... The Yoga of Integral Knowledge The Synthesis of Yoga Chapter XI The Modes of the Self Since the Self which we come to realise by the path of knowledge is not only the reality which lies behind and supports the states and movements of our psychological being, but also that transcendent and universal Existence which has manifested itself in all the movements... habits of its consciousness and yet uses them all with a large freedom and power for the self-expression of the Divine in the world. Here again the change is not any alteration of the essential modes of the Self, but consists in our emergence into the freedom of the Highest and the right use of the divine law of our being. Connected with this triple mode of the Self is that distinction which Indian ...
... self-being. Therefore the ancient counsel, know thyself, will always stand as the first word that directs us towards the knowledge. Still, psychological self-knowledge is only the experience of the modes of the Self, it is not the realisation of the Self in its pure being. The status of knowledge, then, which Yoga envisages is not merely an intellectual conception or clear discrimination of the truth ...
... The Yoga of Integral Knowledge The Synthesis of Yoga Chapter XII The Realisation of Sachchidananda The modes of the Self which we have dealt with in our last Chapter may seem at first to be of a highly metaphysical character, to be intellectual conceptions more fit for philosophical analysis than for practical realisation. But this is a false distinction ...
... we give ourselves to the Divine! 11 May 1954 We must know how to give our life and also our death, our happiness and also our suffering. 28 December 1954 Three typical modes of total self-giving to the Divine: (1) To prostrate oneself at His feet, giving up all pride in perfect humility. (2) To unfold one's being before Him, open one's whole body from head to foot, as one... Elements of Yoga Elements of Yoga Devotion and Self-giving Words of the Mother - II Self-giving Self-giving is true prayer. Self-giving: by this the whole being gets progressively unified round the central psychic being. Give yourself up―it is the best way of finding yourself. Page 100 Give yourself, all that you are and what... what you do, to the Divine, and you will have peace. Give yourself entirely to the Divine and you will see the end of all your troubles. It is a sincere self-giving that saves one from all difficulties and dangers. Never say, "I have nothing to give to the Divine." There is always something to give, for always you can give yourself in a better and more complete way. To the Divine ...
... mind is imaginative, but the body is sanity itself. And that is not a sign of its inconscience and inertia. The dull and dumb immobility of which it is sometimes accused is after all perhaps a mode of its self-defence against the wild vagaries of the mind and the vital to which it is so often called upon to lend support. Indeed it may very well be that the accusation against the flesh that it is weak... accomplices in regimenting the body. They impose their own demands and prejudices upon the body which helplessly gets entangled in them and loses its native instinct. The body left to itself is marvellously self-conscious; Page 11 it knows spontaneously and unfailingly what is good for its health and strength. The animals usually, especially those of the forest, maintain still the unspoilt ...
... mind is imaginative, but the body is sanity itself. And that is not a sign of its inconscience and inertia. The dull and dumb immobility of which it is sometimes accused is after all perhaps a mode of its self-defence against the wild vagaries of the mind and the vital to which it is so often called upon to lend its support. Indeed, it may very well be that the accusation against the flesh that it... They impose their own demands and prejudices upon the body which helplessly gets entangled Page 174 in them and loses its native instinct. The body left to itself is marvellously self-conscious; it knows spontaneously and unfailingly what is good for its health and strength. The animals usually, especially those of the forest, preserve still the unspoilt body instinct; for they ...
... delight which is love in its supreme mode. Indeed, in the final account, we come back to the supreme mantra formulating the mystery of ultimate reality, given by the ancients that we all know and repeat so often —saccid ā nanda. Such then is the ultimate Truth or Reality: there is the Being or pure Existence with its norms or modes or functions or self-formulations as Consciousness-Force... consciousness has two modes or status. First of all, when consciousness is the consciousness of things, when one is conscious of the existence of objects, this mode may be called objective consciousness, but consciousness may exist in itself without reference to any Page 128 object of consciousness; the light is there, there is no object to illumine, it is self-luminous. This is co... expresses itself in different modes and apparent forms, its essential quality does not change but acquires a different colour and vibration in accordance with its degree and level of expression. For example, the body has a consciousness, life-force has a consciousness, mind has a consciousness, and the levels above the mind, each has a consciousness. All these types or modes or, as I have said, dimensions ...
... delight which is love in its supreme mode. Indeed, in the final account, we come back to the supreme mantra formulating the mystery of ultimate reality given by the ancients that we all know and repeat so often – sachchidananda. Such then is the ultimate Truth or Reality: there is the Being or pure Existence with its norms or modes or functions or self-formulations as Consciousness-Force and... annihilation. But consciousness has two modes or status. First of all, when consciousness is the consciousness of things, when one is conscious of the existence of objects, this mode may be called objective consciousness, but consciousness may exist in itself without reference to any object of consciousness; the light is there, there is no object to illumine, it is self-luminous. This is consciousness in... in different modes and apparent forms, its essential quality does not change but acquires a different colour and vibration in accordance with its degree and level of expression. For example, the body has a consciousness, life-force has a consciousness, mind has a Page 259 consciousness, and the levels above the mind, each has a consciousness. All these types or modes or, as I have ...
... being, to taste more strongly and fully, with more intensity and precision, Thy own delight of being and self-manifestation? Suddenly all was lit with the inexpressible beauty of Thy Truth, and in the mirror of the individual consciousness Thou didst reflect all the infinitely varied modes of self-expression of Thy Page 120 being of Love, Pain and enjoyment united and fused in an ecstasy... them in its illumined activities, one can identify oneself with it once more and cease to distinguish between the instrument and the Doer. But since, by the very necessity of preservation, these two modes of activity inevitably coexist, both these points of view, both these ways of feeling must also coexist. 24 July 1914 True impersonality of the nervous being does not consist in an entire and... short, it is the individualised intermediary between the instrument and the thought of the worker, a kind of more or less skilled hand. The "I" knows itself to be completely independent of the present mode of manifestation—form, body, surroundings, education, sensory experiences; it is a constituent element of the All, an infinitesimal part of the universe; its duration as an "I" is identical to the duration ...
... Power, Light, Peace, Bliss was very evidently one." Here is a unique dire experiment, a horrific wager with Himself that the Almighty makes because this too must appear at some point as a mode of phenomenal self-projection. Besides, an actual full repetition of "a dark beginning of all things" would never be called a "symbol", a "semblance" and introduced by "as if". * * * So far we have gone... s, on the way to plenary knowledge or Super-conscience by means of a progressive evolution, is not considered by Sri Aurobindo a repetitive process. He conceives it to be one extreme possibility of self-revelation adopted by the Divine in the course of His varied "adventure of consciousness and joy" in terms of time and space. For, as Sri Aurobindo says in The Riddle of This World, 1 "once manifestation... "dark beginning of all things" as a presence, it is only through an instance of the earth's recurrent nocturnal phase that this presence is conjured up. 2 Savitri opens with a single self-sufficing line — a complete sentence in iambic pentameter consisting of eight words: It was the hour before the Gods awake. This line is the shortest start of any epic. The Iliad ...
... Power, Light, Peace, Bliss was very evidently one." Here is a unique dire experiment, a horrific wager with Himself that the Almighty makes because this too must appear at some point as a mode of phenomenal self-projection. Besides, an actual full repetition of "a dark beginning of all things" would never be called a "symbol", a "semblance" and introduced by "as if". * * * So far we... on the way to plenary knowledge or Super-conscience by means of a progressive evolution, is not considered by Sri Aurobindo a repetitive process. He conceives it to be one extreme possibility of self-revelation adopted by the Divine in the course of His varied "adventure of consciousness and joy" in terms of time and space. For, as Sri Aurobindo says in The Riddle of This World, 1 "once manifestation... "dark beginning of all things" as a presence, it is only through an instance of the earth's recurrent nocturnal phase that this presence is conjured up. II Savitri opens with a single self-sufficing line - a complete sentence in iambic pentameter consisting of eight words: It was the hour before the Gods awake. [p.1] Page 257 This line is the shortest start of ...
... teaching about absolute self-giving in Krishna's words: "Whatever thou doest, whatever thou enjoys, whatever thou sacrifices!, 69 whatever thou givest, whatever energy of Tapasya, 70 of the soul's will or effort thou puttest forth, make it an offering unto me." In Eckhart's teaching, surrender means relinquishing the resistance and the fighting mode of the egoic self towards the universe;... Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga. SABCL. Vol. 23, p. 588. × Pertaining to Tamas. one of the three Gunas or modes of Nature (Prakriti); Tamas is the quality of ignorance, obscurity, inaction, and inconscience, and is inherent in the physical consciousness. ... 109 Both relinquishing the will of the egoic self by acceptance of what is, and self-giving by offering one's will to the Divine, lead to the giving up of the ego. The difference between the attitudes of acceptance and self-giving is that whereas the attitude of acceptance may be based on the view of Reality as impersonal Being, self-giving calls for a faith in Reality that is described ...
... In the reception of the environing contacts and the reaction to them the three modes determine the temper of the recipient and the character of the response. Inert and inapt, he may suffer them without any responsive reaction, any motion of self-defence or any capacity of assimilation and adjustment; this is the mode of tamas, the way of inertia. The stigmata of tamas are blindness and unconsciousness... e: there is a transference or transmutation into a superior spiritual status, triguṇātīta , in which we participate in a greater spiritual dynamisation; for the three lower unequal modes pass into an equal triune mode of eternal calm, light and force, the repose, kinesis, illumination of the divine Nature. This supreme harmony cannot come except by the cessation of egoistic will and choice and... means of self-correction and self-liberation in the rajasic or sattwic ego but looks above, beyond the instruments and the working of Nature, to the Master of works alone and his supreme Shakti, the supreme Prakriti. There alone all the being is pure and free and the rule of a divine Truth possible. In this progression the first step is a certain detached superiority to the three modes of Nature ...
... eternal awareness of infinite and indivisible being and in the multiform appearances of finite division this self-existence preserves perpetually its self-delight. As in the apparent inconscience of Matter our soul, growing out of its bondage to its own superficial habit and particular mode of self-conscious existence, discovers that infinite Conscious-Force constant, immobile, brooding, so in the apparent... play, waves and foamings of that infinite deep, we arrive at the true solution of the problem we are examining. The self of things is an infinite indivisible existence; of that existence the essential nature or power is an infinite imperishable force of self-conscious being; and of that self-consciousness the essential nature or knowledge of itself is, again, an infinite inalienable delight of being. In... non-sensation of Matter it comes to discover and attune itself to an infinite conscious Delight imperturbable, ecstatic, all-embracing. This delight is its own delight, this self is its own self in all; but to our ordinary view of self and things which awakes and moves only upon surfaces, it remains hidden, profound, subconscious. And as it is within all forms, so it is within all experiences whether pleasant ...
... eternal awareness of infinite and indivisible being and in the multiform appearances of finite division this self-existence preserves perpetually its self-delight. As in the apparent inconscience of Matter our soul, growing out of its bondage to its own superficial habit and particular mode of self-conscious existence, discovers that infinite Conscious-Force constant, immobile, brooding, so in the apparent... play, waves and foamings of that infinite deep, we arrive at the true solution of the problem we are examining. The self of things is an infinite indivisible existence; of that existence the essential nature or power is an infinite imperishable force of self-conscious being; and of that self-consciousness the essential nature or knowledge of itself is, again, an infinite inalienable delight of being. In... non-sensation of Matter it comes to discover and attune itself to an infinite conscious Delight imperturbable, ecstatic, all-embracing. This delight is its own delight, this self is its own self in all; but to our ordinary view of self and things which awakes and moves only upon surfaces, it remains hidden, profound, subconscious. And as it * IV. 6. Page 133 is within all forms, so it ...
... birth is because all consciousness carries with it power of its own being and all power of being is self-creative and must have the joy of its self-creation. For creation means nothing else than a self-expression; and the birth of the soul in the body is nothing but a mode of its own self-expression. Therefore all things here are expression, form, energy, action of the Spirit; matter itself is but form... begin to feel and think, or is he in his real self that inner Being and Power which is the whole sense of the evolution and the master of Nature? Is Nature only the force of self-expression, self-formation, self-creation of a secret spirit, and man however hedged in his present capacity, the first being in Nature in whom that power begins to be consciently self-creative in the front of the action, in this... of a secret self-knowledge, is disclosing them in a grandiose succession under the self-imposed difficulties of a material form of being, is disengaging them from a first veiling absorbed inconscience of Nature, there is no difficulty in thinking or seeing that this soul shaped into humanity is a being of that Being, that this also has risen out of material involution by increasing self-expression in ...
... and clarifies; the quality of light, harmony, purity and peace; the force of equilibrium. Sattwa is one of the three Gunas or modes of Nature, the Self — the Atman, the universal Spirit, the self-existent Being, the conscious essential Existence, one in all. (The Self is being, not a being) Shakti — Force, Power; the Divine Power; the Power of the other; the consciousness and power of... Truth-Consciousness; the Overmind draws down the truths separately and gives them a separate identity. guṇa, Guna — quality, character, property; the three Gunas of Nature, her qualities or modes, are Sattwa, Rajas, and Tamas. Hemispheres, Higher and Lower —"The higher hemisphere is the perfect and eternal reign of the Spirit; for there it manifests without cessation or diminution... Rajas —the quality that energises and drives to action; the quality of action and passion and struggle impelled by desire and instinct; the force of kinesis. Rajas is one of the three Gunas or modes of Nature. Ramakrishna —Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa (1836-1886), a spiritual teacher of modem India. rasa — taste, liking, pure taste of enjoyment; the response of the mind, the ...
... characteristic spirit and motive intend to give, and, demanding that, is not prepared to enter into another kind of spiritual experience and another range of creative sight, imaginative power and mode of self-expression. This once understood, we can turn to the difference in the spirit and method of artistic creation which has given rise to the mutual incomprehension; for that will bring us to the... greatest gives its character to the rest and throws on it something of its stamp and influence—is of another kind. Its highest business is to disclose something of the Self, the Infinite, the Divine to the regard of the soul, the Self through its expressions, the Infinite through its living finite symbols, the Divine through his powers. Or the Godheads are to be revealed, luminously interpreted or in... all incidental things; what is really the matter is that I come to this art with a previous demand for a kind of vision, imagination, emotion, significance which it cannot give me. And not being so self-confident as to think that what commands the admiration of the greatest critics and artists is not admirable, I can see this and pause on the verge of applying Mr. Archer's criticism of certain Indian ...
... unequal modes pass into an equal triune mode of eternal calm, light and force, the repose, kinesis, illumination of the divine Nature. 154 Eckhart's simple yet profound teaching, remarkably free from philosophical abstractions, does not make a distinction between liberation and transformation as Sri Aurobindo's yoga does. In Eckhart's teaching, the liberation from the mind-identified self is the... transcending the modes of Nature. Mastery—the decisive step—lies in transforming the three modes of the lower Nature (Apsara Prakriti)—Tamas, Rajas, Sattwa—-into their equivalents of the divine Nature (Para Prakriti)—Shaman, Tapas, Jyoti. Describing this transformation of the modes of Nature, Sri Aurobindo states: Page 142 Here the disharmonies of the triple mode of our inferior... from her enslaving modes. To arrive at freedom, all the three modes of Prakriti must be transcended so that Purusha, the soul, is no longer involved in their workings and subjected to their law. In order to transcend the three modes of Nature, the Gita prescribes a radically different method of self-discipline that enables one to draw back from the three modes and lifts one above them. ...
... produces all its works, objects & happenings only in the Ishwara's self-extended conscious existence. So, the Swetaswatara Upanishad defines Prakriti as Devátmashaktim swagunair nigúdhám, Self-Power of the Divinity concealed by its own modes of working. The Self in Vedanta is not only Swayambhu, self-existent; it is Swarat and Samrat, self-governing and world-governing. The Ishwara is master and user of... inasmuch as they maim the fullness of God's intended self-fulfilment in man, átmahano janáh, self-slaying births,—not less, but in a way even more so, bhúya iva, than the more numerous herd of beings who by an ignorant attachment to bodily life and outward objects maim that self-fulfilment on its other necessary side. To renounce the condition of self-fulfilment is no less a blind darkness, andham tamas... faces in which existence presents itself to our ultimate mental perceptions, first, self-conscious, self-governing existence, secondly, mechanical Force. According to our view of the mutual relation of these two grand entities will be the nature of our philosophy and our outlook on life. If we hold the self-conscious, self-governing existence to be subordinate to mechanical Force, contained in it and one ...
... binding; they are themselves an incomplete mode of self-revelation. But when we go back into ourselves, into the true self and person, there is no longer a binding or limitation by the limits of action or perception; both arise as expressions of consciousness and expressions of force of the self operative for a free self-determination of its nature-being, for the self-unrolling, the becoming in time of something... there is that Brahman as Self is fourfold; the Self is Brahman and all that is is the Brahman, but all that is is the Self seen by the Self in four states of its being. In the pure self-status neither consciousness nor unconsciousness as we conceive it can be affirmed about Brahman; it is a state of superconscience absorbed in its self-existence, in a self-silence or a self-ecstasy, or else it is the... in the Self, the Reality, and the Reality must be seen in them, the Reality must be seen as being actually all these beings; for not only the Self is Brahman, but all is the Self, all this that is is the Brahman, the Reality. That emphatic asseveration leaves no room for an illusory Maya; but still the insistent denial that there is anything other than or separate from the experiencing self, certain ...
... that he should undergo the travail of evolution and trace its steps for us by a gradual attainment and realisation of his own origin. Thus alone could he be a pioneer and model for us. And the mode of self-revelation chosen for his Avatarhood explains the progression of meaning we find in his use of one of the key- words of his Integral Yoga: "Supermind." In the days of his monthly periodical... s in its essence."² Not only is a fusion of Sri Krishna and Sri Aurobindo indicated but also the Mother's presence is shown to be in it. Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo, speaking of the various modes of Krishna's being, first mentions the many-sided supreme reality that is Krishna of the Gita and then describes him as "the Godhead who was incarnate at Brindavan and Dwarka and Kurukshetra and... preparation of the psychological and physical being of the young by a special system of education within the permeating spiritual atmosphere of the Ashram-consciousness can be considered a very important mode of building with the minds and bodies of aspirant youth a new illumined future. I believe we can consider Sri Aurobindo to have been keenly interested and concerned here. There is "proof" for the ...
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