... still more sensible phenomenon of the subtly concrete. For in the brightness I describe there is another additional element that is connected with the phenomenon of Light well known and common to mystic experience. That inner Light of which the mystics speak is not a metaphor, as when Goethe called for more light in his last moments; it presents itself as a very positive illumination actually seen and felt... to risk mental confusion and collapse and all possible accidents of error, illusion, extravagance, hallucination or what not—the usual charges of the positive earth-walking intellect against mystic experience; but I have to take the risk if I want to do it at all. The reasoning intellect bases itself on man's normal conscious ness, it proceeds by the workings of a mental perception and conception of... proceeded and with the evidence of the spiritual seekers as a supreme proof ranking higher than intellectual speculation or inference. In that way they preserved the freedom of spiritual and mystic experience and allowed the reasoning intellect to come in only on the second line as a judge of the generalised metaphysical statements drawn from the experience, but not of the experience itself. This is ...
... otherwise may be to risk a collapse and all sorts of accidents of error, illusion, extravagance, hallucination or what not — the usual charges of the positive earth-walking intellect against mystic experience; but I have to take the risk if I want to do it at all. The reasoning intellect bases itself on man's normal experience and on the workings of a surface external perception and conception of... basis of that experience and with the evidence of the spiritual seekers as a supreme proof ranking higher than intellectual speculation or experience. In that way the freedom of spiritual and mystic experience is preserved, the reasoning intellect comes in only on the second line as a judge of the generalised statements drawn from the experience. This is, I presume, something akin to Prof. Sorley's... it is liable to error and here the intellect is the sole judge. I do not think I am prepared to accept any of these affirmations completely as they are. It is true that spiritual and mystic experience carries one first into domains of Other-Mind (and also Other-Life) and then into the Beyond-Mind; it is true also that the ultimate Truth is described as unthinkable, ineffable, unknowable ...
... experience was "a very high one because the consciousness came back to the body directly - that is, the individual being", By its very nature, a profound mystic experience defies description in material categories. A mystic experience is a leap beyond everyday actuality, and it is a seeing, hearing, living, not in the way of our humdrum existence, but in another order of intensity altogether... modest corporeal form had become the direct and immediate vesture, without any intermediary, of the supreme and eternal Witness. 24 It was on receipt of this vivid recordation of her mystic experience that Sri Aurobindo wrote to her on 31 December: The experience you have described is Vedic in the real sense, though not one which would easily be recognised by the modern systems of Yoga ...
... of spiritual Page 899 experience dwindles and it is considered sufficient to rely only on faith, emotional fervour and moral conduct; the first amalgam of religion, occultism and mystic experience is disrupted, and there is a tendency, not by any means universal or complete but still pronounced or visible, for each of these powers to follow its own way to its own goal in its own separate... after an age of triumphant intellectuality and materialism, we can see evidences of this natural process,—a return towards inner self-discovery, an inner seeking and thinking, a new attempt at mystic experience, a groping after the inner self, a reawakening to some sense of the truth and power of the spirit begins to manifest itself; man's search after his self and soul and a deeper truth of things tends ...
... slumber did my spirit seal is, according to the critics, a member of the Lucy series. Sri Aurobindo was the first critic who in his Synthesis of Yoga refers to the poem as describing a mystic experience of Wordsworth's; but he had left it unanalyzed. Amal accepts Sri Aurobindo's verdict and proves its truth by a serious and extensive study of Wordsworth's poem. The crucial word of the general... the spirit had been used by Wordsworth in some lines. Therefore the poem expresses an experience of Wordsworth's own subtle body making a diurnal round in a state of trance, an authentic mystic experience. The other poem, one of Blake's most powerful lyrics, is The Tyger - Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night... No critic has opined that ...
... which you speak and the feelings in the aesthetic vital which accompany them sometimes are common enough in men with some reach of mind, but they do not constitute either a mystic feeling or a mystic experience. 6 May 1932 Was Shaw a Mystic? It is, of course, difficult to manufacture a mystic out of Shaw in the Yogic sense of the word, but in the philosophic sense I think it can be said that... 2nd equation. Mystic = mystic philosopher = philosopher who has notions about supraphysical entities or forces, e.g. Life Force = Shaw. But a mystic is currently supposed to be one who has mystic experience, and a mystic philosopher is one who has such experience and has formed a view of life in harmony with his experience. Merely to have metaphysical notions about the Infinite and Godhead and underlying ...
... inspiration—the mystic and the philosophic—flowing into and filling with rich significance the mould of the ancient legend of Savitri and Satyavan. The question now arises: to what extent is mystic experience or philosophical statement amenable to transformation as poetry? It may be readily conceded that the rendering of mystical experience in terms of poetry, while it is perpetually necessary (for... guarded manner, that, "both in creation and enjoyment much always enters which is, from the point of view of 'Art', irrelevant." 95 It is when vision, idea and word—a whole world of direct mystic experience, a whole self-poised though complex pattern of ideas, and a whole stream of words in perfect rhythmical accord—fuse absolutely like Browning's conception of "three souls, one man" or, better still ...
... Onward, forever onward, To follow knowledge, like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 62 These and other ideas, mainly derived from his mystic experience on the Holy Mountain of Athos, were woven by Kazantzakis—no doubt with an admixture of strands of thought from Bergson and Nietzsche, and perhaps also Oswald Spengler—into a philosophical memoir... occurred to a modern Greek writer, and that such a retreat should have filled him with creative purpose for the rest of his life. One result, and indeed for us the chief result, of Kazantzakis' mystic experience is this stupendous 'Modern Sequel' to the Odyssey. Like its Homeric model, Kazantzakis' poem too is an epic narrative in XXIV Books, but being 33,333 lines long, thrice as ...
... tendency, constantly recurring in the life-history of Europe and now again in evidence. This force seeks to annul ethics also, not by rising above it into the absolute purity of the spirit, as mystic experience claims to do, but by breaking out of its barriers below into an exultant freedom of the vital play. In this evolution religion was left aside, an impoverished system of belief and ceremony to ...
... hesitation; for these lines have not the vivid and forceful precision of the opening and the close and are less pressed home, they are general in description and therefore to one who has not the mystic experience may seem too large and vague. But they are not padding; a precise and exact description of these planes of experience would have made the poem too long, so only some large lines are given, but ...
... European teaching current in the esoteric tradition of the Catholic Church where it is the authorised explanation of the Trinity,—Father, Son and Holy Ghost,—and it is very well-known to European mystic experience. In essence it exists in all spiritual disciplines that recognise the omnipresence of the Divine—in Indian Vedantic experience and in Mahomedan Yoga (not only the Sufi, but other schools also)—the ...
... hundreds stood together, there was That One; 4 I saw the greatest (best, most glorious) of the embodied gods." 5 Then mark how the seer of the Upanishad translates this thought or this mystic experience into his own later style, keeping the central symbol of the Sun but without any secrecy in the sense. Thus runs the passage in the Upanishad, "The face of the Truth is covered with a golden lid ...
... are and only calls in a half-spiritual or pseudo-spiritual light to flush and embellish it. Inadequate too is the very frequent attempt at a misalliance between the vital and the spiritual, a mystic experience within with an aestheticised intellectual and sensuous Paganism or exalted hedonism outside leaning upon it and satisfying itself in the glow of a spiritual sanction; for this too is a precarious ...
... suppose that at this much higher stage of the evolution a similar but greater progression starting from these rudimentary beginnings might lead to another immense development and departure. In mystic experience,—when there is an opening of the inner centres, or in other ways, spontaneously or by will or endeavour or in the very course of the spiritual growth,—new powers of consciousness have been known ...
... vision recorded by Traherne and by those who, employing more Eastern terms, have expressed themselves out of the "cosmic consciousness" is a proof of the transfiguration the world undergoes in mystic experience. Yet it is only the aspect of the world which is transfigured: the world's substance has not changed. The flawless Above is never literally and totally a flawless Below. Will this imbalance be ...
... is meaningful, there is a line of thought joining them. But, in the context of mysticism, they are not on a par. "A mystic," Sri Aurobindo declares, "is currently supposed to be one who has mystic experience, and a mystic philosopher is one who has such experience and has formed a view of life in harmony with his experience. Merely to have metaphysical notions about the Infinite and Godhead and underlying ...
... spiritual in the true sense and they are more misty than mystic. Not that a state of mind is not infused into them but they give us neither the concreteness nor the intensity of spiritual vision and mystic experience. Mr. Lal's ignorance of this fact proves that he has no clear idea of spiritual poetry. St. John of the Cross is a real mystic and in his poems there is the immediacy of inner contact with ...
... hesitation; for these lines have not the vivid and forceful precision of the opening and the close and are less pressed home, they are general in description and therefore to one who has not the mystic experience may seem too large and vague. But they are not padding; a precise and exact description of these planes of experience would have made the poem too long, so only some large lines are given, ...
... can we expect a uniform level of articulation in a poem of nearly 24,000 lines. Also exercises in commentary or elucidation would be in vain, unless the critic too has had the same range of mystic experience, or is at least conditioned by his psychic and intellectual training to enter into the spirit of such experience. In this predicament it is hardly surprising that Sri Aurobindo should be his ...
... 44 Ibid, pp. 38-39. Page 342 reality and Sri Aurobindo is describing it in a most vivid vision which we, in linguistic terms, would call a metaphor. Again, another mystic experience couched in luminous words: She was all vastness and one measureless point, She was a height beyond heights, a depth beyond depths, 45 and The world was her spirit's wide ...
... they had the capacity to receive. In consequence of their inner and outer change they would find the exterior world also changed the next morning. A long time after, I too had a little of this mystic experience. But now as I cast a retrospective look, I perceive that the past was in a way a period of tapasya before reaching the Gurudeva. As I said, not a single evening would pass without Bharati's ...
... had the capacity to receive. In consequence of their inner and outer change they would find the exterior world also changed the next morning. A long time after, I too had a little of this mystic experience. But now as I cast a retrospective look, I perceive that the past was in a way a period of tapasya before reaching the Gurudeva. As I said, not a single evening would pass without ...
... had the capacity to receive. In consequence of their inner and outer change they would find the exterior world also changed the next morning. A long time after, I too had a little of this mystic experience. But now as I cast a retrospective look, I perceive that the past was in a way a period of tapasya before reaching the Gurudeva. As I said, not a single evening would pass without Bharati’s ...
... religious and moral practice and discipline, on the other an inner seeking piercing beyond the creed and dogma and ceremony or finding their hidden meaning, living deeply within in spiritual and mystic experience. But esoteric poetry? Page 268 perhaps what deals in an occult way with the occult may be called esoteric—e.g., the "Bird of Fire," "Trance," etc. "The Two Moons" 108 is, it is ...
... Mysticism William James arrives at the summit of religious experiences in his chapter on Mysticism. He points out that there are basically two characteristics of Mysticism: (i) Mystic experience is marked by ineffability, and (ii) It has noetic quality and the mystic states are also states of knowledge. See Appendix V (p. 128) He also points out that there are two other qualities ...
... . 92 The cardinal fact, then, is that Sri Aurobindo has seen something, experienced something, so vividly that, although many-splendoured, it is a living vision to him; this 'mystic' experience has comprised life and spirit, the world, the cosmos and the transcendent, and it is therefore a total, if also a many-sided, vision; the epic, Savitri, is an attempt both to retell an ...
... deduced logically from psychologically given premises: no empiricial observation or objective experimentation is necessary to arrive at them: they are found a priori in the subject. Now, mystic experience always lays stress on extra-sensory knowledge: it declares that such a knowledge is not only possible, but that this alone is the right and correct knowledge. All Page 318 things ...
... is the labour of the Poet. Eliot undertook this double function of the poet and the sage and he found the task difficult. The poet has to utter the unutterable, if he is to clothe in words the mystic experience of the sage in him. That is Eliot's ambition: .... Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness, as ...
... the prophecy or divine decree in Savitri: "Even the body shall remember God". 18 It was during the meditation that followed the discussion - or exposition - that the Mother had the singular mystic experience of the descent of the Supramental Light and Force, and she recorded in her diary: This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I had a form ...
... Nor can we expect a uniform level of articulation in a poem of nearly 24,000 lines. Also exercises in commentary or elucidation would be in vain, unless the critic too has had the same range of mystic experience, or is at least conditioned by his psychic and intellectual training to enter into the spirit of such experience. In this predicament it is hardly surprising that Sri Aurobindo should be his ...
... The Alipore Bomb Case and the trial of Sri Aurobindo provoked nationwide interest. It was in the course of his solitary confinement in the Alipore Jail that Sri Aurobindo had his great mystic experience —Narayana darshan —which he was later to describe in his Uttarpara speech. The prosecution failed once again, and Sri Aurobindo was acquitted and released on 6 May 1909. 30 May 1909 ...
... herself totally with Nature, participating in her processes and winning a new intimacy with her. Nature too responded with an equal implicit trust, and on 8 November, Mother had what amounted to a mystic experience. Suddenly Nature understood that the new Consciousness - the supramental - which the Mother was trying to embody wasn't Nature's enemy but only her collaborator. Nothing of Nature was to be denied ...
... Within the limited scope of this essay it has not been possible to attempt a fuller treatment of the subject. We have, therefore, had to omit any consideration of the Mother's more deeply mystic experience : her descent into the frozen darkness of ¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother. ² ibid.,—October 12, 1914. ³ ibid.,—June 2 , 1914. Page 15 Matter, her contact ...
... always the same principle of a bright mystic vision and the transmutation of natural things into symbol values of the universal light, joy and beauty. This poetry is an utterance of an ancient mystic experience with a new tone and burden of its own. Its very character brings in a certain limitation, it is empty of the touch of normal human life; our passion is absent, the warm blood of our emotion does ...
... after an age of triumphant intellectuality and materialism, we can see evidences of this natural process, – a return towards inner self-discovery, an inner seeking and thinking, a new attempt at mystic experience, a groping after the inner self, a reawakening to some sense of the truth and power of the spirit begins to manifest itself; man’s search after his self and soul and a deeper truth of things tends ...
... after an age of triumphant intellectuality and materialism, we can see evidence of this natural process – a return towards inner self-discovery, an inner seeking and thinking, a new attempt at mystic experience, a groping after the inner self, a reawakening to some sense of the truth and power of the spirit …” 8 All the signs were there, but the resistance – the vicious swoop of the Black Dragon’s ...
... does not respond to the new note that determines the rejection or the Page 143 acceptance. At the same time the development of this new note—the impression of a deeper yogic or mystic experience in poetry—may very well demand for its fullness new departures in technique, a new turn or turns of rhythm, but subtle in their difference rather than aggressive. January 12,1932 ...
... hesitation; for these lines have not the vivid and forceful precision of the opening and the close and are less pressed home, they are general in description and therefore to one who has not the mystic experience must seem too large and vague. But they are not padding; a precise and exact description of these planes of experience would have made the poem too long, so only some large lines are given, ...
... in the true sense and they are more misty than mystic. Not that a state of mind is not infused into them but they give us neither the concreteness nor the intensity of spiritual vision and mystic experience. Mr. Lai's ignorance of this fact proves that he has no clear idea of spiritual poetry. St. John of the Cross is a real mystic and in his poems there is the immediacy of inner contact ...
... door And through it vast melodies pour: A gold-descent with heavenly murmur, an angel-stream — we cannot sufficiently admire the cunning craft of phrase so faithful to the mystic experience, the wizardry of that triple rhyme suggesting the continuity of the pouring melodies and that final long line clinching this suggestion as well as hinting the amplitude of the melodies while wording ...
... versified prose. The Upanishads too, and much more, are not at all philosophic thinking, but spiritual seeing; these ancient stanzas are a rush of spiritual intuitions, flames of a burning fire of mystic experience, waves of an inner sea of light and life, and they throw themselves into the language and cadence of poetry because that is their natural speech and a more intellectual utterance would have falsified ...
... religious and moral practice and discipline, on the other an inner seeking piercing beyond the creed and dogma and ceremony or finding their hidden meaning, living deeply within in spiritual and mystic experience. But how shall we define an esoteric poetry? Perhaps what deals in an occult way with the occult may be called esoteric—e.g., the Bird of Fire, Trance , etc. The Two Moons 2 is, it is obvious ...
... lines of growth,—however unfortunate many of its results may be. Not the formal mind, but the ear must be the judge. Moreover the development of a new note—the expression of a deeper yogic or mystic experience in poetry—may very well demand for its fullness new departures in technique, a new turn or turns of rhythm, but these should be, I think, subtle in their difference rather than aggressive. ...
... universe and the place he must occupy in the world. That is the truth of his being. " Inadequate too is the very frequent attempt at a misalliance between the vital and the spiritual, a mystic experience within with an aestheticised intellectual and sensuous Paganism or exalted hedonism outside leaning upon it and satisfying itself in the glow of a spiritual sanction. " The Synthesis of Yoga ...
... teaching current in the esoteric tradition of the Catholic Church where it is the authorised explanation of the Trinity, -- Father, Son and Holy Ghost, -- and it is very well known to European mystic experience. In essence it exists in all spiritual disciplines that recognise the omnipresence of the Divine-- in Indian Vedantic experience and in Mahomedan Yoga (not only the Sufi, but other schools also)-- ...
... for Eternity in its own authentic thrill — in short, he was a mystic in disposition. Swinburne could not fulfil this essential nisus towards mysticism. Shelley had not the definite mystic experience, but the tendency for it was ingrained in him, as proved by various long rhythm-rolls and short song-snatches, ranging from Prometheus Unbound to the fugitive yet unforgettable "I can give ...
... more misty than mystic. Not that a state of mind is not infused into us by them but they give Page 64 us neither the concreteness nor the intensity of spiritual vision and mystic experience. Mr. Lal's ignorance of this fact proves that he has no clear idea of spiritual poetry. St. John of the Cross is a real mystic and in his poems there is the immediacy of inner contact with ...
... literally means standing out or outside (ex+sistet), coming out of one-self and living in other's consciousness – as one sees one's exact image in another's eye. It is not however the old-world mystic experience of finding one's self in other selves. For here we have an exclusively level or horizontal view of the human personality. Page 348 The personality is not seen in depth or height ...
... William James arrives at the summit of religious experiences in his chapter on Mysticism. He points out (See Appendix V. p. 128) that there are basically two characteristics of Mysticism, — (i) mystic experience is marked by ineffability, and (ii) it has noetic quality and the mystic states are also states of knowledge. He also points out that there are two other qualities, which are less sharply marked ...
... spiritual consciousness covering the intermediate worlds (vital, mental, psychic) in its passage to the supreme Ananda (unknown ecstasy transparence wrought, the transparence being that well known to mystic experience of the pure spiritual consciousness and existence). In the light of the main idea the last four stanzas should surely be clear—the stars and the sun being well known symbols. "Super-Blakish" ...
... be deduced logically from psychologically given premises: no empiricial observation or objective experimentation is necessary to arrive at them: they are found a priori in the subject. Now, mystic experience always lays stress on extra-sensory knowledge: it declares that such a knowledge is not only possible, but that this alone is the right and correct knowledge. All 1 op. cit. ...
... the capacity to receive. In consequence of their inner and outer change they would find the exterior world also " changed the next morning, A long time after, I too had a little of this mystic experience. But now as I cast a retrospective look, I perceive that the past was in a way a period of tapasya before reaching the Gurudeva. As I said, not a single evening would pass without Bharati's ...
... myself whether the crest of the winding argument is not, in effect, to hail Savitri as a modern Divine Comedy. If Savitri the epic is poetry and philosophy fused with mystic experience, its central character is the blessed feminine herself, woman pictured not only as beauty and love but also as strength and will. The good wife is verily man's shakti, all the reservoirs of ...
... romance. When one deals with mysticism one has to be very careful, because there are many truths and also many imaginations. Disciple : The Rosicrusians also believe in the reality of mystic experience of Christianity. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, X belonged to that group in England. But it created a lot of difficulty in his Sadhana because they posit two things in man, good and evil persons ...
... arena was nevertheless a sensational one. Page 28 While he was getting deeper into politics, he was at the same time also being drawn more and more towards yoga. The mystic experience at Baroda in January 1908 was a turning point in his life. Henceforth he was in politics, but not quite of it. He was like a man in a trance; he seemed to work and talk as other men but he also ...
... : What does he mean by that? Sri Aurobindo : He means that Blake’s poetry is not vital or mental, i.e. intellectual, but comes from beyond the Mind and expresses spiritual and mystic experience. Disciple : Since the two deal with quite different spheres, can the comparison be valid? Or, if Blake really has more pure poetry, then can he be said to be greater than Shakespeare ...
... other. Whatever language, whatever terms are necessary to convey this truth of vision and experience it uses without scruple or admitting any mental rule of what is or is not poetic." 172 The mystic experience, the philosophy of transcendence (from the mental to the supramental), and the poetic recordation of the vision and the idea all fuse in the figure of Savitri, the chaste wife whose silent strength ...
... as sage and seer, we have here in this small volume gleaming gems scattered by a prodigal hand." 88 But it is the mystic muse that is most typical of Sri Aurobindo at his best. Mystic experience by its very nature is incommunicable in words, and this is the challenge to the poet; it is-also a compulsive need. When the poet is able to find the right rhythm and sound, the right word and ...
... knowledge finds in the description of Krishna stealing the robes of the Gopis one of the deepest parables of God's ways with the soul, the devotee a perfect rendering in divine act of his heart's mystic experiences, the prurient and the Puritan (two faces of one temperament) only a lustful story. Men bring what they have in themselves and see it reflected in the Scripture. Page 345 483—My lover ...
... that such experiences of even the greatest mystics and God-lovers are sure to be scotched today by many as figments of the imagination. But I am not con- cerned with critics who cannot believe because they do not know: I am concerned, first and last, with spiritual seekers as against mere investigators who cannot possibly assay the truth of such experiences as happen on the mystic plane for... our temple, Indira Devi goes off into a mystic trance — samadhi — and sees Mira singing or dancing, in a Brindavan temple, in the midst of some devotees or learned sadhus who start with her a discussion or an altercation, as the case may be. After a time, when Indira Devi comes to, she relates in a half-trance— bhav-samadhi— these singular experiences: historical scenes recaptured or else Mira's... after her samadhi in which state she heard Mira speak or sing as the case might be. To quote hereanent the comment of Sri Aurobindo, (and who could be a greater authority on authentic mystic experiences than he?) he wrote to me three letters when I sent him a few of Indira's songs with an elaborate account of their genesis and transcription. "There is nothing impossible," he wrote first ...
... have something real in her, something mystic? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but the romance was also there. When one deals with mysticism one has to be very careful. There is any amount of truth and there is any amount of imagination. Nivedita spoke of the Theosophists as "woolly-headed people." SATYENDRA: The Rosicrucians too believe in the reality of mystic experiences. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, Arjava (John ...
... therefore heir to the Kalidasian tradition, but also because of the different foundations on which they reared their respective epic edifices. Both of them believed in Evolution, and both had had mystic experiences. Kazantzakis, like Bergson, thought in terms of 'emergent evolution'; the elan vital, in their view, struggled and surged to achieve new forms of life. During his vigil on Mount Athos, Kazantzakis... terrestrial to the divine life. Coercing her godhead she has become a woman, and she is willing that the Master of Evolution should deal with her as is fit. 75 Although Sri Aurobindo's mystic muse in Savitri is sometimes more of an intoxicated Bacchante-like mistress than a quiet and steady housewife, his heroine herself is an Appollonian, rather than a Dionysian, character. Her prime ...
... physical parallels. 111 It is thus not at all surprising that the imagery of ascent-descent and planes is employed purposively with regard to the mystic experiences as well. As Rufus M.Jones writes, The 'mystic way', 'this flight of the alone to the Alone', is described as steep and hard, lonely and arduous, a way of 'ladders' and 'steps' and 'ascents'. The historic... people keep these 'orders' apart, but the mystic increasingly runs them together, and by jumbling the categories holds like Blake infinity in the palm of his hand and eternity in a second. To leap over the barriers of the material order, to storm the gates of eternity, to bring God to our midst: these are the mystic's, the yogin's, preoccupations. Some mystics are content with losing themselves in... the 'illuminative' and the 'unitive' stages...the carefully labelled stages of the 'mystic way' only loosely sum up and recapitulate the unfolding processes of the soul on its way to God. 112 In visualising Aswapati as the traveller of the worlds, Sri Aurobindo had not only such mystic or occult stairs or ladders or slopes in view, but he had also examples such as Dante's progress ...
... interpretation. Sri Aurobindo : The third and the fourth Mandala contain many subtle suggestions about the symbolism of the Veda. The hymns of Dirghatamas in the first Mandala are clearly mystic. The experience of the Rishis is common in general principles but it varies in detail. These details are hard to fix because you do not find any parallel to them in other hymns. And so, sometimes you become ...
... 30 September 1966 This talk begins with Mother's comments on the following letter of Sri Aurobindo. "... although St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much profound spiritual knowledge (profound rather than wide, I think)—I would not swear to it that he is referring to the supramentalised body (physical body). Perhaps to the... structure of the flower, only it is wholly opened and it is luminous, no? ( Mother shakes her head and remains silent for a moment. ) I have not had the experience, I do not know. I am absolutely convinced, because I have had experiences which proved it to me, that the life of this body—the life which makes it move and change—can be replaced by a force; that is to say, one can create a kind of... be many stages. Well, these cells, with all the consciousness and experience they have now, if you ask them, for example, "Is there anything that you cannot do?", they will answer in their sincerity, "No, what the Lord wills, I can do." This is their state of consciousness. But in appearance it is otherwise. The personal experience is this: whatever I do with the Presence of the Lord, I do without ...
... September 30, 1966 After reading a hitherto unpublished letter of Sri Aurobindo's: "...Although St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much profound spiritual knowledge (profound rather than wide, I think)—I would not swear to it that he is referring 1 to the supramentalised body ( physical body ). Perhaps... it's still the flower's structure, only it's in full bloom and radiant. No? Yes, but... ( Mother shakes her head and remains silent for a while ). I lack experience, I don't know. I am absolutely convinced (because I've had experiences that proved it to me) that the life of this body—its life, what makes it move and change—can be replaced by a force; that is to say, a sort of immortality can... necessary. You see, if for instance you ask these cells, with all the consciousness and experience they now have, "Is there something you cannot do?", in their sincerity they will answer, "No, what the Lord wills, I can do." That's their state of consciousness. But the appearance is otherwise. The personal experience is like this: all that I do with the Lord's Presence, I do effortlessly, without difficulty ...
... start from Sri Aurobindo's first mystic experiences on his arrival in India, and trace the course of his spiritual life with the aid of such external sign-posts—his poems and his letters, for example —as are available: his experience of cosmic silence under Yogi Lele's guidance; his beatific vision of Narayana the Omnipresent God in the Alipore Jail; his experience of the besieging of his fields of... ignorance; his spiritual association with Madame Richard, the Mother from 1914 onwards; his rendezvous with Night; his vision of the Paraclete, Thought, and of the ecstasy-laden Rose of God; and other experiences too, both before and after the climactic realisation of 1926, the Siddhi —and all achieve poetic recordation in Savitri. We may start, again, from Sri Aurobindo's early experiments... three poets—Pound, Kazantzakis and Sri Aurobindo—are masters of many languages and heirs to more than one cultural tradition, and each in his magnum opus has tried to explore human history, human experience or human consciousness to the utmost possible limits. But since Sri Aurobindo as man and as thinker experienced and comprehended more, since as yogi and as philosopher he outdistanced the other two ...
... Diederichs wrote. It was only natural that they turned towards Meister Eckhart (c 1260-1328), the great German mystic whose words remain as fresh today as they were seven hundred years ago. If in the Christian West there is one example of the purest and highest mysticism, it is this experience of a Dominican Prior and Master of the Sorbonne who broke through all prescriptions and all dogmas of the Catholic... Catholic creed, and through all religious conventions, to meet and become That in him. “That” could no longer be called “God”, for That was all and all was That, including the dissolved I of the mystic experiencer, whose words sounded so revolutionary because they originated from the Source. “It cannot be stressed with sufficient emphasis that Meister Eckhart means more for the Protestants in the future... Church summarized in the articles of a creed which has to be accepted; “spirituality” is the personal, direct approach of God through the soul or through the higher reaches of consciousness. All true mystics have followed one or other path of spirituality, although many of them were forced by their Church to bow to authority. Martin Luther’s popular appeal lay in his claim that every individual had ...
... psychic does not depend for his experiences on disease. Page 578 The Power of Healing I don't know whether I can throw any positive light on X 's mystic experiences. The description, at any rate the latter part, is not very easy to follow as it is very allusive in its expressions and not always precise enough to be clear. The first part of the experience indicates a native power of healing... distinguished from the mind and vital. All movements and experiences of the soul would in that sense be called psychic, those which rise from or directly touch the psychic being; where mind and vital predominate, the experience would be called psychological (surface or occult). "Spiritual" has nothing to do with the Absolute, except that the experience of the Absolute is spiritual. All contacts with self... but in all that you have said about him and in the printed papers there is no trace of any spiritual realisation or experience. All that he seems to think about is occult powers and feats of thaumaturgy. Those who take their stand on occult powers divorced from spiritual experience are not Yogis of a high plane of achievement. There are Yogis who behave as if they had no control over themselves—the ...
... tance, in spite of the vividness of the expression, and that makes it very difficult to be sure about these things. This passage about the body, for instance—although St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much pro found spiritual knowledge (profound rather than wide, I think)—I would not swear to it that he is referring to the supramentalised body ( physical body ). Perhaps to... enveloping him and abolishing this body of death which he felt the material envelope to be. This verse like many others is capable of several interpretations and might refer to a quite supraphysical experience. The idea of a transformation of the body occurs in different traditions, but I have never been quite sure that it meant the change in this very matter. There was a Yogi some time ago in this region... one when there is the complete siddhi. But, again, is this a divine physical or supraphysical body? At the same time there is no obstacle in the way of supposing that all these ideas, intuitions, experiences point to, if they do not exactly denote, the physical transformation. The physical Nature does not mean the body alone but the phrase includes the transformation of the whole physical mind ...
... E.", was appreciated anywhere in the world as much as he was in our Ashram. "The vaporous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam' of his spiritual experiences were perhaps too ethereal to be grasped by the average western reader but, mystic experiences being universal by nature, they were readily identified here by people engaged in spiritual pursuit. Dilip Kumar Roy had corresponded with... Page 208 And while the exchange goes speeding The two shall never part. This yoga, this union between 'God's hush' and 'man's heart' is further strengthened by the mystic mantras of 'Love' and 'Service' - words in constant usage in tennis, which, as Amal Kiran has intuitively discovered, symbolise Bhaktiyoga and Karmayoga, the two most essential disciplines of Sri ... earth and sky, from her time-bound children who gamely returned the huge white flaming ball that she struck towards them. And all the while the poet dimly heard the referee intoning, among others, the mystic words 'Love' and 'Service'. The Secret Splendour is a collection of nearly six hundred poems. A good number of them (ninety-two to be exact!), especially the ones written in the golden thirties ...
... November 15, 1948 I don’t know whether I can throw any positive light on Miss Chadwick’s mystic experiences. The description, at any rate the latter part, is not very easy to follow as it is very allusive in its expressions and not always precise enough to be clear. The first part of the experience indicates a native power of healing of whose action she herself does not know the process. It... displeased with you for shunning these delights. Page 211 Some, of course, might ask why any sports at all in an Ashram which ought to be concerned only with meditation and inner experiences and the escape from life into the Brahman; but that applies only to the ordinary kind of Ashram to which we have got accustomed and this is not that orthodox kind of Ashram. It includes life in... no ground for it and dismiss all feelings of depression due to this cause and go on happily with your work of which we both approve and appreciate its importance. About Miss Chadwick’s experience – I was perhaps hesitating as to what to write about it because I felt that I had not been able to make clear to myself all that it held in it and was trying to form a more complete idea of its ...
... knowledge finds in the description of Krishna stealing the robes of the Gopis one of the deepest parables of God's ways with the soul, the devotee a perfect rendering in divine act of his heart's mystic experiences, the prurient & the Puritan (two faces of one temperament) only a lustful story. Men bring what they have in themselves and see it reflected in the Scripture. Page 490 482) My lover... I learned something from far-off about love; but it was only when I became a woman and served my Master and Paramour that I knew love utterly. 412) To commit adultery with God is the perfect experience for which the world was created. 413) To fear God really is to remove oneself to a distance from Him, but to fear Him in play gives an edge to utter delightfulness. Page 481 414) The... God has so arranged life that the world is the soul's husband; Krishna its divine paramour. We owe a debt of service to the world and are bound to it by a law, a compelling opinion, and a common experience of pain and pleasure, but our heart's worship and our free and secret joy are for our Lover. 464) The joy of God is secret and wonderful; it is a mystery and a rapture at which common sense makes ...
... perform operations without anesthetics and also helped the police in tracking criminals. A.E.—George Russell,—in his book, The Candle of Vision, writes about his own suprasensual and mystic experiences. Ordinary reactions of the nervous system are also normal operations of a "dominant habit"—they are not inevitable; for instance : operation and even amputation of limbs without anaesthesia... incomplete without experience : man wants what may be called "concrete" experience. An illustration may make the point clear. An essay on the taste of sugar may give man some conception of it, but the actual taste, which takes place on a different plane, gives him the concrete experience. Or, he may read an exposition on "anger" and form an idea of what anger is but one minute's experience of anger gives... knowledge ?" This is an important question. In what does knowledge consist ? We have dealt with the knowledge by identity as a possible source of valid knowledge. And knowledge by identity is not mystic, superstitious or something abnormal, but normally known to almost the whole of humanity in the course of its cultural activity. There is no cultural activity in which something of the knowledge ...
... The mystic Muse is more of an inspired Bacchante of the Dionysian wine than an orderly housewife. 141 The mystic feels real and present, even ever present to his experience, intimate to his being, truths which to the ordinary reader are intellectual abstractions or metaphysical speculations. He is writing of experiences that are foreign... the 'thematic content' of Savitri. But the 'mystic' vision, experience, realisation is one thing, its expression in terms of poetry is a somewhat different thing. "The poetry of mysticism",says Evelyn Underhill, "may de defined on the one hand as a temperamental reaction to the vision of Reality: on the other, as a form of prophecy." 140 Of mystic poetry, with particular reference to Savitri... potent—if also sometimes confusing—language of symbols and images. Evelyn Underhill rightly observes, The mystic, as a rule, cannot wholly do without symbol and Page 345 image, inadequate to his vision though they must always be: for his experience must be expressed if it is to be communicated, and its actuality is inexpressible except in some side-long ...
... life and every experience that he enjoys or suffers is given to him through the grace of the Divine. (iv) The next stage is known as prāṇalingasthala, where the devotee begins to worship the Divine in any form whatsoever. At this stage, the yogic practice reaches a remarkable stage which is called anubhava bhakti, and this stage is marked with numerous mystic experiences. (v) The next... physical object to physical eye that we possess in knowledge. This experience must become more frequent till it is constant. (ii) In due course, there are other internal experiences so Page 42 that the vision of the Self is completed by experiences of it in all our members. All this knowledge and experience are primary means of arriving at and of possessing identity. (iii)... Varieties of Yogic Experience and Integral Realisation 6 Yogic Experience (a) Experiences in Hatha Yoga Yoga has often come to be exclusively identified with physical exercises of Hatha Yoga. Actually, the entire system of Hatha Yoga is only one of the systems of yoga. It aims at a complete mastery of the body and the life and a free and effective ...
... Synthesis of Yoga to the seemingly perilous paths of mystic poetry in Savitri, he was not giving in to fanciful conjectures. Even as epics of action record a racial experience, Savitri records a 3 Ibid., p. 704. 4 The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 21, p. 759. 5 Ibid., p. 48. Page 182 spiritual experience which has an equally ancient history, though he... record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences. You must not expect appreciation or understanding from the general public or even from many at the first touch; as I have pointed out, there must be a new extension of consciousness and aesthesis to appreciate a new kind of mystic poetry. 6 Though... yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative. 14 Any approach to the epic has to keep in mind this fact that it is Sri Aurobindo's yogic consciousness that is transmitting mystic experiences that have been seen and felt. His attempts to set them in mantric poetry have often succeeded very well, the beat of the rhythm, the seal of certitude in this message, for instance in the ...
... make sure you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you acknowledge that Jesus Christ is really in you?" (13:5) 45 Paul's being a true mystic is undeniable. Sri Aurobindo 46 has written in a letter: "... St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much profound spiritual knowledge (profound rather than wide, I think)..." He 47 has also commented on a passage in the Epistles... visual experience including contacts with supernatural beings such as God and angels, so that it does not have to imply Page 239 physical sight. Therefore we cannot simply assume that when Paul speaks of Jesus' 'appearing' to him or when he says he 'saw' Jesus (1 Cor 9:1), he means physical sight of a corporeal being." In favour of a possible purely internal experience Brown... overall evidence does not favor the thesis that Paul was describing a purely internal experience, for he speaks of Jesus' having appeared to more than 500 at once (1 Cor 15:6); and we can scarcely think of synchronized ecstasy. (This observation holds true no matter where Paul got the information about this experience; for Paul, who himself saw the risen Jesus, found no contradiction in positing that ...
... consciousness covering the intermediate worlds (vital, mental, psychic) in its passage to the supreme Ananda (unknown ecstasy, transparence-wrought, the transparence being that well-known-to-mystics experience of the pure spiritual consciousness and existence). In the light of the main idea the last four stanzas should surely be clear—the stars and the sun being well-known symbols. What "remarkable... and a remarkably successful fusion of the supporting object (physical symbol) into the revealing or transmuting image and the image into the object, which is part of the highest art of symbolic or mystic poetry. Heard before? If you refer to elements of the rhythm, words or phrases here and there, or images used before though not in the same way, where is the poetry in so old and rich a literature... misses. In the night of the spirit are shadowy avenues of pain, but even in that shadow the Power of Beauty and Beatitude sings secretly and unseen the strains of Paradise. But in the light of day the mystic heart of moonlight sorrowfully weeps, suppressed, for, even though the nectar of it is there behind, it falters away from this garish light—because it is itself a subtle thing of dream, not of conscious ...
... 138 mystic Dadu repeatedly avers that a veritable spiritual experience defies all formulation in the conceptual framework of our limited speech-mode, and since there is no commensurability between that and the normal experience of average humanity, spiritual knowledge must be by its very nature ineffable, kahy ā n ā j ā i, 1 In the delectable words of the great poet-mystic Tulsi Das: ... mooted: How to know whether the supposed inexpressibility of spiritual experience is not entirely due to the linguistic incompetence of the individual mystic? Is it not conceivable that with greater command over the language-appartus some other mystic will be in a position to offer us a perfect verbal transcription of the same experience? And, be it noted, by language we do not mean at all the restricted... any spiritual experience however lofty or profound it may be. But yet the indubitable fact remains that representative mystics of all ages and climes, beginning with the master-mystics of the Rig-Veda and the Upanishads and coming down to those of our own day have repeatedly asserted the utter impotence of man-made words before the problem of expressing the supreme spiritual experiences. They -and some ...
... do not remember the context of the passage you quote from The Future Poetry, but I suppose I meant to contrast the veiled utterance of what is usually called mystic poetry with the spiritual clarity of the fully expressed experience. I did not mean to contrast it with the mental clarity which is aimed at usually by poetry. The concreteness of intellectual imaged description is one thing and... not but watches his fellow"37—that has an illumining spiritual clarity and concreteness to one who has had the experience, but mentally and intellectually it might mean anything or nothing. Poetry uttered with the spiritual clarity may be compared to sunlight, poetry uttered with the mystic veil to moonlight. But it was not my intention to deny beauty, power or value to the moonlight. Note that I... world without or of any world to which he has access. It may be the outer world that he portrays like Homer and Chaucer or a vivid life-world like Sakespeare or an inmost world of experience like Blake or other mystic poets. The recognition of that power will come first from the few who recognise good poetry when they see 11 and from those who can enter into his world; afterwards Page 211 ...
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