... and successful, each in his own line. What brings men to the Yoga has nothing to do with success or failure, it is the impulse of the psychic being to rise to something truer and higher than the ordinary life. 6 February 1934 This is not the time when we can go on increasing the number of members of the Asram—as you can well understand. We have no accommodation, the numbers are already unwieldy—... for him. 23 October 1938 X is there [ outside Pondicherry ] because he has not yet made up his mind about his future and Mother wants him to see fully both possibilities before him—the ordinary life and the Asram life—and choose his way. He cannot go on always oscillating between the one and the other. If he comes back to the Asram, it should be with the firm determination to stick to the Asram... Ashram have succeeded in doing so? At least everybody must be making some effort to do this. Why then are they not successful? Is it that after some time they forget the aim and live here as in ordinary life? Page 590 I suppose if the Nirvana aim had been put before them, more would have been fit for it, for the Nirvana aim is easier than the one we have put before us—and they would not ...
... Chapter III Morality and Yoga The Spiritual Life and the Ordinary Life The spiritual life ( adhyātma jīvana ), the religious life ( dharma jīvana ) and the ordinary human life of which morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not confuse the three together. The ordinary life is that of the average human consciousness separated from its own... spiritual life. Everything depends upon the aim you put before you. If for the realisation of one's spiritual aim it is necessary to give up the ordinary life of the Ignorance ( saṁsāra ), it must be done; the Page 421 claim of the ordinary life cannot stand against that of the spirit. If a Yoga of works alone is chosen as the path, then one may remain in the saṁsāra , but it will be... direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters. Morality is a part of the ordinary life; it is an attempt to govern the outward conduct by certain mental rules or to form the character by these rules in the image of a certain mental ideal. The spiritual life goes beyond the mind; it ...
... asks: You say that one should have "the certitude of Truth's final victory". But doesn't this certitude seem very different from, and often the very opposite of, what one teaches in ordinary life? Yes. Generally it is believed that things always end badly in Nature. Everyone knows the story of those who have met a lamentable end after having enjoyed great success in their life; of... all one's activities, of strictly doing only what can help you on the spiritual path; it does not necessarily have to be very narrow and limited, but it must be on a little higher plane than the ordinary life, and with a concentration of will and aspiration which does not allow any wandering on the path, going here and there uselessly. This is austere; it is difficult to take this up when one is very... important than teaching them what happened on earth in former times, or even how the earth is built, or even... indeed, all sorts of things which are quite a necessary grounding if you want to live the ordinary life in the world, for if you don't know them, anyone will immediately put you down intellectually: "Oh, he is an idiot, he knows nothing." Page-186 But still, at any age, if you are ...
... she returned. And what is special about the vital plane is that anyone who has a certain realisation there, can make another person get the same realisation. One must not apply the criteria of ordinary life to this plane ; this is the mistake that many spiritists, metapsychists, etc. make. I know it by experience. I have old disciples who have deviated, without my being able to bring them back, so... happens. In meditation when I look for a higher support in myself, when I try to invoke the deeper parts of my being, I meet only a void and I am incapable of making any inner movement. Naturally, in ordinary life, either under the impulsion of outer excitement or de proprio, such movements followed by results are frequent. And usually, though meditation has very perceptible effects on my general state, it... principal forces which help in the ascent of man. One is aspiration; it is emotive and has its centre in the solar plexus. The other is supramental and its centre is above the head. You act in ordinary life with the help of the first. In meditation your consciousness goes back into the higher mind. The silence aspired for, is not for itself, but only in order to let this higher force descend and rejoin ...
... was the mistake. It may be true that ordinarily mixing with women removes shyness etc.,—though it is not always so, for many people are sex-timid by nature—but that is a means for ordinary life, not Yoga, and in ordinary life marriage is the direct means for getting rid of sex-uneasiness; marriage or else having love affairs with women and satisfying the sex. But that is not the proper means for an Asram... Divine, but the last is a rather risky method. Page 496 It is one of the aims of the Yoga to centralise and harmonise all the parts of the being—not around the ego as is done in ordinary life, but around first the psychic being and then the central being in its station above the head—or else round a nexus of the two. It is the thing that was preparing in you. The consciousness was moving... you cannot stop the masturbation, I think you are right in going [ from the Ashram ], as to continue might have serious consequences for the nervous system. It is better in that case to live the ordinary life and let the sex-instinct have its natural outlet so long as it is so irresistible. It is not necessary to wait for training somebody to do the work. Mother appreciates very much all the work you ...
... life and as ordinary life is full of ignorance, the only possible solution is to reject ordinary life and as this doctrine is preached by Shankaracharya, so Sri Aurobindo Ghose is near to Shankaracharya and therefore there is very little new to learn from him. That is an entire misreading of my Yoga which aims not at rejection of life but fulfilment of life. Of course, — ordinary life is full of... conscious life and these obstacles have to be conquered by means of the Supermind. There are several curves and circles coming up and down. They have to be understood and used for transforming the ordinary life. Shankaracharya understood Vijnan as a superior mental consciousness and as this was still mental he rejected that Vijnan, Shankaracharya did not believe in manifestation which to him was Maya.... nature becomes very strong and many people are obliged to change the outer life. Our aim is not to get supramental experiences only in meditation but also in making them conscious in every act of ordinary life. There is one Sutra in Brahmasutras viz., the upadesha of manifestation and non-manifestation in the Upanishads can be explained by the example of a serpent sitting in coiled form or otherwise ...
... vibrations. Because of its ingrained fear, the physical mind constantly puts us in contact with the direst possibilities; it always contemplates the worst. This obsession has little importance in ordinary life, where the activities of the physical mind are lost in the general hubbub, and where we are, in fact, protected by our very lack of receptivity, but when we have worked systematically at fostering... Everything is exposed before its eyes, but it lives time divinely: every second of time is an absolute, as filled with plenitude as all the millennia combined. It is the utter perfection of time. In ordinary life, we never live in the present; we are either thrust ahead by our hopes or pulled backward by our regrets, because the present moment never quite meets our expectations; it is always lacking something... its actions arise naturally and spontaneously. Spontaneity is the particular mark of the Page 239 Supermind: spontaneity of life, spontaneity of knowledge, spontaneity of power. In ordinary life, we try to know what is good or right, and once we think we have found it, we somehow try to implement our thought. The supramental consciousness, on the contrary, does not try to know or to decipher ...
... are young, you have all of life before you; you need not be impatient. You say that you are often depressed. It is the vital being that gets depressed when its desires are not satisfied. In ordinary life, one has to struggle to satisfy one's desires; here one struggles not to do so. Actually, whatever path one follows, success always comes to those who are strong, courageous, enduring. And you know... and much patience. For on the one hand you want to consecrate yourself to the Divine and take your place in the divine life in the making. On the other hand you want the satisfactions of ordinary life and the pleasures of the vital—without considering, however, that these pleasures can only be obtained through much struggle and effort and that always they go hand in hand with worry and suffering... come back here and cannot see me (for, since Sri Aurobindo's accident, I am no longer giving any "pranams" or interviews), won't you feel once again that you are giving up all the pleasures that ordinary life can give, without getting anything much in exchange? Of course, if you want to lead the spiritual life at any cost, that is another thing. But in that case, you will have to rely on the inner ...
... life and as ordinary life is full of ignorance, the only possible solution is to reject ordinary life and as this doctrine is preached by Shankaracharya, so Sri Aurobindo Ghose is near to Shankaracharya and therefore there is very little new to learn from him. REPLY: That is an entire misreading of my Yoga which aims not at rejection of life but fulfilment of life. Of course,—ordinary life is full... conscious life and these obstacles have to be conquered by means of the supermind. There are several curves and circles coming up and down. They have to be understood and used for transforming the ordinary life. Shankaracharya understood Vijnan as a superior mental consciousness and as this was still mental he rejected that Vijnan, Shankaracharya did not believe in manifestation which to him was Maya.... becomes very strong and many people are obliged to change the outer life. Our aim is not to get supramental experiences only in meditation but also in making them conscious and in every act of ordinary life. There is one Sutra in Brahmasutras viz., the upadesha of manifestation and non-manifestation in the Upanishads can be explained by the example of a serpent sitting in coiled form or otherwise ...
... viewpoint of the ordinary life, for people who lead the ordinary life, who do not want to do yoga or develop spiritually, reason is certainly an absolute and very recommendable master. People who live according to reason are usually very sattwic and do not commit any kind of excesses or make serious mistakes, they live reasonably. It is only when one comes out of the ordinary life, when one wants to... any religion with your reason, you are sure to make mistakes, for Page 166 it is outside and beyond the field of reason. Reason can judge things which belong to the rational domain of ordinary life. And as he says later, the true role of reason is to be like a control and an organiser of the movements of human life in the mind and the vital. Each time, for example, that one has some kind... spiritual point of view, for Page 167 it understands nothing in these domains, but from the rational point of view it is naturally the sovereign judge. For everything that concerns the ordinary life, and as I say, the mental, vital and physical life of man, a perfectly reasonable being, one who lives according to his reason, cannot make a mistake from this point of view. It is only if one says ...
... much attracted by the pleasures of ordinary life, such as cinemas, restaurants, social life, etc., come to study in our school? For, as a rule, one feels that this is why most of our students go out during the holidays, and everytime they come back they need quite a long time to readjust themselves here Those who are strongly attached to ordinary life and its agitation should not come... that they will go away from here after their studies, is it not necessary for them to go out from time to time in order to be able to adjust themselves later to ordinary life? There is no difficulty in adapting to ordinary life, it is bondage to which one is subjected from birth, for all carry it in themselves by atavism, and even those who are born to be freed need to struggle seriously... ready for a total consecration. Many children who have studied here need to come to grips with life before they can be ready for the divine work, and that is why they leave to undergo the test of ordinary life. 11 November 1964 * (A student had nearly completed his course of studies. Uncertain whether to attend college in the United States or to remain at the Ashram to live and ...
... are much attracted by the pleasures of ordinary life, such as cinemas, restaurants, social life, etc., come to study in our school? For, as a rule, one feels that this is why most of our students go out during the holidays, and every time they come back they need quite a long time to readjust themselves here. Those who are strongly attached to ordinary life and its agitation should not come here... know that they will go away from here after their studies, is it not necessary for them to go out from time to time in order to be able to adjust themselves later to ordinary life? There is no difficulty in adapting to ordinary life; it is a bondage to which one is subjected from birth, for all carry it in themselves by atavism, and even those who are born to be freed need to Page 360 ... going to leave after their studies here? Surely there must be a great difference between them and ordinary people. What is the difference? Often, as soon as they find themselves in the midst of ordinary life, many of them realise the difference and regret what they have lost. Few of them have the courage to give up the comforts they find in their ordinary surroundings, but even the others no longer ...
... accurate! Yet those associated with me had the impression that I was a truant and erratic chap, especially when I was so restless. Some even thought that I would take up ordinary life and forget all about spirituality. In the ordinary life, which needs no mention, I passed through a bitter experience of what life consists of. The Mother, however, continued to write to me regularly up to 1939 when I was... message to the person concerned. Once she told me that if I had moods that would make me more unhappy, people would shun me. On another occasion she expressed that even if I wanted to take up ordinary life I must not, on any account, marry. That was the worst possible slavery. Then she asked me if I knew what people did when people married. I nodded. I had only a faint inkling of the thing men call... terribly lonely; I had been so much in tune with the Mother and her presence that I felt like a fish out of water. In 1937 I was restless and in November the Mother asked me to 'go out and see the ordinary life'. She wanted me to make a free and independent choice of life. She said that she did not want me to be like D. This person whom the Mother mentioned had begun to go out of the Ashram from 1936 and ...
... strongly attracted by the pleasures of ordinary life, such as cinemas, restaurants, social life, etc., come to study in our school? For, as a rule, one feels that this is why most of our students go out during the holidays, and each time they come back they take quite a long time to re-adjust themselves here. Those who are strongly attached to ordinary life and its excitement should not come here... know that they will go away from here after their studies, isn’t it necessary for them to go out from time to time in order to be able to adjust themselves later to ordinary life? There is no difficulty in adapting to ordinary life; it is a bondage to which one is subjected from birth, for all carry it in themselves by atavism, and even those who are born to be free have to struggle seriously and... going to leave after their studies here? Surely there must be a great difference between them and ordinary people. What is the difference? Often, as soon as they find themselves in the midst of ordinary life, many of them realise the difference and regret what they have lost. Few of them have the courage to give up the comforts they find in their ordinary surroundings, but even the others no longer ...
... where you wanted to go! You are carried away, just like that, quite naturally. "Why, yes, I wanted to go there and I find myself here!" That's how it is. In ordinary life this happens all the time. Only, you know, in ordinary life one says, "It is circumstances, it is fate, it's my bad luck, it is their fault", or else, "I have no luck." That is very, very, very convenient. One veils everything... have the habit of dragging along those parts which lag behind, he may advance on one side and go backward on another. That happens. And then the sum total is not very, very satisfactory. In ordinary life, with ordinary people, this happens all the time. For instance, take someone who is studying, working—a scientist making discoveries. He progresses in his studies, he knows more and more. But as ...
... writes a note. ) It is an answer to a question. Do you know what I told the teachers of the school? I have been asked another question. Here is the beginning of my reply: "The division between 'ordinary life' and 'spiritual life' is an outdated antiquity." Did you read his question? Read it again to me. "We discussed the future. It seemed to me that nearly all the teachers were eager to do something... give him this reply: There is no "spiritual life"! It is still the old idea, still the old idea of the sage, the sannyasin, the... who represents spiritual life, while all the others represent ordinary life—and it is not true, it is not true, it is not true at all. If they still need an opposition between two things—for the poor mind doesn't work if you don't give it an opposition—if they need an... But above all, what is most important is to eliminate these divisions. And every one of them, all of them have it in their minds: the division between leading a spiritual life and leading an ordinary life, having a spiritual consciousness and having an ordinary consciousness—there is only one consciousness. In most people it is three-quarters asleep and distorted; in many it is still completely ...
... yourself say that you have not yet the whole mind for it and without the whole mind success is hardly possible in sadhana. For the other it is hardly the function of sadhana to prepare a man for ordinary life in the world. There is one thing only that could work in a direction which would help you to something which is not that, but still not the whole Yoga for which you intimate that you are not wholly... universal Nature. Of course the full significance of the surrender comes out only when he is ready. Any work can be done as a field for the practice of the spirit of the Gita. The ordinary life consists in work for personal aim and satisfaction of desire under some mental or moral control, touched sometimes by a mental ideal. The Gita's Yoga consists in the offering of one's work as a... when you put yourself into it. Work is part of the sadhana, and in sadhana the question of usefulness does not arise, that is an outward practical measure of things, though even in the outward ordinary life utility is not the only measure. The question is of aspiration to the Divine, whether that is your central aim in life, your inner need or not. Sadhana for oneself is another matter—one can take ...
... tendencies, its past grooves, those which would have decided its direction before; this vital has, as is often one first result, fallen silent and neutral. It is no longer strongly moved towards the ordinary life; it has not yet received from or through the psychic centre and the higher mental will a sufficient illumination and impulse to take up a new vital movement and run vigorously on the road to a new... quiescent vital (few can avoid altogether this passage through a neutral vital indifference) into the full dynamic course of the spiritual movement. It is not absolutely necessary to abandon the ordinary life in order to seek after the Light or to practise Yoga. This is usually Page 17 done by those who want to make a clean cut, to live a purely religious or exclusively inner and spiritual... human birth and a passing away into some higher state or into the transcendental Reality. Otherwise it is only necessary when the pressure of the inner urge becomes so great that the pursuit of the ordinary life is no longer compatible with the pursuit of the dominant spiritual objective. Till then what is necessary is a power to practise an inner isolation, to be able to retire within oneself and concentrate ...
... with two elements in him, the inner being which wants the Divine and the sadhana and the outer mainly vital and physical being which does not want them but remains attached to the things of the ordinary life. The mind is sometimes led by one, sometimes by the other. One of the most important things he has to do, therefore, is to decide fundamentally the quarrel between these two parts and to persuade... only in Yoga one becomes conscious of their movements and their causes instead of feeling them blindly, and in the end one makes one's way out of them into a clearer and happier consciousness. The ordinary life remains to the last a series of troubles and struggles, but the sadhak of the Yoga comes out of the trouble and struggle to a ground of fundamental serenity which superficial disturbances may still... ry elements in human nature and in every human being through which he is made to act in a way which his better mind disapproves. This happens to everybody, to the most ordinary men in the most ordinary life. It only becomes marked and obvious to our minds when we try to rise above our ordinary external selves, because then we can see that it is the lower elements which are being made to revolt consciously ...
... the Divine. It should not be difficult for the man devoted to the spiritual aim [ to depend on the Divine for material things ]—for he is always expected to rely on the Divine even in his ordinary life in the world—such dependence being part of his mental atmosphere and the constitution of his vital nature. Demand and Desire If to you X says that her suffering and ill-health are due to... exacting in its conditions and the most difficult of all is to bring it down on to the physical level. Getting Rid of Desire The satisfaction of the vital desires is a normal feature of the ordinary life, only it must be controlled and regulated by the mental will, so that one may not be enslaved to the desires. It is only if one turns to the spiritual life that one has to get rid of vital desires... there is a self-existent peace and satisfaction and into that peace and wideness must come the Mother's greater peace, force, light, knowledge, Ananda. The vital always wants the things of ordinary life, sex, rich food, enjoyments of all kinds; it does not get full satisfaction out of them, but it feels dissatisfied without them. The only way to get rid of it is to reject desire of these things ...
... when they come to us in ordinary life, the depressions do not get us down as they do here — with the veritable downrush of a deluge or the cataclysm of an avalanche. The reason is that in ordinary life these hostile forces do not need to be as active or organised as they are in Yoga — their Page 59 métier being to thwart all Godward endeavours, and in ordinary life people are seldom c ...
... Mother, will You explain how looking at pictures can be harmful? Page 71 Naturally it depends on what the pictures are; but most often they are concerned only with things of the ordinary life and so they draw the consciousness towards that. 10 December 1934 O Mother, my sweet Mother, when shall I become one with You, when shall I live in You and for You? You must will with... "Trust"? Unless one has full trust in the Divine, the Divine help cannot bear its full fruit. 6 November 1936 Do You think it may be harmful for me to read books that tell only about ordinary life, the joys and sorrows of life? Obviously it is not very helpful, unless the book is very well written and you read it solely for the sake of learning French. 14 November 1936 I would... progress, even invisibly, than to look as if you were making it. 9 December 1936 Page 151 Am I wrong in thinking that sadhaks should not have relationships with people in ordinary life, people who have no inclination towards the spiritual life? Clearly it would be much better. 12 December 1936 There was a certain friendship between Y and me. Then suddenly one day ...
... self-deceiver. 305—There are two ways of avoiding the snare of woman; one is to shun all women and the other to love all beings. What should be the ideal of a modern woman in ordinary life? In ordinary life, women can have all the ideas they like, it is not very important. 1 Page 299 From the spiritual point of view, men and women are equal in their capacity to realise the... way and according to his (or her) own possibilities. 25 January 1970 × Later, Mother added, "For women, in ordinary life, the ideal is good health and harmony." ...
... "5 Lastly, there is a point worth noting. The Mother has remarked: "For an ordinary man, living an ordinary life, having ordinary activities.... it is all right for him to eat anything at all, whatever agrees with him, whatever does him good. But if one wishes to pass from his ordinary life to a higher one, the problem begins to become interesting; and if, after having come to a higher life, one... out of Page 214 tune with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is not a prospect I would encourage. Of course, one may always take an example from whoever you feel is leading a more-than-ordinary life of the inner consciousness, but you should be careful to note that the person is not entrenched bigotedly in any presently prevalent system of creed and dogma and ritual. The living awareness of ...
... A Greater Psychology 6 The Outer (Surface) Being The outer consciousness is that which usually expresses itself in ordinary life. It is the external mental, vital, physical. It is not connected very much with the inner being except in a few — until one connects them together in the course of the sadhana. Letters on Yoga, p. 311 The outer... organisation of our material environment. All these extensions of faculty, though received with hesitation and incredulity by the physical mind because they are abnormal to the habitual scheme of our ordinary life and experience, difficult to set in action, still more difficult to systematise so as to be able to make of them an orderly and serviceable set of instruments, must yet be admitted, since they... by ego which hides itself behind these justifications; in yoga the secret motive has to be pulled out from behind the veil, exposed and got rid of. Secondly, some things are suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated; 2 they may rise Page 65 up any day or they may express themselves in various nervous forms or other disorders ...
... of the process of human lives in previous stages of development. In Yoga friendship can remain, but attachment has to fall away or any such engrossing affection as would keep one tied to the ordinary life and consciousness—human relations must take quite a small and secondary place and not interfere with the turn to the Divine. But Jet that pass. I will send this letter to this Princess... being often brought up by some psychological factor (ambition turning to megalomania, hypochondria, melancholia, etc.) or on the contrary itself bringing these to the surface. All that happens in ordinary life and not only in Yoga; the same causes work Page 190 here. The one thing is that there may be an invasion of an alien Force bringing about the upsetting, but it is not the divine... . Page 244 As for the blows, well, are they always given by the Yoga— is it not sometimes the sadhak of the Yoga who gives blows to himself? There are plenty of blows too in ordinary life, according to my experience. Blows are the order of existence, and of Yoga; our nature and the nature of things bring them upon us until we learn to present to them a back which they cannot touch ...
... sensation, body experience. Usually it is the psychic light in the mind that is first lit of the three, but not always—for sometimes it is the psycho-vital flame that takes precedence. In ordinary life also there is no doubt an action of the psychic—without it man would be only a thinking and planning animal. But its action there is very much veiled, needing always the mental or vital to express... na hi kalyana-krt kascid durgatim tata gacchati ? 124 You have forgotten the context. Arjuna asks what of a yogi who fails in this life because of his errors—does he fall from both the ordinary life and the spiritual and perish like a bro- ken chord? Krishna says no. All who follow the Good get the reward of their effort and don't perish as they get it first in the life beyond and afterwards... quarrels with Sahana, surely it is a great exaggeration to quarrel about such perfectly indifferent matters as a disagreement about the merits of Moni Bagchi—whether in the Ashram or out- side it in ordinary life one can differ in opinion about people or things without the difference spoiling the atmosphere for them. Certainly, liking or disliking people has nothing to do with Yoga; neither liking people ...
... Yoga is quite distinct from Morality and Religion. Morality is a part of the ordinary life. The ordinary life consists of seeking satisfaction and the development of the body, life and mind without any reference to their Page 229 original source or self. Morality is that part of the ordinary life which seeks to regulate and guide the various physical, vital, mental or rational thought ...
... But I don't see any reason why one should be disgusted with everything before one can take to the spiritual life. What we do is that we see the imperfection in the world and we do not accept the ordinary life which is subject to ignorance and falsehood. But we do not despise it – we do not look upon it with disgust and contempt. We look upon it with calm and equality – Samata – and try to understand... you have lost money, Disciple : Then directly you go to a Guru ! ( Laughter ) Sri Aurobindo : The true dissatisfaction comes from the inner being which is not satisfied with the ordinary life when once the inner being is touched. Disciple ; Is aspiration always psychic ? Sri Aurobindo : Yes. True aspiration is always psychic in its origin. It is "the fire rising from the... imperfection in the aspiration itself. But even behind these imperfect forms there is something that is burning. Once one has awakened this fire it is impossible for him to rest satisfied with the ordinary life. Disciple : Does the Fire always signify the psychic aspiration in the Veda ? Sri Aurobindo : Yes. But there are various forms and powers of Agni – Fire – in us and also in the universe ...
... Yoga and may very well happen even without the practice of Yoga in those who are destined for the spiritual change, especially if there is a preparation, a dissatisfaction somewhere with the ordinary life and a seeking for something more, greater or better. It comes often exactly in the way that she describes and the cessation of the experience and the descent also come in the same way. This first... long enough. The descent is inevitable because it is not the whole being that has risen up but only something within and all the rest of the nature is unprepared, absorbed in or attached to the ordinary life and governed by movements that are not in consonance with the Light. Still the something within is something central in the being and therefore the experience is in a way definitive and decisive... the inner need if that is very strong. The moment has come for her and the necessary aspiration and knowledge and the influence that can help her. It is not absolutely necessary to abandon the ordinary life in order to seek after the Light or to practice Yoga. This is usually done by those who want to make a clean cut, to live a purely religious or exclusively inner and spiritual life, to renounce ...
... after some years of Pranava sadhana. Afterwards I understood what the Tantras meant by the relation between sadhaka and sadhika. The reality behind it is the duality of united Shiva-Shakti. Man's ordinary life is the wrong way of giving it expression. I am now able to transform this perception into Delight. Is this experience true? Page 723 This is not accepted in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. 2... come through in the end. On the other hand, if she is not yet truly called or if her nature is not yet ripe, the marriage may take place and she may have to go Page 725 through the ordinary life before she can return to the spiritual. There was never any suggestion from here that the girl should come to Pondicherry; how is it that it has been raised over there? 25 April 1930 No member... age and Yoga are two different movements going opposite ways; if he follows one, he will be moving away from the other. So if he marries, either of two things will happen—he will sink into the ordinary life and go far away from us in spirit or he will find married life unsatisfactory, renounce his wife and return to the path that leads towards the Divine. Marriage with the first result would be only ...
... not made the most out of what is given to us. That proves that life is too easy here and that for the most part you are all too tamasic to make an effort unless goaded by the difficulties of ordinary life. Only a very ardent aspiration can remedy this deadly condition. But the aspiration is absent and your soul is asleep! 2 January 1964 Page 292 1964 Bonne Année I hope... ready for a total consecration. Many children who have studied here need to come to grips with life before they can be ready for the divine work, and that is why they leave to undergo the test of ordinary life. 11 November 1964 Sweet Mother, I have a habit of blaming myself, of making myself responsible for all misunderstandings; this is a weakness Page 307 rather than a virtue... like that, it is an obvious proof that most are not at all ready for the new life, nor even ready to prepare for the new life. And to tell the truth, they would do far better to return to the ordinary life and experience it, instead of taking advantage of the exceptional conditions of existence they have here, without being worthy of enjoying them. 12 January 1966 Sweet Mother, Formerly ...
... It's the answer to a question. Have you heard what I said to the School teachers?... 1 They've asked me another question. This is the beginning of my answer: "It is the division between 'ordinary life' and 'spiritual life' which is antiquated and obsolete...." ( Then Mother gives Satprem roses and a garland of flowers called "adoration" ) 2 Do you want this? ( Satprem accepts... I'll quote it incorrectly, but he had this experience, "If men knew how marvellous it is, they wouldn't hesitate for a minute." Now they still make a distinction: the "spiritual life" and the "ordinary life." Only, one should have what I had when I was very young: the sense of material realization in its utmost perfection, the will for perfection THERE. One should have this in order not to fling... "There's no such thing as 'spiritual life'!" It's still the old idea. Still the old idea of the sage, the yogi, the sannyasi, the ... who represents spiritual life, while all others represent ordinary life—but it's not true! It's not true, not true at all. If they still need to oppose one thing to another (because that wretched mind doesn't work when it's not given an opposition), if they need ...
... powers of his natural instruments—those of knowledge, will etc.—increased in proportion to his devotion to the pursuit of the Infinite, and the concentration of his nature on the task. Man, even in ordinary life, gets many glimpses of something higher than his ordinary self—he hears a voice, or feels a truth, or a sweetness, or a presence in or around him. Aswapathy gradually got acclimatised to higher... him that had kinship with the Divine. He felt the presence of a witness self within him that saw all, but was attached to nothing. But nothing of this experience Page 124 appears m ordinary life. There only material appearance seems to rule. Man is subject to doubts, and difficulties of his own nature which are the products of a process of slow evolution from original Nescience to some... Then he felt sure of a divine presence in and behind the world-process. His own will rose in union with the divine will to fulfil the world purpose. He could not, thereafter, rest content with ordinary life. As a result of his efforts his consciousness rose to higher planes of being. Occasionally he felt a descent of a Higher Power from above. He could then read .the secrets of Nature. He entered into ...
... different from the millions of schools in the world,’ the Mother said. ‘It is to give the children a chance to distinguish between ordinary life and the divine life, the life of truth – to see things in a different way. It is useless to want to repeat here the ordinary life. The teacher’s mission is to open the eyes of the children to something which they will not find anywhere else.’ 13 And she said... reason for this is quite simply that anybody trying to realize his or her soul, or to advance spiritually, will be inevitably attacked by the hostile forces using visible and invisible means. If ordinary life is a battle, spiritual life is a hundred times more so, and one has to be a hero to persevere in one’s effort. Of this heroic struggle Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are the best examples; their fight ...
... of his life and suffering from ill-health and you feel for him, the best thing for him is still that you should tranquillise yourself and call the Divine to his help to pass through. Even in the ordinary life disquietude and depression create an unhelpful atmosphere for one who is ill or in difficulties. Once you are a sadhak, then whether for yourself or to help others for whom you still feel, the true... Drinking Page 330 if excessive affects the substance and quality of the energy—but probably a moderate drinking and smoking would have a less perceptible effect. I don't think people in ordinary life notice clearly, but they have often a general impression which they cannot explain or particularise. It is mainly an inner guard that you must keep. At the same time, if you feel unease in... principle, for that is the mental way of doing things, the way of the ordinary mind—it is as a need that it has to be accepted, when it is felt as a need, not as a general law or rule. Relations in Ordinary Life The best way to prepare oneself for the spiritual life when one has to live in the ordinary occupations and surroundings is to cultivate an entire equality and detachment and the samatā of ...
... one thing I must note that no wrong idea may linger in your understanding. You seem to say in one passage of a letter that the Mother had said to you that jealousy is inevitable in true love (in ordinary life) and if it is not there when one sees the other loving elsewhere, then they don't love each other! You must have strangely misheard and misunderstood the Mother. It is just the opposite of what... very contrary of all her knowledge and experience. It is the idea of the ordinary mind about jealousy and love, not hers. She remembers very well having told you just the opposite that, even in ordinary life, one is not jealous if one has the true love. Jealousy is the common movement of the human egoistic lower vital with its grasping possessive instinct and it cannot be anything else. I thought... of the palate which the sadhak has to conquer. Sometimes I want to wear nice clothes—my dissatisfaction persists unabated. Another vital desire. These things are good for people in the ordinary life, but such desires must be overcome in Yoga. There is a growing disgust with life and a preference for death. I pray to Yamaraja to take me quickly since I don't think I can do anything for Mother ...
... movements. But would this not be against the principles in ordinary life as well as in Sadhana? There is the way of keeping silent when dealing with such people, but even that sometimes hurts them more than a point-blank discouragement. Would the bad effects of depression and discouragement indicated by the Mother happen in ordinary life also? The knowledge about the bad effect of depressions... wish of encouragement or praise for all they do. One can be silent or non-intervening, but if even that depresses them, it is their own fault and nobody else's. Of course, it is the same in ordinary life—depression is always hurtful. But in Sadhana it is more serious because it becomes a strong obstacle to the smooth and rapid progress towards the goal. Page 311 ...
... unless they themselves become capable of entering into this knowledge. And so the logical result is that people will say, as I have heard it said: "Oh! It is just as in ordinary life." Precisely because all that is not of the ordinary life completely escapes our perception, it cannot be transmitted by words. Take a place like this, which is surcharged with certain forces, certain vibrations; these ... which does not belong to normal life. Well, those who Page 222 have no other perception than that of the ordinary mind, who see things working out as they habitually do or seem to do in ordinary life, will tell you, "Oh that, that is quite natural." If they have no other perception than the purely physical perception, if they are not capable of feeling the quality of a vibration (some feel it ...
... Answers (1929-1931) The Ordinary Life and the True Soul The ordinary life is a round of various desires and greeds. As long as one is preoccupied with them, there can be no lasting progress. A way out of the round must be discovered. Take, as an instance, that commonest preoccupation of ordinary life—the constant thinking by people of what they will eat and ...
... responsive, if there is a resistance here, the reason is that the body is incapable of moving as quickly as the rest of the being. It must take time, it must walk at its own pace as it does in ordinary life. What happens is as when grown-up people walk too fast for children in their company; they have to stop at times and wait till the child who is lagging behind comes up and overtakes them. This ... receptivity making the physical parts closely follow the pace of the inner transformation is hardly possible, unless the body has already been prepared in the past for the processes of Yoga. In the ordinary life of man a progressive dislocation is the rule. The mental and the vital beings of man follow as best they can the movement of the universal forces, and the stream of the world's inner transformation... death. By Yoga the inner transformation that is in slow constant process in the creation is rendered more intense and rapid, but the pace of the outer transformation remains almost the same as in ordinary life. As a result, the disharmony between the inner and the outer being in one who is doing Yoga tends to be all the greater, unless precautions are taken and a protection secured that will help the ...
... le that rules of ordinary morality do not have any value for him. Now, if he is an ordinary man living the ordinary life, it is a purely practical question, isn't it? He must conform to the laws of the country in which he lives to avoid all trouble! But all these things which in ordinary life have a very relative value and can be looked upon with a certain indulgence, change totally the minute one... one decides to do yoga and enter the divine life. Then, all values change completely; what is honest in ordinary life, is no longer at all honest for you. Besides, there is such a reversal of values that one can no longer use the same ordinary language. If one wants to consecrate oneself to the divine life, one must do it truly, that is, give oneself entirely, no longer do anything for one's own interest ...
... Considering the causes you have told us about, one should be always ill! But in ordinary life, most of the time, people are almost always ill—except a few who escape for reasons of a different order that we shall explain one day. There are very few people who are not more or less ill all the while. But even in ordinary life, if within you there is trust, goodwill, a kind of certitude, this kind of inner... feeling that the whole life is before them. Very few things are behind, everything is in front. So that gives them a kind of self-confidence, that pulls them out. Otherwise, I do not know, in the ordinary life I have known very few people who did not complain of having at least some physical ailment which they carried always with them You know perhaps that play of Jules Romains, Doctor Knock , in which ...
... to do with what you have, putting into it all the care, all the order, all the necessary method, and avoiding confusion." Source The Problem of Food If one wishes to pass from this ordinary life to a higher one, the problem [of food] begins to become interesting; and if, after having come to a higher life, one tries to prepare oneself for the transformation, then it becomes very important... or less finely, but which in its essence is something divine. The first step is to stop being selfish. For everyone it is the same thing, not only for those who want to do yoga but also in ordinary life: if one wants to know how to love, one must not love oneself first and above all selfishly; one must give oneself to the object of love without exacting anything in return. This discipline is elementary... instead of egoistically making others suffer, well, one may leave them quiet in their own movement and only make an effort to transform oneself without imposing one's will on others, which even in ordinary life is a step towards something higher and a little more harmonious. Source To Know What Love Is ...if one wants to know what love is, one must love the Divine. Then there is a chance ...
... Signature Of Truth THE ORDINARY LIFE AND THE TRUE SOUL The ordinary life is a round of various desires and greeds. As long as one is preoccupied with them, there can he no lasting progress. A way out of the round must be discovered. Take, as an instance, that commonest preoccupation of ordinary life—the constant thinking by people of what they will eat and ...
... The voice of the ordinary conscience is an ethical voice, a moral voice which distinguishes between good and evil, encourages us to do good and forbids us to do evil. This voice is very useful in ordinary life, until one is able to become conscious of one's psychic being and allow oneself to be entirely guided by it — in other words, to rise above ordinary humanity, free oneself from all egoism and become... colour of the dress that one had put on, the colour of one's own skin, the things about you at that time — all that is fixed indelibly with an extraordinary intensity, because the things of the ordinary life revealed themselves then in their true intensity and their true colour. The consciousness that reveals itself in you, reveals at the same time the consciousness that is in things. At times, with... speaking of yogis; I am speaking of ordinary people. Yogis have no laws, it is quite Page 45 different; for them the world is different. I am speaking to you of ordinary men living an ordinary life; for these it is like that. So the conclusion is that if you want to preserve your consciousness, it would be better to centralise it on a part of your being that is immortal; otherwise ...
... It may be true that ordinarily mixing with women removes shyness etc., - though it is not always so, for many people are sex-timid by nature - but that is a means for ordinary life, not Yoga, and in ordinary life marriage is the direct means for getting rid of sex-uneasiness; marriage or else having love-affairs with women and satisfying the sex. But that is not the proper means for an Ashram... ignoring it, the higher has to be brought there. So one must speak of both, not of the higher alone. Page 159 The satisfaction of the vital desires is a normal feature of the ordinary life, only it must be controlled and regulated by the mental will, so that one may not be enslaved to the desires. It is only if one turns to the spiritual life that one has to get rid of vital desires ...
... basically different from most other schools and colleges found elsewhere. For the aim of true education should be, in the Mother's view, to give the students a chance to distinguish between the ordinary life and the life of truth — to see things in a different way. And the teacher's mission should be to open the eyes of the children to something which they will not find in conventional schools. ... the will always to look ahead and to want to move on as swiftly as one can towards — what will be. The students should be helped to discern between the fugitive joys and superficial pleasures ordinary life can offer and the marvellous things that life, action and growth would be in a future world of perfection and truth. They should be aided to cultivate within themselves the certitude that what belongs... happened on earth in former times, or even how the earth is built, or even... indeed, all sorts of things which are quite a necessary grounding if Page 35 you want to live the ordinary life in the world..." (CWM, Vol. 8, p. 182) Sixth Goal: To Overcome the Tyranny of Lower Desires While dealing with their students, the teachers are often confronted with the ...
... heart: to replace the heart with the centre of Power, a formidable, dynamic power! At what precise MOMENT are you going to eliminate the circulation and throw in the Force?... It's difficult. In ordinary life, you think of things and then you do them — here it's just the opposite! In this life, you have to do things first, and understand afterwards, but long afterwards. You have to act first, without... and I say to myself, “Oh, to go into my beatitudes,” It is not allowed. I am bound there. It's here, HERE that we must realize. 60.2611 And then, things do not happen at all as they do in ordinary life, but for three to four minutes, sometimes ten minutes, I am abom-in-ab-ly sick, with every sign that it's all over. And it's just for me to have the experience, to find the strength. So then, it's... of the consciousness that causes one to catch death or not, and accidents and all the rest. Then that experience of “the death of death” becomes clear: 63.163 The impression people have in ordinary life (few are conscious of it) is of a Destiny or a Fate or a will ... “hanging over” them, a set of circumstances (it doesn't matter what you call it), something that weighs you down and tries to manifest ...
... feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo 25 August 1933 MYSELF: In ordinary life, we boast so much of our reason and judgement, but there is no end of error in these judgements. SRI AUROBINDO: It is not a question of ordinary life. In ordinary life people always judge wrongly because they judge by mental standards and generally by conventional standards. ...
... WORDS OF THE MOTHER—III SERIES THE ORDINARY LIFE AND THE TRUE SOUL The ordinary life is a round of various desires and greeds. As long as one is preoccupied with them there can be no lasting progress. A way out of the round must be discovered. Take, as an instance, that commonest preoccupation of ordinary life — the constant thinking by people of what they will eat and ...
... but if even that depresses them, it is their own fault and nobody else's. Would the bad effects of depression and discouragement indicated by the Mother happen in ordinary life also? Of course, it is the same in ordinary life—depression is always hurtful. But in sadhana it is more serious because it becomes a strong obstacle to the smooth and rapid progress towards the goal. 18 July 1936 ...
... Sadhana before Coming to Pondicherry in 1910 Letters on Himself and the Ashram Ordinary Life and Yoga Faith and Knowledge Is it true that only those who have obtained a clear knowledge of their spiritual possibility through a definite glimpse, received by the Grace of the Divine, are able to stick to the path till the end? At least I had no such... puzzle? Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life—when the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it—nothing puzzling in that. 27 April 1936 Meditation as a Means What do you call meditation? Shutting the eyes and concentrating ...
... classify in a general way all the categories of the spoken word, First, we have in the physical domain all words uttered for a material reason, They are by far the most numerous and in ordinary life very probably the most useful. The constant buzz of words seems to be the indispensable accompaniment of the daily routine work. Yet if you just endeavour to reduce the noise to a minimum... Because you are completely master of yourself, you are no longer the slave of the laws of nature that make you act through subconscious and semiconscious impulsions and keep you in the rut of ordinary life. Because of this liberation you can Page 159 decide, with full knowledge, about the path you want to take, choose the action you want to accomplish, and free yourself from all blind ...
... when it happens to you it is over, you can no longer ask any questions, it is done; you do not ask how it happens, it is done. Source Contact with One's Psychic Being In the ordinary life there's not one person in a million who has a conscious contact with his psychic being, even momentarily. The psychic being may work from within, but so invisibly and unconsciously for the outer... habit of playing with ideas are the ones most hampered from going farther. It is a game that's pretty, attractive; it gives you the impression that you are not altogether ordinary, at the level of ordinary life, but it cuts the wings. It's not the head which has wings: it's the heart. Source ...
... of a willed intervention, the action is automatic. Nothing else can happen if you dash yourself in revolt against the Immensity. As long as you remain in your corner and follow the course of the ordinary life, you are not touched or hurt; but once you come in contact with the Divine, there are only two ways open to you. You surrender and merge in it, and your surrender enlarges and glorifies you; or... fetters and debases and disfigures Page 116 the true personality; he must throw from him whatever belongs to the ignorant lower movements of the ordinary man and his blind limping ordinary life. And first of all he must give up his desires; for desire is the most obscure and the most obscuring movement of the lower nature. Desires are motions of weakness and ignorance and they keep you ...
... concerns the Four Truths and the Eightfold Path that lead to the annihilation of suffering. Here are the details given in the text: The Four Noble Truths are: (1) Life—taken in the sense of ordinary life, the life of ignorance and falsehood—is indissolubly linked with suffering: suffering of the body and suffering of the mind. (2) The cause of suffering is desire, which is caused by ignorance... remember one's past lives nor have the sense of a conscious continuity through all one's lives. The first point then is to see correctly, and to see correctly is to see that pain is associated with ordinary life, that all things are Page 248 impermanent and that there is no continuity in the personal consciousness. (2) Correct intention or desire . But the same word "desire" should not have ...
... order that it be different from the millions of schools in the world; it is to give the children a chance to distinguish between ordinary life and the divine life, the life of truth—to see things in a different way. It is useless to want to repeat here the ordinary life. The teacher's mission is to open the eyes of the children to something which they will not find anywhere else. Page 3 ...
... more or less finely, but which in its essence is something divine. The first step is to stop being selfish. For everyone it is the same thing, not only for those who want to do yoga but also in ordinary life: if one wants to know how to love, one must not love oneself first and above all selfishly; one must give oneself to the object of love without exacting anything in return. This discipline is elementary... instead of egoistically making others suffer, well, one may leave them quiet in their own movement and only make an effort to transform oneself without imposing one's will on others, which even in ordinary life is a step towards something higher and a little more harmonious. Page 302 ...
... one of half the mango. For it is not by the quantity or Page 15 the quality that it is measured: it is by the sincerity of the giving and the absoluteness of the giving. But in ordinary life, when rich men want to give their wealth to the Divine, and the Divine is not in front of them, then to whom are they to give? They don't know where to give their money! Yes, but then the question... difference between asking the Divine to adopt you, and making a gesture of goodwill, but without the least intention of changing anything whatever in the course of your life. Those who live the ordinary life, well, if they make a gesture of goodwill, so much the better for them, this creates for them antecedents for future lives. But it is only from the moment you say, "There, now I know that there ...
... Ordinarily is there not a nexus between the psychic being and the higher consciousness? Page 268 Ordinarily means in the ordinary life? A relation between the psychic being... Yes. It is almost, almost totally unconscious. In the ordinary life there's not one person in a million who has a conscious contact with his psychic being, even momentarily. The psychic being may work from ...
... That depends on the person! If it is someone who is doing yoga, it is quite obviously a difficulty in his spiritual life. If it is somebody who is not at all engaged in yoga and who lives an ordinary life in the most ordinary manner, it is an ordinary accident. It depends absolutely on the person. The outer phenomena may be similar, but the inner causes are absolutely different. No two illnesses... to pass on to a higher degree in the evolutionary spiral, pass from the mental to the spiritual; then, naturally, faith takes on a quality of a very high order. But I mean that in daily life, ordinary life, a very simple man who has a very ardent faith can have a mastery over his body—without it being truly a "mastery"; it is simply a spontaneous movement—a control over his body far greater than somebody ...
... something like stones or plants, not altogether inert, but vegetative. Some people say that without desires, that is, without this soul of desire, there would never have been any progress…. In ordinary life it is something very useful but when one decides to do yoga, to find the Divine, it becomes a little cumbersome. The Mother Questions and Answers (1956): 26 September 1956 … the vital... mind. It is only the minority of men who live in the mind or in the psychic or try to live on the spiritual plane. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - IV: The Nature of the Vital In the ordinary life, people accept the vital movements, anger, desire, greed, sex etc. as natural, allowable and legitimate things, part of the human nature. Only so far as society discourages them or wishes to keep ...
... theirs. Why shouldst thou set thy members to war upon each other? What are the highest aims of reason, faith and instinct in ordinary life and in spiritual life? Each one has his own aims according to his nature and the goal he wants to attain in ordinary life. As for spiritual life, it has only one goal: to know the Divine and to unite with Him, by every possible means and with the help ...
... Yoga remains with them there. You have to get rid of your constant reasonings and see whether you can do without the impulse towards Yoga or not—if you cannot, then it is useless thinking of the ordinary life without Yoga—your nature will compel you to seek after it even if you have to seek all your life with a small result. But the small result Page 445 is mainly due to the mind which always... which is necessary for the Yoga here seems to be too difficult for you. If you made a less strenuous demand upon yourself, there might be a greater chance. In any case, if you cannot return to the ordinary life, it seems, in the absence of an opening to the Power that is here, the only course for you. Page 446 × ...
... in the practice of Yoga and may very well happen even without the practice of Yoga in those who are destined for the spiritual change, especially if there is a dissatisfaction somewhere with the ordinary life and a seeking for something more, greater or better. It comes often exactly in the way that she describes Page 431 and the cessation of the experience and the descent also come in the... often long enough. The descent is inevitable because it is not the whole being that has risen up but only something within and all the rest of the nature is unprepared, absorbed in or attached to ordinary life and governed by movements that are not in consonance with the Light. Still the something within is something central in the being and therefore the experience is in a way definitive and decisive ...
... vital inability to bear the pressure of your inner struggle, the one immediate remedy would be a rest and relief from the struggle. A change of air and surroundings, the restoration of contact with ordinary life and the cessation of a constant preoccupation with your difficulties would seem to be urgent and imperative. An appeasement of the nervous system is needed and, at the moment, this seems to be the... by some psychological factor (ambition turning to megalomania, hypochondria, melancholia etc.) or on the contrary itself bringing these to the surface. All Page 808 that happens in ordinary life and not only in Yoga; the same causes work here. The one thing is that there may be an invasion of an alien Force bringing about the upsetting, but it is not the Divine Force, it is a vital Force ...
... Say to yourself, "My difficulty shows me clearly what I have ultimately to represent. To reach the absolute negation of it, the quality at the other pole - this is my mission." Even in ordinary life, we have sometimes the experience of contraries. He who is very timid and has no courage in front of circumstances proves capable of bearing the most! To one who has the aspiration for... could not be happy outside the Ashram and which the Mother has allowed to come back and start exulting and agonising once more in the heavenly hell that is the Yogic passage from the hell of ordinary life to the heaven of God-realisation. I hope all this is simple enough to pull you out of what you term "the fog" and save you from being "an old foggy" if not "an old fogey"! ...
... enter the supramental world. And probably each time a new world opens up, there will again be a new reversal. This is why even our spiritual life, which is such a total reversal compared to ordinary life, seems something still so ... so totally different when compared to this supramental consciousness that the values are almost opposite. It can be expressed in this way (but it's quite approximate... reversals such that an EVER NEW richness of creation will take place from stage to stage, making whatever came before seem so poor in comparison. What to us seems supremely rich compared to our ordinary life, appears so poor compared to this new reversal of consciousness. Such was my experience. Last night, my effort to understand what was missing in order to help you completely and truly come out ...
... physical discomfort or disorder. That need not happen if they are on their guard and careful. Or if there is a great and unusual receptivity in the body, then too they escape ... "In the ordinary life of man a progressive dislocation is the rule. ...After some years, ... the dislocation is so serious that the outer being falls to pieces.... The divergence between the demand and the answer... By Yoga the inner transformation that is in slow constant process in the creation is rendered more intense and rapid, but the pace of the outer transformation remains almost the same as in ordinary life. As a result, the disharmony between the inner and the outer being in one who is doing Yoga tends to be all the greater, unless precautions are taken and a protection secured that will help the ...
... we stopped seeing the need to cut all family ties; on the contrary, this is an indispensable condition because as long as you hang on to all these cords which bind you to ordinary life, which make you a slave to the ordinary life, how can you possibly belong to the Divine alone? What childishness! It is simply not possible. If you have ever taken the trouble to read over the early ashram rules, ...
... supramental world. Besides, perhaps each time that a new world opens up, there will again be a new reversal of this kind. Thus even our spiritual life—which is such a total reversal in relation to ordinary life—is and appears to be, in relation to the supramental consciousness, the supramental realisation, something so totally different that the values of the two are almost opposite. One can put it... explained in this way: a series of reversals bringing about, step by step, an ever new richness of creation so that whatever has preceded it appears poor in comparison. What for us, in relation to our ordinary life, is a supreme richness, appears a poverty in relation to this new reversal of consciousness. This was my experience. Last night when I tried to understand what was lacking so that I might be ...
... master. From that point of view, it can only be a gain. It's such a radical realization.... It seems to be an absolute of freedom, something that's considered impossible to realize while living the ordinary life on earth. It corresponds to the experience of absolute freedom one has in the higher parts of the being when one has become completely independent of the body. But the remarkable point (I lay... that's a pitiable condition—and to me, it's the true condition! Because for them, instinctively, spontaneously and in a so to say absolute way, the sign of perfection is the power of life, of ordinary life.... Well, that no longer exists at all—it's completely gone. Yes, quite a few times, several times, the body did ask the question, "Why don't I feel Your Power and Your Force in me?" And the ...
... part of the consciousness makes any Page 131 response to these forces of the lower plane that the victory and transformation are absolutely complete. 126 In the ordinary life people accept the vital movements, anger, desire, greed, sex, etc., as natural, allowable and legitimate things, part of the human nature. Only so far as society discourages them or insists to keep... moved by ego which hides itself behind these justifications; in yoga the secret motive has to be pulled out from behind the veil, exposed and got rid of. Secondly, some things are suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in various nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without ...
... spirituality has been , distinctly contrasted with religion and morality. Morality is admittedly a part of the ordinary life that seeks satisfaction and the development of the body, life and mind without any reference to their original source or self. Again, morality is that part of ordinary life which seeks to regulate and guide the various aspects of the physical and vital life or of mental or rational ...
... spirituality has been distinctly contrasted with religion and morality. Morality is admittedly a part of the ordinary life that seeks satisfaction and the development of the body, life and mind without any reference to their original source or self. Again, morality is that part of ordinary life which seeks to regulate and guide the various aspects of the physical and vital life or of mental or rational ...
... those who are much attracted by the pleasures of ordinary life,... come to study in our school? For, as a rule, one feels that this is why most of our students go out during the holidays, and every time they come back they need quite a long time to readjust themselves here." The Mother's Answer: "Those who are strongly attached to ordinary life and its agitation should not come here, for ...
... to lead to a compartmentalisation of life, creating a division between the spiritual life and the ordinary life. However, from the viewpoint of Integral Yoga, sadhana is not a part-time practice meant to be pursued during one's spare time while the major part of the day is devoted to the ordinary life. All of life has to be regarded as a field for sadhana. Therefore the ideal of sadhana is that all ...
... An ordinary man, who leads an ordinary life, has ordinary aspirations, thinks of nothing else than earning his livelihood, keeping good health and rearing a family, need not pick and choose, except on purely hygienic grounds. He may eat meat or anything else that he considers helpful and useful, doing good to him. But if you wish to move from the ordinary life to a higher life, the problem acquires ...
... first sukta. The present sukta throws light upon the different steps and rungs of that upward spiritual discipline. The Vedic spiritual discipline aims at Truth, the Right and the Vast. The ordinary life consists of body, life and mind. The trivial work, the insignificant inspiration Page 98 and enjoyment of life, the limited knowledge of the mind - man is aware of nothing beyond... existence from the Supreme as Life). This Vayu or life energy is the raison d’être of all the activities of the ordinary human life. Life abounds with desires and enjoyments of earthly objects. The ordinary life is blind and ignorant. It hankers after the satisfaction of desires. It gets satisfaction even in fleeting pleasures. But what an aspirant needs in life is to taste the pure and unalloyed nectar ...
... well as it can, but it is in its essence a divine thing. The first step then is to cease to be egoistic. It is the same rule for all, not only for those who want to do Yoga, but even in ordinary life, if you want to love truly, first of all you must not love yourself and particularly do not love in an egoistic way; you must give yourself to the object of your love without asking for anything... you do not make others suffer egoistically, you leave others to their own movements, you concern yourself with your own transformation, without imposing your will upon others and that, even in ordinary life, is a step towards something that is a little higher and more harmonious. Page 51 ...
... vital preference, a prejudice or notion that it is the kind in which he can shine or succeed. This egoistic vanity or opportunism may be necessary or unavoidable in ordinary life; but when one wishes to go beyond the ordinary life and aspires for the true life, this attachment or personal choice is more an impediment than a help to progress, towards finding the way to the true life. The Yogic ...
... growth in certain directions, take up a very modest and ordinary life in some other new Page 155 direction or for some other purpose. One who was a king, for example, as I already narrated once, who has had the experiences of power and authority and domination, the imperial heights, may choose to descend to ordinary life, to work as an obscure person without being troubled by ...
... a vital preference, a prejudice or notion that it is the kind in which he can shine or succeed. This egoistic vanity or opportunism may be necessary or unavoidable in ordinary life; but when one wishes to go beyond the ordinary life and aspires for the true life, this attachment or personal choice is more an impediment than a help to progress, towards finding the way to the true life. The Yogic attitude ...
... you as well as it can, but it is in its essence a divine thing. The first step then is to cease to be egoistic. It is the same rule for all, not only for those who want to do Yoga, but even in ordinary life, if you want to love, truly, first of all you must not love yourself and particularly do not love in an egoistic way; you must give yourself to the object of your love without asking for anything... you do not make others suffer egoistically, you leave others to their own movements, you concern yourself with your own transformation, without imposing your will upon others and that, even in ordinary life, is a step towards something that is a little higher and more harmonious. Page 139 ...
... order that it be different from the millions of schools in the world; it is to give the children a chance to distinguish between ordinary life and the divine life, the life of truth to see things in a different way. It is useless to want to repeat here the ordinary Life. The teacher's mission is to open the eyes of the children to something which they will not find anywhere else. 12 There were ...
... Part – III (Sri Aurobindo’s Letters) At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo 25 August 1933 It is not a question of ordinary life. In ordinary life people always judge wrongly because they judge by mental standards and generally by conventional standards. The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and errors. (25.8.33) ...
... serves an indispensable function in dealing with the vital not only in ordinary life but also in spiritual life. As Sri Aurobindo states: The will is a part of the consciousness and ought to be in human beings the chief agent in controlling the activities of the nature. 37 Even apart from yoga, in ordinary life, only those are considered ro have full manhood or are likely to succeed ...
... only in Yoga one becomes conscious of their movements and their causes instead of feeling them blindly, and in the end one makes one's way out of them into a clearer and happier consciousness. The ordinary life re- mains to the last a series of troubles and struggles, but the sadhak of the Yoga comes out of the trouble and struggle to a ground of fundamental serenity which superficial disturbances may... ry elements in human nature and in every human being through which he is made to act in a way which his better mind disapproves. This happens to everybody, to the most ordinary men in the most ordinary life. It only becomes marked and obvious to our minds when we try to rise above our ordinary external selves, because then we can see that it is the lower elements which are being made to revolt consciously ...
... aspiration of his soul to come into its presence and live in contact with it. Its function is to assure Page 458 him too of that possibility of which he has always dreamed, but of which his ordinary life gives him no assurance, the possibility of transcending himself and growing out of bodily life and mortality into the joy of immortal life and spiritual existence. It also confirms in him the sense... knowledge, but a faith and aspiration; it is justified indeed both by an imprecise intuitive knowledge of large spiritual truths and by the subjective experience of souls that have risen beyond the ordinary life, but in itself it only gives us the hope and faith by which we may be Page 459 induced to aspire to the intimate possession of the hidden tracts and larger realities of the Spirit. That ...
... awe or spiritual aspiration, to which it becomes an aid, an outward expression and also a sort of periodical or constant reminder helping to draw back the mind to it from the preoccupations of ordinary life. But so long as it is only an idea of the Godhead to which one renders reverence or homage, we have not yet got to the beginning of Yoga. The aim of Yoga being union, its beginning must always be... will to the divine Will. The bhakta offers up his life and all that he is and all that he has and all that he does to the Divine. This surrender may take the ascetic form, as when he leaves the ordinary life of men and devotes his days solely to prayer and praise and worship or to ecstatic meditation, gives up his personal possessions and becomes the monk or the mendicant whose one and only possession ...
... tamasic persistence of the lower nature. Finally, to keep oneself always open to the Mother in every part of the being so that the process of transformation may find no hindrance. Yes, even in ordinary life there must be a control over the vital and the ego—otherwise life would be impossible. Even many animals, those who live in groups, have their strict rules imposing a control on the play of the... unmoved above and judge what is right without being caught and carried away by the vital. Ambition and vanity are things so natural to the human consciousness—they have even their use in ordinary life—that it is quite natural that at first they should enter into the sadhana also and linger even when they are rejected. But they have to be pushed out, before one is far on the path—otherwise they ...
... undisciplined and to put a curb on his temper which seems to be much too fiery; but he must do it himself by his own will, recognising that self-control and self-mastery are necessary even in the ordinary life and still more necessary—quite indispensable—in Yoga. X 's vision of Y and the spirit among you which it expresses belong to the old quarrelling egoistic movement that spoilt your sadhana... nature and few escape them. The human mind is not really conscious of itself—that is why in Yoga one has always to look and see what is in oneself and become more and more conscious. In ordinary life people always judge wrongly because they judge by mental standards and generally by conventional standards. The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and error. Do not ...
... the sadhak of the Yoga who gives blows to himself? There are plenty of blows too in ordinary life according to my experience. Blows are the order of existence, and of Yoga; our nature or the nature of things brings them upon us until we learn to present to them a back which they cannot touch. The ordinary life naturally has its mental, vital and physical pleasures, but it is of a superficial ...
... human mind and vital ego. All the parts of the human being are entitled to express and satisfy themselves in their own way at their own risk and peril, if he so chooses, as long as he leads the ordinary life. But to enter into a path of Yoga whose whole object is to substitute for these human things the law and power of a greater Truth and the whole heart of whose method is surrender to the Divine Shakti... Vital In all it is the lower vital that is most full of ignorance and desire and therefore of falsehood. There is very commonly a gulf between the higher parts and the lower vital even in ordinary life—in Yoga it is apt to get emphasised until the lower vital changes, but if we can judge from the majority of people here, that change is most extraordinarily difficult. The struggle is always ...
... that nature [ full of desires and fancies ], but that is no reason why one should accept it as an unchangeable fact and allow a restless vital to drive one as it likes. Even apart from Yoga, in ordinary life, only those are considered to have full manhood or are likely to succeed in their life, their ideals or their undertakings who take in hand this restless vital, concentrate and control it and subject... as an instrument. Even sadhana needs that vital force. But if the vital is unregenerate and enslaved to desire, passion and ego, then it is as harmful as it can otherwise be helpful. Even in ordinary life the vital has to be controlled by the mind and mental will, otherwise it brings disorder or disaster. When people speak of a vital man, they mean one under the domination of vital force not controlled ...
... part of the ordered system of social life. Nothing can spiritually justify individual violence done in anger or passion or from any vital motive. In our yoga our object is to rise higher than the ordinary life of man and in it violence has to be left aside altogether. 12 August 1933 I have compiled a translation of most of the slokas of the Gita, using your interpretation of them in the Essays... Universal Prakriti determined it and the soul or Purusha accepted it. In the acceptance lies the responsibility. The Purusha is that which sanctions or refuses. The vital being responds to the ordinary life waves in the animal; man responds to them but has the power of mental control. He has also, as the mental Purusha is awake in him, the power to choose whether he shall have desire Page 134 ...
... human mind and vital ego. All the parts of the human being are entitled to express and satisfy themselves in their own way at their own risk and peril, if he so chooses, as long as he leads the ordinary life. But to enter into a path of yoga whose whole object is to substitute for these human things the law and power of a greater Truth and the whole heart of whose method is surrender to the Divine Shakti... will perhaps tell himself, "Oh! If I were better than I am, if I knew a little more, if I were a little stronger, if I understood a little what ought to be done...." Or suppose, for instance, in ordinary life, someone who needs to earn his living and must choose a situation, and the situation offered is not very congenial to him; he is caught in this dilemma: not to have anything to eat or to accept ...
... Ordinarily is there not a nexus between the psychic being and the higher consciousness? Ordinarily means in the ordinary life? A relation between the psychic being... Yes. It is almost, almost totally unconscious. In the ordinary life there's not one person in a million who has a conscious contact with his psychic being, even momentarily. The psychic being may ...
... sometimes very long, for the mind to accept the Divine or the Yogic ideal while the vital is unconvinced and unsurrendered and goes obstinately on its way of desire, passion and attraction to the ordinary life. Their division or their conflict is the cause of most of the more acute difficulties of the sadhana. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Mind … people usually think that mind is just... control all the lower parts of the being with the help of reason, which is the apex of ordinary human intelligence, then if one wants to go beyond this point, if one wants to liberate oneself from ordinary life, from ordinary thought, from the ordinary vision of things, one must, if I may say so, stand upon the head of reason, not trampling it down disdainfully, but using it as a stepping stone to something ...
... something like stones or plants, not altogether inert, but vegetative. Some people say that without desires, that is, without this soul of desire, there would never have been any progress.... In ordinary life it is something very useful but when one decides to do yoga, to find the Divine, it becomes a little cumbersome. ( Silence ) Is that all? When we come to you for the distribution, 1 ... circumstances or on something within you? No? Yes. Yes. Ah, good! There are many different reasons which make one feel at times more alive, more full of force and joy.... Usually, in ordinary life, there are people who, due to their very constitution, the way they are made, are in a certain harmony with Nature, as though they breathed with the same rhythm, and these people are usually always ...
... This is only a very brief description! But here too, if one wants to have this experience, one must not seek in life and among men for these relationships, because if one seeks them in the ordinary life, as ordinary relationships, one becomes incapable of feeling them exactly as the Divine can give them. And usually, most people, even those who have a living soul, seek these relations with the... would seem that very few people can go straight avoiding all these roundabout ways. Mostly, when they are told that there is a divine Joy and a divine Plenitude which far all they can imagine in ordinary life, they don't believe it; and to believe it they must have, as I said, gone through a painful experience of all that is false, deceptive and disappointing in ordinary relationships. It is said ...
... our choice. In Yoga the process is spiritual and psychic; even its vital and physical processes are given a spiritual or psychic turn and raised to a higher motion than belongs properly to the ordinary life and Matter, as for instance in the Hathayogic and Rajayogic use of the breathing or the use of Asana.... On the other hand, if we start in any field at the lower end we have to employ the means... is a force higher than you and you are only its instrument", they would dislike it very much—and they will send you about your business! Therefore, these two perfections are really divergent in ordinary life. It was said in the old yoga that the first condition for doing yoga was to be disgusted with life. But those who have realised this human perfection are very rarely disgusted with life, unless ...
... doesn't mean that we didn't see that it was necessary; it was a very necessary condition. So long as one keeps all the ties which bind one to life, you understand, which make you a slave of the ordinary life, how can you belong only to the Divine? That's childishness, it is not possible! But if you take the trouble to read the first rules of the Ashram, even friendship among people was considered dangerous... perhaps your conception, I have nothing to tell you. If you can't feel the difference between something that aspires to a higher life and something which finds itself altogether comfortable in the ordinary life, well, I cannot help you. You must first have found that in yourself. Page 301 But doesn't some outer discipline help? If you impose a discipline upon yourself and if it isn't too ...
... For an ordinary man, living an ordinary life, having ordinary activities, not thinking at all of anything else except earning his living, of keeping himself fit and perhaps taking care of his family, it is good to eat meat, it is all right for him to eat anything at all, whatever agrees with him, whatever does him good. But if one wishes to pass from this ordinary life to a higher one, the problem ...
... movements)." (p. 88) Because of the fact that the psychic is veiled by and identified with its instruments, most human beings are almost totally unconscious of their psychic being. "In the ordinary life there's not one person in a million who has a conscious contact with his psychic being, even momentarily. The psychic being may work from within, but so invisibly and unconsciously... the psychic in most human beings is entirely veiled so that one is conscious of oneself only as a mental, vital and physical being, there is always an unconscious influence of the psychic even in ordinary life. xix "A certain sensitive feeling for all that is true and good and beautiful, fine and pure and noble, a response to it, a demand for it, a pressure on mind and life to ...
... the Psychic Ordinarily is there not a nexus between the psychic being and the higher consciousness? Ordinarily means in the ordinary life? A relation between the psychic being… Yes. It is almost, almost totally unconscious. In the ordinary life there’s not one person in a million who has a conscious contact with his psychic being, even momentarily. The psychic being may work from ...
... categories of spoken words. First, in the physical domain, we have all the words that are spoken for material reasons. They are by far the most numerous and most probably also the most useful in ordinary life. A constant babble of words seems to be the indispensable accompaniment to daily work. And yet as soon as one makes an effort to reduce the noise to a minimum, one realises that many things are... material cause and effect. By a total self-mastery, one is no longer a slave of Nature's laws which make men act according to subconscious or semi-conscious impulses and maintain them in the rut of ordinary life. With this liberation one can decide in full knowledge the path to be taken, choose the action to be accomplished and free oneself from all blind determinism, so that nothing is allowed to intervene ...
... life and you are ready to live the life of the immense majority of men, you may certainly go back to your family. X wants to know whether she can take up this life or has to go for the ordinary life. The fact of her being here proves that there is an aspiration somewhere in her being and with help the aspiration can spread in the whole being. As for your question, "Where do you fit... persistent for you to have the strength to overcome it, ask the people you know to find you a post (this is usually not too difficult for the young people going out from the Ashram) and go and face the ordinary life until you learn the true value of the life you would have left. One must have heroism to be a precursor; for, generally, men have faith only in what is already accomplished, evident, Page ...
... religious life {dharma-jīvana) and the ordinary human life of which morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not confuse the three together. The ordinary life is that of the average human consciousness separated from its own true self and from the Divine and led by the common habits of the mind, life and body which are the laws of the Ignorance. The... and living contact and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters. Morality is a part of the ordinary life; it is an attempt to govern the outward conduct by certain mental rules or to form the character by these rules in the image of a certain mental ideal. The spiritual life goes beyond the mind; ...
... this point of view, it can only be a gain. It is such a radical realization.... This seems to be an absolute of freedom, something that is considered to be impossible to realise while leading an ordinary life on earth. This corresponds to the experience of absolute freedom one has in the higher parts of the being when one is no longer at all dependent on the body. But what is remarkable—I insist strongly... human beings this is a pitiful condition—to me it is the true condition! Because for them, instinctively, spontaneously, in an absolute way, so to say, the sign of perfection is the power of life, ordinary life.... Well, that no longer exists at all—it has completely gone. Yes, many times, several times, the body has asked the question, "Why do I not feel Thy Power and Thy Force in me?" And the reply ...
... in a particular way. And outer things, personal and individual things, are virtually sacrificed to that. Certain faculties, for instance, whose source is the higher entity, faculties that in an ordinary life would result in a measure of power or fame or success or realization, are placed under conditions where their outer effect is subordinated to the needs of a particular work. Let me put it to... (a complete conversion of the vital being, for instance) wouldn't necessarily bring an improvement in your health. It is here where.... It's not something I see imperatively. And to go back to ordinary life would be the end of everything—of your physical life and your inner life too. I have absolutely no desire to do that! That's quite obvious—you've had the experience. But it may not be ...
... its place, each person exactly in his place, each movement in its place, and all in its place in an ascending, progressive movement without relapse (that is, the very opposite of what goes on in ordinary life). Naturally, this also means a sort of perfection, it means a sort of unity; it means that the different aspects of the Supreme can be manifested; and, necessarily, an exceptional beauty, a total... are indeed states of grace when one is in the presence of a great difficulty and suddenly has all the power needed to face it—yes, but that's something else. I am speaking of a power active in ordinary life. There was an instance of this the other day: someone in a completely detestable mood wrote me a letter; it was impossible, I couldn't reply—I didn't know what to say. I simply applied the Force ...
... all there should be no mixing; in some circumstances, at certain times, you MUST NOT think of God, for then it would be a kind of blasphemy. There's the religious attitude, and then there's ordinary life where people do things—working, living, eating, enjoying life; they regard these as the essentials, and as for the rest, well, when there's time they think about it. But what Sri Aurobindo brought... automatically, without giving it any importance—'it's not the time to think of things divine.'(!) That's what he preached. So you have the religious attitude of all the religious types, and then ordinary life—I found both of them equally unsatisfactory. Then I came here and told Sri Aurobindo my feeling; I said that if someone is truly in union with the Divine, it CANNOT change no matter what he does ...
... said it, generally I don't even remember what I have said). And downright practical: this must be done, that must not be done. Ordinary life, the ordinary way is as if projected onto a screen (it's not at all within, it's...), and constantly the disorder of ordinary life is as if shown—insubstantial, but perceptible. And if there were something [in Mother] still open to that, or even (let's put it ...
... awe or spiritual aspiration, to which it becomes an aid, an outward expression and also a sort of periodical or constant reminder helping to draw back the mind to it from the preoccupations of ordinary life. But so long as it is only an idea of the Godhead to which one renders reverence or homage, we have not yet got to the beginning of Yoga. The aim of Yoga being union, its beginning must always be... will to the divine Will. The Bhakta offers up his life and all that he is and all that he has and all that he does to the Divine. This surrender may take the ascetic form, as when he leaves the ordinary life of men and devotes his days solely to prayer and praise and worship or to ecstatic meditation, gives up his personal possessions and becomes the monk or the mendicant whose one only possession is ...
... in that way. SRI AUROBINDO: Precisely. Gandhi has been trying to apply to ordinary life what belongs to spirituality. Non-violence or Ahimsa as a spiritual attitude and practice is perfectly intelligible and has a standing of its own. You may not accept it in toto but it has a basis in reality. To apply it to ordinary life is absurd. One then ignores—as the Europeans do in several things—the principle ...
... to lead an ordinary life because my soul aspires for something higher and exceptional. Believe me, I was very unhappy. "I am not a coward. I haven't left the ordinary world because of difficulties and sufferings. My soul is destined to lead the spiritual life. I hope you will understand." He replied, "Yes, I do. The Mother also told us that you were not meant for the ordinary life, and that you ...
... and make a true synthesis, a University will be established for all kinds of studies. Our school will form a nucleus of that University." (CWM, Vol. 12, p. 218) (2)"The division between 'ordinary life' and 'spiritual life' is an outdated antiquity." (Ibid., p. 403) (3)A teacher complained to the Mother that [what, according to his estimation, were] trivial and useless things were being... Mother's Rejoinder: "There is no 'spiritual life'! It is still the old idea, still the old idea of the sage, the sannyasin, the... who represents spiritual life, while all the others represent ordinary life —and it is not true, it is not true, it is not true at all. If they still need an opposition between two things —for the poor mind doesn't work if you don't give it an opposition—if ...
... French nationals. Mirra grew up in Paris where she spent the first part of her life. Even at the age of five, she had deep and unusual spiritual experiences and knew that she would not live an ordinary life but had a great mission to fulfil. In preparation for this mission, she consciously pursued a life of inner development at an age when other children spend their time playing. Perhaps because... sole power of its externalities. She was alive to the greatness of material laws and forces; she had a keen eye for the importance of the physical sciences; she knew how to organise the arts of ordinary life. But she saw that the physical does not get its full sense until it stands in right relation to the supra-physical; she saw that the complexity of the universe could not be explained in the present ...
... different terms by the world's religions. ALL LIFE IS SPIRITUAL The division between "ordinary life and "spiritual" life is an outdated antiquity. All human beings have it in their minds, the division between leading a spiritual life and leading an ordinary life, having a spiritual consciousness and an ordinary consciousness - it is not true, there is only one consciousness ...
... Fitness for freedom has to be acquired. The essential requisite is yoga, arduous yoga. Fear not – the first step towards freedom is the consciousness of and revolt against subjection. If the ordinary life of the world is felt as the domain of a Non-God – if there be a God He cannot remain inside the wheel of this creation – if there be a Lord of this world-machine, then He must be a satanic god,... insignificant it may be. For you feel a sense of want and dissatisfaction in everything including God. Your denial of God is the first step towards God-realisation. One who finds fulfilment in the ordinary life and is content with and enamoured of it, one who needs nothing over and above life, is no better than a tree, a stone, an animal, a gorilla or a chimpanzee. Sulking, spite, denial, disrespect ...
... maximum of their growth in certain directions, take up a very modest and ordinary life in some other new direction or for some other purpose. One who was a king, for example, as I already narrated once, who has had the experiences of power and authority and domination, the imperial heights, may choose to descend to ordinary life, to work as an obscure person without being troubled by the pomps of high ...
... person. An ordinary man, who leads an ordinary life, has ordinary aspirations, thinks of nothing else than earning his livelihood, keeping good health and rearing a family, need not pick and choose, except on purely hygienic grounds. He may eat meat or anything else that he considers helpful and useful, doing good to him. But if you wish to move from the ordinary life to a higher life, the problem acquires ...
... raised to a higher and nobler status. Now, what is meant by popular – "plebeian" – literature? It is the literature of the people, the common man, the literature that has grown up around the ordinary life Page 45 of the ordinary run. When man is in his early childhood, when he has just dissociated himself from his mere animality and has begun to know and feel his own self, when he... restraint, no constructiveness, no high seriousness – there is instead an abundance, a prolixity, almost a Page 46 confusion and an irresponsibility, as it were, and as in the ordinary life there is a pull towards the physical, the external and the small. The Ballads of the English and the Romantic Songs of the French fall under this category. Likewise, however deep in spiritual s ...
... (balance of enjoyment and performance of duties appropriate to the householder), the vanaprastha (the preparation to leave ordinary life by enlargement, by travel, and by detachment, symbolized by dwelling in the forest), and sanyasa (final renunciation of ordinary life for the exclusive pursuit of spiritual life), were conceived as psychological stages of a large and flexible framework for ...
... physical life and the vital force as his main supports. Since these things exist, they must have a purpose. They alone can delve into the mystery of the Page 116 ordinary life who have been living the ordinary life. That is why this line of discipline is described as the line of the natural man; this is the Natural Path, the Way of Sahajiya. This Path has had greater attractions for the ...
... begins to radiate its influence to all the parts of our nature, and it is only because of its growing influence that our heart or mind feels an aspiration for something higher and purer than what ordinary life can give us—an unconditioned peace or bliss, an infinite existence of freedom and harmony, the Divine Reality. All that contributes to sweetness and beauty, to purity and perfection derives from... can make our life worth living, for, the soul gives not only meaning and significance to our life, but the right direction, and, finally, the right fulfilment. "All things are insignificant in ordinary life. The thoughts you think, the actions you do, the feelings you experience, all your movements have no significance at all, they possess no value. They belong to the superficial parts of your being ...
... synthesis between Sadhana and action. In this yoga such a synthesis is not necessary in the beginning. The Sadhak – aspirant – in general, opens himself alternately to the higher Power and to the ordinary life. It goes on like that for a long time. Then comes a time when the two powers oppose each other and then the need for synthesis arises. But is the difficulty is only intellectual then it... can never be lost. On the contrary, an artificial demand for Sadhana created by external pressure may be very bad for her. It may not last and would easily give way before the demands of the ordinary life and its impulses. There was nothing of general interest during the interval. Some events may be noted : 1. A false wire from Krishnashashi informing Sri Aurobindo that he was dead ...
... a miserly, greedy human being whom the hunger-stricken poet is thus piteously importuning the Sun-God to turn to softness and charity. The Vedic idea was that the subconscient darkness and the ordinary life of ignorance held concealed in it all that belongs to the divine life and that these secret riches must be recovered first by destroying the impenitent powers of ignorance and then by possessing ...
... truth and the method of spiritual liberation, mokṣa . The work of the social thinkers and legislators was on the contrary concerned with normal action and practice. It attempted to take up the ordinary life of man and of the community and the life of human desire and aim and interest and ordered rule and custom and to interpret and formulate it in the same complete and decisive manner and at the same ...
... evil, but only as a part of the Brahmic consciousness and for the man who is on the path and advanced enough to fulfil the supreme rule. It does not preach indifference to good and evil for the ordinary life of man, where such a doctrine would have the most pernicious consequences. On the contrary it affirms that the doers of evil shall not attain to God. Therefore if Arjuna simply seeks to fulfil ...
... organisation of our material environment. All these extensions of faculty, though received with hesitation and incredulity by the physical mind because they are abnormal to the habitual scheme of our ordinary life and experience, difficult to set in action, still more difficult to systematise so as to be able to make of them an orderly and serviceable set of instruments, must yet be admitted, since they are ...
... why the Asram is what it is. Only those who are taking the Yoga seriously are making any progress. 17 November 1936 Page 661 How is it that people here become more soft than in ordinary life and a little hardship or discomfort becomes unbearable? Is it because they live a life of ease here doing no physical work? What you have noticed is quite correct. It comes from a wrong movement ...
... ed feelings not their own—afterwards Page 691 the vital rises with its unsatisfied demands and they are swung between two contrary forces or rapidly yield to the strong pull of the ordinary life and action and satisfaction of desire which is the natural bent of adolescence. Or else the unfit ādhāra tends to suffer under the stress of a call for which it was not ready, or at least not ...
... answer can be demanded for any letter. You may write also to the boy himself to the following effect. (1) If he cannot take the right attitude, he had better leave this Yoga and take to the ordinary life or follow some other path like Gandhi's. (2) Satyāgraha and prāyopaveśana are no parts of this Yoga—they are parts of Gandhi's teaching and practice, but anyone who tries to bring them in ...
... misses. For example, he says: "I have lived with my brain, with the reactions of an intellectual to life, now I want to live with my feeling." For usually this over-activity of the intellect in ordinary life diminishes very much the capacity of feeling. Therefore in order to have another field of experience, of development, he renounces his intellectual height; he is no longer a genius, a writer of ...
... what light is. But I want you all to see that we do not repeat and say over and over again indefinitely all that nonsense which is uttered every time one turns towards something other than the ordinary life. Even as I have spoken here, in this book, of the confusion that is made between asceticism and the spiritual life, 3 well, one day I shall Page 163 speak to you of the confusion ...
... this mean: "...one must transfer the allegiance of the Purusha from the lower Prakriti..." Page 203 You don't know what this means? In the ordinary case, of the ordinary being and ordinary life, the Purusha is subjected to Prakriti, to the external Nature, he is her slave. So Sri Aurobindo says that it is not enough to free oneself from this slavery. He begins that way: it is not enough ...
... Ashram have succeeded in doing so? Surely everybody must be making some effort to do this. Why then are they not successful? Is it that after some effort they forget the aim and live here as in ordinary life?" The answer: "I suppose if the Nirvana aim had been put before them, more would have been fit for it, for the Nirvana aim is easier than the one we have put before us—and they would not ...
... dissolved. I am not speaking of yogis; I am speaking of ordinary people. Yogis have no laws, it is quite different; for them the world is different. I am speaking to you of ordinary men living an ordinary life; for these it is like that. So the conclusion is that if you want to preserve your consciousness, it would be better to centralise it on a part of your being that is immortal; otherwise it will ...
... not for reasons of the external consciousness, it was something in her inner being that had pushed her. Only the awakening was not strong enough to overcome all the rest and she returned to the ordinary life for very ordinary reasons of living. Outwardly, it was a funny thing that had made her come here. She was a young woman like others, she had been betrothed but not married; the man had broken ...
... all one's activities, of strictly doing only what can help you on the spiritual path; it does not necessarily have to be very narrow and limited, but it must be on a little higher plane than the ordinary life, and with a concentration of will and aspiration which does not allow any wandering on the path, going here and there uselessly. This is austere; it is difficult to take up this when one is very ...
... have pleasure and enjoyment, to get everything that anybody else may have. All that is utterly false for the spiritual life. These are the aims that selfish, worldly and ambitious men seek in the ordinary life. The spiritual life has nothing to do with these things. One is here only for two things, to realise the Divine and to transform the consciousness and nature into the higher consciousness and nature ...
... other attitude. This is a place meant for Yoga and sadhana; personal relations of the vital kind with their attractions and repulsions, quarrels and explanations and reconciliations belong to the ordinary life and nature. All these clashes which arise whenever you mix with X come from his weakness and yours. I have not imposed on you any rule of not meeting with him; but I have advised you not to ...
... books and preached and disputed and founded institutions which seems a waste of energy if all is Maya. All the energy ought to have gone to getting out of Maya. As for our own position it is that ordinary life is Maya in this sense, not that it is an illusion, for it exists and is very real, but that it is an Ignorance, a thing founded on what is from the spiritual point of view a falsehood. So it is ...
... balance. The Mother Questions and Answers (1954): 10 November 1954 There are many different reasons which make one feel at times more alive, more full of force and joy.... Usually, in ordinary life, there are people who, due to their very constitution, the way they are made, are in a certain harmony with Nature, as though they breathed with the same rhythm, and these people are usually always ...
... ordinary movements of consciousness except the perception and recognition of things around without any accompanying concept or other reaction. The sense of ego disappeared and the movements of the ordinary life as well as speech and action were carried on by some habitual activity of Prakriti alone which was not felt as belonging to oneself. But the perception which remained saw all things as utterly unreal; ...
... important than teaching them what happened on earth in former times, or even how the earth is built, or even... indeed, all sorts of things which are quite a necessary grounding if you want to live the ordinary life in the world, for if you don’t know them, anyone will immediately put you down intellectually: “Oh, he is an idiot, he knows nothing.” But still, at any age, if you are studious and have the will ...
... This non-violent resistance I have never been able to fathom To change the opponent's heart by passive resistance is something I don't understand.... I am afraid Gandhi has been trying to apply to ordinary life what belongs to spirituality. Non-violence or ahimsa as a spiritual attitude and its practice is perfectly understandable and has a standing of its own. You may not accept it in to to but it has ...
... command of the Divine. All work Page 43 done in an egoistic spirit, however good for people in the world of the Ignorance, is of no avail to the seeker of the Yoga. * The ordinary life consists in work for personal aim and satisfaction of desire under some mental or moral control, touched sometimes by a mental ideal. The Gita's Yoga consists in the offering of one's work as a ...
... moved by ego which hides itself behind these justifications; in Yoga the secret motive has to be pulled out from behind the veil, exposed and got rid of. Secondly, some things are suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without it ...
... sole power of its externalities. She was alive to the greatness of material laws and forces; she had a keen eye for the importance of the physical sciences; she knew how to organise the arts of ordinary life. But she saw that the physical does not get its full sense until it stands in right relation to the supra-physical; she saw that the complexity of the universe could not be explained in the present ...
... "Energy Inexhaustible" , On Education In these articles I am trying to put into ordinary terms the whole yogic terminology, for these Bulletins are meant more for people who lead an ordinary life, though also for students of yoga—I mean people who are primarily interested in a purely physical material life but who try to attain more perfection in their physical life than is usual in ordinary ...
... said: "By Yoga the inner transformation that is in slow constant process in the creation is rendered more intense and rapid, but the pace of the outer transformation remains almost the same as in ordinary life. As a result, the disharmony between the inner and the outer being in one who is doing Yoga tends to be all the greater, unless precautions are taken...." Questions and Answers 1929 ( 16 June ...
... its place, each person exactly in his place, each movement in its place, and all in its place in an ascending, progressive movement without relapse (that is, the very opposite of what goes on in ordinary life). Naturally, this also means a sort of perfection, it means a sort of unity; it means that the different aspects of the Supreme can be manifested; and, necessarily, an exceptional beauty, a total ...
... situation. Say to yourself, "My difficulty shows me clearly what I have ultimately to represent. To reach the absolute negation of it, the quality at the other pole—this is my mission." Even in ordinary life, we have sometimes the experience of contraries. He who is very timid and has no courage in front of circumstances proves capable of bearing the most! To one who has the aspiration for the Divine ...
... and you cannot manage to break through. This also is one of the first signs. It means that your inner consciousness has reached a point where its outer mould is much too small for it—the mould of ordinary life, of ordinary activities, ordinary relations, Page 97 all that becomes so small, so petty; you feel within you a force to break all that. There is yet another sign: when you concentrate ...
... makes you receptive to the universal forces. And the one thing above all which spontaneously gives joy, even to those who do not practise yoga, who have no spiritual aspiration, who lead quite an ordinary life, is the exchange of forces with universal forces. People do not know this, they would not be able to tell you that it is due to this, but so it is. There are people who are just like beautiful ...
... forms and enter the higher worlds, one may reach the true repose of Sachchidananda. How is it that one meets and recognises in dream persons whom one is going to meet and recognise later on in ordinary life? There are many possibilities. But most often, it is that a communication has been established either on the mental or the vital plane or even on the subtle physical plane and it is this co ...
... Divine. For if you lean upon anyone for support, that support will break, you may be sure of that. From the minute you start doing yoga (I always speak of those who do yoga, I do not speak about ordinary life), for those who do yoga, to depend upon someone else is like wanting to transform that person into a representative of the Divine Force; now you may be sure there is not one in a hundred millions ...
... of man. So instead of being one of the animals of the herd, you become the one who leads the herds and governs all their movements instead of allowing them to dominate him.... One is bound; in ordinary life one is bound to all these activities of the physical life and all the needs it represents—the need for food, sleep, activity, rest, etc.—well, instead of being an animal, that is, one subjected ...
... born? Why does one die? Why does one suffer? Why does one act?" You no longer live like a little machine, hardly half-conscious. You want to feel truly, to act truly, to know truly. Then, in ordinary life one searches for books, for people who know a little more than oneself, one begins to seek somebody who can solve these questions, lift the veil of ignorance. Here it is very simple. You only have ...
... still higher in future. So, instead of losing one's head one places the experience in the chain of development and keeps a healthy physical balance so as not to lose the sense of relativity with ordinary life. In this way, there is no risk. The means?... One who knows how to do this will always find it very easy, but for one who doesn't know it is perhaps a little... a little troublesome. There ...
... with what we decide should be. And one who has the power and the knowledge can obtain what he wants, whereas one who does not have them has no artificial means of getting what he desires. In ordinary life, everything is artificial. According to the chance of birth or circumstance, you have a higher or lower position or a more or less comfortable life, not because it is the spontaneous, natural ...
... 415 This is why I tell people, "If you can't find peace and solitude in yourself, can't isolate yourself sufficiently to enter within yourself, if you can't do this in the conditions of ordinary life, it is certainly not here that you will be able to do it, because your first difficulty will be that you will feel invaded by everything and everybody, and will be absolutely unable to isolate yourself ...
... separated and in a state of unconsciousness because it is separated; but that if you Page 78 remove this unconsciousness and this sense of separation, you become divine. But in ordinary life, in one's environment, what one receives is not always what one gives. Oh! but you must not understand things so superficially. (Another disciple) Does the inconscient aspire to become conscious ...
... particular? That is what I don't understand! Why particularly occultism? Because I thought that all knowledge of the invisible world entered the sphere of occultism. Yes. So, now, in ordinary life man is unconscious, half conscious; but in the full consciousness he would also have the full consciousness of occultism. No, this is all very well, but do you believe that in the supramental ...
... movement itself. Those who really want to practise physical culture as it is conceived now, everything they do, they do consciously. They walk downstairs consciously, they make the movements of ordinary life consciously, not mechanically. An attentive eye will perhaps notice a little difference but the greatest difference lies in the will they put into it, the consciousness they put into it. Walking ...
... conscious of itself and having its own qualities, all this is your individual being. And this individual being is full of all the movements of obscurity, unconsciousness, and of the limitations of ordinary life, and that's... and that's what you must gradually open to the divine influence and bring to the consciousness and understanding of things. That's what Sri Aurobindo says. In fact, the first victory ...
... habit of playing with ideas are the ones most hampered from going farther. It is a game that's pretty, attractive; it gives you the impression that you are not altogether ordinary, at the level of ordinary life, but it cuts the wings. It's not the head which has wings: it's the heart. It's this... yes, this inevitable need. Nothing else counts. That's everything. Only that. And so, after all, one ...
... rest before they have earned it, who are satisfied with a little progress and in their imagination and desires make it into a marvellous realisation so as to justify their stopping half-way. In ordinary life, already, this happens so much. Indeed, this is the bourgeois ideal, which has deadened mankind and made man into what he is now: "Work while you are young, accumulate wealth, honour, position; ...
... psychic influence. Without the presence of the psychic, without the psychic influence, there would never be any sense of progress or any will for progress. 34 — The Mother * In ordinary life also there is no doubt an action of the psychic — without it man would be only a thinking and planning animal. But its action there is very much veiled, needing always the mental or vital to express ...
... makes you receptive to the universal forces. And the one thing above all which spontaneously gives joy, even to those who do not practise yoga, who have no spiritual aspiration, who lead quite an ordinary life, is the exchange of forces with universal forces. People do not know this, they would not be able to tell you that it is due to this, but so it is. Source ...
... our choice. In Yoga the process is spiritual and psychic; even its vital and physical processes are given a spiritual or psychic turn and raised to a higher motion than belongs properly to the ordinary life and Matter, as for instance in the Hathayogic and Raja yogic use of the breathing or the use of Asana. Ordinarily a previous preparation of the mind and life and body is necessary to make them fit ...
... is necessary, it increases your capacities. This is what the person who taught me occultism told me straightaway: "You are depriving yourself of senses which are most useful even for the most ordinary life ." And this is true, quite true. We can know infinitely more things than we usually do, simply by using our own senses. And not only from the mental point of view, but also from the vital and even ...
... diminishing; it seems to Page 178 be diminishing greatly, but there are still enough of them to produce unpleasant effects or reactions—things that are not transformed, that still belong to ordinary life. But every problem—whether psychological or purely material or chemical—the whole problem comes down to this: they are nothing but vibrations. And there is the perception of this totality of vibrations ...
... if you wish to realise the great ideal that is our goal, you must not remain content with the ordinary and futile reactions of ordinary people who live in the blind and ignorant conditions of ordinary life. It looks as if I were very conservative when I say so, still I must tell you that you should be very careful about outside influences and ordinary habits. You must not allow them to shape your ...
... consecration. Many children who have studied here need to come to grips with life before they can be ready for the divine work and that is why they leave in order to go through the test of the ordinary life. 11 November 1964 ( A student received an invitation to follow a course of practical studies in Calcutta. ) Those who sincerely wish to learn, have here all the possibilities to ...
... capacity but willingness. If there is the will within to face all difficulties and go through, no matter how long it takes, then the path can be taken. A mere restless dissatisfaction with the ordinary life is not a sufficient preparation for this Yoga. A positive inner call, a Page 27 strong will and a great steadiness are necessary for success in the spiritual life. Knowledge of ...
... result; things of small consequence assume Page 130 large proportions. I have seen that more than half of the untoward happenings of this kind in life are due to this cause. But in ordinary life personal feeling and sensitiveness are a constant part of human nature and may be needed there for self-defence, although, I think, even there, a strong, large and equal attitude towards men and ...
... idea in Yoga—that by a right passivity one opens oneself to something greater than one's limited self, and effort is only useful for getting that condition. There is also a notion that even in the ordinary life the individual is only an instrument in the hands of a Universal Energy though his ego takes the credit of all he does. It is the law of the sadhana to open to the influences of the higher ...
... right. For heaven's sake, get rid of it and settle down to quiet aspiration and an ever growing devotion and surrender leaving it to Krishna to do what he is sure to do in his own way and time. Ordinary Life, Vaishnava Traditions and the Supramental Yoga Even if things were as bad as you say, I don't see how going away would help you in the least—(it would certainly not make you non-human); some ...
... 1936 Poetic Genius Poetic genius—without which there cannot be any originality—is inborn, but it takes time to come out—the first work even of great poets is often unoriginal. That is in ordinary life. In Yoga poetic originality can come by an opening from within, even if it was not there before in such a way as to be available in this life. 22 March 1934 For poetry one must have a special ...
... society has ever done in the past, and though necessarily that must be a stage of the journey, to rest there is to miss the heart of the matter, the one thing needful. Not a humanity leading its ordinary life, what is now its normal round, touched by spiritual influences, but a humanity aspiring whole-heartedly to a law that is now abnormal Page 240 to it until its whole life has been elevated ...
... aware of the play of forces, personal or universal—for it is in conscious touch with the universal action. Page 90 The outer consciousness is that which usually expresses itself in ordinary life. It is the external mental, vital, physical. It is not connected very much with the inner being except in a few—until one connects them together in the course of the sadhana. The exterior ...
... does not stop to investigate, to consider in the light, to try, to inquire, but says at once, "Oh, no, I am never going to take that as possibly true." That kind of doubt may be very useful in ordinary life, it may be practically useful in battering down established things or established ideas or in certain kinds of external controversy to undermine a position that is too dogmatically positive; but ...
... restlessness is not dominated by the mind and wants to follow its own feeling. That happens to everybody so long as the vital is not properly under our control. Even in ordinary circumstances and in ordinary life the vital is always carrying away the being to do what the mind disapproves, but there it is felt to be something normal, especially as the vital very usually persuades the mind to find arguments ...
... which is the spiritual condition of cheerfulness. It is an inner joy and cheerfulness that helps, but this [ light joking ] is merely a vital bubbling on the surface. It is all right in ordinary life, but in Yoga it merely expends the vital force for nothing. Humour and Seriousness Sense of humour? It is the salt of existence. Without it the world would have got utterly out of balance—it ...
... true Power, till the crisis or change of which this depression is a stage, is completed. The suggestions which come to your mind telling you that you are not fit and that you must go back to the ordinary life, are false tamasic promptings from a hostile source. Ideas of this kind must always be rejected as inventions of the lower nature; even if they are founded on appearances which seem convincing to ...
... full of a pell mell of scenes, forms and incidents; the significance if any is fluid and depends upon a vital symbolism which it is not always easy for the mind to follow—everything is nearer to ordinary life and its confusions but still more chaotic. Page 469 People Seen in Dreams The people of dream are very often different from the people of actuality. Sometimes it is the real man who ...
... part of the ordered system of social life. Nothing can spiritually justify individual violence done in anger or passion or from any vital motive. In our Yoga our object is to rise higher than the ordinary life of man and in it violence has to be left aside altogether. All vital violence in speech or action is rajasic and unyogic. One must be master of oneself and controlled in speech and act. ...
... formerly because it thought that by its adhesion it could make her satisfy its desires; finding its desires not indulged, it turns against her. That is the usual vital movement in ordinary man and in ordinary life, and it has no true place in Yoga. It was just the introduction of this attitude into Yoga by the sadhaks and its persistence which has at last made it necessary for the Mother to draw back as she ...
... either of these men? Each has to get rid of his wrong reactions—they are here for that. What other remedy is there? If they are not prepared to do that, then we remain on the ground of the ordinary life where one has to do as in a big family, intervening in quarrels, reconciling, soothing, rebuking, punishing, lecturing, somehow getting things going until the next clash. There is no end to that ...
... and the activity by which in the extended universality of our being there is the rich felicity and the creation of the godhead. The divine workings are impaired and restricted by the gods in the ordinary life of the vital and the physical being, but when Mitra and Varuna uphold in us the luminous worlds in which each of these finds its truth and power, they become complete and firm for ever.] ...
... to lay down limits, to coerce the devil, to put the wall of a relative and very doubtful safety around us. This or some similar device of self-protection may be necessary for a time whether in ordinary life or in Yoga; but in Yoga it can only be the mark of a transition. A fundamental transformation and a pure wideness of spiritual life are the aim before us and, if we are to reach it, we must find ...
... his progress towards self-perfection. Certainly, the practical values given us by our senses and by the dualistic sense-mind must hold good in their field and be accepted as the standard for ordinary life-experience until a larger harmony is ready into which they can enter and transform themselves without losing hold of the realities which they represent. To enlarge the sense-faculties without the ...
... sufficient completeness in this transformation he would become capable of a life and a being at least half divine. For he would enjoy powers and a vision and perceptions beyond the scope of this ordinary life and body; he would govern all by the clarities of pure knowledge; he would be united to other beings by a sympathy of love and happiness; his emotions would be lifted to the perfection of the p ...
... of him as a natural result of his spiritual union with the Divine and not be formed by an edifying construction of the mental thought and will, the practical reason or the social sense. In the ordinary life a personal, social or traditional constructed rule, standard or ideal is the guide; once the spiritual journey has begun, this must be replaced by an inner and outer rule or way of living necessary ...
... movements of consciousness except the perception and recognition of things around without any accompanying concept or other reaction. The sense of ego disappeared and the movements of the ordinary life as well as speech and action were carried on by some habitual activity of Prakriti alone which was not felt as belonging to oneself. But the perception which remained saw all things as utterly ...
... Virgilian stretching of hands for love of the other shore. I must have been especially dense: many have become Aurobindonians at a slighter pull. I continued my quest. But there was also the ordinary life and its material needs. One day I noticed that my shoes looked rather shabby. So I drove myself to visit the market for a new pair. I never thought the Gods could have anything to do with ...
... time is to indulge in a quibble: if by eternity is meant a status in which past and present and future are not a sequence but an all-at-once, an endless total Now, then every "now" of our ordinary life as well as of all existence is not something fixed by God from the past, but would it cease to be actuated by Him in the very present? God's hold from the past is avoided; yet unless eternity ...
... wondering whether what you are searching for is the Divine or is something else? I think it is the latter sense you have in mind. If so, my reply in brief is: "Whenever one feels that the things of ordinary life do not satisfy one and that even the best of fortunes commonly imaginable will not answer the need in one's heart, one has known the call and the touch of the Divine. Whether the call and the touch ...
... other a soul touched by a ray from the hidden Truth, illumined, conscious, concentrated in a single unceasing effort towards its own and the world's Highest,—this is the difference between man's ordinary life and the way of the divine Yoga[.] Page 349 It is not a mental or moral ideal to which is turned the seeker of the Way, but a truth of the spirit, the experience of a hidden Reality ...
... have the impression that one must remove oneself from a full human activity in order to live the spiritual life. Yet the spiritual life finds its most potent expression in the man who lives the ordinary life of men in the strength of the Yoga and under the law of the Vedanta. It is by such a union of the inner life and the outer that mankind will eventually be lifted up and become mighty and divine ...
... of this one or that one or.... It comes individually (and the person's name along with it). And a kind of uneasiness takes hold of my body, as if I were in the presence of... I don't know, in ordinary life I would say, "Go away!" ( Mother brusquely shoos something away ) But here it is presented Page 252 for me to do a particular work (I know the people, some are here, others elsewhere; ...
... appear to be decreasing in number, to a great extent, but there are still enough of them to bring about unpleasant effects or unpleasant reactions—things that are untransformed, that still belong to ordinary life. But all problems, whether psychological or purely material or chemical, all problems boil down to this: they are nothing but questions of vibrations. And there is the perception of that totality ...
... I don't understand. If you put "Divine" instead of "supramental", does that make it clearer to you? It means the consciousness that is not filled with the activities and influences of ordinary life, but is concentrated in an aspiration towards the divine light, force, knowledge, joy. Now do you understand? 23 March 1933 Page 79 My dear Mother, Have You seen my ...
... according to what we decide it should be. And he who has this power and this knowledge can obtain whatever he wants, whereas he who does not has no artificial means of getting what he desires. In ordinary life, EVERYTHING is artificial. Depending upon the chance of your birth or circumstances, you have a more or less high position or a more or less comfortable life, not because it is the spontaneous, ...
... limited ego. To leave so profound a stamp on his own age and on thousands of years that followed could not be possible to one who brought merely a negative message, a cessation of all impulses of ordinary life with no grander impulse and more abundant reality to make up for that cessation. Buddha was a spiritual figure and not just a philosopher or a moralist. A philosophy of life as dukkha ...
... corresponds to Jung's Sensation. But let us remember that to Blake his Zoas were no mental constructs of his own, personifying psychological faculties, and that he did not confine them to man's ordinary life, no matter how well-developed, and that he did not hold them to be functioning in this life as they should. Even for Jung the ultimate human being is not the ordinary consciousness we daily know ...
... was K.D. Sethna. He was twenty-three and two years earlier had published a book of poems. He was not happy with the life he had been leading; he had felt that he "had waited overmuch in the ordinary life". 1 In the presence of Sri Aurobindo he found what he aspired to. Sri Aurobindo does not teach a world-shunning life-negating spirituality. "It is an error," he says, "to think ...
... poetic tribute of great depth" because all poetic knowledge, "intelligence", tricks the poet into appearing a dupe in the eyes of the world, so that its inspiration is a curse to him in his ordinary life. Again, in a literal sense, supernatural nocturnal Page 90 sources of the rival's influence have commonly been misunderstood. J.W. Lever 14 however, speaks of ...
... sovereign Being beyond with whose light and love we unite. The ultimate goal is also to bring all that is above into the world below and to manifest it in our own humanity and put it in relation to the ordinary life around us. The manifestation in ourselves and the channelling out to the world have to be of a Divine Presence and Power that can utterly transform into perfection all the terms of our ...
... difference has become apparent to me in what one might call its enormity): everything here, except what goes on within, very deep within, appeared to me absolutely artificial. None of the values of the ordinary life, of the physical life, are based on the truth … This artificiality, this insincerity, this complete lack of truth became so shockingly apparent to me that one wonders how, in so false a world, we ...
... flowed out to Roy from the illumined and blissful depths of Sri Aurobindo's being: they surrounded him with warmth during his moods of anguish at Yoga tearing him away from the cherished follies of ordinary life, they upbuoyed him mightily yet most tenderly when he would sink back to the gilded vanity of the old self-bound existence, they penetrated him with a light which laid bare the hollowness of the ...
... part-time workers. People can't do all day the same work; it is most taxing on the nerves and after some time they get tired, depressed, discouraged, speak of suicide, etc., etc. Even in ordinary life it has been recognised that for the sake of the work itself, a complete change of occupation for a few hours every day is most useful. Always with you, my dear child 13 September 1935 ...
... with you. * May 1, 1949* i have spoken to Mother about Janak Kumari’s experience. She says that it might be too soon for her to draw back from her family and from ordinary life, she thinks she ought to wait longer for that; but there is no reason why she should not follow this urge of prayer and solitude with its strong experience for some time in the day. ...
... and get out from the vital to a higher or deeper place. When they come to you, you can tell them that all these stories have no importance whatever, that they are the ordinary reactions of the ordinary life and that surely it is no use coming here to live in that ordinary way. They must make an effort to rise to a higher and truer, to a more disinterested and unselfish consciousness and there they ...
... that make the (temporary) departure either harmless or psychologically or otherwise inevitable then we give permission. If the sadhak goes in a spirit of revolt and defiance or goes back to the ordinary life out of egoistic ambition as Bejoy and others did then of course Mother does not wish them to come back (so Page 279 long as that remains) and refuses to allow it. Also if there ...
... reply: ‘Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life. When the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it – nothing puzzling in that.’ 25 And so Aurobindo returned home in the company of his young wife and of his sister Sarojini, ...
... Cascades of divine light and peace seemed to be falling all around me. It was as if my soul surged out of its body and floated in this magnificent atmosphere. That night I determined to relinquish ordinary life and embrace the Divine Life. Ever since my childhood I had been aspiring to realise and live the Supreme Truth and Love. In the past no one had understood this feeling of mine, and now nobody ...
... spiritual life; and it is also the cause of this catastrophe and of the suffering it has brought to you, which is the natural consequence of the whole affair. Indeed it is good if you go to face the ordinary life now and learn to live with the others and for the others instead of making of the Ashram life an excuse for living selfishly for yourself. Each one has the right to follow the path he has ...
... force that you allow to make use of you as its instrument. And the choice has to be made at every moment of your life. Page 30 It is the conflict in you between what is attached to ordinary life and what aspires for the divine life. It is up to you to choose which is the strongest in you and to act accordingly. 19 September 1967 You can follow the meanderings of innumerable ...
... The voice of the ordinary conscience is an ethical voice, a moral voice which distinguishes between good and evil, encourages us to do good and forbids us to do evil. This voice is very useful in ordinary life, until one is able to become conscious of one's psychic being and allow oneself to be entirely guided by it—in other words, to rise above ordinary humanity, free oneself from all egoism and become ...
... around the head ) waiting to be heard, demanding attention. Sometimes there are amusing things—if I were to note down all I see! There are things... things which don't appear as they are in ordinary life, but as they ARE when seen with a slightly more clairvoyant eye—it's rather amusing. But it amounts to nothing-a sort of distraction. And all the time the body says.... You know, it's marvelous-all ...
... stage where you have overcome these things and no longer allow them to manifest in yourself, but to the extent that you are linked to the ordinary consciousness, the ordinary point of view, the ordinary life, the ordinary way of thinking, they are still possible, they exist latently because they are the reverse of the qualities that you are striving to attain. And this opposition still exists—until ...
... must come with the will to do the yoga of self-perfection; for if you do not come for that, you will be shocked at every moment by things that are contrary to your habits and to the principles of ordinary life, and it will not be possible for you to stay here, because these things are necessary for the work and organisation here and cannot be changed. 30 September 1960 We are not here to make ...
... There comes a stage when one has mastered these things and doesn't permit them to manifest IN ONESELF; but to the extent that one is in contact with ordinary consciousness, ordinary viewpoints, ordinary life and thought, their possibility is still there, latent, because they are the inverse of the qualities one is striving for. And this opposition always exists until one has risen above and no longer ...
... the mind—he did speak of it, and he says the heartbeats have stopped, but that one isn't dead. That's it. I don't know, when I read it, I suddenly felt he was describing the transition from ordinary life to a supramental life. I don't know why, but I very strongly said to myself that I absolutely had to show you this. ( Satprem reads out the translation ) I don't know if the translation ...
... by ideas and communicated feelings not their own—afterwards the vital rises with its unsatisfied demands and they are swung between two contrary forces or rapidly yield to the strong pull of the ordinary life and action and satisfaction of desire which is the natural bent of adolescence. Or else the unfit adhar [vessel] tends to suffer under the stress of a call for which it was not ready, or at least ...
... dissolves—I am not talking about yogis, I am talking about ordinary people. Yogis have no laws, it's quite different; for them the world is different. I am talking about ordinary people living an ordinary life; for them it's like that. So the conclusion is that if you want to preserve your consciousness, it would be better to center it on a part of your being which is immortal; otherwise it will evaporate ...
... you suffer, you are miserable, you even fall ill, and in the other case... And it's the same thing. But it has reached the point where now the body is quite astounded that one can live the ordinary life with the ordinary consciousness and be contented! It finds that appalling, you know, appalling. And that way of living in chaos, ugliness, wickedness, selfishness, violence, oh... and cruelty and ...
... lot and have been somewhat disappointed. But what this Burmese man has said is fine—that's much more interesting: this idea that it's high time human nature changed. That's good. Because in ordinary life, ordinary people tell you, "I can't help it, that's the way I am!" It's the answer you always get. ( silence ) To do things properly, we would need a small "educational booklet" for the children ...
... and wonder lived no more. There was the common light of earthly day. To return to my subject: the movement which Wordsworth envisages of the slow fading of the "vision splendid" in ordinary life is reversed in the life of Yoga in the Ashram. What Wordsworth took to be faded starts to come back. Under the touch of Sri Aurobindo and at the Mother's beckoning finger the forgotten Soul re-emerges ...
... advertising agents go in for." I am glad you realise that the Ashram life is inwardly a battlefield. I for one never induce anybody to take up Sri Aurobindo's Yoga as an escape from the trials of the ordinary life. Only if there is an intense call for it would I encourage them and then too after giving a balanced picture of how this Yoga is all the harder because it is practised as if under the conditions ...
... from that Ignorance? The sea represents the Universal Consciousness and the mountain the Transcendent Reality. These are the two states of being that terminate the inner darkness in which our ordinary life is enclosed. Naturally the question is: "How are we to get out of the cosmic Ignorance?" A suggestive answer was given in the next part of your dream-experience. You think that there was ...
... unconsciously to be like the music of Browning's Abt Vogler: out of two notes there may be made not a third but a star! When the minuses reach a peak point a sudden surprising break away from the ordinary life may occur. A small significant sign seems to be present in your falling into a common misuse of a word. You write: "My disinterest in routine work." What you feel is a certain absence of something ...
... something of this affection extends to both your wife and the child and I would wish all three of you to live in the vast creative sunshine which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have brought into the ordinary life. May this new year unfold a rich inwardness and outwardness for all three of you. (12.1.1988) Page 269 ...
... distant splendours make their presences felt. For you are appealing to the ultimate creative and transformative power to bring forth the truths that have got misshaped in the jumble and tumble of ordinary life. You have raised the question of the ego and what you call the ego's tangled weft. The ego-nature is so clever that one can be fooled into an illusion of unselfishness while remaining subtly ...
... or intuitive movements deep within make, as Wordsworth puts it, . Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence, and for whom the long littleness of the ordinary life is never final, feeling as they do, with Wordsworth again, that Whether we be young or old, Our destiny, our being's heart and home Is with infinitude, and only there. Of ...
... experience—it always takes the form of an experience, an ACTION: something that has to be done and gets done, or that has to be known and becomes known. It is never the mental transcription of ordinary life. The Pope... I wonder why: what happened? What does it mean? Why did it happen? But I still see the scene; it was a very Page 26 living reality: he was tall, in the room over there ...
... most material consciousness, the utterly physical consciousness (precisely the one that participates in incalculable, minuscule activity of every day) which, of course, is very hard to bear. In ordinary life, it's tolerable, it's bearable because you take interest in it and sometimes pleasure—all that life on the surface that makes you... you see a pretty thing, it gives you pleasure; you have something ...
... change, well, all the vital force is there just to keep your balance so you don't topple over. Because it's difficult. One must remain very calm and do what is indispensable, nothing more. In ordinary life, when one doesn't know, with people who don't know, there is a tremendous wastage of vital forces, for no reason. Well, we no longer have the right to do that because all that vital force is there ...
... way of being, you understand, another way. And it's trying to find a harmony, the equilibrium of a constant harmony. But it's very, very, very difficult. It's not at all the usual condition: in ordinary life, the cells are accustomed to a very restless and unexpected life, with ups and downs, peaks of intense sensation, now sorrow, now pleasure, now acute pain, now something very pleasant—all of this ...
... I shall touch on the problem as briefly and pointedly as I can. People with ideas very different from ours and eager to change our outlook and mode of life - people who are immersed in the ordinary life of the senses and carry an atmosphere full of worldly desires — places that have marked old-world religious associations or are charged with the presence of a spiritual figure whose sadhana diverges ...
... early Christian in me. She glanced at a photograph of mine and pointed out the resemblance. I believe part of the resemblance lay in a certain fear in me at that time, fear of relapsing into the ordinary life. I would keep away from crowds, not be a good mixer, avoid even going to a shop, run to my room every now and then — and, with the Darshan in the offing, there would be almost a retirement for a ...
... strengthened, the weakness will disappear. June 1929 Sri Aurobindo 1 October 1929 It is not possible to come here. Since he has married and taken service, he must go on with the ordinary life. He is still much too young and too unripe for any complete sadhana. At best he can do at present some kind of Karma yoga, trying to realise the one Divine Force behind the action of the world and ...
... beam", and "body of glory". A minor transition in line 176 There was the common light of earthly day {T} establishes a contrast between the God-light and "the common light" of ordinary life. This subunit contains semantically-related expressions such as "blinded quest", "unforeseeing", "uncertain mind", and "covered face". Another secondary line of imagery establishes the sense of ...
... Presents its dubious riches to our hearts Or signs unprovisioned cheques on the Beyond. 43 This is a full-fledged image showing us the futility of thought and also of religion in our ordinary life. That life is pictured as a speculator in Thought's Exchange is a very forceful and significant image. A similar image is presented to us in the following lines? She accepted not to close ...
... the central characteristic of which, as stated earlier, is that they are related to the ego. Identifications which partake Page 74 of the nature of the latter type, too, occur in ordinary life, although they take place unconsciously and are not usually recognized as phenomena of identification. The Mother gives several everyday examples of identification in which one forgets the ego: ...
... writing for her M.A. She got her degree, but otherwise she has been passing through very unfortunate experiences and radical disappointments with the result that she is thoroughly tired of the ordinary life. In her latest letter she expresses her aspiration to take up yoga. In conclusion she adds: “I will come to Pondicherry as soon as I get an opportunity. Do you think I would be allowed to stay ...
... like to relate an experience I had several months back, which was one of the most vivid of the forefront type. I was lying in bed at night and telling myself how vain were all things of the ordinary life, with death as the blind terminus of their groping. I reflected on the complex forces at play in my personality and the uncertain future they were working out. To know God by intimate experience ...
... persistent for you to have the strength to overcome it, ask the people you know to find you a post (this is usually not too difficult for the young people going out from the Ashram) and go and face the ordinary life until you learn the true value of the life you would have left. One must have heroism to be a precursor; for, generally, men have faith only in what is already accomplished, evident, visible ...
... has been spoilt. But the man wouldn't understand.” “Yes, Champaklal,” Mother said softly. “You are right.” She looked so happy at what I had said; her expression was beatific. True, in the ordinary life I too might have reacted in the same way as the other man. But to have lived with the Mother made all the difference in my outlook: Things are living entities and it is an insult to damage or misuse ...
... she kept quiet. I did not understand then. Years later, by her Grace, I realised that it was indeed boasting. My account had begun well but later self-praise entered it. Many may not agree. In ordinary life nobody would have called it boasting. But, in my view, it is different in spiritual life, and indeed, very few are free from this type of boasting. ...
... well known that in every yogic practice that is to be found in religions as also in that which is independent of any religion, the experience of conversion marks a radical point of departure from ordinary life to a truly spiritual life. An important example of this experience of conversion, which William James has given, is that of Saint David Brainerd. The description of this experience is appended at ...
... evil, but only as a part of the Brahmic consciousness and for the man who is on the path and advanced enough to fulfil the supreme rule. It does not preach indifference to good and evil for the ordinary life of man, where such a doctrine would have the most pernicious consequences. On the contrary it affirms that the doers of evil shall not attain to God. Therefore if Arjuna simply seeks to fulfil in ...
... the best known. According to St. Matthew (5: 1 to 7: 29), in whose Gospel we find the most complete account, a great multitude had assembled. I. Parable: an allegorical story dealing with ordinary life from which a moral message or religious truth is taught. 2. Pharisee: one of a Jewish religious school of those times, marked by their strict observance of the law of Moses and other religious ...
... master the meaning of the sight. In the midst of luxury and comfort, a deep questioning arose in Siddhartha and he felt he was sitting on a volcano that might explode at any moment. The details of ordinary life became unbearable for him. At about this time, the birth of a son was announced to Siddhartha in a garden at the riverside, where he had gone after seeing the hermit. The event was unexpected ...
... when his spirit and body are one are astonishing. The cornered rat has been known to turn on the cat and down him. People often display powers in time of fire that they would never dream of in ordinary life. Women have been Page 678 known to lift automobiles to drag children out from under them. In desperate situations of life or death people come up with unheard-of wisdom. All of these ...
... ordinary movement of consciousness except the perception and recognition of things around without any accompanying concept or other reaction. The sense of ego disappeared and the movements of the ordinary life as well as speech and action were carried on by some habitual activity of Prakriti alone which was not felt as belonging to oneself. But the perception which remained saw all things as utterly ...
... according what we decide it should be. And he who has this power and tl knowledge can obtain whatever he wants, whereas he who dc not has no artificial means of getting what he desires. In ordinary life, EVERYTHING is artificial. Depending upon chance of your birth or circumstances, you have a more or ] high position or a more or less comfortable life, not because the spontaneous, natural and sincere ...
... idea in Yoga—that by a right passivity one opens oneself to something greater than one's limited self, and effort is only useful for getting that condition. There is also a notion that even in the ordinary life the individual is only an instrument in the hands of a Universal Energy though his ego takes the credit of all he does. But these are exploded ideas which you need not consider. When did I refuse ...
... individual nature rushing up? SRI AUROBINDO: Individual and general. The subconscient, sir, the subconscient. Brilliant irruptions of the subconscient Brahman into the dullness of ordinary life. (salutation to the subconscient Brahman) MYSELF: As soon as I enter the Dispensary, it seems some black forces ride on my shoulders, I want to escape and spend a few afternoon ...
... puzzle? Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life—when the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it—nothing puzzling in that. B finds that the power of his glasses has to be increased. Shall I take him to the hospital? He will ...
... knowledge. Certainly, there is nothing to prevent it. By the higher knowledge, I understand, you mean spiritual knowledge about Almon, Brahman, etc. But can one deal with the problems of ordinary life with mastery by this spiritual knowledge? For instance, if I am asked to criticise Shaw or other literary figures, how am I to do it with this knowledge alone? One can. What has all that to ...
... that becomes manifest. The inertia of your physical nature is only a thick crust on the surface which goes away slowly, but under the pressure it will give way. If you had some big object in the ordinary life and nothing to hope for here it might be different, but as things are it would be foolish to walk off under the instigation of this old Mother Gloom-Gloom. Stick on and you will get the soul's reward ...
... puzzle ? Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or I myself were born with a pre-vision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life - when the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it - nothing puzzling in that." So there you are. You have observed perhaps that the tone is a little sharp: abusing the ...
... considers man and the objects that surround him as acting and re-acting upon each other, so as to produce an infinite complexity of pain and pleasure; he considers man in his own nature and in his ordinary life as contemplating this with a certain quantity of immediate knowledge, with certain convictions, intuitions, and deductions.... To this knowledge which all men carry about with them, and to ...
... The year 1933 What is the outer consciousness? Is it connected with the inner being? The outer consciousness is that which usually expresses itself in ordinary life. It is the external mental, vital, physical. It is not connected very much with the inner being except in a few — until one connects them together in the course of the sadhana. ...
... the essays. These comments and the two essays are both given here. 1. On Peace Spiritual peace has not the same meaning as peace in our worldly parlance. In the ordinary life, when one is less depressed, disturbed or despondent than people generally are, one thinks oneself at peace. Our normal consciousness (viz. our mental, vital and physical) — inner ...
... with the other pilots, most of whom stayed at the same small hotel. In this new life, he satisfied his need to associate with men he considered superior, men removed from the shabby futilities of ordinary life. "The aeroplane is a means of getting away from towns and their book-keeping and coming to grips with reality... It is the men and not flying that concerns me most." In October 1927, one year ...
... manifestation of realisation greatly superseded that of Ramakrishna's? He had a more powerful vital than Ramakrishna, a stupendous will and an invincible mind of thought. If he had led the ordinary life, he would have been a great organiser, conqueror and creator. If a man rises to a higher plane of consciousness, it does not necessarily follow that he will be a greater man of action or a greater ...
... fact, no country or race can build its greatness except on the foundation of self-control. It is not that self-control must necessarily be self-mortification. There can be a via media, and in ordinary life this is a necessity. Self-indulgence is the debit side. True, this side of Europe is much to the fore, but that leads one to think that she is living on her old capital, and it is not long before ...
... Muraripukur - I AT last I made up my mind finally to take the plunge, that I must now join the Manicktolla Gardens in Muraripukur. That meant good-bye to College, good-bye to the ordinary life. A little while ago, Prafulla Chakravarti had come and joined. Both of us belonged to Rungpore, both were of nearly the same age, and intimate friends. This too pushed me to my decision. I ...
... a perfectly incapable and helpless man; his capacity for an inner life seems to be matched by his incapacity in the outer. He had to bring himself down to the level of an abject beggar in his ordinary life; at every step he had to depend on his wife's assistance, without her co-operation he found it an unmanageable affair to procure even a grain of rice for the maintenance of life. It would not ...
... next in the rung to be taken up, organised and individualised by and around the psychic being. Page 179 The organisation of the vital being in view of a particular object or aim in ordinary life is common enough: the purpose is limited, the scope restricted. Great men of action have done it and one has to do it more or less to be successful in life. This, however, may be called organisation; ...
... MURARIPUKUR — (1) At last I made up my mind finally to take the plunge, that I must now join the Manicktolla Gardens in Muraripukur. That meant goodbye to College, goodbye to the ordinary life. A little while ago, Prafulla Chakravarti had come and joined. Both of us belonged to Rungpore, both were of nearly the same age, and intimate friends. This too pushed me to my decision. ...
... important need is to put each thing in its place. The training that the Mother has throughout been giving us—I am not here referring to the side of spiritual practice but to the daily routine of our ordinary life—is precisely this business of putting our things in order. We do not always notice how very disorderly we are: our belongings and household effects are in a mess, our actions are haphazard, and ...
... to the Bliss, they are the fuel that kindles, quickens and increases the Fire of Ecstasy that is to blaze up on the day of victory in the full and integral spiritual consciousness. The round of ordinary life is not vain or meaningless: its petty innocent-looking moments and events are the steps of the marching Divinity. Even the commonest life is the holy sacrificial rite progressing through the oblations ...
... we learn that God pays his debt through his representative, his protagonist upon earth, the aspiring human being. First let us understand the mystery of God's debt to man. We know, in ordinary life a subordinate has a duty towards his superior, the lesser owes a debt to the greater. That is easily understood. Likewise the superior also has a duty to his subordinate, the greater has his duty ...
... to the Bliss, they are the fuel that kindles, quickens and increases the Fire of Ecstasy that is to blaze up on the day of victory in the full and integral spiritual consciousness. The round of ordinary life is not vain or meaningless: its petty innocent-looking moments and events are the steps of the marching Divinity. Even the commonest life is the holy sacrificial rite progressing, through the oblations ...
... of Intuition. In the Vedas, the cow and the horse also play a large part; even the donkey and the frog have their own assigned roles. These objects are taken from the environment of ordinary life, and are those that are most familiar to the external consciousness, through which the inner experiences have to express themselves, if they are to be expressed at all. These material objects represent ...
... least, grammar was considered important in two fields: in the study of language and in the art of Yoga. The rules were extremely strict and there was no end of manuals and glosses. But in our ordinary life, in the art of day-to-day living, there grew up an enormous amount of slackness and indiscipline, at least during the more recent times. I have just now spoken of two things, grammar and rhythm; ...
... tell you: Be always happy, be always good; be good, meaning, be more understanding, know that you are growing up under exceptional conditions, try to live a life higher, nobler and truer than the ordinary life and let a little of this Consciousness, this light and this benevolence express itself in the world. * * It is not for a personal and egoistic aim that you seek perfection, it is ...
... consciousness will create its own norm and pattern adequate for expressing and embodying supra-sensuous realities. It will not have to depend upon allegories and parables, symbols and signs seized from ordinary life. What exactly this will be is. Page 183 difficult to say at present. Evidently there is likely to be an intermediary creation—a passage leading from the sensuous to the supra-sensuous ...
... events and realities is a golden thread of pure consciousness. The link of ignorance is, one may say, the iron link, and is open to rust and decay inevitably. It is the link that binds together the ordinary life of ignorance, that pulls always backward, clings to all that has gone by, seeks to extend the past into the present and the future, feels unhappy if that is disturbed. In a new and ...
... eclipse the truth, the thing in itself, and in the place of truth a semblance of truth or something quite non-essential is interpolated. The amount of common sense that is needed for success in ordinary life is also equally required for victory in the domain of consciousness. Sri Ramakrishna was endowed with an inborn, alert, practical sense. So nothing could delude him in the name of spirituality ...
... gone beyond all desires still she had to live in the midst of desires; she had no choice of her own, no preference, no attachment, no need of anything, yet she was put in the conditions of very ordinary life, the normal human life; she had to deal with the common man, handle the small insignificant objects of material existence. In one part of her being she had to identify herself with ignorance and ...
... ideal. My discipline was very severe. I lived through this discipline. But at the unconscious levels of my being, my mind and vital yearned for the hopes, desires, joys and satisfactions of an ordinary life. As I had no connection with this .unconscious part I' could not in any way control it . And so, unable to satiate their desires, my mind and Page 340 vital would revolt and not ...
... Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo IV Sadhana 9-4-23 Disciple : Can one practise the Supramental yoga while remaining in the ordinary life ? Sri Aurobindo : It is true that the Supramental yoga accepts life but that does not mean life as it is at present, because the Supramental wants perfection and at present life is not perfect ...
... of someone else, that means she is in need of a vital force from him. Woman and man running after each other means this interchange or drawing. Of course, it takes place unconsciously; even in ordinary life when a person does not like another he does not know the reason but it means that their vital beings don't agree. You know the lines. I do not like thee, Doctor Fell, The reason why I can ...
... The spoiling happens because at times one gives a semi justification to the sex impulse, saying that after all it does not matter very much. But sex is absolutely out of place in Yoga. In the ordinary life it has a certain place for certain purposes. When I was in jail I knew a man who had a power of concentration by which he tried to make everyone love him, and he succeeded. The warders and all ...
... Love is a greater fire than the low smouldering fire that our secular unregenerate life is. One has to choose and declare his adhesion. Indeed, the stage of conversion, the crucial turn from the ordinary life to the spiritual life Eliot has characterised in a very striking manner. We usually say, sometimes in an outburst of grief, sometimes in a spirit of sudden disgust and renunciation that the world ...
... offerings – into it so that it may burn always and brighter and brighter. It calls the gods, also, it is said, ascends to them, brings them down here to live among men, in men. It lifts men from the ordinary life and consciousness, takes them to the abode of the gods. In other words its function is to bring down and infuse into the human vessel the godly consciousness and delight and power. Its purpose is ...
... to the Bliss, they are the fuel that kindles, quickens and increases the Fire of Ecstasy that is to blaze up on the day of victory in the full and integral spiritual consciousness. The round of ordinary life is not vain or meaningless: its petty innocent-looking moments and events are the Page 164 steps of the marching Divinity. Even the commonest life is the holy sacrificial rite ...
... these four flowers signify? Yes, Mother. This is what I have prepared as the answer to what you had sent to me this morning. This is the base for everything — Unselfishness — the base for the ordinary life, for the life of yoga or for the spiritual life. Without this one can do nothing. It is the base — not to do things for one’s pleasure, to satisfy the little ego, but to learn to widen oneself, ...
... quite follow the first part of your answer about the replacement of the ordinary consciousness by the spiritual. SRI AUROBINDO: What I said was that withdrawal is not enough. The seeds of the ordinary life have also to be thrown away and one has to get the spiritual consciousness; one has to get to the true spiritual dynamism which is the source of right action. EVENING SATYENDRA: There is a ...
... SRI AUROBINDO: Does she feel like that after taking up Yoga? NIRODBARAN: Yes. SRI AUROBINDO: That often happens. When the motive that supplied the incentive to work or gave energy in the ordinary life is lost, such a condition sets in until that energy is replaced by another energy. CHAMPAKLAL: How to know whether or not it is Tamas? SRI AUROBINDO: There is a certain element of Tamas in ...
... SATYENDRA (to Nirodbaran) : Don't worry. If you feel you are lonely, I am with you. NIRODBARAN: That is hardly a consolation for me. (Sri Aurobindo laughed a lot.) SATYENDRA : No, but in ordinary life people forget their misery when they find others in the same state. They say, "There are others like me" and get some consolation. NIRODBARAN: That is when they are out of their misery. SRI ...
... gone beyond all desires still she had to live in the midst of desires; she had no choice of her own, no preference, no attachment, no need of anything, yet she was put in the conditions of very ordinary life, the normal human life; she Page 270 had to deal with the common man, handle the small insignificant objects of material existence. In one part of her being she had to identify ...
... Besides we learn that God pays his debt through his representative, his protagonist upon earth, the aspiring human being. First let us understand the mystery of God's debt to man. We know, in ordinary life a subordinate has a duty towards his superior, the lesser owes a debt to the greater. That is easily understood. Likewise the superior also has a duty to his subordinate, the greater has his duty ...
... his decision. Next as you all know, he came to Baroda, entered the State service – as Secretary to the Maharaja and professor of the College. That life was also externally a very normal and ordinary life – an obscure life, so to say, but he preferred obscurity Page 10 for the sake of his inner development and growth. Still he continued in that obscure position that ...
... one.... Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life - when the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it.... 11 This was in 1936, nearly eighteen years after Mrinalini's death. But in 1905, when she was at Calcutta and Sri Aurobindo ...
... all the happenings, all the dramas, all that: disappeared. And this concrete and so brutal reality of the physical life: gone completely. When she returned from that liberating experience to ordinary life, she had only a smile for life's useless complications. She realised that, if everything was the result of a choice, it was also "the Lord's choice, but in us, not [up] there... here. And we ...
... experiences were not a mental fabrication, they came absolutely spontaneously. But I had such a NEED to know in me. To know, know, KNOW! You see, I knew nothing, but nothing, except the things of ordinary life: the external knowledge. Whatever was given to me to learn, I learned: I learned not only what I was taught, but Page 173 also what my brother was taught —the higher mathematics ...
... manifests it perfectly. 1.2.1967 The spiritual goal that You have shown me for my present life is very high and very far. On the other hand, I have wasted much time and energy leading the ordinary life and my aspiration is not yet constant. But I feel that if the Mother is with me, I will attain the goal. I pray that You be with me. I am with you and I will take you to the goal ...
... growing allergy to the pressures - the false lures, the deceptive lights, the ugly compulsions - of the outside world. Between the call for the higher life and the repulsion for the lower or ordinary life is hatched the decision to take the plunge, the irrevocable plunge into the Divine: Take the whole and entire plunge, and you will be free from this outer confusion and get the true experience ...
... double, toil and trouble - in which they are caught. "Mostly," says the Mother, "when they are told that there is a divine Joy and a divine Plenitude which far surpasses all they can imagine in ordinary life, they don't believe it." 6 And yet, it is all very simple: turn to the Divine and ask, ask with total trust, and it will be given; knock, and the gates of delight will open! It is the people themselves ...
... meditation that may in time comprehend a whole universe: A smile acts upon difficulties as the sun upon clouds - it disperses them. Happiness is not the aim of life. The aim of ordinary life is to carry out one's duty, the aim of spiritual life is to realise the Divine. To work for the Divine is to pray with the body. All was gold and gold and gold, a torrent of golden ...
... individuality is really an abnormal siege of confusions and distractions, a closed and murky space only occasionally illumined by reflected flashes from within. This erratic and self-defeating ordinary life should first be exceeded by the discovery of the psychic or the true soul within: that will be the beginning of one's divine life on the earth. To seek and find one's true self and to offer ...
... movement in the Pure Existent it is felt as time; time is really a movement of consciousness in the Pure Existent. In fact, if one watches carefully one finds there is no objective time even in ordinary life. Time is not a fixed something. Time as perceived by man is only movement, action, process, growth, change. If no change takes place one hardly notices time. When a man is inspired by a high ...
... to find his freedom unbearable, like the old prisoner who, on being released, wanted to be sent back into the prison where he had spent forty long years of his life without a break. We know our ordinary life of desires and passions, struggles and sufferings, pleasures and pains, and cannot think of an existence completely devoid of these conflicting elements. What will remain of life, we wonder, if ...
... catches something of its flame or at least its life-giving warmth. It is true Page 96 that there is no room in this poem for the expression, however intense, of the experience of ordinary life of man which is more or less spent in trivialities. The Master here has widened his life into the whole life of man and the whole poem throbs with movements and actions of this vast and complex ...
... enriching itself with its intense or generous movements. ...It is not rare to see psychic beings that have reached the maximum of their growth in certain directions, take up a very modest and ordinary life in some other new direction or for some other purpose....Can you say it is a decline and a fall ? It is only facing life, meeting its problems from another angle, another point of view.”¹ The ...
... Our whole life she cast into a new mould to prepare it for a divine life, a new birth of consciousness, an inner life. Nolini had written to me before I came to the Ashram, “Here the resources of ordinary life will be of no use at all.” Its meaning became gradually clear to me. The Mother visited our house on her way to her evening-drive. We used to see her in the morning. On Sunday evenings she went ...
... to plunge straight from the choice of love into the fierce struggle against Fate. The foreknowledge, of Fate prevents Savitri from any slackening of her will,—or from her being drowned in the ordinary life of vital emotions which play so great a part in human love. The situation takes a grim turn at the very moment of the greatest human joy. The psychological tension gives the sense of concreteness ...
... suddenly wrapped in that white light, as if totally arrested, immobile—there was no longer a quiver of being in that body. Then She would quietly say to me, Things don't happen at all as they do in ordinary life; for three or four minutes, sometimes five or ten minutes, I'm a-bo-minably sick, with every sign that it's all over. But it's only to make me find... to make me go through the experience and to ...
... this organ, much less perfected it. Only great thinkers in their hours of thought are able to use this organ independently of the lower strata, and even they are besieged by the latter in their ordinary life and their best thought suffers continually from these lower intrusions. Only developed Yogins have a viśuddha-buddhi , a thought-organ cleared of the Page 435 interference of the lower ...
... restless wandering of the mind and train it like an athlete to economise all its energies and fix them on the attainment of some desirable knowledge or self-discipline. This is done normally by men in ordinary life, but Yoga takes this higher working of Nature and carries it to its Page 445 full possibilities. It takes note of the fact that by fixing the mind luminously on a single object of thought ...
... the process is spiritual and psychic; even its vital and physical processes are given a spiritual or psychic turn and raised to a higher motion Page 523 than belongs properly to the ordinary life and Matter, as for instance in the Hathayogic and Rajayogic use of the breathing or the use of Asana. Ordinarily a previous preparation of the mind and life and body is necessary to make them fit ...
... cross here in the conviction that the aureole awaits them hereafter. But where then is that perfect bliss & that perfect activity which the Sage promises us, doing verily our works here in the ordinary life of mankind? The thing can be done on the devotional foundation, but only by a peculiar & rare temperament aided by God's special grace & favour. We need a wider pedestal, a securer foundation. ...
... realities of life, concrete, human, vivid, which could once more be pursued by all, realised, practised and lived. It was this return to the sources, this puissant reconnection of Vedanta with ordinary life which was the secret of the Buddha's tremendous effectuality. New also was the particular connection & interlinking of all these central ideas in the thought of the Buddha, the singular cast given ...
... shall see that it amounts to no more than a condemnation passed by the positivist mind attached to the normal values of life upon the quite different standards of a culture which looks beyond the ordinary life of man, points to something greater behind it and makes it a passage to something eternal, permanent and infinite. India, we are told, has no spirituality,—a portentous discovery; on the contrary ...
... mystic knowledge which lay behind the symbols of the sacrifice, the seed of the great Brahminic institution. These were not at first hereditary, but exercised other professions and belonged in their ordinary life to the general body of the people. This free and simple natural constitution of the society seems to have been general at first throughout Aryan India. The later development out of this primitive ...
... strength, character, knowledge, impulsion whose roots are mysterious to us because our mind moves and quivers on the surface and has not learned to concentrate itself and live in the depths. In our ordinary life this truth is hidden from us or only dimly glimpsed at times or imperfectly held and conceived. But if we learn to live within, we infallibly awaken to this presence within us which is our more ...
... Virgilian stretching of hands for love of the other shore. I must have been especially dense: many have become Aurobindonians at a slighter pull. I continued my quest. But there was also the ordinary life and its material needs. One day I noticed that my shoes looked rather shabby. So I drove myself to visit the market for a new pair. I never thought the Gods could have anything to do with such a ...
... suffocate, as if I were dying, the life force slowly draining out of the body, with a very strong pressure for the consciousness to go up and out through the top of the head leaving the body. The ordinary life and consciousness had become as death for me. Nonetheless, some effects of this opening have still remained with me to this day. It was then that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo came into my life. ...
... sorrow, smile always, smile always, smile.' " I believe that the predominant memory of those who saw him was his disarming smile. Champaklal Speaks inspires us to ponder over his extra-ordinary life and fills our hearts with reverence for his Lord and the Mother. We can see that his observations are the expressions of profound truths revealed to him through experiences in his daily life. Let ...
... almost always succumbs. First, one is apt to compartmentalize one's daily life and to regard part of it, such as the routine acts and necessary chores of daily living, as belonging to one's outer or ordinary life, and meditation, consecrated work, and the like as constituting one's inner or spiritual life. Acts pertaining to the outer life are done with ordinary consciousness and are governed by physical ...
... ascetic or moral point of view, but because of the above facts. These are general truths relating to union of man and woman. In your own case everything depends on your ideal. If it is to be the ordinary life of vital and physical enjoyments you can choose your mate just wherever you like. If it is a nobler ideal of art or music or patriotism, the seeking for a companion of life must not primarily be ...
... Self-Seeking Another characteristic of the egoic consciousness, which spiritual aspirants are often unaware of, is a seeking for what is basically personal satisfaction or fulfillment. In ordinary life this takes the form of desire for different things. However, Eckhart points our that seeking is part of the egoic consciousness, and so one must cease to be a seeker if one is to live a truly spiritual ...
... is there before experience. When one starts the yoga, it is not usually on the strength of experience, but on the strength of faith. It is so not only in yoga and the spiritual life, but in ordinary life also. All men of action, discoverers, inventors, creators of knowledge proceed by faith and, until the proof is made or the thing done, they go on in spite of disappointment, failure, disproof ...
... you have a kind of immunity from contagion. If you have this equilibrium, this inner harmony which keeps the envelope intact, it protects you from everything. There are people who lead quite an ordinary life, who know how to sleep as one should, eat as one should, and their nervous envelope is so intact that they pass through all dangers as though unconcerned. It is a capacity one can cultivate in oneself ...
... in a hole without having any strength to recover. But if you are consciously organised, unified around the divine centre, ruled and directed by it, you are master of your destiny." 16 In ordinary life, human beings try to control undesirable feelings, thoughts and actions with the help of mental intelligence and mental will. However, too often the mind is unable to discern what is undesirable ...
... spiritual life; and it is also the cause of this catastrophe and of the suffering it has brought to you, which is the natural consequence of the whole affair. Indeed it is good if you go to face the ordinary life now and learn to live with the others and for the others instead of making of the Ashram life an excuse for living selfishly for yourself. I shall see you and give you blessings in the afternoon ...
... being once strengthened, the illness and weakness will disappear. June 1929 Sri Aurobindo It is not possible to come here. Since he has married and taken service, he must go on with the ordinary life. He is still much too young and too unripe for any complete sadhana. At best he can do at present some kind of Karma yoga, trying to realise the one. Divine Force behind the action of the world ...
... atheists, and her husband does not seem to have been interested either. “I had such a need to know in me … To know, know, know ! You see, I knew nothing, but nothing, except the things of the ordinary life: the external knowledge. Whatever was given to me to learn, I had learned. I had learned not only what I was taught but also what my brother was taught, higher mathematics and all that! [Her brother ...
... realised within themselves – all those are apprentice-overmen. Among them, there are countless variations in the success of their efforts. Each time we try not to be an ordinary man, not to live the ordinary life, to express in our movements, our actions and reactions the divine Truth, when we are governed by that Truth instead of being governed by the general ignorance, we are apprentice-overmen, and according ...
... we?’ 62 She went on to say that in the early years life in the Ashram was ‘very, very, very strict … So long as one keeps all the ties which bind one to life, which make you a slave to ordinary life, how can one belong to the Divine? … We tried to create an atmosphere where only one thing counted: the divine life.’ Now things changed, and not for the better according to many sadhaks and sadhikas ...
... probably do not understand literally enough that, at the same time, she was really alive on one side and really dead on the other side (ours) — this, while she apparently went on living the old ordinary life.’ 2 He also writes: ‘Mother will make that reflection [dead or not dead] dozens of times, and more and more often, one might say with ever greater urgency, in the course of the years that were ...
... apprentice-overmen [des apprentis-surhommes] . Among them, there are countless variations according to the success of their efforts. Each time we try not to be an ordinary man, not to live the ordinary life, to express in our movements, our actions and reactions the divine Truth, when we are governed by that Truth instead of being governed by the general ignorance, we are apprentice-overmen, and according ...
... teachers as for the students. ‘If we have a school here, it is because we want it to be different from the million schools in the world, it is to give the children a chance of discerning between ordinary life and the life divine, the life of truth, of seeing things differently,’ 12 the Mother impressed upon them. ‘We are not here to do only a little better what others do, we are here to do what others ...
... have found a more colorful gamut of the human experience than in la ville lumière , the City of Light? For Mirra was of the opinion that there should be no barrier between the spiritual and the ordinary life, everything without exception being the One. It might be less easy to lead the spiritual life in the midst of the ordinary, but the result would prove to be much richer and more complete, more integral ...
... s were no mental fabrications, they came absolutely spontaneously. But I had such a need to know in me … To know, know, know! You see, I knew nothing, but nothing, except the things of the ordinary life, the external knowledge. Whatever was given to me to learn, I learned. I learned not only what I was taught but also what my brother was taught, higher mathematics and all that! And I learned and ...
... does not stop to investigate, to consider in the light, to try, to enquire, but says at once, "oh, no, I am never going to take that as possibly true." That kind of doubt may be very useful in ordinary life, it may be practically useful in battering down established things or established idea or certain kinds of external controversy to undermine a position that is too dogmatically positive; but I ...
... that is there before experience. When one starts the Yoga, it is not usually on the strength of experience, but on the strength of faith. It is so not only in Yoga and the spiritual life, but in ordinary life also. All men of action, discoverers, inventors, creators of knowledge proceed by faith and, until the proof is made or the thing done, they go on in spite of disappointment, failure, disproof, ...
... age and Yoga are two different movements going opposite ways; if he follows one, he will be moving away from the other. So if he marries, either of two things will happen—he will sink into the ordinary life and go far away from us in spirit or he will find married life unsatisfactory, renounce his wife and return to the path that leads towards the Divine. Marriage with the first result would be only ...
... does not stop to investigate, to consider in the light, to try, to enquire, but says at once: 'Oh, no, I am never going to take that as possibly true.' That kind of doubt may be very useful in ordinary life, it may be practically useful in battering down established things ,or established ideas or certain kinds of external controversy to .undermine a position that is too dogmatically positive; but ...
... D complained to me about all this. I said: "I shall see tomorrow." Truly we cannot interfere in such petty things. Those who constantly forget that they are not here to lead the most silly ordinary life cannot expect us to deal with their stupid quarrels. 27 May 1934 ...
... two months to start with. If you like to see him, he may come first in November for darshan. He was very vain formerly. But of late he has undoubtedly changed and has a distaste for ordinary life. He speaks very emotionally of you and says he has accepted you for his guru. He is sincere I think and fairly intelligent with a literary bent – writes good prose – his novel is not bad – J ...
... is still alive in the memory of many. In general it may be considered that the events of 1968, though by themselves short-lived and though most of their participants dropped back into a very ordinary life, are still active under the surface of global development. With the hindsight we have, May 1968 may be related to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Communist Bloc and the events in ...
... realized within themselves – all those are apprentice-overmen. Among them there are innumerable differences in the success of their efforts. Each time we try not to be an ordinary man, not to live the ordinary life, to express in our movements, our actions and reactions the divine Truth, when we are governed by that Truth instead of being governed by the general ignorance, we are apprentice-overmen – according ...
... the Divine blazing out through the heart-centre and surrounding the body and leaping upward from the head toward unknown immensities. I felt cut off from all that had been connected with my ordinary life. The most astonishing result was that, try as I might, I could not visualise in the least the face of my wife Sehra who was in Bombay! After a week or so, the memory came back in a tentative ...
... achieve? Let us recapitulate our findings on sculpture from the poem before us. According to Keats, the Grecian Urn has brought a sense of something above the precariousness and frustration of ordinary life and this something is a wonderfully expressive stillness, an infinitely suggestive silence whose sweet plenitude goes deeper than the world of sense and is realised by the spirit: what the Urn brings ...
... more than to show disapproval of Dilip's attachment to the sannyasi's ochre-coloured robe. Not that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother consider temples and churches and mosques superfluous. Ordinary life needs such supports and they have a place in the evolution of consciousness. And the religious instinct of prayer, worship and self-offering is very valuable. In its essence - shorn of egoistic ...
... concluded: "Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life. When the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it - nothing puzzling in it." Again, there was never any question of his family getting Sri Aurobindo paired off with Mrinalini. In ...
... Soup Distribution. She said in effect: "Shaw is a very independent mind, free from all preconceptions and able to penetrate through appearances and get to the reality of the problems facing the ordinary life. Conventions cannot deceive him. I don't know if there is anything deeper beyond this powerful capacity." You have referred to reading my poetry. Now that the galleys of my projected "Collected ...
... Ashram once you had stepped into it on the 16th of the same month, exactly the same number of years ago! What I can say on my behalf is that, unlike the departure in 1938 which meant resuming the ordinary life though still without a snap of the inner link between our Gurus and me, my second home-coming was of Page 16 a different nature. Even when it admitted a few visits to Bombay, it ...
... the Chaucerian mentality has less obstacles than the Browningesque. In the former we have a sharp demarcation between the high and the low, there is no effort to align the two parts; so the ordinary life is conceived as quite an animal activity while the mystical is seen in terms of pure spirit, with a denial of any possibility of the animal having the seed of the Divine hidden in it. The outcome ...
... those days, as the general masses were quite ignorant about the new ideal and teachings of Sri Aurobindo, many sadhakas were persuaded by their friends and relatives to return to their old unhappy ordinary life. In spite of all these cross currents, the number of such spiritual freedom-fighters went on increasing in the Ashram and by 1935 it rose up to nearly 150. My parents too came to the Ashram in ...
... Undated? The "Active consciousness" is the usual consciousness, the consciousness of every day and every circumstance—the one in which and by which you live and act in the ordinary life. As a complement to my today's letter. "The world will trouble you so long as any part of you belongs to the world. It is only if you belong entirely to the Divine that you can become free ...
... carried out on an abnormal scale. But the weakness of Hathayoga is that its laborious and difficult processes make so great a demand on the time and energy and impose so complete a severance from the ordinary life of men that the utilisation of its results for the life of the world becomes either impracticable or is extraordinarily restricted. If in return for this loss we gain another life in another world ...
... evidently aimed at in the story of Mayamoha in the Vishnu Purana. He [ Buddha ] had a more powerful vital than Ramakrishna, a stupendous will and an invincible mind of thought. If he had led the ordinary life, he would have been a great organiser, conqueror and creator. Mahomed and Christ Mahomed would himself have rejected the idea of being an Avatara, so we have to regard him only as the prophet ...
... sometimes very long, for the mind to accept the Divine or the Yogic ideal while the vital is unconvinced and unsurrendered and goes obstinately on its way of desire, passion and attraction to the ordinary life. Their division or their conflict is the cause of most of the more acute difficulties of the sadhana. I don't use these terms [ Manas, Buddhi etc. ] myself as a rule—they are the psychological ...
... present themselves to the mind, the vital imagination in man is able to work, imagining, speculating, building ideas or plans for the future etc. etc. It has its utility for the consciousness in ordinary life, but must quiet down and be replaced by a higher action in Yoga. In sleep it is also the vital plane into which you enter. If properly seen and coordinated, what is experienced in the vital plane ...
... constant realised force, just as mind and life have been established and embodied in Matter, so to establish and embody the Supramental Force. It would not be possible to change all that [ ordinary life on earth ] in a moment—we have always said that the whole of humanity will not change the moment there is the Descent. But what can be done is to establish the higher principle in the earth con ...
... else can be made an instrumentation for the Divine Life. It can be made of some spiritual importance if it is taken up with that aim and, even so, it cannot have that importance for everybody. In ordinary life no particular pursuit or study can be imposed as necessary for everybody; it cannot be positively necessary for everybody to have a mastery of English literature or to be a reader of poetry or a ...
... of response to vital movements ] and the soul or Purusha accepted it. In the acceptance lies the responsibility. The Purusha is that which sanctions or refuses. The vital being responds to the ordinary life waves in the animal; man responds to them but has the power of mental control. He has also as the mental Purusha is awake in him the power to choose whether he shall have desire or train his being ...
... unwavering pursuit of a single course of connected thought on a single subject and this it must do undistracted by all lures and alien calls on its attention. Such concentration is common enough in our ordinary life, but it becomes more difficult when we have to do it inwardly without any outward object or action on which to keep the mind; yet this inward concentration is what the seeker of knowledge must effect ...
... activity and perfectly realised only in calm and stillness; we shall be subject to reactions and periods of obscuration when it is withdrawn from us; we shall be apt to forget it in the stress of ordinary life and its outward touches and the siege of its dualities and to be fully possessed of it only Page 422 when alone with ourselves and God or else only in moments or periods of a heightened ...
... complete harmony established, Agastya's Yoga will proceed triumphantly on the new and straight path prescribed to it. It is always the elevation to a higher plane that is the end,—higher than the ordinary life of divided and egoistic sensation, emotion, thought and action. And it is to be pursued always with the same puissant will towards victory over all that resists and hampers. But it must be an integral ...
... body; for these things are the natural action of the vijnana, the plane of ideal consciousness, to which he is rising, just as mental activity and physical motion are the natural action of man's ordinary life. All the ancient Rishis used these powers, all great Avatars and Yogins and vibhutis from Christ to Ramakrishna have used them; nor is there any great man with the divine power at all manifest in ...
... attachment and absorption of family and home. There is instead of these vital and animal movements an unattached will and sense and intelligence, a keen perception of the defective nature of the ordinary life of physical man with its aimless and painful subjection to birth and death and disease and age, a constant equalness to all pleasant or unpleasant happenings,—for the soul is seated within and ...
... sensation, bodily experience. Usually it is the psychic light in the mind that is first lit of the three, but not always—for sometimes it is the psycho-vital flame that takes precedence. In ordinary life also there is no doubt an action of the psychic—without it man would be only a thinking and planning animal. But its action there is very much veiled, needing always the mental or vital to express ...
... spiritual life and do not conflict with surrender, provided one is not disturbed in either way by the fulfilment or unfulfilment of the prayer and keeps one's faith and quietude all the same. In the ordinary life prayer is one of the chief elements of human relation with the Divine and is often but not always answered; when it is not answered the religious man keeps his faith in the Divine and either understands ...
... and a long effort. There is no other way than to persevere. In Yoga friendship can remain, but attachment has to fall away or any such engrossing affection as would keep one tied to the ordinary life and consciousness—human relations must take quite a small and secondary place and not interfere with the turn to the Divine. As to the question about affections etc. I answered X long ago ...
... Transformation Letters on Yoga - III Chapter IV Experiences Associated with the Psychic The Psychic Touch or Influence The psychic influence in the ordinary life of man tries to bring the truth of the soul into human action, human thought and feelings. When it is spiritualised, it tries to turn the human towards the Divine. These are movements of ...
... elements, the psychic within which wants the Divine, and the mind, vital, physical which are pushed to enter the way through some idea, desire or feeling—it may be the feeling of vairāgya with the ordinary life, disgust of it and a desire for freedom and peace, or it may be something else, the idea of a greater knowledge or joy or calm which mind and life cannot give, or the seeking of Yoga power for one ...
... vicāra or by the process of rejection and the substitution of the true movement in its place; when that happens in excess, the sadhaka has sometimes even to go back to the ordinary action of the ordinary life, get the true experience of it with a new mind and will behind and then return to the spiritual life with the obstacle eliminated or else ready for elimination. But this method of purposive indulgence ...
... The hostiles when they cannot break the Yoga by positive means, by positive temptations or vital outbreaks, are quite willing to do it negatively; first by depression, then by refusal at once of ordinary life and of sadhana. Attacks through Suggestions Indirect attacks are not of this kind, a violent rush and covering by hostile forces—they are done through covert suggestions, half-truth, half ...
... time and one's movements. That is quite necessary for work; efficiency and discipline are indispensable. They can however only partly be maintained by outward means—it really depends, in ordinary life, on the personality of the superior, his influence on the subordinates, his firmness, tact, kindness in dealing with them. But the sadhak depends on a deeper force, that of his inner consciousness ...
... It is quite possible for two persons to have a relation of which one is conscious and the other is not—his mental blindness or vital misunderstandings coming in the way. That is frequent even in ordinary life. Very often one becomes conscious of it only when he loses it (by the death of the other person or otherwise) and is then full of repinings for his blindness. 20 July 1935 This thought of ...
... different from people outside, something a little luminous, which a man of sensitive perceptions like Magre could feel. The other side becomes apparent only if one stays long and mixes in the ordinary life of the Asram or hears the gossip of the Sadhaks. People from this country, Gujaratis or others, more easily see or feel this side and do not feel the rest because they enter at once into relation ...
... that make the (temporary) departure either harmless or psychologically or otherwise inevitable then we give permission. If the sadhak goes in a spirit of revolt and defiance or goes back to the ordinary life out of egoistic ambition as B and others did then of course Mother does not wish them to come back (so long as that remains) and refuses to allow it. Also if there is treachery, as in C 's case—a ...
... aim in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. Mukti here means liberation from ego and all its movements and elevation into a divine and spiritual consciousness. For this it may be necessary to come out of the ordinary life and its unsuitable atmosphere, surroundings and activities. But if the Sangha is well founded on a spiritual basis then there ought to be a spiritual atmosphere there favourable to this kind of ...
... see what solution there can be for such a contradiction—unless it be Nirvana. But transformation is hardly more difficult than Nirvana. 17 October 1934 People of sattwic temperament in the ordinary life behave practically in the same manner as sadhaks who realise spiritual peace as a result of Yoga. Can it be said that in sattwic people the peace descends but in a hidden manner? Or is it due to ...
... understand it.... I cannot however say that I am on the right path and every day I realise how immensely difficult it is to give Page 445 up attachment in every form & still live the ordinary life. I have come here as a humble seeker for guidance in this quest of mine & request you to give me a guidance as to whether I should continue on the path I am treading at present or whether I ...
... I may tell you from my personal experience that there is nothing in the world more interesting. If you begin making this effort you will find that your life is full of interest—you know, of the ordinary life of people at least a third is a kind of dull boredom (I say a third, but for some two-thirds of the day is a Page 88 dull boredom), and all that gets volatilised! Everything becomes ...
... you exchange a few words with an undesirable man or even if such a man merely passes by you, you may catch the contagion from him.... So long as you belong to humanity and so long as you lead the ordinary life, it does not matter much if you mix with the people of the world; but if you want the divine life, you will have to be exceedingly careful about your company and your environment." Questions ...
... Education ). You say that one should have "the certitude of Truth's final victory". But doesn't this certitude seem very different from, and often the very opposite of, what one teaches in ordinary life? Yes. Generally it is believed that things always end badly in Nature. Everyone knows the story of those who have met a lamentable end after having enjoyed great success in their life; of those ...
... inevitable, but there are people who are not even aware that their consciousness has fallen very low. There is a state in which a simple conversation which obliges you to remain on the level of ordinary life gives you a headache, turns your stomach and, if it continues, may give you a fever. I am speaking of course about the gossip-type of conversations. I believe that apart from a few exceptions, everybody ...
... have that, then you have only to seek refuge unreservedly in the Divine Reality and live in its help and protection, in it alone. What you may Page 21 have done in the course of your ordinary life only partially or in some parts of your being or at times and on occasions, you must do completely and for good. That is the plunge you have to take, and unless you do it, you may do Yoga for years ...
... infected with its poison; you need not know at all that it is there. You can lose in a few minutes what it has taken you months to gain. So long as you belong to humanity and so long as you lead the ordinary life, it Page 6 does not matter much if you mix with the people of the world; but if you want the divine life, you will have to be exceedingly careful about your company and your environment ...
... of your falling ill and not microbes. But has it not been found that by improved sanitation the health of the average citizen improves? Medicine and sanitation are indispensable in the ordinary life, but I am not speaking now of the average citizen, I am speaking of those who do Yoga. Still there is this disadvantage of sanitation that while you diminish the chances of catching an illness, ...
... is very obvious, one must be blind not to see that one is egoistic. Everybody is a little egoistic, more or less, and at least a certain proportion of egoism is normally acceptable; but even in ordinary life, when one is a little too egoistic, well, one receives knocks on the nose, because, since everyone is egoistic, no one much likes egoism in others. It is taken for granted, it is part of public ...
... same because, instead of having this negative impression of not knowing who one is or where one is or what is what, one has a positive sensation of having risen into something other than one's ordinary life, of no longer being the same person. But when one has altogether lost contact with one's ordinary consciousness, generally it is that one has slept and been for a long time in the inconscient. Then ...
... absolutely closed up and, into the bargain, if you speak to him of a possibility of relation with higher states of consciousness, he looks at you as though you were mad! If someone renounces the ordinary life to live an ascetic life, they think he is out of his senses! There is a small minority among those who have kept the religious traditions, which understands, but understands only under the religious ...
... sometimes very long, for the mind to accept the Divine or the Yogic ideal while the vital is unconvinced and unsurrendered and goes obstinately on its way of desire, passion and attraction to the ordinary life. Their division or their conflict is the cause of most of the more acute difficulties of the Sadhana. * The mental being within watches, observes and passes judgment on all that happens ...
... important than teaching them what happened on earth in former times, or even how the earth is built, or even... indeed, all sorts of things which are quite a necessary grounding if you want to live the ordinary life in the world, for if you don't know them, anyone will immediately put you down intellectually: "Oh, he is an idiot, he knows nothing." But still, at any age, if you are studious and have the ...
... you can tell yourself, "Good, perhaps the divine Grace deserves our confidence", simply this, nothing else, you will avoid many difficulties, many. In fact this avoids many difficulties even in ordinary life, and many worries. And particularly here, if you can do that, well, you will see things which seemed formidably difficult dissolving suddenly like clouds. There we are, that's all. Au revoir ...
... taken and turned into soldiers, and everyone has to go in for it. So there isn't one in a thousand who truly has the soldier's temperament—surely not. The great majority are people made for the ordinary life in the ordinary way, those who like quietness, you see, to have their little hum-drum routine of life. They don't feel they are warriors at all. Therefore, it is difficult to expect them to become ...
... action will be, and at the same time can do a certain thing which is sometimes even in contradiction with this result, that person indeed can know. But I don't think there are many like that. In ordinary life people say that for someone to realise something, he ought always to aim much farther than the goal he has to attain; that all who have realised something in life, all the great men who have created ...
... He also says: "... confined by attachment to finite appearances." So it is the same thing, you see; it's all that attaches you to the ordinary external consciousness, all that ties you to the ordinary life—that's what shuts up the soul, here, like this, squeezed up closely. This must be broken. There, then. Something, over there? Mother, here it is said: "There is first the knowledge of ...
... in certain very obvious things; for example, if there is something good and someone rushes forward to make sure of having it first, even jostling his neighbour (this happens very frequently in ordinary life), then here one becomes quite aware that this is not very, very elegant, so one begins to suppress these crudities, one makes a big effort—and one becomes highly self-satisfied: "I am not selfish ...
... like that. The one thing to know is Page 255 to which side it will turn. It loves exceptional things—exceptionally bad or exceptionally good, it loves the exceptional. It does not like ordinary life. It becomes dull, it becomes half inert. And if it is shut up in a corner and told: "Keep quiet there", it will remain there and become more and more like something crumbling away, and finally just ...
... le energy for it. But in its ordinary, habitual life it is not in contact with these forces—unless, of course, it is Page 81 transformed; but I am speaking of the ordinary vital in ordinary life. It is not open to this source of higher forces, and for it this is even altogether non-existent. In the immense majority of people all their vital force comes to them from below, from the earth ...
... So these are different gradations of the consciousness of which Sri Aurobindo speaks here, "the ordinary scale of our powers"; he is not speaking of spiritual or yogic things; it is the scale of ordinary life, that is, for everyone it is like that. For he says that even in the barbarian, the savage, Page 179 there is something which is not altogether savage, and that he has, he too, indeed ...
... .You have a mental instrument with many possibilities, faculties, but they are latent and need a special education, a special training so that they can express the Light. It is certain that in ordinary life the brain is the seat of the outer expression of the mental consciousness; well, if this brain is not developed, if it is crude, there are innumerable things which cannot be expressed, because they ...
... 4. The Psychic Being and Sadhana The Psychic Being Becoming Conscious of the Psychic Being—Need for Sadhana In the ordinary life there’s not one person in a million who has a conscious contact with his psychic being, even momentarily. The psychic being may work from within, but so invisibly and unconsciously for the outer being that it is as though it ...
... each person, each movement, is exactly in its place—and in Page 8 its place in an ascending, progressive movement, with no relapse— that is, the very opposite of what happens in ordinary life. Of course, this supposes a kind of perfection, a kind of unity, this supposes that the various aspects of the Supreme can be manifested; and necessarily, an exceptional beauty, a total harmony ...
... life, sensation, body experience. Usually it is the psychic light in the mind that is first lit of the three, but not always—for sometimes it is the psycho-vital flame that takes precedence. In ordinary life also there is no doubt an action of the psychic—without it man would be only a thinking and planning animal. But its action there is very much veiled, needing always the mental or vital to express ...
... abolished. Page 75 Mother, this is not exactly what I wanted to ask. What I understand by "rules of conduct" was "manners ". Manners belong to the moral rules of ordinary life and have no value from our point of View. 23 January 1972 Sweet Mother, You have spoken of arranging students according to categories of character In our present state of ignorance ...
... better not to try. 6 January 1933 I would like to know if looking at pictures is harmful. Naturally it depends on what the pictures are. Most often, they are about the things of the ordinary life, and therefore pull down the consciousness towards them. 10 December 1934 "Cubism" and Other Ultra-Modernism If these painters were sincere, if they truly painted what they feel and ...
... Education In these articles I am trying to put into ordinary terms the whole yogic terminology, for these Bulletins are meant more for people who lead an ordinary life, though also for students of yoga — I mean people who are primarily interested in a purely physical material life but who try to attain more perfection in their physical life than is usual in ordinary ...
... control all the lower parts of the being with the help of reason, which is the apex of ordinary human intelligence, then if one wants to go beyond this point, if one wants to liberate oneself from ordinary life, from ordinary thought, from the ordinary vision of things, one must, if I may say so, stand upon the head of reason, not trampling it down disdainfully, but using it as a stepping stone to something ...
... replaced by the centre of power, a tremendous dynamic power! ( Mother laughs. ) Precisely when are we going to cut off the circulation and release the Force? It is difficult. ( Silence ) In ordinary life, you think things over and then you do them—it is just the opposite! In this life, first you must do the thing and then, afterwards, you understand, long afterwards. First you must do it—without ...
... by ideas and communicated feelings not their own—afterwards the vital rises with its unsatisfied demands and they are swung between two contrary forces or rapidly yield to the strong pull of the ordinary life and action and satisfaction of desire which is the natural bent of adolescence. Or else the unfit adhar tends to suffer under the stress of a call for which it was not ready, or at least not yet ...
... should be our greatest preoccupation. 25 July 1971 Page 6 Consider the Divine Life as the most important thing to obtain. Happiness is not the aim of life. The aim of ordinary life is to carry out one's duty, the aim of spiritual life is to realise the Divine. In the world, as it is, the goal of life is not to secure personal happiness, but to awaken the individual ...
... them. 22 October 1965 Mother, in the letter below Sri Aurobindo has written about the necessity of restricting our contacts with the outside world and separating ourselves from the ordinary life, in order to carry on our special work of bringing down a new consciousness for the earth. This letter was written in 1933. But now all types of people from the outside world are freely allowed ...
... situation. Say to yourself, "My difficulty shows me clearly what I have ultimately to represent. To reach the absolute negation of it, the quality at the other pole—this is my mission." Even in ordinary life, we have sometimes the experience of contraries. He who is very timid and has no courage in front of circumstances proves capable of bearing the most! To one who has the aspiration for the ...
... preparation, and they think they are going to realize the Supermind right away.... It's really pathetic. Some things are... they display reactions and attitudes one would be ashamed of in ordinary life. They need something to straighten them out. April 28, 1971 MA XII-108-114 (On the occasion of the laying of the first stone of the Matri-mandir on 21 February, the disciple ...
... colour of the dress that one had put on, the colour of one's own skin, the things about you at that time —all that is fixed indelibly with an extraordinary intensity, because the things of the ordinary life revealed themselves then in their true intensity and their true colour. The consciousness that reveals itself in you, reveals at the same time the consciousness that is in things. At times, with ...
... useless words which it was not at all necessary to say. Source Gossiping Degrades You There is a state in which a simple conversation which obliges you to remain on the level of ordinary life gives you a headache, turns your stomach and, if it continues, may give you a fever. I am speaking of course about the gossip-type of conversations. I believe that apart from a few exceptions, everybody ...
... much lower than individual consciousness, and the collective consciousness of society is certainly lower than the consciousness of the individuals constituting it. There it is a necessity. In ordinary life, an individual, whether he knows it or not, always has a religion but the object of his religion is sometimes of a very inferior kind.... The god he worships may be the god of success or the god ...
... You have a mental instrument with many possibilities, faculties, but they are latent and need a special education, a special training so that they can express the Light. It is certain that in ordinary life the brain is the seat of the outer expression of the mental consciousness; well, if this brain is not developed, if it is crude, there are innumerable things which cannot be expressed, because they ...
... have realised within themselves—all are apprentice-supermen. And there, there are countless differences in the success of their efforts. Each time we try not to be an ordinary man, not to live the ordinary life, to express in our movements, our actions and reactions the divine Truth, when we are governed by that Truth instead of being governed by the general ignorance, we are apprentice-supermen, and according ...
... and make money are not wanted here. We want only those who want to live a higher life. The children have to decide whether they want to belong to the new life or to be "successful" and live an ordinary life. I think that some of the children will go away. 30 January 1972 Protect us from the ignorant goodwill that thinks it is serving us but only debases us. Purify our consciousness of all ...
... and then when I realized what I was thinking ( laughing ), well, I gave myself a good scolding: 'Lazybones!' To know, know, KNOW!... You see, I knew nothing, really, nothing but the things of ordinary life: external knowledge. I had learned everything I had been given to learn. I not only learned what I was taught but also what my brother was taught—higher mathematics and all that! I learned and I ...
... terrestrial influences are, what traces they leave and how they are combined. This is a very interesting subject of study. In dreams one is usually passive and one doesn't react as one does in ordinary life. Why? Not always. I have known many people who were far more active in their dreams than in their waking life and who would do things which they would have been incapable of doing in their waking ...
... person exactly in his place, each movement exactly in its place—and in its place in an ascending progressive movement, without any relapse, that is to say, quite the contrary to what happens in ordinary life. Naturally, this presupposes a kind of perfection, this presupposes a kind of unity, this presupposes that the different aspects of the Supreme can be manifested and, of course, an exceptional beauty ...
... the colour of the dress that one had put on, the colour of one's own skin, the things about you at that time—all that is fixed indelibly with an extraordinary intensity, because the things of the ordinary life revealed themselves then in their true intensity and their true colour. The consciousness that reveals itself in you, reveals at the same time the consciousness that is in things. At times, with ...
... reflection] or by the process of rejection and the substitution of the true movement in its place; when that happens in excess, the sadhak has sometimes even to go back to the ordinary action of the ordinary life, get the true experience of it with a new mind and will behind and then return to the spiritual life with the obstacle eliminated or else ready for elimination. But this method of purposive indulgence ...
... A pure being is always pure, in all circumstances. You will admit that one can't live with others without being influenced more or less by them. No, this is wrong! It is true of the ordinary life but not of a yogi. Page 187 Sweet Mother, if my company is not good for others, should I not dissociate myself from everyone? It would be much better to dissociate yourself ...
... he wanted me to forget. I only remembered afterwards. ( silence ) But ... ( silence ) This path is very hard. ( silence ) And then things don't happen at all as they do in ordinary life ... for three or four minutes, sometimes five or ten minutes, I'm a-bo-minably sick, with every sign that it's all over. ( silence ) But it's only to make me find the ... to make me go through ...
... me what to do. If the opportunity came it means that it can be useful. Love and blessings. 23 March 1970 Mother, A college student who seems to be eager to come out of the ordinary life has been writing to me often. He writes very frankly. He says that he tries to meditate on your photograph, but recently he has begun to feel a strong boy-and-girl-like attraction for you. He wants ...
... business! Why all these stupid complications!' 5 But these are not 'dreams,' they are types of activity—more real, more concrete than material life; the experience is much more concrete than ordinary life. I have had hundreds of such examples ... It's not always the same scene. The scenes are different, but the story is always the same—the thing, in its truth, is absolutely luminous, pleasant ...
... Agenda , but it can't be published. It's not bad for people to get some idea of the work. No.... Well, you can write it up; I'll see. But I don't have much to say. ( silence ) In ordinary life, you think of things, then you do them—but this is just the opposite! In this life you have to do things first and understand afterwards—but long afterwards. You have to act first, without thinking ...
... garment one was wearing, the shade of one's skin, things that were around you at that particular moment—all this is imprinted in an indelible way, with an extraordinary intensity, for the details of ordinary life are then also revealed in their true Page 121 intensity, their true tonality. The consciousness that reveals itself in you reveals at the same time the consciousness in things. These ...
... physical body. And this is useful, it's good. Necessary also—it enhances your capacities. Théon told me right from the start: "You people deprive yourselves of the most useful kind of senses, EVEN FOR ORDINARY LIFE." If you develop your inner senses (he gave them fabulous names), you can.... And it's true, absolutely true, we can know infinitely more than we normally do, merely by using our own senses. And ...
... my body was in a sweat from head to toe! It felt terribly exhausted. It took me at least half a minute of concentration to set things right. You understand, it has become so sensitive that in ordinary life it would be impossible—but for its transformation it was a necessity. Still, it surprised me. Naturally, after half a minute it was all over, but I had to concentrate and call for calm. So the ...
... fasten all that sensitiveness on to the aspiration for the Supreme alone; that's the only way, the solution. You have to do that constantly, every time you feel the influence of others' contact. In ordinary life, of course, to get rid of influences you cut off the contact; well, that movement of withdrawal, recoil, isolation, all those psychological movements (through material isolation in the physical; ...
... may appear fifteen years later like a blessing, an effect of Grace, some highest good. From a higher standpoint, it is quite obvious that if you bring your highest consciousness down into your ordinary life, it will bring the greatest good into your life. People who have made some progress always have this experience. They see clearly that the so-called "disaster" was in fact the starting-point ...
... govern individuals—a great concentration on that point. And this experience seems to be the outcome. There are lots of things which people don't even take notice of in life (when they live an ordinary life, they don't take any notice), there's a whole field of things that are absolutely... not quite unconscious, but certainly not conscious; they are reflexes—reflexes, reactions to stimuli, and so ...
... nervous system is incapable of preserving it. But all the relationships are changed, you are another person. I've seen this phenomenon very often. For example, the impression people have in ordinary life (few are conscious of it, but everyone has the impression, I know that) of a Destiny or a Fate or a will... "hanging over" them, a set of circumstances (it doesn't matter what you call it), something ...
... is a tension, it's like something that doesn't leave you a second's respite. And it's true, it doesn't allow you to fall asleep one minute; because in the ordinary consciousness, in the general ordinary life, rest means tamas . Rest means falling back into Inertia. So then, instead of a rest that benefits you, it's a rest that stupefies you and then you have to make effort once more to recapture the ...
... he has lost her. Not physically, but he loses her since she refuses. She says, "But now you are a Sannyasin, so it's over." He has fallen from his heaven to go to the other extreme and lead an ordinary life with her. And she says no. She says, "That's not what a new life is." But won't it look like hankering after sexual enjoyment? Because that would bring the whole thing down to a very low level ...
... themselves. On the mental level, it's very easy, you can detach yourself completely and nothing Page 298 matters; but for the body, it's difficult, because its rhythm... The whole rhythm of ordinary life is a mentalized one; even people who live in vital freedom are at odds with the whole social organization—it's a mentalized life: there are clocks that strike the hour and it is agreed that things ...
... become the constant, constant way of being. ( silence ) It's very interesting. The first effect of every new progress is a more total and complete perception of the incapacity we live in in ordinary life. That's the first result, because one begins to feel, see, sense, perceive how things should be, and so... ( gesture of a gap opening abruptly ). It's really the effect of the Grace if it's graded ...
... will bring about such an EVER-NEW richness of creation from stage to stage, that it will make whatever came before seem very poor in comparison. What to us seems supremely rich compared to our ordinary life appears very poor when compared to this new reversal of consciousness." Agenda I , November 15, 1958, pp. 236-237 × ...
... without preparation, and they think they are going to realize the Supermind right away.... It's really pathetic. Some things are... they display reactions and attitudes one would be ashamed of in ordinary life. They need something to straighten them out. Mother, maybe we could publish in the next "Bulletin" part of what you said the other day about your perception of people's inner condition and ...
... can be quite busy with other things while remaining neutral: its existence goes unnoticed, and... it doesn't require a continuous attention in order to be in a... favorable state, let's say. In ordinary life, normally you live while being as little concerned with your body as possible; it's an automatically functioning instrument. But in this present condition [of Mother's], the minute the body's attention ...
... Divine. And then, the two are like this ( Mother slips the fingers of her right hand through those of the left ). But for hours... The discomfort about very small things 1 is much greater than in ordinary life, and the well-being is wonderful, and the two are like this! ( same gesture indicating a close fusion ) One needs to be very, very, very still. It's bearable only in an inner peace. For the ...
... Spontaneity of beautiful creation, a Plenitude of Power whose words are worlds. He aspired to live poetry as well as write it; and his failure to discover in the hopes and loves and labours of ordinary life anything final to rest upon, cast a painful shadow over his art, gave his sweetest songs a lingering note of sad hopelessness, making him feel that the highest in him stood unliberated and inarticulate ...
... of Mother Durga, and closely connected with the Ambaji temple at Abu. At a later time Maikalapi confided in his son Maimayur that I was quite different from most people and would not lead an ordinary life. On one of the Puja days Maikalapi was in profound meditation. Everyone there bowed down to him. When I approached, with half-closed eyes he stretched out his right hand, took red powder from ...
... fiercely opposed the adverse forces. But at the same time I felt there was no hope, no bright future for me, so long as this wild whirl of suggestions lasted. Again I fell back into despair. In the ordinary life I had failed to acquire a higher education, because of unfavourable circumstances. Nevertheless I was aware of my longing for something exceptional—something entirely different from what most people ...
... our choice. In Yoga the process is spiritual and psychic; even its vital and physical processes are given a spiritual or psychic turn and raised to a higher motion than belongs properly to the ordinary life and Matter, as for instance in the Hathayogic and Rajayogic use of the breathing or the use of Asana. Ordinarily a previous preparation of the mind and life and body is necessary to make them fit ...
... game. Difficulties of individual nature rushing up? Individual and general. The subconscient, sir, the subconscient. Brilliant irruptions of the subterranean Brahman into the dullness of ordinary life. অবচেতনায় ব্রহ্মনে নমো নমঃ 164 R writes that there is a spare pestle and mortar in the Dispensary lying in the cupboard and not being used—he needs one for his work. If this is not in use ...
... diet... All right. It can be tried. July 19, 1936 S is hardly better. We have to buy a few more pills. Sanction? Yes. The fellow is thinking only of eating and renewing his ordinary life—he can't be allowed to chronicise his beastly jaundice. July 20, 1936 V has had diarrhoea last 2 days. I wonder if it is due to cold in the stomach or the mangoes he had taken. ...
... consciousness failed to carry out his purpose. SATYENDRA: Could these eccentricities and incoherencies be due to egoism still remaining in the being? SRI AUROBINDO: Not necessarily. In the ordinary life the ego-construction holds things together and when that ego is removed by one's going into the higher consciousness, one behaves in this way, until a greater principle takes the place of the ego ...
... es of individual nature rushing up? Sri Aurobindo: Individual and general. The subconscient, sir, the subconscient. Brilliant irruptions of the subconscient Brahman into the dullness of the ordinary life. অবচেতনায় ব্রহ্মণে নমো নমঃ 1 Talking about astrology, Dr. Manilal said, "I met an astrologer who was after money. But he didn't know I was a hard master to deal with." Pat came Sri Aurobindo's ...
... change first must come and it is with the light and faith in the individual as a support that the wider change can be made.” Subornoshikhor [The Golden Summit]: “If you take the plane as the ordinary life or physical consciousness with the sky as the ordinary mind and the mountain as the hill of the Divine Truth with the moonlight cloud as the spiritual Call (the moon is the symbol of the spiritual ...
... A Global Humanity A GLOBAL view of humanity is becoming more and more insistent, unavoidable and inevitable. It is being forced upon the normal consciousness of mankind so that the ordinary life itself has to be conducted and lived according to the demands of that view. It is this that humanity is one, that mankind as a whole is a single organism. Even like an individual being, the collective ...
... the rung to be taken up, organised and individualised by and around the psychic being. Page 297 The organisation of the vital. being in view of a particular object or aim in ordinary life is common enough: the purpose is limited, the scope restricted. Great men of action have done it and one has to do it more or less to be successful in life. This, however, may be called organisation; ...
... then when I realised what I was thinking (laughing), well, I gave myself a good scolding: 'Lazybones!'¹ To know, know, KNOW!... You see, I knew nothing, really, nothing but the things of ordinary life: external knowledge. I had learned everything I had been given to learn. I not only learned what I was taught but also what my brother was taught—higher mathematics and all that! I learned and I ...
... development, we have what is called the rajasic type who are active, dynamic and kinetic in their nature. They are motivated by lust of power and enjoyment and are never satisfied with the routine and ordinary life like the physical man. They are the pioneers in the adventurous games of life like science and technology and extend the limits of physical existence by their inventions and discoveries of nature's ...
... [from the Ashram] can come from the psychic which refuses, when it comes to the point, to allow the other parts to budge, or it can come from the vital which has no longer any pull towards the ordinary life and knows that it will never be satisfied there. It is usually the higher parts of the vital that act like that. What still is capable of turning outwards is probably the physical vital in which ...
... if you wish to realise the great ideal that is our goal, you must not remain content with the ordinary and futile reactions of ordinary people who live in the blind and ignorant conditions of ordinary life. It looks as if I were very conservative when I say so, still I must tell you that you should be very careful about outside influences and ordinary habits. You must not allow them to shape ...
... passage interrelates all the varying standards of conduct in a synthetic sweep of vision and places all the attempts of man to regulate his life and action in the right perspective. "In the ordinary life a personal, social or traditional constructed rule, standard or ideal is the guide; once the spiritual journey has begun, this must be replaced by an inner and outer rule or way of living necessary ...
... away from the Ashram - the experience of pavakāgni, the 'purifying Fire' blazing forth in the heart: "I was lying in bed at night and telling myself how vain were all things of the ordinary life, with death as the blind terminus of their groping. I reflected on the complex forces at play in my personality and the uncertain future they were working out. To know God By intimate experience ...
... 1.NB: ... Where is the sincerity in me? So wouldn't it be better for you to let me go instead of wasting so much of your time and labour on me? Sri Aurobindo: If you had some big object in ordinary life and nothing to hope for here it might be different, but as things are it would be foolish to walk off under the instigation of this old Mother Gloom-Gloom. Stick on and you will get the soul's reward ...
... very well known that in every yogic practice that is to be found in religions and in that which is independent of any religion, the experience of conversion marks a radical point of departure from ordinary life to a truly spiritual life. An important example of this experience of conversion, which William James has given, is that of Saint David Brainerd. The description of this experience is appended at ...
... character, knowledge, impulsion whose roots are mysterious to us because our mind moves and quivers on the surface and has not learned to concentrate itself and live in the depths. In our ordinary life this truth is hidden from us or only dimly glimpsed at times or imperfectly held and conceived. But if we learn to live within, we infallibly awaken to this presence within us which is our more ...
... shraddha is the very stuff of the individual, that as is one's shraddha, so one is verily. This shraddha, which is in its origin higher than sattvic, rajsic and tamasic nature, acts normally in our ordinary life in the domain of sattva, rajas and tamas. Hence, it assumes a three-fold character of sattva, rajas and tamas. It is by tracing shraddha to its origin that we are transported into the experience ...
... It is quite possible for two persons to have a relation of which one is conscious and the other is not—his mental blindness or vital misunderstandings coming in the way. That is frequent even in ordinary life. Very often one becomes conscious of it only when he loses it (by the death of the other or otherwise) and is then full of repinings for his blindness. A.B. writes in an article that through ...
... puzzle? Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life. When the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it - nothing puzzling in it. Sri Aurobindo's argument is sound and convincing. Still, my puzzle remained. For it was based on a ...
... become hopeless it means that the higher being in you has not, but something in you has broken up the attitude all the same. The lower vital has begun to hate the yoga. It prefers ordinary life to sadhana. But I don't care for its preferences and shall teach it what is to be hated and what is to be loved. Could I be informed how far the transformation has progressed and when it will be ...
... it shows that the aspiration is there all the while quite at the front of your consciousness. Of course, the thing is true of the spiritual aspiration only: it is not applicable to matters of ordinary life. So I say that if you are capable of articulating your aspiration in a split second, it means that the object of your aspiration lies in front and dominates your consciousness. And necessarily whatever ...
... The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7 Section Three Things Significant and Insignificant All things are insignificant in ordinary life. The thoughts you think, the actions you do, the feelings you experience, all your movements have no significance at all, they possess no value. They belong to the superficial part of your being, they come and ...
... Besides we learn that God pays his debt through his representative, his protagonist upon earth, the aspiring human being. First let us understand the mystery of God's debt toman. We know, in ordinary life a subordinate has a duty towards his superior, the lesser owes a debt to the greater. That is easily understood. Likewise the superior also has a duty to his subordinate, the greater has his duty ...
... 1. The deer is the individual self; his mate, the doe, is the secret deity, the conscious being in the heart, the immanent divine consciousness. 2. He gives up the joys of ordinary life. Page 259 VII Illusion and Delusion – the twin blocked the way; This has confused the mind of Kanhu – Where can he ...
... there comes a time when this flame, this conscious being is so developed, so mature, so well-formed, that you begin to think of the life spiritual. When one is not content, not wholly content with ordinary life, yearns after something else, something greater, it means that the flame in you has reached a crucial stage and has to take a leap or bound into another dimension of life. The aspiration for ...
... to say on the subject, it is not his final word, whereas in the view of the Western sage, sorrow and suffering, misery and pain appear as ultimate truths at least for the individual, and for the ordinary life of the common multitude; this manner of complete self-immolation of the individual serves a collective end, like the self-sacrifice of an army or a multitude of soldiers in a war. But in Sri Aurobindo's ...
... suffering, than this ordinary round of a life made of the warp and woof of enjoyment and disappointment. There is a greater delight that transcends these common vital norms, the dualities of the ordinary life. In the case of the ascetic, the martyr, the patriot, the delight is in an ideal, moral, religious or social. All that can be conceded here is that the suffering voluntarily courted does not cease ...
... fuel—offerings—into it so that it may burn always and brighter and brighter. It calls the gods, also, it is said, ascends to them, brings them down here to live among men, in men. It lifts men from the ordinary life and consciousness, takes them to the abode of the gods. In other words its function is to bring down and infuse into the human vessel the godly consciousness and delight and power. Its purpose is ...
... tell you: Be always happy, be always good; be good, meaning, be more understanding, know that you are growing up under exceptional conditions, try to live a life higher, nobler and truer than the ordinary life and let a little of this Consciousness, this light and this benevolence express itself in the world. It is not for a personal and egoistic aim that you seek perfection, it is for the sake of ...
... consciousness will create its own norm and pattern adequate for expressing and embodying suprasensuous realities. It will not have to depend upon allegories and parables, symbols and signs seized from ordinary life. What exactly this will be is difficult to say at present. Evidently there is likely to be an intermediary creation – a passage leading from the sensuous to the supra-sensuous, the higher not totally ...
... events and realities is a golden thread of pure consciousness. The link of ignorance is, one may say, the iron link, and is open to rust and decay inevitably. It is the link that binds together the ordinary life of ignorance, that pulls always backward, clings to all that has gone by, seeks to extend the past into the present and the future, feels unhappy if that is disturbed. In a new and higher life ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Things Significant and Insignificant ALL things are insignificant in ordinary life. The thoughts you think, the actions you do, the feelings you experience, all your movements have no significance at all, they possess no value. They belong to the superficial part of your being, they come and pass away, like ...
... and daylight with the queen, it is night with the king - he is just entering into sleep. The king sees dark 'Shadows closing him in, binding him down - bonds of ignorance imprisoning him in the ordinary life and consciousness. The queen, the higher power, is free of all that. Both are being led towards a high divine destiny. But the ego-being is frightened, while the higher consciousness has no ...
... suffering, than this ordinary round of a life made of the warp and woof of enjoyment and disappointment. There is a greater delight that transcends these common vital norms, the dualities of the ordinary life. In the case of the ascetic, the martyr, the patriot, the delight is in an ideal – moral, religious or social. All that can be conceded here is that the suffering voluntarily courted does not cease ...
... light? There is a light indeed that dwells in the setting suns, but that is the inferior light, the light that moves level with the Page 150 earth, pins us down to the normal and ordinary life and consciousness: it" leads into the Night, into Nihil, pralaya. It is the light of the morning sun that man looks up to in his forward march, the sun that rises in the East whom the Vedic Rishi ...
... ) Page 387 The lower half is the domain of death, the Upanishads declare, the higher half is the domain of immortality. As we start our journey upon earth we begin with the ordinary life, the life of death, and we pass through it gaining experience, growing in consciousness; and then when we have crossed the stage we enter into the domain beyond death and begin to learn, to partake ...
... this is to tell you that you are surrounded by a world of beings and influences and this visible body that you have, the normal mind active in you, are not all that you can call yours. Even in ordinary life when you think that you are acting, you are speaking, it is not at all true, or only partially true. A part, often a small part of you is involved in your activities. You are like an iceberg – the ...
... Naveen Chandra." As I saw him going towards the room of Naveen Chandra, I realised in an instant that he had made a leap from the old to the new, from the circle of laws and standards of our ordinary life to the freedom that issues from surrender to the Divine. The great message of the Gita flashed through my mind : "Give up all dharmas and take refuge in Me alone; I shall liberate thee ...
... laid on learning and mastering four operations of arithmetic and also of learning and mastering operations concerned with fractions and concerning measurements of various kinds which one meets in ordinary life. These measurements may also include those which are relevant to physics, chemistry, geography and astronomy. A further 'O' level course in Page 29 mental calculation may be combined ...
... important need is to put each thing in its place. The training that the Mother has throughout been giving us – I am not here referring to the side of spiritual practice but to the daily routine of our ordinary life – is precisely this business of putting our things in order. We do not always notice how very disorderly we are: our belongings and household effects are in a mess, our actions are haphazard, and ...
... it was that I received a new initiation in my life. Within a short while I discovered that my mind had taken a completely different turn. Studies offered no longer an attraction, nor did the ordinary life in the world. To serve the country, to become a devoted child of the Mother, for ever and a day, this was now the only objective, the one endeavour. What would that imply? It implied that one ...
... idea .on all the three occasions, though each time it happened in a different way. This was how it came about the first time. I had just come out of jail. What was I to do next? Go back to the ordinary life, read as before in college, pass examinations, get a job? But all that was now out of the question. I prayed that such things be erased from the tablet of my fate, s irasi ma likha, ma likha, ma ...
... least, grammar was considered important in two fields: in the study of language and in the art of Yoga. The rules were extremely strict and there was no end of manuals and glosses. But in our ordinary life, in the art of day-to-day living, there grew up an enormous amount of slackness and indiscipline, at least during the more recent times. Page 95 I have just now spoken of two things ...
... the weak and the cowardly. Nayamatma balaheenena labhya. There are many who fail, who get defeated. In the outside world there is a need for discipline and control over many things in ordinary life: the social, collective control, the legal control, mental and ethical do's and don'ts. Thanks to this the various temperaments of human nature, the different inner urges and movements are kept ...
... a perfectly incapable and helpless man; his capacity for an inner life seems to be matched by his incapacity in the outer. He had to bring himself down to the level of an abject beggar in his ordinary life; at every step he had to depend on his wife's assistance, without her co-operation he found it an unmanageable affair to procure even a grain of rice for the maintenance of life. It would not of ...
... ngs—into it so that it may bum always and brighter and brighter. It calls the gods, also, it is said, ascends to them, brings them down here to live among men, in men. It lifts men from the ordinary life and consciousness, takes them to the abode of the gods. In other words its function is to bring down and infuse into the human vessel the godly consciousness and delight and power. Its purpose ...
... and daylight with the queen, it is night with the king—he is just entering into sleep. The king sees dark shadows closing him in, binding him down —bonds of ignorance imprisoning him in the ordinary life and consciousness. The queen, the higher power, is free of all that. Page 63 Both are being led towards a high divine destiny. But the ego-being is frightened, while the higher ...
... Along with physical development, Biren-da taught me how to build an ideal character and love the country. This is what gave a new direction to my life. At the age of 14-15 I resolved that the ordinary life was not for me and that I would consecrate my life for some greater purpose. Biren-da taught me that to have a beautiful, strong body and to be a champion boxer was not the be-all and end-all ...
... vital being, it can work in the body. But that is not the Intuitive Consciousness. It is intuition coming down in the nature of man. In fact, many people come to know many things by intuition in ordinary life. They just simply have the knowledge. That is the operation of this plane of Intuitive being penetrating into the mind or into the life or into the physical consciousness. Those who constantly, ...
... I feel called to the spiritual life, and that means that my whole life becomes part of the sadhana. This can only be done in the proper conditions, and I do not see how it is possible in the ordinary life of the family and its surroundings. You all say that God will not bless my sadhana, and it will not succeed; but what I feel is that it is He who has called me; my whole reliance is on Him and ...
... the artist, but by help of imagination it can create powerful new forms which have a great appeal for life. There is a plane of the higher vital being—a higher vital world—far above the plane of ordinary life of everyday, where forms of great power and beauty exist. An artist can either rise to this plane occasionally and draw inspiration for his work from there. He can straightaway bring down forms—either ...
... great service that art renders to man,— this lifting of his ordinary consciousness from amidst the ugliness of this world to a world of beauty. It makes him feel the beauty even in the midst of ordinary life: Art thus elevates the Soul of Man. Seen from this point of view the function of the artist is very high—indeed, it can even be the highest, if he can rise to it. When I saw you ...
... contact with the higher than mental level of consciousness. Though these visitations from the greater world were rare, they gave to the human being some idea of his spiritual possibilities. The ordinary life of man was humdrum, occupied with very ordinary needs of physical life and the satisfaction of little desires. "Man laboured on his little patch of earth For means to last, to enjoy ...
... actively participate in it. It is true I am not for acceptance of life as it is. I accept life, i. e. nature, for transformation. Disciple : Some of our disciples are not taking part in ordinary life but can we say that they are retired? Or can we say that they are not doing your yoga? Disciple : X. here likes ordering people about, he seems full of anger, egoism, etc. Sri Aurobindo ...
... an independent life of their own." 46 Dreams, goddesses, gods, visions, aspirations, emotions, all leap to life, and are seen to be the powers behind 'overhead' poetry, powers that invade our ordinary life to possess and change it. Varied though these powers are, their common traits are Light and 'the mystic voice'. Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo cites examples from world poetry of the ...
... these things mixed up with sex-impulse and the experience was spoiled. This happens because sometimes one gives a semi-justification to sex-impulse. But sex is absolutely out of place in Yoga. In ordinary life it has a certain place for a certain purpose. Of course, if you Page 42 adopt the Sahaja Marga , it is different. While in jail I knew of a man who had a power of ...
... around but with the help of imagination it can create powerful, new forms which have a great appeal for life. There is a plane of higher vital being, a higher vital world, —far above the plane of ordinary life of every day where forms of great power and beauty exist. An artist can either rise to this plane occasionally and draw inspiration for his work from there. He can straightway bring down forms— ...
... earth could be lived at three distinct levels of consciousness, the life in the ignorance, the life taught to Arjuna by the Lord of the Gita, and the Life Divine visualised by Sri Aurobindo. In ordinary life, humanity is driven by egoistic desire, and the controls are exercised - freely and fitfully - by an agreed religious ethic or a mental ideal (social, economic or political). The Gita's Yoga involves ...
... Sri Aurobindo's commendation. And yet, Romen continued to be subject to moods of discontent and icy depression. The Mother had at last to tell him that he was free to "go out the and see the ordinary life", but she warned him also of the possible consequence. It was as the Mother had expected; the hunger for the outside world wouldn't be easily satiated, for the more it was fed, the more ...
... of what light is. But I want you all to see that we do not repeat and say over and over again indefinitely all that nonsense which is uttered every time one turns towards something other than ordinary life... one day I shall speak to you of the confusion made between what one calls God and what I call the Divine. 34 Page 561 This would be the true parā vidyā - the Higher Knowledge ...
... divine light and peace seemed to fall and in this wonderful atmosphere it was as if my soul had come out of its body and begun floating. ... [On that very night] I determined to relinquish the ordinary life and embrace the Divine Life. 2 "You have given me life;" she wrote again on 19 August 1954: Now I have understood what value life has.... You alone have given me the inspiration that ...
... in 1920, Sri Aurobindo had clearly said, My own idea was for our system to grow up in the society, not out of it) 10 with all the problems arising from this sticky mixing with so-called “ordinary” life. It was really a question of taking everybody’s life, at the crudest level, with both men and women together, and trying to make something else out of it without seeming to, in the very conditions ...
... know that "this is Siberia?" Perhaps it notices certain changes of climate. Similarly, Mother noticed many little changes of climate—Siberia is for the geographers. I am Mother's geographer. In ordinary life, you think of things, then you do them—but this is just the opposite! In this life you have to do things first and understand afterwards—but long afterwards. You have to act first, without thinking ...
... substance accord with what we decide it to be. And he who has the power and the knowledge can have what he wants, whereas he who doesn't cannot use any artificial means to obtain what he wants. In ordinary life, EVERYTHING is artificial. Depending upon the fortuity of birth or the circumstances, you have a more or less high position or a more or less comfortable life, not because it is the spontaneous ...
... we enter the supramental world. And probably each time a new world opens up, there will again be a new reversal. This is why even our spiritual life, which is such a total reversal compared to ordinary life, seems something still so totally different when compared to this supramental consciousness that the values are almost opposite.... It's as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver, whereas ...
... of light, or a door swings open upon a flaming Presence, or it is a well or abyss of dazzling effulgence in which we find ourselves. It is an experience unlike any that ever takes place in our ordinary life, unlike any that even the sharpest human mind can ever conceive or imagine. It is an experience in a new dimension of being, in an unaccustomed ether of existence. It is an experience that changes ...
... that cloaks itself in religion and philosophy and colors, lots of colors? We're born with a mudhole to clean out, 19 She said. To know, know, KNOW! I knew nothing, nothing but the things of ordinary life, external knowledge. I had learned everything I had been given to learn; I had learned what I was taught, but also what my brother was taught, higher mathematics and all that! I had learned and ...
... experience—it always takes the form of an experience, an ACTION: something that has to be done and gets done, or that has to be known and becomes known. It is never the mental transcription of ordinary life. And all this happens IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY, not while I am sleeping. This story happened to me when I had just had my bath! All at once something comes, takes hold of me, and then there's a ...
... need is to put each thing in its place. The training that the Mother has throughout been giving us - I am not here referring to the side of spiritual practice but to the daily routine of our ordinary life - is precisely this business of putting our things in order. We do not always notice how very disorderly we are; our belongings and household effects are in a mess, our actions are haphazard, and ...
... body. And this is useful, it's good. Necessary also —it enhances your capacities. Theon told me right from the start, 'You people deprive yourselves of the most useful kind of senses, EVEN FOR ORDINARY LIFE.' And it's true, absolutely true," Mother confirmed. Page 291 ...
... and make money are not wanted here. We want only those who want to live a higher life. The children have to decide whether they want to belong to the new life or to be “successful” and live an ordinary life. I think that some of the children will go away... I have signed copies. You will ask him to show you when he will come to you this evening. This, this makes the situation absolutely clear ...
... puzzle ? Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life —when the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it nothing puzzling in that." Page 129 ...
... see how a material, constructed or formed to satisfy the requirements of an ordinary physical life is being turned into an instrument for luminous and effective communication and expression of other truths and realities in the hands of these seer-creators (kavi-kratu ḥ ). They take the materials from ordinary normal life, familiar objects and happenings but use them as images and allegories putting... XV The Evolution of Language Human language was born out of the necessity of intercommunication among human beings living together. The necessity naturally related to the physical life and its demands and requirements. Man being a mental being sought intercommunication through his mind. So mind yoked to the physical demands gave the first form and pattern to human speech. ...
... material, constructed or formed to satisfy the requirements of an ordinary physical life Page 214 is being turned into an instrument for luminous and effective communication and expression of other truths and realities in the hands of these seer-creators ( kavi-kratuh) . They take the materials from ordinary normal life, familiar objects and happenings but use them as images and allegories... The Evolution of Language HUMAN language was born out of the necessity of inter-communication among human beings living together. The necessity naturally related to the physical life and its demands and requirements. Man being a mental being sought intercommunication through his mind. So mind yoked to the physical demands gave the first form and pattern to human speech. Language ...
... today I see that it was all humbug. There is a still greater purity to manifest and to live. When I go deep down and analyse myself, I find the lower vital impulses, the animal impulses of ordinary human life and its instincts. These things have no strength to make me act physically but I understand now that they creep in and govern the lower vital nature in a very subtle polished form. Yes, these ...
... said in your Synthesis of Yoga that all love and adoration is good—it is a preparation and aspiration, even partial realisation. SRI AUROBINDO: Not for a Yogi. NIRODBARAN: No, I mean in ordinary human life how can it be a preparation and aspiration? SRI AUROBINDO: I meant true love, not vital love with desire and possessiveness, or physical love. That of course can't be—though Blake says the ...
... alone he can profit by staying here. Henceforth a stay here can only be possible 1) for those who are ready for an intensive sadhana turning their back on all attachments belonging to the ordinary human life; 2) for those who though not ready yet recognise fully the aim and open themselves so as to prepare for it; 3) those who, even if not capable as yet of an inner intensive sadhana, can yet... of coming away to the Ashram. I am not touched by her grief. But I do not know if it is due to non-attachment or my hard-heartedness. What is the correct attitude? As he has chosen the spiritual life and work for the Mother, he has only to remain firm and quiet and for the rest to leave it to the Divine power. His indifference is nothing but this quietness and firmness in the true way and he has... expedient, those who live here should be sufficiently open mentally, — psychically, and physically to the spiritual force to recover rapidly from attacks of illness and to keep a sufficient power of life and health in them not to need to be treated as chronic invalids. Any other rule would make the existence of the Ashram impossible. Sri Aurobindo Keep faith and confidence and remain cheerful ...
... movements of the mind and are naturally subject to grief and joy and anxiety and desire or to everything else that makes up the ordinary stuff of life. Mental quiet and happiness they can get, but it can never be permanent or secure. But the spiritual consciousness is all light, peace, power and bliss. If one can live entirely in it, there is no question; these things become naturally and securely... power to govern the outer work and action; if it is happiness, one enters into a beatitude far greater than any joy or happiness that the ordinary human life can give. There are many ways of opening to this Divine consciousness or entering into it. My way which I show to others is by a constant practice to go inward into oneself, to open by aspiration to the Divine and once one is conscious of it and... do—though I do not refuse to do it in certain cases. My aim is to create a centre of spiritual life which shall serve as a means of bringing down the higher consciousness and making it a power not merely for "salvation" but for a divine life upon earth. It is with this object that I have withdrawn from public life and founded this Asram in Pondicherry (so-called for want of a better word, for it is not ...
... intelligent amount of pressure or even coercion might be needed or inevitable. But that stage passed, the higher realisation has to be the natural expression of ordinary earth-life: its normal state has to be the state of the higher consciousness, its life naturally moved by its self-nature expressing its own truth. If there is to be a Divine destiny for earth, it must be because of its free choice.... she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put... portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother. Published February 1975 ...
... intelligent amount of pressure or even coercion might be needed or inevitable. But that stage passed, the higher realisation is to be the natural expression of ordinary earth-life: its normal state is to be the state of the higher consciousness, its life naturally moved by its self-nature expressing its own truth. If there is to be a Divine destiny for earth, it must be because of its free choice... into the ¹ Rigveda, V, 2.4. Page 103 Falsehood and error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of he sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put... portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.¹ ¹ Sri Aurobindo ...
... ( Soon afterwards, Mother asks what the next aphorism will be for her to comment on. Satprem answers that it is the story of Narada and of Janaka who practiced yoga while leading the ordinary human life. 1 ) That's odd! Very recently, a few days ago, after you came last time, again while I was walking for my japa, this whole story of Narada came to me! Sri Aurobindo said that Narada himself... he wished. Janaka, Mithila's king at the time of the Upanishads was famed for his spiritual knowledge and divine realization, even though he led a worldly life. This is how Sri Aurobindo refers to him: 106—"Sannyasa [renunciation of worldly life] has a formal garb and outer tokens; therefore men think they can easily recognise it; but the freedom of a Janaka does not proclaim itself and it wears the... little horde of businessmen and "disciples" in search of petty powers, against whom, once again, Satprem wanted to warn X, for he loved him in spite of everything. This break nearly cost Satprem his life, as will be seen later. Thus is it said that those things are fire. ) ...I see in a very clear way that even in circumstances in which you seem to have made a mistake, even with things that betrayed ...
... the story of human souls when they happen to discover in their midst, their Lord, without whom there is no breath of life. The relationship between the Gopis and Sri Krishna is the relationship of total harmony of which all the conceptions of harmony that we find in ordinary human life even when they are exalted to their maximum expression are only faint imitations. Humanity needs today peace and un... with pregnant meanings, reflective short essays written in well-chiselled language, plays, powerful accounts of historical events, statements of personal experiences of values in actual situations of life, and similar other statements of scientific, philosophical, artistic and literary expression. Thirdly, we may take into account the contemporary fact that the entire world is moving rapidly towards... attempted the creation of the relevant teaching-learning material, and they have decided to present the same in the form of monographs. It appears that there are three major powers that uplift life to higher and higher normative levels, and the value of these powers, if well illustrated, could be effectively conveyed to the learners for their upliftment. These powers are those of illumination ...
... ) Then the letter came with all the details: thrombosis, and so on. But he says he feels a Force [near Mother] that's not in his ordinary little life over there, he finds it makes all the difference—it's something which gives a LIFE that's not in his ordinary little life in France. Anyhow, this is something like a miracle." × ... harmony. Which means that if the object was to cure, for example, the cure was more perfect and total than a cure brought about by the ordinary physical and mental methods. There were hosts of instances. But people are so blind, you know, so bogged down in their ordinary consciousness, that they always have ready "explanations." They can always explain it away. Only those who had faith and aspiration... too!). I told him, "Can you walk on these?" "Leave me alone," he answered, "it's not interesting." "Just watch!" I told him. And I started walking on them, with such ease! As if I had done it all my life. It was the same phenomenon: I felt weightless. Always the feeling of being carried: something holding me up, carrying me. And now if I compare the movement or the sensation... it's the same as that ...
... the sun's ray, the purity of consciousness. Perhaps the image came from the actual life of the Rishis of that time, the cattle they reared, the domestic animals about them, the natural scenery around them, and all that was an important Page 105 part of their ordinary daily life. A whole herd of cattle all white is a beautiful picture. Even so there was something... your inner life is already there, bathing there in that luminous happy air. Only try to be conscious of that: if you are conscious of it even a little you will feel immensely happy, feel that you are beautiful, that you are wise – when you feel the touch of that inner ashram life. And instead of living entirely or mainly the outer life of the ashram as at present you can turn this life into that inner... inner life; and gradually reshape the present life in the mould of the inner life. That is your duty, your task, particularly you who are students, boys and girls, that is your central work – study and learning and all that is secondary. What you should do and what you can is to breathe a new air, live in a better, more beautiful way. You can have this inner life, that is already there, this inner ...
... the sun's ray, the purity of consciousness. Perhaps Page 41 the image came from the actual life of the Rishi of that time: the cattle they reared, the domestic animals about them, the natural scenery around them, and all that was an important part of their ordinary daily life. A whole herd of cattle, all white, is a beautiful picture. Even so, there was something in the atmosphere of... turn this life into that inner life and gradually reshape the present life in the mould of the inner life. That is your duty, your task, particularly you who are students, boys and girls, that is your central work; study and learning and all else is secondary. What you should do and what you can do is to breathe a new air, live in a better, more beautiful way. You can have this inner life; it is already... already there, this inner life, without much difficulty; it is already there, a collective inner life, which is so beautiful as I say, filled with the fragrance of the Mother's Presence. It is a collective life in which you all are not only brothers and sisters but one body and soul unified in the Mother's loving and living substance. That inner life you have to bring out in your body and all ...
... comprise the ordinary social life of man is considered the lower nature. If man wants to attain to his highest nature, his true Self, then he will have to control his outgoing tendencies, stop them totally and finally turn them inward. The summum bonum of life is the absorption in the static Brahman.¹ Needless to say that a creed whose fundamental principle is to escape from life cannot but dry... dry up the sap of life. The outgoing faculties of human life are bound to recede, dwindle and vanish or remain atrophied when it is inculcated that life and the living of life lead one astray from the ultimate Truth. The conception of life as a mirage cannot help life to bloom and manifest. On the contrary, it is sure to effect a gradual cessation of life. It may be argued however that the ideal... real good lies outside the pale of worldly life. The sooner one can get rid of this life, the better. Besides, life was considered not as a way to the Goal beyond, but as a great obstacle to it. To our normal conception a householder is but a despicable sinner. We began to look down upon life and its activities even when we were within the precincts of life itself. Instead of enlarging all the spheres ...
... possible inner ideals which a man can follow. The first is the highest ideal of ordinary human life and the other the divine ideal of Yoga. I must say in view of something you seem to have said to your father that it is not the object of the one to be a great man or the object of the other to be a great Yogin. The ideal of human life is to establish over the whole being the control of a clear, strong and rational... divine nature, to find one's own divine capacities, great and small, and fulfil them in life as a sacrifice to the Highest or as a true instrument of the divine Shakti. About the latter ideal I may write at some later times. At present, I shall only say something about the difficulty you feel in fulfilling the ordinary ideal. This ideal involves the building of mind and character and it is always a... putting an almost insuperable obstacle in the way of your own mental and moral recovery and of your leading a useful life in the future. Secondly, it would be bringing an unmerited disgrace upon your father and family. Thirdly, it would mean, if it took any form, the ruin of the life of someone else, for if I understand rightly what you say, some other or others would be involved, and your suggestion ...
... possible inner ideals which a man can follow. The first is the highest ideal of ordinary human life and the other the divine ideal of Yoga. I must say in view of something you seem to have said to your father that it is not the object of the one to be a great man or the object of the other to be a great Yogin. The ideal of human life is to establish over the whole being the control of a clear, strong and rational... nature, to find one's own divine capacities great or small and fulfil them in life as Page 303 a sacrifice to the highest or as a true instrument of the divine Sakti . About the latter ideal I may write at some later time. At present I shall only say something about the difficulty you feel in fulfilling the ordinary ideal. This ideal involves the building of mind and character and it is... being and its impulses. (2) Your position in human society is or can be that of many others who in their early life have committed excesses of various kinds and have afterwards achieved self-control Page 302 and taken their due place in life. If you [were] 1 not so ignorant of life, you would know that your case is not exceptional but on the contrary very common and that many have done these ...
... × Janaka : Mithila's king at the time of the Upanishads, celebrated for his spiritual knowledge and divine realization, though he led the ordinary worldly life. × Narada : a wandering sage who goes about playing the vina . Immortal like the gods, he... lacked intelligence and discernment. That being could tell him anything and he would swallow it all. That's what prodded him on little by little. And that being would do that as a pastime, he didn't take life seriously. For those beings, people are very small things with which they play as a cat plays with a mouse, until the day when they eat them up.") I knew that being very well (for other reasons.... .. I have had a very close relationship with him and he Page 18 clearly expressed the will to come down on earth only with the supramental world. When the earth is ready for supramental life, he will come. And almost all those beings will manifest—they are waiting for that moment, they do not want the present struggle and darkness. And, certainly, Narada was among those who used to come ...
... the first one, the usual one, is through satisfaction (or rather what is called satisfaction, because there is no such thing as satisfaction in the domain of desire); this means leading the ordinary humananimal life, marriage, children and all the rest of it. There is, of course, another way, a better way,—control, mastery, transformation; this is more dignified and also more effective. Do you... sex? What roles should man and woman play in our new way of life? What shall be the relation between them? What should be the ideal of a woman’s physical beauty? Before answering your questions I wish to tell you something which you know no doubt, but which you must never forget if you wish to learn how to lead a wise life. It is true that we are, in our inner being, a spirit, a living... which we are obliged to be subjected and which we must allow to rule over us. Unfortunately this is what happens most often in life and men are certainly much more slaves than masters of their physical being. Yet it is the contrary that should be, for the truth of individual life is quite another thing. We have in us an intelligent will more or less enlightened which is the first instrument of our psychic ...
... imaginable. Outside, in their respective places of temporary sojourn, these students are exposed to many undesirable influences and they actively imbibe other value-systems which are current in ordinary worldly life but poles apart from the values which the Mother's vision of a new education wanted to instil in their growing consciousness. When they come back to the Ashram after this long break to resume... taken a bad turn because of the parents." (Ibid., p. 434) (4)"This seems indispensable to me. We should write a circular letter saying: 'Parents who want their children to be educated in the ordinary way and learn in order to get a good job, to earn their living and have brilliant careers, should not send them here.' We should... And that is very important." (Ibid.) (5)"...there... December and a demonstration of physical education activities the very next day, on the 2nd. Almost all the students stayed back in the Ashram during this period and there was no interruption in their life-style. And then things began to change, slowly and almost imperceptibly at first, but in later years more clearly. We mean to say that by and by the students of SAICE stopped participating in ...
... for his ordinary physical life, and so much mind and soul only is at play as will accord with its need. This is the real reason, looked at from the mechanical point of view, why the embodied soul seems so dependent on the bodily and nervous life,—though the dependence is neither so complete nor so real as it seems. The whole energy of the soul is not at play in the physical body and life, the secret... gives us control of all the five habitual operations of the vital energy in the system and at the same time breaks down the habitual divisions by which only the ordinary mechanical processes of the vitality are possible to the normal life. It opens entirely the six centres of the psycho-physical system and brings into the waking consciousness the power of the awakened Shakti and the light of the unveiled... physical enquiry. This mental or psychical body, which the soul keeps even after death, has also a subtle pranic force in it corresponding to its own subtle nature and substance,—for wherever there is life of any kind, there must be the pranic energy and a substance in which it can work,—and this force is directed through a system of numerous channels, called nāḍī ,—the subtle nervous organisation of ...
... School". Of course, there was no question of giving any "Certificates" to these tiny tots. As these children grew up in age and some of them decided to go away from the Ashram to lead an ordinary worldly life outside, the question arose whether they should be given some official certificate of recognition to enable them to pursue their higher education elsewhere. As the Mother had established her... And this disease is highly contagious, for even children are not immune to it. At an age when they should be dreaming of beauty, greatness and perfection, dreams that may be too sublime for ordinary common sense, but which are nevertheless far superior to this dull good sense, children now dream of money and worry about how to earn it. So when they think of their studies, they think above... To learn for the sake of knowledge, to study in order to know the secrets of Nature and life, to educate oneself in order to grow in consciousness, to discipline oneself in order to become master of oneself, to overcome one's weaknesses, incapacities and ignorance, to prepare oneself to advance in life towards a goal that is nobler and vaster, more generous and more true... they hardly give it ...
... is formed, if one wants to rise to a higher level and live a spiritual life, if one wants even to become simply Page 367 a higher type of man, the limitations of the ego are the worst obstacles, and the ego must be surpassed in order to enter the true consciousness. And indeed, for the ordinary elementary life of man, all the qualities belonging to the animal nature, especially those... everyone—except for those who are born free, and this is obviously very rare—for everyone this state of reason, of effort, desire, individualisation and solid physical balance in accordance with the ordinary mode of living is indispensable to begin with, until the time one becomes a conscious being, when one must give up all these things in order to become a spiritual being. Now, has anybody a question... one lives—as Sri Aurobindo explains later—in an Ananda which has no cause, which does not depend on any circumstances, inner or outer, which is a permanent state, independent of the circumstances of life, causeless. One is in Ananda because one is in Ananda. And in fact it is simply because one has become aware of the divine Reality. But one cannot feel the Ananda unless one has become desireless ...
... Alone are indeed grand and no Yoga can be complete without them, but as known and presented by the three arch-transcendentalists they cast on much of our life a blank of unfulfilment. Though they are grander than anything in ordinary human life, something in Nature weeps and weeps, the clinging clay of us feels torn, Mother Earth stands defeated and baulked. The hidden instinct of integral harmony... infinite Self beyond our narrow human selves and make no attempt to realise a divine dynamic to replace the dynamic that is human and discordant. At most there is some light reflected in the ordinary workings of the mind - a degree of intuition comes into play - but where is the divinisation of which we dream? The mind must be completely divinised after being stilled and a new faultless... never feel in ourselves that urge for perfection which is the mainspring of all our mental life. But. can mind realise wholly its archetype without the other parts of our being doing the same? No: if, as experience teaches us, we cannot rest finally in mind and, for the sake of a harmonious sense of life, grant matter a separate status, we must strive after an archetype of matter too. Here ...
... theatre. Secondly, his was the life-energy whose vibration created in our country a refined taste and a capacity for subtle experience. Through his influence a consciousness has awakened towards appreciation of beauty. Thirdly, the thing which is, in a way, of greater value is this that if there has been a gradual manifestation of order and beauty in our ordinary daily life, in dress and decoration, in... patriotic society has to foster all limbs of the collective life of the entire nation, to make it a united organism, to endow it with the beauty of forms and rhythm in action. So we say that the beautiful poetry and the poetry of beauty written by him are even surpassed by the beauty that he brought down into our life, particularly in the life of Bengal. The whole contribution of Rabindranath is not... your smile." Page 149 sounds. The poet wants to bring out the suggestiveness behind the significance of words, the incorporeal import comprised in the sentence otherwise framed in ordinary words. The poet says: His Face my eyes have not met, Nor have I heard his Voice. At each hush do I hear The sound of his footsteps. Further: He who is beyond the flight ...
... not a thought enter into the head of a bird? A new thought, a faith did enter into the heart of a human child as reported in the Upanishads, so this bird with his questioning thought found the ordinary bird-life quite uninteresting. He wondered: why lay so much stress upon food and sleep and quarelling and increasing the population? He found flying itself a beautiful Page 76 ... given to this new life they formed gradually a community by themselves and found for themselves another habitat nearby. Those old experts, Shobhanaka's group, the masters, were with them as teachers and guides. And thus new guides and new teachers arose and community after community leading this new life, a life in which the old and unclean habits were eliminated and there was a life of exquisite beauty... and fighting but that was part of the life. And there after, most of the time, they passed in dozing or sleeping or at times flying out once again to sea for a forage . And of course there was the item of mating and begetting children. That was their life and they continued it day after day, year after year. They were, I suppose, quite content with the life they were leading. Now, it happened ...
... and limited life-power which is all that Page 530 the body can bear or to which it can give scope. Moreover, the action of each and both in us is subject not only to the narrowest limitations, but to a constant impurity, which renews itself every time it is rectified, and to all sorts of disorders, some of which are normal, a violent order, part of our ordinary physical life, others abnormal... liability to fatigue; it acquires an immense power of health; its tendencies of decay, age and death are arrested. The Hathayogin even at an age advanced beyond the ordinary span maintains the unimpaired vigour, health and youth of the life in the body; even the appearance of physical youth is sustained for a longer time. He has a much greater power of longevity, and from his point of view, the body being... status and periphery of being with the Divine, sālokya , or in a sort of indivisible proximity, sāmīpya . This can only be gained by rising to a higher level and intensity of consciousness than our ordinary mentality possesses. Samadhi, as we have seen, offers itself as the natural status of such a higher level and greater intensity. It assumes naturally a great importance in the Yoga of knowledge, because ...
... create difficulties in his sadhana and not to make it easier for him or swifter. I have also told him quite clearly in my letter that the attempt at meeting and mixing with others—which in the ordinary human life is attempted by sociableness and other contacts—has to be realised in Yoga on another plane of consciousness and without the lower mixture—for a higher unity with all on a spiritual and psychic... letter of the morning came entirely from the disturbed and wounded vital; that was why I was in no hurry to answer. I do not know why you are so ready to believe that myself or the Mother act from ordinary movements of anger, vexation or displeasure; there was nothing of the kind in what I wrote. You had been repeatedly falling from your attained level of a higher consciousness and, in spite of our ...
... symbol of some larger and higher truth. In the works of Shakespeare we feel the touch of material life and enjoy the savour of earthly pleasure, the embrace of physical bodies with each other, as it were. But Valmiki deals with experiences and realities that exceed the bounds of ordinary earthly life. Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear are the highlights of Shakespearae's creation. Valmiki's heroes and... for we are already quite familiar with them in our life; whereas the character of Rama which is not at all complex can yet hardly be adequately measured. There is a mystic vastness behind the character which can never be classed with human traits. Indeed, Rama and Ravana both are two aspects of the same Infinite. Even the drama of their earthly life is not merely founded on human qualities. The East... teacher and legislator. The virtue of the Romans lay in virility and the spirit of conquest and effective organisation of life. And the virtue of Europe has combined in itself the aesthetic sense of Greece and the military and state spirit of Rome. In Europe they want to regulate life through codes, moral and legal. Forced by circumstances and for the sake of mutual interest they have set up a mode of ...
... knowledge. The spiritual life is alone the best and the only thing worth aspiring for. If this is the only truth then men will aspire for nothing except that which is helpful to the spiritual life. Men will keep aloof from whatever is an obstacle to it. Every branch of the ordinary knowledge should be made into a step towards the supreme knowledge. If there is any glory or beauty in the world then it belongs... of the two. The depiction of the company of a woman may be harmful to the spiritual life, but, from the standpoint of the creation of pure and simple joy, is there any hard and fast rule that its value should be low? The critic may say: "God alone is the repository of the complete joy. In the ordinary worldly life there is no lack of joy or beauty, but that joy or beauty is a portion or a shadow of... spiritual life in poetry, music, painting and sculpture. We want to do away with mundane art and have the art that helps to acquaint us with God. We want to turn our eyes from the art that depicts the lower propensities of our nature and like to gaze at the one that gives us a higher, nobler and purer inspiration. The spiritual knowledge is the supreme knowledge, and the rest is the ordinary knowledge ...
... direct and concrete poetic observation of ordinary human life and character. There is no preoccupying idea, no ulterior design; life, the external figure and surface of things is reflected as near as possible to its native form in the individual mind and temperament of the poet. Chaucer has his eye fixed on the object, and that object is the visible action of life as it passes before him throwing its figures... the joy and passion and pain, the colour and music of Life, in which the external presentation of life and things was taken up, but heightened, exceeded and given its full dynamic and imaginative content. From that it turned to an attempt at mastering the secret of the Latins, the secret of a clear, measured and intellectual dealing with life, things and ideas. Then came an attempt, a brilliant and... beginning. Others also started with a poetry of external life, Greek with the poetry of Homer, Latin with the historical epic of Ennius, French with the feudal romances of the Charlemagne cycle and the Arthurian cycle. But in none of these was the artistic aim simply the observant accurate presentation of Greek or Roman or feudal life. Homer gives us the life of man always at a high intensity of impulse and ...
... can look for guidance and for the uplifting of its whole life towards the Divine. The Western recoil from religion, that minimising of its claim and insistence by which Europe progressed from the mediaeval religious attitude through the Renascence and the Reformation to the modern rationalistic attitude, that making of the ordinary earthly life our one preoccupation, that labour Page 179 ... earthly life, different from it, hostile to it. It seems to condemn the pursuit of earthly aims as a trend opposed to the turn to a spiritual life and the hopes of man on earth as an illusion or a vanity incompatible with the hope of man in heaven. The spirit then becomes something aloof which man can only reach by throwing away the life of his lower members. Either he must abandon this nether life after... and imperfect appearances of things. To make all life religion and to govern all activities by the religious idea would seem to be the right way to the development of the ideal individual and ideal society and the lifting of the whole life of man into the Divine. A certain pre-eminence of religion, the overshadowing or at least the colouring of life, an overtopping of all the other instincts and ...
... of the ordinary human life ! What a poignant and illuminating contrast the life of a Buddha or a Christ or a Ramakrishna presents to the life of a Napoleon or a Bacon, a Voltaire or a Schopenhauer ? An untroubled peace and tranquillity, a calm and comprehensive vision of the Truth and its manifold working, and a steady, silent, impersonal will fulfilling itself in the movements of life, is an... painful school of ordinary existence fashioned entirely from struggle and suffering ”¹ Not one among those countless men who have turned to the Divine has ever had to complain that his life has been robbed of its joy and freedom. Can it be said of those who make material pursuits and the satisfaction of their desires the end of their life ? What a contrast the God-filled life presents to the harsh... The Absolute—the Life of Life This Absolute is the Life of all life. It is life's ultimate Truth, its unity and harmony, its force, its beauty and its bliss. We call it God or the Divine, whom we seem to have lost in the wilderness of the sense-objects—the Divine whom we seek in all our obscure and groping endeavours, and aspire to realise and reveal here in our material life. Even the atheist ...
... mean children! उर्वशीः may mean either wide being, wide possession, wide enjoyment or wide desire or even desire of wideness; but the चिद् .. चिद् shows that a contrast is intended between the ordinary mortal life & the higher existence; human enjoyment in its widest largeness & an increased divine & bliss are possessed in harmony by the siddha. अर्यः, अरिः always suggests the high tapasya of the seeker... mastered enjoying the Truth. चकृम. Sy. interprets त्वामुपपादयामः. This is possible, but there is no त्वाम्. भुरिजोः. बिभृतः कर्मकरणसामर्थ्यं पदार्थान्वेति भूरिजौ बाहू. I take भुर् here in the ordinary sense we have in भुरण्युः etc & suppose it to be equivalent to भूमि, अवनि, but especially applied to the रोदसी, heaven & earth, mind & body. ऋतं Sy. takes = सत्यभूतं त्वाम्. This is possible in grammar... the Cow, thou didst behold, O forceful god, the births of the gods in front of thee; they both fulfilled the wide enjoyments of mortals and were strong in high activity for the increase of the higher life. अख्यद् Sy. takes इन्द्रोऽख्यत्, reading in Indra from the last line. It is just possible, but very forced. Agni is the jatavedas, it Page 651 is Agni who is addressed in उग्र. अरव्यद् ...
... Yoga is needed — a profound meditative passage to the in-world and the over-world, a passage of stillness in which poetry is left behind. Yes, we have to still everything that we know in our ordinary waking life, the to-and-fro of the consciousness has to end. One-pointed, we have to shoot ourselves into the Eternal as into a target — arrows of silence speeding to the Unseen. But two queries arise:... of all speech? and second, is our procedure due to the defect of poetry or to our inability to get from poetry its full substance of heavenward help? Without depreciating the need of silencing our ordinary consciousness and leaving poetry behind, we can affirm that the Unseen is not incompatible with every kind of speech: it is speech that is not mantric that has to be abandoned as helpless after a... a poet as a poet. Shakespeare's After life's fitful fever he sleeps well which has no definite spiritual significance is not less high poetry than a mystical phrase like Frederic Myers's Leap from the universe and plunge in Thee. Nor is the poetry of either of these lines less high than Sri Aurobindo's Life that meets the Eternal with close breast, ...
... separation etc., but that one is living in quite another world than that of the ordinary mind, life or senses. It is another consciousness with another knowledge and way of looking at things that begins. Afterwards as this consciousness takes possession of the instruments, there is a harmony of it with the sense and life; but these too become different, with a changed outlook, seeing the world no more... likes. The Divine is not bound by human philosophies—it is free in its play and free in its essence. One has to get above the cosmic consciousness of the mind, life and matter by entering into the spiritual levels above the ordinary mind, into the higher consciousness. This does not cut one off from the cosmic consciousness, but one sees it without being involved in it. It [ the correspondent's... nature. 3) The ordinary consciousness is that in which one knows things only or mainly by the intellect, the external mind and the senses and knows forces etc. only by their outward manifestations and results and the rest by inferences from these data. There may be some play of mental intuition, deeper psychic seeing or impulsions, spiritual intimations etc.—but in the ordinary Page 272 ...
... and nervous impact and physical indication; it conceives too a mental figure of unity, and in its activity and its will it can create and possess more directly—not only indirectly as in the ordinary physical life—and in other minds and lives as well as its own. But still even this pure mentality does not escape from the original error of mind. For it is still its separate mental self which it makes... out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer. Even with what exists only as obvious parts and fractions, Mind establishes this fiction of its ordinary commerce that they are things with which it can deal separately and not merely as aspects of a whole. For, even when it knows that they are not things in themselves, it is obliged to deal with them... Universe The Life Divine Chapter XVIII Mind and Supermind He discovered that Mind was the Brahman. Taittiriya Upanishad. (III. 4.) Indivisible, but as if divided in beings. Gita. (XIII. 17.) The conception which we have so far been striving to form is that of the essence only of the supramental life which the divine ...
... vanities of ordinary worldly life and our self-absorption in the fugitive pleasures and satisfactions that our brief existence upon earth can offer us, prevent us from feeling their utter relativity and transitoriness and in the same measure pull us back from the Divine who is All-Love, All-Light, All-Joy and All-Mastery. The more we loosen our love and attachment for the things of the ordinary world... time turned to the Divine, will it not interfere with our active life? Or is it intended that a true God-lover should curtail his activities as much as practicable and pass most of his time in an indrawn state? No, surely that cannot be the avowed purpose of the Integral Yoga. One has to live a normal and effective life devoted to the service of the Divine, bat being all the time inwardly... the Divine; even under the harrowing blows of life, but can actually see the auspicious hand of the Divine Mother behind all the misfortunes that may visit him. He will realise not in mere intellectual belief but in concrete experience that in God's Providence there is no real evil; there is only good or preparation for good. Thus, in life's weal or woe, in sunshine or in cloudy darkness ...
... chapters of The Life Divine, she fastened upon Sri Aurobindo's reference to the veil of Inconscience, the veil of insensibility, that hides the universal Consciousness-Force which works within Matter, and on this text she built her own sermon on the Reality at the heart of Matter: When you pick up a stone and look at it with your ordinary eyes and consciousness, you say, "It has no life, no consciousness... As the Mother sees it, 27 everything here, everything outward, is artificial, misleading, false; '"none of the values of the ordinary physical life is based upon truth". Dress, food, speech, exertion, reward, all are governed by falsity and artificiality. The accidents of birth and circumstance largely determine earthly 'success'. Thus a man with the soul of a saint may have to labour like a... remains human and finally decomposes. 11 This was to be amplified later in another talk: Earthly life is the place of progress. It is here, on earth, that progress is possible, during the period of earthly existence. And it is the psychic which carries the progress over from one life to another, by organising its own evolution and development itself. 12 These are succinct accounts of ...
... forces and their working out as if they were independent truths and this is a process that ends, as one descends to ordinary Mind, Life and Matter, in a complete division, fragmentation, separation from the indivisible Truth above,’ 8 writes Sri Aurobindo in a letter. In The Life Divine he says about the Gods and the Overmind: ‘If we regard the Powers of the Reality as so many Godheads, we can... surprising discoveries in the study of the life and work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that another Avatar, Shri Krishna, was present and embodied on Earth from 1926 to 1950 in the body, in the adhara of Sri Aurobindo. In Champaklal Speaks, a book in which Champaklal, the faithful disciple and great yogi who served Sri Aurobindo and the Mother all his life, narrates his experiences, he says the... went inside. Immediately Datta was inspired. In that silence she spoke: “The Lord has descended into the physical today”.’ And Purani goes on naming all twenty-four disciples present. (A.B. Purani, Life of Sri Aurobindo, p. 125 ff.) There are different versions of Datta’s words. Rajani Palit writes: ‘Now Datta came out, inspired, and declared: “The Master has conquered death, decay, hunger and ...
... supramental Power that transforms mind, life and body—not the Sachchidananda consciousness which supports impartially everything. But it is by having experience of the Sachchidananda, pure existence-consciousness-bliss, that the ascent to the supramental and the descent of the supramental become (at a much later stage) possible. For first one must get free from the ordinary limitation by the mental, vital... Truth, it is here that begins the separation of aspects of the Truth, the forces and their working out as if they were independent truths and this is a process that ends, as one descends to ordinary Mind, Life and Matter, in a complete division, fragmentation, separation from the indivisible Truth above. There is no longer the essential, total, perfectly harmonising and unifying knowledge, or rather... exceeding and containing it. Till then there may be direct contacts, communications, interchanges with cosmic forces, beings, movements, but not the full unity of mind with the cosmic Mind, of life with the cosmic Life, of body and physical consciousness with the cosmic material Energy and its substance. Again there may be a realisation of the Cosmic Self which is not followed by the realisation of the dynamic ...
... Mind predominates. Everything proceeds from mind. Naturally, this concerns the physical life, there is no question of the universe. If a man speaks or acts with an evil mind, suffering follows him as the wheel follows the hoof of the bullock that pulls the cart. That is to say, ordinary human life, such as it is in the present world, is ruled by the mind; therefore the most important thing... have spoken of. The first is: to observe one's mind. Do not believe that it is such an easy thing, for to observe your thoughts, you must first of all separate yourself from them. In the ordinary state, the ordinary man does not distinguish himself from his thoughts. He does not even know that he thinks. He thinks by habit. And if he is asked all of a sudden, "What are you thinking of?", he knows nothing... air you breathe is full of happiness. And this is the air that you breathe, in your body and out of your body, in the waking state and in the state of sleep, in life and in the passage beyond life, outside earthly life until your new life. Every wrong action produces on the consciousness the effect of a wind that withers, of a cold that freezes or of burning flames that consume. Every good and ...
... to learn French? Are you preparing them for giving lectures or opening centres in France or French-speaking countries? Are life and mind to be governed by material utility or outward practicality? Spiritual life would then be inferior even to ordinary mental life where people learn for the sake of acquiring knowledge and culturing the mind and not only for the sake of some outward utility. ... well-known phenomenon, not due to something wrong in the spinal chord. What is unusual in your case, is the absolute helplessness of your will in the face of this Page 55 very ordinary phenomenon. If that is due to the spinal chord, it is another matter, but the real cause there too is psychological. The mechanical and subconscient minds are stirred up by the inertia... true Yoga and what should be followed in the Ashram? But then there is no need for an Ashram. A cave somewhere for each will do. Why do you use a fountain pen? You can very well go on with an ordinary one. Why do you take these cahiers [notebooks] from the stores? Cheap papers would do. Why do you write? The mind should be passive. If by passivity of the mind you mean laziness and inability ...
... outset the essential requisites for the successful completion of the pilgrimage; for the path of sadhana is much more difficult, much more beset with difficulties and dangers than an ordinary journey in the outer life. Without these requisites supporting him all along the Way, the spiritual pilgrim will quite often fall into the pit of deep psychological confusion and depression; nay, he may even cut... and to going astray. Otherwise three types of tragedies may easily befall him on the Path. These are: (A)He may slacken down his spiritual effort and be quite content with leading an ordinary worldly life taking care, of course, to clothe it outwardly with a conventional religio-spiritual garb. (B)The sadhaka may get sidetracked and, after forgetting his real goal which is the attainment... Aurobindo reminded the sadhakas of the Integral Path? "Life is the field of a divine manifestation not yet complete: here, in life, on earth, in the body ... we have to unveil the Godhead; here we must make its transcendent greatness, light and sweetness real to our consciousness, here possess and, as far as may be, express it. Life then we must accept in our Yoga in order utterly to transmute ...
... another soul,— it is to be seen definitely and clearly whether that soul or individual being has his potentialities, capacities, tendencies turned towards the higher or towards the lower or ordinary common life. Those who are not sadhakas generally move either lower and lower in the scales of existence or turn in the one plane in which they live in wider and wider circles or vegetate at one point... beauty of life, Beauty thinking in meditation is beauty of thought— The Spirit of beauty is thus standing, moving and thinking from the far off beyonds. II Man first sought for the beautiful in the body of creation draped in all forms. She was too unmoving for him and was standing wondrous and elusive. Then defeated in his quest he sought for her in the quick life of all... in the plant world — the fading of flowers, the withering leaves, and the blasting away of fields of corn; a general death reigns behind this life. The law of the God in His all-absorbing meditation is too powerful for the individual plant to persist in the life-course. Still a collective rhythm of the sense-world continues in its course and is the parent of the rhythm of the sense-mind. The sense ...
... is something quite superficial, an instrument of the Spirit for the play of life. Those who live and act in the normal consciousness are governed entirely by the common movements of the mind and are naturally subject to grief and joy and anxiety and desire or to everything else that makes up the ordinary stuff of life. Mental quiet and happiness they can get, but it can never be permanent or secure... power to govern the outer work and action; if it is happiness, he enters into a beatitude far greater than any joy or happiness that the ordinary human life can give. Supplement, pp. 415-16 The ordinary consciousness is that in which one knows things only or mainly by the intellect, the external mind and the senses and knows forces etc. only by their outward manifestations and results... cord which binds it to the consciousness of life, and the body is left, maintained indeed in its set position, not dead by dissolution, but incapable of Page 212 recovering the ensouled life which had inhabited it. Finally, the Yogin acquires at a certain stage of development the power of abandoning his body definitively without the ordinary phenomena of death, by an act of will, 1 ...
... the inner being have three corresponding parts — mental, vital, physical. Thus "There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self." 6 Figure 1. The Concentric System The vertical... processive or creative energy of the sākṣī. 26 In our ordinary consciousness we are unable to distinguish our true self, the Purusha, from the Nature side of our being, Prakriti, because Purusha is identified with Prakriti. In the state of identification, the Self is bound and governed by its instrumental nature — body, life and mind. If the Purusha in us is passive and allows Nature... for a few dreams. 39 During the waking state, the mind lives largely in impressions rising up from the subconscient. In ordinary sleep most dreams are formations made from subconscient impressions. Thus, in most human beings, the outer self of mind, life and body is to a great extent an instrument of the upsurging irrational, mechanical and repetitive movements of the subconscious during ...
... Truth, it is here that begins the separation of aspects of the Truth, the forces and their working out as if they were independent truths and this is a process that ends, as one descends to ordinary Mind, Life and Matter, in a complete division, fragmentation, separation from the indivisible Truth above. There is no longer the essential, total, perfectly harmonising and unifying knowledge, or rather... period of Sri Aurobindo’s life? If even before the day of siddhi his life was not on the surface for men to see', what could one hope to say about these years when his concentration on the inner life was much more complete? But to say nothing about this span of twenty-four years would be to leave a considerable gap. We will therefore give here a summary account of the life of Sri Aurobindo from 1927... Life of Sri Aurobindo PART THREE CHAPTER X Pondicherry: 1927-1950 Note A. B. Purani's Life of Sri Aurobindo ends with his account of the descent of 24 November 1926 and, in fact the external life of Sri Aurobindo, of which his book is a record, can be said to have ended at this point. As Purani has written in the introduction to ...
... the power of abandoning his body definitively without the ordinary phenomena of death, by an act of will — icchā mrṭyu or by a process of withdrawing the pr ā nic life-force through the gate of the upward life current — ud ā na, opening for it a way through the mystic centre in the head, brahmarandhra. By departing from life in the state of Sam ā dhi, one attains directly to that... consequence that only such powers and only so much of them are active in him as is sufficient for his ordinary physical life, and so much mind and soul only is at play as will accord with its needs. This is the reason why the whole energy of the soul does not seem to be at play in the physical body and life, and the secret powers of the mind are not awake in it. But it is recognised that all the while supreme... ā kamy ā also relates to senses, where it is the power of perceiving smells, tastes, lights, colours and other objects of senses which are neither at all available to ordinary persons or beyond the range from one's own ordinary senses. It is important to note that yogic science gives warning that these powers can only be entirely acquired or safely used when one has got rid of egoism and identified ...
... can't always be holding back people whose vital says, "I want to go, I want to go," and they side with the vital. They are allowed to go and take their risk. If one leads the ordinary vital life, there can be no spiritual struggles - only vital troubles. Page 246 He was always on the point of going. He wanted to be immediately rid of all imperfections and... psychic and spiritual purpose. In some Ashrams the disciples make too much of their Gurus. If the Gurus are just ordinary siddhas they insist on calling them Bhagavans [God incarnated], while here you and the Mother are brought down to such an ordinary level. How unintelligent must be our bright intellect! Perhaps it is too brilliant to see the Truth. Darshan... staying here he was moved always to do sadhana and sadhana had come for him to mean this occultism. He could not get back to the right track without getting back to the normal mind and living in the ordinary consciousness so as to begin with a blank page. This he failed to do here. It is not for vital satisfaction that he goes, but to get out of this wrong groove. The Ashram ...
... the most ordinary and external actions, such as eating; when you eat you must feel that it is the Divine who is eating through you. When you can thus gather all your movements into the One Life, then you have in you unity instead of division. No longer is one part of your nature given to the Divine, while the rest remains in its ordinary ways, engrossed in ordinary things; your entire life is taken... karmakṛt, in the liberated individual who enjoys immortality "by birth" and works in this terrestrial existence. The end of human life is not flight or extinction, but immortality in creative delight. V Immensely more than the ordinary worldly life, the spiritual life is a battlefield, where each inch of ground has to be won by hard fight, and it is always—except at a very advanced stage—a... being, demands of us, should be undertaken and accomplished in the spirit of a joyous sacrifice. So long as we have not attained to some kind of union with the Divine, so long as we live in the ordinary consciousness, "nothing should...be treated lightly, with indifference; the smallest circumstances, the smallest acts have a great importance and should be seriously considered; for we should at ...
... Intercepting the free boon of heaven's air, Admits small inrushes of a mightily breath Or fragrant circuits through gold lattices. 23 Here Sri Aurobindo points out how the ordinary mortal life admits heaven's boon in small measures and cannot bear to be dazzled by its deathless suns. It hides inside the protection of cool and dark interiors. The ritual of Yajna is rendered through... power of receptivity: Perhaps they have even something resembling sensitivity. For instance, if you have a precious stone—precious stones of course have a much more perfect structure than ordinary ones, and with perfection consciousness increases—but if you take a precious stone, you can charge it with consciousness and force; you can put, accumulate force within it. 1 These words... of diamond light 73 It bring association of diamond with light, with will, with divine law, with vision which have their original source in the Divine. No hostile force can counter it, no ordinary man can challenge it. Satyavan is privileged enough to receive this all-penetrative light but when he wakes from this trance he has to grapple with a twilit reality around him. During the ...
... at home; singing, music, dancing and to some extent painting were the ordinary accomplishments, general knowledge of morality, Scripture and tradition was imperative, and sometimes the girls of highborn, wealthy or learned families received special instruction in philosophy or mathematics. Some indeed seem to have pursued a life of philosophic learning either as virgins or widows; but such instances... sphere of woman is in the home and her life incomplete unless merged in her husband's. In any case the majority of the kulabadhus, women of respectable families, could hardly Page 217 be more than amateurs in the arts & sciences, whereas with the Hetairae (Gunicas) such accomplishments were pursued and mastered as a profession. Hence beside their ordinary occupation of singing & dancing in... defence against the former is usually though by no means invariably open warfare, against the latter sensuous seduction. He tempts the mind of the philosopher to sacrifice that aloofness from ordinary sensuous life & its average delights on which his perfect effectiveness depends; or if he cannot succeed in this, to move him to an angry and abhorrent recoil from sensuousness which is equally fatal to ...
... alternative penalty shall I propose to you, gentlemen? Obviously it must be adequate. Well, what penalty do I deserve to pay or suffer, in view of what I have done? I have never lived an ordinary quiet life. I did not care for the things that most people care about: making money, having Page 73 a comfortable home, high military or civil rank, and all the other activities political... say "But what is it that you do, Socrates? How is it that you have been misrepresented like this? Surely all this talk and gossip about you would never have arisen if you had confined yourself to ordinary activities, but only if your behaviour was abnormal. Tell us the explanation, if you do not want us to invent it for ourselves." This seems to me to be a reasonable request, and I will try to explain... dissuades me from what I am proposing to do, and never urges me on. It is this that debars me from entering public life, and a very good thing too, in my opinion; because you may be quite sure, gentlemen, that if I had tried long ago to engage in politics, I should long ago have lost my life, Without doing any good either to you or to myself. Please do not be offended if I tell you the truth. No man on ...
... alternative penalty shall I propose to you, gentlemen? Obviously it must be adequate. Well, what penalty do I deserve to pay or suffer, in view of what I have done? I have never lived an ordinary quiet life. I did not care for the things that most people care about: making money, having a comfortable home, high military or civil rank, and all the other activities — political appointments, secret... Socrates taught that the great problem of any human being lies in the question of how to live his life. Endowed with rationality, each man must decide what course his life shall take. Although mankind's common aim is a "good life" (eu-zen), there is no common agreement on what a "good life" is, or how to reach it. Socrates' answer to this question lies in the Greek term arete, which is usually... that you do, Socrates? How is it that you have been misrepresented like this? Surely all this talk and gossip about you would never have arisen if you had confined yourself to Page 67 ordinary activities, but only if your behaviour was abnormal. Tell us the explanation, if you do not want us to invent it for ourselves." This seems to me to be a reasonable request, and I will try to explain ...
... discover the secret of action & rebirth if we look at the actual facts of material life & then at the Vedantic explanation of our conscious existence. We have, to start with, this fundamental divergence already noted between ordinary psychology & the psychology of Vedanta,—the former recognising only three principles, Mind, Life and Matter, or adding at most a fourth, Soul or Spirit, while the latter, with... and easily avoidable accident, receives all its value from the possibilities surrounding the actual event, the possibilities of escape from fate, reconciliation & for these tragic lovers the life of an ordinary conjugal happiness. These unrealised possibilities & the secret inevitability—of Spirit, not of matter,—which prevents their realisation, which takes advantage of every trivial accident and makes... force that we can come to know the real nature of the force itself & the rule of its obvious & ordinary action. It is not through the leap of the lightning, but through the study of the electric wire & the action of the wireless current that we get near to the true nature & the fixed laws of electricity. As life is obscure & imperfect in the plant & metal & its full character only eventually appears in ...
... creating for it its native atmosphere that has expressed itself in the past in the formation of the monastic life or in attempts of various kinds at a new separate collective living self-governed and other in its spiritual principle than the ordinary human life. The monastic life is in its nature an association of other-worldly seekers, men whose whole attempt is to find and realise in themselves the... sinks from the shining height of its aspiration to something mixed and inferior on the ordinary human level. A common spiritual life meant to express the spiritual and not the mental, vital and physical being must found and maintain itself on greater values than the mental, vital, physical values of the ordinary human society; if it is not so founded, it will be merely the normal human society with... small and close common life, these might assume a considerably enhanced force of obstruction which would tend to counterbalance the enhanced power and concentration of the forces making for the evolution. This is a difficulty that has broken in the past all the efforts of mental man to evolve something better and more true and harmonious than the ordinary mental and vital life. But if Nature is ready ...
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