... Aurobindo: Page 78 'When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is close.' Ibid., p. 433 Let us also study another statement of Sri Aurobindo: After... worlds which are other than the world of physical existence; after this intermediary travel, having shed the subtle physical sheath in the subtle physical world, vital sheath in the vital world, and mental sheath in the mental world and rest in its own world, which Sri Aurobindo calls the Psychic world, it gets reborn into a new physical body, normally after about three years sojourn in the Psychic world ...
... of the physical body for some time only; afterwards it passes away into the vital plane where it remains till the vital sheath dissolves. Next one passes in the mental sheath, to some mental world; but finally the soul leaves its mental sheath also and goes to its place of rest. If the mental is strongly developed, then the mental being can remain and so also can the strongly developed vital, provided... body for some time and passes away into the vital plane where it remains till the vital sheath dissolves. Afterwards it passes, if it is mentally evolved, in the mental sheath to some mental world and finally the psychic leaves its mental sheath also and goes to its place of rest. If the mental is strongly developed, then the mental part of us can remain; so also can the vital, provided they are organised ...
... the downflow of peace. He might mistake a first mental realisation for the deeper spiritual one or think the descent was in his physical when it was in his mental influencing the body through the mental sheath of the subtle body—but those who 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 ...
... its need for the future. When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is due. This is the general course for ordinarily developed human beings. There are variations ...
... body that we go in search of adventure in our vital dreams and that we leave our material or gross body for good at the time of death. Both bodies are in their turn surrounded by or embedded in a mental sheath, made of the still more subtle substance of the mental worlds. If our mental body is sufficiently developed we can roam about in it through mental dream worlds, and after death we spend some time ...
... Page 17 annamaya, which refers to the physical sheath; the second is called the prāṇamaya, which refers to the vital sheath; the third is called, the manomaya, which refers to the mental sheath. These three are familiar to all of us who have risen above the animal level of existence and have even gone above the level of passions and desires so as to lead the life of reflections, reasoning ...
... which it is till now a natural prey The full health of a divine body in its individual as well as its collective and global functioning is assured only when the human being is lifted out of its mental sheath and established in the supramenal status. It is an adventure for the heroic soul, for the vanguards of humanity; but its fruition will spread abroad a benefit that even the common level shall ...
... dissolved. The soul then continues to live in the vital sheath, prāṇamaya koṣa, having experiences in the vital world. The vital sheath, then, dissolves in its turn, and the soul lives on in the mental sheath, manomaya koṣa, till that too is dissolved. When all the three sheaths are dissolved, the soul goes to its own plane, the psychic plane, for rest, for assimilation of its past experiences—the ...
... body for some time and passes away into the vital plane where it remains till the vital sheath dissolves. Afterwards it passes, if it is mentally evolved, in the mental sheath to some mental world and finally the psychic leaves its mental sheath also and goes to its place of rest. If the mental is strongly developed, then the mental part of us can remain; so also can the vital, provided they are organised ...
... for some time and passes away into the vital plane where it remains till the vital sheath dissolves. Afterwards it passes, if it is mentally evolved, in the mental sheath to some mental world and finally the psychic leaves its mental sheath also and goes to its place of rest. If the mental is strongly developed, then the mental part of us can remain; so also can the vital, provided they are ...
... post-mortal journey. When the period of rest is over, Page 183 and the work of assimilation complete, the soul or the psychic being emerges from its plane and assumes again, first, a mental sheath, that is to say, a mental body cornposed of those mental elements which it attracts towards itself by the characteristic force of its personality for the work of its next incarnation. Then it descends... various experiences. Because he has developed a mind of reflection and imagination, and an affinity with the mental world, be can live in that world more or less securely and fruitfully till the mental sheath is dissolved and the soul or the psychic being departs to its own plane to rest and assimilate its past experiences. It must be noted that the psychic being carries only the quintessence of its ...
... and formed, the vital or nervous, prāṇakoṣa , in which there is a nervous contact and formation, the mental, manaḥkoṣa , in which there is mental contact and imaging. We dwell centred in the mental sheath and therefore the experience of the material world has to come through the other two sheaths before it can reach us. The foundation of sense, therefore, is contact, and the essential contact ...
... but to raise the animal until it is divine. It is his first business therefore to be conscious not only in the physical sheaths of the Annakosha and Pranakosha,—this he normally is,—but in the mental sheath or manahkosha, and there in his normal condition he is only partially active. Once awake in the mental body, he has to extend his waking consciousness,—whoever can so far develop,—into the Vijnana ...
... accomplishing what is inherent in it. That inherent something is the real-idea of the consciousness. This real-idea is driven by its own force. It attains a partial awareness in its ascent into the mental-sheath. Then it is faith. The real-idea, the secret inherent something, in its ascent into the supermind becomes self-luminous. Then it is no more a secret something; for it stands self-revealed. There ...
... accomplishing what is inherent in it. That inherent something is the real-idea of the consciousness. This real-idea is driven by its own force. It attains a partial awareness in its ascent into the mental-sheath. Then it is faith. The real-idea, the secret inherent something, in its ascent into the supermind becomes self-luminous. Then it is no more a secret something; for it stands self-revealed. There ...
... effect of the gradations of being are the multiple bodies or “sheaths” into which our soul has incarnated. There is not only the most obvious sheath, the material body, there is also a vital and a mental sheath (and potentially a “causal” or supramental one). These bodies together form what Indians call the adhara. This is the reason why, when we leave our material body (in our dreams or when we die) ...
... the life-world enters into relations with us. That is done through other sheaths of our being,—so they are termed in the Upanishads,—other bodies, as they are called in a later terminology, the mental sheath or subtle body in which our true mental being lives and the life sheath or vital body which is more closely connected with the physical or food-sheath and forms with it the gross body of our complex ...
... need for the future. When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally, the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is close. This is the general course for ordinarily developed human beings. There are variations ...
... its need for the future. When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is close. This is the general course for ordinarily developed human beings. There are variations ...
... Page 37 When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is close. This is the general course for ordinarily developed human beings. There are ...
... the inner being [which goes on its way to the psychic world] but of his vital sheath which falls away after death." (Letters on Yoga, p. 446) Let us now mention what happens after the mental sheath, in its turn, gets broken up. If during the lifetime of the individual he has been able to develop a special mental capacity and aptitude such as the ability for creative writing or musical talent ...
... of the gross material sheath (annamaya kosa) alone which is all that is visible and sensible to us. It is prāncakosātmaka, made up of four more sheaths: a vital sheath (prānamaya kosa), a mental sheath (manomaya kosa), a "knowledge" sheath (vijnānamaya kosa) and a "bliss" sheath (ānandamaya kosa). Each of these subtler sheaths possesses its own faculty of vision. In fact ...
... which it is till now a natural prey. The full health of a divine body in its individual as well as its collective and global functioning is assured only when the human being is lifted out of its mental sheath and established in the supramental status. It is an adventure for the heroic soul, for the vanguards of humanity; but its fruition will spread abroad a benefit that even the common ...
... after death the vital and mental sheaths dissolve, leaving the soul free to retire to the psychic world before it takes up new sheaths. What becomes of the Karma and of the impressions—Samskaras—on the old sheaths? Do they also dissolve without producing any result, good or bad, which they should according to the theory of Karma? Also, what becomes of the vital and mental beings after the dissolution... dissolution of the vital and mental sheaths? Page 123 The outer form only dissolves, unless that too is made conscious and is organised round the divine centre. But the true mental, the true vital and even the true subtle physical persist: it is that which keeps all the impressions received in earthly life and builds the chain of Karma. If we go a little way within ourselves, we shall discover... January 1935 In rebirth it is not the external being, that which is formed by parents, environment and circumstances—the mental, the vital and the physical—that is born again: it is only the psychic being that passes from body to body. Logically, then, neither the mental nor the vital being can remember past lives or recognise itself in the character or mode of life of this or that person. The ...
... then the rest in that world. Did Karuna have an easy and quick passage to the final place of rest in the psychic world? Had she gone through it easily and unscathed? Are her physical, vital and mental sheaths dissolved or is she still in one of them, partially or fully? The transition period was short; all the parts of her being connected directly or indirectly with me, are at rest and her soul... say, “Even after death, I will keep a watch on you and try to help you to progress on the path of divine realisation.” Is she consciously helping us? If so, why are we not aware of it? This was a mental resolve and may not have lasted when she united with her soul. 12 March 1965 ...
... substance not only of our physical but of our vital and mental sheaths and is therefore our real substance supporting this physical form which we erroneously imagine to be the whole body of our spirit. So too we have a double psychic entity in us, the surface desire-soul which works in our vital cravings, our emotions, aesthetic faculty and mental seeking for power, knowledge and happiness, and a subliminal... superficial mentality created by us in our emergence out of Matter, another a subliminal mind which is not hampered by our actual mental life and its strict limitations, something large, powerful and luminous, the true mental being behind that superficial form of mental personality which we mistake for ourselves. So also we have two lives, one outer, involved in the physical body, bound by its past... its function is to free and illumine, yet love is the deepest and most intense and its privilege is to be the key to the most profound and secret recesses of the Divine Mystery. Man, because he is a mental being, is prone to give the highest importance to the thinking mind and its reason and will and to its way of approach and effectuation of Truth and, even, he is inclined to hold that there is no other ...
... being. × Not only the physical body, but the vital and mental sheaths, all the embodied states or forms of the soul. × The supramental world has to be formed or created in us by the Divine Will as the result... Mental, vital, physical, the lower "births" all the knowledge of which the Divine Will, knower of our Births, possesses and through which it has to lead the ascending sacrifice to the supramental. × The peace, joy and full satisfaction in the mental, vital and physical being... the mortal grows into immortality. It destroys the enemy, the assailants, the powers of evil, enriches the soul with all they try to withhold, gives the triple peace and the triple fulfilment of the mental, vital and physical being and, labouring in the light of the supramental Truth, leads beyond, creating in us the world of immortal felicity.] त्वामग्ने वसुपतिं वसूनामभि प्र मन्दे अध्वरेषु राजन् ...
... after death the vital and mental sheaths dissolve, leaving the soul free to retire to the psychic world before it takes up new sheaths. What happens about the Karma and about the impressions - Samskaras - on the old sheaths? Do they also dissolve without producing any result, good or had, which they should according to the theory of Karma? Also, what becomes of the vital and mental beings after the dissolution... dissolution of the vital and mental sheaths? A: The outer form only dissolves, unless that too is made conscious and is organised round the divine centre. But the true mental, the true vital and even the true subtle-physical persist: it is that which keeps all the impressions received in earthly life and builds the chain of Karma. Now, wouldn't this answer by the Mother mean; "Our... "Our true beings - subtle-physical, vital, mental - remain the same for us from life to life down the ages. They, no less than our psychic being, have continuous survival. And the psychic being picks them up while acquiring new subtle-physical, vital and mental sheaths to accompany the physical body into which it is born."? When I turn to Sri Aurobindo I don't get quite the same picture. He 2 ...
... on its way till it is ready to pass into the psychic world where it rests until it is ready for a new birth. After death one passes through various vital and mental planes till the psychic being drops its vital and mental sheaths and enters into rest on the psychic plane till the time comes for rebirth. Page 530 At the time of death the being goes out of the body through the head;... certain surroundings, a remnant of the vital desires and instincts which one had in the body. As soon as one is tired of these and able to go beyond, the vital sheath is dropped and the soul, after a little time needed to get rid of some mental survivals, passes into a state of rest in the psychic world and remains there till the next life on earth. One can help the departed soul by one's good will... reached a stage of her development marked by a predominance of the sattwic nature, but not a strong vital (which works towards a successful or fortunate life) or the opening to a higher light,—her mental upbringing and surroundings stood against that and she herself was not ready. Her early death with much suffering may have been the result of past (prenatal) influences or they may have been chosen ...
... to our body constituents alone; it governs our vital and mental sheaths too. The extent to which this law reigns in Nature has not yet been fully recognised by men of our time, — who take their stand on the supposed substratum of Matter, — and indeed cannot be recognized, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, "until we have a science of mental life and spiritual existence as sound as our present science... thirst and the particular way of their satisfaction are but reflections 1 2 Sri Aurobindo's translations. Page 246 in the physical sheath, annamaya ko ṣ a, of something that is operative in all other sheaths or koṣas of our being. And unless we effectuate a transfiguration of the very principle of Hunger and the manner of its satisfaction in the higher and deeper... 3 The Life Divine, p. 201. Page 250 while we live are continually mixing with the energies of other beings. A similar law governs the mutual relations of our mental life with the mental life of other thinking creatures. There is a constant dissolution and dispersion and a reconstruction effected by the shock of mind with a constant interchange and fusion of elements." ...
... the soul. The soul is in the body in the same way as the mind or vital—but the body is not this gross physical body only, but the subtle body also. When the gross body falls away, the vital and mental sheaths of the body still remain as the soul’s vehicle till these too dissolve. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Psychic Being Sweet Mother, can the psychic express itself without the... births one after the other but is itself unborn, for it does not descend into the being but is above it—it holds together the mental, vital and physical being and all the various parts of the personality and it controls the life either through the mental being and the mental thought and will or through the psychic, whichever may happen to be most in front or most powerful in action. If it does not exercise... if there is a new birth out of the mere mental, vital and physical into the psychic consciousness, then this Yoga can be done…” Why has he said “the inmost soul”? Is there a superficial soul? It is because this inmost soul, that is, the central psychic being, influences the superficial parts of the consciousness (superficial in comparison with it: mental parts, vital parts). The purest mind, the ...
... however, a human being consists of several bodies or sheaths, material, vital, and mental, contained in each other. At the center of this complex being sits the soul or psychic being, which has taken up its bodies in reverse order when descending into a new terrestrial incarnation. The material body is the one that dies, while the vital and mental bodies survive for some time, still enveloping the... the plane of the psychic, which is a divine plane. These protecting pathways are what gives the impression of a tunnel, a bridge, or a narrow mountain pass. Still carried by his vital and mental body sheaths, the transiting person perceives the Light of the higher, spiritual hemisphere (in fact the Mother’s Light). The more he comes nearer to it, the more intense it becomes. As Kübler-Ross writes... of finally going home.” The experiencers who have gone that far do not want to return to the dark, difficult and painful world which they have left behind; they want to discard their vital and mental sheaths too and enter there where all is existence, consciousness and bliss: the psychic world. The Mind-Body Problem As mentioned before in passing, “a Gallup poll published in 1982 estimates ...
... not only of our physical but of our vital and mental sheaths and is therefore our real substance supporting this physical form which we erroneously imagine to be the whole body of our Page 233 spirit. So too we have a double psychic entity in us, the surface desire-soul which works in our vital cravings, our emotions, aesthetic faculty and mental seeking for power, knowledge and happiness... superficial mentality created by us in our emergence out of Matter, another a subliminal mind which is not hampered by our actual mental life and its strict limitations, something large, powerful and luminous, the true mental being behind that superficial form of mental personality which we mistake for ourselves. So also we have two lives, one outer, involved in the physical body, bound by its past... and insignificant, bare and savage, terrible and repellent. The artist and the poet do it when they seek the rasa of the universal from the aesthetic emotion or from the physical line or from the mental form of beauty or from the inner sense and power alike of that from which the ordinary man turns away and of that to which he is attached by a sense of pleasure. The seeker of knowledge, the God-lover ...
... disciplines who possessed the power to lay down their body at will. The difference with Sri Aurobindo’s master act was that he went into death in full consciousness and while keeping the vital and mental sheaths which, let us not forget it, were supramentally transformed. And this he did not in search of escape or dissolution, but to intervene and effect a change somewhere at the bottom of existence, in... undeniable that my body has that capacity [of endurance] infinitely more than the body of Sri Aurobindo.” This reminds us of her former saying that she had consciously chosen her parents not only for their mental but also for their physical qualities. She also said later: “I told him that, as to me, it would be absolutely without regret and without difficulty that I would leave my body to go and join him …... . It was an extraordinary experience. … When he left, there was a whole part – the most material part of the ‘descent’ [the formation in Sri Aurobindo] of the supramental body up to the [physical] mental – which visibly came out of his body, like this [gesture], and entered into mine. And this was so concrete that I felt the friction of the forces passing through the pores of the skin. It was as concrete ...
... down of the physical body by the soul. The soul remains “sheathed” in its vital and mental bodies to the extent that these have been developed. But what happens if the vital and mental sheaths are supramentalised? Supramentalisation means divinisation which means immortality. Sri Aurobindo’s vital and mental sheaths had been supramentalised for many years when he entered voluntarily into death with... also means that, like Sri Aurobindo, the Mother lives in an immortal body. Hers is even more fully supramental than Sri Aurobindo’s because not only the mental and vital sheaths of her adhara were supramentalised, but also part of the material sheath. (This is what most of her conversations from 1958 till 1973, recorded in the Agenda, were about.) Consequently she, like him, is omnipresent in a s... adversaries. This is what the greatest part of all mythologies in the world is about. Having explained this, Sri Aurobindo warns against another possible misunderstanding. “A mental control can only be a control, not a cure; a mental teaching, rule, standard, can only impose an artificial groove in which our action revolves mechanically or with difficulty and which imposes a curbed and limited formation ...
... by which the human being can use its fundamental qualities to rise above its ordinary state and to find access to the Above. But it is also embodied in several ‘sheaths’: the visible material sheath and the invisible vital and mental sheaths. The totality of this complex embodiment — called the adhara in India and much more complex than the commonly supposed single material body — also has its possibility... else is nothing but ‘vanity of vanities’ while mankind keeps plodding around in its mental circles. ‘Yoga is not a thing of ideas but of inner spiritual experience. Merely to be attracted to any set of religious or spiritual ideas does not bring with it any realization. Yoga means a change of consciousness; a mere mental activity will not bring a change of consciousness, it can only bring a change of... burst because of the pressure of the awareness that the time of the incarnation of a higher species on Earth was imminent. Imprisoned by mental limitations, he suffered like few others; born too early and too much to the West, he was unable to escape from the mental prison and dashed himself to insanity against its glass walls. As an evaluation of Friedrich Nietzsche, we may conclude with the following ...
... an end to his life, following the normal process of transiting to the other worlds by shedding successively the material, vital and mental body-sheaths. His master act was a confrontation with death in full consciousness and while keeping the vital and mental sheaths, which, as we know, were supramentally transformed. (The Mother described him later on as being in possession of this supramentalized... movement governed by a new principle in which mind and man would be subordinate elements and no longer mind the utmost achievement or man the head or leader … A new humanity would then be a race of mental beings on the Earth and in the earthly body but delivered from its present conditions in the reign of the cosmic Ignorance so far as to be possessed of a perfected mind, a mind of light which could... Savitri as a means of ascension,’ explains Sri Aurobindo in one of his many letters on his epic to K.D. Sethna, the very first person to receive and read a few lines of it. ‘I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level … In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see ...
... today represented by the family. The cerebral constitution of the new beings, which will enable them to be conscious outside their physical envelope (no longer feeling the weight of the vital and mental sheaths), and which will make them different from their parents, can only act in this sense. However, this does not mean that things will take place in a moment. Too many thousands of familial habits of... Without leaving duality, the basis of our mental perception of the world, we would no longer live in terms of division, but of complementarily, and the peace between peoples would inevitably follow. Having eluded us as long as we were restricted to a divisive mental consciousness, an ineluctable and sovereign peace would prevail as soon as we entered a unifying mental consciousness, of which that peace would... and before us, really exists only for us. If Time can be captured and interpreted according to norms other than those of the terrestrial mental, it follows that everything which belongs to the terrestrial and, in the final analysis, to the cosmic mental, can change value in our eyes. There is, to begin with, the principle which apparently obliges us to do things according to what we have previously ...
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