... yourself; you yourself must see, you must live them with enough sincerity to see (by being sincere and spontaneous) that they are independent of any mental formations. Because one can take the opposite line and make an intensive study of the way mental formations act upon events—which is very interesting. But that's another field. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you start noticing... concrete results. Page 220 However, you must have at least a little experience of these things to understand them. Otherwise, if you are convinced that all this is just human fancy or mental formations, if you believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have imagined them to be like that, or that they have such and such defects or qualities because men have envisioned it that... . And behind your back, they would say, 'That person is cracked!' ( Later, the disciple asks Mother for some clarification on the 'essential difference' between the occult reality and mental formations ) Once you have worked in this field, you realize that when you have studied a subject, when you have mentally understood something, it gives a special tonality to the experience. The experience ...
... in the body, so to say, and I am in front of my body, looking at it. Not from above. When the force comes down, it has a dissolving power over the mental formations. I can now use this power for placing before the force the mental formations I want to get rid of. This power liberates me and I feel a sensation akin to floating. I never go above, but forward — but I never succeed in cutting all... conscious field. But I think it is not right. No. That is what people ordinarily do. But it simply suppresses the vital movements. You have to call down the same power that dissolves the mental formations and apply it to open the vital. You have to watch and understand the movements, see how they rise, what supports them in nature. The full understanding of this is necessary. I did so in ...
... the rhythmic line". August 1, 1934 Don't indulge in gloomy forebodings. What one fears does not always happen, though it is true that fears and forebodings are mental formations and that such mental formations can give a fillip to the [imps?] of mischief. For my part I propose to make the opposite formation that nothing will happen of importance, even while trying to guard against p... it, can get the full estimation of a poet like Shelley all right. These variations must be allowed for; the human mind is not a perfect instrument, its best intuitions are veiled by irrelevant mental formations; but in these matters t truth affirms itself and stands fairly firm and clear in essence through all changes of mental weather. October 8, 1934 (...) Suhrawardy's 62 opinion about ...
... (She had studied a bit of theosophy also.) She said: "I formed a mahatma ; with my thought I formed Page 277 a mahatma " And she knew (this has been proved) that at a given moment mental formations acquire a personal life independent of the fashioner—though they are linked with him—but independent, in the sense that they can have their own will. And so she told me: "Just imagine, I had made... formation a kind of small envelope, a vital shell which gives it a still greater reality. These people are usually surrounded by a number of tiny entities which are their own formations, their own mental formations clothed with vital force, which come all the time to strike them to try to make them realise materially the formations they have made. You have perhaps read the books of Maurice Magre; there... just imagine! ( Mother points to all those seated in front of her ). You see what you are like, how many of you there, all of you here, and each one has his own little world in this way, of mental formations of which some are clothed in vital substance, and all these crawl together, mix with each other, knock against each other. There is a struggle to see which is the strongest, which tries to realise ...
... made an experiment.” (She had studied a bit of theosophy also.) She said: “I formed a mahātmā; with my thought I formed a mahātmā “ And she knew (this has been proved) that at a given moment mental formations acquire a personal life independent of the fashioner—though they are linked with him—but independent, in the see that they can have their own will. And so she told me: “Just imagine, I had made... formation a kind of small envelope, a vital shell which gives it a still greater reality. These people are usually surrounded by a number of tiny entities which are their own formations, their own mental formations clothed with vital force, which come all the time to strike them to try to make them realise materially the formations they have made. You have perhaps read the books of Maurice Magre; there... So, just imagine! (Mother points to all those seated in front of her). You see what you are like, how many of you there, all of you here, and each one has his own little world in this way, of mental formations of which some are clothed in vital substance, and all these crawl together, mix with each other, knock against each other. There is a struggle to see which is the strongest, which tries to realise ...
... meet these beings, speak to them, even make an appointment with them for the next time! Can they exercise their influence on a human being, as the beings of the vital worlds do? Many mental formations try to realise themselves upon earth, but these are generally created by human beings; they then continue to work in the mental world with the intention of influencing the mind of human beings... you about it, never to explain it to you, precisely because of this ridiculous phenomenon of the mind which begins to "think" about it and brings you "experiences" which have no value: they are mental formations which make a plaything of you, that is all. They have no reality. You must distrust the mind altogether when you want to enter the world of experiences. It is enough for the mind to be just ...
... imagination? If so, no Yoga is possible. One has to take it as an axiom that subjective things can be as real as objective things. No doubt there may be and are such things as mental formations—but, to begin with, mental formations are or can be very powerful things, producing concrete results; secondly whether what one sees or hears is a mental formation or a real subjective object can only be determined ...
... physical; even symbolic visions are real in so far as they are symbols of realities. Even dreams can have a reality in the subtle domain. Visions are unreal only when these are merely imaginative mental formations not representing anything that is true or was true or is going to be true. In this case the thing seen can be taken as true since it has been seen by many and always in the same relation... that there is truth in the principle I enunciated and an important truth for you and me. How much truth and what are the limitations (limitations are invariably and inevitably present in all mental formations) I do not know. Hitler as Duryodhana? Again I do not know. He may be or again he may be much less than that. It is too fatally easy to see Krishna’s enemies or even Arjuna’s enemies in those ...
... by these means that humanity can get that radical change of its ways of life which is yet becoming imperative, but only by reaching the bed-rock of Reality behind,—not through mere ideas and mental formations but by a change of the consciousness, an inner and spiritual conversion. But that is a truth for which it would be difficult to get a hearing in the present noise of all kinds of many voiced clamour... dwelling on the idea of difficulty and unsuccess and incapacity, if not always in the front of the mind, yet at the back and by that they hope to prevent the experience from coming. It is these mental formations that you must reject, for they are a much greater obstacle than the vital feelings to which you give such an exaggerated importance. It is not a fact that you have not had experiences—you had ...
... nature that take upon themselves a voice—then there are all sorts of beings who either for a joke or for a serious purpose invade with their voices. These voices are sometimes one's own mental formations, sometimes suggestions from outside. Good or bad depends on what they say and on the quarter from which they come. This kind of manifestation [ hearing voices ] comes very often at a certain... (very changeful) will of the Mother. All this is well-known to those Page 310 experienced in Yoga, and it means that these things were not intuitions, but constructions of the mind, mental formations. If there was an intuition at all, it was movements of the intuitive mind, but what the intuitive mind gives to us is the intuition of possibilities, some of which realise themselves, some do ...
... When there is a chaos in the brain or a local fever, a particular turmoil in the brain, an overstrain, or if there is a want of control, you let yourself be possessed by mental formations, this is what happens most often—mental formations which, most often, you yourself have made, besides. And as the control of the rational, waking consciousness has gone, all this begins to dance a saraband in the head ...
... pass it on without even being aware of it. They are the first victims. They pass the illness to others. But there are wilful attacks. We were speaking the other day of mental formations and of wicked people who make mental formations to harm you, make them wilfully to do harm. And then there are others who go still a step further. There is a misguided, perverted occultism which is called black magic ...
... are beings of the mental world which are also sexless, not all, but many. There are many of them. There are some of these mental formations which are persistent, you see, which are very well made, very well harmonised, persistent, some kind of mental constructions, mental formations which are living beings, but which pass indifferently from a masculine to a feminine body when they incarnate. It is all ...
... the point.... I don't know where I stand, I don't know on which road I am. I don't know, I know nothing at all! But that's wonderful, mon petit! It means you have emerged from mental formations. It's mental formations that say, "You are on this road" or "You are at that point of the realization" or... For me, that's deplorable! When one is in that, one is still buried in mentality. Page 343 ...
... ideas and beliefs of a people, a civilisation, a race." "Certainly, all ideas are not creative to the same degree. In fact, few minds are capable of thinking real thoughts; and most individual mental formations are no more than distortions, malformations of stereotypes formed by some anonymous thinker which have become common property. The forms they assume in the intellectual substance are usually crude ...
... to a rule of the mind is an indication of a blindness still hiding somewhere." Questions and Answers 1929-1931 ( 19 May 1929 ) Are superstitions mental rules? No, not rules but mental formations. Generally a superstition originates in an experience. For instance, there is a certain superstition in Europe, and you are told: "Never walk under a ladder, it will bring you ill-luck." It is ...
... sahasradala: The thousand-petalled lotus, seventh centre at the crown of the head. samarpana (Samarpana): Entire self-giving, surrender, dedication. samskāras (Sanskaras): Fixed mental formations; impressions of past habits, experiences stored up in the subconscious parts. sattva (Sattwa): One of the three gunas, fundamental qualities or modes of Nature; the principle of light and ...
... only come if the psychic change has been complete or the spiritual transformation has reached a very high state of achievement. For it implies a giving up by the mind of all its moulds, ideas, mental formations, of all opinion, of all its habits of intellectual observation and judgment to be replaced first by an intuitive and then by an overmind or supramental functioning which inaugurates the action ...
... complete preparation of self-purification and widening of the consciousness which is absolutely indispensable. In these invisible worlds there are also regions which are the result of human mental formations. One can find there all one wants. In fact, one very often finds there exactly what one expects to find. There are hells, there are paradises, there are purgatories. There are all sorts of things ...
... and you can multiply thers formations indefinitely if you gibe the necessary time and care. I do not believe at all in limits which cannot be crossed. But I see very clearly people's mental formations and also a sort of laziness in face of the necessary effort. And this laziness and these limits are like diseases. But they are curable diseases unless you have a really defective cerebal structure ...
... by these means that humanity can get that radical change of its ways of life which is yet becoming imperative, but only by reaching the bed-rock of Reality behind,--not through mere ideas and mental formations, but by a change of the consciousness, an inner and spiritual conversion. But that is a truth for which it would be difficult to get a hearing in the present noise of all kinds of many-voiced ...
... entities or these little gods, as some people call them, and be able to verify from above what their statements are worth. If you have a universal mental vision, you can see all mental Page 126 formations. Then you see—and it is very interesting—how the mental world is organised to realise itself on the physical plane. You see the various formations, the way in which they approach and ...
... on whom the necessity does not lie. In any case one thing can never help and that is to despond always and say, "I am unfit; I am not meant for the Yoga." And worse still are these perilous mental formations such as you are always accepting that you must fare like X (one whose difficulty of exaggerated ambition was quite different from yours) and Page 472 that you have only six years ...
... these means that humanity can get that radical change of its ways of life which is yet becoming so imperative, but only by reaching the bedrock of Reality behind,—not through mere ideas and mental formations, but by a change of the consciousness, an inner and spiritual conversion. But that is a truth for which it would be difficult to get a hearing in the present noise of all kinds of many-voiced ...
... can get the full intuition of a poet like Shelley well enough. These variations must be allowed for; the human mind is not a perfect instrument, its best intuitions are veiled by irrelevant mental formations; but in these matters the truth affirms itself and stands fairly firm and clear in essence through all changes of mental weather. 6 October 1934 Contemporary Judgment of Poetry If you ...
... memories. So it is impossible to say that the memory is located in a particular part of the consciousness or in a particular plane. These ideas of past lives are not experiences, they are mental formations trying to give a name and form to something that is true, but you must not attach any importance to the forms the mind gives it. The truth is that there was a connection in past lives, but the ...
... instance of a dream of exact physical prevision. The power to have such dreams is comparatively rare, for ordinarily such previsions come in inner vision but not in sleep. In dreams vital or mental formations often take shape which sometimes fulfil themselves in essence, but not with this accuracy of detail. It is only a particular class of dreams that do that. Most coherent dreams are either symbolic ...
... s 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 substance, of its self behind the ego, goes behind mentality to the timelessness of an eternal present; it is that in it which is ever the same and unaffected by the mental distinction ...
... is presented Page 252 for me to do a particular work (I know the people, some are here, others elsewhere; they're people I am in touch with for the yoga). So I am faced with these mental formations and each one is HELD like this ( Mother grips the thing with both hands ) so that I don't simply brush it aside. Then (it's certainly a good opportunity to go completely crazy!) I slowly bring ...
... realisation is not fixed, not determined, as up to now nobody has concretely existed in a supramental body. And didn’t Sri Aurobindo time and again refuse to define Supermind so as not to limit it by mental formations? Besides, the Integral Yoga is as complex as its object, which is the whole world, and as every practitioner of the Yoga is different, his or her approach has to be different. We may therefore ...
... the necessity does not lie. In any case one thing can never help and that is to despond always and say, “I am unfit; I am not meant for the Yoga”. And worse still are these perilous mental formations such as you are always accepting that you must fare like Barin (one whose difficulty of exaggerated ambition was quite different from yours) and that you have only six years, etc. These are ...
... child. The day before yesterday you said that right from the age of three, more or less, a child's psychic being is "in front", but as a result of intellectual education it is pushed behind by mental formations. Is it possible to educate a child by keeping the psychic being always in front? Yes, it is possible, provided the educator himself remains always in the psychic consciousness. Isn't a ...
... been used to. It was because I had taken help from one of the artists who had drawn for me on the boards the position of Satyavan and Savitri when they had met. He was realistic and had his own mental formations and theories, while I was doing something more subtle and giving only impressions according to the Mother's guidance. I regretted to have taken help from him without the Mother's knowledge. But ...
... believing in all this drama, which is purely imaginary. 7 May 1936 Please explain how these suggestions come to me. They seemed quite real to me. As all suggestions come: they are mental formations that hover in the atmosphere and seize upon any mind that is ready to receive them. 7 May 1936 Do You think that it is very dangerous for me to have attachment? Dangerous for what ...
... could imagine. And my hands were gathering it up in the atmosphere—it was so funny! The body is obviously being prepared for something. But this body is still much too open to people's mental formations, so it has to struggle against... oh! That's my reproach to it—why does it struggle? Why, suddenly, do I have a terrible fatigue falling over me and have to brace myself? The body, naturally ...
... says she has met that famous Tibetan sage with whom she wanted to discuss.... He seems to have made fun of her (she doesn't say so), but she says he "constantly brings you face to face with your mental formations" (he must have shown her that she was feeding on words). And then she adds, "But as for me, I feel, I do feel your love always with me, and everything is fine."—Never! It's the first time in her ...
... 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 substance, of its self behind the ego, goes behind mentality to the timeless-ness of an eternal present; it is that in it which is ever the same and unaffected by the mental distinction ...
... falsehood. How can this be? It is because they go higher and higher in the same plane of consciousness as before and do not rise beyond — e.g. higher and higher in the realm of vital mental formations — not higher beyond mind into the planes that lead to the full supramental. Only today a suggestion from outside advised me to ask the Mother whether the knowledge that comes ...
... most traditional training and education; when they think of the gods they give them attributes and appearances which are popular, which belong normally to entities of the vital world, at best to mental formations but which do not represent in any way the truth of the beings behind. All idols in temples or the household gods worshipped by the many are inhabited by beings who know only how to lead you to ...
... discipline came to me once and said that he had made an experiment: he had formed a being with his thought, he had created something like a Mahatma. He knew and it is a proved fact that these mental formations after a time begin to have a personal life, independently of the author,—although they may be connected with him, yet they are quite independent, in the sense that they have a will of their own ...
... offers, without his mind intervening, he could have avoided much harm, much worry, in order to live a simple and healthy life. He is afraid of doing this and that, he is terrified of breaking his mental formations and he recoils before his habits and his past. If he were not afraid, if he did not have this fear — it is a fear which gnaws at his very existence — he could have lived a noble and a gracious ...
... saying 'Mother'. "Just imagine! It took them years to call her 'Mother'. Isn't it incredible?" "Yes," answered Sri Aurobindo, "I had to prepare them, to remould them gradually. All the old mental formations and traditional habits had to be broken and a new light poured down in their place - all this was not done in a day. For you it is relatively easy, firstly because you are still young and you ...
... discipline came to me once and said that he had made an experiment: he had formed a being with his thought, he had created something like a Mahatma. He knew and it is a proved fact that these mental formations after a time begin to have a personal life, independently of the author,-although they may be connected with him, yet they are quite independent, in the Page 34 sense that ...
... continued calling her again and again. Finally after a few days this dark figure stopped coming at the window. My aunt too stopped cooking in the kitchen alone.' Page 135 These are all mental formations, Dada explained. They are born out of strong suggestions. I've heard of an incident about a revolutionary who had hidden himself in an uninhabited house all alone. All the doors and windows of ...
... forms and inhabited by beings with a density ... analogous to that of the domain in which they live .... In these invisible worlds there are also regions which are the result of human mental formations .... There are hells, there are paradises, there are purgatories .... 22 Such being the nature of the interlinked occult worlds Ascending and descending twixt life's poles The ...
... 3. The sense of wideness means that you get out of the ego into wider world. It is not a mental concept. 4. The symbolic forms have value, are significant; even if they are fixed mental formations, they have meaning. 5 .... Concentration must be free, not strained. That is the true way .... 27.4.1937: Mother saw me for 40 minutes, all conversation. Topic: about the Nada ...
... objection to spinning or weaving. How would "N" like to go on spinning? Disciple : I am already spinning away. Sri Aurobindo : There are all sorts of mental ideas, or rather mental formations which can be carried out and which are being carried out at the other places but this Ashram is not the fit place for carrying them out. Page 79 Disciple : In what way it is ...
... world. Letters on Yoga, pp. 1492-93 The power to have such dreams is comparatively rare, for ordinarily such previsions come in inner vision but not in sleep. In dreams vital or mental formations often take shape which sometimes fulfil themselves in essence, but not with this accuracy of detail. It is only a particular class of dreams that do that [indicate Page 241 ...
... can only work with the primary qualities of things: extension, motion, and mass. Secondary qualities like colour, scent and taste are conditioned by the primary qualities. Like all elaborate mental formations, the scientific method is an instrument, a set of mental formulations which fit more or less together as a whole, and which apply to a certain aspect of ‘objective’ reality. The primary qualities ...
... direct mental expression in physical life. The Japanese use the vital world very little. Their art is extremely mentalized; their life is extremely mentalized. It expresses in detail quite precise mental formations. Only in the physical do they have spontaneously the sense of beauty.’ 23 ‘It was a Japanese street brilliantly illuminated by gay lanterns picturesquely adorned with vivid colours. And ...
... of difficulty and unsuccess and incapacity, if not always in the front of the mind, yet at the back and by that they hope to prevent the experience Page 93 from coming. It is these mental formations that you must reject, for they are a much greater obstacle than the vital failings to which you give such an exaggerated importance. It is not a fact that you have not had experiences—you had ...
... withdraw if necessary. But splashings about on the surface—will it lead to anything? It does not look like it. It is not a physical retirement that is needed, but an inner detachment from the mental formations and vital desires. To find the real self above and within and live in that, not in the mind's conceptions or the vital's reactions. These must be observed and looked at not as one's own but as ...
... on whom the necessity does not lie. In any case one thing can never help and that is to despond always and say, "I am unfit; I am not meant for the Yoga." And worse still are these perilous mental formations such as you are always accepting that you must fare like X (one whose difficulty of exaggerated ambition was quite different from yours) and that you have only six years etc. These are clear ...
... long as you try to understand with the unillumined mind, mistakes and non-understanding are inevitable. Yes, that is the point. The ordinary mind governed by the vital desires and its own mental formations cannot understand—it must fall quiet and allow the Peace and Force to work so as to bring another consciousness with the true Light in it. When that is done, these questionings and their reactions ...
... physical; even symbolic visions are real insofar as they are symbols of realities. Even dreams can have a reality in the subtle domain. Visions are unreal only when these are merely imaginative mental formations not representing anything that is true or was true or is going to be true. In this case the thing seen [ a vision of Krishna, silvery blue in colour, standing in a dance pose playing the flute ...
... directly mental expression in physical life. The Japanese use the vital world very little. Their art is extremely mentalised; their life is extremely mentalised. It expresses in detail quite precise mental formations. Only, in the physical, they have spontaneously the sense of beauty. For example, a thing one sees very rarely in Europe but constantly, daily in Japan: very simple people, men of the working ...
... and you can multiply these formations indefinitely if you give the necessary time and care. I do not believe at all in limits which cannot be crossed. But I see very clearly people's mental formations and also a sort of laziness in face of the necessary effort. And this laziness and these limits are like diseases. But they are curable Page 386 diseases—unless you have a really defective ...
... one would risk being the plaything of all the most disorderly impulses and influences. But once one enters the yoga and wants to do yoga, it is very necessary not to be the toy of one's own mental formations. If one wants to rely on one's experiences, one must take great care not to construct within oneself the notion of the experiences one wants to have, the idea one has about them, the form one ...
... this kind and naturally they clash and contradict one another; hence the strongest and the most persistent will have the best of it. Now, what is it that gives strength and persistence to mental formations?―It is emotion and will. If you know how to add to your mental formation an emotion, affection, tenderness, love, and an intensity of will, a dynamism, it will have a much greater chance of success ...
... that one can hardly say that it is such and such a person whom one has known, for people as we know them are made of what?—of all their physical experiences, all their vital reactions, all their mental formations—that is, the body, the character, the thought—and with these we have a human being! Well, all that cannot persist after death unless it is organised and centralised around the psychic being and ...
... farther and reach identification with the Divine? Page 244 It is impossible. Religion is always a limitation for the spirit. If a man has a spiritual life independently of his mental formations and the set limits in which he lives, then this spiritual life makes him, so to say, cross the religious principles and enter something higher. But his consecration must come from within and not ...
... existence of a hell, a paradise, or various heavens, these places do exist objectively, and when they die they can go there for a longer or shorter period. But still these things are only impermanent mental formations; they carry no eternal truth in themselves. I have seen the heavens and hells where some people have gone after death, and it is very difficult to make them understand that there is no truth ...
... us that our activities must be an offering to the Divine. What does it mean exactly, and how to do it? For instance, when one plays tennis or basketball, how does one do that as an offering? Mental formations are not enough, naturally! It means that what you do should not be done with a personal, egoistic aim, for success, for glory, for gain, for material profit or out of vanity, but as a service ...
... country, family lie there; it is the DIVINE. Source Mental Formation and Progress I do not believe at all in limits which cannot be crossed. But I see very clearly people's mental formations and also a sort of laziness in face of the necessary effort. And this laziness and these limits are like diseases. But they are curable diseases... if you are a normal person, well, provided you ...
... idealism, etc.] that humanity can get that radical change of its ways of life which is "yet becoming imperative, but only by reaching the bed-rock of Reality behind,—not through mere ideas and mental formations, but by a change of the consciousness, an inner and spiritual conversion. But Page 196 that is a truth for which it would be difficult to get a hearing in the present noise of ...
... longer have any effect. Mother, X has broken a porcelain bowl. Yesterday you were surprised that she had never broken anything,—naturally today she has broken something; this is how mental formations work. That is why one must state only what one wishes to see realised. Page 180 You must abstain from thinking about a person when you cannot think anything good about him. ...
... describes all the ways by which images are sent to you—and they are not always images or reflections of the truth of things past, present or future; there are also all the images that come from human mental formations and all the various things that want to be considered. It is very, very interesting. And interestingly enough, in these few pages I have found a description of the work I have spent my whole life ...
... whole mass of things, most of which are quite futile from an ordinary point of view—not to mention the things of which these moral or religious types disapprove. Quite interestingly, all kinds of mental formations come like arrows while I'm walking for my japa upstairs ( Mother makes a gesture of little arrows in the air coming into her mental atmosphere from every direction ); and yet, I'm entirely in ...
... that our activities should be an offering to the Divine. What does this mean exactly , and how can it be done? For instance, when we play tennis or basketball, how can we do it as an offering? Mental formations are not enough, of course! It means that what you do should not be done with a personal, egoistic aim, for success, for glory, for gain, for material profit or out of pride, but as a service ...
... statements. Page 96 With a universal mental vision, you can see (and this is very interesting) how the mental world operates to get realized on the physical plane. You see the various mental formations, how they converge, conflict, combine and relate to one another, which ones get the upper hand, exert a stronger influence and achieve a more total realization. Now, if you really want a higher ...
... concrete as can be. And yet, difficulties pour in from everywhere, not only with regard to health (which is still linked to moral things: the mood, the state of consciousness, the thoughts and mental formations, etc.), but to money, the "paper money" which refuses to come! And in this connection, lately I have seen in a fairly interesting way the difference in the material mental atmosphere: there was ...
... have always been disappointed. And asserting this fact is what had the power of dispelling a whole mass of formations: not only formations of beings of the vital or hostile beings, but the false mental formations of human beings. And here, I wrote: Je ne détiens pas de pouvoirs ["I possess no powers"], which is better than Je ne dispose pas de pouvoirs ["I have no powers at my disposal"]. I had ...
... (Suddenly looking at Nirodbaran and smiling) Will you set Nirodbaran spinning, to begin with? NIRODBARAN: I have been spinning all the time. (Laughter) SRI AUROBINDO: There are all sorts of mental formations that can be carried out. But here it is by the Mother's intuition that, things are taken up and done. PURANI : They have done many things for self-sufficiency successfully at Dayalbagh. ...
... encounter beings whose forms and consciousness are more and more pure and beautiful and perfect. A third point: In these invisible worlds there are also regions which are the result of human mental formations. There are hells, there are paradises, there are purgatories. There are all sorts of things Page 54 in accordance with the different religions and their conception -but these ...
... domain of reverie. Many a time I brushed away the cobwebs of imagination, but they entwined me yet more securely and made me immobile. A curious dread had begun to grow amid the chaos of my mental formations. They persisted on the same track, foreseeing a thousand obstacles, setbacks, mishaps, struggles, sufferings, heedless of the effect they were producing on my body. I felt sick, tormented. A flood ...
... whose different element s are ideations, imaginations, beliefs, judgments, opinions, and many others. Now, in its undisciplined functioning the mind of man is stubbornly attached to all these mental formations and cannot look at anything, be that a person, situation or happening, except through the coloured distorting glass of these tightly-held personal possessions of the individual man. But this ...
... directly mental expression in physical life. The Japanese use the vital world very little. Their art is extremely mentalised; their life is extremely mentalised. It expresses in detail quite precise mental formations. Only in the physical, they have spontaneously the sense of beauty. For example, a thing one sees very rarely in Europe but constantly, daily in Japan: very simple people, men of the working-class ...
... falsehood. How can this be? It is because they go higher and higher in the same plane of consciousness as before and do not rise beyond — e.g. higher and higher in the realm of vital-mental formations — not higher beyond mind into the planes that lead to the full supramental. Before or while rising to the higher spiritual ranges, often we imagine that the ego has been dropped ...
... psychic. Why has the psychic being to pass through the other worlds before reaching its own? Because they are there in between and because so long as the vital and mental formations are there, you cannot go elsewhere than the mental and vital worlds. While passing through the mental and vital worlds, does not the psychic draw back the substance from its mental ...
... , — of acting, of adjusting, of conducting, or of behaving, — by the infusion of the New Consciousness into the knee. All the past habits, the atavism, the essential nature of the cells, the mental formations, the ideas, the ways of conduct, the physical actions and reactions, the vital attractions and repulsions, all, all that constitutes the mode of action, the fear and the spontaneous shrinking ...
... meant Nagin. How do you explain this? I suppose it indicates something to be poured into you by her through H's help. These things seem to be mental and may be mental intuitions or mental formations. At times I feel as if a burning spark enters my forehead. It remains only for a while. What does it indicate? A spark of the higher dynamic force, I suppose. ...
... traditional training and education; when they think of the gods they give them attributes and appearances which are popular, which belong normally to entities of the vital world, at best to mental formations but which do not represent in any way the truth of the beings behind. All the idols in temples or the household gods worshipped by the many are inhabited by beings who know only how to lead you ...
... with The Mother 1940 Mother, Your reply to my letter concerning the after-treatment of washed plants has come as a revelation to me. It is my mental formations and suggestions that have not been allowing me to hear the small inner voice and distorting and disfiguring the true inspirations and impulses coming from You. Mother, when it is Your will ...
... of view, I lived from wonder to wonder." 9 What immediately struck her was the fact that Japanese art, like Japanese life, was extremely mentalised. "It expresses in detail quite precise mental formations." The Japanese people - not the artists and the connoisseurs alone, but the common people also, the working men and the peasants, and even school children - had a spontaneous feeling for beauty ...
... years, her experience was different: her body was able to feel the Divine Presence. There was also the sustained pressure of the new Consciousness in ruthlessly clearing away the cobwebs of old mental formations and in turning the heavy and the obscure and the ugly into lightness and luminosity and beauty: This is the conquest that is being done, this tremendous change: that physical life must be ...
... physical body drops, the being passes into the subtle physical, and from there into the vital world. It exhausts its vital Karma in the vital world, and then passes on into the mental. When the mental formations are dissolved, like those of the vital, the soul goes to its own plane, called by Sri Aurobindo the psychic plane, for rest and assimilation of all its past experiences, acquired both on earth ...
... IMAGINATION The imagination is really the power of mental formation. When this power is put at the service of the Divine, it is not only formative but also creative. There is, however, no such things as unreal formation, because every image is a reality on the mental plane. The plot of a novel, for instance, is all there on the mental plane existing independently of the physical. Each of us is... 97 that her hair was surely growing. By constantly imagining it her hair really began to grow and even reached an enviable length owing to still further auto-suggestion. The power of mental formation is most useful in Yoga also; when the mind is put in communication with the Divine Will, the supramental Truth begins to descend through the layer intervening between the mind and the highest... to you never be dejected and disappointed but let your imagination be always hopeful and joyously plastic to the stress of the higher Truth, so that the latter may find you full of the necessary formations to hold its creative light. The imagination is like a knife which may be used for good or evil purposes. If you always dwell in the idea and feeling that you are going to be transformed, then ...
... Imagination The imagination is really the power of mental formation. When this power is put at the service of the Divine, it is not only formative but also creative. There is, however, no such thing as an unreal formation, because every image is a reality on the mental plane. The plot of a novel, for instance, is all there on the mental plane existing independently of the physical. Each of us... every day and that her hair was surely growing. By constantly imagining it her hair really began to grow and even reached an enviable length owing to still further auto-suggestion. The power of mental formation is most useful in Yoga also; when the mind is put in communication with the Divine Will, the supramental Truth begins to descend through the layers intervening between the mind and the highest... to you never be dejected and disappointed but let your imagination be always hopeful and joyously plastic to the stress of the higher Truth, so that the latter may find you full of the necessary formations to hold its creative light. The imagination is like a knife which may be used for good Page 156 or evil purposes. If you always dwell in the idea and feeling that you are going to ...
... experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how... results entirely concrete. One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain Page 357 defects and certain qualities because men... you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation. Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external ...
... Yes. Obviously on what it means. That is, we must think... Yes. Then? Because that, Mother, becomes a mental function or what? The sentence is already a mental formation; the mental formation is made. The sentence is the expression of the mental formation. So when you meditate on a sentence, there are two methods. There is an active, ordinary external method of reflecting and... form. But if you were to believe that this form was physical, that would obviously be an error, yet it really does exist in the mental world. Imagination is a power of formation. In fact, people who have no imagination are not formative from the mental point of view, they cannot give a concrete power to their thought. Imagination is a very powerful means of action. For instance, if you have a pain... analysis, to understand what it means. There is another method, more direct and deep; it is to take this mental formation, this combination of words with the thought they represent, and to gather all your energy of attention on it, compelling yourself to concentrate all your strength on that formation. For instance, instead of concentrating all your energies on something you see physically, you take that ...
... 9 November 1966 Does the will that a thinker puts into his thought have a power of realisation? Certainly, it is one of the important elements of mental formation. But since each thinker has his own will, it leads to a great conflict of thoughts, which results in doubts. Only will one with the Divine Will is all-powerful. 9 November 1966 ...
... Dilip, Certainly you can come tonight after meditation. I am sending a flower for U with the enclosed written blessings. As for the dream she must not rely upon that, as it is likely to be a mental formation. My force and help are with her but these wordings cannot be from me. Who is this L? If it is B's wife I cannot send her a flower as it is sure to be misinterpreted. If it is the niece then ...
... Golden World was a glimpse which the Mother had given me, and that actually she had taken my consciousness there. But according to our human nature, I thought that the vision might be some kind of mental formation by myself; it could be simply a dream. I wrote to the Mother in order to make sure, because what I had seen had the look of a living thing, which I can never forget. She answered: ...
... Mother laughs ) He clearly knows how to put mental substance into shape—but this handling of mental matter to give it a shape, everybody does it unknowingly, automatically; you only have to think a little strongly for it to be done. Only, people don't see it because they don't have the mental vision. And here, it was so funny [X's mental formation], because it responded so well (that's what made... him a sort of mass of substance, not material but responsive to a mental formation, which means that mental thought and will can make this substance take different shapes—I know it ( Mother makes a gesture of fingering the substance ), it's very like the sort of substance mediums use for their apparitions (less material, more mental, but anyway the same kind). There was a sort of mass in front of him... (it was an unceasing danger, you see), and he very strongly thought that he should concentrate on me to protect me. And the next day, I saw him—but it was an image, a mental formation! I told him, "Yes, you came in a mental formation, it wasn't the same thing." Then he told me that this capacity of discernment is an extremely rare thing. But I always had it, even when I was small. It's a sensitiveness ...
... could not succeed, now it has possessed your brain with a mental formation of disgust for your house and the suggestion that you can not do your work there. This is an utter falsehood. This adverse being knows quite well that your power for painting Savitri 's pictures is closely connected with your studio where a special conscious formation has been created and kept for it, and that if you move elsewhere ...
... sanskara or mental formation which has become habitual and has to be broken up so that you may have a free mind and vital, free for experience. As for the help, you expect a divine intervention to destroy the doubt, and the divine intervention is possible, but it comes usually only when the being is ready. You have indulged to a great extreme this habit of the recurrence of doubt, this mental formation... Their Help Well, what an amazing mass of extraordinary mental constructions you have built up about the Mother and myself! The Mother is a great Yogi of a rather grave and impersonal type! I am Vedantic and vast and cosmic and impersonal and what not! What not indeed! Nothing is impossible after that!! However, I won't protest—for mental constructions are to the mind like his favourite productions... did your mind come to the conclusion that it was a command to be followed on pain of displeasure, spiritual hanging or rejection and exile? The habit of mental constructions, that is all. Fear? Page 121 But the fear itself is a mental construction which could have no real foundation if you had remembered the constant indulgence and patience the Mother has always shown to you. The ...
... The whole thing is from its origin a very well made, a very strong and elaborate mental formation, powerfully designed to catch hold of certain vital elements and forces (both outside and inside the individuals) to rule and use them and through the vital to exercise a partial power over the physical. Formations of this kind are numerous; they translate upon earth into secret societies. (I have... the kind more or less ancient, more or less powerfully organized, but all of a similar type). They are not, in their natures, spiritual. If there is any spirituality in them it comes, not from the formation itself, but from the presence, in the society, of one or several personalities with a spiritual character and achievement. I will speak of certain details in this connection, next time we meet ...
... satisfaction while the will is asleep. "And as desires are veritable dynamic centres of formation, they tend to organise in and around us an assemblage of circumstances most favourable to their satisfaction." "On Dreams" , Words of Long Ago In another lesson we spoke of the power of mental formation: the mind shapes entities which have a more or less independent life and try to manifest... belongs to the vital domain but at the core of this desire there is always a thought, and Page 58 the desire becomes all the more active and dynamic when it holds in itself this power of mental formation and the power of vital realisation. The vital is the centre of dynamism of the being, of active energy, and the two combined make something very strong which has a considerable tendency towards... behind the subconscious world there lies the immensity of the Inconscient. And what you do not know is this that unless you destroy within you the desire itself, that is, the seed of the formation, this formation which you are preventing from manifesting is so to say repressed in the subconscient—driven down and repressed right at the bottom—and if you go and search in the subconscient you will find ...
... these beings or spirits, as they are called, are nothing more than creations of men. That is to say, it is fear that produces them; it is a mere mental formation which is taken to be a reality. And the greater the fear, the more concrete and effective the formation appears to be. I have had to deal with hundreds of such cases and I have found that there are very few which contain anything more than imagination... of our fear. How long do spirits of dead people live in their trees? That depends. There are entities that stay or live only for a short time; there are others that have a stronger formation and may stay on in their shelter for a thousand years, if the trees live to a thousand years. Do such spirits go out of animals also and possess trees ? Not likely. A certain growth... to 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 ...
... these beings or spirits, as they are called, are nothing more than creations of men. That is to say, it is fear that produces them; it is a mere mental formation which is taken to be a reality. And the greater the fear, the more concrete and effective the formation appears to be. I have had to deal with hundreds of such cases and I have found that there are very few which contain anything more than imagination... creations of our fear. How long do Spirits of dead people live in their trees? That depends. There are entities that stay or live only for a short time; there are others that have a stronger formation and may stay on in their shelter for a thousand years, if the trees live up to a thousand years. Do such spirits go out of animals also and possess trees? Not likely. A certain growth and... to 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 ...
... The whole thing is from its origin a very well-made, a very strong and elaborate mental formation , powerfully designed to Catch hold of certain vital elements and forces (both outside and inside the individuals) to rule and use them and through the vital to exercise a partial power over the physical. Formations of this kind are numerous; they translate upon earth into secret societies. I have... the kind, more or less ancient, more or less powerfully organised, but all of a similar type. They are not, in their nature, spiritual. If there is any spirituality in them, it comes not from the formation itself but from the presence, in the society, of one or several personalities with a spiritual character and achievement. In ancient times the teaching of the great spiritual truths was a ...
... experience. If it were not so, the Hindus would always see one of their gods, the Europeans one of theirs, the Japanese a third variety and so on. This may be an addition of each one's own mental: formation, but it would not be the Reality in its essence or purity which is beyond all form. One can have a perception of the Divine Presence, a very concrete perception, one can have even a personal... together and are habituated to each other's Page 27 thought and talk, do not require any definition of the words they use or even a large use to understand each other. There has been a mental adjustment and the words are only an excuse for the inner contact, the contact between brain and brain which underlies or even precedes the words. But when you meet a new person, it takes you time ...
... essential experience. If it were not so, the Hindus would always see one of their gods, the Europeans one of theirs, the Japanese a third variety and so on. This may be an addition of each one's own mental formation, but it would not be the Reality in its essence or purity which is beyond all form. One can have a perception of the Divine Presence, a very concrete perception, one can have even a personal contact... people who have lived together and are habituated to each other's thought and talk, do not require any definition of the words they use or even a large use to understand each other. There has been a mental adjustment and the words are only an excuse for the inner contact, the contact between brain and brain which underlies or even precedes the words. Page 316 But when you meet a new ...
... it means that you make a mental formation which may be close to the truth or far from the truth—it also depends upon the quality of your formation. You make a mental formation and there are people who have such a power of formation that they succeed in making what they imagine real. There are not many of these but there are some. They imagine something and their formation is so well made and so powerful... has remained in the mental domain, you can find him immediately. Naturally if he is no longer in the mental domain, if he is in the psychic domain, to think of him is not enough. You must know how to go into the psychic domain to find him. But if he has remained in the mental domain and you think of him, you can find him immediately, and not only that, but you can have a mental contact with him and... difficult. And then if one wants to go out, not only from the earth atmosphere but from the universal life! To be able simply to enter into contact with the life of the earth in its totality from the formation of the earth until now, what can this mean? And then to go beyond this and enter into Page 230 contact with universal life from its beginnings up to now... and then again to be able to ...
... is not formulated as in the mind. It is a sort of inner certitude which makes you do the right thing at the right moment and in the right way, without necessarily passing through the reason or mental formation. For instance, one may act with a perfect knowledge of what should be done, and without intervention—the least intervention—of the reasoning mind. The mind is silent: it simply looks on and... 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... once what are the right and what the wrong movements in your nature. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Jivatman in the Integral Yoga Communications from the psychic do not come in a mental form. They are not ideas or reasonings. They have their own character quite distinct from the mind, something like a feeling that comprehends itself and acts. By its very nature, the psychic is ...
... wrong path and imperilling your sadhana. What happens to sadhaks who do this is that they make a mental Formation and put it in place of the true embodied Mother here, and then under its inspiration they begin to lose touch with her and disobey her and follow the false suggestions of their mental Formation. The first thing it does is Page 248 to instigate them not to write to her, not to ...
... abstain from thinking of anyone in a depreciatory way. When we meet a person, our criticising thoughts give to him, so to say, a blow on the nose which naturally creates a revolt in him. It is our mental formation that acts like a deforming mirror to that person, and then one would become queer even if one were not. Why cannot people remove from their minds the idea that somebody or other is not normal ...
... the Truth speaking (that's in fact why I started feeling angry), and I suddenly perceived it wasn't he who spoke, it was probably the mental formation of those "Divine Life Society" people who sent you a letter of recommendation for him. I feel it's their mental formation. That's right. Page 370 There's nothing to be done with those government people. They are fully in Falsehood, that ...
... When you imagine a thing, it means that you make a mental formation which may be near to the truth or far from it according to the quality of your formation. There are people who have this power of formation to such an extent that they are capable of realising what they imagine. They imagine some thing and they make such a strong well-shaped formation that they succeed in materialising it. They are truly... of your thought. But this happens in the thought world only; you know nothing of the vital or physical context of the object. Thought is conscious of thought only in the mental world; by your thought you can be conscious of the mental atmosphere of the distant object, of the thought of the person to whom you go, but nothing else, absolutely nothing of his vital or physical. If you want to know... an entirely catalyptic condition. These things cannot be done without someone by your side who has the right knowledge and who can protect you. But the mental exteriorisation happens constantly. It puts you in relation with the mental world. If you are very conscious and the person you see in thought is also very conscious, then you can know of the ideas and opinions which the person might form ...
... vital become active. On the mental plane all the formations made by the mind—the actual “forms” that it gives to the thoughts return and appear to you as if they were coming from outside and give you dreams.... Some people have a very conscious mental life... these people have mentally objective nights. But most people are incapable of doing this; it is their mental activity going on during sleep... works no longer. And you have fantastic dreams, absurd dreams. “The mind is an instrument of formation, of organisation and action.” Why? The mind gives a form to the thoughts. This power of formation forms mental entities whose life is independent of the mind that has formed them.... There is a mental substance just as there is a physical substance, and on this plane the mind can emanate innumerable... one's psychic consciousness and there are not many who are capable of this. One dreams in the mental or vital consciousness but rarely does one dream in the psychic consciousness.... At times, there are dreams which one takes for memories, but they are only symbols: what one sees comes from a mental formation which is objectified on an inner screen and which enacts a scene, so to say, in which you are ...
... Golden World was a glimpse which the Mother had given me—and that actually she had taken my consciousness there. But according to our human nature, I thought that the vision might be some kind of mental formation by myself; it could be simply a dream. I wrote to the Mother in order to make sure, because what I had seen had the look of a living thing, which I can never forget. She answered: Happily ...
... But the mental exteriorisation happens constantly. It puts you in relation with the mental world. If you are very conscious and the person you see in thought is also very conscious, then you can know of the ideas and opinions which the person might form at that time, but even then only indirectly, you do not know directly. When you imagine a thing, it means that you make a mental formation which may... may be near to the truth or far from it according to the quality of your formation. There are people who have this power of formation to such an extent that they are capable of realising what they imagine. They imagine something and they make such a strong and well-shaped formation that they succeed in materialising it. They are truly creators. There are not many like that, but there surely are a few... of your thought. But this happens in the thought world only; you know nothing of the vital or physical context of the object. Thought is conscious of thought only in the mental world; by your thought you can be conscious of the mental atmosphere of the distant object, of the thought of the person to whom you go, but nothing else, absolutely nothing of his vital or physical. If you want to know of ...
... concentrated in a kind of consecration of their being to their literary work, form within themselves a sort of mental entity extremely well-constituted and coordinated, having its own life, independent of the body , so that when they die, when the body returns to the earth, this mental formation continues to exist altogether autonomously and independently, and as it has been fashioned for expression it... has written surprisingly resembles certain things in Maeterlinck or has the characteristics of his writings, even with certain almost identical turns of phrase, we could very well imagine that a mental formation of Maeterlinck has incarnated in this child and is using this young instrument to express itself. There are similar examples, for instance, among musicians. There are pianists who have ind ...
... nature of some people to which a generous nature is often blind, for that helps the growth of one's consciousness. The blow you wince at seems to you so hard because it is a blow the world of your mental formation has sustained. Such a world often becomes a part of our being. The result is that a blow dealt to it gives almost physical pain. The great compensation is that it makes you live more and more... psychic's confidence in the Mother and the surrender that goes with it, i.e. "whatever she wills is best for me", and the vastness which you feel now,—it is the wideness of the true self, of the true mental, vital, physical being also, from which such things fall off like dust, for they are of no importance to it whatever. It is the one thing to do, to get permanently into the wideness, peace and silence ...
... persistently, towards the place where the pain is more or less sharp, and fix it there, this is very good. This is not always enough. But if by widening this movement you can add a sort of mental formation with a little life in it―not just cold, but with a little life in it―that the only reality is the divine Reality, and all the cells of this body are a more or less deformed expression of this... sufficiently not to do that. Second point: as I said, it depends on your habits. If you know how to concentrate, to be quiet, and if you can bring into yourself a certain peace, of any kind―it may be a mental peace, it may be a vital peace, it may be a psychic peace; they have different values and qualities, this is an individual question―you try to realise within yourself a state of peace or attempt to ...
... Europe is one, – not as one country or one nation, not as a homogeneous group of people, like France or Germany or England, but for the commonalty that exists in general in the way of thinking, the mental formation and in the mode of living. Of course there are Muslims in India. Their genius is trying to strike a different note, still the foundation of India and her original character are the Aryan genius... about was but the sole supremacy of a particular country and nation; that means the union of the devourer and the devoured. Another type of union too is at present visible in Europe – that is the formation of groups in their self-interest, each group combining to pool its resources against others. None of these unions is real unity. The compromise, the compact arrived at among different interests are... the 'One Being', purusam ekam. That is the person who alone brings about harmony, unity and oneness in the diverse, innumerable and variegated life of India. The unity of India does not lie in the mental plane alone, gradually it is taking shape in the vital and is going to get embodied even in the physical. It is the descent of the soul-power of India that is pressing to fuse India into a single ...
... sender. In that case a serious accident may happen to the sender of the formation: if one wishes death to another, death may come to himself. That is often the result of black magic which is a de-formation of occultism. Formations are of many kinds. A formation is made for a particular work. When the work is done, the formation too dissolves. But it is a huge and complex subject. You cannot learn... you make a formation – a mental formation, for example, to the effect that an accident or some unpleasant thing should happen to a person and you send out the formation to do its work, then, if it so happens that the person concerned is on a higher level of consciousness, that is to say, if he wishes harm to none, is quite disinterested and indifferent in the matter, then the formation approaches him... sunshine and everything is beautiful. But when you have the other sight, the picture is quite different. You see that the whole atmosphere is filled with a multitude of small formations, which are the remains of desires and mental deformations and they crowd about you in such a way that Page 354 the whole thing gives you a very disagreeable impression. Indeed, it is positively ugly ...
... sender. In that case a serious accident may happen to the sender of the formation: if one wishes death to another, death may come to himself. That is often the result of black magic which is a deformation of occultism Formations are of many kinds. A formation is made for a particular work. When the work is done, the formation too dissolves. But it is a huge and complex subject. You cannot learn... a formation—a mental formation, for example, to the effect that an accident or some unpleasant thing should happen to a person and you send out the formation to do its work, then, if it so happens that the person concerned is on a higher level of consciousness, that is to say, if he wishes harm to none, is quite disinterested and indifferent in the matter, then the formation approaches him... sunshine and everything is beautiful. But when you have the other sight, the picture is quite different. You see that the whole atmosphere is filled with a multitude of small formations, which are the remains of desires and mental deformations and they crowd about you in such a way that the whole thing gives you a very disagreeable impression. Indeed, it is positively ugly more often than not. They come ...
... An outside view may find many things to criticise and criticise much, but from the inner view what has been done has been done well. In an outside view, you come with all kinds of mental, intellectual formations and find there is nothing uncommon in what is done here. But thereby you miss what is behind: the sadhana. A deeper consciousness would see the march towards a realisation that surpasses ...
... seeing. It is therefore a difficulty that cannot be effectively combated by the logical reason alone, but best by the clear perception that it is a self created difficulty—a self-formed sanskara or mental formation which has become habitual and has to be broken up so that you may have a free mind and vital, free for experience. As for the help, you expect a divine intervention to destroy the doubt, and... and the divine intervention is possible, but it comes Page 439 usually only when the being is ready. You have indulged to a great extreme this habit of the recurrence of doubt, this mental formation or sanskara, and so the adverse force finds it easy to throw it upon you, to bring back the suggestion. You must have a steady working will to repel it whenever it comes and to refuse the tyranny... company with me in the old days but it was more in the direction of mental and vital development than spiritually, for at that time I was doing my own sadhana and not putting out any spiritual influence on others—only if anybody asked me, I told him what to do, the result of his effort was his own affair. 17 August 1936 Giving Mental Silence I wrote something on the subject of peace, which I showed ...
... illumined Mind. 2) The centre between the brows in the middle of the forehead. Will, vision, inner mental formation, active and dynamic Mind. 3) The centre in the throat. Speech, external mind, all external expression and formation. 4) The heart-lotus. Externally, the emotional mind, the vital mental: in the inner heart the psychic centre 5) The navel centre. The larger vital proper; life-force... a power and source of life to support the supramental creation Descent into the navel centre 6) The Sun of Life-Radiances (Power-Rays) distributing the dynamis and pouring it into concrete formations. Descent into the penultimate centre 7) The Sun of supramental Substance-Energy and Form-Energy empowered to embody the supramental life and stabilise the creation. Descent into the Muladhara... into Tat Sat and able to identify with it. Believed to be obtainable in its absoluteness only in absolute Trance—nirvikalpa samadhi. All this (first in the Upanishads) is the viewpoint from the mental consciousness. It is incomplete because two things that are one have been left out, the Personal Manifestation and the name of the Mahashakti. The subsequent growth of spiritual knowledge has brought ...
... long-lasting oral sepsis and susceptibility to cold. I don't know whether there is T.B.—but the mental formation of T.B. on N was formed long ago and when you have a mental formation like that, then physical results may come at any opportunity,—pleurisy, a strong chill even etc. Because of this mental formation, the Mother cannot see definitely. The doubt can only be cleared by a blood exam and co... from the terrace to B to come and help. If he did do it with such an idea, it is evidently a suggestion of the hostile force or, if you like to put it more psychologically, he was possessed by a mental formation of an irrational undetermined character. It is of the same class as the ideas which get hold of people's minds and become "fixed ideas", only these are momentary. But even if he did it by mistake... behind the abhiman and the hunger-strikes. Can it be said that because they live more in their heart than in their head, their path is easier? All these clear-cut assertions are mental statements—and mental statements are too clear-cut to be true, as philosophy and science have now begun to discover. Life and being are too complex for that. So doubt having gone and faith coming in, their ...
... in the thing. What I mean is that every definite mental formation always gives a particular colouring to the experience. As for example, with all people brought up in a certain religion their experiences will always be coloured by this religion; and in fact, to reach the very source of the thing one must free oneself from the external formation. But there is a kind of reading which awakens in... how it should be done, not before. If one knows it beforehand, one makes a mental construction and risks greatly living in his mental construction, which is an illusion; because when the mind builds certain conditions Page 208 and then they are realised, there are many chances of there being mostly pure mental construction which is not the experience itself but its image. So for all these... sincere and truthful; it becomes a mental construction. If you have read and read much that it is like a serpent which is coiled up, well, quite naturally when you concentrate and try to awaken it, you see a serpent which is coiled, because you think about it like that. If you are told about a thousand-petalled lotus, you see a thousand-petalled lotus. But it is a mental superimposition upon the fact of ...
... and for them a few general indications may be useful. The starting-point is to seek in yourself that which is independent of the body and the circumstances of life, which is not born of the mental formation that you have been given, the language you speak, the habits and customs of the environment in which you live, the country where you are born or the age to which you belong. You must find, in... exceptional beings it is always this consciousness that governs their lives and organises both the circumstances of their existence and their individual reaction to these circumstances. What the human mental consciousness does not know and cannot do, this consciousness knows and does. It is like a light that shines at the centre of the being, radiating through the thick coverings of the external consciousness... they are the only ones that matter. It is true that this concentration on external things is very useful, provided that it is done in the proper way. The three lines of education—physical, vital and mental—deal with that and could be defined as the means of building up the personality, raising the individual out of the amorphous subconscious mass and making him a well-defined self-conscious entity. With ...
... wrote, they will find all they need to organize the country, and much better, I tell them, infinitely better than what I may say, because he knew the country infinitely better than I do, and the mental formation and everything. People need occasions to do things. But this seems to have been wonderfully prepared ON PURPOSE. ( long silence ) Page 207 Is that all? To write this new ...
... are movements and formations which are what we call thoughts, feelings etc. Page 12 × The correspondent suggested that a mere mental knowledge of spiritual experience might lead one to concoct an experience through imagination or to exaggerate an experience by adding something to it mentally or to doubt an experience... experience, thinking it might be a mental formation.—Ed. ... (honestly imagined) can help to mental realisation and mental realisation can be a step to total realisation. Mental Knowledge and Spiritual Experience These disadvantages of mental knowledge no doubt exist. 1 But I doubt whether anybody could mentally simulate to himself the experience of the One everywhere or the downflow of peace. He might mistake a first mental realisation for the deeper spiritual ...
... answer very forcefully, very clearly, even with words, a precise sentence. If they learned to receive mentally, it would be good. I always answer. And when it's something important and I have some peace, when I have no external action, I even repeat my answer by making a very precise mental formation—they should receive it. ( Mother picks up at random a letter from a Western disciple who asks to change... human life on earth, quite primitive (I mean outside any mental civilization), a human life on earth that wasn't an evolutionary life, but the manifestation of beings from another world. I lived in that way for a time—a lived memory. I still see it, I still have the image of it in my memory. It had nothing to do with civilization and mental development: it was a blossoming of force, of beauty, in a... conversations with him, three or four, on the mental level, and perfectly objective because his reactions were unexpected; to me they were very spontaneous, 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 ...
... people who practised that low deformation of occultism, which is called magic, and they had made formations through magic against someone. But this person happened to be far above this and could not be touched by those formations. So they returned upon those people, fatally. If they had made a formation of death, it would have been they who died. The Mother Questions and Answers (1954): 3 March... commonest laws in occultism—if you make a formation, for instance a mental formation that an accident or something unpleasant should happen to a certain person and you send out this formation, if it so happen that this person is in a very high state of consciousness, does not at all wish anything bad, is quite indifferent and disinterested in the affair, the formation will come up against his atmosphere... more or less long period. In this case it means that the relation was very close, very intimate, and if you are not altogether materialistic to the point of not having any direct mental perception, you can remain in mental contact with this person, in communication with him. It is a rather exceptional case, for usually if your atmosphere is calm and strong enough to be able to truly serve as a protection ...
... puppet, begins to say it, very calmly without knowing why! Is it because of a lack of will? No, it is a mental deformation. There is not much will in this. If the will intervened, it would become less absurd, perhaps. No, they are mental movements, the formation of the mind, the mental force which moves all the time, which comes and goes, like a squirrel in a cage which runs round and round and... cannot concentrate on something that has a form, an objective reality; indeed, everything is carried on exclusively with words in a field of abstraction, it is purely mental gymnastics. And if you can enter into the mental formation of a metaphysician and are able to understand and answer him, it is perfect gymnastics! (A mathematician disciple:) The same thing applies to mathematicians, I suppose... "—They know nothing at all! It is quite interesting, for the more mental activity one has, the more does one indulge in this little game. And there are Page 202 ideas to which one clings! One hangs on to them as though all life depended upon it! I have known people who had fixed upon one central idea in their formation and said, "All the rest may go to pieces, I don't care, but this idea ...
... is converted first, for it is the mind that must have the power to organise the other parts of the being. ( Mother stops and suddenly looks at the disciples .) Someone here has just sent a mental formation that... has taken, if you like, the shape of a blue paper on which something was written. It dropped down whirling, and dropped upon one of you. So I would like to know if anyone has all of a... time to recover, it comes as one progresses, through successive illuminations. 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... is Page 251 an affinity (sometimes merely an affinity, sometimes an identity, depending on the being's degree of perfection), the Force goes there. Those who are still in the course of formation but whose psychic being is sufficiently developed are seen, their vibrations are seen, the being that is there is seen and accordingly the degree of manifestation is determined, the exact line of ...
... people who practised that low deformation of occultism, which is called magic, and they had made formations through magic against someone. But this person happened to be far above this and could not be touched by those formations. So they returned upon those people, fatally. If they had made a formation of death, it would have been they who died. I don't know whether you remember or not the story... commonest laws in occultism—if you make a formation, for instance a mental formation that an accident or something unpleasant should happen to a certain person and you send out this formation, if it so happens that this person is in a very high state of consciousness, does not at all wish anything bad, is quite indifferent and disinterested in the affair, the formation will come up against his atmosphere... many other kinds of formations with more or less durable lives. I tell you it is a science—you cannot learn chemistry in an hour! But still, in a case like that, when the formation returns and strikes the one who has made it, it is finished. Its action is accomplished and comes to an end. Everybody doesn't know the story of the stones.... You narrated it only to the little children, Sweet Mother. ...
... integration in a spiritualised, a universalised and divinised individuality. Such an individual will not be like the blind leading the blind, one ego, in its half-light, with its small narrow mental formation imposing its ignorant and ineffective will upon others in the same state of consciousness, but, as I have said, a universalised individual, who has identified himself with all and everyone in... However, it can be said and admitted as a fact that there is in the East an atmosphere that is predominantly spiritual and one can more easily come in contact with it; whereas in the West it is the mental and material culture that predominates Page 166 and the approach to it is nearer and closer to man. The science of the Spirit has received greater attention in the East; it has been... consciousness. And growth means ascension or evolution from level to level. The individual starts from the organic cell, that is the lower end, it progresses through various gradations of the vital and mental worlds till he reaches the culmination of its growth in the Spirit as atman. But this vertical growth must be reflected in a horizontal growth too. There is a solidarity among the individuals forming ...
... have a keen desire for a certain person to come and that, along with this vital impulse of desire, a strong imagination accompanies the mental formation you have made.... And if there is a sufficient power of will in your thought-form, if it is a well-built formation, it will arrive at its own realisation." 27 In the example given, suppose there is no strong desire in the vital but only thoughts... 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 vital cannot, only many Sadhaks do not make this exchange in time and withdraw the mental control merely. "The strength of such impulses as... are stated,—due to certain mental and physical circumstances—if these are changed, death is not inevitable any longer. Obviously the alteration can only come "if" certain conditions are satisfied,—all progress and change by evolution depends upon an "if" which Page 308 gets satisfied. If the animal mind had not been pushed to develop speech and reason, mental man would never have come into ...
... A dark-blue wave, very high. Dark blue is the mind. ( long silence ) ( Mother laughs ) She's managed the whole affair quite successfully! ( silence ) But there was in her mental formation a DEEP PITY for human suffering, and especially, especially an extraordinary Compassion. Oh, precisely for the suffering of death, for that transition, that moment of transition—the suffering... to. So she would get up abruptly and go. She was an indomitable being, 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... be? Yes, in everyone: it has united. That's what she did, mentally she didn't want to continue to exist INDIVIDUALLY. With the psychic, you can't play jokes of that sort—it went away. But she didn't Page 315 concern herself very much with her psychic—it was the belief she didn't want to believe in, of course! But mentally she dispersed herself (that's not very difficult). But it ...
... integration in a spiritualised, a universalised and divinised individuality. Such an individual will not be like the blind leading the blind, one ego, .in its half-light, with its small narrow mental formation imposing its ignorant and ineffective will upon others in the same state of consciousness, but, as I have said, a universalised individual, who has identified himself with all and everyone in... However, it can be said and admitted as a fact that there is in the East an atmosphere that is predominantly spiritual and one can more easily come in contact with it; whereas in the West it is the mental and material culture that predominates Page 224 and the approach to it is nearer and closer to man. The science of the Spirit has received greater attention in the East; it has... consciousness. And growth means ascension or evolution from level to level. The individual starts from the organic cell, that is the lower end, it progresses through various gradations of the vital and mental worlds till he reaches the culmination of its growth in the Spirit as ātman. But this vertical growth must be reflected in a horizontal growth too. There is a solidarity among the individuals forming ...
... for them a few general indications may be useful. The starting-point is to seek in yourself that which is independent of the body and the circumstances of life, which is not born of the mental formation that you have been given, the language you speak, the habits and customs of the environment in which you live, the country where you are born or the age to which you belong. You must find, in... a being long before something of it becomes perceptible in the life of the body. In brief, one can say that the supramental education will result not merely in a progressively developing formation of the human nature, an increasing growth of its latent faculties, but a transformation of the nature itself, a transfiguration of the being in its entirety, a new ascent of the species above and... looking upon those alone as important. It is true that this concentration upon external things is very useful; provided it is done in the proper way. The three lines of education— physical, vital and mental — deal wtth that which may be defined as the means of building up the personality, raising Page 121 the individual out of the amorphous subconscious mass, making it a well-defined ...
... to us from a vast mental space or ether either as mind-waves or waves of mind-force that carry a significance which takes shape in our personal mind or as thought-formations ready-made which we adopt and call ours. Our outer mind is blind to this process of Nature; but by the awakening of the inner mind we can become aware of it. What you saw was the receding of this constant mental invasion and the... demarcation between different fields of reality. All that takes place in these experiences must not be taken as true—one has to discriminate, see what is mental formation or subjective construction and what is true, what is only suggestion from the larger mental and vital planes or what has reality only there and what is of value for help or guidance in inner sadhana or outer life. Page 264 ... experience is an opening into the inner mental self—the space between the eyebrows is the centre of the inner mind, vision, will and the blue light you saw was that of a higher mental plane, a spiritual mind, one might say, which is above the ordinary human mental intelligence. An opening into this higher mind is usually accompanied by a silence of the ordinary mental thought. Our thoughts are not really ...
... Finally I wrote to K., "Send me the two texts, I will see" (not "see" with my eyes, but like that, "feeling" the thing). The boy did NOT copy. But to me, it's far worse, because it means K. made a mental formation with words—words put in a certain order—and stuffed it into their brains. And they repeat it parrot fashion—naturally, it bears an extraordinary similarity to his teaching. Finally, K. told me... like defined groups, but their positions were changing ( Mother makes a rotating gesture, like the lights in a kaleidoscope ). They were almost like entities. And it was in your atmosphere. Like formations moving about and organizing themselves ( same gesture ), made up of those three colours.... The grey is the grey of spiritual light, spiritual aspiration; the red is the ruby red of the physical; ...
... centre of speech commands "expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces." 6.ĀJNĀCHAKRA :located on the forehead between but a little above the eyebrows. The lotus is white and has two petals. It "governs the dynamic mind, will, vision, mental formation." In a word all mental faculties . When the third eye opens, it is here; then we get the occult vision. All... a power and source of life to support the supramental creation. Descent into the Navel Centre. 6.The Sun of Life-Radiances (Power-Rays) distributing the dynamis and pouring it into concrete formations. Descent into the Penultimate Centre (Swadhishthana, below the navel). 7.The Sun of Supramental Substance-Energy and Form-Energy empowered to embody the supramental life and stabilise the creation... supermind is the first power of the Supreme which one meets across the border where the experience of the spiritualised mind ceases...." Let us note that there is no separate centre for the Supra-mental as it is not organized in the body. The Seven Suns of the Supermind : 1.The Sun of Supramental Truth,—Knowledge-Power originating the supramental creation. Descent into the Sahasradala ...
... and for them a few general indications may be useful. The starting-point is to seek in yourself that which is independent of the body and the circumstances of life, which is not born of the mental formation that you have been given, the Page 32 language you speak, the habits and customs of the environment in which you live, the country where you are born or the age to which you belong... can be at work in an individual long before anything of it becomes perceptible in his bodily life. To sum up, one can say that the supramental education will result no longer in a progressive formation of human nature and an increasing development of its latent faculties, but in a transformation of the nature itself, a transfiguration of the being in its entirety, a new ascent of the species above... exceptional beings it is always this consciousness that governs their lives and organises both the circumstances of their existence and their individual reaction to these circumstances. What the human mental consciousness does not know and cannot do, this consciousness knows and does. It is like a light that shines at the centre of the being, radiating through the thick coverings of the external consciousness ...
... what I mean? Page 321 When one is identified with the Divine, does one see Him in the form one thinks He has? Usually. It is very rare—unless one is able to get rid of one's mental formation completely—it is very rare to see Him quite objectively. Besides, Sri Aurobindo always used to say that the relation with the Divine depended on what one wanted it to be. Everyone aspires for... not be sufficient for there to be a possibility of integral expression.... But that is yet to come; it has not yet been done. And so long as it is not done, one cannot know. For even in the highest mental expression there is something which intervenes, due to the physical body. For the inspiration to come right down to the paper, for instance, well, despite everything, it must pass through very material ...
... discovery, the Mother has given a few general indications: "The starting-point is to seek in yourself that which is independent of the body and the circumstances of life, which is not born the mental formation that you have been given, the language you speak, the habits and customs of the environment in which you live, the country where you are born or the age to which you belong. You must find, in... heterogeneous compound consists of temporary mental, vital, physical personalities; each has its own distinct nature, its influence, its action on the whole of 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... within which exposes every movement to the light of Truth, repels what is false, obscure, opposed to the divine realisation: every region of the being, every nook and comer of it, every movement, formation, direction, inclination of thought, will, emotion, sensation, action, reaction, motive, disposition, propensity, desire, habit of the conscious or subconscious physical, even the most concealed, ...
... is not formulated as in the mind. It is a sort of inner certitude which makes you do the right thing at the right moment and in the right way, without necessarily passing through the reason or mental formation. For instance, one may act with a perfect knowledge of what should be done, and without intervention—the least intervention—of the reasoning mind. The mind is silent: it simply looks on and... be in contact with one's psychic being constantly—there is no time to make the contact, one must be in contact. Between the moment one slips and the moment one is on the ground, if the mental and psychic formation is sufficiently strong, then there is nothing, nothing will happen—nothing happens. But if at that moment, the mind according to its habit becomes a pessimist and tells itself: "Oh! I have... this, whether it could be that, if it is going to be like that, and how it will all end. Well, if instead of letting the mind do this disastrous work, one used the same capacity to make favourable formations—simply, for example, to give confidence to the body, to tell it that it is just a passing disturbance and that it is nothing, and if it enters a real state of receptivity, the disorder will disappear ...
... An outside view may find many things to criticise and criticise much, but from the inner view what has been done has been done well. In an outside view, you come with all kinds of mental, intellectual formations and find there is nothing uncommon in what is done here. But thereby you miss what is behind: the Sadhana. A deeper consciousness would see the march towards a realisation that surpasses... the animal, a being who will remain a man in its external form, and yet whose consciousness will rise far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance. Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to teach this truth to men. He told them that man is only a transitional being living in a mental consciousness, but with the possibility of acquiring a new consciousness, the Truth-consciousness, and capable of living ...
... own formation. Man has an extraordinary power of creation. He has created Page 131 a whole set of godheads in his own image, having the same faults as himself, doing on a bigger scale, with greater power whatever he does. These beings have a relative existence, but still it is an independent existence, just like your thought. When you have a thought, a well-made mental formation which... affection and good will upon the sick person, if you know how to pray for him and make helpful formations, you will do him much more good than if you go to nurse him, feed him, help him wash himself, indeed all that everybody can do. Anybody can nurse a person. But not everybody can make good formations and send out forces that act for healing. In any case, to come back to our paradise, it is a... made. It continues to act independently of you. That is why you must be on your guard. If you have made such a formation and it has gone out, it has gone out to do its work; and after a time you find out that it was perhaps not a very happy thing to have a thought like that, that this formation was not very beneficial; now that it has gone out, it is very difficult for you to get hold of it again. You ...
... simple means of putting an end to this comedy. There is also something else: I am called and I answer; but what people see afterwards, the result, is almost always the product of their own mental formation. They want me to do a certain thing and that is what happens. And I verify this, you see, when they come and tell me, "Tonight you came"; as a matter of fact, they had called me and I had gone... Page 117 body as conscious as possible, make it the most perfect and most conscious instrument of the Divine. He has given you a certain amount of substance and of matter in all the domains—mental, vital and physical—in proportion to what He expects from you, and all the circumstances around you are also in proportion to what He expects of you, and those who tell you, "My life is terrible, I ...
... its subtle body and transcribed to our mind by the appearance of an image or the hearing of a voice. (2) A mental formation stamped by the thoughts and feelings of a departed human being on the atmosphere of a place or locality, wandering about there or repeating itself—till that formation either exhausts itself or is dissolved by one means or another. This is the explanation of such phenomena as... them from place to place. This accounts for what are called poltergeists , phenomena of stone-throwing, tree-inhabiting bhūtas and other well-known phenomena. (5) Apparitions which are the formations of one's own mind but take to the senses an objective appearance. (6) Temporary possession of people by vital beings who sometimes pretend to be departed relatives etc. (7) Thought-Image of... necessary for an action or a purpose and when one means fails, take another. They [ general forces and impulses in the atmosphere ] are able to act with a greater force if they can make a special formation Page 559 than by a general psychological action common to all human nature. The forces are conscious. There are besides individualised beings who represent the forces or use them ...
... to the cosmic Inconscience, not near enough to the original Superconscience; he has to find himself as the mental and vital ego before he can find himself as the soul or spirit. 18 According to Sri Aurobindo, the ego is not fundamentally real in itself but a temporary formation devised by the Consciousness-Force to hold together its action in the body, life and mind in order to aid in... experiences of the outer consciousness, giving one a sense of a separate individuality which is mistaken for one's true self. The ego, which is felt as the "I", is thus a physical, vital and mental formation. It disappears when the true self is discovered. However, Sri Aurobindo's experience, like that of many other sages in the past, affirms that behind the illusory individuality of the... are expressed in the Vedantic concept of Sat-Chit-Ananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss). All things and creatures are united in the One Reality, though they appear to be separate and divided to mental consciousness which is Page 391 an ignorance-consciousness. Through a process of involution, the One Existence and Consciousness is plunged in the universe into its opposite — the ...
... 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 ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are... of the Divine. When there is the full consciousness, the Jivatman and the psychic being join together. The ego is a formation of Nature; but it is not a formation Page 16 of physical nature alone, therefore it does not cease with the body. There is a mental and vital ego also. The base of the material consciousness here is not only the Ignorance, but the Inconscience-that... governs the emotional being; the throat centre -vi ś uddha- governs the expressive and externalising mind; the centre between the eye-brows - ājnācakra - governs the dynamic mind, will, vision, mental formation; the thousand-petalled lotus sahasradala - above commands the higher thinking mind, houses the still higher illumined mind and at the highest opens to the intuition through which or else by ...
... power of formation. Blessings. 4 November 1971 Sweet Mother, Concerning what you wrote yesterday, is the power of formation purely occult or can a mental or vital power of formation also transmit messages? The mental power of formation can certainly transmit messages. But for these messages to be received and understood, the person to whom they are sent must himself be mentally very... corresponds to the significance you have given to it. In that case, does the flower have that quality inherent in it, which men with a certain sensitivity perceive, or does the flower respond to the mental formation of man who has used it for yearsfor a certain purpose? It is rather a more or less widespread collective suggestion. This is how a universal language could be created. But it would necessarily... a particular point (a person or a thing). 1 July 1970 * * * There is a red Canna with a yellow border named Physical centre touched by the Light and a yellow Canna with a red centre named Mental intuitive centre manifested in the physical. How can one know when the colour yellow indicates the mind and when it indicates the light? Yellow going towards green is the mind. Yellow going ...
... months, some years after or... never! You told me once that one must not ask a child to make a mental effort before the age of seven. That is quite different. There it is a question only of the formation of the physical brain which develops slowly, little by little. If you ask of a brain in formation an effort beyond its capacity, you tire it, you overwork it or you make it ill. You say that... consciousness and there are not many who are capable of this. One dreams in the mental or vital consciousness but rarely does one dream in the psychic consciousness. That can happen, but it is rare. At times, there are dreams which one takes for memories, but they are only symbols: what one sees comes from a mental formation which is objectified on an inner screen and which enacts a scene, so to say... psychic light which the psychic being sees immediately and, without hesitation it rushes towards it. Then, from that moment (which is the moment of conception), it watches over the formation of the child, so that this formation may be Page 145 as favourable as possible to the plan it has; consequently its influence is there over the child even before it appears in the physical world. If ...
... dreamt of the Mother telling me, "I will see you at 3 p.m." I asked her for confirmation of the dream. Was it a true one or just wishful thinking? In reply, she wrote, "Something true coated with a mental formation -I thought of seeing you, but 8 p.m. is an impossible time." The next day, when I corrected the error about the time saying that I wrote 3 which must have looked like 8 she wrote, "3 p.m. is quite ...
... talks to us directly, and the winged words go home: The starting-point is to seek in yourself that which is independent of the body and the circumstances of life, which is not born of the mental formation that you have been given, the language you speak, the habits and customs of the environment in which you live, the country where you are born or the age to which you belong. You must find, in... the power of inner calm and mental silence, facilitating "receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being". This is a consummate analysis of the whole science of mental education. In the life of the growing child, a thousand things distract its attention, and hence to forge intelligent attention and lively reception is the beginning of mental education. The child's curiosity... exercises in expansion and central organisation, the next mental discipline would be self-control and resolved self-limitation - and so on to the casting away of all thoughts and perceptions, and the invocation of mental silence, the meditative calm in which the higher lights may be seen reflected, resulting in an accession of peace: ...all mental vibration can be stilled and an almost total silence ...
... longer exists, there is only the unconditioned Infinite. But this is to assume that there is no power of spiritual individuality, but only a power of individuation in Nature. All is then a formation of a nodus of mental, vital and physical Karma with which the one self for a long time mistakenly identifies its being by the delusion of ego. But if on the contrary there is any such thing as an individual... and imposed energy only because there is separation between my outward nature and my inmost spiritual self and I do not live in that outwardness with my whole being, but with a shape, turn and mental formation of myself which I call my ego or my personality. The cosmic spirit in matter seems itself to be so bound, for the same reason. It has started an outward compressed action, a law and disposition... critical moment to exercise a free and virgin choice, while all the time my choice is dominated by its own previous formation and by all that obscure past which I ignore? Granted that Nature works through our will and can create and change, can, that is to say, produce a new formation out of the stuff she has provided for her workings, is it not by a past impulsion and a continuous energy from it that ...
... started my sessions with mantras given by the Mother. I always refer to Mother and Sri Aurobindo in this work. It is necessary to be careful to maintain a silent mind. Any mental agitation must be stopped. If there is a mental formation it can influence the movement of the pendulum. I began by using the circle of ABC’s from the middle of the circle. I silence the mind, then I can hear Mother softly speaking... is useful and helpful to the human spirit. An expansion of physical space is more helpful for the inner life. Also the Western world is burdened by an over-emphasis on mental constructions. It seems that Science drags its mental feet with no sense, yet, of exploration of the higher regions of the mind as outlined by Sri Aurobindo. Also the Western world seems to need a stronger sense of Bhakti [devotion]... Enamoured, is a sensitive man with a round face and fair skin. His eyes are deep blue and though he speaks with a slight stammer he has great inner strength and possesses a highly developed capacity for mental concentration. We have been friends for many years and when I arrived he was quietly sitting in his small cottage nestled in the grounds of the paper factory. We had known one another since the ...
... anāhata —governs the emotional being; the throat centre— viśuddha —governs the expressive and externalising mind; the centre between the eyebrows— ājñācakra —governs the dynamic mind, will, vision, mental formation; the thousand-petalled lotus— sahasradala —above commands the higher thinking mind, houses the still higher illumined mind and at its highest opens to the intuition through which or else by an... head, 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... vision. This inner or occult vision is called by ordinary people psychic vision. It [ the centre between the eyebrows ] is the centre of the inner mind—therefore also of the inner mental will and inner mental vision. Page 237 The centre of vision is between the eyebrows in the centre of the forehead. When it opens one gets the inner vision, sees the inner forms and images of things ...
... many many small compartments. So you find the compartment corresponding to the information you wish to have. You press a button and it opens. And inside it you find a scroll as it were, a mental formation which unrolls before you like a parchment, and you read. And then you make a note of what you have read and afterwards return quietly into your body with the new knowledge, and you may transcribe... and memory the same thing? Not necessarily. Memory is a mental phenomenon, purely mental. Remembrance can be a phenomenon of consciousness. One can remember in all the domains of one's being: one can remember vitally, one can remember physically, one can remember psychically, one can remember mentally also. But memory is a purely mental phenomenon. Memory can, first of all, be deformed and it can... Questions and Answers 1929-1931 ( 23 June 1929 ) You have said that in order to go to the place where all mental movements belonging to earthly life are recorded and preserved, one must silence the movements of the material and physical mind... and put a stop to ordinary mental movements. If the movements are stopped, what is going to happen? We have to do something or other the whole day long ...
... say it is more effective and total, because it is with the truth of his being that I communicate. There is no resistance there, I don’t have to pass through these mental, vital and physical layers ( gesture ), or the psychological formations, habits, the social customs or spiritual deviations, nor the resistance of matter, of ignorance, of inconscience or even of nature which resist my intervention.... the persons whom I see. There are all sorts of methods that I use according to the individual cases. Sometimes when I hear from far a prayer, a call, a sentiment, an ardent devotion, even a mental formation, a sincere aspiration or a vibration, then I concentrate deep within myself to distinguish better and judge the magnitude of this aspiration or this vibration and when it appears in my inner vision... not worry about anything. She will arrange everything.” Remain like this, without thinking of anything. Wait patiently and you will see that everything will be arranged as it should be without your mental or physical intervention. With this attitude you will see how the divine force works to establish peace and happiness in you as well as in the surroundings, and that part which was in revolt and was ...
... We are mental beings and our highest state of the mind, even though golden, is composed of the concepts and percepts of the mind, which are indeed a means of knowledge, rays of the Truth, but not in their nature integral Truth of existence. According to the Isa Upanishad, we can only arrive at the true Truth, if Surya works in us to remove this brilliant and golden but mental formation that hides... the widest formula of the synthesis finally to be effected by humanity. These results are envisaged to be employed for an integral mental and physical life, and the mental and physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. As a result, a synthesis is accomplished of the three degrees of Nature and of the three modes of human existence... descending path, the one I began with Sri Aurobindo; and there, the work is immense. The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even ...
... (12)"An outside view may find many things to criticise and criticise much, but from the inner view what has been done has been done well. In an outside view, you come with all kinds of mental, intellectual formations and find there is nothing uncommon in what is done here. But thereby you miss what is behind: the Sadhana. A deeper consciousness would see the march towards a Page 92 ... the animal, a being who will remain a man in his external form, and yet whose consciousness will rise far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance. Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to teach this truth to men. He told them that man is only a transitional being living in a mental consciousness, but with the possibility of acquiring a new consciousness, the Truth-consciousness, and capable of living... the Mother herself opened this Memorial Convention with these significant words: "Sri Aurobindo is present in our midst, and with all the power of his creative genius he presides over the formation of the University Centre which for years he considered as one of the best means of preparing the future humanity to receive the supramental light that will transform the elite of today into a new ...
... Otherwise you can't ask for anything. Do you understand? When somebody has an ill-will against a person, how does this will act upon that person? It is the same thing. Through a formation, a mental formation. When somebody is very ill-willed and wants to harm you, his will is expressed more or less; at times he does not dare to Page 143 acknowledge this to himself for he would feel... reason, and then, when one realises the reason, there is only one thing to do, just this ( gesture ), as one brushes off a fly. Flies are very troublesome and come back again and again; and evil formations take care! have the same habit as flies. You brush flies away, they return, you brush them away again, again they return. They think it is a game. Have you never noticed, flies take this as a game... July July Questions and Answers (1953) 8 July 1953 "The mind is an instrument of action and formation and not an instrument of knowledge; at each moment it is creating forms. Thoughts are forms and have an individual life, independent of their author: sent out from him into the world, they move in it towards the realisation of their own purpose ...
... would see one of their divinities, Europeans one of theirs, the Japanese one of their own, and so on. Then it would no longer be a pure perception, there would already be an addition of their own mental formation. It is no longer the Thing in its essence and purity, which is beyond all form. But one may have a perception, and a very concrete perception of the Divine Presence, yes. One may have a very... very unconsciousness that you are no longer aware of the truth of your being.... It is a process. You cannot argue whether it is inevitable or evitable; the fact is it is like that. This process of formation and creation is the reason why purity no longer manifests in its essence and in its purity but through the deformation of unconsciousness and ignorance.... If you had answered immediately: "Yes, of... way for all these things. All this is there in different domains and with different vibrations, but the cause of all is the same. It is inconscience produced because of the necessity of individual formation. Once again I do not say that it was indispensable. That is another problem which perhaps later on we shall be Page 71 ready to solve; but for the moment we are obliged to state that that's ...
... connote specially that part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc. that are part of man's intelligence. The ordinary mind has three main parts: mind proper, vital mind, and physical mind. The mind proper... transcendental. Circumconscient — the subliminal has a formation of consciousness which projects itself beyond the mental, vital, subtle physical and gross physical sheaths and forms a circumconscient, an environing part of itself, through which it receives the contacts of the world outside us. cittākāś a — mental ether. Consciousness-Force, the Force — the Conscious... overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole of manifestation. Ego —the "I" constituted by a mental, vital and physical formation which serves to centralise and individualise the outer consciousness and action; when the true self is discovered, the utility of the ego ceases, this formation disappears and the true individuality is felt in its place. Environmental consciousness — ...
... and for them a few general indications may be useful. The starting-point is to seek in yourself that which is independent of the body and the circumstances of life, which is not born of the mental formation that you have been given, the language you speak, the habits and customs of the environment in which you live, the country where you are born or the age to which you belong. You must find, in... experience, all that you think. A story-day in the Mother's class for children Page 515 To complete this movement of inner discovery, it is good not to neglect the mental development. For the mental instrument can be equally a great help or a great hindrance. In its natural state the human mind is always limited in its vision, narrow in its understanding, rigid in its conceptions... than that of the human mind, even beyond the region of pure ideas. The mind has to be made silent and attentive in order to receive knowledge from above and manifest it. For it is an instrument of formation, organisation and action. And it is in these functions that it attains its full value and real utility. Another practice may be very helpful for the progress of the consciousness. Whenever there ...
... classes, a sentence or a group of sentences from the Dhammapada was read, and the children were asked to meditate for a while. What was the purpose of the brief meditation? A sentence was but a mental formation, and wouldn't meditation on a sentence degenerate into a cerebral exercise? When the question was asked in the Wednesday class on 27 August, the Mother said that, ordinarily, one could try to... was the creator-spirit, the soul, the law, the Mother was the architect, the executrix, of the new unfoldment. Together the divine collaborators had set all doubts at rest, cleared whole jungles of mental resistance, harnessed the tides of human emotion and energy to good purpose, and trained a community of sadhaks ready to aspire, to labour, to receive, to surrender - to be kneaded and made 'new'... serve this useful purpose: When I give you a thought it is simply to help you to concentrate.... And this I am going to do with a very precise, very definite purpose: to bring you out of your mental somnolence and compel you to reflect and try to understand what I tell you. 3 III The Wednesday readings from The Life Divine, of course, went into the heart of the Aurobindonian testament ...
... it the mind that shows the absurdity of this request? It is a mental formation prompted by a desire of the vital, which protests and rebels because it cannot be fulfilled. These formations are autonomous entities . That is why, once they are made, the conscious will loses nearly all control over them unless a counter-formation is made to destroy them . Something like this, for example: " I do... must be done immediately. I am not feeling comfortable about the dining room. It is not by merely saying: "nothing will happen" that an accident can be avoided. Your mental formation may be strong, but the contrary formation is at least as strong as yours—and we must never tempt the adverse forces. Page 14 I ask you to discard all obstinacy and to be perfectly sincere . Go and see... I put forth all the necessary force for it to become an effective formation charged with the power of realisation, and I said that the work could proceed, adding in a few words how it was to be done. (This was long ago—the first time it was decided to distemper the walls of X's apartment, perhaps more than a year ago.) My formation was so living, so real, so active, that I made the mistake of not reminding ...
... already the right attitude. Blessings. 2.4.1970 Without mental silence it is really difficult to know the Divine Will. It is almost impossible because always there is the risk of taking one's .own mental formation for the expression of the divine will. . A great intensity of aspiration can help towards this mental silence (an aspiration not formulated in words). Blessings... ego must abdicate. Only one will has value: the Supreme Lord's. 5.10.1970 Without mental silence I am no longer joyful on the way. If you have mental silence at will, it is already c great accomplishment and it should give patience for the day when the whole life will pass in mental silence. 7.10.1970 Your Victory, O Mother Divine, Your own victory... Presence in a total abandonment. But if you have not yet learnt to do this in the body, not mentally, it is better to go to Rigos who will treat you. Blessings. 18.4.1970 I find very interesting the method indicated by You to stop tooth-ache and I hope to learn it with mental silence and progress in the body. It is very good. You can count upon my help. Blessings ...
... Although a ‘philosophical’ Buddhist and therefore logically an atheist, Alexandra was also interested in occultism. Putting some of her reading and travelling experiences together, she had by mental formation tried to create a ‘mahatma’ – mahatmas 91 were ‘in’ at the time – and succeeded in doing so. But then her mahatma never left her alone and became such a botheration to Alexandra that she tried... tried to get rid of him by all possible means, though in vain. Finally, she had to confide in Mirra, the occult expert, and received the necessary advice to reabsorb into herself the mental formation which the troublesome mahatma was. ‘Madame David-Néel was an intense woman and capable of profound meditation,’ said the Mother. And she gave an example. On her journey to the north of the Indian su... and the explorations of the occult realms. With Richard she had entered a period of mental development in the most comprehensive way: ‘a study of all the philosophies, all the conceptual juggling in the minutest details, delving into systems, getting a grasp on them.’ It was the experience and development of the mental capacities ‘taken to the uppermost limit where you can play with all ideas, when the ...
... don't propose to do the whole business of the inside and outside off our own bat. You are as necessary for this as X for the building or others for their work. Another thing—why should a mental formation obstruct the supramental? Who told you we are acting from supramental consciousness? We are not and cannot until the confounded quarrel with Matter is settled. 1 February 1935 Page... under Conditions Can't you send me some force? I am willing to try to believe or à la X remain passive—but I am not so foolish and irrational not to avail myself of any kindly force because of my mental reservations. As for the Force, I shall write some other time. I have told you that it is not always efficacious, but works under conditions like all forces; it is only the supramental Force that... attachment and the demands it makes, it is because there is in her own vital a resistance to the Force that would remove it. If there were the complete consent in the being for giving it up (not only mental wish or prayer, however strong), it could not possibly last—at any rate in this form,—only at most for a time in fragments of the old habit. There is in her vital a certain violence of temperament—I ...
... variety and the multiplicity of the specialized jobs, it will be necessary to bring out and define the essential features of an education which can serve for all those tasks. What kind of basic mental formation should a be a young man have coming out from university or technological Page 63 institute, irrespective of his graduation subjects? What would make him a valuable asset... indications which The Mother gives to a young seeker: The starting-point is to seek in yourself that which is independent of the body and the circumstances of life, which is not born of the mental formation that you have been given the language you speak, the habits and customs of the environment in which you live, the country where you are born or the age to which you belong. You must find, in... such as books and magazines, radio and television broadcasts, exhibitions, travel arrangements. This will make it possible for him to pursue all his life the cultural formation started at school, so that the two aspects of formation, the professional or functional and the personal or cultural, can be kept harmoniously blended for the benefit of the individual and the society alike. In view ...
... yogic consciousness and its experiences and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - II: Concentration... governance which discloses and quietly and patiently removes all imperfections, brings the right mental and vital movements and reshapes the physical consciousness also. Another method is to stand back detached from the movements of the mind, life, physical being, to regard their activities as only a habitual formation of general Nature in the individual imposed on us by past workings, not as any part of our... the other way. That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one must open the silent mental consciousness upward to all that is above mind. After a time one feels ...
... that act through the human intermediary, or is the person himself the origin of the mischief? It can be anything and in fact is in different cases very different things, from simply a wrong mental formation to the action of an adverse force, entity or being, through all the scale of human bad will. September 1964 Sweet Mother, I have received a question. In the Tantric system, ... Large crowds were gathering. And when She appeared, ill-willed people emerged as if from hidden places and started jumping up and down to create a disturbance. There was even a group in military formation and dress, standing just below Mother, pointing their weapons at her. But the Darshan went off as scheduled and Mother gave Darshan without taking any note of these happenings. There was something... centres) may break open to let the force pass upward—this is more probable. But for each one the experience is different, and to try to make a rule by which all experience has to proceed, is childish mental nonsense. The Spirit is free and will always be free in its workings. 3 October 1964 Sweet Mother, Last August Y met me and asked whether it is permissible for disciples of Sri ...
... 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 & therefore full of illusions & falsehoods. Loud... 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 to the infra-mental material & animal world out of which... Loud roared the lightning of this lord of abundance when the human split apart the non-human; he drank of the wine of delight that had been pressed & he trod down the conscious formations of the Divider with his forms of the illusion. 11) पिबपिब इत् इंद्र शूर सोमं मंदंतु त्वा मंदिनः सुतासः । पृणंतः ते कुक्षी वर्धयंतु इत्था सुतः पौरः इंद्रं आव ।। शूर । बलवन् ।। पिबऽपिब । आदरार्था वीप्सा ...
... many many small compartments. So you find the compartment corresponding to the information you wish to have. You press a button and it opens. And inside it you find a scroll as it were, a mental formation which unrolls before you like a parchment, and then you read. then you make a note of what you have read and afterwards return quietly into your body with the new knowledge, and you may transcribe... action and formation and not an instrument of knowledge". 33 Thought is most often imperfect, incomplete or perverse knowledge, and no wonder it causes perplexity and confusion. Much better would it be to silence Thought and listen in Silence: If you listen in silence, you will hear rightly and understand rightly. 34 In the pursuit of the Divine, one has to abandon all mental conceptions... conceptions and transcend Thought; and one of the common mental conceptions is that microbes cause illnesses. But there is also the inner condition of the body, for any disharmony within - in the physical, vital or mental - can equally father ailments. This problem was to come up again for discussion on 22 July 1953, when the Mother went into considerable detail. Normally we are under Divine protection ...
... at all but a subjective mental formation. But this objection is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of spiritual knowledge. Spiritual truth is a truth of the spirit, not a truth of the intellect, not a mathematical theorem or a logical formula. It is a truth of the Infinite, one in an infinite diversity, and it can assume an infinite variety of aspects and formations: in the spiritual evolution... general worldly questions — though even there it is a very fallible judge — or in the formation of metaphysical conclusions and generalisations; but its claim to be the decisive authority in matters of yoga or in spiritual things is untenable. The activities of the outward intellect there lead only to the formation of personal opinions, not to the discovery of Truth. It has always been understood... discovery and as much of its contents as can at all be expressed in mental terms to those who still live in the mental intelligence.... In the East, especially in India, the metaphysical thinkers have tried, as in the West, to determine the nature of the highest Truth by the intellect. But, in the first place, they have not given mental thinking the supreme rank as an instrument in the discovery ...
... contact with the soul of a human being in its subtle body ... 2.A mental formation stamped by the thoughts and feelings of a departed human being... 3.A being of the lower vital planes who has assumed the discarded vital sheath of a departed human being or a fragment of his vital personality...; 4.... formations of one's own mind... [taking] to the senses an objective appearance. ... 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 total being is constituted of five "Koshas" or sheaths and envelopes, such as, "Annamaya Kosha" (material envelope), "Prạnamaya Kosha" (vital envelope), "Manomaya Kosha" (mental envelope)... part of a man's being are left behind in the physical world; the vital elements in the corresponding vital world; and the mental elements in the mental world. Just as the soul first drops its physical sheath at the moment of so-called "death", it discards too its vital and mental sheaths after some time, short or long, depending on many variable circumstances. But that does not mean that nothing will ...
... many parts of the mind, each a force in itself with its formations, functionings, interests, and they may not agree. One part of the mind may be spiritually influenced and like to think of the Divine and obey the spiritual impulse, another part may be rational or scientific or literary and prefer to follow the formations, beliefs or doubts, mental preferences and interests which are in conformity with... governs the emotional being; the throat centre, Vishuddha, governs the expressive and externalising mind; the centre between the eye-brows, Agnachakra, governs the dynamic mind, will, vision, mental formation; the thousand-petalled lotus, Sahasradala, above commands the higher thinking mind, houses the still higher illumined mind and at the highest opens to the intuitive through which or else by... into the vital plane where it remains till the vital sheath dissolves. Afterwards it passes, if it is mentally evolved, in the mental sheath to some mental world and finally the psychic leaves its mental sheath also and goes to its place of rest. If the mental is strongly developed, then the mental part of us can remain; so also can the vital, provided they are organised by and centred round ...
... 360 summit. No blind revivalism, this; nor an uncritical acceptance or rejection of everything new-fangled, everything imported and alien. The mould of the old social organisation and mental formation was broken already, giving Indians of the new age a priceless opportunity to remould "in larger outlines and with a richer content": Our half-aristocratic, half-theocratic feudalism had... Divine Command whenever it might come. Thus it was that in mid-February, whatever his contingency plans before, when the ādeś actually came, "Go to Chandernagore" - it was the countermanding of a mental plan and the issue of a Divine Command - he followed it implicitly. And in Motilal Roy's upstairs room, Sri Aurobindo must have felt a sudden cleansing of the dust and odour of politics, for he was ...
... An outside view may find many things to criticise and criticise much, but from the inner view what has been done has been done well. In an outside view, you come with all kinds of mental, intellectual formations and find there is nothing uncommon in what is done here. But thereby you miss what is behind: the Sadhana. A deeper consciousness would see the march towards a realisation that surpasses... alone, rejection of ego and all the ordinary vital movements and the training in a psychic elevation, selflessness, obedience, renunciation of all mental, vital or other self-assertion of the limited personality. Self-affirmation is not the aim, the formation of a collective Vital ego is also not the aim. The merging of the little ego in union with the Divine, purification, surrender, the substitution... that one must have, and if you have it nobody can take it away from you. The Mother An austere truth The freedom of which I speak is the freedom to follow the soul's will and not that of mental and vital whims and fancies. The freedom of which I speak is an austere truth which tends to surmount all the weaknesses and desires of the lower, ignorant being. ...
... the past and present in the interest of the future. He has a mental life which is often enslaved to the vital force and its desires and passions, and it is these he seeks to satisfy through the mind: but when he interests himself strongly in mental things, he can become the mental adventurer, the opener of the way to new mind-formations or the fighter for an idea, the sensitive type of artist, the... secure, if somewhat inert, material basis on which she can 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... e and impulsive formations of life-consciousness emerging from the subconscient, along with a customary crowd or round of sensations, desires, Page 745 hopes, feelings, satisfactions which are dependent on external things and external contacts and concerned with the practical, the immediately realisable and possible, the habitual, the common and average. He has a mental part, but this too ...
... 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 ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that... movements of this mental Inhabitant; it is only by setting the corporeal instrument in motion that the Conscious Being emerging, evolving in it can transmit its mind formations, will formations and turn them into a physical manifestation of itself in Matter. The capacity, the processes of the instrument must to a certain extent reshape the mind formations in their transition from mental shape into physical... the past and present in the interest of the future. He has a mental life which is often enslaved to the vital force and its desires and passions, and it is these he seeks to satisfy through the mind: but when he interests himself strongly in mental things, he can become the mental adventurer, the opener of the way to new mind-formations or the fighter for an idea, the sensitive type of artist, the ...
... sympathy the latter's position as a questioning seeker and then coming down to his level of intelligence and receptivity. To give an instance in point: "I had come to the Ashram with a strong mental formation in favour of asceticism. So... I wanted to debouch into inaction of the sattwic type, to shine as a living example of inaction, bhakti and wisdom!... [I wondered] why must Sri Aurobindo go... are from Sri Aurobindo's correspondence with Dilip Kumar. (1) Mental consciousness viz-d-vis Divine Consciousness: "I would ask one simple question of those who would make the intellectual mind the standard and judge of spiritual experience. "Is the Divine something less than Mind or is He something greater? Is mental consciousness with its groping enquiry, endless argument, unquenchable... become a half-full jar after being a full one or was he never full? Did he get far away from God and so begin work? Or had he reached a condition in which he was bound neither to rajasic work and mental prattling nor to inactivity and silence, but could do, from the divine realisation, the divine works and speak, from the inner consciousness, of the divine world? If the last, then perhaps, in spite ...
... Golden World was a glimpse which the Mother had given me, and that actually she had taken my consciousness there. But according to our human nature, I thought that the vision might be some kind of mental formation by myself; it could be simply a dream. I wrote to the Mother in order to make sure, because what I had seen had the look of a living thing, which I can never forget. She answered: 16 ... edition of Savitri was published in 1954 by the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education: Savitri is occult knowledge and spiritual experience. Some part of it can be understood mentally—but much of it needs the same knowledge and experience for understanding it. Nobody here except myself can explain Savitri. One day I hope to explain it in its true sense. On 18th January ...
... of ignorance, — physical, vital, mental, — which are presented to it by the Ignorant Prakriti. Hence, the individual in the Ignorance has three poises of the Purusha corresponding to three currents of the formations of Prakriti. In the physical formation of Prakriti, the individual takes the poise of the physical Purusha (annamaya purusa), in the vital formation of Prakriti, the individual takes... takes the poise of the vital Purusha (prānamaya purusa), and in the mental formation of Prakriti in the human complex, the individual takes the poise of the mental Purusha (manomaya purusa). But these assumptions of the Purusha corresponding to gradual formations of forms of Prakriti have behind them the consent of the Purusha, and the capital point of importance is that the Purusha has the freedom... varying play of diversity. In our lower experience of human consciousness, the individual soul is found in the complex formation of body, life and mind. The body, life and mind are formations of material energy of Prakriti, vital energy of Prakriti and Page 115 mental energy of Prakriti; corresponding to these three levels of Prakriti, there are three poises of the Purusha consciousness ...
... by earth-existence, but created as an annexe to the descending world-order and a prepared support for the evolutionary terrestrial formations; here evil may appear, not as inherent in all life, but as a possibility and a pre-formation that makes inevitable its formation in the evolutionary emergence of consciousness out of the Inconscient. However this may be, it is as an outcome Page 628 ... largely directed and used by the vital urge for its life-desire and life-purpose. For as mind develops, there develops also a mental Page 641 individuality with a personal drive of mind-tendency, a mental temperament, a mind formation of its own. This surface mental individuality is ego-centric; it looks at the world and things and happenings from its own standpoint and sees them not as they... causes endure, the effects also will persist in our action and in our nature. A mental control can only be a control, not a cure; a mental teaching, rule, standard can only impose an artificial groove in which our action revolves mechanically or with difficulty and Page 650 which imposes a curbed and limited formation on the course of our nature. A total change of consciousness, a radical change ...
... movements the action that goes outward. If I were to come now without the help of a favourable new age to externalise my spirit, I should have to begin by a form of mind corresponding to my last mental formation and start from that working out of it what was opposed to the action. I should not be a sufficient force for help to the world at this critical period. I might even join myself to old ideas having... several centres, and the whole thing will be of a fluid character before there is any decisive formation. I should say, do not fix things beforehand, but let the force that descends have freedom of movement, the freedom as of waters descending and flowing in many directions, afterwards the solid formation. My opinion is of no great value in that matter. The progress in these matters comes usually... and uncertain action in the movement. Kutthumi represents a Deva, not a Jnana Deva, but a certain kind of thought deva who responds with a limited light but a great abundance of curious thought formations to the greater Idea that comes from the supramental level. Maurya represents an Asura who has stopped short on the way to Devahood, a being of aggressive thought force and great vital vehemence ...
... yogic consciousness and its experiences and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature. Page 29 If the psychic is awake and in... which discloses and quietly and patiently removes all imperfections, brings the right mental and vital movements and reshapes the physical consciousness also. Another method is to stand back detached from the movements of the mind, life, physical being, to regard their activities as only a habitual formation of general Nature in the individual imposed on us by past workings, not as any part... is not formulated as in the mind. It is a sort of inner certitude which makes you do the right thing at the right moment and in the right way, without necessarily passing through the reason or mental formation. For instance, one may act with a perfect knowledge of what should be done, and without intervention — the least intervention --- of the reasoning mind. The mind is silent. It simply ...
... Yogic consciousness and its experiences and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature. Page 307 I was very glad to get your letter... which is that of the above-mind or higher consciousness; a centre in the forehead between the eyebrows which is that of the thinking mind, mental will, mental vision; a centre in the throat which is that of the expressive or externalising mind: these are the mental centres. Below comes the vital—the heart (emotional), the navel (the dynamic life-centre), another below the navel in the abdomen which is... physical centre. Behind the heart is the psychic centre. If one concentrates in the head as many do it is a mental-spiritual meditation one seeks for, if in the heart it is a psychic meditation; these are the usual places where one concentrates. But what rises up first or opens first may not be the mental or psychic, but the emotional or the vital; that depends on the nature—for whatever is easiest to open ...
... at all but a subjective mental formation. But this objection is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of spiritual knowledge. Spiritual truth is a truth of the spirit, not a truth of the intellect, not a mathematical theorem or a logical formula. It is a truth of the Infinite, one in an infinite diversity, and it can assume an infinite variety of aspects and formations: in the spiritual evolution... indeed, a complex of half-effects of the psychic pressure on the mental and vital parts, a formation mixed with mental aspiration and vital desires, is mistaken for the soul, just as the separative ego is taken for the self, although the self in its true being is universal as well as individual in its essence,—or just as a mixture of mental aspiration and vital enthusiasm and ardour uplifted by some kind... mentalised life; its movements are involved in the mind movements, its operations seem to be mental and emotional activities; the mental human being is not aware of a soul in him standing back from the mind and life and body, detaching itself, seeing and controlling and moulding their action and formation: but, as the inner evolution proceeds, this is precisely what can, must and does happen,—it is ...
... attained by the nature, that is to say, the basis provided in its formation for the revelation of what is itself infinite; let the delight be in accordance; then let the action proceed from that basis of formed knowledge & delight, but swahakrita, turned into a self energy which produces fresh results & arrives at fresh formations through those results. Vijnana Once more active in script... But the continuity is still too dependent on Asana. Krishnabhava & Darshana Krishnabhava is often obscure in the mentality, although fixed. Ishwaradarshan (Anandamaya) is combated by the mental formation of the jnanam Brahma and the perception of the udvigna Anandabhava. This disappears only by the recovery of Chidghanananda— Utthapana Back & loins, 8 minutes, maintained with immense... In this purification & refinement there are necessarily two processes corresponding to two necessities. First the mental & nervous reactions must all become satya, so that in the end there may be no anritam in Etat falsifying the vijnana; secondly, the mental & nervous action must be translated into the terms of vijnana, thus becoming ritam, & eventually being replaced by the total v ...
... his little formation of the most ordinary mind, which fabricates everyday life like in a narrow prison. 67.2110 Then there are all those old things that come from human atavism: be reasonable, prudent, shrewd ... take precautions, be provident, oh!... The whole fabric of ordinary human equilibrium. It's so sordid! And the whole mentalization of the cells ... The cells are “mentalized,” that is... film of difficulties, of complications, added on by the human consciousness (it's much stronger in man than in the animal; the animal doesn't have that: it's something specific to man and the mental formation), and it's something very thin — it's thin like an onion skin, dry like an onion skin, and yet it spoils everything. It's that stupid “onion skin” of the human mentality. An onion skin, you know:... silently and invisibly, by a slow and innumerable formation of new microscopic ways of being in the smallest gestures of each minute and the slightest little vibration in the nerves that is difficult to understand — and I did not really understand. Mother tried to explain to me: 67.3012 That's what this body is now learning — to replace the mental government of intelligence by the spiritual government ...
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