... preliminary. 26 Mental knowledge is of little use except sometimes as an introduction pointing towards the real knowledge which comes from a direct consciousness of things. 27 You have to learn by experience. Mental information (badly understood, as it always is without experience) might rather hamper than help. In fact there is no fixed mental knowledge about these things, which... Eckhart attaches little importance to mental knowledge in spiritual teaching, whereas Sri Aurobindo regards an intellectual preparation as a possible "first step in a powerful Yoga" in spiritual life. This is probably because Eckhart had a transformative experience Page 87 without any prior acquisition of mental knowledge about spiritual life. The mental understanding... a alluded to earlier (p. 20). The first of the four aids—Shastra—which consists of "the knowledge of the truths, principles, powers, and processes that govern the realization"—is usually the mental knowledge that one acquires from books and reacher. Almost all spiritual teaching starts with some mental concepts. Thus, the exposition of the Gita begins with the chapter on "Buddhi 23 Yoga," the ...
... psychic phenomena. Even imagined experiences (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... have no mental knowledge can also make these mistakes. The disadvantage of the one who does not know mentally is that he gets the experience without understanding it and this may be a hindrance or at least retardatory to development while he would not get so easily out of a Page 9 mistake as one more mentally enlightened. Usually they [ persons without mental knowledge of the Self... Self ] feel first through the psychic centre by union with the Mother and do not call it the Self—or else they simply feel a wideness and peace in the head or in the heart. Previous mental knowledge is not indispensable. I have seen in more cases than one sadhaks getting the Brahman realisation and asking "what is this?"—describing it with great vividness and exactness but without any of the known terms ...
... , p. 95. Page 148 before may be trenchantly put in the following words of Maurice Mehauden: "There is no veritable 'Ineffable' in the sense of any supernormal, supra-mental knowledge: there is only some sort of illusion which might be termed the 'Ineffable-Pseudo-knowledge', an illusion that blends in the complacent mystic into what might be called the 'Ineffable-Fairydom... parts of our mentality, - Mind has to make room for another consciousness which will fulfil Mind by transcending it or reverse and so rectify its operations after leaping beyond it: the summit of mental knowledge is only a vaulting-board from which that leap can be taken. The utmost mission of 33. The Life Divine, pp. 1016-17. Page 152 Mind is to train our obscure consciousness... the role of a guide and governor of mental action and thus gives to the mind 'a sense of sure definiteness, security and completeness in its knowledge'. But, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out: "Mental knowledge is not an integral but always a partial knowledge. It adds constantly detail to detail, but has a difficulty in relating them aright; its wholes too are not real but incomplete wholes which it ...
... mind. Disciple : Can an individual in the supermind know the function of, and deal with, the material world without the direct intervention of mental knowledge ? Sri Aurobindo : When it is perfect there is no more need of mental knowledge. Disciple : I mean to say this : take a piece of glass : it is found by experiment that certain substances in certain proportions are necessary... Disciple : Can these forces take possession when the man Page 188 has got a fine mind – a mind which is higher than the vital impulses ? Sri Aurobindo : What is man's mental knowledge before those beings ? What does man know ? Practically nothing. They know the complex of forces at work, while man knows nothing of it. Man has a great destiny if he goes along the right lines... is much more delicate than the savage. All these words "assimilation" and "reproduction” do not explain what life is. They are simply properties of life. You cannot know what life is with mental knowledge. Disciple : We have different manifestations of life on the Page 212 physical plane. If we take molecules, cells and organised bodies – the three forms – we find ...
... quietude for the spiritual peace and refuse to come out of it in order to go farther. Knowledge and the Psychic It is not a mental knowledge that is necessary, but a psychic perception or a direct perception in the consciousness. A mental Page 53 knowledge can always be blinded by the tricks of the vital. The one thing always is to let the Peace and Power work and not allow the... Most people who have not knowledge are apt to be opinionated—they have their ideas and don't want them to be changed or their fixity disturbed. Knowledge and the Divine Consciousness Mental knowledge is of little use except sometimes as an introduction pointing towards the real knowledge which comes from a direct consciousness of things. All consciousness comes from the one conscio... states and movements and the causes and influences that bring them about and conscious too of the Divine—the nearness, presence, power, peace, light, knowledge, love, Ananda of the Divine. Mental Knowledge and Knowledge from Above The knowledge of the mind and vital plane is no knowledge. Only from above can the true knowledge come. No, these contacts with the violent vital forces do not ...
... certain limits for our life; on the basis of that sensational experience we can make out a practical rule and order of living. All the rest of mental knowledge may be described [as] a selection of probabilities out of a mass of possibilities. But because mental knowledge is limited & subject to mixed truth & error, therefore also the feelings & impulses of mind in man are subject to falsehood, error, wrong... vast amount of work of action, work of impulse, work of knowledge goes either under or above the lower & the upper level of our waking existence and faculty. In the nature of things, therefore, mental knowledge starts from limitation, lives in limitation & ends in limitation. It is dabhram, alpam, says the Veda, not, like the vijnana, brihat; in its nature truncated, oppressed, little. We know nothing ...
... explanation of things or exalting one of the Divine's Godheads above all others as the true God than whom there can be no other or none so high or higher. This divisionary principle pursues man's mental knowledge everywhere and even when he thinks he has arrived at the final unity and harmony, it is only a constructed unity based on an Aspect. It is so that the scientist seeks to found the unity of knowledge... or the Mayavadin thinks he has arrived at absolute Adwaita by cutting existence into two and calling the upper side Brahman and the lower side Maya. It Page 138 is the reason why mental knowledge can never arrive at a final solution of anything, for the aspects of Existence as distributed by Overmind are numberless and one can go on multiplying philosophies and religions for ever. In... mistakes in trying to judge by the "signs"—one has to become conscious within and know directly. Knowledge and Will in the Supermind That [ the division between knowledge and will ] is true of mental knowledge and will, but not of the higher knowledge-will. In the Supermind knowledge and will are one. Knowledge and will have naturally to be one before either can act perfectly. Force and ...
... by its own greatness. Mental knowledge is of little use except sometimes as an introduction pointing towards the real knowledge which comes from a direct consciousness of things. It is not a mental knowledge that is necessary but a psychic perception or a direct perception in the consciousness. A mental Page 72 knowledge can always be blinded by the tricks ...
... CHAPTER XXII KNOWLEDGE—THE LIGHT THAT FULFILS PART I WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE IN yogic parlance and spiritual philosophy knowledge does not mean mental knowledge. Mental knowledge is a knowledge of objects taken as separate integers or aspects, and not viewed as indivisible parts of a universal whole. Even when it arrives at a synthesis, it is an aggregate or a... the Brahman by knowing the Brahman— brahmavid brahmaiva bhavati. Therefore, it can be said that knowledge begins only when we have passed beyond all mental knowings. So long as we cherish our mental knowledge and depend upon our intelligence .and reason and imaginative reflection in our search for Truth, we remain imprisoned in our mental constructions, severed from the Infinite. To transcend the mind ...
... Maruts are the diffused energies (vi-mahas) of Div, the mental world; they are the rays of the ideal knowledge-force, the Vijnana, pouring itself out in mind and diffusing itself in action of mental knowledge. The expression divo vimahasah gives the justification of sugopátamo; because the Maruts are these diffused energies of the Truth, Right, Wideness above, therefore their protection is perfectly... Indra or mind force becoming entirely luminous with the solar light of the ideal knowledge is to perfect the mental power of the Yogin so that he is strong to support & hold all the activities of mental knowledge & of the temperament in their fullness. “Be rapturous in us and a dwelling for the sacrifice, enter with mastery into Indra, O Soma; thou art powerful, moving forward, and thou meetest no hostile ...
... is the life-current penetrated & pervaded with the habitual movement of mind. When the movement of mind is involved in the life-movement, as it usually is in all forms, there is no response of mental knowledge to any contact or impression. For just as even in the metal there is life, so even in the metal there is mind; but it is latent, involved, its action secret,—unconscious, as we say, and confined... the sensory part of itself & not with the understanding part; thirdly, when it falls on the object with both the sensory & understanding parts of itself. In the first case, there is no act of mental knowledge, no attention of eye or mind; as when we pass, absorbed in thought, through a scene of Nature, yet have seen nothing, been aware of nothing. In the second, there is an act of sensory knowledge ...
... lonesome heart of me? Spiritual poetry is the poetry of knowledge, of vision and of stark luminosity. It is not so much the poetry of the depth as of the height. Its source is above our mental knowledge, in the region of vijnana , the suprarational. It is the poetry of the Flame that gradually burns, as it rises higher and higher, the veils hiding the face of Truth ( satyasya mukham ). ... there is no clear-cut demarcation between the two. In fact, psychic inspiration opens the soul towards the higher visions of truth. The poetry that is created in the heart illumined by the above-mental knowledge can be called psycho-spiritual poetry. About a passage from Sethna's "This Errant Life" Sri Aurobindo writes to the poet that there is a spiritual ulumination, "but it is Page 351 ...
... Part I: Letters of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II Mental Knowledge Now, what the intellect has understood let the whole being realise. Mental knowledge must be replaced by the flaming power of progress. The Mother ...
... hold on to the Truth — but when we live in the knowledge, this faith is changed into knowledge. Of course I am speaking of direct spiritual knowledge. Mental knowledge cannot replace faith, so long as there is only mental knowledge, faith is still needed. Letters on Yoga, p. 576 The phrase ["blind faith"] has no real meaning. I suppose they mean they will not believe without ...
... mind and obtained a taste of spirituality, glimpsed a ray of the direct light of the Divine, too much preoccupation with mental knowledge will be a waste of your life." Ever since I gathered this grace of "wisdom from the Mother, I have moderated my acquisition of mental knowledge. Though every new vista of intellectual research pulls me towards it, there is a profound sense in the heart that truth ...
... been able to actualise in our apparent nature and by which we attempt to know more, express and actualise more, grow always more into the much that we have yet to actualise. But our intellect and mental knowledge and will of action are not our only means, not all the instruments of our consciousness and energy: our nature, the name which we give to the Force of being in us in its actual and potential play... always been short-lived because they can never satisfy the secret knowledge in man: that cannot be the Page 715 final Veda because it does not correspond with the Veda within which all mental knowledge is labouring to bring out; from the moment that this lack of correspondence is felt, a solution, however skilful it may be and however logically complete, has been judged by the eternal Witness ...
... sustain us and hold on to the Truth—but when we live in the knowledge, this faith is changed into knowledge. Of course I am speaking of direct spiritual knowledge. Mental knowledge cannot replace faith; so long as there is only mental knowledge, faith is still needed. The phrase [ "blind faith" ] has no real meaning. I suppose they mean they will not believe without proof—but the conclusion formed ...
... psychic, but with a strong vital tinge; and it is the mind and the vital between them that bring in the opposition between the bhakti and the Jnana. The vital concerned only with emotion finds the mental knowledge dry and without rasa, the mind finds the bhakti to be a blind emotion fully interesting only when its character has been analysed and understood. There is no such opposition when the psychic ... s which you felt in the heart and breast. That will come of itself, Page 361 if this devotion and sole dependence on the Light continues. The psychic contact does not bring mental knowledge, but it brings true perception and true feeling and it can bring down also, if you aspire from the psychic centre, a knowledge higher and truer than intellectual knowledge. Quietude and ...
... ess that one knows a spiritual result—one feels and sees it happening. There are two kinds of knowledge—mental knowledge such as you describe here which is usually necessary as a mental preparation or for guidance and the real knowledge which is spiritual. One receives the mental knowledge from the Guru in the shape of instruction and guidance, but that is only a part of what he gives—for the man ...
... in their vital or physical consciousness, there is nothing any more. There are others, on the contrary, who, even physically, in their body... who perhaps Page 114 don't have much mental knowledge, but who in their physical consciousness have an absolute faith in the divine Grace, and a total trust, and they live like that in this faith and trust. Others still have it only in their deep... rare person! ( Laughter ) No, it is in the feeling. Ah, the feeling, that's different. Usually it is in the feeling, but there are people who have it first in thought, who have a kind of mental knowledge, and then that's all, it stops there. And some people have the feeling and don't have the mental experience, their mind is like that... Can't it be like this, that sometimes one has a feeling ...
... hold on to the Truth — but when we live in the knowledge, this faith is changed into knowledge. Of course I am speaking of direct spiritual knowledge. Mental knowledge cannot replace faith, so long as there is only mental knowledge, faith is still needed. If a sadhak waits a little and watches without giving room to anxiety and impatience most of his troubles will be over ...
... veridicity & capacity of direct response. Interpretation. The vijnana is being perfect[ed] in the physical, vital & mental worlds according to their characteristic differences; at present the mental knowledge is being idealised to perfection by the idealising (rendering perfectly & spontaneously true & luminous) of the sense perceptions, the pranic impulses, the bodily movements & all connected therewith... ly & finally perfected. N.B. It is a curious fact that the physical knowledge received by the body through the annamaya Atman & the pranakosha is often truer, if at all illumined, than the mental knowledge; on the other hand the responses of the prana to knowledge are more erratic than those of the mind. Page 396 Other sortileges confirming the sense of those already given. Images ...
... speech, for Indra his yoke of steeds, and fashioned for the Aswins a spacious car of ease." प्रमतिः. Throughout the Veda I take प्रमतिः in its simple and obvious etymological sense of प्रज्ञा, mental knowledge. The Greek & Latin sense of प्र, beforehand, need not be premised of the Sanscrit particle. The force of प्र in प्रमतिः and प्रज्ञा comes from the idea of the object of knowledge standing before... reference to महस्, the ideal knowledge. It is because Agni is great with the wideness of Mahas or vijnana, ideal knowledge, that he is chitra, so rich & various in his perception in the prajnana, mental knowledge. 6) Thou art the Adhwaryu and the Hota also from of old, the controller & purifier of beings, the Purohita; thou knowest, O wise one, all the functions of the Ritwik & (by that knowledge) ...
... convert it into the immortal. This is done, as the Rishi goes on to state in the next two verses, by the Power lifting itself from vital desire into mental knowledge. The capacity & the attempt to discern (दक्षाय्यः, दक्षोः) has to arrive at pure mental knowledge (चिकिते .. चिकेत द्यौरिव). 5) यत्. S. says यत् = यस्य. Such a violent conversion is wholly unnecessary. यत् means, as so often, "when" ...
... is impossible to it; even the most trained, severe and vigilant intellect fails to observe the twists and turns it gives to truth in the reception of fact and idea and the construction of its mental knowledge. Here we have an almost inexhaustible source of distortion of truth, a cause of falsification, an unconscious or half-conscious will to error, an acceptance of ideas or facts not by a clear perception... heterogeneous idea, constitutes the complex substance, of morality; in all of them there is the constant mixture of truth and half-truth and error which pursues all the activities of our limiting mental Knowledge-Ignorance. A mental control over our vital and physical desires and instincts, over our personal and social action, over our dealings with others is indispensable to us as human beings, and morality ...
... the experience before coming here. Before I came, before knowing Sri Aurobindo, I had the experience. So three quarters of the work was already done, you could say.... I didn't have mental knowledge (the mental knowledge was nothing to talk about), but it's not necessary for the experience. If you're sincere, you have the experience without thinking, you don't NEED to think. But you have to be sincere ...
... birth, 138, 139 distinction between suppression and self-mastery, 134 doctrine of "desireless action," 46, 105 Jivatman, 79, 80 liberation, 142 mental knowledge, 86 method of self-discipline, 125-127, 136 natural self in, 135 Purushottama of, 78, 110 steps to becoming an impartial witness, 136, 137 supreme secret... viewpoints attention, 105 consciousness, state of, 16, 29, 30, 67 delight of being, 10, 11 dispersion, state of, 118, 119 faith, 4 fear, 8 human traits, 16 mental knowledge, significance of, 88 mental witness, meaning of, 92 the Now, 16 paradoxes in spiritual teachings, 20 practice of living in the present moment, 108 remedy to mental ...
... U, S, etc. and also of people like my humble self: whether the full opening of these inner centres will make everybody's knowledge the same. Please do not confuse the higher knowledge and mental knowledge. The intellectual man will be able to give a wider and more orderly expression to what higher knowledge he gets than the homo psychicus; but it does not follow he will have more of it. He will... into a state of pother with imaginary difficulties. S was taking Lithinée according to your suggestion. For the last few days the pain which subsided by Lithinee has come back. Shall I try my mental knowledge or leave her to the spiritual? At least use your mental K. to know what is the matter with her. May 11, 1935 Till the other day patients with stomach ulcer were treated with soda ...
... without experience) might rather hamper than help. In fact there is no fixed mental Page 211 knowledge for these things, which vary infinitely. You must learn to go beyond the hankering for mental information and open to the true way of knowledge. Is it not better to keep giving mental knowledge until the experiences come in plenty? As you were giving it in the past ...
... psychic knowledge and its character of truth. Does this knowledge concern facts, beings and events of the manifested world, or simply metaphysical truths? The word "metaphysical" indicates a mental knowledge and there is in psychic knowledge a nearness, a concrete reality very different from intellectual speculation. To say that it brings material knowledge would be wrong, that is not its field... physical. As it is the life, if this thread is cut, death results. An abrupt recall is also dangerous. As a rule, it is better to acquire a certain experience of the mental going-out and a mental knowledge of the planes before attempting the exit in the vital body. So in this yoga the going-out in the mental body precedes that in the vital body? Yes, but both these are yet subordinate ...
... had this experience before I came here. I had the experience before coming, before knowing Sri Aurobindo. So it was as though three-fourths of the work were done.... I didn't have the mental knowledge—my mental knowledge was nothing remarkable — but it's not necessary to the experience. If you are sincere, you get the experience without thinking —you DON'T need to think. But you have to be sincere." ...
... to the mind a truth in itself beyond expression by space & time—just as we say "I have this in my mind" when we do not really intend to express any location in space but mean rather "This is my mental knowledge as it just now expresses itself." Pashya me yogam aishwaram. For he now feels that these things in which & outside which he seems to be are himself, his becomings in the motion of awareness, jagat ...
... mind has become silent, Eckhart and Sri Aurobindo speak in very similar terms. Eckhart distinguishes between two kinds of knowing: knowing about something and knowing of the thing in itself. Mental knowledge, he says, is knowing about something as an object that is separate from oneself as the subject; it is a separative and superficial knowledge of a thing. On the other hand, knowing of a. thing ...
... for knowledge and understanding of her experiences, she read everything she could find about spirituality, including the Dhammapada and other Buddhist texts. But she was never satisfied with mental knowledge only and always tried out in practice what she read. We may suppose that it was at some time during these years that the Minister of Fine Arts invited her into his box for the first performance ...
... manifest knowable, partly manifest to our ignorance, manifest entirely to the divine Knowledge which holds it in its own infinity. If it is true that neither our ignorance nor our utmost and widest mental knowledge can give us a hold of the Unknowable, still it is also true that, whether through our knowledge or through our ignorance, That variously manifests itself; for it cannot be manifesting something ...
... and their dependences, generalisations and their application, and makes out of its devices a Page 789 structure in which mentally it can live, move and act and enjoy and labour. This mental knowledge is always limited in extent: not only so, but in addition the mind even sets up other willed barriers, admitting by the mental device of opinion certain parts and sides of truth and excluding ...
... their own purpose but are not necessarily and by their very nature reliable. They are dependent for their emergence on the suggestions given by mental and sense data or on the accumulation of past mental knowledge. They search for the truth as a thing outside, an object to be found and looked at and stored as an acquisition and, when found, scrutinise its surfaces, suggestions or aspects. This scrutiny ...
... there is only an experience of the passage from Mind to what is beyond it so that our mental structure of the universe ceases to be valid and another reality of it is substituted for the ignorant mental knowledge. In this transition it is possible to be awake to all the states of being together in a harmonised and unified experience and to see the Reality everywhere. But if we plunge by a trance of exclusive ...
... the last word of knowledge is the Unknowable, but only if it is something, to use the words of the Upanishad, which being known all is known. The Unknowable—not absolutely unknowable, but beyond mental knowledge—can only be a higher degree in the intensity of being of that Something, a degree beyond the loftiest summit attainable by mental beings, and, if it were known as it must be known to itself, that ...
... with it can we arrive at a perfect relation. Therefore we must arrive at a conscious unity with our fellow-beings and not merely at the sympathy created by love or the understanding created by mental knowledge, which will always be the knowledge of their superficial existence and therefore imperfect in itself and subject to denial and frustration by the uprush of the unknown and unmastered from the ...
... parts of our mentality,—Mind has to make room for another consciousness which will fulfil Mind by transcending it or reverse and so rectify its operations after leaping beyond it: the summit of mental knowledge is only a vaulting-board from which that leap can be taken. The utmost mission of Mind is to train our obscure consciousness which has emerged out of the dark prison of Matter, to enlighten its ...
... its positive and negative ideas, the aspects of the Divine Reality that it sees, and tends too much to pit one against the other. Thought in the mind, vicāra , the philosophic trend by which mental knowledge approaches the Divine, is apt to lend a greater importance to the abstract over the concrete, to that which is high and remote over that which is intimate and near. It finds a greater truth in ...
... succumb to the attacks whether of the Coverers or of the powers that limit. Next are described the results towards which the seer aspires. With this fuller light opening on to the finalities of mental knowledge the powers of Limitation will be satisfied and of themselves will withdraw, consenting to the farther advance and to the new luminous activities. They will say, in effect, "Yes, now you have the ...
... the forces at work in any given Apas is now fairly perfect in wideness (brihat) & in satyam; but the defect of the ritam arises in the attempt of manasabuddhi either as stress of speculation, mental knowledge tapas, (manasasmriti, judgment, imagination, memory working on observation & by inference) or Page 325 as stress of mental will-tapas to select the event or the decisive force out ...
... pure energy of consciousness, free in its rest or action, sovereign in its will. Ananda—is Beatitude, the bliss of pure conscious existence and energy. Page 1460 Vijnana—Supra-mental knowledge—is the Causal Idea which, by supporting and secretly guiding the confused activities of Mind, Life and Body ensures and compels the right arrangement of the Universe. Buddhi—is the lower divided ...
... sweetness with the emotional man? It may be that homo intellectualis will remain wider and homo psychicus will remain deeper in heart. Please do not confuse the higher knowledge and mental knowledge. The intellectual man will be able to give a wider and more orderly expression to what higher knowledge he gets than the homo psychicus ; but it does not follow he will have more of it. He will ...
... the Mahayana. Many Christian mystics also speak of the necessity of a complete ignorance in order to get the supreme experience and speak too of the Divine Darkness—they mean the shedding of all mental knowledge, making a blank of the mind and engulfing it in the Unmanifest,—the param avyaktam . All this is the mind's way of approaching the Supreme—for beyond the avyakta, tamasaḥ parastāt , is the Supreme ...
... The Mother's Force The Mother with Letters on the Mother Mental Knowledge and the Working of the Mother's Force During the evening meditation my mind tries to become conscious of the thoughts which the Mother brings down. Is this the right activity? It is not altogether the way—if the mind is active it is more difficult to become aware of what the ...
... quite different from what it is usually taken to mean. It is not to experience what one knows―that is of course obvious―but instead of knowing and understanding―even a knowledge much higher than mental knowledge, even a very integral knowledge―it is to become the Power which makes that be. Fundamentally, it is to become the Tapas of things―the Tapas of the universe. It is always said that at the ...
... give you two examples to make you understand what true spontaneity is. One—you all know about it undoubtedly—is of the time Sri Aurobindo began writing the Arya , 1 in 1914. It was neither a mental knowledge nor even a mental creation which he transcribed: he silenced his mind and sat at the typewriter, and from above, from the higher planes, all that had to be written came down, all ready, and he ...
... One knows that it is not an imagined experience, that it is a sincere, spontaneous one, and this always has a power of transformation much greater than the experience that was brought about by a mental knowledge. Then, Mother, this means that it is better not to read? On condition that one truly has within himself the ardour of aspiration. If you are born for this, for the yoga, and this is the ...
... person, have the same difficulties, haven't achieved any realisation?" I very often hear remarks of this kind. They forget only one thing, that they have obtained the knowledge—intellectual, mental knowledge—before having deserved it, that is, before having put into practice what they have read, and that, naturally, there is discrepancy between their state of consciousness and the ideas, the knowledge ...
... oneself more entirely to it, until one has made enough progress to know and feel that it is the Divine who acts in you, His force that animates you and His will that supports you—not only a mental knowledge, but the sincerity of a state of consciousness and the power of a living experience. Page 389 For that to be possible, all egoistic motives and all egoistic reactions must disappear ...
... experience or built its structures as Page 341 an approach to it: but it has also rejected all aid,—or all impediment,—of religion and proceeded in its own strength, either satisfied with mental knowledge or confident to discover its own path of experience and effective discipline. Spiritual experience has used all the three means as a starting-point, but it has also dispensed with them all, relying ...
... yoga, are still convinced that "a cat is a cat", as we commonly say in French, and that one can rely only on one's physical eyes Page 40 for seeing and observing, on one's physical-mental knowledge for judging and deciding, and that the laws of Nature are laws —in other words, any exception to them is a miracle. This is false. This is what is at the root of all the misunderstandings ...
... yourself more entirely to it, until you have made enough progress to know and to feel that it is the Divine who acts in you, His force that impels you and His will that supports you—not just a mental knowledge, but the sincerity of a state of consciousness and the power of a living experience. For that to be possible, all egoistic motives and all egoistic reactions must disappear. 20 November ...
... assuming a new reality. It is not "experiencing what one knows"—that's taken for granted, it's banal—but.... We would need another word. Instead of knowing something (even a knowledge far superior to mental knowledge, even a very integral knowledge), you... become the power that makes it BE. Essentially, it is becoming the tapas [energy] of things—the tapas of the universe. The Manifestation is always ...
... things. But you can't say whether something unexpected is going to happen. Why? Someone has said, "For this a special eye is needed." It is possible to foresee without receiving images: there is a mental knowledge without images. Seers are usually able to foresee—not always, but often. I don't suppose you were thinking of an extra eye in the middle of the forehead like the Cyclops! No, you mean an inner ...
... tubes with things in them and the effect on a totality of matter. I was there, looking on (I was looking with great interest), and I understood everything then. And I still see the image, but the mental knowledge, the mental translation that would have enabled me to say, "Now I know," prrt! taken away. It's the same thing every time. Which means it must be given to people other than me for them to use ...
... was total, the perception was total, absolutely concrete, with elements that were completely missing—convincing elements that were completely missing in the first perception, which was a vital-mental knowledge. While this is a knowledge of the consciousness of the cells. But all this would only be interesting with all the facts (which can't be given). So I'd like to have a more complete and "impersonal" ...
... many details) the fact to the doctor, not in the hope that he would know, but because (it's amusing) when I speak to him, he tries to understand, of course, and then there is the mirror of his mental knowledge, and in that mirror, sometimes I find the key! ( Laughing ) You understand, the scientific key of what's going on. Page 274 As a matter of fact, it was after I spoke to him (I mentioned ...
... ken of our mind. As a matter of fact, in the course of the heightening and deepening of our consciousness brought about by the pursuit of spiritual Sadhana, there arises spontaneously a trans-mental knowledge of our true being which is then realised as a consciousness altogether independent of the bodily vehicle, as a spiritual entity possessed of a continuous soul-life perpetually developing and ...
... tabula rasa, a blank slate, over which sensations can inscribe images, producing perceptions and ideas. According to this theory, all ideas are rooted in sensations, and all mental ideas or mental knowledge can be traced back to sensations. In other words, sense perception is the basic brick and mortar that builds up the superstructure of knowledge. The pedagogical consequence of this theory is that ...
... come to see that in order to solve them integrally "we must arrive at a conscious unity with our fellow-beings and not merely at the sympathy created by love or the understanding created by mental knowledge, which will always be the knowledge of their superficial existence and therefore imperfect in itself and subject to denial and frustration by the uprush of the unknown and unmastered from the ...
... these small purlieus of mind, A greater vision meets us on the heights In the luminous wideness of the Spirit's gaze." (Savitri, Book II, Canto V, p. 168.) Also: "Mental knowledge is not true knowledge. True knowledge is that which is based on the true sight, the sight of the Seer, of Surya, of the Kavi. Mental thought is not knowledge, it is a golden lid placed over the ...
... conclude this last paper on "SAICE: The Cradle of a New Humanity" with the following admonition of our Sweet Mother: "Now, what the intellect has understood let the whole being realise. Mental knowledge must be replaced by the flaming power of progress." (Ibid., p. 141) Page 144 ...
... oneself more entirely to it, until one has made enough progress to know and feel that it is the Divine who acts in you, His force that animates you, and His will that supports you — not only a mental knowledge, but the sincerity of a state of consciousness and the power of a living experience. For that to be possible, all egoistic motives and all egoistic reactions must disappear." (M C W, Vol. ...
... expressed in various ways. This One is; it is affirmed, wonderful (adbhutam) and It cannot be known by mere intellectual thought or contemplation but can be known only by transcending the limits of mental knowledge and by the development of psychological powers of intuition, revelation, Page 88 inspiration and supra-intellectual discrimination, — by development of supra-intellectual vision ...
... coverers of his light of knowledge... .This idea of the Vedic mystics can in a more metaphysical thought and language be translated into the conception that the Ignorance is in its origin a dividing mental knowledge which does not grasp the unity, essence, self-law of things in their one origin and in their universality, but works rather upon divided particulars, separate phenomena, partial relations, as ...
... practising Yoga daily and the philosophy was there automatically. But that is not being a philosopher!' And the Mother has explained: 'Sri Aurobindo began writing the Arya in 1914. It was neither a mental knowledge nor even a mental creation which he transcribed: he silenced his mind and sat at the typewriter, and from above, from the higher planes, all that had to be written came down, all ready, and he ...
... You have to learn by experience. Mental information (badly understood, as it always is without experience) might rather hamper than help. In fact there Page 36 is no fixed mental knowledge for these things which vary infinitely. You must learn to go beyond the hankering for mental information and open to the true way of knowledge. You wrote the other day: "...there is ...
... light with which we start on the way. A developed stage comes when the Sun sets for us, that is to say, when we retire from the senses and rise into the mind, whose divinity is the Moon. It is the mental knowledge, the light of reason and intelligence, of reflection and imagination that govern our consciousness. We have to proceed farther and get beyond the mind, exceed the derivative light of the Moon ...
... and consciousness are centred in the intellect, where intellectual light is the only light, the unrivalled master of life, well, let them discuss and speculate; they will acquire at least some mental knowledge, a bit of purification and clarity of intellect. But for those who aspire not only to educate and polish Page 65 their mind but also to heighten and transform their co ...
... thought will gain in richness and suppleness and be made ready for a more complex and comprehensive synthesis. In this way also the child will be imbued with the sense of the extreme relativity of mental knowledge and little by little he will be awakened to an aspiration in him for a truer source of knowledge. Indeed, as the child progresses in his studies and grows in age, his mind too ripens and is ...
... that is done, until a radical change in consciousness is brought about the solution cannot be found. Sri Aurobindo says, that if you go on enlarging the field of sense-knowledge and mental knowledge however widely, it would only be increasing or enlarging the knowledge of phenomena, not of the Reality. Adding to phenomena, he says, is feeding yourself with more and more grass, not with ...
... If man consents to my working I can save the world. Then Savitri heard the "voice of the sense-shakled human mind" its limitation is that it cannot know the whole of the Infinite and so all mental knowledge remains incomplete. This mind can give man the forms but not the soul, or Truth behind the forms, It can know the external but not the noumenal, the real. It knows Page 320 the ...
... absolute law ? Disciple : But then another force, quite different from the purely physical, enters into play. If the laws of the physical are not dependable then what is the use of this mental knowledge? Sri Aurobindo : It is very useful. It is even .necessary. It enables man to deal with physical facts and establishes his control over physical phenomena. Disciple : But that ...
... its objective. The will, exercised with a quiet persistence, calls down the Mother's Force, which begins to act on the inconscient and the subconscient for their purification and illumination. Mental knowledge does not count for much in spiritual life; more often than not it proves an impediment in that it bars the being's progress with its unenlightened constructions. It is the psychic conscious- ness ...
... layers of being. Just imagine, it's educating itself. It's learning things and organizing the ordinary science of the material world. It's very interesting. You see, all the memory that came from mental knowledge has long since gone, and I used to receive necessary indications only from above [from the higher planes of consciousness]. But now it's A SORT OF MEMORY BEING BUILT FROM BELOW. It's like a shift ...
... carried out, the supramental revolution of the human species – as others had launched the human revolution among the apes – its great rebellion against the Machine, its general strike against mental knowledge, mental power and mental fabrications – against the mental prison – its mass defection from the old groove of pain, and its calling out for what has to be, its simple cry for truth amidst the ...
... of being—do you know, it is educating itself. It is learning things and organizing the ordinary science of the material world. That’s very interesting.... You see, all the memory that came from mental knowledge went away a long, long time ago, and I used to receive indications only from above . But now it’s a sort of memory being built from below. It’s like a shift in the directing will; it’s no longer ...
... point or line of culmination of the sattwic discipline. The self-exceeding of the sattwic nature comes when we get beyond the great but still inferior sattwic pleasure, beyond the pleasures of mental knowledge and virtue and peace to the eternal calm of the self and the spiritual ecstasy of the divine oneness. That spiritual joy is no longer the sattwic happiness, sukham , but the absolute Ananda. ...
... Manoj is not yet in a state to know that, so he knows that he is making an effort. But now you have told me! Today I know, so... ( Instantaneously ) Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha!... ( Laughter ) Mental knowledge is not enough, you must have the practical experience. Otherwise, my children, we would all have been transformed long ago, because for a long time we have had the knowledge that the transformation ...
... thought will gain in richness and suppleness and be made ready for a more complex and comprehensive synthesis. In this way also the child will be imbued with the sense of the extreme relativity of mental knowledge and, little by little, an aspiration will be, awakened in him for a truer source of knowledge. Indeed, as the child progresses in his studies and grows in age, his mind too ripens and ...
... me, tossing me like a toy. It comes progressively. Do not strain. Be calm and confident. 12 March 1973 Now, what the intellect has understood let the whole being realise. Mental knowledge must be replaced by the flaming power of progress. × Message for the inauguration of a course in technology. ...
... is only the farther development at a later stage and the aim of the Yoga that are new. But that one need not concern oneself with in the earlier stages unless one wishes to do so as a matter of mental knowledge. Poetry by itself does not bring to the goal, but it can help as a means to express and deepen one's aspiration while it gives the vital an activity which can keep it from rusting and maintains ...
... General knowledge is another matter, it is intellectual and the intellect gains by the intellectual activity of teaching. Also if in Yoga it were only a matter of imparting intellectually one's mental knowledge of the subject, that rule 2 would perhaps hold; but this mental aspect is only a small part of Yoga. There is something more complex which forms the bigger part of it. In teaching Yoga to another ...
... courageous and in the physical mind which lends its support to these things. To get the supramental light and calm and strength and intensity down there is what you need. You may have all the mental knowledge in the world and yet be impotent to face vital difficulties. Courage, faith, sincerity towards the Light, rejection of opposite suggestions and adverse voices are there the true help. Then only ...
... Mind creates the chain and not the body. WORKS AND KNOWLEDGE 9) The opposition between works and knowledge exists as long as works and knowledge are only of the egoistic mental character. Mental knowledge is not true knowledge; true knowledge is that which is based on the true sight, the sight of the Seer, of Surya, of the Kavi. Mental thought is not knowledge, it is a golden lid placed over the ...
... realisation and experience or built its structures as an approach to it: but it has also rejected all aid—or all impediment—of religion and proceeded in its own strength, either satisfied with mental knowledge or confident to discover its own path of experience and effective discipline. Spiritual experience has used all the three means as a starting-point, but it has also dispensed with them all, relying ...
... their powers in the human being. This idea of the Vedic mystics can in a more metaphysical thought and language be translated into the conception that the Ignorance is in its origin a dividing mental knowledge which does not grasp the unity, essence, self-law of things in their one origin and in their universality, but works rather upon divided particulars, separate phenomena, partial relations, as ...
... been a perilous spiritual ill-health and a vast disorder. Page 759 For mind itself is not enough; even its largest play of intelligence creates only a qualified half-light. A surface mental knowledge of the physical universe is a still more imperfect guide; for the thinking animal it might be enough, but not for a race of mental beings in labour of a spiritual evolution. Even the truth of ...
... sake of the right arrangement of the life of the community. If we inquire how this radical change is to be brought about, two agencies seem to be suggested, the agency of a greater and better mental knowledge, right ideas, right information, right training of the social and civic individual and the agency of a new social machinery which will solve everything by the magic of the social machine cutting ...
... and action of Truth appears in it always broken and divided. All Mind can do is to piece together the fragments or deduce a unity; truth of Mind is only a half-truth or a portion of a puzzle. Mental knowledge is always relative, partial and inconclusive, and its outgoing action and creation come out still more confused in its steps or precise only in narrow limits and by imperfect piecings together ...
... identity more into the background and stresses more the objectivity of the thing known. Its characteristic movement, descending into the mind, becomes the source of the peculiar nature of our mental knowledge, intelligence, prajñāna . In the mind the action of intelligence involves, at the outset, separation and otherness between the knower, knowledge and the known; but in the supermind its movement ...
... such truth as they have is diminished in scope, degraded into a lower movement, divided and falsified by fragmentation, afflicted with incompleteness, marred by Page 826 perversion. Mental knowledge is not an integral but always a partial knowledge. It adds constantly detail to detail, but has a difficulty in relating them aright; its wholes too are not real but incomplete wholes which it ...
... becoming entirely luminous with the solar light of the ideal knowledge is to perfect the mental power of the Yogin so that he is Page 1319 strong to support & hold all the activities of mental knowledge & of the temperament in their fullness. "Be rapturous in us and a dwelling for the sacrifice, enter with mastery into Indra, O Soma; thou art powerful, moving forward, and thou meetest no hostile ...
... 89 All that exists or can exist in this or any other universe can be rendered into terms of consciousness; there is nothing that cannot be known. This knowing need not be always a mental knowledge. For the greater part of existence is either above or below mind, and mind can know only indirectly what is above or what is below it. But the one true and complete way of knowing is by direct ...
... and after the bang.” 9 How shall the intellectual outsider choose between this mathematical hypothesis and the ancient wisdom – which is only wisdom if it is knowledge, though not necessarily mental knowledge? “What will happen,” asks Claude Allègre, “if it is proven tomorrow that the big bang does not define the beginning of everything, but only the beginning of one episode among the innumerable which ...
... parts of our mentality, – Mind has to make room for another consciousness which will fulfil Mind by transcending it or reverse and so rectify its operations after leaping beyond it: the summit of mental knowledge is only a vaulting-board from which the leap can be taken. The utmost mission of Mind is to train our obscure consciousness which has emerged out of the dark prison of Matter, to enlighten its ...
... these will perish and pass away, "expunged, annihilated, blotted out". For "...that cannot Page 31 be the final Veda because it does not correspond with the Veda within which all mental knowledge is labouring to bring out; from the moment that this lack of correspondence is felt, a solution, however skillful it may be and however logically complete, has been judged by the eternal Witness ...
... ive process of thinking or by a logomachy of the logical mind. Spiritual awareness should not be confused with a very subtle and opulent conceptual thought. As Sri Aurobindo has pointed out: "Mental knowledge is not true knowledge; true knowledge is that which is based on the true sight, the sight of the Seer, of Surya, of the Kavi. Mental thought is not knowledge, it is a golden lid placed over the ...
... catch it. You have to concretely feel that Sri Aurobindo's full Power of expression is there (I don't mean the words, it's not a question of words), but the power to transmit knowledge (not mental knowledge, experience). It's constantly there. So... an attentive silence—but be very patient, because as soon as the Force comes, something begins to stir in the mental regions. Then there is also a sort ...
... an irresistible block descending ), a kind of absoluteness, without even any possibility of hesitation (there's no question of doubt), or anything like that. Without (how to say it ?).... All mental knowledge, even the highest, is a 'conclusive' knowledge, as it were: it comes as a conclusion of something else—an intuition, for instance (an intuition gives you a particular knowledge, and this knowledge ...
... being absorbed and acting ( gesture of flowing through Mother over the world in a perpetual movement ). That seems to be the secret of all-powerfulness. There is no need at all to go through mental knowledge—that diminishes, shrinks, hardens. It's an acute state of consciousness, that is, wholly awakened. In the cells of the body, it dispels all darkness. Naturally, it's a long and slow work, but ...
... reincarnated Richard..." "Oh," I said, "enough, enough!" ( Mother laughs ) There. So the result is... Paul Richard had a quite unhealthy sexual side, not at all healthy, far from it. He had much mental knowledge (a great deal, a very strong intelligence), but no spiritual life. So he wasn't an exceptional being—what's happening to him is what must happen. I have been trying to do something about the ...
... instinct based on the rhythm of the words (I don't know where it comes from, maybe from the superconscient of the language) that lets you know whether a sentence is correct or not—it's not at all a mental knowledge, not at all (that's all gone, even the knowledge of spelling is completely gone!), but it's a sort of sense or feeling of the inner rhythm. I noticed this a few days ago: in the birthday cards ...
... between that moment [during the experience] and afterwards.... But all this is inexpressible. Yet it is an absolute knowledge—it's another way of knowing. Sri Aurobindo explained this, that all mental knowledge is a seeking: you seek; while this knowledge has another quality, another flavor. And then the power of the Harmony is so wonderful! ( Mother again depicts a great Rhythm, her arms outstretched ...
... of sannyasins, pundits, purohits, 1 etc.), all that that represents. (I am not referring to religions in other countries: it's specific to India.) And they are people who have a knowledge, a mental knowledge, of course, but very precise and very exact, of the movements in relation to the Overmind: all the gods and godheads and their ways of being and the relationships between men and gods; and they ...
... make spelling errors; and it doesn't know, so it inquires, it learns, it looks up in the dictionary or it asks. That's very interesting. It wants to know. You see, all the memory that came from mental knowledge went away a long, long time ago, and I used to receive indications only like this ( gesture from above ). But now it's a sort of memory being built from below, and with the care of a little child ...
... of our mentality, — Mind has to make room for another consciousness which will fulfil Mind by transcending it or reverse and so rectify its operations after leaping beyond it: the summit of mental knowledge is only a vaulting-board from which that leap can be taken. The utmost mission of Mind is to train our obscure consciousness which has emerged out of the dark prison of Matter, to enlighten ...
... is accepted as truth, there is always a doubt around it. Truth is seated on the shadowy back of doubt; further on he speaks of the face of knowledge turbaned with doubt. As long as it is a mental knowledge, there is always the possibility of its not being true and some part of the mind questions it. At times it may be a wrong doubt, but it can also prove to be a legitimate doubt, making possible ...
... that Aswapati has been seeking? Aswapati finds that this world is not sure even of its foundations. It cannot answer the question whether the creations of the Mind are real or false. Probably mental knowledge itself is an error hidden even from the mind. A doubt corroded even the means to think, Distrust was thrown upon Mind's instruments; All that it takes for reality's shining coin ...
... is only the farther development at a later stage and the aim of the Yoga that are new. But that one need not concern oneself with in the earlier stages unless one wishes to do so as a matter of mental knowledge. Page 309 September 12, 1935 I am grateful to learn that I have succeeded in making you somewhat partial to Peace and even almost able to envisage Silence without horror ...
... along crooked windings (duritāni, vrjināni). There is in and behind all our errors, sins and stumblings a secret Will which is hidden. Even when highest degrees of the mind are developed, since mental knowledge and mental will works by stress on division and multiplicity that is divorced from ū ū ū ū ī ī ś ś ś Page 63 unity, errors and sins are committed. The secret of karma yoga is ...
... the sake of the right arrangement of the life of the community. They have further advised that reason and will can be enlightened by the aid of two agencies : the agency of a greater and better mental knowledge and the agency of a new social machinery which will solve everything by the magic of the social machine cutting humanity into a better pattern. (iv) There is also a fourth set of advisers who ...
... Vedic Yoga and the Upanishadic Yoga, on the basis of which his own Integral Yoga is founded, even though it has built new methodologies for purposes of a new objective in order that the supra-mental knowledge can be harnessed for purposes of the highest collective welfare and for the mutation of the human species which would result in the development of a new humanity or super-humanity. Page 240 ...
... their own purpose but are not necessarily and by their very nature reliable. They are dependent for their emergence on the suggestions given by mental and sense data or on the accumulation of past mental knowledge. They search for the truth as a thing outside, an object to be found and looked at and stored as an acquisition and, when found, scrutinize its surfaces, suggestions or aspects. This scrutiny ...
... have the same difficulties, haven't achieved any realization? " I very often hear remarks of this kind. They forget only one thing that they have obtained the knowledge — intellectual, mental knowledge — before having deserved it, that is, before having put into practice what they have read, and that, naturally, there is discrepancy between their state of consciousness and the ideas, the knowledge ...
... rather has "the experience of the passage from Mind to what is beyond it so that our mental structure of the universe ceases to be valid and another reality of it is substituted for the ignorant mental knowledge. In this transition it is possible to be awake to all the states of being together in a harmonised and unified experience and to see the Reality everywhere." 2 Then we experience, as Sri Aurobindo ...
... know, it is educating itself. It )p learning things and organizing the ordinary science of the material world.... That's very interesting. It wants to know. You see, all the memory that came from mental knowledge went away a long, long time ago, and I used to receive indications only like this (gesture from above). But now it's a sort of memory being built from below.... It's like a shift in the ...
... is excluded for the sake of greater facility and range in the inner experience. But in both it is the inner vision that sees. Page 197 HIGHER KNOWLEDGE AND MENTAL KNOWLEDGE How is it that at times I feel myself in the proximity of knowledge and at times miles away from it? Neither knowledge nor anything else is constant at first - and ...
... may have studied or delved into it. The Mother once said: Who can explain Savitri? No one. It is not possible. It is not possible for man with his parcelled knowledge, not with his mental knowledge which only adds one bit to the other in order to understand, that dissects with his poor and clumsy logic, that formulates with his limited and insufficient understanding in order to reproduce ...
... maya, it not only does not exist, it never existed. Brahman alone is Page 18 there always. That is what the Upanishad also says. This experience cannot be acquired by mental knowledge and argumentation or study of books. Only when it reveals its own body then one stands before it face to face . As of the Brahman, even so of the Brahman's qualities. They are various ...
... generality and with a Platonic flavour, the principle which is at the basis of the modern methods of education. The principle is of wide applicability. It is not limited to intellectual or mental knowledge. It applies also, as we shall see, to ethical knowledge, the discrimination between good Page 49 and evil, and aesthetic knowledge, the feeling and understanding of beauty ...
... to a new plane, or some such thing. The reason why he is not getting knowledge, probably, is that his mind is active. So long as the mind is active higher Knowledge cannot come. He can get mental knowledge, of course. Ask him to make his mind passive and open to the higher Knowledge. Let him stop the egoistic activity in his mind. When I ask him to be passive I do not mean that he should repress ...
... the idea expressed in the apophthegm. What is stated here is much simpler and transparent. It is this that when the Divine is absent and the divine Knowledge, then comes in man with his human mental knowledge: it is man's humanity that clouds the Divine and to reach the' Divine one must reject the human values, all the moralities, salva dharmān, seek only the Divine. The lesser way lies through the ...
... existed and will exist; there is no maya, it not only does not exist, it never existed. Brahman alone is there always. That is what the Upanishad also says. This experience cannot be acquired by mental knowledge and argumentation or study of books. Only when it reveals its own body then one stands before it face to face. As of the Brahman, even so of the Brahman's qualities. They are various aspects ...
... Algeria. Soon afterwards leaves Le Groupe Cosmique. 1908-14 Period of 'intensive mental development' leading to the realisation of something luminous and true beyond the synthesis of all mental knowledge. 1908 Mar Separation from Henri Morisset. Later moves to 49, rue de Levis, Paris. 1908-1909 Sri Aurobindo realises 'in full two of the four great realisations on which his yoga and ...
... Universal Soul, acts and behaves as if it was the centre of the cosmos. Instead of experiencing itself as one centre of the Omnipresent Reality it acts as a separate individuality. " And yet the mental knowledge acquired by the ego- consciousness is not absolutely false; it is a partial or distorted view, behind which the unity is present and active. Let us take Matter, for instance. All Matter is one ...
... knowledge of the psychology of our nature is a great help in the beginning of the spiritual life, and saves us many a stumble and bewilderment. When the inner light dawns, we can dispense with the mental knowledge and know the whole working of our nature by spiritual vision and direct experience. THE CHITTA OR THE BASIC CONSCIOUSNESS What is mind and how does it evolve? The term antaḥkaraṇa ...
... h have a certain attraction for some minds but which are after all only very rough approximations to the truth of things. If we go deep enough into mental human knowledge, we realise that all this knowledge as we have it externally in the mental consciousness is scarcely anything more than a language—a fairly complicated one—making it possible for us to understand each other but corresponding only... the material plane of consciousness. All this is what might be called a half-knowledge, which is a kind of very primitive attempt to grasp the links of interdependence between universal and individual existence. And all these things are much more like languages which enable us to fix a certain half-elaborated knowledge rather than absolute rules or the notation of indisputable facts. They are attempts... key to the whole machinery of things, a direct key that needs no complicated science to express itself—something that corresponds to movements of consciousness and will, which would not need all the mental complications to express themselves. Then the universal reality in its totality becomes a symbol and can be directly perceived in its essence. Page 285 ...
... comprehension was total, the perception total, altogether concrete, with elements that were wholly missing—convincing elements—wholly missing in the first perception, which was a mental-vital knowledge. This was a knowledge of the consciousness of the cells. But all that would be interesting only with all the facts (which cannot be given). So I would like to have a more complete, more "impersonal"... "death", of the conditions of death, why there are so many accidents at the present moment, etc. I have already answered two persons. Naturally, the answers were on the mental level, but with an attempt to go beyond. It is this kind of mental logic which wants, yes, things to be deduced from one another in accordance with this logic, so they arrive at questions... that are impossible. 1 It is nothing... has an individualised psychic being can survive even in the midst of collective catastrophes, if that is his soul's choice. After death, once separated from his physical being, from his vital and mental beings, how is the soul conscious of being, of existing? The soul is a spark of the Supreme Divine; I do not see how the Lord has need of a body in order to be conscious of his being. ...
... inner certainty and total cosmic vision, the new poet has both to return to those ancient wells of integral knowledge and to be a master of the mental knowledges of our age of advancing science and technology; he has to master the variety of all this specialised and compartmentalised knowledge, yet impose on it all the unity of the Spirit with the aid of a new faculty, the spiritual power of the supermind... Page 455 His Yoga of the Life Divine, the 'integral Yoga' that sought to fuse into a potent engine of transformation the old disciplines that were centred on will, works, knowledge, love, any one of them alone; his own and the Mother's travail of spiritual voyage and vigil and defeat and discovery and ultimate victory; his hopes and visions and forecasts of the future: these... and evening, at once starts psychic vibrations of incommensurable potency. There are endless overtones and undertones from the Vedic and Upanishadic structures of myth and symbolism and spiritual knowledge. Then the story itself; the tremendous issue and its vast implications; the human and the cosmic backgrounds; and the struggle and the victory. In all this Savitri does convincingly project before ...
... spiritual itinerary? But the fact is that this deeper truth is not revealed to the sadhaka's consciousness in the early part of his sadhana. And in spiritual matters it is not the mental speculative knowledge which can be of much help. What is essential is to have the direct subjective experience of the Truth. Otherwise, without having this intimate experience to support him, if a sadhaka tries... issuing forth from a unique source of confluence, the Supreme. Of course, such is the case in the experience of the novice sadhaka. Later on, when the sadhana will become mature and the sadhaka's mental ideas give place to direct spiritual realisation, he will come to feel concretely that there is indeed one unique Reality functioning in the world, and that the three separate elements of our anal... all that is done in the universe, the Divine through his Shakti is behind all action... In Yoga also it is the Divine who is the Sadhaka and the Sadhana; it is his Shakti with her light, power, knowledge, consciousness, Ananda, acting upon the Adhara... that makes the Sadhana possible." (Cent. Ed.,p.6) But this truth is at present veiled from the ego-consciousness of the sadhaka, and his ...
... one carries in it some suggestion of truth which gets coated with mental matter—here one has to use discrimination and separate the true suggestion from the less reliable mental matter. Intuition and discrimination must always go together so long as one mixes in the mental plane—and for some time after. Mental intuitive knowledge catches directly some aspect of a truth but without any completeness... but when there Page 158 is a dynamic action from them, it is always a mixed action, not an action of pure knowledge but of knowledge subduing itself to the rule of the Ignorance, the cosmic necessity in a world of Ignorance. If their action was that of the full Knowledge, there would be no need of any supramental descent. The higher consciousness is a concentrated consciousness, ... intuitivised) it can make you understand and be conscious of all the processes in you and around but it does not necessarily make you entire master of the reactions. For that Knowledge is not enough—a certain Knowledge-Will (knowledge and will fused together) or Consciousness-Power is needed. One can get intuitions—communications from there [ the intuitive plane ] even while the ego exists—but to ...
... bliss; but our own being remains the sport of a lower Nature of pleasure and pain and dull neutral sensation incapable of its divine delight. There is this perfect Knowledge and Will; but our own remains always the mental deformed knowledge and limping will incapable of sharing in or even being in tune with that nature of Godhead. Or else so long as we live purely in an ecstatic contemplation of that... process of Integral Yoga in which the Infinite is experienced not merely at the mental plane and even at the overmental plane, but at the supramental plane that all the varieties of yogic experiences, even their conflicts can be harmonised. For the mind, the process of integralisation is its supreme difficulty. The knowledge obtained at the level of the integral realisation reveals to us, in the words... essential cognition of the Infinite and mental, overmental, and supramental cognitions of that Infinite. It is when the spiritual experience of the infinite is obtained in mental cognition that the aspect of the infinite which is experienced tends to be felt as though that aspect is the only truth of the infinite. As Sri Aurobindo points out, "If then we seek mentally to realise Sachchidananda, there ...
... The Yoga of Integral Knowledge The Synthesis of Yoga Chapter XIII The Difficulties of the Mental Being We have come to this stage in our development of the path of Knowledge that we began by affirming the realisation of our pure self, pure existence above the terms of mind, life and body, as the first object of this Yoga, but we now affirm that this... bliss; but our own being remains the sport of a lower Nature of pleasure and pain and dull neutral sensation incapable of its divine delight. There is this perfect Knowledge and Will; but our own remains always the mental deformed knowledge and limping will incapable of sharing in or even being in tune with that nature of Godhead. Or else so long Page 394 as we live purely in an ecstatic... conscious experience by the power and in the manner of the divine supramental faculties, this realisation would offer no essential difficulties. But man is a mental and not yet a supramental being. It is by the mind therefore that he has to aim at knowledge and realise his being, with whatever help he can get from the supramental planes. This character of our actually realised being and therefore of our Yoga ...
... well in the field of mental action outside. But Yoga is not a mental field, the consciousness which has to be established is not a mental, logical or debating consciousness—it is even laid down by Yoga that unless and until the mind is stilled, including the intellectual or logical mind, and opens itself in quietude or silence to a higher and deeper consciousness, vision and knowledge, sadhana cannot reach... is, his mental constitution and mental preference. So what's the use of running down faith which after all gives something to hold on to amidst the contradictions of an enigmatic universe? If one can get at a knowledge that knows, it is another matter; but so long as we have only an ignorance that argues, well, there is a place still left for faith—even, faith may be a glint from the knowledge that knows... vital of the man of strongest mental and vital faith there are periods when the knowledge in the psychic gets covered up—but it persists behind the veil. In you the eclipse has been strong and long because, owing to certain mental and vital formations, the assent of the mind and vital got clouded over and could only take negative forms. But there is always the knowledge or intuition in the soul that ...
... distinguished from those who have mentally acquired knowledge, maníshí. विदथा कवीनां can only mean the realisations of (ideal) knowledge possessed by the seers. In my rendering I take, as usual, प्रांचं in the sense of "higher, supreme" = परांचं, दुवस्यन् in the sense of "made active", नमस् of submission or adoration, गृत्साय of "eager, desirous to acquire". गीः is the goddess Vak who expresses the... bright & rapturous forms; the streams of sweetness & richness flow down where he as the strong lord increases by the ideal knowledge. Agni, born of the might of God, has blazed out in the whole range of our being, illuminating it with strength whose substance is knowledge & knowledge whose force is strength, the Chit-Tapas from which he sprang; in that blaze of strength & light he holds up all the bright... in their sheer nakedness of self-being, for all of them are rendered in the mental values proper to this existence of mind in material life, neither are they covered & concealed by the obscurations of the lower & false values given by our present tainted & muddied perceptions. The truth of them shines through the thin mental veil they wear. Here, in this lower kingdom, the seven in their eternal youth ...
... from the standing-ground of the inner spiritual experience. The more you go inward or upward, the more the view of things changes and the outer knowledge Science organises takes its real and very limited place. Science, like most mental and external knowledge, gives you only truth of process. I would add that it cannot give you even the whole truth of process; for you seize some of the ponderables, but... much difference between the high mental eminencies and the lower climbings of this external existence. All the energies of the Lila are equal in the sight from above, all are disguises of the Divine. But one has to add that all can be turned into a first means towards the realisation of the Divine. A philosophic statement about the Atman is a mental formula, not knowledge, not experience: yet sometimes... the stiletto of doubt and the bludgeon of denial. An indiscriminateness of mental belief is not the teaching of spirituality or of Yoga; the faith of which it speaks is not a crude mental belief but the fidelity of the soul to the guiding light within it, a fidelity which has to remain firm till the light leads it into knowledge. Page 225 July 31, 1932 I am glad you have told me ...
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