psychic prana—we will leave aside for the time the question of the physical purification, that of the body and physical prana, though that too is necessary to an integral perfection,—prepares the ground for a spiritual ...
... of action of the self and spirit. It is the first secret of the soul's mastery of existence. When we have it in perfection, we are admitted to the very ground of the divine spiritual nature. The mental being in the body tries to compel and conquer life, but is at every turn compelled by it, because it submits to the desire reactions of the vital self. To be equal, not to be overborne by any stress of ...
... body. For behind the gross physical sheath of this materially visible and sensible frame there is subliminally supporting it and discoverable by a finer subtle consciousness a subtle body of the mental being and a spiritual or causal body of the gnostic and bliss soul in which all the perfection of a spiritual embodiment is to be found, a yet unmanifested divine law of the body. Most of the physical ...
... of ego means the admission of that which it tries to exclude as not-self, of the cosmos and other beings. The self-annihilation of the Buddhist is in its nature absolute exclusion of all that the mental being perceives; the self-immersion of the Adwaitin in his absolute being is the self-same aim differently conceived: both are a supreme self-assertion of the soul of its exclusive independence of Prakriti ...
... highest, the self-knowledge or infinite knowledge. The normal thought-action of the mind may for this purpose be viewed as constituted of a triple motion. First and lowest and most necessary to the mental being in the body is the habitual thought mind that founds its ideas upon the data given by the senses and by the surface experiences of the nervous and emotional being and on the customary notions formed ...
... intimately linked with the fact of evolution - the rising by some means or other from lower grades of embodied consciousness to higher ones and finally (or at least so at the present stage) from man the mental being to the supramental Superman. This rising is not to be equated to man getting psychicised and spiritualised, becoming a saint or a jivan-mukta but to transforming the human into a superhuman species ...
... ent and a help to the greater descent, a descent not only into the physical mind but also into the physical vitality and the physical proper. As Sri Aurobindo puts it, "there would be a new mental being", "a liberated mind... aware of its affiliation to Supermind, a natural agent of Supermind and capable of bringing down the supramental influence into the lower reaches of being,... aspiring ...
... it is aware of movement; but this movement does not seem to proceed from the Self, but to go on by some inherent power of its own and only to be reflected in the Self. In other words, the mental being has put away from himself by exclusive concentration the dynamic aspect of consciousness, has taken refuge in the static and built a wall of non-communication between the two; between the ...
... phrases. That is what you may call the illumined style in a semi-decorative form; the illumined style as such in its proper functioning is something which is beyond both the vital being and the mental being. You have some inward glow of things by which you feel the hidden significance of objects and of persons and of occasions. You have the illumined style wherever imagery is at play but the true illumined ...
... AUROBINDO'S PHILOSOPHY AND YOGA " AN ATTEMPT AT A SCHEMATIC SUMMARY 1)"The Mind of Light" is a coinage of Sri Aurobindo's, applicable not to all the levels of mental being where Light (Divine Knowledge) has open play in various degrees, but only to the human mental level — which we may designate broadly as the physical-mental — when its ignorance essentially ceases ...
... whom then does it matter? Only to Maya and mind. Well, then, it is an affair between Maya and mind, and they can settle it between themselves. Precisely, the Illusionist will reply; to you, the mental being, it does matter because you are in Maya, you suffer, however phenomenally, however unreally, and the only way to get rid of it is to abolish Maya by abolishing yourself, your mental individuality ...
... This new psychological research is only in its infancy & cannot tell us what this secret consciousness is, but the knowledge gained by Yoga enables us to assert positively that this is the complete mental being within who guides life & body, manomayah pranashariraneta. He it is who conducts our evolution & awakes mind out of life & is more & more getting possession of this Page 130 vitalised ...
... then and then only can man exceed himself and know divinely and divinely act and create; he will have become at last a conscious portion of the Eternal. The superman will be born, not a magnified mental being, but a supramental power descended here into a new life of the transformed terrestrial body. A gnostic supermanhood is the next distinct and triumphant victory to be won by the spirit descended ...
... 2 March 1920 The action of outer mentality in a mass of all kinds turned into the lower and lesser ideal action. The object to get rid of the coating, penetration, mixture of the intuitive mental being in the thought-action, as has already been done in script and lipi. Also of the glamour of confused light in the uncentralised ideal action.. This seems to have been done, but not so as to absolutely ...
... that they can present themselves, piercing from outside through the regular working and finding some similar response in the physical system, but rejected by the gnostic and Page 1151 mental being. When this gnosis works in freedom, then it arouses no pragmatic eagerness in the mental system, tolerates no mechanical tamasic laxity During the rest of the day a variable action of the ideality ...
... his physical being, yet he would have also the freedom of his infinite mind and his immortal soul. And in these contrasts something in him finds a curious attraction; they constitute for his mental being the artistry of life. It is not only the nectar but the poison also that attracts his taste and his curiosity. In all these things there is a meaning and for all these contradictions there ...
... puruṣa , the supreme Intelligence who is the Lord and dwells in the sleep-state holding all things in a seed of dense consciousness which works out through the perceptions of the subtle Purusha, the mental Being. Vijnana is indeed a consciousness which sees things, not as the human reason sees them in parts and pieces, in separated and aggregated relations, but in the original reason of their existence ...
... . The very nature of our humanity supposes a varying constituent past for the soul as well as a resultant future. More reasonable therefore is a recent theory which suggests that a spirit or mental being has descended from another and greater plane and taken up the material existence when the physical and the animal evolution had proceeded far enough for a human embodiment upon earth to be possible ...
... first an abstract and unseizable idea. In the image of the ether, not physical but an encompassing ether of vast being, consciousness and bliss, he may seem to see with the mind and to feel in his mental being this supreme existence and to identify it in oneness with the self within him. By such meditation the mind may be brought to a favourable state of predisposition in which, by the rending or withdrawing ...
... back into his body that after some hours the doctors believed he would be saved. But it couldn't last (it wasn't possible—a part of the brain had come out). Well, when not only his soul but his mental being, his vital being, and all the rest had been properly collected and organized over his body and had realized that the body had become quite unusable, it was over—they gave up the body and it was ...
... warriorlike—an adventurous spirit fared forth. Here, again, was something romantic—a dreamer rose above humdrumness and trampled on the mechanically of common life. And here, finally, was man the mental being in full control of animal energy, making the latter's magnificent wildness serve the ends of a far-seeing and ordering urge. Perhaps this last significance is the most complete. For, ...
... India has to offer should be stated to the West in language that the West can understand. Sri Aurobindo 1 Rationality is a specific function of the human being, so often called “the mental being” by Sri Aurobindo. There is no doubt that his view was the most encompassing ever, which is the reason why words like “integral” and “synthetic” are keywords in it. His affirmation was “a catholic ...
... transient being and stands at the turning-point of the whole movement.” 21 And: “A many-sided ignorance striving to become an all-embracing Knowledge is the definition of the consciousness of man the mental being … Truth is relative to us because our knowledge is surrounded by ignorance … On the surface we are still an ego figuring self, an ignorance turning into knowledge, a will labouring towards true ...
... modification of the previous animal form and its erect figure of a new power of life and its expressive movements and activities serviceable and necessary to the principle of mind and the life of a mental being, so too a body must be developed with new powers, activities or degrees of a divine action expressive of a truth-conscious being and proper to a supramental consciousness and manifesting a conscious ...
... This Sri Aurobindo called the Supramental Being. Everything in existence is supported by it, guided by it, and will ultimately be fulfilled by it. According to Sri Aurobindo the human is “the mental being” who appeared on earth at a certain moment in its evolution. In the popular mind man, as Darwin said, is still a descendant of the ape, but today paleoanthropology could neither tell you which ape ...
... wills to work out the superman, the god.” 1 (Sri Aurobindo) The next step in the evolution, announced by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, is the “superman” or supramental being. The human is the mental being; therefore, what is more than human must be called supra-mental. As the mental consciousness has been incorporated into life on Earth from its pre-existent involutionary level in the cosmic man ...
... to our human dimensions. But in spite of everything there will be a moment when it happens; there will be a moment when the development tilts into a new reality. There has been a moment when the mental being was able to manifest upon Earth. Its starting point may have been very poor, very incomplete, very imperfect, but all the same there was a starting point. Why would the starting point [of the s ...
... beginning from vegetable to life-consciousness in the worms, insects, reptiles, birds and thence to the mental consciousness of the animals and finally to the emerging higher consciousness of man, the mental being, the earth is progressively moving towards the yet un evolved spiritual and supra-mental consciousness which is at the summit of our evolutionary destiny. When the summit is reached ...
... life in matter, half-awake and somewhat consciously evolving in "mind housed in a living body" 3 , and destined to be fully evolved and awake "by the awakening of the Supermind in the embodied mental being and nature". 4 Thus, what characterises Matter is not that it is bereft of all life or consciousness but that therein the involved consciousness is "in a full sleep" 5 and has not developed ...
... physical movements which appear to us as subconscient; it then emerges in mind constituting the specific consciousness of 32. Letters on Yoga, p. 168. Page 151 man the mental being; but that is not its farthest limit or the highest height. Above mentality it ascends into yet greater supra-mental forms which thus remain for the normal awareness of man altogether superconscient ...
... Shocks and trials always come as a divine grace to show us the points in our being where we fall short and the movements in which we turn our back on our soul by listening to the clamour of our mental being and vital being. If we know how to accept these spiritual blows with due humility, we are sure to cover a great distance at a single bound. 22 February 1965 Be absolutely convinced ...
... × Mother is referring to a letter of Sri Aurobindo's which Satprem had quoted in his manuscript: "... in the calm mind, it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they do not rise at all out of the mind, but they come from outside and cross the mind as a flight of birds crosses ...
... sense of a single person, a single being. But there are many of them, and there are in particular concentrations on different planes: just as you have a physical being, you have a vital being, a mental being, a psychic being, and many others with all possible intermediaries.... So when you leave your body, all those beings will scatter. It's only if you are a very advanced yogi and have been capable ...
... it was on a surge of the vital being - the strongest and the most vehement part of our instruments of expression on the earth-scene - that my soul suddenly came to you. It could not have been the mental being on a visit, for then the soul would have projected itself more calmly, more ethereally. Nor could it have been the subtle-physical's France-ward sweep, for then some of the marked characteristics ...
... contact from the scientific side with the Page 86 vision of the Integral Yoga. But there is no sign in it, as there is none also in Teilhard's "super-consciousness", that man the mental being will go beyond the utmost possibility open to mind itself. A widening of the mental consciousness and its achievement of technological mastery on a grand scale are the limits of its prognosis. But ...
... inner disturbance that stems from "desire". He says that people think we shall be inert if desire is lacking. This, to him, is a mistake; for desire is not the sole source of dynamism: man is a mental being and his typical activity is the buddhi , the intelligent will. Buddhi looks around, is far-visioned, tries to be impersonal, just and fair. Of course, beyond the buddhi is the immanent ...
... of lives had to be passed through before the soul could have a human embodiment. Earth's long history amply allows time for our pre-human past. You and I are certain to have been real Manu-man (mental being) and not something like Hanu-man when Rama flourished and Nolini was in his train.(In fact, I believe that most disciples of Sri Aurobindo were with Sri Aurobindo each time he manifested in human ...
... miracle, except for a pretend miracle. ( silence ) If what belongs to the supramental world materialized abruptly, rather than through a slow evolution... that would be something which man, as a mental being, even if his mentality, his mental domain, were brought to perfection, could call a miracle, for it is the intervention in his conscious life of something he doesn't consciously carry within him ...
... permeation into Life—into Life, into the material, earthly substance, which had become alive. Even plants participated in last night's experience: it isn't something that was the privilege of the mental being, it's the whole vital substance (vitalized material substance) of the earth that received this ananda of the power of progress—it was triumphant. Triumphant. And when I came back (it took me ...
... ] had even promised to lend some money, but he died just before—a few days before he was due to give it! 3 But the first one was a conscious, highly mentalized being, with a very well-formed mental being; he knew a lot and he told me, "I am very conscious and now I know that I am fully alive and fully conscious, so I don't want an impotent body that constantly requires someone to nurse it or move ...
... that I was using my head too much. Of course there has always been a controversy down the ages among the philosophers and others whether the soul is in the head or in the heart. Man is called a mental being, a rational animal and hence most Western philosophers have believed that the characteristic human consciousness is up in the head. The heart has been often so capricious, so impulsive, so whimsical ...
... you should insist in your Calcutta centre an attention being given to what I call the Purusha side, that is to say a basis of deep calm, strength, equality, wide consciousness and purity in the mental being, and as the vital physical opens, also in the vital and physical being. If that is attended to and successfully developed the play of the psychic vital and physical experiences will be more steady ...
... thought and then another coming in a concrete way from outside; I flung them away before they could enter and take hold of the brain and in three days I was free. From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms ...
... Lila, concept of, 83, 84 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 ...
... ignorance then they could drag him down to birth again. He could have abandoned those parts. Then was he free? What do you mean by freedom? Birth is a bondage so long as one is in the mental being. It only appears so. But if you look at the thing from above then there is no such thing, one is not affected by birth and death. Then Buddha did not achieve perfection of his nature? He ...
... better relations for antagonism and dislike. Then ? October 24,1936 It is a little difficult for the wider spiritual outlook to answer your question in the way you want and every mental being wants, with a trenchant "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not", especially when the "thou" is meant to cover "all". For while there is an identity of essential aim, while there are general broad lines ...
... If they fell, it was because they preferred to follow their lower nature and side with the lower forces. The Divine can lead, he does not drive. There is an internal freedom permitted to every mental being called man to assent or not to assent to the Divine leading: how else can any real spiritual evolution be done? If there is so serious an obstacle to your going forward, it consists only of ...
... terms of the Taittiriya Upanishad, the first process is to perfect the faculties and activities of the annamaya kosha, pranamaya kosha and manomaya kosha, — of the physical being, vital being and mental being, — Page 25 and proceed to develop and perfect the faculties of Vijnāna Purusha and the Ānandamaya Purusha; this will lead us to the knowledge of the law of the universe of the ...
... and anandamaya, the bliss that is conscious and self-existent. The Vedic and the Upanishadic Rishis had made a thorough study of the problem of integration and come to the conclusion that the mental being, manomaya , is the leader of the physical and the vital, — prana sharira neta, and that it is by developing the mental powers that the vital and the physical can be controlled and mastered, although ...
... In the closing hymns of the Rigveda, we find two great messages, which are today even more relevant than in any other previous time. In its first message it exhorts the human being to become a mental being and yet not to remain limited to the powers of the mind and the intellect but to transcend them so as to grow into a luminous being possessing the faculties and powers of cosmic and transcendental ...
... methods and results of the Vedic Yoga, Sri Aurobindo refers to the Vedic movement of the ascent and the descent. As he points out: "The link between the Spiritual and the lower planes of the mental being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijnana and which we may term the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or the supermind where the One and Many meet and our being is freely ...
... with the rigour of scientific discovery and invention that build knowledge upon knowledge. In one short sentence in Sanskrit, Veda declares: "manurbhava, janaya daivyam janam " — become first the mental being and then become the divine being. This is the message for the individual. The Veda also presents a collective ideal and enjoins upon all who want to listen to this message that they should ...
... bliss being. It is these states of the Purusha which are described in the Taittiriya Upanishad as annamaya purusa, the physical being, prānamaya purusa, the vital being, manomaya purusa, the mental being, vijanānamaya purusa, the supramental being, and ānandamaya purusa, the bliss being. It is the individual being that accepts the identification, by means of exclusive concentration of consciousness ...
... Supermind and a supramental race of beings upon the earth, it could bring about an uplifting and transforming change in mind itself and as an inevitable consequence in the consciousness of man, the mental being and would equally bring about a radical and transforming change in the principles and forms of his living, his ways of action and the whole build and tenor of his life. ...One result of the ...
... the Mind, namely the powers of the rationalistic mind, ethical mind and aesthetic mind. But this is not all. He also tries to control and integrate these powers of the mind; in doing so, man, the mental being, begins to exceed himself, and bring out in different degrees higher powers of consciousness, the powers of inspiration, revelation and 'intuition. It is these powers, which impel man to develop ...
... as infinite and as the same Infinite, and can bring out, sustain and develop in the one what it holds supernally in the other. Its time consciousness therefore will be different from that of the mental being, not swept helplessly on the stream of the moments and clutching at each moment as a stay and a swiftly disappearing standpoint, but founded first on its eternal identity beyond the changes of time ...
... the context of this development, mind and mental humanity would remain as one step in the spiritual evolution; but other degrees above it would be there formed and accessible by which the embodied mental being, Page 71 as it became ready, could climb into the gnosis and change into an embodied supramental being. Page 72 ...
... us; there is a constant confusion and even a conflict in our members; often it is by our mental reason and will that we are moved to control and harmonize confusions and conflicts; it is in the mental being to which we look up for some kind of order and guidance; even so, ordinarily, we drift too much or are driven by the stream of our nature and act from whatever in it comes uppermost at the time ...
... initial reactions as the mental, but is different in the constitution of its self-experience, even as that which is superconscient is in the constitution of its self-experience different from the mental being. Does the range of what we can call consciousness cease with the plant, with that in which we recognise the existence of a sub-animal life? If so, we must then suppose that there is a force ...
... where 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. 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 loss ...
... find their equation lie at the very roots of human civilisation and persist throughout man's history of cultural development, even up to the stage when he has grown into a highly individualised mental being or even entered the path of spiritual progress. And how are collectivities formed? Men seek to be grouped, linked, united around a common ideal, a common action, a common realisation, but ...
... inferior on the ordinary human level." (Ibid.) A collective spiritual life - the goal of our Ashram - is meant to express the spiritual and not merely the physical, vital, or even the mental being of man; it has, therefore, to found and maintain itself on greater values than the mental, vital, physical values of the ordinary human groupings. If it is not so founded, our Ashram will be merely ...
... and then another coming in a concrete way from outside; I flung them away before they could enter and take hold of the brain and in three days I was free. From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms ...
... its highest products. But Sachchidananda has yet to emerge fully in manifestation. Therefore this evolution, this spiritual progression cannot stop short with Mind and with the imperfect mental being called Man. Mind is too imperfect an expression and man too hampered and burdened a creature to be the last terms of the evolutionary elaboration of life's destiny upon earth. So, in the very ...
... subconscious or just conscious instinct. Advancing step by step, it developed into intelligence in animal man. Advancing still further, it has elevated the thinking animal into the status of a reasoning mental being. But even in his highest elevation man is still weighed down by a heavy stamp of original animality. Therefore mental man has still to evolve out of himself the fully conscious being, a divine manhood ...
... man, because it contains in itself powers whose right satisfaction or whose final way of transformation reason cannot discover. If reason were the secret, highest law of the universe or if man the mental being were limited by mentality, it might be possible for him by the power of the reason to evolve out of the dominance of infrarational Nature which he inherits from the animal. He could then live securely ...
... openness to the Divine Force. It is thus clear that so long as the sadhaka does not get integrally consecrated to the Divine Mother, he has to meet and contend with the resistance in his mental being with its principal forms of doubt and denial, in his vital nature with its turmoils of desires and attachments, also in his physical consciousness with its characteristic stamp of fundamental ...
... man for realising the Divine upon earth? ...You mean manifesting, I suppose. Anyone can realise the Divine— in the sense of being conscious of the Divine. Man is a mental being in a body — how can he have command of the Supermind which is far above mind? Even Overmind is far above him. As the mind has its corresponding divine plane the vital too must have ...
... I am much delighted and relieved to .find that you have not lost your sense of humour by your Supramental transformation, Sir! Where the deuce do you get these ideas? From Dilip? The Supra-mental being the absolute of all good things, must equally be the absolute of humour also. Q.E.D. February 25, 1938 Benjamin doesn't like boiled vegetables. He wants them fried. The other day Dr ...
... you all the time, but you did not feel it because you were living on the surface altogether, and the surface is all crowd and clamour. But in all men there is this silent Purusha, base of the true mental being, the true vital being, the true physical being. It was by your prayer and aspiration that the thing came, to show you in what direction you must travel in order to have the true rasa of things, ...
... language was born out of the necessity of intercommunication among human beings living together. The necessity naturally related to the physical life and its demands and requirements. Man being a mental being sought intercommunication through his mind. So mind yoked to the physical demands gave the first form and pattern to human speech. Language in the beginning must have been an echo or a ...
... instrumentation, in other words, the development and organisation of the mind, the life and the body. So the individualisation and growth of the soul means a growth and individualisation of the mental being, the vital being and also of the physical being. Normally the purpose of intellectual culture is the growth and individualisation of the mind, the purpose of moral culture is the growth and ind ...
... life. God, soul, the beyond, or the higher worlds, in these things the new Russians of today have no faith, none. Their entire stress or sraddha is on this world, this life, on the physical-vital-mental being whom they call Man. It was arranged that I should talk to the gymnasts. Following civilised traditions, this was to be a post-prandial session; that is, the conversation was to follow a rather ...
... prehistoric animals, no, he will still be at the head of earthly creation, but undergo a sea-change, as it were, and be transmuted into a divine creature. Page 10 As at present man is a mental being, that is to say, it is his mind—his reason and intellect—that governs him and it is through that faculty that he governs the world. But mind is not the highest or the most powerful faculty in him ...
... its own particular limitations and released into the broader reality. These threefold limitations are repeated in each of the statuses of being or consciousness. Thus the mind has a mental being, a vital being and a physical being. So the mind has mental limitations and vital limitations and also physical limitations. The mind's mental limitations are its notions and concepts, constructed ...
... evolutionary external consciousness and who are aware of the way in which the terrestrial world has developed, telling them that it is something greater than the creation of man whom he always calls mental being. He calls it Supramental to say that it is beyond mind. But we can also say that it is something more divine than what has been manifested before. For the Infinity is there; that has no limit ...
... behind. Some portion is very near the surface ready for expression, some parts are so hidden that they may not come out in this life. It is the object of yoga to harmonies the different parts in the mental being, in the vital being and the physical being. Then the whole is to be given a harmonious expression; and for that the external personality has to be got over and changed. Some of the elements may ...
... work of the priest. The gods must not yoke me to that work. That was why I imbedded my body variably so that I as Agni may not know of that pathway. The gods 5. Come, O Agni! Man, the mental being, desires to do the sacrifice, he has made everything ready, and you dwell in obscurity! Make easy-going the path that leads to the gods, with a happy mind carry the offering. Page 160 ...
... and people were dragging him into active life. SRI AUROBINDO: I am not surprised to hear that, for they can drag a Yogi down from spiritual heights. But that shows he had the realisation in his mental being only. SATYENDRA: No, sir, he was a Bhakta also. PURANI: He had two strains: intellectual and emotional. SRI AUROBINDO: In that case it means that his experience of the Brahmic consciousness ...
... Spirituality goes straight forward to direct vision and communion with the Beyond. Religion labours to experience and express the world of Spirit in and through a turn, often a twist, given by the mental being – manu – in man; it bases itself upon the demands of the mental, the vital and the physical complex – the triple nexus that forms the ordinary human personality and seeks to satisfy them under ...
... inner being has rejected sex altogether. NIRODBARAN: A has asked if the inner being means the psychic being. SRI AUROBINDO: It also means the inner physical, the inner vital and the inner mental being. The psychic is the inmost being. NIRODBARAN: A has asked if the gains in the inner consciousness are not to be worked out in the outer being. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, the ultimate aim is to transform ...
... and power, its own laws of being and action. Obviously we all know apart from the material or physical being there is the vital being, the Page 218 life-force and there is the mental being, the mind-force. And there are many other levels like these. A miracle happens, that is to say, a material formation behaves in an abnormal way because a force has come down from the vital region ...
... delivered from its own particular limitations and released into the broader reality. These threefold limitations are repeated in each of the statuses of being or consciousness. Thus the mind has a mental being, a vital being and a physical being. So the mind has mental limitations and vital limitations and also physical limitations. The mind's mental limitations are its notions and concepts, constructed ...
... Page 139 That was why I embedded my body variably so that I as Agni may not know of that pathway. [4] THE GODS Come, O Agni! Man, the mental being, desires to do the sacrifice, he has made everything ready, and you dwell in obscurity! Make easy-going the path that leads to the gods, with a happy mind carry the offering. [5] ...
... mind is vacant, there is no thought, no conception, no mental action of any kind, except an essential perception of things without the formed idea; but in the calm mind, it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it.... A mind that has achieved this calmness can begin to. act, even intensely and powerfully, but it will keep its fundamental stillness - originating ...
... One could almost feel the whole Earth in that corner of Playground—how vast She was, this Mother, how She pummeled and kneaded that obscure dough! There was a MOMENT. There was a moment when the mental being was able to manifest on earth. The starting point may have been quite poor and incomplete and partial, but it was a starting point just the same. Why could it not be now? 8 There will be a ...
... relativities, a ladder of divers inter-connected planes of consciousness. And Man himself: isn't he a composite entity - so far as the evolutionary scene is concerned - made up of a psychic being, a mental being, a vital being and a physical being? And men differ widely, in the degree of their self-awakening, in the energy of their faculties, in their assumption of responsibility. A simple law will not ...
... of this creation and from there to the realms of the Eternal from where a Truth- world governs the whole movement of the cosmos, waiting for the fulfilment of its purpose here in Time. Man, the mental being, holds within himself the capacity of releasing true divinity of him- self, of the cosmos and of that which is beyond the cosmos. He releases in himself the divine spark and retaining all the i ...
... say. I am afraid, the difficulty with him is that his vital being drags him into all sorts of activities and he begins to say : "You must do this, you must not do that," Then his mind – the mental being – comes in and says : "You may do what you like. I am nothing, you are free to do what you like." This kind of double movement renders the activity ineffective. If he had only worked with his ...
... imperfect response to the original Delight renders itself in triple terms of pleasure, pain, and neutral indifference. What are the consequences of this limited being and limited response of the mental being ? The human being is limited in his mental consciousness, and has a narrow nervous apparatus given to him for reacting to all outer contacts. The first consequence is that though we are the One ...
... safe to them. "17 " Our life is a horse that neighing and galloping bears us onward and upward; its forces are swift-hoved steed; the liberated powers of the mind are wide-winging birds; this mental being or this soul is the upsoaring Swan or the Falcon that breaks out from a hundred iron walls and wrests from the jealous guardians of felicity the wine of the Soma. Every shining godward Thought that ...
... great and sublimated filth". ' "All Nature pulled out of her frame and base Was twisted into an unnatural pose". Agony, hatred and torture tried to work as their opposites. The mental being here turned itself into an animal and entered the pit of mire in order to disport itself, "Thence bubbling rose sullying the upper air, The filth and festering secrets of the Abyss: ...
... the Mind: it was a permeation into Life, into the material, earthly substance, which had become alive. Even plants participated in the experience: it wasn't something that was the privilege of the mental being, it was the whole vital, material substance of the earth that received this joy of the power of progress—it was triumphant. Triumphant That diamond-like sparkling. When I got up this morning, I ...
... coming through the top of the head, the forehead and eyes and nose meant that it was working to open the mental centres — especially the two higher centres of thought and will and vision in the inner mental being. These two centres are called the thousand petalled lotus and the ajnachakra between the eyebrows — you can ask Nolini to explain to you about them. Thirdly, by this working inner parts of the being ...
... and then another coming in a concrete way from outside; I flung them away before they could enter and take hold of the brain and in three days I was free. From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited' to the narrow circle of personal thought as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred ...
... Uta vá, “And besides”, “moreover”; the Rishi is giving a fresh aspect of the activity of the Maruts; as diffused energies of an illuminated mentality & therefore efficient protectors of our mental being, substance & gains, not only are they upholders of our outgoing action and upholders of our illuminated mind states, but they are the formers of being & thought & image, inward & outward, like Indra ...
... of humanity, it may be said. But in order to understand what we are saying, we must first see clearly what the humanity is which she seeks to surpass. This human symbol, this type we now are is a mental being with a mental ego, working in a vital case by mind always, but upon matter, in matter & through matter. It is limited in its higher workings by its lower instruments. Its basis of mind is egoistic ...
... never failing assent, a courageous willingness to let the Divine Power do with us whatever is needed for the work that has to be done. Man cannot by his own effort make himself more than man; the mental being cannot by his own unaided force change himself into a supramental spirit. A descent of the Divine Nature can alone divinise the human receptacle. For the powers of our mind, life and body are ...
... their shining weapons. Our life is a horse that neighing and galloping bears us onward and upward; its forces are swift-hooved steeds, the liberated powers of the mind are wide-winging birds; this mental being or this soul is the upsoaring Swan or the Falcon that breaks out from a hundred iron walls and wrests from the jealous guardians of felicity the wine of the Soma. Every shining Page 383 ...
... cetas , whose thoughts and emotions are the threads or fibres. Dyaus or Heaven is the pure mental principle not subjected to the reactions of the nerves and the body. In the seat of Heaven,—the pure mental being as distinguished from the vital and physical consciousness,—the thoughts and emotions become pure rays of true perception and happy psychical vibration instead of the troubled and obscured mental ...
... with its action all his worlds or planes of being, bringing health, youth, strength, wholeness to the physical man, capacity of enjoyment and action to the vital, glad energy of the light to the mental being,—in a word, the force of the pure delight of being in all his members. 4 Page 339 The third work of the Ribhus is to fashion the cow who gives the sweet milk. It is said elsewhere ...
... Page 400 × The Mother and Father are always either Nature and the Soul or the material being and the pure mental being. × As the Purohita who leads and conducts the work of the sacrifice. ...
... reshaped in an ideal substance of consciousness and to hold the divine felicity firmly. 22 May 1914 Sortileges—recorded in the last khata & their indications (1) Mar 28. Penetration of the mental being by the mental delight, Indra by Soma, fulfilled gradually in two months & now approaching perfection. (2) Mar 29. Destruction of the tapasic rajas impulses disturbing the system—Fulfilled. ...
... of all individual existences, the indivisible Spirit to whom all souls are no more than dark or luminous centres of its consciousness. This the self of man, since it is the essentiality of a mental being, will do through the mind. In the gods the transfiguration is effected by the Superconscient itself visiting their substance and opening their vision with its flashes until it has transformed them; ...
... immortality we mean the absolute life of the soul as opposed to the transient and mutable life in the body which it assumes by birth and death and rebirth and superior also to its life as the mere mental being who dwells in the world subjected helplessly to this law of death and birth or seems at least by his ignorance to be subjected to this and to other laws of the lower Nature. To know and possess ...
... enthroned in the Divine city of the Brahman, in his ethereal heaven. मनोमयः प्राणशरीरनेता प्रतिष्ठितोऽन्ने हृदयं संनिधाय । तद्विज्ञानेन परिपश्यन्ति धीरा आनन्दरुपममृतं यद्विभाति ॥८॥ 8) A mental being, leader of the life and the body, has set a heart in matter, in matter he has taken his firm foundation. Page 140 By its knowing the wise see everywhere around them That which shines ...
... there are always two eternal aspects, the aspect of incessant and all-pervading action and energy and the aspect of sempiternal and inalienable stillness and peace. The world of matter in which the mental being called man finds himself dwelling is a sensible manifestation of the principle Page 483 of energy supported by the secret and non-manifest presence of the principle of rest and stability ...
... in His garden of the universe. The reason of these differences lies in our human variation of temperament—for we live in heart and temperament—and therefore of knowledge and approach—for with us mental being seated in the heart temperament determines our knowledge & action,—variations produced by the differently distributed motion in us of Prakriti, of Jagati, of the process of our world-nature. According ...
... ego-sense, active, more and more in contact, even unified more and more with other minds, other lives, other bodies than the organism we call ourselves, producing effects not only on our own moral and mental being and on the subjective being of others, but even on the physical world and its events by means nearer to the divine than those possible to our egoistic capacity. Real then to the man who has had ...
... unconscious matter develops its lines, enlarges its scope, elevates its levels until the increasing manifestation of the sattwic or spiritual portion of the vehicle of mind enables the individual mental being in man to identify himself with the pure spiritual consciousness beyond Mind. India's social system is built upon this conception; her philosophy formulates it; her religion is an aspiration to ...
... phenomenon lies in our having reached a critical threshold where one epoch of evolution is dead and another not yet born — or, if born, still not Page 110 "alive and kicking". Man the Mental Being has had his day — the hour of his triumph, the hour of nuclear energy and bio-genetic control, is also the moment when he sees an abyss yawn under his feet, the abyss opened up by his awareness ...
... mind must perforce one day yield to the supermind under the supreme pressure of the upward urge in the secret will-in-things. Out of the several rhythms and movements that are found in man the mental being,— the richest and the most complex of beings,— has Page 57 yet to rise a harmony higher and greater than all those that went before. And that rhythm will be a key to all the others ...
... must perforce one day yield to the supermind under the supreme pressure of the upward urge in the secret will-in-things. Out of the several rhythms and movements that are found in man the mental being,— the richest and the most complex of beings,— has Page 57 yet to rise a harmony higher and greater than all those that went before. And that rhythm will be a key to all the ...
... associate ideas, conversations and memories that come together at random. Such dreams are already more significant, for these erratic activities reveal to us the confusion that prevails in our mental being as soon as it is no longer subject to the control of our will, and show us that this being is still not organised or ordered within us.... Almost the same in form to these, but more important ...
... night when this constraint is no longer effective. Certainly, it is possible to suppress this activity completely and to have a total, dreamless sleep; but to be able in this way to immerse our mental being in a repose similar to the repose of our physical being, we must have achieved a perfect control over it, and this is not an easy thing to do. As a general rule, each individual has a period ...
... the evolutionary scale we should be more correct if we tat mind rather than life as Page 279 basic. Some might urge that mind is just a development of life, but, inasmuch as man the mental being is acknowledged by biologists to be a unique evolute with whom the character of evolutionary progress becomes altered, mind must be distinguished from life. The distinctive traits of life are things ...
... mind must perforce one day yield to the supermind under the supreme pressure of the upward urge in the secret will-in-things. Out of the several rhythms and movements that are found in man the mental being,— the richest and the most complex of beings,— has Page 8 yet to rise a harmony higher and greater than all those that went before. And that rhythm will be a key to all the others. ...
... ignorance then they could drag him down to birth again. He could have abandoned those parts. Then was he free? What do you mean by freedom ? Birth is a bondage so long as one is in the mental being. It only appears so. But if you look at the thing from above then there is no such thing, one is not affected by birth and death. Then Buddha did not achieve perfection of his nature? He ...
... living symbolism. Describing Aswapati's spiritual achievement he says: And broken the intellect's hard and lustrous lid. 21 In another context recounting the limitations of the mental being which remains satisfied and self-complaisant, he says: There comes no breaking of the walls of mind. 22 The basic idea both in Isha and Savitri in these expression is that ...
... I suppose, up to the Overmind. Beyond that,—I do not know. Page 17 It went very high, that definitely I know. Can the psychic being rise of its own? I know, my mental being could rise. So too could the psychic being. If it is free from the bondage of nature, it should be possible. Yes, it can. But here, there was Grace and so it could rise. Yes, it was asked to rise ...
... ignorant bit of personality to go back to its real Self and with it to these greater things — or else to the extinction of itself, Nirvana. 11 For our real self is not the individual mental being, that is only a figure, an appearance; our real self is cosmic, infinite, it is one with all existence and the inhabitant of all existence. The self behind our mind, life and body is the same ...
... of universal being into which we enter: these have sometimes, like the symbolic dreams, a strong bearing on our own inner and outer life or the life of others, reveal elements of our or their mental being and life-being or Page 235 disclose influences on them of which our waking self is totally ignorant; but sometimes they have no such bearing and are purely records of other organised ...
... It is more difficult because life and body are the first powers and, if they are in the least strong, can impose themselves with an almost irresistible insistence on the mental ruler. Man is a mental being and the mind is the leader of his life and body; but this is a leader who is much led by his followers and has sometimes no other will than what they impose on him. Mind in spite of its power ...
... instinct; it develops slowly till in more organised forms of living Matter it reaches its climax of intelligence and exceeds itself in Man, the thinking animal who develops into the reasoning mental being but carries along with him even at his highest elevation the mould of original animality, the dead weight of subconscience of body, the downward pull of gravitation towards the original Inertia ...
... you should insist in your Calcutta centre on attention being given to what I call the Purusha side, that is to say a basis of deep calm, strength, equality, wide consciousness and purity in the mental being, and as the vital physical opens, also in the vital and physical being. If that is attended to and successfully developed the play of the psychic vital and physical experiences will be more steady ...
... Sri Aurobindo clarifies the distinction between the mind and the vital as follows: "The 'Mind' in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this yoga the words "mind" and "mental" are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ...
... spiritual evolution as the meaning of our existence here. It is a series of ascents from the physical being and consciousness to the vital, the being dominated by the life-self, thence to the mental being realised in the fully developed man and thence into the perfect consciousness which is beyond the mental, into the Supramental Consciousness and the Supramental Being, the Truth-Consciousness ...
... the Great Mother and by a special intervention of the manifesting Divine, a recovery of the lost Godhead became possible. In the succeeding climb upwards of the evolution, we Homo sapiens , the mental being, are somewhere halfway up on the ladder, which is a gradation of consciousness. But every step in the ascension necessitates a response from the corresponding level in the already existing hierarchy ...
... material out of which the highest animal evolves the ethical impulse.” (Evolutionary psychology will agree with this.) Ethics is a matter of the mind and therefore a stage in evolution. It is “man the mental being” who evaluates God as obligatorily “good” – an attribute which is not there in the Vedantic trinity. 11 It is only from the human standpoint that the world has three layers: infra-ethical ...
... very serious illness.’ 4 Who can live without the vital, without the life force? Who can live without a mental consciousness? ‘One cannot move a finger, speak a word, make a step without the mental being involved.’ 5 We know that the mental is present even in the cells and atoms. And without the life force one is dead. It was a miracle how that body remained alive, how it started talking again ...
... Peace, Light, Force, Ananda in the consciousness, their workings there—the realisation of the divine or spiritual love, the perception of one's own psychic being, the discovery of one's own true mental being, true vital being, true physical being, the realisation of the overmind or the supramental consciousness, the clear perception of the relation of all these things to our present inferior nature ...
... explained to me once in answer to a question of mine about consistency. "It is a little difficult," he wrote, "for the wider spiritual outlook to answer your question in the way you want and every mental being wants, with a trenchant 'Thou-shalt' or Thou-shalt-not' — especially when the thou is meant to cover all. For while there is an identity of essential aim, while there are general broad lines ...
... However that may be, the descent of the sadhana, of the action of the Force into the vital plane of our being becomes after some time necessary. The Force does not make a wholesale change of the mental being and nature, still less an integral transformation before it takes this step: if that could be done, the rest of the sadhana would be comparatively secure and easy. Page 199 ...
... twofold affair: the Divine's Grace and Page 103 one's own effort. One has to fulfil certain conditions, create a certain attitude, extend a happy co-operation to the Guru. Man is a mental being, he stands in consciousness a little apart from the stream of what the Vedanta terms the play of Nature in him. He is to some extent a witness and a giver of sanction and has the possibility of ...
... lives had to be passed through before the soul could have a human embodiment. Earth's long history amply allows time for our pre-human past. You and I are certain to have been real Manu-man (mental being) and not something like Hanuman when Rama flourished and Nolini was in his train. In fact, I believe that most disciples of Sri Aurobindo were with Sri Aurobindo each time he manifested in ...
... of action, possesses it not only by powers and magnitudes, by degrees and outward faces of itself but out of its eternal self-knowledge, when the Unborn knows itself and acts in the frame of the mental being and the appearance of birth, that is the height of the conditioned manifestation; it is the full and conscious descent of the Godhead, it is the Avatar." And in the central scripture of ...
... the divine life is what is meant by spirituality; all lesser meanings given to the word are inadequate, fumbling or impostures. I pondered over the message. My soul must have understood but my mental being groped in vain. ...
... admission of rebirth as a part of the scheme of things. But what if it were found with the increase of our knowledge, as certain researches and discoveries seem to presage, that the dependence of the mental being or the psychic entity in us on the body is not so complete as we at first naturally conclude it to be from the study of the data of physical existence and the physical universe alone? What if it ...
... Force. In the case of Socrates and that of the habitual drunkard raised by you, the difference you make is correct. The weak-willed man is governed by his vital and physical impulsions, his mental being is not dynamic enough to make its will prevail over them. His will is not "free" because it is not strong enough to be free, it is the slave of the forces that act on or in his vital and physical ...
... Vedic symbolism of sacrifice. Vayu and Indra are cosmic godheads presiding over the action of cosmic principles—they are not the manomaya purusha or pranamaya purusha in each man. You have a mental being or purusha in you and a vital being or purusha, but you cannot say that you are in your mind Indra or in your vital Vayu. The Purusha is an essential being supporting the play of Prakriti—the Godhead ...
... Chapter VI The Mind Mind in the Integral Yoga and in Other Indian Systems The "Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this Yoga, the words mind and mental are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ...
... pure and perfect; in it is an instrumental Force for all divine realisations. It is the true vital being that has become awake and come in front within you. In the same way there is too a true mental being, a true physical being. When these are manifest, then you are aware of a double existence in you; that behind is always calm and strong, that on the surface alone is troubled and obscure. But if ...
... in the plant and associated in the animal with a growing Mind, then Mind itself evolved and organised in Man. This evolution, this spiritual progression—does it stop short here in the imperfect mental being called Man? Or is the secret of it simply a succession of rebirths whose only purpose or issue is to labour towards the point at which it can learn its own futility, renounce itself and take its ...
... scenes. What about Edward II ? Marlowe had already moved towards the well-built drama. Page 374 Shakespeare's Hamlet Would you take, as many critics do, Hamlet as typically a mental being? How would you characterise his essential psychology? Hamlet is a Mind, an intellectual, but like many intellectuals a mind that looks too much all round and sees too many sides to have an effective ...
... various worlds that belong to it. The appearance of the being in other planes is not the same necessarily as that of the physical body. Very often the form taken by the vital or psychic or mental being is very different from the physical form. Even when they resemble on the whole, there is always some difference. Page 132 ...
... the heart. It [ true surrender ] begins when there is the true self-offering. A Free Surrender The Divine can lead, he does not drive. There is an internal freedom permitted to every mental being called man to assent or not to assent to the Divine leading—how else can any real spiritual evolution be done? All the play in this world is based on a certain relative free will in the ...
... considerable revolution or turnover? Up to the animal line it is the vital and physical that have been developing—for the human to begin is it not necessary that there should be the descent of a mental being to take up the vital and physical evolution? And may it not well be that the mental beings who descend are not all of the same power and stature and, besides, do not take up equally developed vital ...
... and superficial action of our self that appears to us while the largest and most secretly determining parts of our own existence are occult to our mentality. The supramental Spirit has, unlike the mental being, the real because the inmost and total knowledge of itself and of all its universe and of all things that are its creations and self-figurings in the universe. This is the second character of ...
... him, not at her lowest or in some limiting movement. In her lower vital activities it is desire that Nature takes as her most powerful leverage; but the distinct character of man is that he is a mental being, not a merely vital creature. As he can use his thinking mind and will to restrain and correct his life impulses, so too he can bring in the action of a still higher luminous mentality aided by ...
... respond to the spiritual knowledge. But also we find that though the nature can be induced to take this general attitude, there is yet a struggle between that higher reason and will and the lower mental being which clings to the old egoistic way of seeing the world and reacting to its impacts. Then we find that these two, though at first confused, mingled together, alternating, acting on each other, ...
... ineffable height of spiritual being. Therefore in dealing with the buddhi, we must either take Page 672 one of these choices or else try the rarer adventure of lifting the soul from the mental being into the spiritual gnosis to see what we can find in the very core of that supernal light and power. This gnosis contains the sun of the divine Knowledge-Will burning in the heavens of the supreme ...
... We cease to think and see for ourselves, but think only what he wills to think for us and see only what he sees for us. And then the teacher is fulfilled in the lover; he lays hands on all our mental being to embrace and possess, to enjoy and use it. He is the Master; but in this way of approach all distance and separation, all awe and fear and mere obedience disappear, because we become too close ...
... of the Inconscience. Purusha indeed consents to assume the apparent form of itself which Prakriti constructs for it; it seems to become the Inconscient, the physical being, the vital being, the mental being: but in all these it remains still in reality itself; the light of the secret conscious Being supports and informs the action of the inconscient or emergingly conscious energy of Nature. The ...
... created by us in our emergence out of Matter, another a subliminal mind which is not hampered by our actual mental life and its strict limitations, something large, powerful and luminous, the true mental being behind that superficial form of mental personality which we mistake for ourselves. So also we have two lives, one outer, involved in the physical body, bound by its past evolution in Matter, which ...
... has emerged as an individual consciousness and is aware therefore only of a fragmentary movement of its own total activities. The whole crux and difficulty of human life lies here. Man is this mental being, this mental consciousness working as mental force, aware in a way of the universal force and life of which he is part but, because he has not knowledge of its universality or even of the totality ...
... contradiction in both essence and operation between human mentality and the divine Supermind. And certainly, if this consciousness had no relation at all to mind nor anywhere any identity with the mental being, it would be quite impossible to give any account of it to our human notions. Or, if it were in its nature only vision in knowledge and not at all dynamic power of knowledge, we could hope to attain ...
... proceeds by the Idea, using thought, form and name as keys which yield up to the concentrating mind the Truth that lies concealed behind all thought, form and name; for it is through the Idea that the mental being rises beyond all expression to that which is expressed, to that of which the Idea itself is only the instrument. By concentration upon the Idea the mental existence which at present we are breaks ...
... 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 power the two natures, higher and lower ...
... have indeed to be written off as against these gains, but those are to be accepted as the price we must pay for civilisation. The normal society treats man essentially as a physical, vital and mental being. For the life, the mind, the body are the three terms of existence with which it has some competence to deal. It develops a system of mental growth and efficiency, an intellectual, aesthetic and ...
... priesthood. Agni as the sevenfold priest of the sacrifice. The Sisters & the Mother’s sister evident as symbolical figures. Connection of the Brahmans with the Brahman—the Eighth Ray in man the mental being. The Seven Rays & the (Seven) Cows—(sisters) ascending from the domains of the three to the Highest (Varnam .. Varam) भुवनं is interpreted by Sayana in its etymological significance, a becoming ...
... heavenly workings and fill with them the workings of the mid-regions between earth and heaven, that is to say, the functioning of those vital planes governed by Vayu which link our physical and pure mental being, may well be the Angiras powers. For they too gain and maintain the truth by maintaining unhurt the divine workings ( amardhanto devānāṁ vratāni ). This is indeed their function, to bring the divine ...
... that state of right mentality which together they build will be manifested; for that is the first condition. Let them foster the growing thoughts and bring into expression those energies of the mental being which by an enriched and multiple thought become capable of the illumination and rapidity of the Truth-consciousness. The powers that attack the Aryan fighter, would create in him poverties of mind ...
... It is at the point where there is the first possibility of the great passage, the transition from mind to supermind, the trans figuration of the intelligence, till now the crowned leader of the mental being, into a divine Light,—it is at this supreme and crucial point in the Vedic Yoga that the Rishi, Gotama Rahugana, seeks in himself for the inspired Word. The Word shall help him to realise for himself ...
... the Greek ambrosia, as if it were itself the substance of immortality? It is a figure for the divine Ananda, the principle of Bliss, from which, in the Vedic conception, the existence of Man, this mental being, is drawn. A secret Delight is the base of existence, its sustaining atmosphere and almost its substance. This Ananda is spoken of in the Taittiriya Upanishad as the ethereal atmosphere of bliss ...
... emotions, of the intellect, of Page 291 the intuitive reason and liberating the superior faculties from their limitation and constant reference to the material world fulfils our entire mental being. Its activities receive their completest manifestation; they are gathered up into the life of the complete Truth by the rays of the sun, that is to say, by the full splendour of the divine Super-Mind ...
... subhagā sudaṁsāḥ , she brings into existence in us by her revelations Page 296 Swar, the concealed luminous mind, our highest mental heaven; and thus from the farthest extremities of mental being extends herself over the physical consciousness. As this divine Dawn pours out widely its light upon them, so have men by submission to the law of her divine act and movement to bring forward ...
... নিঃশেষে তাড়িয়ে দিচ্ছে ৷ আগে মিথ্যার খেলাকে ত্যাগ করতে আমার অনেক কষ্ট হত ৷ এখন সেই জাগ্রত চৈতন্যময় পুরুষের সাহায্যে ঐ সকল আক্রমণকে প্রত্যাখ্যান করা আমার পক্ষে সহজ হয়ে উঠেছে ৷ উ: এই পুরুষ higher mental being — ঊর্ধচেতনার অবতরণে সে জাগ্রত হয়ে যায় – তার জ্ঞান সাধারণ মনের নয়, উদ্ধৃমনের জ্ঞান ৷ 26.4.34 প্রথম চেতনা শূন্য ও বিশাল চাই – তার মধ্যে উপরের আলাে শক্তি ইত্যাদি স্থায়ীভাবে স্থান পেতে ...
... Attainment, or, the splendour or, glory. × Heaven and earth, the pure mental being and the material consciousness. ...
... and flame of its far-extended existence which has broken the limitations of the material being and he is full of the joys of this new and rich supra-physical life. Now the third state, the free mental being, is to be perfected by a richly varied and luminous play of thought and word ending in the manifestation of the highest reach of the mental realms, the power of the supramental Light in the mentality; ...
... than his to lead him; for largeness and multiplicity of soul-force and knowledge are not enough, there must be the divine truth in thought, word and act. For we have to attain beyond the enlarged mental being to the beatitude of a state beyond mind. Agni has the light and the force, the Word and the true impulsion, the embracing knowledge and the achieving power. He shall bring the divine wealth in his ...
... Surya, the Purushas of the female solar energies. Then he creates out of this solar body of Vishnu the planets each of which successively becomes the Bhumi or place of manifestation for Manu, the mental being, who is the nodus of manifest life-existence and the link between the life and the spirit. The present earth in its turn appears as the scene of life, Mars being its last theatre. In the Bhumi Agni ...
... Ananda. The principal psychical conception of this inner Vedic cult was the idea of the Satyam Ritam Brihat, the Truth, the Law, the Vast. Earth, Air and Heaven symbolised the physical, vital and mental being, but this Truth was situated in the greater heaven, base of a triple Infinity actually and explicitly mentioned in the Vedic riks, and it meant therefore a state of spiritual and supramental il ...
... each creature and determines its action according to the law of its own nature, Swabhava, shapes man too and determines his action according to the general law of nature of his kind, the law of a mental being emmeshed and ignorant in the life and the body, shapes too each man and determines his individual action according to the law of his own distinct type and the variations of his own original swabhava ...
... eternal harmony, eternal love and Ananda. But all this change means a total passing from the lower human to the higher divine nature. It is a lifting of our whole being or at least of the whole mental being that wills, knows and feels beyond what we are into some highest spiritual consciousness, some satisfying fullest power of existence, some deepest widest delight of the spirit. And this may well ...
... this true aim of human existence. A new civilisation no longer vitalistic or mainly political and economic, but intellectual, cultural, idealistic, taking up the ancient ideal of man, the perfected mental being in an ennobled life and sound body, a great expansion of human mind and intellect, a mankind more mentally alive, even a human race grown capable of culture and not only of a greater external c ...
... thought is involved in life and the view is that of the life-spirit feeling, thinking, imagining, carried forward in its own surge of self, cannot permanently hold the greater activities of the mental being. He ceases to identify himself entirely with the passion, the emotion, the thought-suggestions of life; for he needs to know from a freer height what it is and what he is, to get a clear detached ...
... The correspondent sent to Sri Aurobindo a passage from The Synthesis of Yoga: "This concentration proceeds by the Idea...; for it is through the Idea that the mental being rises beyond all expression to that which is expressed, to that of which the Idea itself is only the instrument. By concentration upon the Idea the mental existence which at present we are breaks ...
... coming through the top of the head, the forehead and eyes and nose meant that it was working to open the mental centres—especially the two higher centres of thought and will and vision in the inner mental being. These two centres are called the thousand-petalled lotus and the ājñā-cakra between the eyebrows. Thirdly, by this working the inner parts of the being are opened and freed; you are liberated ...
... psychic on the vital, but it is not the direct or first condition of the psychic opening itself. But so also the opening of the higher centres is helpful for the influence of the psychic on the mental being. All the centres have to open, because otherwise the inner consciousness is not opened out and liberated to its full working in all its parts. There is however no invariable rule as to the order ...
... likes it or even, if wanting to be free, is too accustomed to receive and respond to the old feelings, thoughts, suggestions and does not yet know how not to respond. The first thing is for the mental being to stand back, refuse to accept, say "This is no longer mine." Then, even if the vital feeling responds to the attack, one part of the nature can be free and observe and discourage it. The next ...
... However that may be, the descent of the sadhana, of the action of the Force into the vital plane of our being becomes after some time necessary. The Force does not make a wholesale change of the mental being and nature, still less an integral transformation before it takes this step: if that could be done, the rest of the sadhana would be comparatively secure and easy. But the vital is there and always ...
... pushing it out, till it remains as an outside force only—by bringing down the higher peace and light into the physical mind. Concentration, Meditation and Prayer What you felt before was in your mental being and consciousness; after coming here you have evidently come out into your external and physical consciousness, that is why you feel as if all you had before was gone. It is only covered over by ...
... mind is vacant, there is no thought, no conception, no mental action of any kind, except an essential perception of things without the formed idea; but in the calm mind, it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they do not rise at all out of the mind, but they come from outside and cross the mind as a flight of birds crosses ...
... The Vital Being and Sadhana Letters on Yoga - IV Chapter I The Nature of the Vital Living in the Vital Man is a mental being and cannot come from the vital, although part of him may live on the vital plane or rather in connection with it. Most men in fact live much in the vital and therefore when they practise sadhana it is first on the vital plane ...
... V. "...the Christian life, a mystic, progressive life which is an enrichment, an infinite enlargement of the human being." This is not our idea of transformation—for the human person is the mental being limited by life and body. An enrichment and enlargement of it cannot go beyond the extreme limit of that formula, it can only widen and adorn its present poverty and narrowness. It cannot ascend ...
... need of rest apart from the physical body and the physical brain? Yes, an absolute need. And it is only in silence that the mind can receive the true light from above. I do not think that the mental being is liable to fatigue; if it feels tired, that is rather a reaction of the brain. It is only in silence that it can rise above itself. But from the point of view of sleep and dreams of which we were ...
... the psychic being goes to take rest, doesn't it? But the vital is stopped in the vital world; does this prevent the psychic from going to rest? But the vital does not go to rest nor does the mental being. Generally they are dissolved. It is only if one has followed a yoga throughout his whole life, if one has taken great care to individualise, to centralise the vital and the mental around the psychic ...
... Prayers and Meditations May 19, 1914 This mental being which throughout my individual existence had the power to set all my faculties working: deep devotion for Thee, infinite compassion for men, ardent aspiration for knowledge, effort for self-perfection—seems to have fallen into a deep sleep and no longer sets anything at all in movement. All the individual ...
... That is done through other sheaths of our being,—so they are termed in the Upanishads,—other bodies, as they are called in a later terminology, the mental sheath or subtle body in which our true mental being lives and the life sheath or vital body which is more closely connected with the physical or food-sheath and forms with it the gross body of our complex existence. These possess powers, senses, ...
... spite of all, there will come a moment when it happens... there will be a time when it happens, there will be a time when the movement swings over into a new reality... There was a time when the mental being could manifest upon earth. The starting point might have been poor, very incomplete, very partial, but all the same there was a starting point. Why can't it be now?... That's all. Page 322 ...
... elementary life of man, all the qualities belonging to the animal nature, especially those of the body, were indispensable, otherwise man would not have existed. But when man has become a conscious, mental being, everything that binds him to his animal origin necessarily becomes a hindrance to progress and to the liberation of the being. So, for everyone—except for those who are born free, and this is ...
... 13 October 1954 This talk is based upon Sri Aurobindo's Bases of Yoga , Chapter 1, "Calm—Peace—Equality". Sweet Mother, what does "the reduction of the mental being to the position of a witness" mean? Have you never felt this? As though you were a little behind or above things, and were looking at them taking place but were not doing anything yourself? ...
... Between the vital being and the mental, which progresses faster generally? That depends on people. It is the vital in those who have a stronger vital and the mental in those who have a stronger mental being. You mean in the same person? That depends absolutely on which one is more active and more strong. In what way? In each person the combination is different, so one cannot make a general rule and ...
... general course for ordinarily developed human beings. There are variations according to the nature of the individual and his development. For example, if the mental is strongly developed, then the mental being can remain; so also can the vital, provided they are organized by and centred around the true psychic being; they share the immortality of the psychic. The soul gathers the essential elements ...
... 1. Meaning and Nature of the Psychic Being The Psychic Being Knowledge—Mental and Psychic The mental being within watches, observes and passes judgment on all that happens in you. The psychic does not watch and observe in this way like a witness, but it feels and knows spontaneously in a much more direct and luminous way, by the very purity of its own ...
... represented by the evolving psychic being which supports all the rest of the nature. life-nature (the life) —see the Vital . manomaya puruṣa (Manomaya Purusha) —mental Person, the mental being. mechanical mind —a part of the mind closely connected with the physical mind; its nature is to go on repeating without use whatever has happened—recent events, impressions, old habitual thoughts ...
... considerable revolution or turnover? Up to the animal line it is the vital and physical that have been developing -- for the human to begin, is it not necessary that there should be the descent of a mental being to take up the vital and physical evolution? And may it not well be that the mental beings who descend are not all of the same power and stature and, besides, do not take up equally developed vital ...
... " "And according to the point of contact that we choose will be the type of the Yoga that we practise." "The triple Path of Works, of Love, and of Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth, Beatitude and Infinity which are the nature of the spiritual life." One starts on ...
... the kind of progress to be made, the quality of the transformation to be realised. We are at precisely such a turning-point in the world's history. Just as Nature has already created upon earth a mental being, man, so too there is now a concentrated activity in this mentality to bring forth a supramental consciousness and individuality. Certain beings who, I might say, are in the secret of the gods ...
... means of expression. The vital being had already realised this liberation long ago and knew how to enjoy the plenitude of sensations and emotions in all forms capable of manifesting life. But the mental being had not yet learnt how to animate, organise and illuminate consciously all lives without distinction. Thou didst break down all barriers, Thou didst open to it the doors of Thy infinite manifestation ...
... Prayers and Meditations January 11, 1915 More than ever before, the aspiration of the mental being rose to Thee with great fervour.... The perception of infinity and eternity is always there. But it is as if Thou hadst willed to cut me off from all religious joy, all spiritual ecstasy, in order to plunge me into the most strictly material circumstances ...
... control our thoughts constantly, and this control is gradually obtained by the methods I outlined to you last month—analysis, reflection, meditation, etc. Those who have achieved the control of their mental being can emanate at will a certain portion of their intellectual power, send it wherever they think proper, while remaining perfectly conscious of it. These emanations, which are true messengers, ...
... makes it difficult for the sensibility of a nation to enjoy the delight that another nation finds in one art or another is the habitual limitation of the nervous being which, even more than the mental being, is naturally exclusive in its ability to perceive the Divine and which, when it has entered into relation with Him through certain forms, feels an almost irresistible reluctance to recognise Him ...
... by [the psychic's] coming to the front is simply this. The psychic ordinarily is deep within. Very few people are aware of their souls—when they speak of their soul, they usually mean the vital + mental being or else the (false) soul of desire. The psychic remains behind and acts only through the mind, vital and physical wherever it can. For this reason the psychic being except where it is very much ...
... labour of purification and unification, we must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of our being. When the higher truth will manifest, it must find in you a mental being supple and rich enough to be able to give to the idea seeking to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words ...
... possibility of the conscious animal, as the animal-mind is astir with the movements of feeling and perception and the rudiments of conception that are the first ground for man the thinker, so man the mental being is sublimated by the endeavour of the evolutionary Energy to develop out of him the spiritual man, the fully conscious being, man exceeding his first material self and discoverer of his true self ...
... there, there is no room for miracles—except that it looks like a miracle. ( Silence ) If, instead of a slow evolution, something belonging to the supramental world appeared suddenly, man, the mental being, could call that a miracle, because it would be the intervention of something which he does not consciously carry within himself and which intervenes in his conscious life. And in fact, if you consider ...
... stage, he Page 408 would risk making a great mistake, and of taking for perfect freedom a perfect weakness with regard to his lower nature. It is almost impossible to pass from the mental being—even the most perfect and most remarkable—to the true spiritual life without having realised this ideal of moral perfection for a certain period of time, however brief it may be. Many people try ...
... submit it to this Will. The vital being seeks only power—material possession and terrestrial power. This also is false. The higher part of the vital being, like the higher part of the mental being, aspires for the Divine and suffers when far from Him. Page 192 This desire to live in an intellectual atmosphere—doesn't it show that my mind can govern the vital? No, it only ...
... that it is unlimited—and yet limited. So, if you understand anything, you are lucky! If the number is limited, how many are there? Twelve. How can there be "an egoistic faith in the mental being"? 2 He has described it very well: "tainted by ambition", etc. I Page 319 find that if you put it differently, it is much more true. Is there any faith which doesn't have a little ...
... , in the sense that I received answers that weren't at all those I might have expected—which proves it was genuine), but for example, before his election, I met him once (there is a part of his mental being, a higher intelligence, that's very well formed, conscious, individualized), and I had a spontaneous conversation that I hadn't sought and which was very interesting. But at one point, I replied ...
... those thoughts and emotions are the threads or fibres. Dyau or Heaven is the pure mental principle not subjected to the reactions of the nerves and the body. In the seat of Heaven, — the pure mental being as distinguished from the vital and physical consciousness, — the thoughts and emotions become pure rays of true perception and happy psychical vibration instead of the troubled and obscured mental ...
... mind, from their influence. ( silence ) Recently, I got a letter, I forget from whom or where, but it was from someone in Europe, someone who saw my vital being, and someone else who saw my mental being. You know that they have been sent away (they go on working, seeing people, going and coming...). So that person saw it as I myself know it (which surprised me, because generally people change the ...
... Bharatidi. ( Mother laughs ) Yes, extremely mental. Extremely mental. The vital she had dominated; the physical... It was all mental, mental, mental.... And with a sort of concentration in her mental being. She must have had a bad night, it must have been difficult—because here it was very, very difficult, and I didn't know it had to do with her. As soon as I knew, I went and saw there (I knew ...
... indicates the sacred, the aesthetico-mystic way. But in my dream we are in the dimension of literature with a sort of spiritual light falling upon it and the head of hair seems to represent the mental being with its manifold self-expression of whatever ideative enlightenment it may have. Your gesture may have more than one meaning. Apparently it is a movement of friendliness with a shade of deepening ...
... tion of the whole physical mind, vital, material nature - not by imposing siddhis [=abnormal faculties] on them, but by creating a new physical nature which is to be the habitation of the supra-mental being in a new evolution". And he continues: "I am not aware that this has been done by any Hathayogic or other process. Mental or vital occult power can only bring siddhis of the higher plane into the ...
... liberation from the ignorance of the partial being in its flux of action, it is earned by putting on a luminous nescience of the dynamic Reality or a luminous separation from it: the spiritual mental being remains self-absorbed in a silent essential status of existence and becomes either incapable of active consciousness or repugnant to all activity." 1 But our goal is the integral fulfilment ...
... a divine transformation of our physical sheath, annamaya ko ṣ a, is an indispensable concomitant of a truly divine living in the world. But in the present status of consciousness of man the mental being, this transformation cannot be achieved or even initiated on the plane of the body. It will then be like putting the cart before the horse. For, where is the lever of transformation or the potent ...
... more and more freely. How can I think, when She is thinking in my mental centre, arranging, rearranging, destroying, creating there as She likes? Of course, now it is all obscured by the dirt in my mental being, but She will slowly remove that. It was the first time that I went to Her for the distribution (on the first of the month) without wanting anything. I did not want Her to look at me, to give me ...
... . This one and unique Being projects itself on each plane of nature, in the form of a representative Purusha or being that is proper to that particular plane. Thus, in man, there is a mental being corresponding to the mental nature, a vital being corresponding to the vital nature and a physical being answering to the physical nature. Now in the evolutionary emergence so far effectuated ...
... We work the vital being through games and exercises that help to differentiate and control energy, and, with older groups, through exploration of emotions and attitudes. We approach the mental being through attention, concentration, relaxation exercises, and debriefings on the exercises that have been done, although attention, concentration and relaxation are always part of whatever activity ...
... cease to think and see for ourselves, but think only what he wills to think for us and see only what he sees for us. And then the teacher is fulfilled in the lover; he lays hands on all our mental being to embrace and possess, to enjoy and use it. He is the Master; but in this way of approach all distance and separation, all awe and fear and mere obedience disappear, because we become too ...
... must go through a process of transforming the immediate mental, vital and other connections, must it not—so why should not the process be in parts? Immortality also can come by parts. First the mental being becomes immortal (not shed and dissolved after death), then the vital, while the physical comes only last. That is a possible evolution, recognised by occult science. March 27, 1935 ...
... and physical, it is not easy to separate it from the mind. 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 ...
... not being able to Page 11 put up a persistent and calm aspiration and will. The calm and steady will must be the mental being's. There is no reason why the mental being should allow itself to be at the mercy of the vital. The fundamental remedy is to strengthen the vital at any rate. But that cannot be done if the inner vital remains weak and indifferent ...
... application of the law of that truth in the power of the vital. It is here that failed all the great spiritual or rather religious movements of the past. They were content with evoking the divine in the mental being, but left the vital becoming to be governed by the habitual un-divine or at the most to be just illumined by a distant and faint glow which served, however, more to distort than express the Divine ...
... is a ray that has strayed down from some higher region, page – 185 In Macbeth we move up one step farther; human consciousness attains here a higher level. Something of the mental being enters into the purely vital creature: instead of the Eater, the man with the mere stomach, we have here the Ruler, the Tyrant, the human being with its will – and its arms that execute the will: ...
... her, involved, it is also the overt realisation of that which she secretly is." 33 And here Sri Aurobindo sounds a note of warning to the race: "Mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind ...
... highest products so far. (vii)But Sachchidananda has yet to emerge fully in manifestation; therefore this evolution, this spiritual progression cannot stop short with Mind and with the imperfect mental being called Man; Mind is too imperfect an expression and Man too hampered and burdened a creature to be the last terms of evolution. (viii)The former steps in evolution were taken by Nature in the ...
... connection what Sri Aurobindo has said about the freedom and slavery of the working consciousness of the sadhaka: "The weak-willed man is governed by his vital and physical impulsions, his mental being is not dynamic enough to make its will prevail over them. His will is not 'free' because it is not strong enough to be 'free', it is the slave of the forces that act on or in his vital and physical ...
... don't run away with the idea that all that comes into an empty mind, even a clear or luminous empty mind, will be intuitive. Anything, any blessed kind of idea, can come in. In other words, the mental being must be there, silent but vigilant, impartial but discriminating. That is, however, when you are in search of truth.... 48 (21) Govinda Das, the Bangalore scientist: NB: How did you ...
... confident sight A bounded prospect took for the far goal." (257) (8)"... the great truths escape her narrow cast; Guarded from vision by creation's depths" (626) Although man the mental being prides himself on the possession of mind, and his "seeing thoughts" fill in "the blanks left by the seeking sense" (268), it remains a patent fact that mind, the intellect and the reason of man ...
... without any distortion or diminution the divine Will in the world. Now, the mind, the heart, the vital and the body are the four instruments of manifestation of the Spirit. Thus, there is the mental being which produces thoughts, the emotional being which produces feelings, the vital being which produces the power of action and the physical being that acts and gives form to everything else. Now, ...
... and anandamaya, the bliss that is conscious and self-existent. The Vedic and the Upanishadic Rishis had made a thorough study of the problem of integration and come to the conclusion that the mental being, manomaya, is the leader of the physical and the vital, — prana sharira neta, and that it is by developing the mental powers that the vital and the physical can be controlled and mastered, although ...
... or of universal being into which we enter: these have sometimes, like the symbolic dreams, a strong bearing on our own inner and outer life or the life of others, reveal elements of our or their mental being and life - being or disclose influences on them of which our waking self is totally ignorant; but sometimes they have no such bearing and are purely records of other organised systems of consciousness ...
... the idea of the spiritual individual was dominant in ancient India, although the society was of extreme importance and the individual had to pass first to the social states of the physical, vital, mental being with satisfaction of interest, desire, pursuit of knowledge and right living - kama, artha and dharma - before he could reach fitness for the truer state of free spiritual existence (moksha) ...
... namely, the method of discovering the Supreme through concentration on the Self of the human being, Sri Aurobindo states as follows: "This the self of man, since it is the essentiality of a mental being, will do through the mind. In the gods the transfiguration is effected by the Superconscient itself visiting their substance and opening their vision with its flashes until it has transformed them; ...
... yoga is a self- surrender, a giving up of the human being into the being, consciousness, power, and delight of the Divine, a union or communion, at all the points of meeting in the soul of man, the mental being, by which the Divine himself, directly and without veil, master and possessor of instrument, shall perfect the human being by the light of his presence and guidance in all the forces of nature for ...
... practices of Raja Yoga, and a point can be reached at which a transition can be made from Hatha Yoga to Raja Yoga. Raja Yoga aims at the liberation and perfection not of the bodily being but of the mental being; although it admits the utility of asana and pranayama, but not as liberally as in the Hatha Yoga. It fixes its eyes on the chitta, that stuff of mental consciousness in which the activities ...
... behind the material world. Just as Matter does not know Mind, but Mind knows Matter, even so, the Mind does not know That which is behind it, but That knows Mind. The supreme problem and aim for the mental being is how to rise beyond the mind and its instruments and how to attain to the Brahman. The Kena concentrates on this all-important problem of human existence. Again, the Katha Upanishad aims ...
... by intense aspiration for collective yoga that aims at highest welfare and solidarity of people. These verses express exhortation of Rishis for building up the future divine man, "Be, first, the mental being, and manifest, then, the divine being", — so is the message of the Veda, — manurbhav, janayā daivyam janam. "Join together, speak one word, let your minds arrive at one knowledge even as ...
... beyond, around even in a sense, but with a gulf between that being and our being, and unbridged and even an unbridgeable chasm. There is this infinite existence; but it is quite other than the mental being who becomes aware of it, and we cannot either raise ourselves to it and become it or bring it down to ourselves so that our own experience of our being and world-being shall be that of its blissful ...
... process. Sri Aurobindo teaches us that our world is the scene of an ascending evolution which goes from the stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, and from the animal to man. But man, the mental being, is himself a transitional being, not the final end and summit of evolution. In the next step, man will develop a new and higher spiritual consciousness which Sri Aurobindo has called the Supramental ...
... thought and another coming in a concrete way from outside; I flung them away before they could enter and take hold of the brain and in three days I was free. From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought as a labourer in a thought-factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms ...
... be a great yogi, a superman. With us, the vital and the ego are the two greatest stumbling-blocks all along the path. I admit nothing of the kind. He went quickly because the inner mental being had a great receptivity and the vital a great ardour. But the ego was a stumbling-block from the first and the ambition a great hindrance. He wanted to indulge his lower nature in many ...
... here and there and sometimes even in greater mass than below. How is it so?" The ego they perceive there is not the inhabitant of the spiritual heights. But the thing is, man being a mental being, when he ascends he carries with him subtly or unconsciously the ego of the lower nature. And as his consciousness is naturally heightened and cosmicised in the spiritual planes, the ego too feels ...
... regard to form what is the difference between the soul and the psychic being? As there is in us a mind which one does not see in form but is aware of and as there is at the same time a mental being which one can see in form, so there is a soul and a psychic being. The soul is the same always, the psychic being is what it develops in the evolution. When you say that the psychic ...
... labour of purification and unification, we must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of our being. When the higher truth will manifest, it must find in you a mental being supple and rich enough to be able to give to the idea seeking to express itself a form of thought Page 512 Page 513 which preserves its force and clarity. This thought ...
... evolution develops its lines, enlarges its scope, elevates its levels until there is the increasing manifestation of the sattwic or spiritual portion of the vehicle of mind; this enables the individual mental being in man to finally identify himself with the pure spiritual consciousness that Page 165 exists beyond Mind. This, according to the Indian concept, is the ultimate aim ...
... realising the Divine upon earth? Realising means what? You mean manifesting, I suppose. Anyone can realise the Divine, in the sense of being conscious of the Divine. Man is a mental being in a body — how can he have command of the Supermind which is above mind? Even Overmind is far above him. When one becomes one with the Divine, what exactly is the function of the Supermind ...
... They go about or flow on like the waves of a vast sea. Human beings are mere instruments, receptacles that capture or seize some undulations of this vast ocean. Man is man, that is to say, a mental being, because in him the brain has developed to such an extent and in such a manner that it serves as antennae or as an aerial to receive vibrations from the mental world. Indeed the ordinary human ...
... own special consciousness and power, its own laws of being and action. Obviously we all know apart from the material or physical being there is the vital being, the life-force and there is the mental being, the mind-force. And there are many other levels like these. A miracle happens, that is to say, a material formation behaves in an abnormal way because a force has come down from the vital region ...
... Spirituality goes straight forward to direct vision and communion with the Beyond. Religion labours to experience and express the world of Spirit in and through a turn, often a twist, given by the mental being— manu— in man; it bases itself upon the demands of the mental, the vital and the physical complex—the triple nexus that forms the ordinary human personality and seeks to satisfy them under a holier ...
... flow on like the waves of a vast sea. Human beings are mere instruments, receptacles that capture or seize some undulations of this vast ocean. Man is man, that is to say, Page 186 a mental being, because in him the brain has developed to such an extent and in such a manner that it serves as antennae or as an aerial to receive vibrations from the mental world. Indeed the ordinary human mind ...
... like the waves of a vast sea. Human beings are mere instruments, receptacles that capture or seize some undulations of this vast ocean. Man is man, that is to say, Page 190 a mental being, because in him the brain has developed to such an extent and in such a manner that it serves as antennae or as an aerial to receive vibrations from the mental world. Indeed the ordinary human mind ...
... language was born out of the necessity of inter-communication among human beings living together. The necessity naturally related to the physical life and its demands and requirements. Man being a mental being sought intercommunication through his mind. So mind yoked to the physical demands gave the first form and pattern to human speech. Language in the beginning must have been an echo or a graphic ...
... his dimensions. Still there will come a time when the thing will happen; there will be a moment or a movement that will at last land into the reality. Once upon a time there came a moment when the mental being could appear upon earth. The start may be poor, very incomplete, very partial, but after all there was the start. Why should not the same thing occur now? Page 60 to me—they who ...
... the body to continue as an independent entity. When an animal dies its vitality almost immediately disintegrates and merges into the general forces of Nature. It is only in man where there is a mental being to organise the vitality into some sort of an individualised form that the persistence of that form is. possible after the dissolution of the body. Page 38 ...
... the prehistoric animals, no, he will still be at the head of earthly creation, but undergo a sea-change, as it were, and be transmuted into a divine creature. As at present man is a mental being, that is to say, it is his mind — his reason and intellect — that governs him and it is through that faculty that he governs the world. But mind is not the highest or the most powerful faculty in ...
... and intelligence seize on h and apprehend it to know its meaning and endeavour to bring it to the fore of the critical perception of an enlightened intelligence. We have already said that the mental being (Manomaya Purusha) of the country awoke in Bankimchandra. It is he who gave a fluent expression, in thought and in an outer attractive language, to her hopes, aspirations and inner feelings. And ...
... work of the priest. The gods must not yoke me to that work. That was why I imbedded my body variably so that I as Agni may not know of that pathway. The gods 5 Come, 0 Agni! Man, the mental being, desires to do the sacrifice, he has made everything ready, and you dwell in obscurity! Make easy-going the path that leads to the gods, with a happy mind carry the offering. Page 333 ...
... the body to continue as an independent entity. When an animal dies its vitality almost immediately disintegrates and merges into the general forces of Nature. It is only in man where there is a mental being to organise the vitality into some sort of an individualised form that the persistence of that form is possible after the dissolution of the body. ¹ A disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother ...
... animals, no, he will still be at the head of earthly creation, but undergo a sea-change, as it were, and be transmuted into a divine creature. Page 358 As at present man is a mental being, that is to say, it is his mind – his reason and intellect – that governs him and it is through that faculty that he governs the world. But mind is not the highest or the most powerful faculty in ...
... grace and aristocracy – form one aspect of man, the aspect of "light"; but the aspect of energy and power lies precisely in him where the aboriginal and the barbarian find also a lodging. Man as a mental being is naturally sattwic, but prone to passivity and weakness; his physico-vital reactions, on the other hand, are obscure and crude, simple and vehement, but they have life and energy and creative ...
... the secret support of its environment, it is courageous because it feels itself in good company. But once it rises out of the environmental level and stands truly apart and outside it – it is the mental being which can do so more or less successfully – the first feeling is that of freedom, no Page 377 doubt, but along with it there is also the uncanny sense of isolation, of heavy responsibility ...
... his dimensions. Still there will come a time when the thing will happen; there will be a moment or a movement that will at last land into the reality. Once upon a time there came a moment when the mental being could appear upon earth. The start may be poor, very incomplete, very partial, but after all there was the start. Why should not the same thing occur now? The people who were announcing the good ...
... evolutionary external consciousness and who are aware of the way in which the terrestrial world has developed, telling them that it is something greater than the creation of man whom he always calls a mental being. He calls it Supramental to say that it is beyond mind. But we can also say that it is something more divine than what has been manifested before. Page 42 For the Infinity ...
... awake, Lightning! Out of the ocean of the heart, awake, O Himalaya! Awake, O dancing Beauties of Heaven! Awake, O Supreme! O Supreme, awake, appear Upon the waters of the Deluge, O Mental Being – Man and Woman! Gouri Dharmapal Page 87 ...
... of the vital being are in conflict with the demands of the mind when it wants to pursue the purity of thought and knowledge and the purity of its ideals. Often the vital being tends to make the mental being the advocate of its Page 207 desires and ambitions by means of rationalisation. At the same time, the pure pursuits of the mind succeed some times in obliging the vital being to make ...
... ego-sense, active, more and more in contact, even unified more and more with other minds, other lives, other bodies than the organism we call ourselves, producing effects not only on our own moral and mental being and on the subjective being of others, but even on the physical world and its events by means nearer to the divine than those possible to our egoistic capacity." 34 According to Sri Aurobindo ...
... an ideal of a spiritual living, begun the evolution in him of a spiritual being. As a result, the thinker, the idealist, the Prophet, the Sage, the self-controlled, self-disciplined, harmonized mental being have been led to exceed themselves and to go higher and deeper within. Their efforts indicate their call to the inner soul, inner mind and inner heart to come out into the front, and they also indicate ...
... and spiritually. It has omitted from our educational programme those arts and sciences which can make our body strong and healthy, which can make our vital being heroic and courageous, and our mental being subtle, complex and comprehensive. Philosophy, which was for long a part of the cultural education in our country, accessible even to the rustic, has been flung aside to such remoteness that even ...
... order to solve its critical problems. When towards the end of the Rigveda, the future task of humanity is described, in brief but powerful words, " manurbhava janaya daivyam janam”: (Be first the mental being in its perfection and then generate the divine being), it has behind it a vast body of experimentation with those faculties of inspiration, revelation, intuition and supramental discrimination that ...
... order to solve its critical problems. When towards the end of the Rigveda, the future task of humanity i$ described, in brief but powerful words, "manurbhava janaya daivyam janam": (Be first the mental being in its perfection and then generate the divine being), it has behind it a vast body of experimentation with those faculties of inspiration, revelation, intuition and supramental discrimination that ...
... scientific discovery and invention that build knowledge upon knowledge. In one short sentence in Page 207 Sanskrit; Veda declares: "manurbhava, janaya daivyam janam” become first the mental being and then become the divine being. This is the message for the individual. The Veda also presents a collective ideal and enjoins upon all who want to listen to this message that they should ...
... can, if necessary, break the tradition and establish the new. The rishi was not merely a scholar, often he was not a scholar at all, but he could command knowledge whenever needed. He was not a mental being, but one who had transcended the limitations of the mental consciousness and had a direct access to superior modes of knowledge and action. All this was recognized by masses of people throughout ...
... see how much the apprehended annulment of one's personal consciousness is at all based on fact. The truth of the matter is that personal survival after the body's death is assured to every mental being. The basic consciousness of a man is in no way dependent on the existence or non-existence of his physical body. It is entirely separate and independent. Here is an adaptation from what the Mother ...
... may be envisaged as a part of the process of the change. But the main part of the change will be the appearance of the supramental being and the organisation of a supramental nature here, as a mental being has appeared and a mental nature organised itself during the last stage of the evolution. I prefer nowadays not to speak of the descent of the higher beings because my experience is that it leads ...
... Veda. This is as true from the outward, historical point of view as it is true of the lines of inner change. As I have already explained, man begins his career as a vital-physical being, becomes a mental being at a later stage. But the trouble is that when he goes beyond his vital being into the mental, he tends to pass beyond mind into the gnosis and forgets his life and body; this is what is known as ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Hymn to the Mental Being RIGVEDA Mandala X: Sukta 58 (1) THAT Mind of yours which has gone afar, to the solar world of Divine Law — We bring back to you; so may you dwell here in life. (2) That Mind of yours which has gone afar, to the Heaven, to the Earth — We bring back ...
... human life. The being of man comprises such a dual nature; on one side he may be a scientist and on the other he may remain a non-scientist. The reasoning faculty, the intellectual power of the mental being is the instrument by which the scientist carries on his search after truth. If he wants to remain strictly faithful to reality as it appears, then he cannot exceed the realm of sense-perceptions ...
... man was born. Yes, man is the highest peak of evolution on earth up to now. In him the mind or mental consciousness seems to have reached its highest possible height. But still, man is not fully a mental being, he is rather a mental animal. Page 59 The mind is not yet the master in his Adhara; the true master who rules and handles the mental faculty is the life principle, the animal in ...
... that he was "a Bhakta with a limited mind but with some experience and evocative power". 117 Refer- ring to the same experience, he says in Yoga II, Tome II: "From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms ...
... labour of purification and unification, we must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of our being. When the higher truth will manifest, it must find in you a mental being subtle and rich enough to be able to give to the idea seeking to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words ...
... God, soul, the beyond or the higher worlds, in these things the new Russians of today have no faith, none. Their entire stress or śraddhā is on this world, this life, on the physical-vital-mental being whom they call Man. It was arranged that I should talk to the gymnasts. Following civilised traditions, this was to be a post-prandial session; that is, the conversation was to follow a rather ...
... must not yoke me to that work. That was why I embedded my body variably so that I as Agni may not know of that pathway. The gods 5.Come, O Agni! Man, the mental being, desires to do the sacrifice, he has made everything ready, and you dwell in obscurity! Make easy-going the path that leads to the gods, with a happy mind carry the offering ...
... light and play of mind and senses, ego-centric life subject to dualities on to the superconscient All which is the realm of Light. And this higher Light can penetrate and come down into mind—the mental being of man. When it comes to man's mind, it first takes the form of intuition. That is how the penetration of Light also takes you in the other direction partly. This is the intuition of Self which ...
... Aswapathy's spiritual achievement he says: "And broken the intellect's hard and lustrous lid." Sāvitrī Book I, Canto 3. In another context recounting the limitations of the mental being which remains satisfied and self-complaisant he says: "There comes no breaking of the walls of mind," Sāvitrī Book II, Canto 10. The basic idea both in Iśa and Sāvitrī in ...
... existence are essentially problems of harmony." In the material world there is only "ordered, rhythmic slumber," not apparent harmony. Life is a dynamism full of disharmony and conflict. Man, the mental being, as an individual, is a divided being, the various parts of his being-the intellect, emotions, passions, desires-are in constant conflict. To bring about harmony within oneself and express it in ...
... reversal of the process, to seek the Infinite. In the first process Nature was, as it were, putting out a point of consciousness from this vast inconscience. And now when she has created a mental being, a mental life, she wants to reverse the process. She reverses the process when the ego is formed. From the infinite, the first labour was to create, to manifest or to bring about this individual ...
... spheres above And coloured shadows limned on mortal ground The passing figures of immortal things". So, from the higher regions, influences were invited and felt. Man, the mental being, found that he was capable of establishing a contact with the higher than mental level of consciousness. Though these visitations from the greater world were rare, they gave to the human being ...
... the senses. It also receives mental messages. Even in sleep it is disturbed. The human being then flies into the mental plane "in imagination's car" and is able to conceive "ideals". But this mental being is not the true Self of man; true Self is hidden and lives within. Human nature holds within itself both the divine and the undivine powers: "Careless guardian of his nature's powers". ...
... ”² Till the psychic is awake and in front, it is the ego in us that is the leader of our life. The desires and impulses of our vital (prana) and the ideas, opinions and preferences of our mental being are all egoistic in their nature and drive. If left to them- selves, they would never turn to the Divine, but perpetually spin round the ego. Born of the obscurity of Matter and nursed by subconscient ...
... essentially, in their origin as also in their Page 311 instrumentation, spiritual powers. A plant, an animal, a man, all share within limits the same life; yet man the mental being outsoars the others; and the man with an awakened soul outsoars average humanity insensitive to the intimations of the soul. Tine rhythmic word, too, "has a subtly sensible element, its sound ...
... little works of its prison-house It turned around the same unchanging points In the same circle of interest and desire,... 62 Whatever the seeming achievements of the mental being, however impressive the march of civilisation, the crux of the human situation remains unsolved. A total emancipation is yet to arrive. Aswapati can sense in this Kingdom of the Little Life, ...
... to ascend to the Higher consciousness. Disciple : Sometimes I feel myself widening. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, sometimes one feels the head opening or expanding. That is the sign of the mental being opening to the Power. Disciple : Sometimes I see sky, ocean, or mountains and forests. Sri Aurobindo : Yes. One sees many things i.e. by the inner sight. These are symbols of life ...
... self-surrender, a giving up of the human being into the being, consciousness, power, delight of the Divine, a union or communion at all the points of meeting in the soul of man, the mental being, by which the Divine himself.. .shall by the light of his presence and guidance perfect the human being in all the force of the Nature for a divine living.. .The liberated individual ...
... lost in the ocean, the little bird of one's individuality is seen lost in the universality of the blue sky. The radical inner change, the profound spiritual transformation takes place when man the mental being aspires with his whole heart and soul to the 'higher' knowledge, and is seized and overwhelmed by it: The possession of the Infinite cannot come except by an ascent to those supramental ...
... which holds the worlds and their unrevealed potentialities in her obscure bosom. Night extends her realm over this triple world of ours, physical, vital and mental, and out of her, in heaven, in the mental being, dawn is born. Dawn delivers the sun out of the darkness in which it was lying concealed and eclipsed and it creates a vision of the supreme day, in the non-existence and in the night. This ...
... organs of understanding. And Auroville must understand in the first place that her raison d’etre is to work out other organs, another level of understanding, and finally another being beyond the mental being. We are not here to build a Matri-mandir (and I will repeat that until I get a hoarse throat) nor to grow cabbages, but to build a new being, and incidentally some cabbages to help his transitory ...
... error there? 6 Nevertheless, as Sri Aurobindo has written in The Life Divine, human progress has not indeed carried the race beyond itself, into a self-exceeding, a transformation of the mental being. But that was not to be expected; for the action of evolutionary Nature in a type of being and consciousness is first to develop the type to its utmost capacity by just such a subtilisation and ...
... slightest degree to the forces of ignorance and falsehood and suffering, which sway the life of humanity and impede its spiritual evolution. From the cells of the physical body to the summits of our mental being, all, without exception, must be divinely converted and rendered perfectly plastic to the supramental Force of the divine Mother. "So long as one element of the being, one movement of the ...
... subconscient Powers who hold the light and the force in themselves, in their cities of darkness and illusion, but can neither use it Page 61 aright nor will give it up to man, the mental being. Their ignorance, evil and limitation have not merely to be cut away from us, but broken up and into and made to yield up the secret of light and good and infinity. Out of this death that immortality ...
... was the miracle of resurrection following the shock of the crucifixion. Nolini Kanta Gupta said some time after the event: He has done it: he has made Nature take the final leap. The mental being with its triple node is at last bundled up and cast into the Supramental status. As he saw and assured us. A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour... Nature shall overleap ...
... before. In spite of everything, there will be a moment when it will happen, there will be a time when the movement will tilt over into a new reality. There was a MOMENT. There was a moment when the mental being was able to manifest on earth. There will come a time when the human consciousness is in the required state for a supramental consciousness to be able to enter this human consciousness and manifest ...
... sanctuary of our being, the immortal inhabitant of our Page 155 mortal tenement. In the last essay we have seen what the desire-soul is and how, having helped the evolution of the mental being to a certain extent, having even led him to the frontiers of his consciousness and given him a glimpse of the infinite, stretching beyond, it yet stands as the greatest bar to his irrevocable s ...
... preparation of the material instruments - I can now only look forward as a subsequent eventuality in a yet distant vista of things. To possess securely the Light and the Force of the Supra- mental being, this is the main object to which the power is now turning. But the remnant of the old habits of intellectual thought and mental will come so obstinate in their determination to remain that the ...
... of man and, by an increase of moral purity and calm, help the concentration of his conscious- ness on the Supreme. It aims "at the liberation and the perfection not of the bodily, but of the mental being, the control of the emotional and sensational life, the mastery of the whole apparatus of thought and consciousness. It fixes its eyes on the chitta, that stuif of mental conscious- ness in which ...
... the tossing desires and ambitions and passions of his life- being or vital being. Similarly a man may be called mental or intellectual, if he lives not so much in his physical and vital as in his mental being. But a physical man. may have vital desires and ambitions and also mental interests and pursuits, or a vital man may have the latter and may also be susceptible to spells of physical inertia and ...
... being and constrains them to accept the discipline. That can be done in the beginning of the sadhana, when the psychic pressure and influence is a decisive, purifying factor, and the toddling mental being has not learnt to walk erect and look up to the high heavens. A certain psychic push and pressure are indispensable at the earlier stages of the sâdhanâ in order to awaken the less evolved parts ...
... a divine life. You can say also, that he is high because he has developed a mind and the mind gives him a chance of conscious evolution. But it does not necessarily follow that because man is a mental being he has used his mind for his evolution. Exactly because he has a mind, man has an infinite capacity to be devilish. He brings to the help of his devil a mind, and the devil himself can't be so bad ...
... voices. Instead I got into the silent Brahman Consciousness." In other words, Nirvana. Since then Sri Aurobindo's mind became the Master in its own house. "From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms ...
... been able to overcome. It was mental stillness she had striven to obtain. A mental stillness in which anything can pass through your head without causing the least ripple. "It is the stuff of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it" as Sri Aurobindo described it. If thoughts or activities come, "they come from outside and cross the mind as a flight of birds crosses the sky in ...
... Sri Aurobindo As there has been established on earth a mental Consciousness and Power which shapes a race of mental beings and takes up into itself all of earthly nature that is ready for the change, so now there will be established on earth a gnostic Consciousness and Power which will shape a race of gnostic spiritual beings and take up into itself all of earth-nature that is ready for this... receive into itself from above, progressively, from its own domain of perfect light and power and beauty all that is ready to descend from that domain into terrestrial being. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: The Gnostic Being Balcony Darshan If my understanding is limited, widen it; If my knowledge is obscure, enlighten it; If my heart is empty of ardour, set it aflame; If ...
... (1957-1958) 25 September 1957 " A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the Ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor... be the intermediate being between humanity as it is and the supramental being created in the supramental way, that is, no longer belonging to animality at all and delivered from all animal needs. As we are, we have been created in the ordinary animal way, and therefore, even if we transform ourselves, there will remain something of this animal origin. The supramental being as he conceived of it... way that the body can be a "materialisation" and not a formation according to the ordinary animal principle. It is quite obvious that intermediate beings are necessary, that it is these intermediate beings who must find the means of creating beings of the supermind, and, undoubtedly, when Sri Aurobindo wrote this he was convinced that this is what we must do. I think—I know—that it is now certain ...
... individualised psychic being can survive even in the midst of collective catastrophes, if that is his soul's choice. After death, once separated from his physical being, from his vital and mental beings, how is the soul conscious of being, of existing? The soul is a spark of the Supreme Divine; I do not see how the Lord has need of a body in order to be conscious of his being. ... "death", of the conditions of death, why there are so many accidents at the present moment, etc. I have already answered two persons. Naturally, the answers were on the mental level, but with an attempt to go beyond. It is this kind of mental logic which wants, yes, things to be deduced from one another in accordance with this logic, so they arrive at questions... that are impossible. 1 It is nothing... seeing, and then the comprehension was total, the perception total, altogether concrete, with elements that were wholly missing—convincing elements—wholly missing in the first perception, which was a mental-vital knowledge. This was a knowledge of the consciousness of the cells. But all that would be interesting only with all the facts (which cannot be given). So I would like to have a more complete ...
... The vast majority of human beings have a collective destiny. For them, the question does not arise. One who has an individualized psychic being can survive even in the midst of collective catastrophes, if such is the choice of his soul. How is the soul conscious of being and existing after death, once it is separated from its physical, vital and mental beings? The soul is a spark of... on "death," the conditions of death, why are there are so many accidents at present, and so on. I have already answered two persons. Of course, the answer is on a mental level, but with an attempt to go beyond. It is that sort of mental logic which wants ... yes, which wants things to be deduced one from the other according to that logic, and so they have arrived at ... impossible questions. (... to explain. I've had the example (not an example: it was lived with the full perception) of a being who lived with me for years, who remained in perfectly conscious contact after he had left his body (and left it quite materially), and who didn't merge, but closely associated himself with another living being and in this association went on living the life of his OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. I can give neither ...
... thought depends considerably on the power of the thinker. Every well-formed thought has its own force of realisation, which gives it a power of realisation in the mental domain. It can act in the physical world only through a mental human being. 7 November 1966 ...
... is not the external being, that which is formed by parents, environment and circumstances—the mental, the vital and the physical—that is born again: it is only the psychic being that passes from body to body. Logically, then, neither the mental nor the vital being can remember past lives or recognise itself in the character or mode of life of this or that person. The psychic being alone can remember;... after death the vital and mental sheaths dissolve, leaving the soul free to retire to the psychic world before it takes up new sheaths. What becomes of the Karma and of the impressions—Samskaras—on the old sheaths? Do they also dissolve without producing any result, good or bad, which they should according to the theory of Karma? Also, what becomes of the vital and mental beings after the dissolution of... of the vital and mental sheaths? Page 123 The outer form only dissolves, unless that too is made conscious and is organised round the divine centre. But the true mental, the true vital and even the true subtle physical persist: it is that which keeps all the impressions received in earthly life and builds the chain of Karma. If we go a little way within ourselves, we shall discover ...
... on upon Earth Essays in Philosophy and Yoga Mind of Light A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the Ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor... of all types and forms of its being which are the visible, indicative and efficient embodiments of its essential nature. There appear in the evolutionary process organised forms and activities of Matter, the types of life and the living beings, the types of mind and the thinking beings, the luminosities and greatnesses of the spiritual principle and the spiritual beings whose nature, character, personality... mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution ...
... Eckhart has repeatedly said, a perspective is a mental position and is therefore quite inadequate to understand spiritual truths that transcend the purview of the mind. However, at the present stage of the evolution of our consciousness, most human beings are at best mainly mental beings. Therefore, we cannot help beginning with a more or less mental approach even to things that lie beyond the mind... mind. As a concession to this limitation of the human being, spiritual teachers have had to resort to mental concepts and ideas to communicate by verbal means truths that are essentially unformulable in thoughts and incommunicable in words, but realizable only through experience. Some of the teachers, like Eckhart, have used only minimal mental concepts to serve as "pointers" or "signposts" on the spiritual... nature of the spiritual realizations on which they are based. For example, the Buddhist view that the Reality is Non-Being or Non-Existence or Nothingness (Asat) is based on a different spiritual experience from the one that is founded on the Vedantic view of the ultimate reality as Being, Existence, or the All (Sat, the Brahman). Similarly, the Hindu view that both the world and the notion of an individual ...
... never tried even by the Vedic Rishis to bring down to earth. Like the Page 31 mental consciousness and Power which has been in operation on earth shaping a race of mental beings, this supramental consciousness has to be brought down to earth to shape a race of spiritual or gnostic beings and it his is what he has done by sacrificing his own life for the future of humanity. This... transformation of human nature both vital and physical which he compared to the tail of a dog which could never become straight—it must always revert to its crooked curl of nature. At a higher vital and mental level, one could live a spiritual life and to that extent enjoy the bliss of the Brahman. The ignorant world had thus no prospect, no chance to get better and would .continue the same scene of sorrow... This will naturally take time for its manifestation as Mind took time to appear in the life-being of the animals. The evolutionary principle works through gradual and progressive stages and not through violent and cataclysmic upheavals. This is all I have to say about the importance given to Moksha or withdrawal from life in the past. It has been often charged that, striving for Spiritual liberation ...
... developed out of the inconscience first in the vegetable kingdom, then in insects, worms, reptiles, birds and beasts and lastly in the developed mental consciousness of developed animals and human beings. The mental consciousness Page 8 of human beings is not the last term of the evolutionary progression of consciousness. It will exceed Mind as mind has exceeded the life consciousness of... ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit." And again : "As there has been established on earth a mental consciousness and power which shapes a race of mental beings, so now there will be established here a gnostic consciousness and power which will shape a race of gnostic spiritual beings and take up into itself all of earth nature that is ready for this new transformation." Since this was what... and egoistic nature, mental, vital and physical but mastery is not transformation. A certain but not complete mastery. Sri Aurobindo, therefore, insists that we have to go deeper after this first realisation of the soul to the Psychic entity lying dormant in the deepest recesses of our being. This psychic transformation has been achieved by only a limited number of human beings up to the present. But ...
... A Scheme for The Education of Bengal VI. MIND OF LIGHT A NEW humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the Ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open... of all types and forms of its being which are the visible, indicative and efficient embodiments of its essential nature. There appear in the evolutionary process organised forms and activities of Matter, the types of life and the living beings, the types of mind and the thinking beings, the luminosities and greatnesses of the spiritual principle and the spiritual beings whose nature, character, personality... capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind .and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution ...
... wants to develop spiritually, the first thing to do is to overcome one's dislikes... and one's likes. Look at all that with a smile. ( Silence ) " A new humanity would then be a race of mental beings on the earth and in the earthly body but delivered from its present conditions in the reign of the cosmic Ignorance so far as to be possessed of a perfected mind, a mind of light which could even... repulsions. Therefore, it may be said in a general and almost absolute way that those who have very definite and impulsive likes and dislikes live in a vital consciousness. Mixed with this, there may be mental affinities; that is, some minds like to have relationships in common activities, but here too, these are people on a much higher level intellectually, and this is also expressed even more by a comparative... the best thing is to look at all that from a little distance and to lecture yourself a little on the futility of these things. Obviously there are some natures which are almost fundamentally bad, beings who are born wicked and love to do harm; and logically, if one is quite natural, not perverted, natural as animals are—for from this point of view they are far superior to men; perversion begins with ...
... horizontally in all the different and often contradictory parts which constitute the outer being, physical, vital and mental. The being organised around the psychic: the first stage of transformation. Mental opening: the first step of the mind towards transformation. Mental prayer: spontaneous in a mind aspiring for transformation. Thirst to understand: very useful for t... Transformation and the Parts of the Being Doesn't transformation demand a very high degree of aspiration, surrender and receptivity? Transformation demands a total and integral consecration. But isn't this the aspiration of all sincere sadhaks? Total means vertically in all the states of being, from the most material to the most subtle. Integral means h... Supramental influence in the subconscient: under its modest appearance it is a great force for transformation. Transformation is the change by which all the elements, and all the movements of the being become ready to manifest the supramental Truth. ...
... between them. There are mental beings who are also creators, giving form to some beings that have taken body upon earth. Page 39 Thus, there is a tradition which says that the world of insects is the outcome of the creators of the vital world. That is why when you see the insects under a microscope they take on appearances that are absolutely diabolical. Enlarged on a screen they... earthly beings and things. They sent out their emanations and these again theirs in their turn and so on. Thus it was not the Divine Will which acted directly upon Matter and gave the world the form it could 'or should have had. There are layers and planes, graded intermediaries through which the Will has had to act. I spoke of the overmental and the vital plane. There is also the mental plane ... always good and in the right direction, then the choice will no longer be free. But in reality these questions cannot be adequately answered in that way. It is a problem to which mental answers—of which the mental formulations even—only serve to diminish the dimensions of the problem; the question itself reduces the problem to a more or less elementary formula corresponding only vaguely and su ...
... to earthly beings and things. They sent out their emanations and these again theirs in their turn and so on. Thus it was not the Divine Will which acted directly upon Matter and gave the world the form it could or should have had. There are layers and planes, graded intermediaries through which the Will has had to act. I spoke of the over-mental and the vital plane. There is also the mental plane between... between them. There are mental beings who are also creators, giving form to some beings that have taken body upon earth. Thus, there is a tradition which says that the world of insects is the outcome of the creators of the vital world. That is why when you see the insects under a microscope they take on appearances that are absolutely diabolical. Enlarged on a screen they look like veritable monsters... direction, then the choice would no longer be free. But in reality these questions cannot be adequately answered Page 327 in that way. It is a problem to which mental answers – of which the mental formulations even – only serve to diminish the dimensions of the problem; the question itself reduces the problem to a more or less elementary formula corresponding only vaguely and ...
... human values are half values – they are relative. They have no permanence or durability about them. Disciple : Perhaps, if man became more of a mentalized being, he would understand things better. Sri Aurobindo : By being mentalized? No. The difficulty that men do not follow the principles of life. Disciple : How is that? Sri Aurobindo : Life compromises between different... human values are half values – they are relative. They have no permanence or durability about them. Disciple : Perhaps, if man became more of a mentalized being, he would understand things better. Sri Aurobindo : By being mentalized? No. The difficulty that men do not follow the principles of life. Disciple : How is that? Sri Aurobindo : Life compromises between different... apart from and opposed to all other things. Hegel boasted that in Europe they had succeeded in separating reason from life and you see their philosophy – it has nothing to do with life; it is all mental gymnastics, it does not form part of life. While in India, philosophy has always been a part of life; it has an aim. In the political philosophy of Europe you find, if they accept democracy ...
... and forms, nor do we anywhere see it void of or apart from its own multiplicity. One Matter, but many atoms, plasms, bodies; one Energy, but many forces; one Mind or at least Mind-stuff, but many mental beings; one Spirit, but many souls. Perhaps periodically this multiplicity goes back, is dissolved into, is swallowed up by the One from which it was originally evolved; but still the fact that it has... creative Word, the beginning of all things and that to which life aspires. But he affirms Becoming only and excludes Being from his view of things; hence his philosophy is in the end unsatisfactory, insufficient, lop-sided; it stimulates, but solves nothing. Heraclitus does not exclude Being from the data of the problem of existence, although he will not make any opposition or gulf between that and Becoming... his conception of existence as at once one and many, he is bound to accept these two aspects of his ever-living Fire as simultaneously true, true in each other; Being is an eternal becoming and yet the Becoming resolves itself into eternal being. All is in flux, for all is change of becoming; we cannot step into the same waters twice, for it is other and yet other waters that are flowing on. And yet, ...
... life, sense is only a preparatory to the real travail of the soul, and we must leave this lower Brahman and know that Higher if we are to fulfil ourselves. We pursue, for instance, our mental growth, we become mental beings full of an accomplished thought-power and thought-acquisition, dhīrāḥ ̣, in order that we may by thought of mind go beyond mind itself to the Eternal. For always the life of mind and... Isha Upanishad who inhabits all the creations of His Force, all form of movement in the ever mobile principle of cosmos. It is our self and that of which and by which we are constituted in all our being and activities, the Brahman. The mortal life is a dual representation of That with two conflicting elements in it, negative and positive. Its negative elements of death, suffering, incapacity, strife... we have not yet achieved; therefore there is a necessity of return, an insistent utility of farther life in the mortal body which we do not overcome until we have passed beyond all types to the very being of the Infinite, One and Immortal. The worlds of which the Upanishad speaks are essentially soul-conditions and not geographical divisions of the cosmos. This material universe is itself only existence ...
... it, which is associated with the all-pervading phenomenon of attraction and repulsion. These three things are everywhere in Nature because Life is everywhere in Nature. But in us mental beings they are all given a mental value according to the mind which perceives and accepts them. They take the form of action, of desire and of liking and disliking, pleasure and pain. The Prana is everywhere in us... sanction from the tangle of the mental undercurrent and the reasoning intellect and causes both to cease from their importunities. He becomes liberated from subjection to the thinking mind and capable of the utter silence. For perfection there is necessary also the resumption by the Purusha of his position as the lord of his Nature and the will to replace the mere mental undercurrent and intellect by... integral purification of the being. For all this movement of knowledge which we are describing is a method of purification and liberation whereby entire and final self-knowledge becomes possible, a progressive self-knowledge being itself the instrument of the purification and liberation. The method with the thought-mind will be the same as with all the rest of the being. The Purusha, having used the ...
... through that of the unveiled manifestation of the now-concealed and only partly revealed Divine Being. This revelation requires the transformation of Nature so that on all its levels, physical, vital and mental it may become conscious and spiritualised. The life of the supramental race of beings will be the Life Divine. The means of attaining this goal of evolution is the Integral Yoga which... essence of yoga. According to Sri Aurobindo, yoga has the same relation with the inner nature and being of man as the natural sciences have with the forces of external nature like, say, steam or electricity. Yoga studies by repeated observation and experiment the forces and movements of the human psyche, its mental, vital and physical aspects, their mutual relation and influence. In the process of this inner... his experience is not only xii mental intelligence and feeling. For mind is only one level of the multi-level reality called Consciousness. This brings us to the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. The basic elements of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, briefly stated, are as follows. There is a supreme, sovereign Reality which depends on nothing for its being; this independent Reality is self-luminous ...
... yet physical abandonment is what we usually contemplate when we use the term renunciation; for although we are mental beings, yet ours is a mentality emmeshed in matter and impelled by that physical Maya to give a materialised or sensible value and a material expression to all our mental conceptions. We hardly admit a truth until we see it cloaked in an outward form or in an outward event & action... perfect enjoyment? We have, at once, the answer in this phrase of the Seer, Ma gridhah. Thou shalt not have the greed of desire in thy heart,—that is the practical effect of the call to renunciation. Mental beings, souls throned in mind, it is in mind our centre not in matter which is to us a mere case, circumference and result of mind, that we should seek our secret of bondage and our means of deliverance... indeed that weakness to pass out from itself by the extinction of active existence, freeing us from life, but not freeing life for us; but the inner renunciation leads us through our real nature as mental beings, takes account of our strength and teaches us to insist upon it and realise its perfection in God. Sannyasa is a rapid road of escape for our self-accepted weakness; tyaga is a path of fulfilment ...
... active. For even the mind, so long as it is primitive or is developed but still too external, does not recognise their deeper character. It is easy to regard ourselves as physical beings or beings of life or mental beings using life and body and to ignore the existence of the soul altogether: for the only definite idea that we have of the soul is of something that survives the death of our bodies; but... principle, has already begun to take secret form; it puts forward and develops a soul-personality, a distinct psychic being to represent it. This psychic being remains still behind the veil in our subliminal part, like the true mental, the true vital or the true or subtle physical being within us: but, like them, it acts on the surface life by the influences and intimations it throws up upon that surface;... our mental, vital and bodily experience and assimilates it for the farther evolution of our existence in Nature; but this action is occult and not obtruded on the surface. In the early material and vital stages of the evolution of being there is indeed no consciousness of soul; there are psychic activities, but the instrumentation, the form of these activities are vital and physical,—or mental when ...
... ) The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth Essays in Philosophy and Yoga Supermind in the Evolution A new humanity would then be a race of mental beings on the earth and in the earthly body, but delivered from its present conditions in the reign of the cosmic Ignorance so far as to be possessed of a perfected mind, a mind of light which could even... harmonised perfection. It is this possibility that we have to look at and that would mean a new humanity uplifted into Light, capable of a spiritualised being and action, open to governance by some light of the Truth-consciousness, capable even on the mental level and in its own order of something that might be called the beginning of a divinised life. Page 584 ... knowledge. The Spirit has been thought of not as something all-pervading and the secret essence of our being, but as something only looking down on us from the heights and drawing us only towards the heights and away from the rest of existence. So we get the idea of our cosmic and individual being as a great illusion, and departure from it and extinction in our consciousness of both individual and cosmos ...
... A Scheme for The Education of Bengal V. SUPERMIND IN THE EVOLUTION A NEW humanity would then be a race of mental beings on the earth and in the earthly body but delivered from its present conditions in the reign of the cosmic Ignorance so far as to be possessed of a perfected mind, a mind of light which could even be a subordinate action of the supermind... harmonised perfection. It is this possibility that we have to look at and that would. mean a new humanity uplifted into Light, capable of a spiritualised being and action, open to governance by some light of the Truth-Consciousness, capable even on the mental level and in its own order of something that might be called the beginning of a divinised life. Page 203 ... knowledge. The Spirit has been thought of not as something all-pervading and the secret essence of our being, but as something only looking down on us from the heights and drawing us only towards the heights and away from the rest of existence. So we get the idea of our cosmic and individual being as a great illusion, and departure from it and extinction in our consciousness of both individual and cosmos ...
... active. For even the mind, so long as it is primitive or is developed but still too external, does not recognise their deeper character. It is easy to regard ourselves as physical beings or beings of life or mental beings using life and body and to ignore the existence of the soul altogether: for the only definite idea that we have of the soul is of something that survives the death of our bodies; but... principle, has already begun to take secret form; it puts forward and develops a soul personality, a distinct psychic being to represent it. This psychic being remains still behind the veil in our subliminal part, like the true mental, the true vital or the true or subtle physical being within us: but, like them, it acts on the surface life by the influences and intimations it throws up upon that surface;... our mental, vital and bodily experience and assimilates it for the farther evolution of our existence in Nature; but this action is occult and not obtruded on the surface. In the early material and vital stages of the evolution of being there is indeed no consciousness of soul; there are psychic activities, but the instrumentation, the form of these activities are vital and physical—or mental when ...
... brought about by the mixed and irregular action of the energy of being in our physical, moral and mental system; secondly, concentration, that is to say, the bringing to its full intensity and the mastered and self-directed employment of that energy of being in us for a definite end; thirdly, liberation, that is to say, the release of our being from the narrow and painful knots of the individualised energy... naturally a great importance in the Yoga of knowledge, because there it is the very principle of its method and its object to raise the mental consciousness into a clarity and concentrated power by which it can become entirely aware of, lost in, identified with true being. But there are two great disciplines in which it becomes of an even greater importance. To these two systems, to Rajayoga and Hathayoga... instrument. Both of these instruments are now our masters. We are subject to the body, we are subject to the life energy; it is only in a very limited degree that we can, though souls, though mental beings, at all pose as their masters. We are bound by a poor and limited physical nature, we are bound consequently by a poor and limited life-power which is all that Page 530 the body can bear ...
... not even a Brahmacharin. The Yoga I am practising has not the ghost of a connection with Sannyasa. It is a Yoga meant for life & life only. Its object is perfection of the moral condition & mental & physical being along with the possession of certain powers—the truth of which I have been establishing by continuous practical experiment,—with the object of carrying out a certain mission in life which God... difficulty to solve. The question about the cult to answer precisely. There are four parts of the siddhi, roughly, moral, mental, physical & practical . Starting from December 1908 the moral has taken me three years and a half and may now be considered complete. The mental has taken two years of regular sadhana and for the present purpose may be considered complete; the physical is backward and... the immunity from disease—which I am now attempting successfully to perfect & test by exposure to abnormal conditions. The physical also does not matter so much for practical purposes, as the moral, mental and a certain number of practical siddhis are sufficient. It is these practical siddhis that alone cause delay. I have had first to prove to myself their existence and utility, secondly to develop ...
... pp. 101-02. (Italics ours) Page 106 essence' but in the manifold names and forms. "All the soul-life, mental, vital, bodily existence of all that exists [is] one indivisible movement and activity of the Being who is the same for ever." 1 "All is one Being, one Consciousness, one even in infinite multiplicity." 2 Thus action and creation cannot in the very nature of... But the difficulty experienced by a spiritual seeker in guarding the peace of the silent Self while engaged in dynamic activity is more incidental than intrinsic . It arises out of the mental being's exclusive concentration on its "plane of pure existence in which consciousness is at rest in passivity and delight of existence at rest in peace of existence." 2 Because of this exclusiveness... conscious mastery over it. It is because of this ignorant relapse brought about by the dynamic play that the mental Purusha is so ready to condemn all action and dynamism. To its judgment, all dynamism must be foreign to the supreme nature of the Absolute whose only true and whole being must be a status silent and immutable, featureless and quiescent. Thus cancelling the dynamis of Brahman, the ...
... and determinative of all minds, lives and bodies; one Mind containing all mental beings and constituting all their mental activities; one Life active 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... cosmic energies. We realise the Divine as the Supreme Person, the sempiternal Being, who knows all, sanctions all, governs all, contains, up-holds and informs all as the Parama Purusa, and at the same time executes all knowledge, will and formation as prakrti. We see Him as "one Existence, Being gathered in Itself and Being displayed in all existences; as one Consciousness concentrated in the unity... Divine Presence in the hearts of beings, are all summed up in the Paramātman or Para Purusa whom we seek and adore with the integrality of our being. He delivers us from the darkness of the Ignorance, lifts us into the infinite plenitude of His Truth-Consciousness, and, transforming us into His own divinity, fulfils the deepest aspiration of our whole being. He is our Master and Lover and Friend ...
... , but what they have within, their soul, the aspiration, the effort for progress, whether they are conscious of their inner being, whether they have an urge to perfect themselves, or whether they are very developed mental beings and who are exclusively guided by their mental ideas; then I see only this force, this consciousness and what they are capable of. I see their soul, their capacity to hold... you and to show the difference. It will be a true being, perfect in proportions, very, very strong, light, luminous or else transparent; it will have a supple and malleable body capable of doing everything, a creation of the New Consciousness or else a transformed body which was never conceived. It will have nothing in common with the human being, I mean man with the mind, the vital and all that.... inconscience, the ignorance, and the ego that wants to impose itself, and the result — all this misery. Whereas a being of the other world is perfectly conscious, perfectly balanced, joyous, is not subject to these terrestrial needs, of eating, sleeping, dressing and thinking, like a human being. It is not encased in its little body, but it is everywhere and wherever it wants to go. It has extraordinary ...
... quiet the mental disturbance and give scope for free thinking. But even this free thinking is hindered by the upsurging of the vital. For. though we are mental beings, we live largely in the vital. Very few live purely and constantly in the mental consciousness. As we are more in the vital, the descent of peace straight into it is indispensable in order to calm completely our whole mental stuff. ... its power of direction and my being is driven by all sorts of undesirable impulses and doing things suggested by the ordinary forces. It is probably due to the mental control being removed — what is acting in the things you mention is not the mind but the vital and physical consciousness. What should take the place of the removed mental control? The psychic or... in the mental, vital, physical levels (not only above) a consciousness that is neither mind, life nor body. Up to the last year the Mother's Force had to continue its pressure on my lower nature to change. But now a mutual understanding seems strangely to emerge between the higher and the lower. Through my mental Purusha the higher consciousness points out to my lower being its obscurity ...
... that as consciousness develops more and more, "as the light of its own being emerges from the inert darkness of the involutionary sleep, the individual existence becomes dimly aware of the power in it and seeks first nervously and then mentally to master, use and enjoy the play." 4 But, even at our best, we mental beings are bound by a poor and limited life-power which is all that our body can... necessarily mean an abeyance of consciousness of the whole of our dynamic being, nor a nightly falling down, nor even an interruption in the pursuit of our Sadhana. On the other hand, this may be transformed, if we know how to do it, into a sleep of experiences giving us an access to the inner domains of our being. But whatever may be the value of the sleep-existence, to live in the... outwardly conscious and yet lives in the inner being and has at will the indrawn or the outpoured condition." 3 It is thus evident that the irresistible bouts of unconsciousness of sleep to which our body's waking status occasionally succumbs cannot but be viewed as a sign of imperfection in the prevailing organisation of our physical being. What is then necessary is that — and this must ...
... Yoga—they were there all the time. What is meant by the mental control being removed, is that the mental simply kept them in check but could not remove them. So in Yoga the mental has to be replaced by the psychic or spiritual self-control which could do what the mental cannot. Only many sadhaks do not make this exchange in time and withdraw the mental control merely. I find already that at certain... one follows one's psychic being and higher mental will, no amount of pressure of Yoga can produce such results. People talk as if the Yoga had some maleficent force in it which produces these results. It is on the contrary the resistance to Yoga that does it. May 11, 1933 The Mother, in "Conversations", says that the first effect of yoga is to take away the mental control so that the ideas... present state is too disorganised to bear any pressure. May 1, 1933 I read in "The Synthesis of Yoga" that every act, movement etc. must be done as an offering, even if by a mental effort. This mental discipline is easy in acts of mechanical nature but not so easy in those of concentrative nature where the attention gets divided. It is because people live in the surface mind and are ...
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.