... is these things that are also Savitri. But Sri Aurobindo brings again and again the accent and vibration of the Mantra and a general mantric atmosphere playing round whatever other overhead planes find voice, to convey him to a goal further than any the Vedas and the Upanishads envisaged. His poetry traverses regions on which the steps of the ancients never fell. The afflatus of the planes... multiplicities have fundamental types behind them — individuals grounded in species, species grounded in genera. A wide variation playing upon a persistent pattern is her creative mode everywhere. The overhead planes hold that basic oneness most intensely. Conscious being there does not forget as in our lower hemisphere the universal Self: every movement is fraught with awareness of the Infinite. The principle... and impairing the vitality of the broad scheme. The power and perfection of each line of Savitri lies in utter faithfulness to the fact, the atmosphere, the life-throb found on the overhead planes. Not that the poetry refuses to descend anywhere: there are lines which the ordinary mind recognises as akin to its coinage, but these are deliberately introduced as helpful connecting-links between ...
... is these things that are also Savitri. But Sri Aurobindo brings again and again the accent and vibration of the Mantra and a general mantric atmosphere playing round whatever other overhead planes find voice, to convey him to a goal further than any the Vedas and the Upanishads envisaged. His poetry traverses regions on which the steps of the ancients never fell. The afflatus of the planes... types behind them - individuals grounded in Page 6 species, species grounded in genera. A wide variation playing upon a persistent pattern is her creative mode everywhere. The overhead planes hold that basic oneness most intensely. Conscious being there does not forget as in our lower hemisphere the universal Self: every movement is fraught with awareness of the Infinite. The principle... The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still. The power and perfection of each line of Savitri lies in utter faithfulness to the fact, the atmosphere, the life-throb found on the overhead planes. Not that the poetry refuses to descend anywhere: there are lines which the ordinary mind recognises as akin to its coinage, but these are deliberately introduced as helpful connecting-links between ...
... (5) "...the sahasradala padma through which the higher intuition, illumined mind and overmind all pass their rays." 6 It is overwhelmingly borne in on us that, when a number of overhead planes come to be distinguished among them-selves and from the Supermind, the Supermind is the one plane conspicuously absent in relation to what the Sahasradala communicates with and receives from... be a sheer misnomer for them and could never be applied either to "the illumined mind", "the intuition proper" or even "the overmind". Perhaps it will be argued:" In the Arya-days the overhead planes below the intuition must have fallen outside the Supermind; for, what is said in the old definition - namely, that the thousand-petalled lotus has the Supramental directly communicating with... alone the Intuition and Overmind lie beyond the whole Sahasradala - "top and summit" as well as the rest. Even if we accept that only the Intuition and Overmind and none of the lower overhead planes were classed as supramental, we still have the Arya at very substantial variance with later times. In fact, the variance would fundamentally remain substantial so long as the Overmind whose ...
... doubtful whether any such mentally constructed definition could be always applicable. You [Amal Kiran] speak, for instance, of the sense of the Infinite and the One which is pervasive in the Overhead planes; that need not be explicitly there in the Overhead poetic expression or in the substance of any given line: it can be expressed indeed by Overhead poetry as no other can express it, but this... than of the dynamic aesthesis which creates; I was not thinking at all of superior or inferior grades of poetic greatness or beauty. If the complete Overmind power or even that of the lower Overhead planes could come down into the mind and entirely transform its action, then no doubt there might be greater poetry written than any that man has yet achieved, just as a greater superhuman life might... of our mind and life; our capacity for ecstasy is brief and limited; these tones arise from a general ground of neutrality which is always dragging them back towards itself. As it enters the Overhead planes the ordinary aesthesis turns into a pure delight and becomes capable of a high, a large or a deep abiding ecstasy. The ground is no longer a general neutrality, but a pure spiritual ease and ...
... Savitri III Overhead Aesthesis Now all these overhead planes—Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind—can influence, each to the measure of its distinctive or sovereign power, our various activities or preoccupations at the mental or the below-mental—the vital and the material planes. If the resistance from the lower powers—matter, life... of the inner eye; its rhythm has a decisive inevitable sound which leaves nothing essential unheard, but very commonly is embodied in a single stroke. 18 Such are the overhead planes and their characteristic powers, which are more or less spiritual in their origin and impulsion. When these powers engage themselves, partly or wholly, in the creation and communication of beauty... tone of neutrality and indifference born from the universal insensibility into which the Ananda sinks in its dark negation in the Inconscient." 22 It is alone the opening of the overhead planes, the play of the overhead powers, that can effect a cure for this indifference and restore the lost taste for the original Ananda. Behind the Manomaya, the divided limited agonised mental self ...
... out to be the choice of the Supreme in her. Aswapathy creates the possibility for the descent of the higher Power, Savitri incarnates the power and effectuates the transformation. II. OVERHEAD PLANES AND AESTHESIS Sanskrit poetics, Rasa Shastra, takes note of literary creations from higher levels of consciousness beyond Mind: Overhead creations like the Veda, the Upanishads, the Gita... Humanity is passing through a crucial stage in its evolution the need for clarifying the functions and powers of the Overhead consciousness is all the more urgent. Sri Aurobindo shows that all the Overhead planes are not to be classed together, —there are gradations: "These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined ... reception—sometimes mixed with the stuff of the poet's nature. Sri Aurobindo says that now is the time when the seat of creation may be raised from the receiving mind of the poets to any of the overhead planes. The problem is to open, if possible, consciously, to these higher planes, establish a contact, and receive without mixture of the lower nature the Overhead creation. As he wrote in one of his ...
... in, but it is doubtful whether any such mentally constructed definition could be always applicable. You speak, for instance, of the sense of the Infinite and the One which is pervasive in the overhead planes; that need not be explicitly there in the overhead poetic expression or in the substance of any given line: it can be expressed indeed by overhead poetry as no other can express it, but this poetry... level of our mind and life; our capacity for ecstasy is brief and limited; these tones arise from a general ground of neutrality which is always dragging them back towards itself. As it enters the overhead planes the ordinary aesthesis turns into a pure delight and becomes capable of a high, a large or a deep abiding ecstasy. The ground is no longer a general neutrality, but a pure spiritual ease and happiness... One unmoving is swifter than thought, the gods cannot overtake It, for It travels ever in front; It moves and It moves not, It is far away from us and It is very close." The gods of the overhead planes can do much to bridge that distance and to bring out that closeness, even if they cannot al together overtake the Reality that exceeds and transcends them. 29 July 1946 Page 49 ...
... soul, it has irresistibly to penetrate, much as X-rays do, the divers outer sheaths and reach vijñana and lose itself in Ananda. Between mind and supermind, Sri Aurobindo has located various "overhead" planes - Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind - and a reaction of consciousness from any of these "overhead" levels that helps us to experience the rasa or essential taste of some fragment... we climb beyond Mind, higher and wider values replace the values of our limited mind, life and bodily consciousness. Aesthesis shares in this intensification of capacity. ... As it enters the Overhead planes the ordinary aesthesis turns into a pure delight and becomes capable of a high, a large or a deep abiding ecstasy. 49 It is also necessary to remember that all overhead poetry is not... hearts, Apollo kindles a sudden transfiguring light. The occult and the terrestrial planes intersect unexpectedly, the subliminal is a sea within and without us, there are invasions from the 'overhead' planes, there are minglings, matings, meltings, partings. In the foreground is played the shattering last act of the Trojan War. The women - Helen, Hecuba, Cassandra, Polyxena, Creusa, Briseis - are ...
... as the higher planes do unless something comes down into them from the higher planes." To this we may add from a third letter: "The sense of the Infinite and the One which is pervasive in the overhead planes... can be expressed indeed by overhead poetry as no other can express it." However, overhead poetry need not be explicitly mystic. Sri Aurobindo tells us that it can deal with quite other... mysterious reverberations, and occasionally giving rise to a chequer of baffling beautiful surrealism. Parts four, five and six are much longer and carry, together with a mixture of the overhead planes among themselves, a wider variety of interweavings and, for the sake of striking comparison, several examples of spiritual self-expression not only from the creative intelligence but also from ...
... to the complete Savitri. Mostly, Savitri was meant to create in massive proportions the kind of poetry that, in his published literary criticisms, he used to designate as hailing from "Overhead" planes — the ranges of consciousness broadly envisaged by ancient Indian scriptures as lying hidden above the human and possessing an inherent light of knowledge and a natural experience of the infinite... sheaf of letters than when first published separately and follows a scheme of grouping differing in several respects from the one adopted then, serves also to add to the description of the Overhead planes given by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri itself as well as in his philosophical work The Life Divine and to clarify certain aspects of their role in poetic creation. It etches memorably on our minds ...
... that it has been a habit with me to re-read and repeat and hum lines which I have felt to have come from very high sources. I mentioned your recent poems as my aid to drawing inspiration from the overhead planes. Jyoti begged me to type for her all the lines of this character from these poems. I have chosen the following: 1. O marvel bird with the burning wings of light and the unbarred... than thought, the Gods cannot overtake It, for It travels ever in front; It moves and It moves not, It is far away from us and It is very close. "The gods of the Overhead planes can do much to bridge that distance and to bring out that closeness, even if they cannot altogether overtake the Reality that exceeds and transcends them." Page 211 ...
... write to the complete Savitri. Mostly, Savitri was meant to create in massive proportions the kind of poetry that, in his published literary criticisms, he used to designate as hailing from "Overhead" planes—the ranges of consciousness broadly envisaged by ancient Indian scriptures as lying hidden above the human and possessing an inherent light of knowledge and a natural experience of the infinite... further sheaf of letters than when first published separately and follows a scheme of grouping differing in several respects from the one adopted then, serves also to add to the description of the Overhead planes given by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri itself as well as in his philosophical work Page 149 The Life Divine and to clarify certain aspects of their role in poetic creation. It etches ...
... it has been a habit with me to re-read and repeat and hum lines which I have felt to have come from very high sources. I mentioned your recent poems as my aid to drawing inspiration from the Overhead planes. Jyoti begged me to type for her all the lines of this character from these poems. I have chosen the following: 1.O marvel bird with the burning wings of light and the unbarred... swifter than thought, the Gods cannot overtake It, for It travels ever in front; It moves and It moves not, It is far away from us and It is very close. "The gods of the Overhead planes can do much to bridge that distance and to bring out that closeness, even if they cannot altogether overtake the Reality that exceeds and transcends them." Page 145 ...
... dactyl, a trochee again, and a final long. The idea behind the poem is that, as human thought (which is man's mediator or paraclete between earth and the beyond) rises from the mental to the overhead planes, it becomes successively higher thought, illumined thought, intuitive thought, overmental thought, and so, ever climbing higher still and higher, vanishes into the transcendental. First, thought... opening: like an archangel winging homeward to God, my Thought raced beyond the green seas (the vital) and the orange skies (the mental horizons) and plunged into the vasts of God (the overhead planes of consciousness). The next movement covers the planes upto the Overmind: Sleepless wide great glimmering wings of wind Bore the gold-red seeking of feet that trod Space and ...
... as the higher planes do unless something comes down into them from the higher planes." To this we may add from a third letter: "The sense of the Infinite and the One which is pervasive in the overhead planes...can be expressed indeed by overhead poetry as no other can express it." However, overhead poetry need not be explicitly mystic. Sri Aurobindo tells us that it can deal with quite other... mysterious reverberations, and occasionally giving rise to a chequer of baffling beautiful surrealism. Parts four, five and six are much longer and carry, together with a mixture of the overhead planes among themselves, a wider variety of interweavings and, for the sake of striking comparison, several examples of spiritual self-expression not only from the creative intelligence but also from ...
... write to the complete Savitri. Mostly, Savitri was meant to create in massive proportions the kind of poetry that, in his published literary criticisms, he used to designate as hailing from "Overhead" planes - the ranges of consciousness broadly envisaged by ancient Indian scriptures as lying hidden above the human and possessing an inherent light of knowledge and a natural experience of the infinite... when first published separately and follows a scheme of Page 58 grouping differing in several respects from the one adopted then, serves also to add to the description of the Overhead planes given by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri itself as well as in his philosophical work The Life Divine and to clarify certain aspects of their role in poetic creation. It etches memorably on our minds ...
... Savitri, after describing in brief all the "overhead" planes - Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition - up to Overmind he begins the description of the Overmind: Then stretches the boundless finite's last expanse, The cosmic empire of the Overmind, Time's buffer state bordering Eternity... (Centenary Ed., 660: 23-25) The overhead planes, including Overmind, are boundless ...
... aesthesis Rasa or essence and its enjoyment can get linked up with the Ananda that creates everything in this world. As the growing aesthetic enjoyment enters in, he further adds, "the overhead planes the ordinary aesthesis turns into a pure delight and becomes capable of a high, a large or deep abiding ecstasy. The ground is... a spiritual ease and happiness upon which the special tones of... even of the occult. But, unfortunately, in that search for newer moods and manners it leaned on Freudian psychology and got totally misled. It took the path of the inconscient Nirvana. The Overhead planes remained sealed; in fact, they started receding. The rise of Modernism, though in its "final orientation" as yet undetermined (written in 1919), was necessary against the "Victorian type" ...
... into its hands the direct government of the nature. It can then receive and express all spiritual realisations in its own way and manner. For the turn of the psychic is different from that of the overhead planes—it has less of greatness, power, wideness, more of a smaller sweetness, delicate beauty, there is an intense beauty of emotion; a fine subtlety of true perception, an intimate language. The expression ...
... sight, A rapture of the thrilled undying Word Poured into his heart as into an empty cup. 21 The above two quotes along with Sri Aurobindo's critical comments clearly point to the overhead planes of consciousness as the source of Aurobindonian symbols and that symbol making with him is not a deliberate indulgence for picturesqueness. And yet intellectual critics (p.794) seek for verifiable ...
... and Superasque evadere ad auras Hoc opus, hie labour est — "to move out into the higher spaces — this the work, here is the labour," suggesting almost a direct descent from the overhead planes; in his Eclogues even foreseeing: The ages' mighty march begins anew... Now from high heaven descends a wondrous race — 1 The Oxford Professor of Poetry Mr. Mackail's observation ...
... mouthpiece Swami Vivekananda paid a visionary visit, day after day for a fortnight, to Sri Aurobindo in the Alipore Jail pointing beyond the mental consciousness towards the Page 213 "overhead" planes whose culmination is the earth-fulfilling Supermind realised and rendered operative for the first time by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Apropos of the Aurobindonian Supermind it is quite ...
... had not gone but the real I was free from it. Then 1 recalled Sri Aurobindo writing that mountains were a symbol of the Universal Consciousness. It also struck me that what he had called the "overhead" planes - planes of consciousness above the mind-level - would surely be inner heights in a spiritual wideness, from where Sri Aurobindo drew the inspiration of his Yogic poetry, especially of his epic ...
... envisaged at the start of his epic. Again, if he had touched on "problems" connected with rendering the English tongue more and more plastic to the stress of what Sri Aurobindo describes as the "overhead planes", levels of Yogic consciousness beyond the mental, he Page 338 would have justly indicated the reason why Sri Aurobindo rewrote some portions of Savitri nearly a dozen times ...
... different from being settled in any stratum of them or from receiving a constant downpour of God-gold from the strata nearest our mind. While writing this I recall four lines of mine summing up the overhead planes: (1) the Intuition as a general category of the immediate Overhead, (2) the Overmind as the crown of the spiritual adventure in general, (3) the Supermind as the Divine who is formative of all ...
... a time or else the higher force attracted by the creative will breaks through or touches or catches up the less excited inspiration towards or into itself. I am speaking here especially of the Overhead planes where this is quite natural; for the Overmind, for instance, is the ultimate source of intuition, illumination or heightened power of the planes immediately below it. It can lift them up into its ...
... The Secret Splendour EPILOGUE THE OVERHEAD PLANES A few have dared the last supreme ascent And break through borders of blinding light above, And feel a breath around of mightier air, Receive a vaster being's messages And bathe in its immense intuitive Ray. On summit Mind are radiant altitudes Exposed to the lustre ...
... strong tread often with bare unsandalled feet and moves in a clear-cut light: a divine power, measure, dignity is its most frequent character". 10 The One Self everywhere is common to all the overhead planes, but the force at work varies: the Illumined Mind visions rather than thinks. "The outflow of the Illumined Mind comes in a flood brilliant with revealing words or a light of crowding images, sometimes ...
... into its hands the direct government of the nature. It can then receive and express all spiritual realisations in its own way and manner. For the tone of the psychic is different from that of the overhead planes,—it has less of greatness, power, wideness, more of a smaller sweetness, delicate beauty; there is an intense beauty of emotion, a fine subtlety of true perception, Page 84 an intimate ...
... a time or else the higher force attracted by the creative will breaks through or touches or catches up the less exalted inspiration towards or into itself. I am speaking here especially of the overhead planes where this is quite natural; for the Overmind for instance is the ultimate source of intuition, illumination or heightened power of the planes immediately below it. It can lift them up into its ...
... Page 126 Blue Light Blue light, according to the shades, means several different things. If the blue lights [ seen in vision ] were of different shades it might mean the overhead planes, Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind, Higher Mind. The light from the higher planes of consciousness just above the mind is blue. The light indicates an action of force (bluish probably ...
... its hands the direct government of the nature. It can then receive and express all spiritual realisations in its own way and manner. For the turn of the psychic is different from that of the overhead planes—it has less of greatness, power, wideness, more of a smaller sweetness, delicate beauty, there is an intense beauty of emotion; a fine subtlety of true perception, an intimate language. The ...
... harmonious, teres tot-usque rotundus 1 — the expression very felicitous and embodying exactly the thing seen. Source is poetic intelligence drawn back into inner mind and lifting towards the overhead planes from which it receives its vision and substance and a certain breath of subtlety and largeness." 1 "Smooth, complete and rounded." (K.D.S.) Page 22 ...
... somewhat restricted though still keen feeling in a narrower context that is found in Baxter.(K.D.S.) Page 51 sense of the Infinite and the One which is pervasive in the Overhead planes; that need not be explicitly there in the overhead poetic expression or in the substance of any given line: it can be expressed indeed by overhead poetry as no other can express it; but this ...
... time or else the higher force attracted by the creative will breaks through or touches or catches up the less excited inspiration towards or into itself. I am speaking here especially of the Overhead planes where this is quite natural; for the Overmind, for instance, is the ultimate source of intuition, illumination or heightened power of the planes immediately below it. It can lift them up into ...
... Overhead Poetry EPILOGUE THE OVERHEAD PLANES Sri Aurobindo ... A few have dared the last supreme ascent And break through borders of blinding light above, And feel a breath around of mightier air, Receive a vaster being's messages And bathe in its immense intuitive Ray. On summit Mind are radiant altitudes ...
... by the realisation Sri Aurobindo had at Baroda in 1908. A further vivification, as it were, of the Unknowable spoken of is given us in some lines in Savitri where also the Overhead Page 261 planes function but through an eye with a capital E. The Thoughtful Eye is now at work to show us that the Unknowable is not an impotent void or a divine darkness: even when there is a negation ...
... can be caught as a hint not only from the Mandukya Upanishad but also from a brief correspondence between Sri Aurobindo and me in 1948. When I had asked him to help me draw inspiration from the 'overhead' planes which he had named Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Overmind, with the still unmanifested Supermind at the top, and whose distinguishing traits and powers he had explained, I was ...
... which poetry speaks". But if I get round to writing such a paper and expound what Sri Aurobindo calls "the Future Poetry", of which the inspiration and illumination from what he has termed "the Overhead planes" would be the major element, I shall inevitably have to give illustrations from his own work, notably Savitri. You have forbidden me to do so or else if you let me go ahead you are likely to ...
... one line he has it, according to Sri Aurobindo, at its highest pitch: Those thoughts that wander through Eternity. 11 Sri Aurobindo distinguishes a fourfold gradation of the overhead planes as having acted so far in the world's literature on a few occasions: higher mind, illumined mind, intuition, overmind. On all these planes the experience of the Infinite is automatic, and ...
... envisaged at the start of his epic. Again, if he had touched on "problems" connected with rendering the English tongue more and more plastic to the stress of what Sri Aurobindo describes as the "overhead planes", levels of Yogic consciousness beyond the mental, he would have justly indicated the reason why Sri Aurobindo rewrote some portions of Savitri nearly a dozen times. But it is quite another matter ...
... of Aswapati (Savitri's royal father) is released from Ignorance and his mind and body undergo their "first spiritual change" by a Knowledge drawn from above and within. What pours down from the overhead planes is called "a wide self-knowledge" and what broadens out from the subliminal and the psychic depths is termed "a new world-knowledge". With a combination of both, Aswa-pati faces the objective and ...
... Krishna — Vasudeva sarvam — came later in the same year during his detention in Alipore Jail; even the vision of what he afterwards was to call the "overhead planes" of "gnostic consciousness" began in prison. Of course, Mr. Alvares is free to look on all this as bogus, but he must at least get right his chronology ...
... even in their difference. Intellectual definitions and distinctions are too external and rigid to seize the true truth of things. The turn of the psychic is different from that of the overhead planes. It has less of greatness, power, wideness, more of a smaller sweetness, delicate beauty; there is an intense beauty of emotion, a fine subtlety of true perception, an intimate language. ...
... in view. In order to understand what this dual purpose meant in actual practice, we have to remember that one of the cardinal points of Sri Aurobindo's teaching is that there are more than one overhead planes of spiritual consciousness above the ordinarily functioning mental, and it is possible through yogic sadhana to bring these superconscient planes down to illumine and heighten our everyday life; ...
... source" please, inner or over? Looks something damnably mystic, but neither inner nor overhead. Can't specify—as these things have no name. Inner—over also in imagery, but not what I call the overhead planes. These belong to the inner mind or inner vital or to the intuitive mind or anywhere else that is mystic. July 8, 1938 Z is asking again and again if she can join her work. Do you advise ...
... on the symbolic content of Savitri, 264-265; Sri Aurobindo on the Vedic myths, 269-271; on the symbol of'Savitri' in the Veda, 275-279; on the divinisation of human nature, 281-283; on the overhead planes of consciousness, 295-299; Sri Aurobindo's overhead aesthesis, 299-303; Sri Aurobindo on mantric poetry, 303-304; on overhead poetry, 309-310; overhead influence in Sri Aurobindo's ...
... ), 8.0 (exhilaration), 22.0 (optimum activity, freedom from self-concern), 40.0 (serenity and self-awareness); the range 40-100 is left unexplored, and we may take it that above 40.0 are the 'overhead' planes of consciousness. (Creative Education, pp. 22-9). It may be added that the 'tone' plotting scale is the invention of Dr. L. Ron Hubbard, the noted psychiatrist, nuclear physicist and 'scientologist' ...
... "divine Event" is decreed; the darkness is temporary; the Gods will now awake; Eternity will now meet Time. That these wonderful opening lines of Savitri are surely from the 'overhead' planes will become clearer if we compare with them other earlier descriptions of Dawn in Sri Aurobindo. The fragment, Chitrangada, begins thus: In Manipur upon her orient hills Chitrangada ...
... Savitri II THE OVERHEAD PLANES OF CONSCIOUSNESS At the present stage of the evolutionary advance, man has a body, certain vital instincts and passions, and a directing and controlling mind. Mental man is a great improvement on the mere animal, but he is also a prey to various dissatisfactions. What is the reason? Sri Aurobindo's ...
... the blissful experience of Narayana Omnipresent had suddenly overwhelmed Sri Aurobindo, and he had won his way to the heart of the Gita's integral Yoga; and he had been given a glimpse of the overhead planes of consciousness from Mind towards Supermind. At Chandernagore he had further explored the Unknown, and at Pondicherry he had discovered the fundamental insights of the Veda and with their help ...
... ion rather than a descent. A descent is in relation to the framework of an individual's existence in which various things are below and above - the mind centre, the heart-centre etc. and the "overhead" planes. Doubtless there was some rumour-mongering and not a little bemused speculation in the Ashram,' for the changes made by the Mother by hand in the printed message of 29 March were meant to ...
... into its hands the direct government of the nature. It can then receive and express all spiritual realisations in its own way and manner. For the turn of the psychic is different from that of the overhead planes—it has less of greatness, power, wideness, more of a smaller sweetness, delicate beauty; there is an intense beauty of emotion, a fine subtlety of true perception, an intimate language. The expression ...
... Page 257 fix the meeting lines which often tend to fade away, leaving an indefinable border. 3 May 1937 I mentioned your recent poems as my aid to drawing inspiration from the Overhead planes. I quoted also the famous lines from other poets which have derived from the highest levels. Jyoti begged me to type for her all the lines of this character from your poems. I have chosen the ...
... stars and the sun being well-known symbols. What "remarkable source", please? Inner or over? Can't specify—as these things have no name. Inner—over also in imagery, but not what I call the overhead planes. These belong to the inner mind or inner vital or to the intuitive mind or anywhere else that is mystic. 8 July 1938 Page 495 This is really disappointing! Oh, the time ...
... Jivatman which can be realised in this way is the pure "I" of which the lower self has the experience and through which it gets its salvation; and, secondly, what need is there of going into the overhead planes at all? Well, in the first place, this pure "I" does not seem to be absolutely necessary as an intermediary of the liberation whether into the impersonal Self or Brahman or into whatever is eternal ...
... religious, occult, spiritual realisation. Where except in Sri Aurobindo does one find precise and extended accounts not only of the in-worlds but also of the worlds above the mental level - the "overhead" planes which Sri Aurobindo distinguishes and describes as Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition. Overmind and, beyond the last-named, the still unmanifested Supermind which is the dynamic face and front ...
... after he had compassed the experience of Nirvana or Silent Brahman on the one hand and that of the cosmic Divine Person, Vāsudevah sarvam, on the other and had been on the way to the initial "overhead" planes. Even later he declared that he was basing himself in his expositions on the old Yogic vision of Sachchidananda, or infinite and everlasting Brahman, in the three aspects: Atman, Purusha, Ishwara ...
... realisation Page 287 Sri Aurobindo had at Baroda in 1908. A further vivification, as it were, of the Unknowable spoken of is given us in some lines in Savitri where also the Overhead planes function but through an Eye with a capital E. The Thoughtful Eye is now at work to show us that the Unknowable is not an impotent void or a divine darkness: even when there is a negation of all ...
... what we have already mentioned as its climbing towards and into Supermind. Once shaped, the Mind of Light can first reflect accurately in its purified and exalted condition something of the overhead planes and then rise to the plateaus and peaks of Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind, Supermind. However, this rising will not be the same experience as that of the ordinary mentality ...
... never forgot this first brief impact of the closely guarded secret. Even before it, Sri Aurobindo had tried to make me conscious of a certain element in poetry that hailed from what he called the Overhead planes, the hidden ranges of conscious- ness above the intellect, with their inherent light of knowledge and their natural experience of the infinite. He distinguished four planes: Higher Mind, Illumined ...
... his poetry. Each one of them subtly conveys aspiration for realising the depths and heights and wideness of his being and consciousness. Many of the poems have the influx of currents from overhead planes of consciousness. The combination of overhead inspiration and its vivid images and moving rhythm and variegated colour in poetry is rare. And this fine blend marks him out as a sadhak-poet ...
... the "spirituality"? If, as you say, the touch gets in through a passionate emotion and sincerity, what nuance of them catches the sense of the Infinite and the One which is pervasive on the Overhead planes? Is there anything Overhead in the emotion of Wordsworth's And never lifted up a single stone or Shakespeare's Page 65 Absent thee from felicity a ...
... Savitri struck me as opening up an entirely new world not only of experiences but of literary expression. It was a great help to me because I was eager to write from what Sri Aurobindo called the overhead planes. Of course I aspired to participate in that consciousness but more directly my aim was to open myself to the influence and receive the direct utterance of poetry. It was possible to be receptive ...
... most comprehensive expression possible of spiritual realities within the scheme set up by him of character, incident and plot. The expression sought was from the top range of what he designated "Overhead" planes — ranges of consciousness lying hidden above the human mind and possessing an inherent light of knowledge and a natural experience of the Infinite. He distinguished in general a progression of ...
... state unhesitatingly that it was "a poetic marvel": The power and perfection of each line of Savitri lies in utter faithfulness to the fact, the atmosphere, the life-throb found on the overhead planes.... From the very start we have the full grip on profound realities, the expanse and richness of a revelation beyond the mental meaning. 3 So when Amal Kiran began his correspondence ...
... of his disciples were talented poets who sought the guidance and critical appreciation of their Master. The ease with which Sri Aurobindo traced many of their lines to the various spiritual or “overhead” planes from where they originated, is remarkable and a true innovation in literature. See K.D. Sethna’s Overhead Poetry: Poems with Sri Aurobindo’s Comments, and Nirodbaran’s Fifty Poems with Sri ...
... the head, and being surrounded by Light, I quickly rushed through wide spaces of heavens. Heavens within heavens were entered. The consciousness moved both upwards and inwards. It crossed six overhead planes which had been screening the Truth. Then I entered into the experience of the Void, the Sunya of Nothingness. But this was not the end. I felt I was near the Vast Realm of Light which is the Home ...
... never forgot this initial brief impact of the closely guarded secret. Even before it, Sri Aurobindo had tried to make me aware of a certain element in poetry that hailed from what he called the Overhead planes, the hidden ranges of consciousness above the intellect, with their inherent light of knowledge and their natural experience of the infinite. He broadly distinguished four planes: Higher Mind, ...
... dimensions of 182 Night and Dawn 94,302 Nirodbaran 204,266,279,287,321, 330,352,357 Nirvana 51,265 Nolini 277,298,331,351,352 O Oneness 3 One Self 235 overhead planes 51,58,317,338 rhythm in mystical poets 33 writing 103,215 Overmind 51 inspiration 200 Intuition 323 P pain 75,82 parame vyoman 271 Phillips, Stephen ...
... perfect power is at play. From this peace and power the Yogic poet has to catch his inspiration if he is to be the apocalypt par excellence . Poetic visitations from the "overhead" planes come with a vast powerful ease of illumination and harmony, for now there is no translation of the Divine into terms near the human formula: there is the original and authentic self-expression ...
... Overmind plane, had not been caught in its giant grandeurs and believed he had reached the limit. Sri Aurobindo, of course, as soon as he came to that part of his sadhana when the prospect of the overhead planes was opened up, knew intuitively the essential character of the Supermind. He could not but know it, since he had come from the Supramental Truth as its Avatar to establish it on earth. But he has ...
... strong tread often with bare unsandalled feet and moves in a clear-cut light: a divine power, measure, dignity is its most frequent character". 1 The One Self everywhere is common to all the overhead planes, but the force at work varies: the Illumined Mind visions rather than thinks. "The outflow of the Illumined Mind comes in a flood brilliant with revealing words or a light of crowding images ...
... never forgot this first brief impact of the closely guarded secret. Even before it, Sri Aurobindo had tried to make me conscious of a certain element in poetry that hailed from what he called the Overhead planes, the hidden ranges of consciousness above the intellect, with their inherent light of knowledge and their natural experience of the infinite. He distinguished four planes: Higher Mind, Illumined ...
... writes Sri Aurobindo, "higher and wider values replace the values of our limited mind, life and bodily consciousness. Aesthesis shares in that intensification of capacity... As it enters the Overhead planes the ordinary aesthesis turns into a pure delight and becomes capable of a high, a large or a deep abiding ecstacy... In the Overmind we have a first firm foundation of the experience of the ...
... “mistakes” dulling the mantric power of Savitri . The examples I have given are of lines belonging to the various grades of spiritual inspiration, inspiration coming from several spiritual or Overhead planes, while the sheer Mantra comes from the Overmind. Even there, every Overmind line is not necessarily mantric, a few examples of which we have already seen. Recall what I have already quoted from ...
... harmonious, terres totusque rotundus 1 —the expression very felicitous and embodying exactly the thing seen. Source is poetic intelligence drawn back into inner mind and lifting towards the overhead planes from which it receives its vision and substance and a certain breath of subtlety and largeness." * INVOCATION TO THE FOURFOLD DIVINE O Void where deathless power is ...
... excellent poetry. If one could write like that, is there not going to be a greater creation in all respects? Maybe; it has to be seen. ... I suppose all spiritual poetry does not come from overhead planes. No, it may come from the spiritualised mind or vital. I don't see really why overhead poetry will only excel in expressing spiritual things and not also excel in a superior form than the ...
... peered through the finite at the infinite. 306 With an expansive range of consciousness, Savitri receives thought-intimations from far and near, from the dim inconscient as well as the overhead planes: Thoughts leaped down from a superconscient field Like eagles swooping from a viewless peak, Thoughts gleamed up from the screened subliminal depths ...
... translating into poetic terms the massive dialectic of The Life Divine. In the fourth place, Sri Aurobindo wished to make Savitri, a foretaste of the 'future poetry', the poetry of the overhead planes, the poetry that crystallises at auspicious moments into the mantra. Finally Sri Aurobindo wished to reproduce in Savitri something of the Valmikian, Upanishadic and Kalidasian verse movement; ...
... besides to make the collective reality embrace even the individualities of those sadhaks who couldn't stay in the Ashram always. The whole point of Sri Aurobindo's teaching has been that there are overhead planes of consciousness above the mental, and it is possible to bring them down to inform and heighten our everyday life; and that, in the depth of things, there is a will much stronger than our surface ...
... organisation, and of art and poetry. The Human Cycle is thus a notable little treatise on the psychology of social development. Man's primary urge should be to open to the higher light of the overhead planes of consciousness: to turn to the Divine, to achieve a progressive divinisation of his nature. As he once wrote to his brother Barin: "No one is God but in each man there is a God and to make him ...
... immediate human urgency, and also an enveloping cosmic background. Its very composition is largely the result (so it is confidently claimed) of a new aesthesis with its source of origin located in the overhead planes. In The Human Cycle, Sri Aurobindo had written: A time comes when the creator of beauty revolts and declares the charter of his own freedom, generally in the shape of a new law ...
... known. In the phase of evolution that is now approaching the need for clarifying the functions and powers of the Overhead consciousness is all the more urgent. Sri Aurobindo shows that all the overhead planes are not to be classed together, there are gradations of them. "These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind ...
... bringing under one cover the whole of epic, Savitri. Three or four topics have been added before the story of the Second part of Savitri: Yoga of Aswapathy and the Yoga of Savitri. A short story of "Overhead planes and esthetics" has also been included so that the reader may see all poetry from another view-point. Even though readers of poetry in England have not as yet come to realise the value of ...
... seer which is necessary for the Mantra." (Does "poetic eloquence" belong only to the mental plane which you have called "the poetic intelligence" and more generally "the creative intelligence"? Can it be part also of "the Higher Mind" or "the Higher Thought" which is an "overhead" plane ?) "It belongs to the poetic intelligence, but as in most of Milton it can be lifted up by the... Overhead Poetry Yoga "Torment not with intangible fulgences! O master, to my hungry life impart The nectarous truth of yon Sky-Spirit unheard Whose sole revealing word Is a touch of cold far flame upon my heart! Of what avail mute mystic suns of snow?" "Banish from your dream-night The burning blindness of earth-hued... the touch of the Higher Mind rhythm and language." "There are besides in mental poetry derivations or substitutes for all [overhead] styles. Milton's 'grand style' is such a substitute for the manner of the Higher Thought. Take it anywhere at its ordinary level or in its elevation, there is always or almost always that echo there: Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of ...
... 23 September 1934 If one can write from the highest plane, i.e. overmind and supermind plane—as you have done in Savitri—is it evidently going to be greater poetry than any other poetry? Nobody ever spoke of supermind plane poetry. Is Savitri all from overhead plane? I don't know. You lay down certain features of overhead poetry, e.g. greater depth and height of spiritual vision, inner... difference. 24 September 1934 Grades of Perfection and Planes of Inspiration Is there any coordination between the differences of style and the different planes of inspiration? I don't think so—unless one can say that the effective style comes from the higher mind, the illumined from the illumined mind, the inspired from the plane of intuition. But I don't know whether that would stand at... outshine Shakespeare in poetic excellence. Obviously if properly done it would have a deeper and rarer substance, but would not be necessarily greater in poetic excellence. You say also that for overhead poetry technique, it must be the right word and no other in the right place, right sounds and no others in a design of sound that cannot be changed even a little. Well, is that not what is called ...
... Page 41 Sri Aurobindo's Reply "What super-excellence? As poetry? When I say that a line comes from a higher or overhead plane or has the Overmind touch I do not mean that it is superior in pure poetic excellence to others from lower planes—that Amal's lines outshine Shakespeare or Homer for instance. I simply mean that it has some vision, light, etc. from up there and the... Overhead Poetry Gnosis No clamorous wing-waft knew the deeps of gold. An eagle lost in earth-forgetfulness, Rising without one stir of dreamy feather, Life gains the Unmeasured through a flame of sleep— A love whose heart is white tranquillity Upborne by vast surrender to this Sun. Flickering no longer with the cry of clay,... here or that word there —if the sense is much the same and has a poetical value, the mind does not feel that all is lost unless it is very sensitive and much influenced by the solar plexus. In the overhead poetry these things are quite imperative, it is all or nothing—or at least all or a fall." Page 43 ...
... in those of truth-feeling. Truth-knowledge is a gift of the planes of consciousness which Sri Aurobindo labels as "overhead": it is a knowledge reached not by discursive thinking but by illumination and intuition or at the least by a large spontaneous many-sided unifying play of ideas, the work of the overhead plane nearest to our intellect and named by Sri Aurobindo "Higher Mind". This... with the throb of a mysterious world-bliss in Page 273 his heart - say, his spiritual heart's systolic beat - intuited in its diastolic counterpart the presence of a hitherto-hidden plane of the Spirit which is not only an all-creative but also an all-transformative Consciousness-Force: what he has designated as Truth-Consciousness and Supermind. Only because the Supermind can transform ...
... The 'intuitive' quality, which they instance examples of and analyse, lifts the poetry above their 'illumined' style and on to what they call the overhead plane - a plane in the highest reaches though it just falls short of the very highest, the overmind plane to which belong the mantras such as the Rig Veda and the Gita. Page 106 The main example celebrated by Sri Aurobindo is... brows bent: none our parts so poor But was a race of heaven. Antony and Cleopatra (1.3. 35-37) He would limit the passage to the vital plane 'the vital in its excited thrill' and cite as counter-example of poetry with the Overhead touch the lines of Hamlet: Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain. Hamlet (5.2. 351-52) ... ways of practical criticism and yet going beyond its bounds well before its day. Sethna illuminatingly sets one pas-sage beside the other in terms of the Aurobindonian clas-sification of poetry into planes - for example, his contrast -of Othello's (p. 33) Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul, But I do love thee! And when I love thee not, Chaos is come again. (3.3. 90-92) ...
... surely the overhead consciousness, leaning down in all its secret majesty to your soul - a glorious night connecting and communicating with your dream-depths, your psychic centre. The immediate overhead plane was what Sri Aurobindo has called the Higher Mind, the first link between our normal self and the levels of existence that are above it. The deep blue colour is indicative of this plane and the thin... thin white-blue border is the sign of the planes beyond it pressing to break through. But what has somehow broken through, on however small a scale, is a glint from the highest - Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's supramental light - as shown by the golden crescent on one side of the sky and a golden star on the opposite side. There cannot be a greater promise of a sweet and profound future. The crescent... and along with it suggestive spontaneity too, giving place to a thought-out statement with an obvious turn. Of course, when from one's profundities one can raise the level of a line to a finer plane the poet has the right to interfere with his own production. Now one moment of inspiration is substituted by another which is greater. Thus Sri Aurobindo transformed an early Savitri-line Concealed ...
... from a plane of inspiration beyond the mind — an "overhead plane", to Page 7 use an Aurobindonian label — and comes suffused with a fathomlessness of suggestion and harmony absent in the mystical snatch from Myers, the vigour and wideness of which derive from a mental plane, imaginatively and not abstractly so, yet mental all the same. The manner, the form, of the "overhead" line... other, the mind-force throws up sensation, gives a direct echo: the emotion finds voice in the two lines on two different planes because the two poets do not draw their inspiration through the same plane. Nor is the emotional vibration within the larger one of the predominant plane the only thrill in rhythm: there is a vibration too of the consciousness-stuff becoming a vision, becoming an idea, becoming... line may be described as directly mystical, while that of the non-"overhead" is indirect in its mysticism. Such a difference counts in a mystical consideration: it does not count in the least in the artistic — and the artistic is all that is of moment when a poet's rank is in question. Neither the theme nor the plane of consciousness from which the perfect manner is born introduces any difference in poetic ...
... By some great wind of mystery overpowered. In this example what Sri Aurobindo has designated as the "overhead" plane of Intuition is active with its sudden disclosures which are subtle yet go straight into our minds and prove completely convincing. Yes, there is only one plane at work but it operates in two distinct dimensions. If it had continued in one dimension throughout, the poem would... at play. It is as if the poet could not sustain the "occult" or "magic" vein, so enchantingly profound, and opened himself to a region more familiar to him: the Illumined Mind of Sri Aurobindo's overhead series. The inspiration from the Intuition got latched on to this more •familiar, even if intrinsically rare, region and brought forth a pure intuitivised snatch from it, no less fine as sheer... may be of equal artistic excellence and yet they may derive from different "planes" and cohere only in what I may term a subtle aura just beyond the poet's receptive mind. He may have got stuck at some point and when he resumed writing, though the theme was not changed, the style of expression was from another "plane" than the one he had started with. Then the resultant whole cannot be considered ...
... though the plane may be not quite Overmind so much as a mixture of Higher Mind and Intuition." (p. 275) Though he can exemplify the poetic creations of the hierarchy of planes and distinguish each plane's way of creating, he makes it clear that further research has to be done to find out if the levels of style correspond to the levels of inspiration in the sense of planes. ... strong life-sense of the same Super consciousness is again felt, now not in its secret inspiration so much as in its lordly and luminous revelation of the inherently Deathless poised on its overhead plane and silently nourishing, protecting, ruling, enlightening the child-soul which is still aware of its divine source and of that source's all-seeing immensity". 4 Approving of Sethna's... individual poems and while estimating their quality, Sethna makes a judicious use of Sri Aurobindo's profound concept of poetic inspiration which, according to him, can hail from one of the following planes: (1) The Subtle Physical, (2) The Vital, (3) The Creative Intelligence, (4) The Inner Mind, (5) The Psychic, (6) The Higher Mind, (7) The Illumined Mind, (8) The Intuitive Mind, (9) The Overmind ...
... and articulating at once, and, at the other end, hearing and seeing at once. When yoga gave Sri Aurobindo this power of vision, the rhythmic word often came unbidden as it were from the overhead—the above-mental—planes of consciousness, and all he had to do was to listen and to transcribe. "There are poets", he once said, "who neither experience nor even understand what they have written. They merely... from an overmental level. Poems like Thought the Paraclete and Rose of God and, of course, the greater Page 42 part of Savitri could only have been written from an overhead plane of global consciousness. Aside from the mystic note (or at least alongside of it, for it is really the Great Bass in Sri Aurobindo's poetry), other notes too are occasionally heard ...
... seer which is necessary for the Mantra." (Does "poetic eloquence" belong only to the mental plane which you have called "the poetic intelligence" and more generally "the creative intelligence"? Can it be part also of "the Higher Mind" or "the Higher Thought" which is an "overhead" plane?) "It belongs to the poetic intelligence, but as in most of Milton it can be lifted up by the... and substance of the original which you have followed with a remarkable exactitude.' But Nishikanta, I understand, writes from the subtle vital plane. If a poem is from overhead, would not its spiritual value be lost in a translation from a different plane?" Sri Aurobindo replied: "If you mean the spiritual substance, I suppose it would be lost. I was looking at the poetic beauty of Ni... living but with a sort of inner super-life To be able to write at will from this plane is sufficiently rare,—though a poet habitually writing from some other level may stumble into it from time to time." The plane of dynamic vision is a part of the inner Mind and perhaps should be called a province rather than a plane. There arc many kinds of vision in the inner Mind and not dynamic vision only ...
... to speak of all the letters and messages etc. I have written since."² "I myself had my experience of Nirvana and silence in the Brahman, etc. long before there was any knowledge of the overhead spiritual planes; it came first simply by an absolute stillness and blotting out as it were of all mental, emotional and other inner activities – the body continued indeed to see, walk, speak and do its other ...
... it. Aspiration is first or usual means, that is all. 13 April 1937 I myself had my experience of Nirvana and silence in the Brahman, etc. long before there was any knowledge of the overhead spiritual planes; it came first simply by an absolute stillness and blotting out as it were of all mental, emotional and other inner activities—the body continued indeed to see, walk, speak and do its other... quite agree with you in not relishing the idea of another attack of this nature. I am myself, I suppose, more a hero by necessity than by choice—I do not love storms and battles—at least on the subtle plane. The sunlit way may be an illusion, though I do not think it is—for I have seen people treading it for years; but a way with only natural or even only moderate fits of rough weather, a way without typhoons ...
... merely opens a passageway and goes out. Sri Aurobindo had not gone beyond the mental plane when he experienced Nirvana: I myself had my experience of Nirvana and silence in the Brahman long before there was any knowledge of the overhead spiritual planes. 120 It is after ascending to higher, superconscious planes that he had experiences superior to Nirvana, where the illusionary, immobile and impersonal... is to lift ourselves to higher planes through individual evolution. Our only role is to transcribe and materially embody the truths of the plane we belong to. Two important points, which apply to every plane of consciousness, from the highest to the lowest, deserve to be underscored in order for us better to understand the mechanism of the universe. First, these planes do not depend upon us or upon... meeting-point of all the planes in one body. This is the field of work because it is the starting, or almost starting, point of evolution; through this body, slowly, after countless undifferentiated lives, a "self" takes on an individuality by coming Page 108 in contact with higher and higher planes of consciousness, and vaster and vaster reaches of consciousness on each plane. Hence, there are ...
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