... imperfect intimations. And even these come not from the outer consciousness but from what is within us. There are two mutually complementary movements; in one the inner being comes to the front and impresses its own normal motions on the outer consciousness to which they are unusual and abnormal; the other is to draw back from the outer consciousness, to go inside into the inner planes, enter the world... inner and outer consciousness has to be removed, it is only then that a real Yogic consciousness begins. The outer has to be merely an instrument or channel for the inner to express itself and communicate with the outer physical world. The inner again has to have free communication with the universal on all the planes—it has to enter into the cosmic consciousness. The outer consciousness has to be... nature. But for that one must have experiences in the inner nature and through these the power of the inner nature grows till it can influence wholly and possess the outer being. To change the outer consciousness entirely without developing this inner consciousness would be too difficult. That is why these inner experiences are going on to prepare the growth of the inner consciousness. There is an inner ...
... but it is reserved for us two. To you it is rather the road that this indicated. And this road is very different from what you expected in your outer consciousness. I wouldn't know how to express it. You would not understand me in your outer consciousness. Your inner being knows : it almost told me sometime ago something very similar. That must become conscious. You are on the eve of something. Don't... During my meditation this evening, all the work was in the outer consciousness. A peaceful and calm light descended which filled all the upper part of the body, without it being possible to tell exactly whence it emanated. And a work of calming went on in the outer mind. The lowest centre was also active —in short, the entire outer consciousness. In this case I make no effort to concentrate within myself... develop. Saturday, October 16, 1926 I feel the working of two forces. One goes straight to the psychic centre and remains there.... The other comes from above and permeates the outer consciousness, the mind first then the vital. The first is more inner, but calls the second one into action. THESE are two workings of the force. I have difficulties in keeping my mind concentrated ...
... do not mean that it is not at the centre of their being, but that their outer consciousness is so small, so limited, so obscure that it is not able to keep a contact, not only conscious but intimate, with the psychic being which extends beyond it in every way; it is so much higher and deeper than the other outer consciousness that there is no relation either of quality or of nature between them. Religions... psychic being is an entity which has a form; it is organised around a central consciousness and, having a form it has a dimension, but a dimension of another kind than the third dimension of the outer consciousness. The Mother Questions and Answers (1950 - 1951): 24 February 1951 The physical heart is in the left side, but the heart centre of yoga is in the middle of the chest—the cardiac centre... will, sincerity and perseverance. Even a fleeting idea in a child, at a certain moment in its childhood when the psychic being is most in front, if it succeeds in penetrating through the outer consciousness and giving the child just an impression of something beautiful which must be realised, it creates a little nucleus and upon this you build your action. There is a vast mass of humanity to whom ...
... The outer consciousness is shut up in the body limitation and in the little bit of personal mind and sense dependent on the body—it sees only the outward, sees only things. But the inner consciousness can see behind the thing, it is 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... whatever is necessary to do. This is part of the Yogic consciousness and to have it means a very real and considerable advance on the path of Yoga. You have been accustomed to feel your outer consciousness as if it were yourself and so, when you are in your inner realisation, you feel as if you were not in this old accustomed self. As you grow in the sadhana, you must learn to live in this inner... Mother. I was speaking of the inner mental, inner vital, inner physical; in order to reach the hidden seat of the psychic one has first to pass through these things. When one leaves the outer consciousness and goes inside, it is here that one enters—some or most entering into the inner vital first, others into the inner mental or inner physical; the emotional vital is the most direct road, for ...
... Because during the pranam I reestablished the contact between your ordinary consciousness and the psychic consciousness. The extreme sweetness of the psychic consciousness always makes the outer consciousness weep with emotion. 21 September 1934 For a long time I have been aspiring with all my heart, Mother, for You to grant me Your love and peace. My love and peace are always with you—it... to be in my heart; why aren't You there any more? Because I am blind, I do not see You: silence, silence, peace. Yes, you are right; I am always there in your heart, but something in your outer consciousness is too active and makes too much noise for you to be aware of this presence. It is only in silence and calm that you can become aware of it. 25 September 1935 Why doesn't X want to... heavy. 14 September 1936 Your presence has become rather cold, and for some time I haven't been feeling the happiness and peace. This shows that something has happened in me. The outer consciousness finds it difficult to keep the fire of aspiration burning always with the same intensity. But with your will you must watch over the purifying fire and revive it when it fails. 14 September ...
... had been done. I questioned whether this was possible so long as the inertia was so strong. Usually the full stabilising can only come if the inner being is separate from the outer consciousness, otherwise the outer consciousness is sure to pull the central down. I aspire also for the inner being to bring down the Mother's Force not merely to guide the actions of the outer being but to... can act without even a call from below and in spite of the pervading inertia. If the inner being once becomes separate, then inertia need not interfere at all with such states. The outer consciousness is up to now stronger than the inner in you, more normal still, so it happens like that, inertia interfering and stopping these states. When the inner being once thoroughly establishes... being calls me within. When I accept it the outer being tries its best to keep me on the surface. Then a tug-of-war takes place! That is because you are accustomed to submit to your outer consciousness and not live within in your inner consciousness. If one lives within, then it is the inner consciousness that one depends on, not the outer. The inner consciousness can then always go on independent ...
... world as we see it and our outer consciousness are the result of something which is behind, which Sri Aurobindo calls the subliminal. And this itself, as he says, is set in motion by impulses which come from the subconscient below and the superconscient above, and so it is as though it were assembled there, and once it is organised there it is expressed in the outer consciousness, the ordinary consciousness... Planes and Parts of the Being Our Many Selves The Subliminal - The Inner Being There is an inner as well as an outer consciousness all through our being, upon all its levels. The ordinary man is aware only of his surface self and quite unaware of all that is concealed by the surface. And yet what is on the surface, what we know or think we know of ourselves... dreams in the subliminal. The Mother Questions and Answers (1955): 6 April 1955 It is not necessarily more enlightened, more balanced—no. It is more subtle, it is less dull than our outer consciousness. Our external consciousness is so dull, it has no depth; as our outer understanding has no depth, our sensations have no depth; all this is something as though flat. So here it is fuller, but ...
... do not mean that it is not at the centre of their being, but that their outer consciousness is so small, so limited, so obscure that it is not able to keep a contact, not only conscious but intimate, with the psychic being which extends beyond it in every way; it is so much higher and deeper than the other outer consciousness that there is no relation either of quality or of nature between them. Religions... own will that organises their whole life, that puts them in the required condition, that attracts favourable circumstances or people, that arranges everything outside them, so to say. In their outer consciousness, perhaps they wanted something and worked for it, but something else came. Well, after some years, they realise that this is what really had to happen. You may know nothing of the existence of... psychic being is an entity which has a form; it is organised around a central consciousness and, having a form it has a dimension, but a dimension of another kind than the third dimension of the outer consciousness. 10 — The Mother The psychic being is the representative of the Divine in the human being. That's it, you see — the Divine is not something remote and inaccessible. The Divine is in ...
... these come not from the outer consciousness but from what is within us. In your former experiences the inner being had come to the front and for the time being impressed its own normal motions on the outer consciousness to which they are unusual and abnormal. But in this meditation what you did was,—for the first time, I believe,—to draw back from the outer consciousness, to go inside into the inner... good luck you may expect it on Friday or Saturday at the latest. September 4,1931 I have said already that your experience was, in essence the piercing of the veil between the outer consciousness and the inner being. This is one of the crucial movements in Yoga. For Yoga means union with the Divine, but it also means awaking first to your inner self and then to your higher self,—a movement ...
... Contact with the Psychic Being (All passages in this Section have been extracted from the works of the Mother.) Usually is it [the psychic] veiled? It is the outer consciousness that is not in contact with it, for it is turned outwards instead of being turned inwards — for it lives amidst all the external noises and movements, in what it sees, what it does, what it says... Because during the pranam I reestablished the contact between your ordinary consciousness and the psychic consciousness. The extreme sweetness of the psychic consciousness always makes the outer consciousness weep with emotion. 61 * Page 56 I have known people who were extremely stupid, truly stupid; well, these people succeeded through aspiration — an aspiration which... be a physical memory if there were one, in any case of all the intellectual and emotional elements of life, and of some physical events when it was possible for this being to manifest in the outer consciousness; then, at these moments, the whole set of physical circumstances in which one was is kept absolutely intact in the consciousness. 69 * And the moment you are in your psychic being ...
... world as we see it and our outer consciousness are the result of something which is behind, which Sri Aurobindo calls the subliminal. And this itself, as he says, is set in motion by impulses which come from the subconscient below and the superconscient above, and so it is as though it were assembled there, and once it is organised there it is expressed in the outer consciousness, the ordinary consciousness... but not necessarily, not always; it depends on the degree of development of the being. It is not necessarily more enlightened, more balanced—no. It is more subtle, it is less dull than our outer consciousness. Our external consciousness is so dull, it has no depth; as our outer understanding has no depth, our sensations have no depth; all this is something as though flat. So here it is fuller, but... speaking or thinking or reflecting on something—a second layer which is behind, much vaster, in which things are organised much more synthetically (not positively understandable) than in the outer consciousness. If one reflects just a little and looks at oneself thinking, one can see this at the back very well, one can see the two things moving together like this ( gesture )... like the formulated thought ...
... do not mean that it is not at the centre of their being, but that their outer consciousness is so small, so limited, so obscure that it is not able to keep a contact, not only conscious but intimate, with the psychic being which extends beyond it in every way; it is so much higher and deeper than the other outer consciousness that there is no relation either of quality or of nature between them. Religions... psychic being is an entity which has a form; it is organised around a central consciousness and, having a form it has a dimension, but a dimension of another kind than the third dimension of the outer consciousness. It is often said that children enter into possession of their psychic being when they are about seven. What does this mean exactly? This is not correct. There are people whose psychic ...
... original sources; there is finally the transmitting outer consciousness of the poet. The most genuine and perfect poetry is written when the original source is able to throw its inspiration pure and undiminished into the vital and there takes its true native form and power of speech exactly reproducing the inspiration, while the outer consciousness is entirely passive and transmits without alteration... and give too much of their own initiation or a translation into more or less turbid vital stuff, the poetry remains powerful but is inferior in quality and less authentic. Finally, if the outer consciousness is too lethargic and blocks the transmission or too active and makes its own version, then you have the poetry that fails or is at best a creditable mental manufacture. It is the interference ...
... A Greater Psychology 3 The Surface Being and the Inner Being The very first step in getting out of the ignorance is to accept the fact that this outer consciousness is not one's soul, not oneself, not the real person, but only a temporary formation on the surface for the purposes of the surface play. The soul, the person is within, not on the surface —... rises successfully to the surface of our life. To know our inner being is the first step towards a real self-knowledge. The Life Divine, pp. 555-57 There is an inner as well as an outer consciousness all through our being, upon all its levels. The ordinary man is aware only of his surface self and quite unaware of all that is concealed by the surface. And yet what is on the surface, what... inner one and the outer which has to be changed into its counterpart and instrument — that also must become full of peace, light, union with the Divine. Letters on Yoga, p. 307 The outer consciousness is shut up in the body limitations and in the little bit of personal mind and sense dependent on the body — it sees only the outward, sees only things. But the inner consciousness can see behind ...
... in it. Page 341 The Inner Being (The Subliminal) Behind the outer being is the inner being, also called the subliminal self. There is an inner as well as an outer consciousness all through our being, upon all its levels. The ordinary man is aware only of his surface self and quite unaware of all that is concealed by the surface. And yet what is on the surface... being — is discovered. The "I" or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and the formation has to disappear — the true being is felt in its place. 34 This persistent soul... unconscious. The material body is very much under the influence of this power for the same reason; it is why we are not conscious of what is going on in the body, for the most part. The outer consciousness goes down into this subconscient when we are asleep, and so it becomes unaware Page 350 of what is going on in us when we are asleep except for a few dreams. 39 ...
... original sources; there is finally the transmitting outer consciousness of the poet. The most genuine and perfect poetry is written when the original source is able to throw its inspiration pure and undiminished into the vital and there takes its true native form and power of speech exactly reproducing the inspiration, while the outer consciousness is entirely passive and transmits without alteration... active and give too much of their own initiation or a translation into more or less turbid vital stuff, the poetry remains powerful but is inferior in quality and less authentic. Finally, if the outer consciousness is too lethargic and blocks the transmission or too active and makes its own version, then you have the poetry that fails or is at best a creditable mental manufacture. It is the interference ...
... original sources; there is, finally, the transmitting outer consciousness of the poet. The most genuine and perfect poetry is written when the original source is able to throw its inspiration pure and undiminished into the vital and there takes its true native form and power of speech exactly reproducing the inspiration, while the outer consciousness is entirely passive and transmits without alteration... active and give too much of their own initiation or a translation into more or less turbid vital stuff, the poetry remains powerful but is inferior in quality and less authentic. Finally, if the outer consciousness is too lethargic and blocks the transmission or too active and makes its own version, then you have the poetry that fails or is at best a creditable mental manufacture. It is the interference ...
... whole is so poised and the force does the work through the passive instrument. Concentration is necessary. By dhyana you awake the inner being; by concentration in life, in work, in the outer consciousness you make the outer being also fit to receive the Divine Light and Force. It is in the waking consciousness that all has to be realised. But that cannot be done without a full preparation... you concentrate—then it begins to come out and control the outer, so that the calm and peace remain even when working, mixing with others, talking or other occupations. For then whatever the outer consciousness is doing, one feels the inner being calm within—indeed one feels the inner being as one's real self while the outer is something superficial through which the inner acts on life. The gaze... tendency to quiet, peace, going inside; when the sadhana begins with some intensity, it is most often like that for a time. Afterwards there is a more even balance between the inner and the outer consciousness or rather the outer begins to change and become of one piece with the inner. So do not let this trouble you. When the pressure gives a tendency to insideness (samadhi), the Page 319 ...
... A fairly long preparation is needed in order to feel an increase of life when one goes out of the outer consciousness. It Page 278 is already a great progress. And then there is the culmination, that when one is obliged for some reason or other to return to the outer consciousness, it is there that one has the impression of falling into a black hole, at least into a kind of dull, lifeless ...
... are sure to reach the goal. But if you want to make the complementary movement of which Sri Aurobindo speaks, that is to say, to return to the outer consciousness and world after having realised this union in yourself, and transform this outer consciousness and world, then in this case you cannot limit yourself in any way, for otherwise you will not be able to accomplish your work. Essentially, ...
... higher reality, with something of the divine Consciousness, who feel earthly existence in that way. And when one can become so fully conscious of all these weaknesses and stupidities of the outer consciousness, all these falsehoods of so-called material knowledge and so-called physical laws, the so-called necessities of the body, the "reality" of one's needs; if one begins to see how very false, stupid... its sense of its short duration and the kind of impatience this brings. So I have been asked: "Will it take long for the Supermind which is involved in material Nature to emerge into the outer consciousness and bring visible results?" That depends on the state of consciousness from which one answers, for... For the human consciousness, obviously, I think it will take quite a long time. For another ...
... therefore the agent of most of the lesser movements of our external life; its habitual reactions and obstinate pettinesses are the chief stumbling-block in the way of the transformation of the outer consciousness by the Yoga. It is also largely responsible for most of the suffering and disease of mind or body to which the physical being is subject in Nature. As to the gross material part it is not... our Yoga by making the body conscious,—that is to say, full of a true, awake and responsive awareness instead of its own obscure, limited half-subconscience. There is an inner as well as an outer consciousness all through our being, upon all its levels. The ordinary man is aware only of his surface self and quite unaware of all that is concealed by the surface. And yet what is on the surface, what ...
... consciousness or the powers that act in Yoga. In fact the question is not of fitness or unfitness but of the acceptance of Grace. There is no human being whose physical Page 412 outer consciousness—the part of yourself in which you are now living—is fit for the Yoga. It is by grace and enlightenment from above that it can become capable and for that the necessity is to be persevering and... experiences also and had seen very lucidly the condition of your own being and nature and had by that got so far that these parts were ready for the spiritual change—what remains is the physical and outer consciousness which has to be compelled to accept the necessity of change. That is no doubt the most difficult part of the work to be done, but it is also the part which, if once done, makes possible the total ...
... only or mainly on and from the surface. The individual being has to find himself, his true existence; he can only do this by going inward, by living within and from within: for the external or outer consciousness or life separated from the inner spirit is the field of the Ignorance; it can only exceed itself and exceed the Ignorance by opening into the largeness of an inner self and life. If there is... nature, made by limit and circumstance. If there is a self in us capable of largeness and universality, able to enter into a cosmic consciousness, that too must be within our inner being; the outer consciousness is a physical consciousness bound to its individual limits by the triple cord of mind, life and body: any external attempt at universality can only result either in an aggrandisement of the ego ...
... grip. By an inner soul-perception, an intuitive consciousness, the passage is to be apprehended. To the outer consciousness it must appear to be what Housman calls it: "poetry with so little meaning that nothing except poetic emotion is perceived and matters." In relation to the outer consciousness he is also right when he remarks: "The verses probably possessed for Blake a meaning, and his students ...
... Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1 The Inner Being 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 ...
... off and woke up at 11:25. SATYENDRA: The word "trance" is rather vague; it doesn't convey the real sense. SRI AUROBINDO: Why? In English that is the only word. "Trance" means the loss of outer consciousness and going within. One can't say all that every time. Of course, as with Samadhi, there are many kinds of trances. NIRODBARAN: I read somewhere that a patient under chloroform was watching... body. In hypnotism the subjects can know all their experiences and under chloroform they can do the same. During fever one can have vital experiences. NIRODBARAN: How? There is no loss of outer consciousness then. SRI AUROBINDO: The non-physical centres get excited. We can use our favourite term, "physical crust", and say that it temporarily becomes thin and the centres just below it become active ...
... is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over.... 39 I suppose the ego came there first as a means of the outer consciousness individualising itself in the flux of Nature and, secondly, as an Page 382 incentive ...
... only if or when the waking mind is ready that they come as readily in the waking state. Again in you the waking mind has been too active in its insistence on the ideas and operations of the outer consciousness to give the inner mind a chance to project itself into the waking state. But it is through the inner consciousness and primarily through the inner mind that these things come; so, if there is... choice that they do it, some- thing in their nature draws them. There arc many here who have had or still have that long covering of the inner by the outer or separation of the inner from the outer consciousness. You yourself took that way in spite of our expostulations to you advising you Lo take the sunlit road, and you have not yet got out of the habit. But that does not mean that you won't get ...
... supreme all-soothing Presence. The pain turns into a short cut - a sharply swift passage to a sacred Sweetness which helps the hidden soul to overflow, as it were, and permeate more and more the outer consciousness, even the bodily consciousness. Thus you have had both the inspired wit and the intuitive wisdom to create out of your Page 54 hardships stepping-stones for a two-way traffic... begins with your own family with whom you should cultivate cordial relationship as a part of your Yoga. The "fear-complex" will not recur if you have a greater relaxation in your inner-outer consciousness. You have a keen sense of insecurity - especially with regard to your future. There is also an uncertainty about your spiritual status. You have to proceed in your sadhana without too much s ...
... First, although there is a Kubla-Khan quality in parts of Paradise Lost, a quality not sufficiently appreciated by critics, what we get is not so much the occult seizing the outer consciousness as the outer consciousness infusing itself into the occult and almost taking away the sting of strangeness. Secondly, Milton's mind at the time of his epic is powerful in thought but with little subtlety ...
... much as is active in ordinary people is very little—for in them it is the outer consciousness that is active. The centres of consciousness [ are meant by the term "centres" ], the chakras. It is by their opening that the Yogic or inner consciousness develops—otherwise you are bound to the ordinary outer consciousness. Page 231 One does not pass through the psychic centre or any ...
... the inner manifesting itself in the outer. It makes at once true and practical what sounds only a theory to the uninitiated,—the strong distinction made by us between the inner being and the outer consciousness. It is how also unexpected Yogic capacity reveals itself, sometimes no doubt as a result of long and apparently fruitless effort, sometimes as a spontaneous outflowering of what was concealed... g and Sadhana Will it do any harm to my sadhana if I attempt stories or a novel? You can try, if you like. The difficulty is that the subject matter of a novel belongs mostly to the outer consciousness, so that a lowering or externalising can easily come. This apart from the difficulty of keeping the inner poise when putting the mind into outer work. If you could get your established peace ...
... Letters on Yoga - IV Chapter I Ego and Its Forms Ego and Egoism I suppose the ego came there [ into human activity ] first as a means of the outer consciousness individualising itself in the flux of Nature and, secondly, as an incentive for tamasic animal man to act and get something done. Otherwise he might merely have contented himself with food and... effective than that of a severe tapasya of purification. The higher consciousness in descending brings peace and purity into all the inner parts; the inner being separates itself from the imperfect outer consciousness and at the same time the peace that comes carries in it a power which can throw out what contradicts the peace and purity. Ego can then slowly or swiftly but surely disappear—rajas and tamas ...
... one. Page 451 The Descent of Peace When one has gone so far that peace from above can descend, that is a considerable progress. Yes, surely the peace can come into the outer consciousness also; it is meant to do so. It is perfectly possible for the body to bear the peace and stillness. It is more difficult for it to bear the full play of the Force; but if the peace is first e... beginning, because the ordinary consciousness is not accustomed to it, but to something else. But it always increases in duration and power until it is able to maintain itself even when the outer consciousness is occupied with other things. At first it remains there as something behind which emerges as soon as the outer preoccupation ends; afterwards it remains behind, but as something just felt, and ...
... the body and the subconscient enlightened by it and accustomed to obey its control. It is good. Emptiness and silence of the consciousness prepare the being to live within, with the outer consciousness only as a means of communication and action on the physical world instead of living in the external only. As there is a superconscient (something above our present consciousness) above the... quite unconscious. The material body is very much under the influence of this power for the same reason; it is why we are not conscious of what is going on in the body, for the most part. The outer consciousness goes down into this subconscient when we are asleep, and so it becomes unaware of what is going Page 599 on in us when we are asleep except for a few dreams. Many of these dreams ...
... disappear. 5 February 1937 What the Mother did was to light the fire within—if you did not feel it, it must be because the outer covering has not yet allowed it to come through into the outer consciousness. But something in the inner being must have kept it and opened more widely—that is shown by your experience in sleep, for that was evidently an action of the Mother in the inner being. The descent... surface consciousness—for always there is a preparatory work behind the veil in the inner being before the veil thins or disappears and all the working can be done with the participation of the outer consciousness. 22 April 1937 The Mother's force can come down quite nicely and gently—there is no need of palpitations, giddiness or nausea for that. Page 207 ...
... I quite agree with it. But it may be an experience which remains at the back, you see, and is conscious even while not being exclusive, and which causes the contact with the world and the outer consciousness to be supported by something that is free and independent. This indeed is a state in which one can truly make very great progress externally, because one can be detached from everything and act... were, so to say, not existing. But one had altogether the impression of beings who were completely incomplete, totally incomplete, that is, outwardly there was nothing at all. But if in the outer consciousness one is very low, how can one meditate? It becomes very difficult, doesn't it? Yes, very difficult! Then how do these people succeed? Page 290 But they came out of it completely ...
... by its mental, vital and physical instruments. The outer consciousness of the human being "lives amongst all the external noises and movements in what it sees, what it does, what it says, instead of looking within, into the depths of the being and listening to the inner inspirations" (p. 42). So the psychic being remains behind the outer consciousness as a "secret witness", "a secluded King in a screened ...
... 313 ( silence ) And you? I have a lot of difficulties with my outer consciousness. I seem to be unable to open it up. ( Mother vigorously nods her head ) And so it's very painful, you know, everything is very painful. That's it, exactly that! One quite feels the inability of the outer consciousness to participate in the experience... to be up to the mark. Yes! Exactly, ...
... darkness of the being, or it may be a being of light, conscious, fully formed and independent. There are all the gradations between the two. Usually it is veiled? It is the outer consciousness that is not in contact with it, for it is turned outwards instead of being turned inwards - for it lives amidst all the external noise and movements, in what it sees, what it does, what it says... Thee. It is not the psychic being that suffers for personal reasons, it is the mind, the vital and the ordinary consciousness of ignorant man. This is because the contact between the outer consciousness and the psychic consciousness is not well established. He in whom the contact has been well established is always happy. The psychic being works with perseverance and ardour for the ...
... The inertia decreased when the Mother came down for Blessings. Then I gathered Force merely from her physical presence and detached myself from the inertia. Not only the inner but the outer consciousness as well was taken up into the higher realms. The whole of myself tasted the sweetness of the spiritual peace and silence. When I was up above, often the inertia tried to stir things below and... attacks. But in the evening the whole thing came back. Why so? It is nothing more than what I told you — the suggestion of the adverse Force and a mechanical habit of response in the outer consciousness during the periods when it is not lifted up and exalted. Even in such intensity it must be able to reject these things. The suggestions say that because of my present bad condition ...
... intensity of the pain how to be free from such suggestions? It is nothing more than what I told you — the suggestion of the adverse Force and a mechanical habit of response in the outer consciousness during the periods when it is not lifted up and exalted. Even in such intensity it must be able to reject these things. The present cold appears to be of an abnormal type.... sadhana ought not to exist. The Yogic Consciousness and its activities must be there whether there is health or illness. The coming of the cold in the head has encouraged my outer consciousness to rise above! For, if it remains calm and concentrated above, the cold gets veiled. It appears again only when the consciousness comes down and is diffused. It is the only final ...
... Does your answer mean that the psychic has unveiled itself now? It is trying to open. It seems that the psychic being has begun to work directly on the outer consciousness, with love and devotion as its main means. Yes, certainly that is the working of the psychic. A thrill comes from above and passes through my body, making the adhar... is the fire of aspiration and purification with the beginning of the true inner experience which, if it continues, creates the Yogic consciousness and in the end replaces by it the ordinary outer consciousness. The central fire is in the psychic being, but it can be lit in all the parts of the being. There is aspiration during the whole day. Now I feel that it is not my mind ...
... defying defeat, death and destruction, leads him from behind a veil—an invisible pilot, a living fount of perennial hope and strength and inspiration. If ever a beam of light penetrates into his outer consciousness from behind the veil, or a still small voice breathes into his heart a message of ethereal import, he muffles it lest it disturb his complacent scepticism, the pride of his culture and civilisation... Consciousness and your external consciousness; it is the builder of the inner life; it is that which manifests in the outer nature the order and rule of the Divine Will. If you become aware in your outer consciousness of the psychic being within you and unite with it, you can find the pure Eternal Consciousness and live in it; instead of being moved by the ignorance as the human being constantly is, you grow ...
... the laws that govern consciousness or the powers that act in Yoga. In fact the question is not of fitness or unfitness but of the acceptance of Grace. There is no human being whose physical outer consciousness — the part of yourself in which you are now living — is fit for the Yoga. It is by grace and enlightenment from above that it can become capable and for that the necessity is to be persevering... also and had seen very lucidly the condition of your own being and nature and had by that got so far that these parts were ready for the spiritual change — what remains is the physical and outer consciousness which has to be compelled to accept the necessity of change. That is no doubt the most difficult part of the work to be done, but it is also the part which, if once done, makes possible the total ...
... bought the cloth in which case the additional work can be done at once. Page 31 You have done rightly about the things. These small desires obstruct greatly the change in the outer consciousness and the being must be free from them if the transformation is not to be hampered there. The hunger is all right as it is a sign of the body re-covering and wishing to recuperate its strength... there are two nights' bad sleep, for it is easier to deal with when it has not gathered force. No date Bula's experiences are those which usually attend the withdrawal from the outer consciousness into an inner plane of experience. The feeling of coldness of the body in the first is one of the signs — like the immobility and stiffness of D's experience — that the consciousness is with ...
... that I was holding enclosed in a dark sheath one of Thy most precious and powerful gifts.... Lord, all my being aspires to obey Thy voice, to conform to Thy Law; but it does not know in its outer consciousness, Page 334 does not understand what Thou expectest of it. It feels indeed that at present its love is a passive state and that Thou wouldst awaken it to an active state; but how to ...
... be a physical memory if there were one, in any case of all the intellectual and emotional elements of life, and of some physical events when it was possible for this being to manifest in the outer consciousness; then, at these moments, the whole set of physical circumstances in which one was is kept absolutely intact in the consciousness. Mother, here Sri Aurobindo speaks of "the psychic behind ...
... visions even amidst activity. Vision is another plane of perception which awakes. It is the senses in the mind or vital or physical which wake up and manage to pass their experiences to the outer consciousness. It is as though one had another pair of eyes behind these, eyes which could see in the vital instead of seeing in the physical. And this is always there. Only, as one is concentrated on the ...
... You are plunged in a sea of consciousness full of light, aspiration, true understanding, essential purity, and whether you want it or not it enters. Even for those who are shut up in their outer consciousness, well, they cannot sleep in vain. There is an action here during sleep which is quite considerable, considerable. So that has an effect, it is visible. I have seen people who had come altogether ...
... spark in the darkness of the being or it may be a being of light, conscious, fully formed and independent. There are all the gradations between the two. Usually is it veiled? It is the outer consciousness that is not in contact with it, for it is turned outwards instead of being turned inwards—for it lives amidst all the external noises and movements, in what it sees, what it does, what it says ...
... without any meditation. If you want the outer being to change, it is while remaining conscious of it that you should have the other experiences; and you must not lose contact with your ordinary outer consciousness if you want it to profit by the experience. There are many people... I knew people like that, who used to meditate for hours, almost all the time... they spent their time meditating, and then ...
... apparently been successful, even for him there is always a counterpart. And this kind of hardening of the being which is produced, this veil which is formed, a thicker and thicker veil, between the outer consciousness and the inner truth, becomes, one day or another, altogether intolerable. It is usually paid for very dearly—outer success. ( Mother's voice becomes extremely deep. ) One must be very great ...
... meditation. All depends on the inner being and how it can meet her from within and receive her force and profit by it. Of course, if people meet her with their psychic prominent, and not with the outer consciousness only, it should be different, but— 29 July 1936 You have said that those who are doing sadhana outside the Asram cannot do it fully—the daily touch and nearness of the Mother, gained by ...
... own will that organises their whole life, that puts them in the required condition, that attracts favourable circumstances or people, that arranges everything outside them, so to say. In their outer consciousness, perhaps they wanted something and worked for it, but something else came. Well, after some years, they realise that this is what really had to happen. You may know nothing of the existence of ...
... without any meditation. If you want the outer being to change, it is while remaining conscious of it that you should have the other experiences; and you must not lose contact with your ordinary outer consciousness if you want it to profit by the experience. There are many people… I knew people like that, who used to meditate for hours, almost all the time… they spent their time meditating, and then if ...
... Consciousness and your external consciousness; it is the builder of the inner life, it is that which manifests in the outer nature the order and rule of the Divine Will. If you become aware in your outer consciousness of the psychic being within you and unite with it, you can find the pure Eternal Consciousness and live in it; instead of being moved by the Ignorance as the human being constantly is, you grow ...
... is that these higher planes are actually at every moment acting upon and in communication with our own plane of being, although this action is naturally not present to our ordinary waking or outer consciousness, because that is for the most part limited to a reception and utilisation of the contacts of the physical world: but the moment we either go back into our subliminal being or enlarge our waking ...
... escape from this turmoil, to run away from the difficulty and to find for themselves a happy condition elsewhere; but they leave the world and life uncorrected and untransformed; and their own outer consciousness too they leave unchanged and their bodies as unregenerate as ever. Coming back to the physical world, they are likely to be worse there than even ordinary people; for they have lost the mastery ...
... will, sincerity and perseverance. Even a fleeting idea in a child, at a certain moment in its childhood when the psychic being is most in front, if it succeeds in penetrating through the outer consciousness and giving the child just an impression of something beautiful which must be realised, it creates a little nucleus and upon this you build your action. There is a vast mass of humanity to whom ...
... seen were magnificent revelations. ( Silence ) The capacity for visions, when it is sincere and spontaneous, can put you in touch with events which you are not capable of knowing in your outer consciousness.... There is a very interesting fact, it is that somewhere in the terrestrial mind, somewhere in the terrestrial vital, somewhere in the subtle physical, one can find an exact, perfect, automatic ...
... superhuman, it is truly human) in which the two things may coexist. One may have sufferings and not feel them, be as if they did not exist. That is, a misfortune, a "cross" touches only the outer consciousness, the physical, the mental, the vital, but the psychic—in truth, the psychic is above all suffering. Let us take a very simple example: an illness. A physical disorder brings suffering, at times ...
... and the limited human consciousness which make distinctions. And through these differences you get into a confusion. You distinguish only by differences, and differences mean just the illusory outer consciousness. As soon as you really enter within, you immediately have the sense of a total identity and all these divergences seem absolutely ridiculous to you. Sweet Mother, what is the difference between ...
... psychic being is as though shut up in a kind of hard shell, a prison, and that this is what prevents it from manifesting outwardly and entering into a conscious and constant relation with the outer consciousness, the outer being. One has altogether the feeling that it is as though enclosed in a box or in a prison with walls Page 266 which must be broken or a door which must be forced in order ...
... beginning at least of a psychic and spiritual transformation. 86 — Sri Aurobindo * The psychic, except in a few extraordinary natures, does not get its full chance in the outer consciousness; it needs some Page 84 kind of Yoga or Sadhana to come by its own and it is as it emerges more and more in front that it gets clear of the mixture. That is to say, its presence ...
... The Subconscient and the Inconscient The subconscient is what is below the mind and conscious life just as the subliminal is what is behind the outer consciousness. Whereas the subliminal is an inner and larger consciousness compared to the surface consciousness, the subconscious is a nether and inferior, diminished consciousness. "[The subconscient] ...
... wrong way, is moved by the right feeling but errs as to the application, person, place, circumstances. The psychic, except in a few extraordinary natures, does not get its full chance in the outer consciousness; it needs some kind of Yoga or Sadhana to come by its own and it is as it emerges more and more in front that it gets clear of the mixture. That is to say, its presence becomes directly felt ...
... which is strong. You will find that the obstinate spiritual difficulty disappears in the end like a mirage. It belongs to the maya and, where the inner call is sincere, cannot hold even the outer consciousness always: its apparent solidity will dissolve. Turning towards the Divine An idealistic notion or a religious belief or emotion is something quite different from getting spiritual light. ...
... realised in the inner psycho-spiritual experience first, because Page 477 without that nothing sound or lasting can be done; but also there must be a realisation of the Divine in the outer consciousness and life, in the vital and physical planes on their own essential lines. It is that which, without your mind understanding it or how it is to be done, you are asking for, and I too; only I see ...
... to life must first be done. The difficulty of the Yoga is not in getting experiences or a subjective realisation of the Truth; it is in objectivising the Truth, that is, in making the outer consciousness down to the material an expression of the inner Truth. So long as that is not done, the attacks of the lower Nature can always continue. Experience and the Change of One's Nature Merely ...
... nature an operation of the Ignorance and incompatible with a condition of realisation. But as a matter of fact there are three stages there: (I) in which the work brings you to a lower as well as outer consciousness so that you have afterwards to recover the realisation; (II) in which the work brings you out, but the realisation remains behind (or above), not felt while you work, but as soon as the work ...
... itself apparently to float on the oceanic stream of Nature and envisages itself as carried away by the current. Spirit veils itself from Mind; Ish wraps Himself up in jagat & seems to its own outer consciousness to be jagat. This is the principle of our bondage; the principle of our freedom Page 439 is to draw back from that absorption & recover our real self-consciousness as the containing ...
... are necessary for this Yoga. The "I" or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear—the true being is felt in its place. The psychic is the true being here—the ...
... s the only form of consciousness possible? and again, is the consciousness synonymous with mind, is all consciousness mental or are other forms of it, supramental or submental, possible? Outer Consciousness and Inner Consciousness Consciousness is inherent in Being, though it is here involved and Page 19 concealed in things so that it has to emerge out of an apparent unconsciousness ...
... It is ignored that any of these things may be there and yet there need not be any spiritual life behind it, any rebirth into a new consciousness or any remoulding of either the inner or the outer consciousness no longer in a higher or richer power of mind and life and body only, the instruments, but in the direct light and force of the hitherto veiled user of the instrument, the now revealed and directly ...
... consciousness that generated them is changed and cleared in the waking state, that afterwards one can clear them out of the sleep also. You are listening too much to the suggestions of the outer consciousness, "not being able", etc. etc. Since you did begin to open a little for a time, it shows that you are able. You have to get back to that movement; for that you must persuade this outer vital not ...
... the contrary habit of responding to the Divine Force only. This of course so long as a highest consciousness does not descend to which illness is impossible. It is the old habit of the outer consciousness from which it refuses to be delivered. Until this will to repeat the old movements is thrown away, the Force works but under difficulties and behind instead of taking up the frontal consciousness ...
... mental opinion or preconceived moral idea, but on probative facts and on observation and experience. I do not deny that so long as one allows a sort of separation between inner experience and outer consciousness, the latter being left as an inferior activity controlled but not transformed, it is quite possible to have spiritual experiences and make progress without any entire cessation of the sex-activity ...
... come for every seeker of complete self-knowledge when he is thus aware of living in two worlds, two consciousnesses at the same time, two parts of the same existence. At present he lives in the outer consciousness, the outer being and sees within the inner self—but he will go more and more inward, till the position is reversed and he lives within in this new inner consciousness, inner self and feels the ...
... essential—it can be used, but by itself it cannot lead to the change of consciousness which is our object, for it gives only an inner subjective experience which need not make any difference in the outer consciousness. There are plenty of instances of sadhaks who have fine experiences in trance but the outer being remains as it was. It is necessary to bring out what is experienced and make it a power for ...
... entirely only when that part gets equanimity and a simple natural freedom from all desires. You have done rightly about the things. These small desires obstruct greatly the change in the outer consciousness and the being must be free from them if the transformation is not to be hampered there. Desire and Need It would certainly be very easy if all that one had to do were to follow one's desires; ...
... It is always the effect of the physical consciousness being uppermost (so long as it is not entirely changed) that one feels like this—like an ordinary man or worse, altogether in the outer consciousness, the inner consciousness veiled, the action of Yoga power apparently suspended. This happens in the earlier stages also, but it is not quite complete usually then because something of the mind ...
... ing. All the movements of the surface being can be seen with a complete detachment, but also with a direct sight in the consciousness by which the self-delusions and mistakes of self of the outer consciousness can be dispelled; there is a keener mental vision, a clearer and more accurate mental feeling of our subjective becoming, a vision which at once knows, commands and controls the whole nature ...
... pressure of the universal force or subsist in this great and dangerous world. A perfect equality of our spirit and nature is a means by which we can move back from the troubled and ignorant outer consciousness into this inner kingdom of heaven and possess the spirit's eternal kingdoms, rājyaṁ samṛddham , of greatness, joy and peace. That self-elevation to the divine nature is the complete fruit and ...
... I see... the most exact thing to say is their condition, the state they're in. And then, of course, there are those who are closed, so to say, who, for me, don't see, who are totally in the outer consciousness; and there are those who are open—there are some... certain children are remarkable, it's as if they were wide open ( gesture like a flower to the sun ) and ready to absorb. It's especially people's ...
... had never known what spiritual self-surrender could be until she had thrown her whole being at his feet. It was in 1914 too that she experienced an identification of even her most outer consciousness with the Universal Mother. She has written about this in her Prayers and Meditations. She has described there two successive identifications. Of course, she had known, long before, that ...
... plane, the outer mind and other instruments enter the field. The best poetry is produced when the vital force of creative beauty allows itself to respond faithfully to the inspiration and the outer consciousness remains entirely passive and transmits Page 361 what the inspiration has formed with the vital substance and impetus without being mixed or altered. The inspiration itself can ...
... seem rather to exist above and behind his formed nature than to be a part of its visible reality; subliminal in his inner being or superconscient above in some unreached status, they are in his outer consciousness possibilities rather than things realised and present. The spirit is in course of birth rather than born in Matter. This imperfect being with his hampered, confused, ill-ordered and mostly ...
... with false stress of certitude and ideal perception of actuality (possibilities being seen as actual forces unfulfilled or partially effected) with right stress of certitude. Both come from the outer consciousness and are not native to the adhara. Only the higher vijnana on the highest or middle level is native to the adhara. The T² and with it other siddhis dropped towards the lowest levels even with ...
... tends to draw the mind back to the body, but then there occurs often a phenomenon which is now growing, the double or triple samadhi, in which the outside world is experienced accurately in an outer consciousness of sleep, by the sukshma and not the sthula indriya. The inner consciousness remains in swapna, a deeper is in sushupti of some kind, for the most part swapnamaya sushupti. Sometimes the outer ...
... uncertain state so that Sri Aurobindo's Centenary may have its full development—so I see that mixture of things. The feeling is that the Centenary is the major event, while at the same time the outer consciousness says that if there is war, it will be the end of Page 175 the Centenary. There you are, that's how it is. So I don't see anything precise because things are like that, all intertwined ...
... every little movement of life, like meals, for example; well, when I curl up like this ( gesture of interiorization ), everything seems instantaneous. There isn't any time. When I am in the outer consciousness (what I call outer is a consciousness that witnesses the creation), then things take more or less time depending on the attention given it. And so everything, everything seems... nothing seems ...
... Ashram] is filled with conflict when he is here—but that is the reason. 2 Why aren't people conscious of this identification while having it in a part of their being? Between the outer consciousness and the deepest consciousness there are truly holes—which are 'missing links' between states of being and which have to be built, but they don't know how to do it. So their first reaction when ...
... other art attaining greatness, is a rapture, a peace or a pain, according to its creator's mood, in which a significance is shaped out with a glow and a tingle as if some secret from beyond the outer consciousness pushed through, bringing with it splendours and sweetnesses and poignancies far wider and deeper than the common range to which that consciousness is accustomed. Words become wings and in each ...
... Mother, aren't you and the Supreme the same? Mother: Yes, and when I go into a trance I see everything. Even in the present case I must have seen everything, but when I come back into the outer consciousness I sometimes forget and there is a blank. Sehra: You mean you want to forget and so you don't remember. Mother: You may put it like that if you wish. But when I am meant to interfere ...
... distinctions, such as those indicated above, between the different parts of the being and the different levels of consciousness become particularly important in yoga when the veil between the outer consciousness and the inner consciousness is pierced through sadhana - or, in rare cases, spontaneously - giving rise to various experiences which have generally been described as "transpersonal" experiences ...
... with Dyuman) Dyuman's Correspondence with The Mother 17 April 1934 Beloved Mother, I remain completely quiet, calm and open. And if this outer consciousness remains a block and does not give way like an obstinate horse, we shall patiently take it into our control, make it submissive and allow the Divine Will to manifest. This is quite good. ...
... is another and most usual blank state, the state "when one goes deeply and crassly into the subconscient." 2 The heavy and inert and altogether unrefreshing 'subterranean plunge' of our outer consciousness into the black pit of a complete subconscience leads to a state of "absolute unconsciousness which is almost death — a taste of death." 3 These then are the principal contributing factors ...
... ‘mild infection’ to a fatal condition. A still stronger indication was his surfacing, time and again, from the inner consciousness, where he must have been waging a battle nobody knew of, to the outer consciousness, in a most peculiar uraemic ‘coma.’ The Mother has asserted repeatedly that Sri Aurobindo did not have to leave his body for ‘natural’ reasons, he did not have to go the way of all flesh ...
... the work will be disrupted by this departure ... ( Another handwritten version ) 7.4.55 My dear child, You may go to Almora if you think it will help you break this shell of the outer consciousness, so obstinately impenetrable. Perhaps being far away from the Ashram for a while will help you feel the special atmosphere that exists here and that cannot be found anywhere else to the same ...
... quietness. Mother, for several days I have been suffering a lot. It is the inner being that suffers and always wants to unite with the divine consciousness but cannot because of the outer consciousness. Mother, really I am suffering. You know that it is indispensable to be calm; you must try hard to become calm. Then in the calm, pray to Sri Aurobindo to give you the right consciousness; ...
... I think your latest dream is symbolic of this wordless interchange of friendship. All the circumstances are significant of it. You dream that you wake up from sleep. Rapt away from the outer consciousness by sleep, you have become aware of your inner being and are acting in it. And what do you find? Right at your door appears "a just born child" which you recognise with your own soul's instinct ...
... your two letters. When the period of pain is gone, the vibration will not be so marked in its frequency but a steady movement will continue. It will form a kind of settled music in your most outer consciousness, a keen yet controlled response of this consciousness to the inner Mother in her act of emerging increasingly into the surface of your being and there radiating forth from her child in you to ...
... message of Sri Aurobindo to his followers. I add the word "life" to the word "Yoga" because to an Aurobindonian the two are inseparable. Yoga to him is not a special practice set apart from the outer consciousness: an inward air has to pervade whatever he thinks, feels, says, does - and he has never to stop at any point as though there were nothing further to achieve. This look ahead is no gesture of ...
... but what you see on the screen is a sort of combination of the two—they don't really combine, but the visual effect is odd [for Mother]. By "visual," I don't mean just for the eyes but for the outer consciousness. It's a bizarre life, neither this nor that, nor a mixture of the two, nor a juxtaposition, but as though both were operating through each other. It must be intercellular: something that goes ...
... see! "), I said, "Ah, that didn't last long. They quickly brought it under control." With that he turned his back on me ( laughing ); he went off one way and I the other. Then I regained my outer consciousness, which is why I remember everything exactly. I believe they began fighting up there two or three days after it happened. What can the west side be?... I don't know. I thought it would ...
... completely. And the person standing smiled, while the person in the bed wondered, "What! I am fainting—but I am in my bed!" There. And as it was time for me to "wake up" (that is, to return to the outer consciousness), I came back. And I was left with this problem: who was standing there?... Very tall, with a splendid dress, and then a person (who was a human person, but much shorter), a white person beside ...
... now many years since Purushottam kicked off the dust of the Ashram and sought for a spiritual achievement on his own with no Guru supervising his progress. Page 48 outer consciousness, would nod forward — not only with his head but with his whole body. And the nodding kept increasing in tempo until his head either went bang into the back of whoever was in front of him or, ...
... 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 ...
... its supernal calm: There only were Silence and the Absolute... He plunged his roots into the Infinite, He based his life upon Eternity. 27 And when he returns to the outer consciousness after this baptism in the waters of transcendence, he has won "his soul's release from Ignorance": A wide God-knowledge poured down from above, A new world-knowledge broadened from ...
... hold on me. My mother had the feeling that she would some day in some way lose her eldest child. But as she could not give expression to this feeling, she kept silent. She knew nothing in her outer consciousness about it. "My child spends his time Page 30 with his friend in the house of Srinivasachari, preparing for the Matriculation examination. After the examination, before ...
... on me. My mother had the feeling that she would some day in some way lose her eldest child. But as she could not give expression to this feeling, she kept silent. She knew nothing in her outer consciousness about it. "My child spends his time Page 30 with his friend in the house of Srinivasachari, preparing for the Matriculation examination. After the examination ...
... that he had never known what spiritual self-surrender could be until she had thrown her whole being at his feet. It was in 1914 too that she experienced an identification of even her most outer consciousness with the Universal Mother. She has written about this in her Prayers and Meditations. She has described there two successive identifications. Of course, she had known, long before, that she ...
... dream but a reality, a very charming expression of the reality of the constant presence of Sri Aurobindo and of his help given through an intimate and true relation, even though veiled to the outer consciousness. This is a precious experience worth being kept in the most sacred corner of the remembrance. The Mother ...
... which is strong. You will find that the obstinate spiritual difficulty disappears in the end like a mirage. It belongs to the maya and, where the inner call is sincere, cannot hold even the outer consciousness always: its apparent solidity will dissolve. May 21,1936 We will certainly try to get your uncle, Tokumama and aunt, Mandamamima here and I suppose one day they will come. ...
... (though the past circumstances may not be known) drawn together by old ties. It was the same inward recognition in you (apart even from the deepest spiritual connection) that brought you. If the outer consciousness does not yet fully realise, it is the crust always created by a new physical birth that prevents it. But the soul knows all the while. Your poem is very beautiful. I am aware of the ...
... and it shapes the process of growth, even though the presence of the inner flame and the knowledge that the inner flame possesses of the past, present and the future, is not available to the outer consciousness of the mind, life and body, which are normally turned outwards; but if one turns inwards, it is found that the inner flame is the leader, and it opens out to our central being, which is called ...
... restricted range of the physical senses or belonging to other planes or spheres of existence. A study of the subliminal consciousness points out that it is the subliminal consciousness and not the outer consciousness that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight and other super normal faculties whose occurrence in the surface consciousness is due to opening in the wall erected by the ...
... creative Force and sees himself and others as her creations, — egos, separated existences in her universe. It is thus, superficially, that he now lives and, while it is so and until he exceeds this outer consciousness and knows what is within him, all his thought and science can only be a shadow of light thrown upon screens and surfaces. This ignorance is possible, is even imposed, because the Godhead within ...
... free himself from the egoistic preferences and antipathies of his vital and the mental, he will find to his happy surprise that his secretly dwelling psychic being has started sending to his outer consciousness, in an unimpeded and regular way, its sacred injunctions and prohibitions. And that it has been doing so can be recognised by the sadhaka by certain psychological signs. Here is what Sri ...
... There is another and most usual blank state, the state when one goes 'deeply and crassly' into the subconscient. The heavy and inert and altogether unrefreshing 'subterranean plunge' of our outer consciousness into the black pit of a complete subconscience leads to a state of absolute unconsciousness of which no record reaches our waking awareness. (iii) Absence of link bridge: In sleep our ...
... alternatives may open out before those who aspire after spirituality : (i)To create a division, a separation, a dissociation of consciousness and to be spiritual within or above while the outer consciousness and its ignorant movements are indifferently watched and felt to be something intrinsically foreign and disparate. This is the solution of the 'Witness Consciousness'. (ii)To be satisfied ...
... (Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 389) The discussion in the preceding chapter has made the point clear that since our Yoga aims at the realisation of the Divine in the outer consciousness and life as well as in the inner one, the Jivanmukta with his aloof indifference to or at the best a benevolent tolerance for the dynamic waking existence can never be our ideal. But ...
... such thing as emptiness, it is pure existence, silence etc." Why then does it create a feeling of voidness, a suspension of all sadhana? It is because there is no activity and the outer consciousness is accustomed to be always thinking, feeling or doing something. Since the day before yesterday there is a feeling of a strong Force existing not only within me but Page ...
... is meant by "centres"? The centres of consciousness, the chakras. It is by their opening that the Yogic or inner consciousness develops — otherwise you are bound to the ordinary outer consciousness. The more they open, the more the consciousness increases. They are reckoned as six usually — or with the one above the head, seven. May I know what the "Adhara" ...
... of the Mystics that the Inmost Consciousness is the Divine Child, the Superconscient is the Divine Father and the Inferior Consciousness is the Great Mother (Magna Mater): the Inner and the Outer Consciousness are the field of play and the instrument of action as well of this Divine Trinity. Man, we thus see, is an infinitely composite being. We have referred to the four or five major chords ...
... exclusive. But also it can be an experience that remains behind, exists in a conscious way and yet not exclusively. Page 143 In other words, the contact with the world and the outer consciousness is maintained and supported by something which is independent of them and free. It is a state in which you can make truly a great progress in your external consciousness; for then you can detach ...
... dwells beyond the walls of the city; one, that is to say, the conscient being in us, loves her all the more passionately because she is so. The city means this normally flourishing confine of outer consciousness where we dwell usually; the Divine is kept outside the pale of this inferior nature. To our consciousness that which is beyond it is an obscure, valueless, worthless, miserable non-entity; ...
... in the case of a person hardened to the core, who has apparently the utmost success, there is a counterpart: exactly this hardening, this veil that is put up thicker and thicker between the outer consciousness and the inner truth becomes also more and more unbearable. The outer success has to be paid for very dearly. One must be very great, very pure, one must have a very high, very unselfish spiritual ...
... of the Mystics that the Inmost Consciousness is the Divine Child, the Superconscient is the Divine Father and the Inferior Consciousness is the Great Mother (Magna Mater): the Inner and the Outer Consciousness are the field of play and the instrument of action as well of this Divine Trinity. Man, we thus see, is an infinitely composite being. We have referred to the four or five major chords in ...
... Thenceforth they would taunt me with "Nirod's brinjal intuition"! To end the sad story: the case was not showing any improvement; one after another complications began to develop. Above all, his outer consciousness failed to respond actively to the Force. The Mother saw that the only way that could save the patient was to send him to Bangalore where he could be treated by an efficient German doctor well-known ...
... SRI AUROBINDO: Then why do you call it sleep? It may be the psychic being or the inner being watching what was happening. Sometimes one goes into a deep state and remembers nothing of the outer consciousness though many things may be occurring on the surface. What is called dreamless sleep is really a sleep where many dreams are passing on, only one doesn't know of them. Sometimes one discusses important ...
... had indeed proved to me that He was creating a new race of men." Everybody was listening to Sri Aurobindo in rapt silence. When he finished speaking, the children seemed to return to the outer consciousness from some deep meditation. Quietly they filed out of the room, their heads bowed. * Today Sri Aurobindo began on his own: "Yesterday I spoke to you about the young men of the New Age ...
... is driven helplessly on. But the story does not end here. Man can, if he chooses, alter the situation, turn the tables. He has in him the source of freedom – what he vaguely feels in his outer consciousness; there is a centre from where he is capable of reacting and reasserting. It is the centre where lies his dharma, the law of his being. It is his soul. If he once comes in contact with that ...
... in the case of a person hardened to the core, who has apparently the utmost success, there is a counterpart: exactly this hardening, this evil that is put up thicker and thicker between the outer consciousness and the inner truth becomes also more and more unbearable. The outer success has to be paid for very dearly. One must be very great, very pure, one must have a very high, very unselfish spiritual ...
... our progress, because they fixate us in the same inner attitude, the same contraction, the same refusal or revolt, the same tendency. To grow we need to forget. If, in our hopelessly childish outer consciousness, we were to remember having once been a virtuous banker, for example, while we now find ourselves in the skin of an adept crook, we would be understandably confused! Perhaps we are still too ...
... its supernal calm: There only were Silence and the Absolute.... He plunged his roots into the Infinite, He based his life upon Eternity. 35 And when he returns to the outer consciousness after this baptism in the waters of transcendence, he has won "his soul's release from Ignorance"; A wide God-knowledge poured down from above, A new world-knowledge broadened from ...
... own purer gestures and less clogged up bodies She was in the process of making them bring the answer into being. When you can be completely conscious of the infirmities and stupidities of the outer consciousness, she said to them, of the utter falsehood of so-called material knowledge and physical laws, the so-called needs of the body and the "reality" of these needs, if you begin to see how false ...
... eternal consciousness and enter the serenity of Thy Oneness. ... And precisely because of that, is not the suffering that separation brings one of the most effective means of transcending this outer consciousness, of replacing this superficial attachment by the integral realisation of Thy eternal Oneness? 6 Reconciled thus to the event, the Richards leave Geneva; and, the next day, at Marseilles ...
... "without attaching any great importance to this activity, to this quite relative utilisation, we can take, without any difficulty, without any inner discussion, the decisions which, to the outer consciousness, appear most daring and hazardous.”³ For, after all, what is an action, even a most stupendous and far-reaching action, but a relative and transitory utilisation of human faculties, ...
... points to the Beyond as the only kingdom of perfection and fulfilment. The Mother's Force is directed to the radical transformation of the whole active nature of man, so that the gulf between his outer consciousness and the divine Consciousness may be bridged and he may manifest the Divine in every movement of his individual and collective life on earth. The Ashram of Sri Aurobindo is the Mother's creation ...
... to the Beyond as the only kingdom of perfection and fulfilment. The Mother's Force is directed to the radical transformation of the whole active nature of man, so that the gulf between his outer consciousness and the divine Consciousness may be bridged and that he may manifest the Divine in every movement of his individual and collective life on earth. The Ashram of Sri Aurobindo is the Mother's ...
... growing discontent and disquiet. How will peace emerge out of this heaving chaos ? And unless peace comes, how will this chaos dissolve ? In this dilemma, the soul of man, unknown to his outer consciousness, appeals to God, its sole refuge. It is this appeal that rings in many of the Mother's "Prayers and Meditations" with the haunting pathos of psychic sadness. Her Prayer of the 29th Nov. 1913 ...
... ignorance, division and discord, but something of the experience will always abide with you, and pull you out of the lapses and aberrations. "Once this reversal has happened, you can slip into the outer consciousness, you may, in dealing with others, fall back some- what into their ignorance and blindness, but always there will be something living, erect, that moves no more, until that thing enters everywhere ...
... Nothing happens, nothing in life is without reason, there is always a hidden meaning or a true cause — this is what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother taught us again and again, removing the veil of our outer consciousness. I wrote to Sri Aurobindo: “You have written that my physical consciousness has the habit of responding to illness. But I am not at all aware of it. How to become so? Whatever little perception ...
... Sri Aurobindo : Then why do you call it sleep? It may be the psychic being, or the inner being watching what is happening. Sometimes one goes into deeper state and remembers nothing in his outer consciousness, though many things may be going on within. What is called dreamless sleep is really a sleep in which dreams are passing on, only one does not know. Sometimes one discusses problems in such ...
... freedom has only to be entirely realised by the mind in all its parts in order to be possessed, whether in action or in inaction, in withdrawal from life or possession & mastery of life, by this outer consciousness which we call our waking self as it is eternally possessed in our wide & true effulgent spiritual being which lives concealed behind the clouded or twilit shiftings of our mental nature and our ...
... creative Force and sees himself and others as her creations,—egos, separated existences in her universe. It is thus, superficially, that he now lives and, while it is so and until he exceeds this outer consciousness and knows what is within him, all his thought and science can only be a shadow of light thrown upon screens and surfaces. This ignorance is possible, is even imposed, because the Godhead within ...
... development is possible with sex going on; but this development is only on the plane of the mind and the inner consciousness and that too to a certain extent: the emotional part, the sense-self, the outer consciousness remain gross and the full freedom of the mental and the inner is also never attained or, if attained, is not kept up but always interrupted by the desire-driven, ego-slaking, turbid and narrow ...
... Page 156 forward to solve the problem. It spontaneously saw the Divine within everyone and strove to pierce to that reality behind all masks and to dissolve the obstacles of the outer consciousness of both myself and the other party. The great saying of Buddha occurred to me: "Hatred does not cease by hatred; hatred ceases by love." When I met the person whose behaviour had affected ...
... hold on me. My mother had the feeling that she would some day in some way lose her eldest child. But as she could not give expression to this feeling, she kept silent. She knew nothing in her outer consciousness about it. “My child spends his time with his friend in the house of Srinivasachari, preparing for the Matriculation examination. After the examination, before he joins the F.A. in Madras, he ...
... consciousness which awakens.... Vision is another plane of perception which awakes. It is the senses in the mind or vital or physical which wake up and manage to pass their experiences to the outer consciousness.... One can have visions with closed eyes, one can have visions with open eyes; while when dreaming one is always asleep. Usually, the symbolic dream is much clearer, more precise, more c ...
... master of the inner discipline of Yoga on its most integral level. Modern psychology has brought into use the term "subliminal" to indicate phenomena of experience beyond the knowledge of the outer consciousness. Sri Aurobindo 13 writes: "...the subliminal being has... a larger direct contact with the world; it is not confined like the surface Mind to the interpretation of sense-images and sense-vibrations ...
... in Kottakal 1980-09-14 “The clear, commanding, compassionate voice which is neither Sri Aurobindo's nor the Mother's must be Champaklal's own inmost or highest being calling to his outer consciousness. It may be his psychic being speaking, because it is telling him, “Come with me”. “The Dhara Patthi seems to symbolise the gross physical basis of our earth-life, the inconscient or subconscient ...
... Similarly, the practice of Sri Aurobindo's yoga, which teaches the consecration of all one's actions to the Divine, calls for the performance of every act with one-pointed concentration of the outer consciousness on the act and of the inner consciousness on the Divine. Concentrating on the present is particularly stressed in doing work for the Divine. As the Mother has remarked: Your work can never ...
... about it. Not at least presently; no, not as yet. You know the present work that is going on. At times so much work is being done that it takes me a fairly long time to come out, out to the outer consciousness. They are working but I have to do my work as well. The work of spiritualization is going on and, of course, behind this work, the work of spiritualization, the work of psychicisation ...
... overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole of manifestation. Ego —the "I" constituted by a mental, vital and physical formation which serves to centralise and individualise the outer consciousness and action; when the true self is discovered, the utility of the ego ceases, this formation disappears and the true individuality is felt in its place. Environmental consciousness ...
... real in itself but a temporary formation devised by the Consciousness-Force to hold together its action in the body, life and mind in order to aid in centralising the experiences of the outer consciousness, giving one a sense of a separate individuality which is mistaken for one's true self. The ego, which is felt as the "I", is thus a physical, vital and mental formation. It disappears when ...
... The "I" or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a Page 365 mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear — the true being is felt in its place. 13 Whereas the apparent self ...
... Part IV – Correspondence Champaklal Speaks 15 March 1934 My All, After receiving the last letter from you I felt my outer consciousness turned within and with this inward turn I felt myself calm and peaceful and more gathered within than before. Mother, I pray to Thee to make me entirely free from any other influence except Thine. I would like to ...
... (though the past circumstances may not be known ) drawn together by old ties. It was the same inward recognition (apart even from the deepest spiritual connection) that brought you here. If the outer consciousness does not fully realise this, it is because of the crust always created by a new physical birth that prevents it. But the soul knows all the while." (28,2,1935). In another letter her wrote ...
... d and might grow into something morbid. But the solitude itself I expected to be beneficial, and I was counting on it to prepare you for living within in the inner being more than in the outer consciousness. The outer can grow in faith, fidelity to the Divine, reverence, love, worship and adoration, great things in themselves – though in fact these things too come from within – but realisation ...
... (though the past circumstances may not be known) drawn together by old ties. It was the same inward recognition (apart even from the deepest spiritual connection) that brought you here. If the outer consciousness does not yet fully realise, it is the crust always created by a new physical birth that prevents it. But the soul knows all the while. “ my effort to help you, not only from time to time, ...
... shall relent only when you take me on your lap."] Page 151 because without that nothing sound or lasting can be done but also there must be a realisation of the Divine in the outer consciousness and life, in the vital and physical planes on their own essential lines. It is that which, without your mind understanding it or how it is to be done, you are asking for and I too; only I see ...
... her child but as one who was already in his heart her child and had come in search of his long-lost Mother. I cannot say the Mother always thinks up and plans out her moves. In her outer consciousness she may not always know what the purpose is of the Divine Force that is her true self. She may commit what looks like a mistake on an occasion. I should state that, viewed from purely external ...
... hidden within, like a golden key to liberate us from the leaden room locking us up with obsession by what has been and what is to be. The inner cup waits to be filled with our ever-flowing outer consciousness and give us happy security in an immortal remembrance of the Eternal Now. The concealed fire, lifting ever upward and tasting at all times with its thrilled tongue a perpetual paradise, is ready ...
... theme of the human, ail-too human, takes on a new significance and becomes - to put the matter in an extreme form - hell's hidden way to heaven. To let the past be what it has been to the outer consciousness or to transmute its lines and hues by giving them a novel denouement lies in our hands. And as the past is our only established and achieved possession in the process of time, it is the sole ...
... have been as if the protracted yet beautiful and happy opening of a tightly shut flower. The Divine Grace may intervene, especially if our psychic beings press constantly into the outer consciousness. But, whether we have a hard or a smooth time, we may be sure that all is well and that, in the final reckoning, all has been for the best. To show our gratitude we must keep the inner flame ...
... that you stand on that high level and act directly from there and the solething left is to bring the Supermind down completely into theembodied consciousness here? Or is it that even the outer consciousness of you is acting straight from a supramentalrealisation? Or would it be correct to say that at present this consciousness is functioning from only the top of the Over mind established ...
... withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising ...
... the triple time, a transcendence of our limitation to the standpoint and view range of the moment, can be wholly possible. Meanwhile there are certain doors opening from the inner on to the outer consciousness which make an occasional but insufficient power of direct retro-vision of the past, circumvision of the present, prevision of the future even in the physical mind at least potentially feasible ...
... sapta ratnā , to the giver of the sacrifice. He looses them forth on us; for they are all there in the world as in the divine being, in ourselves also, and have only to be loosed forth on our outer consciousness. The rich and varied amplitude of this sevenfold delight, perfect on all the planes of our being, is the bhāga , enjoyment or portion of Bhaga Savitri in the completed sacrifice, and it is that ...
... wrong way, is moved by the right feeling but errs as to the application, person, place, circumstance. The psychic, except in a few extraordinary natures, does not get its full chance in the outer consciousness; it needs some kind of Yoga or sadhana to come by its own and it is as it emerges more and more "in front" that it gets clear of the mixture. That is to say, its presence becomes directly felt ...
... the latter. At present there are fluctuations in your consciousness because this inner state is not yet fully developed and established. When it is, there will still be fluctuations in the outer consciousness, but the inner quiet, force, love etc. will be constant and the superficial fluctuations will be watched by the inner being without its being shaken or troubled, until they are removed by the ...
... excessive; but to have too many contacts and be always dispersing oneself prevents the sadhana from growing and solidifying in the inner being, since one is always being pulled out into the ordinary outer consciousness. Mixing with Others It is true that mixing with others too closely tends to lower the condition, if they are not themselves in the right attitude and live very much in the vital. In all ...
... condition [ of peaceful concentration ] to grow in intensity until it can last even through the meal and after. I suppose it is not really the meal that disturbs but the coming out into the outer consciousness which is a little difficult to avoid when one goes to eat; but that can be overcome in time. You must not let that movement [ of reducing food ] go too far. It is one of the dangers of ...
... only a recent discovery of what the occult-spiritual knowledge knew long ago. People's ideas of sound sleep are absolutely erroneous. What they call sound sleep is merely a plunge of the outer consciousness into a complete subconscience. They call that a dreamless sleep; but it is only a state in which the surface sleep consciousness which is a subtle prolongation of the outer still left active ...
... choice that they do it, something in their nature drives them. There are many here who have had or still have that long covering of the inner by the outer or separation of the inner from the outer consciousness. You yourself took that way in spite of our expostulations to you advising you to take the sunlit road, and you have not yet got out of the habit. But that does not mean that you won't get out ...
... meditative ascetics, then all my spiritual teaching is false and there is no use for supramental realisation or anything else that has not been done in the past. The including of the outer consciousness in the transformation is of supreme importance in this Yoga—meditation cannot do it. Meditation can deal only with the inner being. So work is of primary importance—only it must be done with ...
... You have attained the silent inner consciousness, but that can be covered over by disturbance—the next step is for calm and silence to be established as the basis in the more and more outer consciousness—probably these [ higher ] forces are working for that. Then the play of the ordinary forces will be only on the surface and can be more easily dealt with. Silence and True Activity The ...
... of putting it in its proper place in a sound spiritual harmony. You can try [ writing a novel ], if you like. The difficulty is that the subject matter of a novel belongs mostly to the outer consciousness, so that a lowering or externalising can easily come. This apart from the difficulty of keeping the inner poise when putting the mind into outer work. If you could get an established poise within ...
... obscure ignorant physical Nature. That is why I want you to get rid of this habit of the outer mind and to recognise that it is the inner being which is the real truth of yourself and not this outer consciousness with its confusions which is a present fact but not your true permanent being. 9 December 1932 This morning I sent a letter to the Mother through X, but I have received no reply. Have ...
... does not make it an imagination; on the contrary, the more it grows the more is the likelihood of the whole being fulfilling this truth; the inner bhāva takes more and more possession of the outer consciousness and remoulds it so as to make it a truth there also. This is the constant principle of action in the Yogic transformation—what is true within comes out and takes possession of the mind and heart ...
... only if or when the waking mind is ready that they come as readily in the waking state. Again in you the waking mind has been too active in its insistence on the ideas and operations of the outer consciousness to give the inner mind a chance to project itself into the waking state. But it is through the inner consciousness and primarily through the inner mind that these things come; so, if there is ...
... Vivekananda comments: "Everything comes to him [to a man with Pratibha] naturally without making Page 307 Samyama." 1 Is it that he brings the highest knowledge down into the outer consciousness rather than being compelled to go into Samadhi? But in that case he is probably aware of the supermind. It has nothing to do with the supermind, for nobody can be aware of the supermind without ...
... (though the past circumstances may not be known) drawn together by old ties. It was the same inward recognition in you (apart even from the deepest spiritual connection) that brought you. If the outer consciousness does not yet fully realise, it is the crust always created by a new physical birth that prevents it. But the soul knows all the while. Your poem is very beautiful. I am aware of the terribly ...
... its energies. And without attaching much importance to that activity, that altogether relative utilisation, one can take without any difficulty, any inner debate, decisions which, to the outer consciousness appear the boldest and most dangerous. How simple everything is for him who sees all things from the height of Thy eternity! I hail Thee, O Lord, with a joyful and trusting devotion. May ...
... little too glaring, try to correct them or control them a little so as not to have too much trouble in life, while these people who think that the right attitude is to leave one's body and one's outer consciousness completely and withdraw entirely to the "spiritual heights", treat that like an old coat one throws aside and does not mend—and when one takes it back it is full of holes and stains. That ...
... therefore the agent of most of the lesser movements of our external life; its habitual reactions and obstinate pettinesses are the chief stumbling-block in the way of the transformation of the outer consciousness by the Yoga. It is also largely responsible for most of the suffering and disease of mind or body to which the physical being is subject in Nature. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The ...
... quite unconscious. The material body is very much under the influence of this power for the same reason; it is why we are not conscious of what is going on in the body, for the most part. The outer consciousness goes down into this subconscient when we are asleep, and so it becomes unaware of what is going on in us when we are asleep except for a few dreams. Many of these dreams rise up from the subconscient ...
... are necessary for this Yoga. The "I" or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear - the true being is felt in its place. * The three Gunas become purified ...
... and your acceptance of certain alleged principles, you yourself close the door upon the possibility of the miracle—they are not miracles when one knows how they happen, but obviously for the outer consciousness they seem miraculous. And it is you yourself , saying to yourself with a logic that seems quite reasonable, "Well, if I do this, that will necessarily happen, or if I don't do that, necessarily ...
... the mind which will help the psychic to manifest. The roles are reversed. The mind can be an instrument for the manifestation of the psychic later, when it has already taken possession of the outer consciousness. It is rarely so before that. Usually it is a veil and an obstruction. But surely it can't help in the manifestation. It can help in the action if it takes its true place and true movement. And ...
... Supermind, doesn't it? Ah, yes, you mean you did not understand the difference between yogic forces and the supramental nature. But Sri Aurobindo explains it. I did not understand. In the outer consciousness, mental and physical—corporal—in order to get a result like the one we were speaking about just now (for example, to have a protective personal atmosphere which can keep you safe from any undesirable ...
... t which will liberate the Spirit working from within. So, in the outer appearances as you see them, at first you find the mineral kingdom with stones, earth, minerals which to us, in our outer consciousness, appear absolutely unconscious. Yet, behind this unconsciousness there is the life of the Spirit, the consciousness of the Spirit, which is completely hidden, which is as if asleep—though that ...
... Consciousness to pass through them. Page 364 One can see also, one can see also, but one no longer sees things as they are physically, that's natural. If you keep a tiny part of your outer consciousness, if you are not entirely absorbed in the experience, you may see the two superimposed. But then the perception is not as clear and total. Yet it may happen that, for example, there is something ...
... most difficult, for many things of which one was not aware, become enormous ! There were all kinds of suggestion, movements, thoughts, formations which went on as though automatically in the outer consciousness, almost outside the consciousness, on the frontiers of consciousness; and as soon as one wants to be absolutely silent, one becomes aware of all these things which go on moving, moving, moving ...
... see I pull out always. And so, when I am doing that, apart from those cases in which I am aware that people are a little conscious of themselves, I am not always sure of the degree of their outer consciousness; and when I ask questions it is to know the difference between what they are conscious of and what I see; and this I am doing all the time. It looks as though I did not know, doesn't it? I ask ...
... simply say these are states of being which were never yet conscious in man (that is, that man has so far never been aware of them). One must get identified with them, then bring them into the outer consciousness, and manifest them in action. And then, I add (exactly what I foresaw—I did not know that Sri Aurobindo would do it, but still I foresaw that this had to be done): "3) To speak to the world ...
... apparently been successful, even for him there is always a counterpart. And this kind of hardening of the being which is produced, this veil which is formed, a thicker and thicker veil, between the outer consciousness and the inner truth, becomes, one day or another, altogether intolerable. It is usually paid for very dearly—outer success. (Mother's voice becomes extremely deep.) One must be very great ...
... higher destiny intervenes favourably in the normal destiny of the being and changes the course of events insofar as they concern him personally. It is events of this kind that appear to the outer consciousness as miracles, as divine interventions. The Mother On Education: Foresight ...
... are necessary for this Yoga. The “I“ or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear—the true being is felt in its place. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: ...
... wrong way, is moved by the right feeling but errs as to the application, person, place, circumstance. The psychic, except in a few extraordinary natures, does not get its full chance in the outer consciousness; it needs some kind of Yoga or Sadhana to come by its own and it is as it emerges more and more in front that it gets clear of the mixture. That is to say, its presence becomes directly felt ...
... escape from this turmoil, to run away from the difficulty and to find for themselves a happy condition elsewhere; but they leave the world and life uncorrected and untransformed; and their own outer consciousness too they leave unchanged and their bodies as unrcgenerate as ever. Coming back to the physical world, they are likely to lie worse there than even ordinary people; for they have lost the mastery ...
... higher destiny intervenes favourably in the normal destiny of the being and changes the course of events insofar as they concern him personally. It is events of this kind that appear to the outer consciousness as miracles, as divine interventions. Bulletin, February 1950 Page 79 ...
... very distant and often doubtful knowledge. In the transformed consciousness your starting-point is knowledge and you proceed from knowledge to knowledge. However, this is a beginning; for the outer consciousness, the various planes and parts of the outer active being are transformed slowly and gradually as a result of the inner transformation. There is a partial change of consciousness which makes ...
... towards which they always move without even being aware of it? And precisely because of that, is not the suffering that separation brings one of the most effective means of transcending this outer consciousness, of replacing this superficial attachment by the integral realisation of Thy eternal Oneness? This is what I wished for them all; this is what I ardently willed for them, and that is why, ...
... to me, and on the point of disappearing definitively. But the necessity of my outer duties tore me away from this beneficent and happy contemplation, and when I was obliged to return to the outer consciousness the veil closed again and now seems to me darker than ever. Why this fall into the inconscience of night after so great a light?... O Lord, Lord, wilt Thou not then let me escape at last from ...
... being, no matter how great, is limited, at least for a long time, by the very fact that he is human and because, even when he is in contact with immensity, this immensity is translated in his outer consciousness from the angle of his own personality. It is very difficult for him not to have a perspective partially obliterated as it were by his own viewpoint. But these last obstacles must be overcome ...
... of direct knowledge. But before reaching this stage, all the experiences one has must pass through the ordinary mental method of observation, analysis and deduction in order to reach the outer consciousness. The very essence of the experience fades away and there remains only a sort of very dry husk which has lost all its power of realisation—almost, almost lost it. But those whose intellectual ...
... Mother, if the psychic always feels the Divine Presence, why does the human being cry and lament the lack of this Presence? I have already told you that it is because the contact between the outer consciousness and the psychic consciousness is not well established. He in whom this contact is well established is always happy. The suffering we experience proves that the psychic being is far away ...
... other words, that you have the will to realize it. From the negative point of view—I mean the difficulties to be overcome—one of the most serious obstacles is that the ignorant and falsifying outer consciousness, the ordinary consciousness legitimizes all the so-called physical laws, causes, effects and consequences, all that science has discovered physically and materially. All this is an unquestionable ...
... better afterwards. It is not useless, some work has been done—cleaning, cleaning, cleaning out. But there's quite a lot to do! Does this have an effect on people's consciousness—I mean their outer consciousness? Page 131 Ah... not much! Yes and no in the sense that I do manage to bring about a general progress. Some individuals are receptive, sometimes astonishingly so, receiving the ...
... speaking about, waves of this joy of life, the joy of life rippling past, touching; but instead of being.... At times, you see, the body is in a sort of equilibrium (what we, in our ordinary outer consciousness, call 'equilibrium'—that is, good health), and then this joy is constant, like swells on the sea ( Mother shapes great waves ): it seems to flow on behind everything; it comes and shows its face ...
... France, from where he would return in July. ) Mother looks tired, she goes into a long contemplation: Will you continue [the Tantric discipline] there? Yes.... I must say that in my outer consciousness, I don't Page 108 know anything at all. I don't understand anything You don't understand? I understand nothing whatsoever. ( Mother laughs ) I simply know that there ...
... 334 It is not the psychic being that suffers for personal reasons, it is the mind, the vital and the ordinary consciousness of ignorant man. This is because the contact between the outer consciousness and the psychic consciousness is not well established. He in whom the contact has been well established is always happy. The psychic being works with perseverance and ardour for the union ...
... an absolutely indispensable first step that must be accomplished before anything else can be undertaken: the transformation of the consciousness.... However, this is only a beginning; for the outer consciousness, the various planes and parts of the outer active being are transformed only slowly and gradually as a result of the inner transformation." Why do I make a distinction between the integral ...
... higher destiny intervenes favourably in the normal destiny of the being and changes the course of events insofar as they concern him personally. It is events of this kind that appear to the outer consciousness as miracles, as divine interventions." I shall give you an example of how consciousness, a higher consciousness, intervenes. A man steps out of his house to go to his office. He goes a ...
... spot of light and concentrates on it, trying to discover how it touches and changes the outer vision, he is a secure seer with an eye that ranges over the entire "inscape" of mystery until his outer consciousness is altogether drenched in that translucence. Change in Style and Psychology That a poet should discard so thorough a power to voice occult insight seems a grave tragedy. ...
... he would send in troops. It seems more likely that this cease-fire is a Chinese trick, that they've got something up their sleeve. It's quite possible. It may be like that in their outer consciousness. ( silence ) Had I been asked the last question put to that man in Madras, I would have answered something like this: "I don't know if there will be fighting or not, but it can happen without ...
... Approximately at that time, a former disciple, Rani Maitra, wife of the former chancellor of Benares University, was dying without Mother's knowing anything about it in her outer consciousness. ...
... than Nirvana or Nirvikalpa Samadhi." 1 For, we do not want to be satisfied with inner psycho-spiritual experiences alone, we seek too the total and complete realisation of the Divine in the outer consciousness and in the life of action. 1 Letters on Yoga, p. 59. Page 93 But the detractor may interject at this point: "The waking realisation that you are aiming at — has ...
... in the poem itself. I speak of the star of creation, the moon of ecstasy and the storm-breath of the soul-change—that is, the upheaval before the change. The trance brings in a change of the outer consciousness and nature. There is no philosophy anywhere. (Shortly after returning the book) Let me have the book again. (Looking at the poem once more) There is a big printing mistake here. A hyphen ...
... burnt all my works to be caught again in Art’s devilish snare?’ This was the burden of his pathetic song.” [57] And he adds: “The duel went on and all kinds of inner conflict scoured his outer consciousness. I believe that the Yogic Force after the first years of creative ananda had touched the subconscious, hence the reaction.” [58] During that time the Mother fell ill and Sri Aurobindo discontinued ...
... which we need to look into in some detail. (f) The inner consciousness is, in fact, what can be called the subliminal consciousness, because it is behind the threshold of our outer consciousness. It includes the large action of the inner mind, inner Intelligence and inner sense-mind, of an inner vital, and of an inner subtle-physical being which upholds and embraces our waking consciousness ...
... an instrumentation proves to be altogether inadequate and futile. (vi)Because of the aforesaid inability to exercise anything but a relative and moderate elevating influence on the outer consciousness, it so happens that when the Samadhi ceases, the thread is broken and the soul returns once again to the "distractions and imperfections of the outward life." As a matter of fact, since ...
... possession of equality a sadhaka cannot progress on the path of sadhana. For "a perfect equality of our spirit and nature is a means by which we can move back from the troubled and ignorant outer consciousness into the inner kingdom of heaven...." (The Synthesis of Yoga , p. 672) So the sadhaka is faced ! with a dilemma: Without attaining equality, one cannot acquire perfect spiritual equality; ...
... meditation, I feel that I have not slept nor I had any thought. Then what did I do? I feel as if my body has become inert, it is not laziness. It is not sleep - you go inside losing the outer consciousness, that is all. The body remains inert — the inner consciousness is elsewhere. Mother, Since 11.30 a.m. today, I feel like crying. Although I am trying to remain calm, I cannot ...
... t, this Divine Will operative always and everywhere is also active in every individual human being in his 'central will' which resides in his central being. But this Will cannot reach the outer consciousness in its pure form; it becomes deformed in many ways and then acts in many different forms. About this polychromous chameleon manifestation of ordinary personal will, Sri Aurobindo has this ...
... Page 29 (2) "Vision is another plane of perception which awakes. It is the senses in the mind or vital or physical which wake up and manage to pass their experiences to the outer consciousness. It is as though one had another pair of eyes behind these, eyes which could see [other planes of consciousness] instead of seeing in the physical." (CWM, Vol. 7, p. 129) The second ...
... The Life Divine (p. 535): "All the movements of the surface being can be seen ... with a direct sight in the consciousness by which the self-delusions and mistakes of self of the outer consciousness can be dispelled; there is a keener mental vision ... of our subjective becoming, a vision which at once knows, commands and controls the whole nature." Sri Aurobindo has referred in ...
... and necessity of any disturbance in the immobility, — that work or action has behind it the status of the inactivity. The discerning sage discerns inactivity even when there is activity in the outer consciousness. It is that action behind which one sees inaction that has to be discovered and allowed to be carried out. Action that is not in consonance with the highest state of consciousness and which is ...
... dhyana in which the mind becomes concentrated leads to the state of samadhi which gives an entry into higher states of consciousness. Mental action is liberated from the confusions of the outer-consciousness, and it passes thence to the higher supramental planes in which the individual soul, Purusha, enters into its spiritual existence, distinct and independent of Prakriti, Nature. The ancient system ...
... ess—the night and the abyss are the outer ignorance, its brief mortal existence, but even there it brings a momentary relief and an after-effect (trace on the clustered memories of the dark outer consciousness); within the heart there is the beginning of a trance, of change opening to the caves of the luminous deep of the psychic (hridaye guhâyâm) 214 with its psychic fires. See? But that is only ...
... in some more vigour to find him in reality? And why does it make you glad simply because I have found him in my dream? What is once found in the inner being is likely to be found in the outer consciousness—that is why. June 3, 1937 [Question by J:] P says that he is going to write an article on "the only vernacular epic", Tulsi Ramayan in Hindi. But Meghnadbodh is an epic too in ...
... What is meant by "having a psychic basis"? The psychic in front and supporting the whole experience. It seems that the psychic being has begun to work directly on the outer consciousness with love and devotion as its main means. Yes, certainly that is the working of the psychic. The pressure from the cardiac centre down to the navel centre is ...
... driven helplessly on. But the story does not end here. Man can, if he chooses, alter the situation, turn the tables. He has in him the source of freedom—what he vaguely feels in his outer consciousness; there is a centre from where he is capable of reacting and reasserting. It is the centre Page 132 where lies his dharma, the law of his being. It is his soul. If he once ...
... dwells beyond the walls of the city; one, that is to say, the conscient being in us, loves her all the more passionately because she is so. The city means this normally flourishing confine of outer consciousness where we dwell usually; the Divine is kept outside the pale of this inferior nature. To our consciousness that which is beyond it is an obscure, valueless, worthless, miserable non -entity; but ...
... if the condition becomes exclusive. But also it can be an experience that remains behind, exists in a conscious way and yet not exclusively. In other words, the contact with the world and the outer consciousness is maintained and supported by something which is independent of them and free. It is a state in which you can make truly a great progress in your external consciousness; for then you can detach ...
... according to Sri Aurobindo, a deeper and inner consciousness which is subliminal, but it is sometimes called the subconsciousness, because, as already stated, it is behind the threshold of our outer consciousness, and of this subliminal consciousness we are normally unconscious. Consciousness and Powers of the Subliminal We have already seen to some extent the nature of the domain of subliminal ...
... ss, which we need to look into in some detail. VI The inner consciousness is, in fact, what can be-called the subliminal consciousness, because it is behind the threshold of our outer consciousness. It includes the large action of the inner mind, inner Intelligence and inner sense-mind, of an inner vital, and of an inner subtle-physical being which upholds and embraces our waking consciousness ...
... hold on me. My mother had the feeling that she would some day in some way lose her eldest child. But as she could not give expression to this feeling, she kept silent. She knew nothing in her outer consciousness about it. "My child spends his time with his friend in the house of Srinivasachari, preparing for the Matriculation examination. After the examination, before he joins the F. A. in Madras ...
... certainly the abrupt and decisive breaking that is the easiest and best way for these things-vital habits."³ (v) THE SUBLIMINAL " There is an inner as well as an outer consciousness all through our being, upon all its levels. The ordinary man is aware only of his surface self and quite unaware of all that is concealed by the surface. And yet what is on the surface, what ...
... knowledge. To withdraw the mind first from the multiplicity of outward phenomena - to fix the concentrated attention on one object (a rūpa or a mantra) alone - and finally to transcend all outer consciousness in the infinite immobility of the cessation of normal consciousness: this is the Rajayogin's way and goal. In Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, while physical techniques are not taboo and are, in fact, found ...
... It was very clear. The Goal is known to us, but it is reserved for us two. To you it is rather the road that this indicated. And this road is very different from what you expected in your outer consciousness .... 34 Here she speaks of "us two", of Sri Aurobindo and herself, as if it is a two in-one identity notwithstanding the seeming difference: they were a single consciousness pa ...
... unvisited by illusion's gleams, A Will expressive of soul's deity, A Strength not forced to stumble by its speed, A Joy that drags not sorrow as its shade." Man is absorbed in the outer consciousness. He is busy with his little daily acts in which he finds himself a slave of circumstances; and whenever he makes a movement it is almost always through compulsion of necessity or emergency. ...
... are new regions which have never yet been manifested on earth, and which Sri Aurobindo Page 52 called supramental .. One must get identified with them, then bring them into the outer consciousness, and manifest them in action.17 As regards giving to the world again "the eternal word under a new form" , 't was to be "the synthesis of all human knowledge". The Word, Logos, the source ...
... and the psychic feeling, one has no right to despair of one’s spiritual future. You could not yet carry out the discrimination into an entire psychic change, because a large part of the outer physical consciousness still took some pleasure in old movements and therefore these roots remained alive in the subconscient. When you were off your guard the whole thing rose up and there was a temporary and ...
... something on the surface—it may be determined by the psychic and so help to shape the future but it does not determine the psychic's choice. That is something behind the veil. It is not the outer consciousness's action that determines the inner process, but the other way round. Sometimes, however, there are signs or fragments of the inner action that come up on the surface, e.g. some people have a vision... death, the last state of consciousness is usually the most important. That is, if at the moment of death one has the intense aspiration to return to continue his work, then the conditions are arranged for it to be done. But, you see, there are all the possibilities, for what happens after death. There are people who return in the psychic. You see, I have told you that the outer being is very rarely preserved;... state, which is not very frequent—it depends absolutely on the degree of development of the psychic and the hope formulated by the integral consciousness of the being—there is still the mental, vital and physical consciousness, united with the psychic consciousness; so at that moment, the moment of death, the moment of leaving the body, it formulates a hope or an aspiration or a will, and usually this ...
... heights, is incapable of receiving, appreciating and knowing what divine Love is. Love must cease to be divine to be accepted by man. But that is a phenomenon of the outer, superficial consciousness; it doesn't prevent Love in its form of Grace from being at work everywhere and always, and from doing its work in an unknown but constant way, to put it thus; and I think, in fact, that it never works so well... le and incomprehensible for you. That is the experience in its essence and its true power. Gradually, as the action is prolonged and the outer being begins to assimilate this action, there awakens a capacity of observation, first in the mental consciousness, and a kind of Page 341 objectivisation occurs: something in the mind looks on, observes and translates in its own way. This is... Light, when it can be penetrated by it, is sufficiently receptive to absorb it, the moment it wants to express it in a way understandable to the human consciousness—I don't mean the ordinary consciousness but even the enlightened human consciousness—the moment it wants to formulate, to make it precise and understandable, it reduces, diminishes, limits—it attenuates, weakens, blurs the experience, even ...
... merely to the aspect of conduct; the conduct dealt with by morality is only a minor aspect of the totality of works, inner no less than outer. Yogic consciousness Page 232 includes all these works and strives by the method of a progressive change of consciousness for the perfect expression of all the aspects of the works and in this striving it realises also the unity of works with the highest... mere learning about Yoga is not Yoga, and even the most catholic book cannot be a substitute for the direct yogic practice of an inner change of consciousness by which one can perceive and realise the inner and higher Self and transform the workings of the outer instruments of Nature. Nor can Yoga be practiced in a casual way or only as a part-time pre-occupation. Yoga, to be properly practiced, must... Yoga proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and comes first into a direct and living contact by experience and then into a union with the Divine. For the yogin, this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else ...
... and inspire me to have devotion, love and aspiration for Thee once again. What may be the reason for this? You may have allowed your consciousness to go too much outward and get taken up by ordinary things. It is usually when the outer physical consciousness covers up the inner being that this happens. The aspiration is not gone, but it no longer rises to the surface. If you remain very quiet inwardly... unshaken, holding on to the Mother—then these things will no longer be able to cloud the inner consciousness as now. Plenty of people have this condition (it is human nature) and there is naturally a way of coming out of it—having full faith in the Mother to quiet the inner mind (even if the outer continues to be troublesome) and call in it the Mother's Peace and Force, which is always there... with a constant support of your consent, with a constant rejection of all that is not that, till all the inner being is tranquillised and filled with the Mother's Force, Peace, Joy, Presence—then the outer nature will be obliged to follow suit in its turn. 8 May 1933 In a dream I saw a dull painting with an expanse of water in the background, and in the centre a temple with trees in front. As I ...
... received the initiation of the supreme spirituality to become its instrument and servitor. Sri Ramakrishna, at the very outset, proved in his own life the conquest of the inner over the outer, of Consciousness over Matter, of the spiritual over the mundane. And then he sought to impress that high truth on the life-plane of humanity. He sowed the seed of a new future creation. That is why he is the... right to act, and his deeds alone achieve fulfilment, who has been chosen and authorised by God. The spiritual practice of Sri Ramakrishna laid great stress on Yogic trance. It signifies that the outer mind should be withdrawn from all sense-attraction, not going out in all directions but focussed on the pure spiritual truth, like an arrow shot into its target. What absurd ideas do we not cherish... essential principles of different religions and harmonising them. But Sri Ramakrishna's work was not of this type. Every religion leads to the same goal. However different and contradictory may appear the outer forms of spiritual disciplines, fundamentally each derives from the same source and culminates in the same Truth. Sri Ramakrishna has proved this unity and has brought about, so to say, a unification ...
... immensely to our possible scope of knowledge and widen the narrow limits in which our sense-bound outer physical consciousness is circumscribed and imprisoned. But more important is the power of the subliminal to enter Page 248 into a direct contact of consciousness with other consciousness or with objects, to act without other instrumentation, by an essential sense inherent in its... or visualise or turn into sensory formations. It is the subliminal in reality and not the outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight and other supernormal faculties whose occurrence in the surface consciousness is due to openings or rifts in the wall erected by the outer personality's unseeing labour of individualisation and interposed between itself and the inner... directed, to be no longer their subject but their master and to come into conscious and self-controlled possession of the inner secrets of our nature. The psychical consciousness reveals this interaction between the inner and the outer planes, this world and others, partly by an awareness, which may be very constant, vast and vivid, of their impacts, suggestions, communications to our inner thought ...
... but not the joy of wonderment, and it doesn't have the stupidity of bewilderment, it's... something... a state, yes. The body notes the way life is (or at least the way life is for our outer, active consciousness), the way life is, the way it APPEARS to be... and it's very hard for it not to say, "Why, why, why? WHY?.." And then, when it sits looking like that, it becomes sad, sad, so very sad; then... to be disgusting, to go wrong, to grate: a TINY LITTLE movement either of trusting opening, or of the ordinary consciousness (not at all a consciousness of revolt or negation, not at all: merely the ordinary consciousness, the consciousness of life as people have it—the ordinary consciousness), and it's enough... things become appalling; and then, like this ( gesture in the other direction ): miraculously... Answer is always, always the same (it's like this, it's here like this [ gesture around the head ]): "In my Consciousness, things are different." Or, "In my Consciousness, things have a different appearance." And there was this insistence: "Work to have the true consciousness." The TRUE consciousness that contains everything. And this morning, the body understood: the problem was very clearly understood ...
... now, otherwise I might have asked you a question. Go ahead. What question? Why didn't Sri Aurobindo or you make more use of miracles as a means to overcome the resistances of the outer human consciousness? Why this self-effacement towards the outside, this sort of nonintervention, as it were, or unobstrusiveness? In Sri Aurobindo's case, I only know what he told me several times: what people... We might say that the sense of miracle can only belong to a finite world, a finite consciousness, a finite conception. It is the abrupt, unexpected entry—or appearance or intervention or penetration—of something that did not exist in this physical world. So it follows that any manifestation of a will or consciousness belonging to a realm more infinite and eternal than the earth is necessarily a miracle ...
... and purification with the beginning of the true inner experience which, if it continues, creates the Yogic consciousnesss and in the Page 114 end replaces by it the outer ordinary consciousness. Is this fire the aspiration of the psychic being? The central fire is in the psychic being, but it can be lit in all the parts of the being. ... be complete." Which consciousness was spoken of here? How am I to receive it from the Divine Shakti? The right consciousness by which you become aware of all that is going on in you and of the real character of the movements and aware too of the right working. You can get it by aspiration. What is the "true consciousness"? The consciousness that is aware of the... in which you take interest, you concentrate on it. Concentration simply means fixing of consciousness on something. You have said that one has to concentrate a little till one gets one's proper state of consciousness back. On what is one to concentrate? To concentrate the consciousness in itself simply, as you tighten a belt. It has got relaxed and diffused, so you have lost ...
... work there, but invisible, occult and latent in a subconscious or apparently unconscious action of energy. The electron and the atom are in this view eternal somnambulists. In the plant the outer form consciousness is still in a state of sleep, always on the point of waking, but never waking. Animal being is mentally aware of existence, its own and others, it has even a practical intelligence, founded... self-power of its divine being and consciousness is the culmination. It is admitted that the two stages that have already occurred seem at first sight to deny the possibility of the later consummating stage of the cycle, but it is stressed that logically they imply its emergence. For, it is argued, if the inconscience has evolved consciousness, the partial consciousness already reached must surely... change was a pre-requisite of a change of consciousness. But in man a reversal is possible, indeed inevitable. It is through his consciousness, through its transmutation, and no longer through a new bodily organism as a first instrumentation, that the evolution can be effected. It may even be surmised that in the inner reality of things, a change of consciousness was always the major fact, that evolution ...
... something on the surface—it may be determined by the psychic and so help to shape the future but it does not determine the psychic's choice. That is something behind the veil. It is not the outer consciousness's action that determines the inner process, but the other way round. Some times, however, there are signs or fragments of the inner action that come up on the surface, e.g. some people have a... of mind, life and body. It manifests, as the individual mind and life and body grow, as much as may be of the consciousness which it holds in potentiality, manifests it in the outward instrumental nature as far as and in the way that is possible through these instruments and through the outer personality that has been prepared for it and by it—for both are true—for the present life. I know nothing... in human consciousness. It is when the vital gets broken up, some strong movements of it, desires, greeds, may precipitate themselves into animal forms, e.g., sexual desire with the part of the vital consciousness under its control into a dog or some habitual movement of excessive greed may carry part of the vital consciousness into a pig. The animals represent the vital consciousness with mind ...
... traditional meditation, when effectively practised, the consciousness of the sadhaka splits into two distinctly different disjoint parts: one the inner one and the other the outer one. The inner consciousness of the sadhaka gets flooded with the downpour of supernal Light and Love and I Peace and Delight, abiding and self-existent, while the outer untransformed life is left outside to fend for itself... Vivekananda, with eyes closed, a serene face and consciousness appearing to be completely indrawn, cut off from all contact and concern with the outer world. But we must remember that this is only one specialised form of a successful meditation. As we are sadhakas of the Integral Yoga and seek the establishment of spiritual consciousness even in the waking state, and since we aim at the... acquired. But the Integral Yoga does not favour this kind of escapist spirituality. It demands that the Truth, the Light, the Power, the Bliss realised in the inner consciousness should enter into the outer waking consciousness also and become entirely effective there. Hence for the sadhaka of the Integral Yoga each act of meditation has to be outwardly dynamic and not confine itself to being ...
... standing back, from the surface consciousness, which equa- Page 167 nimity entailed, began to diminish and the hidden presence of the Divine in all came to be caught with a certain vividness which brought a natural insight into their deepest selves and an understanding of the complexes of their personalities. The equanimity now permeated even the outer being and along with it went the... minimum and it can be dropped at the earliest opportunity. From that moment you are soul-powered and your contact with the Lord is so deep and strong and continuous that it overflows into the outer waking consciousness and you had those marvellous five minutes of utter soul-life in the wakeful state on the physical plane just after the dream. What happened is the promise of a more luminous future than ever... First there is a pale shine, next a faint pink gleam which lays a carpet, as it were, over which a World-Mother's presence sweeps royally towards me to raise me into my highest possibility of inner and outer godhead. My visionary up-soar feels harmonious with what Coleridge in a familiar strain calls the birds' "sweet jargoning" and Meredith in an insightful accent hails as A voice seraphically free ...
... another form and meaning and the consciousness that lives and acts among them is not the outer physical consciousness but some inner vital part of the being. The insurrection of the French soldiers is a figure of some disturbance on the vital plane which wants to happen and affect the inner life. The import of the dream is the readiness of the vital inner consciousness to put its reliance on the Mother... of things, not an outer instrumental part. In the sleep part of the consciousness goes out to other planes of being and sees and experiences things there. It is quite possible for the witness consciousness to follow these happenings which usually transmit themselves in a coherent transcription to the sleeping part of the consciousness—the latter receives them and they appear as clear significant... The whole was only a formation or suggestion of outer forces on the vital plane to see what kind of response, if any, your consciousness would make. These are dreams of the vital plane in which the vital plane takes up the spiritual experience and tries to turn it into forms of ego with a suggestion afterwards of loss of power and of consciousness and a fall. You should attach no importance to ...
... Page 380 inner but as outer. It is an outer mass of old movements pressing on the physical consciousness and trying to keep its place by memory and recurrent habit. The physical consciousness has to push it out more and more till it is no longer felt as within it, but seen for what it really is, an outer Nature of the ignorance which had usurped the consciousness and prevented the psychic being... psychic will return and eventually come down into the physical consciousness itself; then there will be very little difficulty. The second is the inner consciousness always awake. At present that is difficult, because to keep the inner consciousness awake at all times can only come by a deepening of yourself so that the veil between the outer and inner which lifts only in concentration may cease to exist... good—it is the psychic condition that is increasing. The peace and spontaneous knowledge are in the psychic being and from there they spread to mind and vital and physical. It is in the outer physical consciousness that the difficulty still tries to persist and brings the restlessness sometimes into the physical mind, sometimes into the nerves, sometimes in the shape of bodily trouble into the body ...
... done. For I was looking on, to see, as I said, if there were things which were not as they should have been. But in any case, to the eye of this consciousness which was looking on, it was satisfying. Materially, you see, I said, "In the outer human consciousness this can be done much better." That of course is understood, we haven't reached the height of perfection, far from that, but it must also be said... and the importance you give to the things which concern you, and the universal immensity; this is enough. Naturally, there is another way, it is to free oneself from the earth consciousness and rise into a higher consciousness where these terrestrial things take their true place—which is quite small, you see. But... indeed, once, very long ago, when I was still in Paris and used to see Mme. David-Neel... what you could do. What is it to you whether a few foolish spectators see it or not?" It was clear , you see. I am expressing it; in expressing it I take away something from it. It was a state of consciousness, and then, indeed, it troubled me a little, because... trouble! that's a way of speaking... I told myself: "Heavens! If it is like that after all, we can't be sure that the rain will stop. For if ...
... and the psychic feeling, one has no right to despair of one's spiritual future. You could not yet carry out the discrimination into an entire psychic change, because a large part of the outer physical consciousness still took some pleasure in old movements and therefore their roots remained alive in the subconscient. When you were off your guard the whole thing rose up and there was a temporary and... anything else. I have told you that if you feel quietness somewhere in your consciousness, even if a part is not quiet, that is sufficient to lean on and get the Force to act through it. The quietness is quite as much a fact as the outer confusion. You have to accept it, to stress it, to aspire to keep and increase it—to reject the confusion. What "reason" do you need to aspire for peace, purity... of the inferior consciousness by your or his unaided effort. That is why when you sink into this inferior consciousness, everything seems hopeless to you, because you lose hold for a time of the true consciousness. But the suggestion is untrue, because you have an opening to the Divine and are not bound to remain in the inferior consciousness. When you are in the true consciousness, then you see that ...
... experienced by us in our ordinary wakefulness, jagrita; the next higher state of the Self is what is experienced in the dream state, swapna, the state that comes when we withdraw from the outer, bahirmukha, consciousness; it is a state of deeper awareness, but it appears dreamy to our ordinary wakeful stage; the objects of that deeper awareness are subtle. The third state is much profounder, so dense... self again is the same as God and Brahman, a transcendent Existence and Existent, and they beheld, felt, lived in the inmost truth of all things in the universe and the inmost truth of man's inner and outer existence by the light of this one and unifying vision. The Upanishads are thus the records of self-knowledge, world- knowledge and God-knowledge. As a first step of the yoga, there has to be an... phenomena. 39 Avidya is a veil of nescience that hides the real reality of the individual, universal and the transcendence and projects a false view centred on ego-consciousness. In avidya, the individual lives in his ego-consciousness, which tends always to assert its finitude and yet its independence, as though it were self-existent. Ego is a false sense, corresponding to which there is no real existent ...
... appearaance, an appearance based on a limited view. But there is no radical change in the vibration of the consciousness." (CWM, Vol. 11, p. 61) And Sri Aurobindo? Has he not taught us that death does not signify the end of the personal existence; it is no more than the taking off of one's outer garment: "... death is only a shedding of the body, not a cessation of the personal existence. A man is... only something on the surface - it may be determined by the psychic and so help to shape the future but it does not determine the psychic's choice. That is something behind the veil. It is not outer consciousness's action that Page 69 determines the inner process, but the other way round," (Letters on Yoga, Cent. Ed., pp. 443-44) There is something interesting associated with... reflected in the dying man's consciousness. It is through their influence and direction that the departing spirit finds its proper way of egress, and the supraphysical path to follow in the other world; it finally goes to its resting place according to its saṁskāras and conditionings shaped in the lifetime before death." (Translated.) Well, all this relates to the outer cosciousness of the dying ...
... started the Arya. 1926 marked what is called the descent of the Overmind Consciousness into his physical being and into the Mother's. The Ashram too was officially started — under the Mother. Next, 1938 is the year — 12 years later — in which it seems a decisive step was taken to draw the Supermind into the outer physical consciousness, even if the step was partial and not continuous in its effect. Then... psychologically — though all with different movements. Amal has made his movement anapaestic (three-stepped), mine is iambic (two-stepped), Nishikanta's a jumble of both, depending on his inner and outer condition. Also, before leaving, Sri Aurobindo saw to it that, among those he had initiated into poetry with so much special care, one of us at least would be able to follow the path he has opened and... Rajayoga than merely breathing exercises which make you super-young, (laughter) And so I was a little intrigued. Here was talk of the mind being stilled and ultimately passing into a higher state of consciousness, as a result of which you acquired various powers, not only having inexhaustible energy but becoming larger, becoming smaller, flying about and doing a lot of amazing things. Furthermore, just to ...
... unfelt inner Existence,—he who is awake in the sleeper, the universal Inhabitant of the Upanishads,—an outer absorbed form-consciousness which, unlike that of the human somnambulist, has never been awake and is not always or ever on the point of waking. In the plant this outer form-consciousness is still in the state of sleep, but a sleep full of nervous dreams, always on the point of waking, but never... existence as distinguished from the immanent or secretly governing consciousness, is lost in the physical action, is so absorbed into it as to be fixed in a stereo typed self-oblivion unaware of what it is and what it is doing. The electron and atom are in this view eternal somnambulists; each material object contains an outer or form consciousness involved, absorbed in the form, asleep, seeming to be an u... way that the transition from the lower to higher grades of consciousness seems to have been made in Nature. In fact, life, mind, supermind are present in the atom, are Page 739 at work there, but invisible, occult, latent in a subconscious or apparently unconscious action of the Energy; there is an informing Spirit, but the outer force and figure of being, what we might call the formal ...
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.