... , thinker, scientist, intellectual creator, the man of the idea, the man of the written or spoken word, the idealist and dreamer are the present mental being at his highest attained summit. This mental man has his life-part, his life of passions and desires and ambitions and life-hopes of all kinds and his lower sensational and physical existence, and this lower part can often equibalance or weigh... formative in his whole nature: but this is not typical of him in his greatest development, for there the vital and physical are controlled and subjected by the thinking will and intelligence. The mental man cannot transform his nature, but he can control and harmonise it and lay on it the law of a mental ideal, impose a balance or a sublimating and refining influence, and give a high consistency to... imponderable influences which act upon the material world and the life-plane but which at present we can only infer and cannot directly experience: these intangibles and imponderables are to the mental man real and patent and he regards them as truths demanding to be realised in our or the earth's nature. On the inner plane mind and mind soul independent of the body can become to us an entire reality ...
... the Knowledge Divine to the Ignorance (avidyā) of mental man take place?"; and this, again, is followed (in Vol. II, Part 2) by the climactic inquiry: "How, then, shall avidya-ridden man surpass his ignorance (and the impotence born of it) and reclaim the sovereignty of the Divine Knowledge or Gnosis or supramental Truth-Consciousness"? Mental man is a transitional being in the evolving history of... y race and reach a new dynamic status, that of the Superman. But a kind of road-block was barring the way. If that could be removed and it could and indeed would be - the transitional being, the mental man, would give place to the future man, the supramental man; and when man changed, society and its institutions and its activities would change too, and the Life Divine would be established here on... Taittiriya Upanishad, for example, sees in Man several layers of reality and significance: annamaya, prānamaya, manomaya, vijñānamaya and ānandamaya corresponding to the physical man, vital man, mental man, supramental man and the wholly realised man resting in the sachchidānanda consciousness. Page 426 The great crossing has to be from the aparārdha hemisphere of the first ...
... action than Page 1074 the mental man because of his superiority in kinetic life-force: the intellectual tends to be effective in thought but ineffective in power over the world, while the kinetic vital man of action dominates life. But it is his use of mind that enables him to arrive at a full exploitation of this superiority, and in the end the mental man by his power of knowledge, his science... inward: for him there is no inner being, no inner living. But the introvert of this distinction also has not the inner life; he is not a seer of the true inner self and of inner things, but the small mental man who looks superficially inside himself and sees there not his spiritual self but his life-ego, his mind-ego and becomes unhealthily preoccupied with the movements of this little pitiful dwarf creature... first pettiness of the life constructed for itself by our normal physical humanity, a joy of being which is larger and richer than any delight in existence that the outer vital man or the surface mental man can gain by their dynamic vital force and activity or subtlety and expansion of the mental existence. A silence, an entry into a wide or even immense or infinite emptiness is part of the inner spiritual ...
... al power (or inadequacy) does not play a role and our greater or lesser capacities are not actively involved, we feel that our endeavor is doomed to failure. Such is the deep-seated belief of mental man. We know its results all too well. But even if they were flawless within their own scope, they would still conceal a supreme flaw, which is to bring in only what is contained in our own intelligence... same shadow, the white of the black, the good of evil, the virtue of a frightful misery that grips us all in the depths of our caves. This implacable duality which assails the whole life of mental man – a life that is only the life of death – is obviously insoluble at the level of the Duality. One might as well fight the right hand with the left. Yet, that is exactly what the human mind has... How could what is ever be in need of anything else? An animal is perfectly in its animal self, and once its immediate needs are satisfied, it is in equilibrium, in harmony with the universe. Mental man is not in his self, though he believes he is – he even believes in the greatness of his self, because it must have size, like everything else, and there must be bigger and lesser selves, more or ...
... thinker, scientist, intellectual creator, the man of the idea, the man of the written or spoken word, the idealist and dreamer are the present mental being at his highest attained summit. This mental man has his life-part, his life of passions and desires and ambitions and life-hopes of all kinds and his lower sensational and physical existence, and this lower part can often equibalance or weigh... formative in his whole nature: but this is not typical of him in his greatest development, for there the vital and physical are controlled and subjected by the thinking will and intelligence. The mental man cannot transform his nature, but he can control and harmonise it and lay on it the law of a mental ideal, impose a balance or a sublimating and refining influence, and give a high consistency to... live in mind and the things of the mind, to be an Page 45 intelligence rather than a life and a body, is our highest position, short of spirituality, in the degrees of Nature. The mental man, the man of a self-dominating and self-formative mind and will conscious of an ideal and turned towards its realisation, the high intellect, the thinker, the sage, less kinetic and immediately ...
... physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development—Krishna opens the possibility of Overmind, Buddha tries to shoot... What is all this obsession of greater or less? In our Yoga we do not strive after greatness. It is not a question of Sri Krishna's disciples, but of the earth consciousness—Rama was a mental man, there is no touch of the overmind consciousness (direct) in anything he said or did, but what he did was done with the greatness of the Avatar. But there have since been men who did live in touch... and vital. What was said 2 was that Krishna as a manifestation on earth opened the possibility of the Overmind consciousness here to men and stood for that, as Rama was the incarnation in mental Man. If Krishna was an overmind "God", that means he was not an Incarnation, not the Divine, but somebody else who claimed to be the Divine—i.e. he was a god who somehow thought he was God. ...
... humanity evolves slowly, containing in itself all stages of the evolution from the material and the vital man to the mental man. A small minority has pushed beyond the barriers, opening the doors to occult and spiritual knowledge and preparing the ascent of the evolution beyond mental man into spiritual and supramental being. Sometimes this minority has exercised an enormous influence as in Vedic India... effect on mankind would be to open a way between the order of the Truth-light and the orders of the Ignorance here on earth itself, a sort of realised gradation by which it would be possible for mental man to evolve more easily and surely from the Ignorance towards the Light and, as he went, organise his existence according to these steps. For at present the grades of consciousness between mind and ...
... THE OVERHEAD PLANES OF CONSCIOUSNESS At the present stage of the evolutionary advance, man has a body, certain vital instincts and passions, and a directing and controlling mind. Mental man is a great improvement on the mere animal, but he is also a prey to various dissatisfactions. What is the reason? Sri Aurobindo's diagnosis is pointed and clear: the mind of man, a helper in many... purblind vision, the vision of a man who strives to find his Page 292 bearings in darkness; a walled-up agonised vision, vaguely apprehensive of everything and everybody. The mental man has no sense of community or communion, he is as it were by himself and for himself. Mind the efficient servant upto a point is also a weakening and defeating power, a power that divorces us from... answers. 10 Ascent, descent, integration; aspiration, response, realisation: such are the classic terms of the Aurobindonian dialectic of spiritual evolution. Once spiritually awakened, mental man strives to exceed himself, and as he explores the ascending possibilities, he reaches stage after stage of the overhead—or above mind—consciousness: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind ...
... there be, of what is beyond mind,—and in that case as its last stride has been the evolution of the mental being, man, out of the vital being, the animal, so its next stride will be to evolve out of mental man a greater spiritual and supramental creature. Page 223 50 All mind and life on earth are the progressive manifestation of a Spirit or Being that has involved itself in Matter... great in consciousness, however physically small, that the scientists' alleged cousinship of monkey and man looks psychologically almost incredible. And yet the difference between vital animal and mental man is as nothing to that which will be between man's mind and the superman's vaster consciousness and richer powers. That past step will be to this new one as the snail's slow march in the grass to... all was moving in Nature. At present what we know best is man and mind and what mind and its several senses see or infer about the universe. But mind is not the highest possible instrument and mental man is not the last creation possible to the capacities of creative evolution in the material universe. There is indeed the real man as well as this that is apparent. The apparent is this imperfect ...
... and exceeds itself in Man. The mental man is greatly hampered and burdened by the control of the original Inconscience, but the upward evolutionary force aims at evolving out of the mental man the fully conscious being, a divine manhood or a spiritual and supramental supermanhood which shall be the next product of evolutionary process. The transition from the mental man to supramental supermanhood will ...
... in the ascent of the nature. At a higher stage of the evolution of personality the being of mind may rule; there is then created the mental man who lives predominantly in the mind as the others live in the vital or the physical nature. The mental man tends to subordinate to his mental self-expression, mental aims, mental interests or to a mental idea or ideal the rest of his being: because ...
... then the...Avatars leading to the human development from the vital [Rama of the Axe],..to the 12. On Yoga 11, Tome One, p. 405, Page 90 mental man [Rama, son of Dasaratha] and again the over-mental man [Krishna]. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development -Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot ...
... many millenniums for each step, the halting and difficult evolution operated by Nature in the past in the unconscious creatures of the Ignorance. It is a first condition of this change that the mental Man we now are should become inwardly aware and in possession of his own deeper law of being and its processes; he must become the psychic and inner mental being master of his energies, no longer a slave... original terrestrial creation, each complete in its separate existence. The evolved spiritual individual would be there, there might evolve also a spiritual community or communities in the same world as mental man and the vital being of the animal, but each working out its independent existence in a loose relation within the terrestrial formula. The supreme power of the principle of unity taking all diversities ...
... self-repeating forces with a few major vibrations. What we propose in our Yoga is nothing less than to break up the whole formation of our past and present which makes up the ordinary material and mental man and to create a new centre of vision and a new universe of activities in ourselves which shall constitute a divine humanity or a superhuman nature. The first necessity is to dissolve that central... prevent from leading it to its goal. This is the faith with which the seeker has to begin his seeking and endeavour; for in all his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the Unseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will be transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge. Into all our endeavour upward ...
... the ascent of the nature. At a higher stage of the evolution of personality the being of mind may rule; there is then created the mental man who lives predominantly in the mind as the others live in the vital Page 932 or the physical nature. The mental man tends to subordinate to his mental self-expression, mental aims, mental interests or to a mental idea or ideal the rest of his being: ...
... always be an amorphous mass, all intermingled, like that ( gesture ). To become an individual is what Sri Aurobindo calls becoming truly a mental man. Well, if you have read The Human Cycle , you will see that already it is not so easy to become a truly mental man who thinks by himself, is free from all outer influences, who has an individuality, who exists, has his reality; even that is not so easy ...
... have been busy with their own salvation while the world has remained just the same. SRI AUROBINDO: Evolution has proceeded from matter through animal to physical man, vital man, mental man and spiritual man. When mental man or spiritual man appears, the others don't disappear. The tigers and serpents don't become men. In this upward growth of the human consciousness you can't say that Buddha, Christ ...
... methods of integral yoga, but the integral yoga is a conscious application of the methods of the evolution that are found to be operating in Nature. The mental man, according to Sri Aurobindo, has not been Nature's last effort or highest reach; mental man is a transitional being; and the evolutionary Nature points man to a yet higher and more difficult level; Nature inspired him with an ideal of a spiritual ...
... humanity evolves slowly, containing in itself all stages of the evolution from the material and the vital man to the mental man. A small minority has pushed beyond the barriers, opening the doors to occult and spiritual knowledge and preparing the ascent of the evolution beyond mental man into spiritual and supramental being. Sometimes this minority has exercised an enormous influence as in Vedic India ...
... call for a definitive answer,—first, the exact nature of the transition from mental to spiritual being and, when that is given, the process and method of the evolution of the spiritual out of the mental man. It would at first sight seem evident that as each gradation emerges not only out of its precedent grade but in it, as life emerges in matter and is largely limited and determined in its self-expression... an intermediate necessity of great importance. But none of these three lines of approach can by themselves entirely fulfil the greater and ulterior intention of Nature; they cannot create in mental man the spiritual being, unless and until they open the door to spiritual experience. It is only by an inner realisation of what these approaches are seeking after, by an overwhelming experience or by ...
... universal thought and knowledge of the Spirit will converge than a centre. The mental man thinks and acts in a radius determined by the smallness or largeness of his mentality and of its experience. The range of the supramental man will be all the earth and all that lies behind it on other planes of existence. And finally the mental man thinks and sees on the level of the present life, though it may be with ...
... ve process of self-development by a sort of inclusive process of self-enlargement and transformation. The evolution of the material man into the vital man, from the vital man into the mental man, from the mental man into the supramental man and from that stage into the divine man, daivyam janam, to use the Vedic term Page 22 Illustration of other Methods of Yogic Quest: Kena ...
... shuddering" from the mental Man, man the apologist and would-be practitioner of pure reason: The finite he has made his central field, Its plan dissects, masters its processes,... His knowledge scans bright pebbles on the shore Of the huge ocean of his ignorance. 290 Hasn't the sum of the giant endeavours of mere mental man petered out into nothing ...
... natural zenith, not a superior degree of human greatness, knowledge, power, intelligence, will, character, genius, dramatic force, saintliness, love, purity or perfection. Supermind is something beyond mental man and his limits. 336 Driven to the extreme, Mind can only harden man, not divinize him or even simply give him joy, for the Mind is an instrument of division, and all its hierarchies are inevitably... Similarly, from the Neanderthal man to Plato, thousands of years were needed to overcome the resistance of the two previous levels and to "mentalize" Life, Page 290 to become the complete mental man. Even today, how many human lives are truly governed by the mind rather than by vital passions? The whole task of the pioneers of evolution, at any level, is precisely to join the new height with ...
... busy with their own salvation while the world has remained just the same. Sri Aurobindo : Evolution has proceeded from matter through animal to physical man, vital man, mental man and spiritual man. When mental man or spiritual man appears the others do not disappear. So, the tiger and serpent do not become man. In this upward growth of the human consciousness you cannot say that Buddha, Christ ...
... life and body are bound to their own limitations and, however high they may rise or however widely expand, they cannot rise above their natural ultimate limits or expand beyond them. But, still, mental man can open to what is beyond him and call down a supramental Light, Truth and Power to work in him and do what the mind cannot do. If mind cannot by effort become what is beyond mind, supermind can ...
... ego-sense had not taken possession of our heart & reason. We seek our infinity not only through the finite, but by insisting on the conditions of the finite & exaggerating them. Physical, vital & mental man, acting & striving under these conditions, must always be limited in his realisation and in his best satisfactions never entirely or permanently satisfied. He reaches towards physical, vital and ...
... central conception is that of the Eternal, the Spirit here incased in matter, involved and immanent in it and evolving on the material plane by rebirth of the individual up the scale of being till in mental man it enters the world of ideas and realm of conscious morality, dharma . This achievement, this victory over unconscious matter develops its lines, enlarges its scope, elevates its levels until the ...
... terrestrial creation, each complete in its separate existence. The evolved spiritual individual would be there, there might evolve also a spiritual community or communities in the same world as mental man and the vital being of the animal, but each working out its independent existence in a loose relation within the terrestrial formula. The supreme power of the principle of unity taking all diversities ...
... exists, but if I have faith in God, then I can arrive at the experience of the Divine. Letters on Yoga, p. 572 ...in his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the Unseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the Page 203 realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will be transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge. The ...
... consciousness emerging from it takes the general shape of a mentality struggling towards knowledge but itself, in what seems to be its fundamental nature, an Ignorance. Thus hampered and burdened, mental man has still to evolve out of himself the fully conscious being, a divine manhood or a spiritual and supramental supermanhood which shall be the next product of the evolution. That transition will ...
... be, of what is beyond mind, – and in that case as its last stride has been the evolution of the mental being, man, out of the vital being, the animal, so its next stride will be to evolve out of mental man a greater spiritual and supramental creature.” 50 “Man is an abnormal who has not found his own normality, – he may imagine he has, he may appear to be normal in his own kind, but that normality ...
... proof that in certain conditions the ordinary state of humanity can be surpassed and that a new state of consciousness can work itself out which at least renders possible a conscious relation between mental man and higher man [i.e. overman, le surhomme ]’. 12 And once again she describes in unmistakable terms what that intermediary being will be. All this is very plain and very positive. In ...
... do not want these alien things; I do not recognise them as part of myself or my nature," P.S. About Khitish Sen Mother says that he is all brain, that is predominantly strong in the mind, a mental man par excellence. Extremely self-confident, sure of his ideas and his intelligence and looking at the world from the heights of his mental vision. He has some weak points, but they are hidden behind ...
... Mother’s withdrawal had become a necessity because she was entering a new phase of the yoga. Till now she had focused her effort on the realization of the overman, the transitional being between mental man, which we are, and the full-fledged supramental superman. From now onwards her effort would be concentrated on the transformation of the body – of her body and therefore of the body of humanity, ...
... the mental level whose instrumental centre is in our brain. Sri Aurobindo writes of "overhead poetry" - poetry coming from vastnesses of being and consciousness that are as yet unreached by mental man and whose manifestations in him have been rare and sporadic so far. At the top of the gradation which they form is what he calls Overmind, the world of the great Gods who are essentially One Existence ...
... who are mental beings. Unseen by human eyes, the pupation, the transformation took place, in the cells of that material body, into a supramental body existing in a supramental world. The world of mental man is a world of darkness and ignorance, comparable to the crawling-world of the caterpillar; the supramental world is the flying-world of the colourful, winged and light butterfly, imperceptible to ...
... centred in the lower powers of consciousness, the riddle of its own existence, its purpose, its necessity is to it an insoluble enigma; if something of the truth is at all conveyed to this outward mental man, he but imperfectly grasps it and perhaps misinterprets and misuses and mislives it. His true staff of walking is made more of a fire of faith than any ascertained and indubitable light of knowledge ...
... only come "if" certain conditions are satisfied—all progress and change by evolution depends upon an "if" which gets satisfied. If the animal mind had not been pushed to develop speech and reason, mental man would never have come into existence,—but the "if", a stupendous and formidable one, was satisfied. So with the ifs that condition a farther progress. The Conquest of Death As for the conquest ...
... mispresented to our mind or framed into a false figure by the conflicting or wavering elements of the moral law. There alone the unification of the transformed vital and physical and the illumined mental man becomes possible in that supramental Spirit which is at once the secret source and goal of our mind and life and body. There alone is there any possibility of an absolute justice, love and right—far ...
... knowledge and culminate in a positive and effective ignorance. We can get some glimpse of what this means, to what it amounts in action, when we look at the nature of exclusive concentration in mental man, in our own consciousness. First of all, we must note that what we mean ordinarily by the man Page 604 is not his inner self, but only a sum of apparent continuous movement of consciousness ...
... But in truth it is something greater than its present appearance and not bound to its humanity: it was a lesser manifestation than the human in its past, it can become something much greater than mental man in its future. And when this soul rises above all ignorant limitation, then it puts on its divine nature of which its humanity is only a temporary veil, a thing of partial and incomplete significance ...
... the preceding Avatar Rama, even though Krishna was an Avatar of a higher plane. It is not a question of Sri Krishna's disciples, but of the earth Page 407 consciousness—Rama was a mental man, there is no touch of the overmind consciousness (direct) in anything he said or did, but what he did was done with the greatness of the Avatar. But there have since been men who did live in touch ...
... 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 existence,—but the "if",—a stupendous and formidable one, was satisfied. So with the "ifs" that condition a farther progress. "Many people would tell you wonderful ...
... for a public, one is obliged to say certain things which make it something accessible. But it is true, isn't it? Whether it is the truth? Yes... That's all. Mother, the appearance of mental man was gradual, wasn't it, from the animal to man? That... There was all the same a time when it became a man, isn't that so? I told you that, from the standpoint of evolution it seems like that ...
... natural zenith, not a superior degree of human greatness, knowledge, power, intelligence, will, character, genius, dynamic force, saintliness, love, purity or perfection. Supermind is something beyond mental man and his limits; it is a greater consciousness than the highest consciousness proper to human nature. . . . Man's greatness is not in what he is, but in what he makes possible ...
... natural zenith, not a superior degree of human greatness, knowledge, power, intelligence, will, character, genius, dynamic force, saintliness, love, purity or perfection. Supermind is something beyond mental man and his limits; it is a greater consciousness than the highest consciousness proper to human nature. Man in himself is little more than an ambitious nothing. He is a littleness that reaches ...
... call for a definitive answer,—first, the exact nature of the transition from mental to spiritual being and, when that is given, the process and method of the evolution of the spiritual out of the mental man. It would at first sight seem evident that as each gradation emerges not only out of its precedent grade but in it, as Life emerges in Matter and is largely limited and determined in its self-expression ...
... in him. It is no mere reasonable doctrine of the golden mean: it takes account of secret cosmic forces, the mysterious gods. And it can be seen as directed actually against a Dionysian upsurge in mental man to drown his supra-intellectual possibilities: what is to be restrained is the desire revelling in a magnification of the crude stuff of our being which needs katharsis, purgation, and which on ...
... "me": it's a mental construction he has made (but that doesn't matter, one can work through anything).... But there was in this letter something MORE than I thought. I always thought he was a very mental man with a vital power of attraction—there may be something else.... Page 284 But they are caught in vital formations. P. L. too, I always got a feeling he had to be protected. Did Z say ...
... l being in a new evolution." 3 For, in actuality, he says, "the imperfection of Man is not the last word of Nature, but his perfection too is not the last peak of the Spirit." 4 Beyond the mental man we are, there exists the possibility of another being who will be the spearhead of evolution as man was once the spearhead of evolution among the great apes. "If," says Sri Aurobindo, "the animal ...
... godhead than Krishna? What was said was that Krishna as a manifestation on earth opened the possibility of the Overmind consciousness here to men and stood for that, as Rama was the incarnation in mental Man. If Krishna was an overmind "God", that means he was not an Incarnation, not the Divine, but somebody else who claimed to be the Divine—i.e. he was a god who somehow thought he was God. Somehow ...
... come into play man becomes the Rakshasa, the demon. Egoistic hunger for possession, enjoyment, enlarged and increased appetite are his characteristics. Next came the Asura, the Titan, the egoistic mental man in his earlier avatar seeking to emerge out of the purely vital nature. Ambition and pride are his guiding spirit. Prometheus is his prototype. There are still two higher types which have been e ...
... the adventurous games of life like science and technology and extend the limits of physical existence by their inventions and discoveries of nature's secrets. Above this type, we have the purely mental man of the sattwic type who lives in the mind and things of the mind, artists, writers, poets, philosophers and others. The sattwic type is noted for light, balance and harmony, for truth, honesty, kindness ...
... learnt? 3. What is the difference between art and technology? 4. Observation of the different levels of being in man: the distinction between the physical man, the vital man, the mental man, the spiritual man and the integral man. 5. Topic for deep study and reflections: "Unity of knowledge" or "All knowledge, scientific, philosophic or yogic, tends ultimately to be identical ...
... plane. What is all this obsession of greater or less? In our Yoga we do not strive after greatness. It is not a question of Sri Krishna's disciples, but of the earth-consciousness—Rama was a mental man, there is no touch of the overmind consciousness (direct) in anything he said or did, but what he did was done with the greatness of the Avatar. But there have since been men who did live in touch ...
... and it evolves on the material plane by a process of rebirth of the individual. In this process of evolution, the individual moves up the scale of being from the physical man and vital man till in mental man he enters the world of ideas and realm of conscious morality, dharma. It is this achievement, this victory over unconscious matter that constitutes the concept of evolution in India. This evolution ...
... original terrestrial creation, each complete in its separate existence. The evolved spiritual individual would be there, there might evolve also a spiritual community or communities in the same world as mental man and the vital being of the animal, but each working out its independent existence in a loose relation within the terrestrial formula. The supreme power of the principle of unity taking all diversities ...
... formless Infinite. But what Sri Aurobindo means by manifestation is not a flawed and imperfect self-revelation under the conditions of mental ignorance and material limitations, as we have today in the mental man, but a perfect self-expression of the Divine Sachchidananda in the triple term of mind, life and body, as the crown of Nature's evolutionary endeavour. He says that emerging from inconscience, the ...
... turned to soul, and soul to air! 69 These are vivid evocations of the successive stages in the evolution of man, from the ape-man through man the hero-fighter, the sensuous hedonist, the mental man, the man of sorrows who has a bottomless pity for mankind, the saintly man who has surpassed the dualities, and so to the disembodied soul. Odysseus fondles the seven heads and Page 402 ...
... "Some dreams have got meaning down to their very details. . . . "There was a scientist and a magician and they both wanted to rescue a girl from alien enemies. The magician was the psychic and mental man who knows the truth but does not know the concretisation of the same. He has the grasp of the spirit but not the process and details. "First the magician tried to save the girl. He failed. Then ...
... been my ongoing battle for the last 33 years; it was fifteen days after my twentieth birthday on that day of November 15, 1943. Satprem November 23, 1976 Death of Malraux. The end of the mental man. November 24, 1976 My mother: I am with you. On my verandah: L., N., my Douce, my mother. The end of an era. November 25, 1976 I am besieged by Death. With L. and H., brought ...
... best power we know and the best morals we know are only the reverse of the same Evil, the golden side of the same powerlessness and the same rot, which assail and almost constitute the life of mental man. It is everything that has to be changed: Page 96 the best as well as the worst, something else must emerge from this unfortunate evolution — and it is Something Else that is emerging ...
... Sri Aurobindo's Thoughts and Glimpses and began readings from this little book of sutra-like apophthegms. The problem raised by the opening aphorism is the need for the transcendence of the mental man: "Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar". Reason has served well during the childhood and boyhood of humanity, but the time has come when man must race beyond Reason in quest of supermanhood: ...
... transformed to constitute "a new race, a race of supermen". 14 Six months later, in answer to a question, the Mother said on 8 October, that there could be many intermediate stages between the mental man and the ultimate supramental being: In reality, in this race to the Transformation, the question is to know which of the two will arrive first: the one who wants to transform his body in the image ...
... fulfils His Will in every "detail of its earthly life. This ascent to the higher divine Nature is the supreme "work of human life, both individual and collective. The collective lower Nature of the mental man has to be transformed and converted into the higher, so that man as a race may take the next higher step in evolution, and live sad. work on earth as a supramental being, a vessel of the Page ...
... what one swallows—this consciousness is very "exact." In fact, the cause behind the unifying abc's, or re-unifying rather, is not mental as we presume. We cannot refrain from transplanting the old mental man into the skin of the next being, but this is our mistake. The real cause is almost mechanical, as it were, a physiological mechanics, not at all meant (or only secondarily) to provide great world ...
... said it will go faster—) HOPE it will go much faster. 29 This was in 1956. Obviously the Mind is not going to create what surpasses it, any more than the apes' expertise in tree swinging created mental man. But once in a while the mistakes of the apes paved the way to man's thought. In man's case, the missed branch is the usual mental support that is constantly called upon to uphold the slightest gesture ...
... Matter, of each atom. An original secret principle that appears only at the very end, when all of the Amazon and each particle of the Amazon uncover themselves. We believed that it was the small mental man who was to be the explorer and ultimate discoverer, but it could be that the “something” that created primal Matter so many thousands of millions of years ago also created ultimate Matter and that ...
... self-repeating forces with a few major vibrations. What we propose in our Yoga is nothing less than to break up the whole formation of our past and present which makes up the ordinary material and mental man, and to create a new centre of vision and a new universe of activities in ourselves which shall constitute a divine humanity or a superhuman nature."¹ ¹ The Synthesis of Yoga or ...
... only come "if" certain conditions are satisfied—all progress and change by evolution depends upon an "if" which gets satisfied. If the animal mind had not been pushed to develop speech and reason, mental man would never have come into existence,—but the "if", a stupendous and formidable one, was satisfied. So with the ifs that condition a farther progress. 31 July 1936 There are some lines in ...
... ritual growth consist in: emerging progressively from the unconscious state in which one is more or less a fused part of the collective mass rather than an independent individual who is "a truly mental man who thinks for himself, is free from all outer influences, who has an individuality, who exists, has his reality" ( p. 104 ); developing an increasingly greater understanding of oneself by becoming ...
... zenith, not a superior degree of human greatness, knowledge, power, intelligence, will, character, genius, dynamic force, saintliness, love, purity or perfection. Supermind is something beyond mental man and his limits, a greater consciousness than the highest consciousness proper to human nature. ... Page 9 Man's greatness is not in what he is but in what he makes possible. His ...
... to the very last and highest. Evolution is the emancipation of a self-revealing Soul secret in Form and Force, the slow becoming of a Godhead, the growth of a Spirit. In this evolution mental man is not the goal and end, the completing value, the highest last significance; he is too small and imperfect to be the crown of all this travail of Nature. Sri Aurobindo Page 7 ...
... aspects, one individual and the other collective: how can one fully realise one's own good and the good of others? None of you have found the solution, for this riddle of life cannot be solved by mental man, however superior he may be. For that, one must be born into a new and higher consciousness, the Truth-Consciousness. For behind these fleeting appearances there is an eternal reality, behind this ...
... even the senses and the sensations. It offers in words of revelation, it unveils as if by lightning flashes, it shows in a sort of mystic or psychic glamour or brings out into a settled but for mental man almost a supernatural light a Truth greater and truer than the knowledge given by Reason and Science, a Right larger and more divine than the moralist's scheme of virtues, a Beauty more profound ...
... long before that; the Self cosmic or individual is experienced long before rising to Supermind. If it were not so, spiritual experience of that high Page 66 kind would be impossible to mental man, liberation would be impossible; he would first have to become a supramental being. As for the Purusha it is there on all planes; there is a mental Purusha, manomaya , leader of the life and body ...
... animal also the surface consciousness can obstruct or alter the intuition but, because its capacity is less, it interferes less with the automatic, mechanical or instinctive action of Nature: in mental man when the intuition rises towards the surface, it is caught at once before it reaches and is translated into terms of mind-intelligence with a gloss or mental interpretation added which conceals the ...
... adequate expression of a spiritual being in the supramental nature. This is the height and crowning movement of a spiritual evolution in the material world, and as the change from the vital animal to mental man made life another thing altogether in basic consciousness, scope, significance, so this change from the materialised mental being to the spiritual and supramental being using but not dominated by ...
... superfluous, inadequate and an impertinence. All divine consummations have perforce to be figured by us in the inapt and deceptive terms of a language which was made to fit the normal experience of mental man; so expressed, they can be rightly understood only by those who already know, and, knowing, are able to give these poor external terms a changed, inner and transfigured sense. As the Vedic Rishis ...
... consciousness emerging from it takes the general shape of a mentality struggling towards knowledge but itself, in what seems to be its fundamental nature, an Ignorance. Thus hampered and burdened, mental man has still to evolve out of himself the fully conscious being, a divine manhood or a spiritual and supramental supermanhood which shall be the next product of the evolution. That transition will mark ...
... first to secure himself on the higher mental altitudes, to ascend from them to the gnosis. Still less can he bring down all the Bliss-Power into this terrestrial Nature; he must first cease to be mental man and become superhuman. All he can do now is to receive something of its power into his soul in greater or less degree, by a diminishing transmission through an inferior consciousness; but even that ...
... and up from the ignorance or half-enlightenment of our mental conscious-being into a greater wisdom-self and truth-power above it, there to dwell in the unwalled light of a divine knowledge. The mental man that we are is changed into the gnostic soul, the truth-conscious godhead, the vijñānamaya Purusha. Seated on that level of the hill of our ascension we are in a quite different plane from this ...
... intuitivised intellectual insight. One thing is clear: their joint endeavour is to bring about a radical spiritual change of the world's consciousness, an evolution of Page 157 mental man into supramental man, a transformation of the human into the divine: they are the luminous parents of a new creation on earth. As such they have all the marks of an Avatar manifestation, a play of ...
... aspiration can come only if something in affinity with the Yogic condition and with the soul is already there in the consciousness which is you, along with its identification with the ego. Mental man has always, within his ego-consciousness, a projection made by his soul, a Page 161 projection which mingles with his sensational, emotional and conceptional ...
... in the Yogic books, the latter in the nervous system of the gross body. The two are closely connected and almost always act upon each other. The prana forms the link between the physical and the mental man. I must here warn you against stumbling into the error of those who try to harmonise Yogic Science with the physical science of the Europeans and search for the Yogic Nadis and Chakras in the physical ...
... its incalculable utility; for our natural mind seeks to dwell in its nature & is sceptical of supernature. Faith & religion were provisions of the All Wise Energy to accustom the natural & merely mental man to the promptings of the ideal soul in him which seeks even now to escape out of twilight into light, out of groping into truth, out of the senses & reasoning into vision & direct experience. The ...
... widest, to the very last and highest. Evolution is the emancipation of a self-revealing Soul secret in Form and Force, the slow becoming of a Godhead, the growth of a Spirit. In this evolution mental man is not the goal and end, the completing value, the highest last significance; he is too small and imperfect to be the crown of all this travail of Nature. Man is not final, but a middle term only ...
... natural zenith, not a superior degree of human greatness, knowledge, power, intelligence, will, character, genius, dynamic force, saintliness, love, purity or perfection. Supermind is something beyond mental man and his limits, a greater consciousness than the highest consciousness proper to human nature. Man is a being from the mental worlds whose mentality works here involved, obscure and degraded in ...
... Sri Aurobindo's terminology, the 'Overmind' represents the highest level of the mind, the world of the gods and origin of all the revelations and highest artistic creations—the world that has ruled mental man till now. in his gradations of the worlds, Sri Aurobindo speaks of two hemispheres, the upper hemisphere and the lower. The Overmind is the line between these two hemispheres, 'This line is the ...
... selection, as it were, or restricted number can stage and realize themselves in the order of the physical world.” (LD 780) “Man cannot by his own effort make himself more than man … But, still, mental man can open to what is beyond him” and call for supra-mental powers “to work in him and to do what the mind cannot do.” (EDH 170) Because the human being has awareness it can be conscious of this aspiration ...
... but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic , sattwic , nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development – Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot ...
... great in consciousness, however physically small, that the scientists’ alleged cousinship of monkey and man looks psychologically almost incredible. And yet the difference between vital animal and mental man is as nothing to that which will be between man’s mind and the superman’s vaster consciousness and richer powers. That past step will be to this new one as the snail’s slow march in the grass to ...
... his actuality alone; it concerns itself equally, or even more, with man in his potentiality, with man as he is bound to evolve into. For, it is sure that, although at present hampered and burdened, mental man has still to evolve out of himself the fully conscious being, a divine manhood or rather a spiritual-supramental manhood which shall be the next product of earthly evolution. Sri Aurobindo's ...
... Sri Aurobindo's terminology, the Overmind represents the highest level of the mind, the world of the gods and origin of all the revelations and highest artistic creations—the world that has ruled mental man till now. ...
... In other words, later, among the supramental race, they will say, "That's all very well, but it's only the beginning. Now, the entire earth has to become a supramental manifestation." Just as from mental man the supramental being was born, so also from the supramental being will be born the powers that will transform the earth.... Do you see it?! It's interesting. ( silence ) It's something ...
... mental level whose instrumental centre is in our brain. Sri Aurobindo writes of "overhead poetry" - poetry coming from vastnesses of being and consciousness that are as yet unreached by mental man and whose manifestations in him have been rare and sporadic so far. At the top of the gradation which they form is what he calls Overmind, the world of the great Gods who are essentially One Existence ...
... and mainly physical human stage) becomes afterwards ParasuRama ("Rama of the Axe", the Divine in the kinetic or vitalistic phase of humanity) and then Rama, son of Dasaratha (the Divine as the mental Man, the embodiment of Dharma, the perfect Moral Consciousness) and, again, Krishna (the Divine as the "Overman", openly exemplifying a more-than-mental Consciousness, what Sri Aurobindo calls the ...
... boundary of the mental circle. 4 Page 4 Sri Aurobindo has examined this argument and even formulated it in full sharpness. He has, therefore, provided basic facts of the urge in the mental man towards evolution of the spiritual man and contended that this evolution is marked by a long process of progression in four fields which are directly relevant to the evolution of spirituality: religion ...
... centred in the lower powers of consciousness, the riddle of its own existence, its purpose, its necessity is to it an insoluble enigma; if something of the truth is at all conveyed to this outward mental man, he Page 109 but imperfectly grasps it and perhaps misinterprets and misuses and mislives it. His true staff of walking is made more of afire of faith than any ascertained and indubitable ...
... technology be learnt? What is the difference between art and technology? Observation of the different levels of being in man: the distinction between the physical man, the vital man, the mental man, the spiritual man and the integral man. Topic for deep study and reflection: "Unity of knowledge" or "All knowledge scientific, philosophic or yogic, tends ultimately to be identical". ...
... mispresented to our mind or framed into a false figure by the conflicting or wavering elements of the moral law. There alone the unification of the transformed vital and physical and the illumined mental man becomes possible in that supramental spirit which is at once the secret source and goal of our mind and life and body. There alone is there any possibility of an absolute justice, love and right ...
... What is the difference between art and technology? 4. Observation of the different levels of being in man: the distinction Page 97 between the physical man, the vital man, the mental man the spiritual man and the integral man. 5. Topic for deep study and reflections: "Unity of knowledge" or "All knowledge, scientific, philosophic or yogic, tends ultimately to be identical". ...
... of a certain number of other individuals and this association is determined either by birth or by circumstance or even by deliberate choice. While describing the nature of collectivities formed by mental man solely basing himself on the resources of his unregenerate ego-bound mental-vital consciousness, Sri Aurobindo writes: "In our present human existence there is a physical collectivity held ...
... "Beyond the mental and moral being in us is a greater divine being that is spiritual and supramental... There alone the unification of the transformed vital and physical and the illumined mental man becomes possible in that supramental spirit which is at once the secret source and goal of our mind and life and body. There alone is there any possibility of an absolute justice, love and right ...
... of obstruction which would tend to counter-balance the enhanced power and concentration of the forces making for the evolution. This is a difficulty that has broken in the past all the efforts of mental man to evolve something better and more true and harmonious than the ordinary mental and vital life." (The Life Divine, p. 1062) But whatever may have happened in the past, the Mother and Sri ...
... further, it has elevated the thinking animal into the status of a reasoning mental being. But even in his highest elevation man is still weighed down by a heavy stamp of original animality. Therefore mental man has still to evolve out of himself the fully conscious being, a divine manhood which shall be the next product of evolution. A great responsibility lies with man; for with his advent upon ...
... of obstruction which would tend to counterbalance the enhanced power and concentration of the forces making for the evolution. This is a difficulty that has broken in the past all the efforts of mental man to evolve something better and more true and harmonious than the ordinary mental and vital life. But if Nature is ready and has taken her evolutionary decision or if the power of the Spirit descending ...
... Something can be done, but to hope that love can be the next motto of it, is foolish. About him, I feel as if these ideals were coming more from the vital plane than from elsewhere. He is not a mental man and has always had the ideal of a mission to fulfil, of being guided towards it by higher entities. In what way can I help him? Of course, the life energy he speaks of is a vital energy and ...
... their very details". I saw one yesterday. Page 244 There was a scientist and a magician. Both of them wanted to rescue a girl from alien enemies. The magician was the psychic and mental man who knows the truth but does not know concretisation of the same. He has the grasp of the Spirit but not of the process and its details. The scientist tried and the magician tried ...
... ascetic refusal, 420-1; omnipresent Reality, 422; 8 principles, 423; the double soul, 423; 2 hemispheres, 424; Supermind the link-principle, 424, Vedic intimations, 424; middle state of mental man, 425, involution-evolution, 425; ascent-descent-integration, 426; lights from Taittiriya, 426; other past intimations, 426; founding the Life Divine upon earth, 427; world-existence as Shiva's dance ...
... will see God in himself and not himself in God, and who will see in existence more than life and body - who will see in it the dimensions of mind and Spirit as well. The Rakshasa, the Asura, and the mental man - these would be the necessary steps on the steep ascent to the summit of the future Man Divine. Kama is an interesting variation of The Birth of Sin. Not Power and Love, but Ignorance ...
... ponder over the limitations of the mental dispensation; let them pray, let them invoke, let them create the Next Future; let them usher in the race of the Superman. When that happens, when the mental man is superseded by the intuitive man and the superman, the rages of the ages will be extinguished, and man and man's works will wear a new poise of purpose and a new cloak of beauty: Thus, man's ...
... don't give it importance because it has no grandiose effects. 26 Completely invisible miracles because they are completely natural. They have to stop being natural for us to notice them. Actually, mental man became aware of the world as he began upsetting everything. And this is the whole key, the total key. If we want the miracle of the world, we must look closely at those little microscopic miracles ...
... Herself with the earth and her children, and, slowly but steadily, leaven them with Her supramental Light and Force. The inauguration of the reign of the Supermind in Matter cannot be done by the mental man, however high his soul may have soared in the realms of Spirit. It is the incarnate individuality of the Supreme Mother that alone can "tear the covering and shape the vessel and bring down into ...
... Infinite. But what Sri Aurobindo means by manifestation is not a flawed and imperfect self-revelation under the conditions of mental ignorance and material limitations, as we have today in the mental man, but a perfect self-expression of the Divine Sachchidananda in the triple term of mind, life and body, as the crown of Nature's evolutionary endeavour. He says that emerging from ...
... One: The Cell Without Code Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III 9: Innumerable Life It was a mystery indeed, deeper than that of the appearance of mental man amidst the animals, deeper than that of the appearance of any species whatever amidst other species of the same substance; perhaps one would have to go as far back as the explosion of life in the ...
... toward something else, we are the pioneers of a new air. And for once, it may be an air of joy. This need is the key to every evolutionary transition, from the mineral to man to what will replace mental man. There are not several ways of getting through, there is only one. But because we are mental beings, we speak of the need for truth, the need for justice, the need for good, the need for freedom ...
... the cells: this mind will automatically elaborate its own results and will reach its own inevitable evolutionary formula in a new species. It will find its own manipulation of Matter, as did the mental man of the Neolithic. This book could stop here, even with suspension points, because evolution is always in suspension points. It is a question of time ... and perhaps of human collaboration. But do ...
... Supramental being in a new evolution." 2 For, indeed, he says, "the imperfection of Man is not the last word of Nature, but his perfection too is not the last peak of the Spirit." 3 Beyond mental man, which is what we are, there opens the possibility of the emergence of another being who will be the spearhead of evolution as man was once the spearhead of evolution among the great ...
... awake, Lightning! Out of the ocean of the heart, awake, O Himalaya! Awake, O dancing Beauties of Heaven! Awake, O Supreme! O Supreme, awake, appear Upon the waters of the Deluge, O Mental Being – Man and Woman! Gouri Dharmapal Page 87 ...
... was a very "Ordinary" text (I've brought it with me), in "The Riddle of this World." Ah! And at the end, he says this, which he said many times but which I understand differently: "His [mental man's] full liberation and enlightenment will come when he crosses the line into the light of a new superconscient existence...." And then he says: Page 281 "But in itself this would change ...
... of suppleness, of agility, man is not the most gifted of animals, but for expressing the Spirit no other animal can be compared with him. Everything is made with this in view. We may wish to add to this possibility other things which seem to have been sacrificed just for the sake of the mental life—but also precisely because of this capacity of expressing a mental life man is able to develop in himself... expressing intelligence, observation, comprehension, deduction—all the mental qualities—man has gradually learnt to understand the laws of Nature and tried not only to understand them but master them. If we compare what he is with the higher being living in the Truth which we want to become, we may obviously speak about man as he is at present in a very derogatory fashion and complain of his im... field; whereas by a normal and systematic development man can remedy his defects and shortcomings. Man is certainly, in an organised way, the first progressive animal who can augment his capacities, his possibilities, increase his faculties and acquire things that he did not have spontaneously. There is not one animal which can do that. Yes, under man's influence some animals have learnt movements they ...
... of the universal Nature. It sounds like a sensation of opening and enlarging of this passage. The nose is connected with the vital dynamic part of the mental—a man with a strong nose is supposed to have a strong will or a strong mental personality,—though I don't know whether it is invariably true. But the vital physical? Of course the nose is the passage of the Prana and the Prana is the support... indicates an action on the externalising mind (physical mental) whose centre is in the throat. The neck and throat and the lower part of the face belong to the externalising mind, the physical mental. The forehead to the inner Mind. Above the head are the higher planes of Mind. The organ of speech is an instrument of the physical mental or expressive externalising mind. The Chest, Stomach... of the mouth, chin, neck are the seat of the external or physical mind. It indicates that the force is working there to change and prepare this part of the mind and get rid of resistance and wrong mental habits. The Cerebellum Yes, it [ the cerebellum ] has some connection with the subconscient. The Ear, Nose, Face and Throat It cannot be anything physical but only a subtle physical sensation ...
... suggests the psychological progress of man, and the psychological progress of race cannot be different in principle from the evolution of the individual—a proceeding from the material, the emotionally and mentally inert man upwards [?through] the mental to [?our] spiritual fulfilment. The Puranas admit the creation of animal forms before the appearance of man and in the symbol of the Ten Avatars trace... established, and then the Avatara and the dharmasya sansthapanam, eternal Light and Force descending, restoring, effecting a new temporary adjustment of the world's ways to the truth of things and of man. Translated into more modern but not necessarily more accurate language these symbols point us to a world history not full of the continual, ideal, straightforward victory of good and Page 384... trace the growth of our evolution from the fish through the animal, the man-animal and the developed human being to the different stages of our present incomplete evolution. But the ancient Hindu, it is clear, envisaged this progression as an enormous secular movement covering more ages than we can easily count. He believed that Nature has repeated it over & over again, as indeed it is probable that ...
... kind of progress to be made, the quality of the transformation to be realised. We are at precisely such a turning-point in the world's history. Just as Nature has already created upon earth a mental being, man, so too there is now a concentrated activity in this mentality to bring forth a supramental consciousness and individuality. Certain beings who, I might say, are in the secret of the gods, ...
... know I've had contacts with all the deities of all the religions. There's a gradation ( gesture of levels ). These beings are found all the way from... there are even some in the vital; in the mental realm, man has deified many things: he has readily made gods out of whatever didn't seem exactly like him. If you are eclectic, you can have contacts with them all. And they all have their own reality and... and of suffering are included in its pantheon. In the end, I think it's up to each one to name what he wants the way he wants. That's how I have always felt. Even in Hindu tradition it is written: "Man is chattel for the gods; beware of the gods." All this is merely a question of language to me—words to suit each one according to his nature. I've had conscious contacts with all the beings of ...
... mentality. (I I) Equality of the Thinking Mind: This is the last limb of mental sadhana, apparently most difficult for man the mental creature who is passionately proud of his mental possession. The fact is that the mind of man, because of its inherent nature, is always engaged in a mental activity whose different element s are ideations, imaginations, beliefs, judgments, opinions... is any mental decision infallible in content. (8)Man's mind greatly contributes to his miserable state of constant worries and anxieties vis-à-vis the unfolding of his future. Animals are wrapped in a fold of blind darkness; they move from moment to moment; hence they are exempt from any tendency to unnecessary and irrational brooding anxiety. Page 274 But man ' s mind... with great sympathy. This will help him to widen his mental consciousness instead of keeping it confined in a narrow bound. This will immensely help in the reception of newer and newer light from above and within. (3) Harmonious Ordering of the Mental Field: One of the most deplorable conditions - but quite a common one at that of man's functioning consciousness is that almost everything there ...
... may call a man a physical man, Page 268 if the foothold of his consciousness is in the physical being; or a vital man, if he lives predominantly in the tossing desires and ambitions and passions of his life- being or vital being. Similarly a man may be called mental or intellectual, if he lives not so much in his physical and vital as in his mental being. But a physical man. may have... have vital desires and ambitions and also mental interests and pursuits, or a vital man may have the latter and may also be susceptible to spells of physical inertia and material preoccupation; or, again, a mental or intellectual man may have occasional lapses into the obscurity of the physical or the turmoil of the vital consciousness. Yet in spite of these oscillations and overlappings, each. human being... individual freedom and high-soaring aspiration. Man's pilgrimage is from untruth to Truth, from darkness to Light, and from mortality to immortality; or, in other words, from Matter to Spirit. But his ascent is both a sublimation and an integration, so that when man reaches the glories of his spiritual existence, he does not necessarily die to his mental - and material life, but can bring those glories ...
... and inspired with the conscious will to impose a higher and higher law on her own processes of life and being. In subhuman life there is a vital and physical struggle, but no mental conflict. Man is subjected to this mental conflict and is therefore at war not only with others but with himself; and because he is capable of this war with himself, he is also capable of that which is denied to the animal... of life are simply a mental translation of the forces and tendencies of life itself as they emerge in the form of needs, desires and interests. The human mind has a practical intelligence more or less clear and exact which takes these things into account and gives to one and another a greater or less value according to its own experience, preference and judgment. Some the man accepts and helps in their... will and intelligence, others he rejects, discourages and even succeeds in eliminating. But from this elementary process there emerges a second and more advanced character of man's ideas about life; he passes beyond the mere mental translation and ready dynamic handling to a regulated valuation of the forces and tendencies that have emerged or are emerging in him and his environment. He studies them as ...
... excluded from the wide framework of the divine life. The mental and physical sciences which examine into the laws and Page 141 forms and processes of things, those which concern the life of men and animals, the social, political, linguistic and historical and those which seek to know and control the labours and activities by which man subdues and utilises his world and environment, and the... knowledge should be to discover and understand the workings of the Divine Consciousness-Puissance in man and creatures and things and forces, her creative significances, her execution of the mysteries, the symbols in which she arranges the manifestation. The Yogin's aim in the practical sciences, whether mental and physical or occult and psychic, should be to enter into the ways of the Divine and his processes... lives in a higher and vaster spiritual consciousness; all his work of knowledge or creation must then spring from there: it must not be made in the mind,—for it is a greater truth and vision than mental man's that he has to express or rather that presses to express itself through him and mould his works, not for his personal satisfaction, but for a divine purpose. At the same time the Yogin who knows ...
... Him alone. They had landed (was it mere chance?) at Dhanushkodi, far to the south, near the great temple of Rameswaram, whose high violet towers stood out above dunes of white sand; the temple of mental man’s first Avatar, and of his wife, Sita— who was engulfed alive by the Earth she loved—perhaps to pay homage to that story of the distant past, before going to meet the future. She already felt that... endless exercises, all kinds of things, even “pranayama”—if it would only shut up! I was able to go out (that wasn't difficult), but inside it kept turning.... But at that moment, all the mental constructions, all the mental, speculative structures, none of it remained—a big hole. And such a peaceful, such a luminous hole! Afterwards, I kept very still so as not to disturb it. I didn't speak, above all... evolutionary course and a long circuit in which the Consciousness had to act through more and more complex instruments and finally through a mental shell in which it perceived itself as an individual, with all the distortions and infirmities of the mental environment, it will be that same “involved” Consciousness, as Sri Aurobindo calls it, confined within the cells and electrons, hidden behind life ...
... and what is not seen, what is experienced and what is not experienced, what is and what is not,—all it sees, it is all and sees. Prasna Upanishad. (IV. 5.) All human thought, all mental man's experience moves between a constant affirmation and negation; there is for his mind no truth of idea, no result of experience that cannot be affirmed, none that cannot be negated. It has negated... of two kinds, mental or ideative and visual or in some way sensory. When we Page 445 see an image of things where those things are not, it is an erroneous construction of the senses, a visual hallucination; when we take for an objective fact a thing which is a subjective structure of the mind, a constructive mental error or an objectivised imagination or a misplaced mental image, it is a... supraphysical realities; thus the cosmic consciousness which is our entry by a breaking down of our mental limitations into the sense of a vast reality, has been classed, even in admitting it, as a hallucination. But, taking only the common hallucination, mental or visual, we observe that it seems to be at first sight a true example of what is called imposition in the philosophic theory; it is the placement ...
... then an instrument would be needed. And Sri Aurobindo says man is the instrument because he is one who holds in himself,—material substance, vital substance, mental substance. Man brings the whole evolved powers of the cosmos to a point; and his substance does not end with the body. A more perfect physical body, also, can be evolved if man admits the possibility. The body cannot be denied the possibility... there is no channel through which the higher series of substance can act directly on matter. Man is the instrument who embodies in him this possibility of direct action. The descending power of the supramental substance can act upon the triple series of mental, vital and physical substance embodied in man and change it. What is it that we call matter ? What are Page 231 the qualities... the present relation between sense and substance, as represented by matter, is binding. Is the relation between substance and sense bound by the present form of mental consciousness ? That is the problem. Even material states exist which man has not yet perceived, and so there is no reason to suppose that the present knowledge and possibility Page 230 of matter is binding on the spirit ...
... though its preexistence logically be admitted, mentally fetters man and keeps him enslaved to the incessant round of births and deaths. Not until man transcends this belief, in virtue of Right Knowledge, can there come Liberation" [p. 4]. If belief in the soul fetters man, what about the idea that the world is full of misery and that karma bandhana keeps man bound to the idea of misery and pain? According... the Ishwara consciousness as suṣupta , deep Sleep, because it is only in Samadhi that man usually enters into it, so long as he does not try to turn his waking consciousness into a higher state. Finally, I may observe that the Cabbala system seems to look at and describe the whole from a certain spiritual-mental or spiritual-psychic view from below the supernals. This is quite natural so long as... information I cannot carry the correlation farther. Now as to the three Supernals. I do not quite understand L.O.E.'s sentence about them—for she speaks of two only, the real and higher man and the separated man. Should I understand that these are the two on either side and that at the top is the Divine? If not, which are they and what is the third? In the ancient Indian system there is only one triune ...
... mentality. To heaven and earth in man, manushye, mind & matter manifesting in this mortal world & in human nature, Agni stands in two relations. Divine force in us is purity & to the soul that is pure both mental & physical nature become harmonious, amical, like two friends and helpful playfellows. Divine force in us is also mastery & enjoyment; to the strong soul mental & physical nature become like wives... "sisters" is proved by युवतयः सयोनीः of the sixth mantra. I render:—"Wide in mental capacity, purified in discernment he, the perfect friend, has established Beatitude by his birth in heaven & on earth; within the waters the gods found Agni of glorious beauty (or, the seer), in the work of the sisters." Pure divine tapas in man, says Viswamitra, equipped with the full capacity of the mind and a power... as we have not the clue; once the clue is in our hands there is an admirable force, clearness & sublimity in every word & image of the sacred writings. The idea is that of the existence of the mental being man in this world made absolutely full in all its parts & harmonious by the completest power, range & complexity possible to our beings; this is the great result of the waking & working of divine ...
... rather it has lost its head, its reason, its mental capacities of rationalisation, understanding, and concentration. The mental chaos was to be expected if the view of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and the forces activated by their Work, contain any truth. Man is “the mental being” par excellence, as one finds repeated time and again in their books. If man has to be surpassed by the overman and afterwards... Winock “Reason is the master of the nature of the human species,” 15 said the Mother, thus confirming that man is “the mental being” par excellence. “Reason using the intelligent will for the ordering of the inner and the outer life is undoubtedly the highest developed faculty of man at his present point of evolution; it is the sovereign, because the governing and self-governing faculty in the... between the animal and the suprahuman species of the future. Man is the typical mental being, an embodiment on the Earth of the mental gradation in the universal manifestation. Keeping this in mind, let us see how Sri Aurobindo and the Mother defined Mind. 1. “Mind is not a faculty of knowledge” “Mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis, but not of essential knowledge. Its function is ...
... Right, the Vast {Satyam, Ritam, Brihat) gleaming forth in the midst of mental man's preoccupation with making his mortal existence tolerable by the help of his analytic wits, his synthesising skills, his speculative ingenuities, his clair-obscur creations. This aspiration which has been vocal from far antiquity is inherent in man and a sure sign of superhuman things to come. Not that they can arrive... new life. The word "Superman" connected with Sri Aurobindo's work has to be properly understood - in the very sense in which you speak of "man" "since in our nature we are already what we should become". Yes, in Sri Aurobindo's spiritual experience not only man in his inner being but also apparently brute matter holds the supramental light and love and bliss secret within. That is why evolution follows... experiences compassed by the Vedanta are included so that the whole system undergoes purification and the consciousness undergoes a profound peace and there is an invocation of the Divine who is above the mental level together with the Divine who is deep within and the Divine who is universally around - but in as much as this Divine is figured as the Supreme Mother one with the Supreme Lord we get again a ...
... reason... is the last and choicest growth — and you would use this for the child's early training? To make a man reasonable is the coping stone of a good education, and yet you profess to train a child through his reason. You begin at the wrong end. No; we must, rather, retard mental education. "Keep the child's mind [intellect] idle as long as you can. " If he has opinions before he is twelve... having laughed, as Voltaire did, at Rousseau's "gentilhomme menuisier" — gentleman carpenter.) In any case Emile (though he is heir to a modest fortune) must serve society either manually or mentally. "The man who eats in idleness what he has not earned is a thief. " 1 Emile learns to be a cabinet maker and finally meets Sophie, an idealized country girl, and marries her. At the end of the book... unnatural and arise when men leave the "state of nature". "Man is naturally good, " he declares. This discourse contains the famous line, "If she 1. Ibid., p. 26. 2. Ibid., p. 205. Page 236 [Nature] destines man to be healthy, I venture to declare that a state of reflection is a state contrary to nature, and that a thinking man is a depraved animal. " Here he also makes a strong ...
... 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... the mental being of man you will find that there is what may be called the pure mental part of it, which is high above the head and communicates through the brain with the physical life. It is the – "thinking mind". It is concerned chiefly with reasoning, creations of mental forms and the activity of the mental will. Then there are the emotions and sensations which are not really mental in their... there is no evolution. What is generally understood by the Soul is the psychic and mental indi-vidualisation which persists even after the dissolution of the physical body and the vital sheath. Now, when a man dies his physical body dissolves, the vital body dissolves after some time and the psychic and the mental bodies also dissolve. Take the case of an insect. In the insect there is only the ...
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