... Page 22 established and manifested in the terrestrial physical life or is it something that is attainable, finally, by shedding the physical life? There are indications to show that the Vedic rishis had a vision and experience of the possibility of realizing perfection and immortality even in the terrestrial physical life The .Veda speaks of the forefathers who have, according to it... ity of the terrestrial and physical life. Not only in India, but all over the world, there has been a dichotomy and opposition between the spiritual life and physical life. There has been the rejection of Matter by those who uphold the ideal of spiritual life, and there has been the rejection of the Spirit by those who uphold the ideal of a perfect physical life. It seems now as though these... in the Veda in a seed form. It even seems that it was realized that this aim was very difficult to achieve, and that it could probably be realized only with a Supreme effort in the terrestrial physical life. Because of the difficulties of this supreme effort, there seems to have been a tendency to assign greater and greater importance to the supra-terrestrial achievements in preference to the t ...
... logical corollary, it is justified in denying the immortality of the soul. For if psychical activities are merely a later and temporary operation of physical life and dependent on the physical for their own continuance, it follows that when physical life ceases with the arrest of bodily operations by the mysterious agency Page 236 of death, human personality which is a psychical activity... Shining because in psychical matter luminous energy is the chief characteristic, colour and light predominating over fluid or solid form. It is Garbha, Embryon, because out of psychical matter physical life and form are selected and evolved into the final or Waking State in which Spirit manifests itself as physically visible, audible & sensible form and life, and arrives at last at an appearance of... through them and not directly through the Mind. Soul-evolution precedes physical evolution. This theory directly contradicts those conclusions of modern Science which make soul an evolution of physical life and activities, not an all-important and enduring evolution, but merely their temporary efflorescence and dependent on them for its existence. Arguing from the facts of physical evolution which ...
... evolutionist will deny, Mother's first fact: 58.2811 The physical substance progresses through each individual formation, and one day this substance will be capable of building a bridge between physical life as we know it and the supramental life that is to manifest. The body is the bridge. The body means the cells. Cells that behave according to the Anglo-American schema ... or otherwise?... evolution. ... I saw this Secret (which is getting more and more perceptible as the Supramental [the other state] becomes more precise), I saw it in the everyday outer life, precisely in this physical life which all spiritualities reject: a kind of precision and exactness right down to the atom. Could this life — imprecise, groping, indirect, and painful because it never knows and never has the... from everything which the physical consciousness at present represents that it's a battle of every second: all feelings, all sensations, all repulsions, all that exists and forms the fabric of our physical life must be overcome, transformed and freed from all its habits. It's a battle of every second against thousands and millions of adversaries. 64.3010 The body is learning one thing: ALL that happens ...
... and vital existence, Page 92 but also to infuse enough consciousness into the body so that it, too, participates in the psychic immortality. For, with respect to our mental, vital, and physical life, as well as our sleep, our death, and our immortality, everything is always a matter of consciousness. Consciousness is the means, consciousness is the key, and consciousness is the goal. Page... it, at the subatomic, atomic, molecular, or purely external level. "Elsewhere" is everywhere in this reality. We have attached a unique exclusive value to the various symbols that form our outer physical life because they are right before our eyes, but they are no more or no less valid than the other symbols that make up our extraphysical life. The atomic reality of an object does not cancel or contradict... perhaps ultimately by an integral consciousness that will perceive everything simultaneously. Our evolution is far from over. Death is not a denial of Life but a process of Life. 97 This physical life in this physical body has, therefore, a special prominence among all our modes of existence, because it is here that we can become conscious; this is the field of work , as the Mother says, the ...
... ignores—that is the reason why he ignores my orders and puts no value on my telegrams or letters. 5) Also he feels in this condition an abnormal shrinking (not any spiritual detachment) from physical life, from his family, from his friends—for some time he withdrew even from the society of his fellow sadhakas,—and considers anything that comes from them or turns him from his exalted condition as... other disciples impossible and would spoil my own spiritual work altogether. His one chance is if he can settle down in Vizianagaram for a considerable time and in the surroundings of his old physical life return to a normal condition. Please therefore do not send him back or give him money to return to Pondicherry. It will be of no use and may do him great and irreparable harm. He promised, when... trying. It cannot be done by falling at my feet. It cannot be done in a moment. It cannot be done by fasting. It cannot be done by refusing to have anything to do with physical forces and the normal physical life. 3) If you throw away your body, you will not be my "Avatar" either in this life or in any other. On the contrary, you will destroy your chances for a hundred lives to come. 4) The supramental ...
... difficulty of his double nature. Page 236 We have said that this failure is due to the fact that this higher power is only a mediator, and that thoroughly to transform the vital and physical life in its image is perhaps not possible, but at any rate not the intention of Nature in us. It may be urged perhaps that after all individuals have succeeded in effecting some figure of transformation... and should eventually succeed in doing; for the exceptional individual is the future type, the forerunner. But to how much did their success really amount? Either they impoverished the vital and physical life in them in order to give play to one element of their being, lived a one-sided and limited existence, or else they arrived at a compromise by which, while the higher life was given great prominence... decided to study thoroughly Life and Matter, to admit only that, to recognise mind only as an instrument of Life and Matter, and to devote all its knowledge to a tremendous expansion of the vital and physical life, its practicality, its efficiency, its comfort and the splendid ordering of its instincts of production, possession and enjoyment. That was the character of the materialistic, commercial, economic ...
... unable or unwilling to detach itself from its lower formations. Yet we may suppose that there is a downward attachment so strong as to compel the being to hasten at once to a resumption of the physical life because his natural formation is not really fit for anything else or at home on any higher plane. Or, again, the life experience might be so brief and incomplete as to compel the soul to an immediate... sufficient self-expressive mental and vital individuality to persist without the support of the material body, as well as to overcome any excessive detaining attachment to the physical plane and the physical life: it would be sufficiently evolved to subsist in the subtle body which we know to be the characteristic case or sheath and the proper subtle-physical support of the inner being. It is the soul-person... constructions may be so strong as to create for him an artificial post-mortal environment in which he may linger. For the image-making power of the human mind, its imagination, which is in his physical life only an indispensable aid to his acquisition of knowledge and his Page 830 life-creation, may in a higher scale become a creative force which would enable the mental being to live for ...
... would not be an opening upwards, a flight towards a higher realization—that, no. Categorically no. But that's not what I was after! It is the labyrinthine path through the circumstances of physical life. That's just as clear as can be. But the reason behind the idea was my physical condition. I hadn't thought of Sujata at first; I simply saw... I don't know. I'm tired all the time, it's... he mind turns round and round and I can't sleep. My meditations are always the same.... You know, the feeling of nothing, nothing, nothing. So I think the cause of all this lies in the kind of physical life I lead. 2 A lack of vitality. A lack of vitality, too much tension; I don't know—maybe the climate saps me. A certain number of physical things making it.... Anyway, that's what's behind... instance) wouldn't necessarily bring an improvement in your health. It is here where.... It's not something I see imperatively. And to go back to ordinary life would be the end of everything—of your physical life and your inner life too. I have absolutely no desire to do that! That's quite obvious—you've had the experience. But it may not be unimportant to take a few precautions and make use of ...
... things in the physical life. I don't know, but I still feel a nostalgia for... Page 204 Nostalgia for what? Have you actually known something worth being nostalgic about? What? It goes back very far, to when I was a child: a sailboat on the sea. Oh, such a trifle! It's nothing, childish. But it's a wide physical life, and not without its beauty! The physical life—yes, it's... it's nothing at all. All these things of the physical life—nothing at all, nothing at all! It's childish, not worth thinking about for a second. Unless one has the sense of the TRUE LIFE, of the Truth—it is nothing, nothing. All the rest is nothing, nothing—pastimes, childish amusements, the business of people who have nothing else to do. Ah, no! It's not worth a second's thought. You don't understand ...
... permanent and indestructible. Renunciation of attachments and sense of possession is the means by which the true self is realised. Page 179 III "O Son of Kunti, this physical life is called the field circumstances and the one who knows it is called the knower of the field." Two Things That Cannot Be Doubted: The Indian idea of the application of Dharma... cross the limitations of that stage and to climb upwards to the next higher stage of development. Four Aims of Human Effort: Normally, a human being has a composite personality expressing physical life (annamaya), vital life (prānamaya) and mental life (manomaya). How to harmonise rhythms of these three aspects and how to exceed them is the main domain of dharma. Physical and vital... these are the ten characteristic constituents of dharma.” _______________ 8 Mansmriti, VI.92 Page 187 At a still later level, the aim should be not only perfection of the physical life, vital life and mental life but also attainment of the status of liberation (moksha) and perfection. Three Levels of Human Life: Without going into details, it may be said that methods ...
... the pull of earth and follow the heavenlier intuitions of its psychic parts, the heart's ideal and the soul's yearnings. On the mind the body imposes the boundaries of the physical being and the physical life and the sense of the sole complete reality of physical things with the rest as a sort of brilliant fireworks of the imagination, of lights and glories that can only have their full play in heavens... possibilities. Even physical science is trying to find physical means for passing beyond the ordinary instrumentation or procedure of Nature in this matter of propagation or the renewal of the physical life-force in human or animal beings; but the resort to occult means and the intervention of subtle physical processes, if it could be made possible, would be a greater way which could avoid the limitations... operative processes of the material organs themselves and, it may well be, in their very constitution and their importance, they could not be allowed to impose their limitations imperatively on the new physical life. To begin with, they might become more clearly outer ends of the channels of communication and action, more serviceable for the psychological purposes of the inhabitant, less blindly material in ...
... life it has just finished upon earth—the conditions in which its next life will be passed. Here I must tell you a very important thing: the psychic being can progress and form itself only in the physical life and upon earth. As soon as it leaves a body, it enters into a rest which lasts for a more or less long time according to its own choice and its degree of development—a rest for assimilation, for... very advanced stage of evolution—it is the psychic. So, this is what happens: the psychic has alternate periods of activity and rest; it has a life of progress resulting from experiences of the physical life, of active life in a physical body, with all the experiences of the body, the vital and the mind; then, normally, the psychic goes into a kind of rest for assimilation where the result of the progress... progress in growth has come to an end, that is, it is not indispensable for him to take birth again in a body. Till then rebirth is a necessity, for it is through rebirth that he grows; it is in the physical life and in a physical body that he gradually develops and becomes a fully conscious being. But once he is fully formed, he is free, in this sense that he can take birth or not, at will. So there, one ...
... the pull of earth and follow the heavenlier intuitions of its psychic parts, the heart's ideal and the soul's yearnings. On the mind the body imposes the boundaries of the physical being and the physical life and the sense of the sole complete reality of physical things with the rest as a sort of brilliant fireworks of the imagination, of lights and glories that can only have their full play in heavens... possibilities. Even physical science is trying to find physical means for passing beyond the ordinary instrumentation or procedure of Nature in this matter of propagation or the renewal of the physical life-force in human or animal beings; but the resort to occult means and the intervention of subtle physical processes, if it could be made possible, would be a greater way which could avoid the limitations... operative processes of the material organs themselves and, it may well be, in their very constitution and their importance; they could not be allowed to impose their limitations imperatively on the new physical life. To begin with, they might become more clearly outer ends of the channels of communication and action, more Page 553 serviceable for the psychological purposes of the inhabitant, less ...
... often undergoes happenings or carries on actions that resemble those of the physical life with the same surroundings and the same people, though usually there is in arrangement and feature some or a considerable difference. But it may also be a contact with other surroundings and with other people, not known in the physical life or not belonging at all to the physical world. In the waking state you... different—in that, it is the consciousness that goes high up to other planes or lands and comes down again to the body. It is a dream of the vital plane. In these dreams the figures of the physical life take 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... clear and convincing to the lower vital itself, can seem very absurd, incoherent and unintelligible to the physical mind. For the lower vital uses the happenings, scenes, figures, persons of the physical life, but in defiance of the order and logic of the physical world and even without any reference to it, it fits Page 481 them into a quite different significance-scheme of its own for its ...
... extent to which this law reigns in Nature has not yet been fully recognised and indeed cannot be until we have a science of mental life and spiritual existence as sound as our present science of physical life and the existence of Matter. Still we can Page 213 see broadly that not only the elements of our physical body, but those of our subtler vital being, our life-energy, our desire-energy... equation, but only a temporary unstable equilibrium ending in the death of the body, the dissolution of the individual and the dispersal of its elements into the universality. The nature of physical Life forbids the idea of an individual form possessing the same inherent power of persistence and therefore of continued individual existence as the atoms of which it is composed. Only a mental being... possess and grow; rather the more it gives, the more it receives and grows; and the more it fuses itself into others, the more it fuses others into itself and increases the scope of its being. Physical life exhausts itself by too much giving and ruins itself by too much devouring; but though Mind in proportion as it leans on the law of Matter suffers the same limitation, yet, on the other hand, in ...
... mental part of his being, usually at the expense of the fullness of his vital and physical life and in the end the mind predominates and can open to the Beyond. He can concentrate this self-liberating mind on the Spirit. Here too usually in the process he turns away more and more from his full mental and physical life; he limits or discourages their possibilities as much as his material foundation in... desire-world and its dominant rajasic principle. On the vital plane also, in its own right alone, a perfect perfection is impossible; the soul that attains only so far would have to return to the physical life for a greater experience, a higher self-development, a more direct ascent to the Spirit. Above matter and life stands the principle of mind, nearer to the secret Origin of things. The Spirit... to make an accumulated total or a massed structure. Therefore the self-perfecting mental being here must either depart into pure spirit by the shedding of its lower existence or return upon the physical life to develop in it a capacity not yet found in our mental and psychic nature. This is what the Upanishad expresses when it says that the heavens attained by the mind Purusha are those to which man ...
... The utility of the psychic experiences and knowledge of the invisible worlds as of other Yogic experiences is not to be measured by our narrow human notions of what may be useful for the present physical life of man. In the first place, these things are necessary for the fullness of the consciousness and the completeness of the being. In the second place, these other worlds are actually working upon... condition. (1) There is a state of mind in which he loses hold to a great extent of physical realities and lives in a world of imaginations which do not at all belong to terrestrial body and the physical life. (2) He conceives a great distaste for eating and sleeping and believes that the power in him is so great that he can live without sleep and without food. (3) He is listening all the time... ignores; that is the reason why he ignores my orders and puts no value on my telegrams or letters. (5) Also he feels in this condition an abnormal shrinking (not any spiritual detachment) from physical life, from his family, from his friends—for some time he withdrew even from the society of his fellow Sadhakas—and considers anything that comes from them or turns him from his exalted condition as the ...
... movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are part of his intelligence. Letters on Yoga, p. 320 Mind identifies itself to a certain extent with the movements proper to physical life and body and annexes them to its mentality, so that all consciousness seems to us to be mental. But if we draw back, if we separate the mind as witness from these parts of us, we can discover... and to that extent mentalised. Yet it has not, in its independent motion, the mental awareness which we enjoy; if there is mind in it, it is mind involved and implicit in the body and in the physical life: there is no organised self-consciousness, but only a sense of action and reaction, movement, impulse and desire, need, necessary activities imposed by Nature, hunger, instinct, pain, insensibility... impact and physical indications; it conceives too a mental figure of unity, and in its activity and its will it can create and possess more directly — not only indirectly as in the ordinary physical life — and in other minds and lives as well as its own. But still even this pure mentality does not escape from the original error of mind. For it is still its separate mental self which it makes ...
... — let us hope — for. this cycle of civilisation, when the entire identification of the self with the body and the physical life was possible for the general consciousness of the race. That is the primary characteristic of complete barbarism. To take the body and the physical life as the one thing important, to judge manhood by the physical strength, development and prowess, to be at the mercy... It is true that the first tendencies of Science have been materialistic and its indubitable triumphs have been confined to the knowledge of the physical universe and the body and the physical life. But this materialism is a very different thing from the old identification of the self with the body. Whatever its apparent Page 271 tendencies, it has been really an assertion... of culture begins to define itself for us a little more Page 280 clearly, or at least it has put away from it in a clear contrast its natural opposites. The unmental, the purely physical life is very obviously its opposite, it is barbarism; the unintellectualised vital, the crude economic or the grossly domestic life which looks only to money-getting, the procreation of a family and ...
... Part Two: A Dangerous ... Unknown Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III 17: Uninterrupted Physical Life But Mother’s mystery is not over. Perhaps even it is the true mystery that is beginning. We have found a pretty little label, “overlife,” and all is exorcised, we think⎯and that air is actually there, light, new, for those who know how to breathe... is projected successively on a screen. I have the impression [and this is where Mother touched that Secret] ...that I am on the way to discovering the illusion that must be destroyed so that physical life can be uninterrupted—discovering that death comes from a ... a distortion of consciousness. That's it. 13 The screen that imprisons time, the vibration that distorts. A “distorting magic... disorders. The abominable chaos of this world. A … real illusion. But an illusion nonetheless. An evolutionary illusion for us to grow within the cage … then break it open. Break the screen and physical life can go on uninterrupted, nothing impedes. Nothing impedes. Death was a necessary illusion in order to reach the total state, without death, in a body. Just a small vibration which distorts. ...
... condition. (1) There is a state of mind in which he loses hold to a great extent of physical realities and lives in a world of imaginations which do not at all belong to terrestrial body and the physical life. (2) He conceives a great distaste for eating and sleeping and believes that the power in him is so great that he can live without sleep and without food. (3) He is listening all the time... ignores that is the reason why he ignores my orders and puts no value on my telegrams or letters. (5) Also he feels in this condition an abnormal shrinking (not any spiritual detachment) from physical life, from his family, from his friends — for some time he withdrew even from the society of his fellow Sadhakas — and considers anything that comes from them or turns him from his exalted condition... other disciples impossible and would spoil my own spiritual work altogether. His one chance is if he can settle down in Vizianagram for a considerable time and in the surroundings of his old physical life returned to a normal condition. Please therefore do not send him back or give him money to return to Pondicherry. It will be of no use and may do him great and irreparable harm. He promised, when ...
... impose easily on the vulgar or physical mind. And yet at the end we may ask what we have gained at the end of all this stupendous labour. The object of physical Nature, the preservation of the mere physical life, its highest perfection, even in a certain sense the capacity of a greater enjoyment of physical living have been carried out on an abnormal scale. But the weakness of Hathayoga is that its laborious... the control by the subjective consciousness of its outer activities and environment. We perceive that as Hathayoga, dealing with the life and body, aims at the supernormal perfection of the physical life and its capacities and goes beyond it into the domain of the mental life, so Rajayoga, operating with the mind, aims at a supernormal perfection and enlargement of the capacities of the mental life... into the domain of the spiritual existence. But the weakness of the system lies in its excessive reliance on abnormal states of trance. This limitation leads first to a certain aloofness from the physical life which is our foundation and the sphere into which we have to bring our mental and spiritual gains. Especially is the spiritual life, in this system, too much associated with the state of Samadhi ...
... permanently—let us hope—for this cycle of civilisation, when the entire identification of the self with the body and the physical life was possible for the general consciousness of the race. That is the primary characteristic of complete barbarism. To take the body and the physical life as the one thing important, to judge manhood by the physical strength, development and prowess, to be at the mercy of... mankind. It is true that the first tendencies of Science have been materialistic and its indubitable triumphs have been confined to the knowledge of the physical universe and the body and the physical life. But this materialism is a very different thing from Page 77 the old identification of the self with the body. Whatever its apparent tendencies, it has been really an assertion of man ...
... the term of physical life are part of its completeness. For the active Brahman fulfils Itself in the world by works and man also is in the body for self-fulfilment by action. He cannot do otherwise, for even his inertia acts and produces effects in the cosmic movement. Being in this body or any kind of body, it is idle to think of refraining from action or escaping the physical life. The idea that... not inaction, but to cease from identifying oneself with the movement and recover instead our true identity in the Self of things who is their Lord. THE OTHER WORLDS By departing from the physical life one does not disappear out of the Movement, but only passes into some other general state of consciousness than the material universe. These states are either obscure or illuminated, some dark ...
... Knowledge in which God, Man and Nature stand integrated in a blaze of light through which each individual would discover the Divine Will to manifest itself in physical life. To discover Purushottama, to discover His Will and to manifest it in physical life through the individual, Jiva, — this would be the aim. "The new content of education would relate to the theme of Man and the Universe and cover ... the Veda, Upanishads or the Gita, or else, other books of science or medicine or economics or what you will. True education is to grow inwardly to discover the Divine Will and to manifest it in physical life. And the secret of the science of the discovery of the Divine will can be practised under any system of education." I had asked her : What is that secret? And she had replied : "Do ...
... beyond the death of our body, that the very mention of death makes us shudder at the prospect of an utter Void beyond. This assumed nullity on the other side pitted against the richness of our physical life induces in us an intense urge to cling to life and avoid and postpone the experience of death as long as possible. (10)For the religious-minded people there is another source of fear and... through the dismal portal of physical dissolution. The second argument against the futility of any fear of death follows a different line. The vital man is in passionate egoistic love with his physical life and is strongly attached to all its possibilities. To him death is altogether antithetical to life and is therefore evil in its very nature. But this way of looking at death is fallacious and has... guidance there? Any helping hand? This absence of any reliable knowledge regarding the post-death period, leading to a sense of absolute insecurity, makes man cling to the known field of physical life as much and as long as possible, and seek to keep at a distance the uncertain and obscure domain of post-mortem situation. But this sort of fear also has no solid basis in fact. An attentive ...
... replied, "here, in the physical life, there are quite a few beautiful things" (I did not understand then to what an extent Mother was seeking something else, something radically different for the earth, I was still dreaming of the virgin forest and sailing around the world), "there are adventures at sea...." Oh, such a trifle! she interrupted, It's nothing, childish. The physical life—yes, it's nothing... nothing at all (as it is now). All these things of the physical life—nothing at all, nothing at all! Its childish, not worth thinking about for a second. Even those momentary breakthroughs one can have in life before having found the Truth, when one is on the way and suddenly has glimpses of an immortal consciousness, the contact with a truth, even that.... These experiences are all very fine, it's very good ...
... progress in growth has come to an end, that is, it is not indispensable for him to take birth again in a body. Till then rebirth is a necessity, for it is through rebirth that he grows; it is in the physical life and in a physical body that he gradually develops and becomes a fully conscious being. But once he is fully formed, he is free, in this sense that he can take birth or not, at will. So there, one... life it has just finished upon earth — the conditions in which its next life will be passed. Here I must tell you a very important thing: the psychic being can progress and form itself only in the physical life and upon earth. As soon as it leaves a body, it enters into a rest which lasts for a more or less long time according to its own choice and its degree of development — a rest for assimilation, for... evolution — it is the psychic. So, Page 70 this is what happens: the psychic has alternate periods of activity and rest; it has a life of progress resulting from experiences of the physical life, of active life in a physical body, with all the experiences of the body, the vital and the mind; then, normally, the psychic goes into a kind of rest for assimilation where the result of the progress ...
... translate into the forms of one's physical life the inner aspiration and adoration is quite legitimate, and it is much more sincere than what is done by a man who splits himself into two, leads a physical life quite mechanically and ordinarily and, when he can do it, when he has the time or when it suits him, withdraws within himself, escapes from physical Page 246 life and the physical consciousness ...
... has to reembody in the beauty of the word, is all life, the infinite life of the spirit thrown out in its many creations. The poet's business most really, most intimately is not with the outward physical life as it is or the life of the passions and emotions only for its own sake or even with some ideal life imaged by the mind or some combining and new shaping of these things into a form of beauty, but... the rasa of feeling, passion, emotion, sense thinning them away into a subtle, at the end almost unreal fineness. There is then an attempt to get back to the natural fullness of the vital and physical life, but the endeavour fails in sincerity and success because it is impossible; the mind of man having got so far cannot return upon its course, undo what it has made of itself and recover the glad... And all these things, because they have their own reality, have their life and a poetry which makes them its subject can be as vital, as powerful, as true as the song which makes beautiful the physical life and normal passions and emotions of men and the objects of our bodily sense-experience. But still all life is one and a new human mind moves towards the realisation of its totality and oneness ...
... relation of mind-consciousness to Brahman-consciousness and does not stray outside the strict boundaries of its subject. The material world and the physical life are taken for granted, they are hardly mentioned. But the material world and the physical life exist for us only by virtue of our internal Page 15 self and our internal life. According as our mental instruments represent to us the... becomes then the supreme aim for the mental being, the all-important problem of his existence. For given that there is a more real existence than the mental existence, a greater life than the physical life, it follows that the lower life with its forms, and enjoyments which are all that men here ordinarily worship and pursue, can no longer be an object of desire for the awakened spirit. He must aspire ...
... of the ideal and spiritual being could be destroyed. It is significant that one prominent result claimed by the Hathayogins for their practices and verified in many respects was a control of the physical life-force which liberated them from some of the ordinary habits or so-called laws thought by physical science to be inseparable from life in the body. Behind all these terms of ancient psycho-physical... them be made to impose that law and power on our dense matter and substitute their purer, higher, intenser conditions of being for the grossness Page 274 and limitation of our present physical life and impulses and habits. If that be so, then the evolution of a nobler physical existence not limited by the ordinary conditions of animal birth and life and death, of difficult alimentation and... shut up in the walls of the physical ego or limited to the poor basis of knowledge given by the physical organs of sense, but a life-power liberated more and more from its mortal limitations, a physical life fit for a divine inhabitant and,—in the sense not of attachment or of restriction to our present corporeal frame but an exceeding of the law of the physical body,—the conquest of death, an earthly ...
... the secret of escape from birth in time into the birthless and deathless Eternity from which it came. These two discoveries seem at first sight quite unconnected and disparate. In one it is a physical Life in the cosmos that evolves and the individual is only an ephemeral member of the species, the species a means of this cosmic evolution. Mind is indeed the term and the mental human being the crown... The evolution would be impossible; life and mind and beyond-mind would be unable to manifest in the material universe. There is not only this material plane of being that we see, there is a physical life plane proper to the vital physical operation of Nature. There is a physical mind plane proper to a mental physical operation of Nature. There is a physical supermind plane proper to the supramental... could not possess it, because this first organised mind consciousness was enslaved in a narrow scope, tied to the first functionings of the physical body and brain and nerve, tied to serve the physical life and its desires and needs and passions, limited to the insistent uses of the vital urge, to natural longing and feeling and action, bound by its own inferior instrumentation, its spontaneous combinings ...
... come to an end? Must it always take a body? Not necessarily; but the soul needs to have achieved a very high degree of perfection before it has the power to choose whether to return to the physical life or to rest outside the manifestation. 23 January 1935 I thought that the soul was perfect in its nature. I don't understand "the ascension of the soul towards the truth from which it springs"... 29 June 1935 "The perfected ones were no longer obliged, like other men, to purify themselves in new bodies." What is meant by "purify themselves in new bodies"? It is during one's physical life on earth that one has the opportunity to purify oneself, to make spiritual progress. 1 July 1935 "When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man. The Animal was the helper;... although I think it is calm. Would You prefer it to be a bit more regular? You must discipline the physical consciousness from within, and from within also will come the outer order of your physical life. 8 September 1937 You tell me to discipline my physical consciousness from within, but I don't know what it is or how to do it. I mean that the physical consciousness must be disciplined ...
... thing which can abide like that in one other emotional and agitated nature a reality as good as anything the outward life can give? And there is much more than that that Yoga can bring—even if the physical life with its transcience and shocks is a field that has still to be conquered. April 5, 1935 Does the man across the Atlantic—but would not that mean America?—really expect an immediate... which makes for the right impulse, the right action, the right sense of things and reaction to things. In the body it becomes a similar but still more automatic correct response to the things of physical life, sensation, body experience. Usually it is the psychic light in the mind that is first lit of the three, but not always—for sometimes it is the psycho-vital flame that takes precedence. In... Just as there are many very good and kind men who are boorish and rude in their manners, so there may be very spiritual men (I mean who have had deep spiritual experiences) who have no grasp over physical life or action (many intellectuals too are like that) and are not at all careful about their manners. I suppose I myself am accused of rude and arrogant behaviour because I refuse to see people, do not ...
... and congenial physical environment; and even when his vital and mental activities begin to grow, these activities aim constantly at securing for themselves a sound civilizational framework where physical life is sought to be established on some permanent basis. But although this is the first phase of the development of man, he tends to evolve more and more the powers of the mind, and he develops various... consciousness, the powers of inspiration, revelation and 'intuition. It is these powers, which impel man to develop different varieties of religion; man even seeks to control and integrate the physical life, vital life and mental life under the guidance of various Page 33 religious forms, which also shape more and more organized and complex formulations. Religion tends to be the governor... said that a large part of human history has been the history of religions, which, in turn, is marked by conflict of religions with the normal powers of the mind, vital demands and necessities of physical life. Even now, human history stands today at a point where under the pressure of the need of integration and harmony, man appears to be preparing himself to exceed himself. It appears that man's chief ...
... tapas, the tranquilly intense divine force; tamas becomes shama, the divine quiet, rest, peace. But this can be done, according to Sri Aurobindo, in its fullness in the physical only when the physical life is finally transformed by the supramental power. One of the first questions that was raised when Mother met Sri Aurobindo was whether they should do the yoga and go right to the end without... not merely an individual achievement but a collective one for the earth; not merely the realisation of the Divine, but the realisation of the integral Divine and its integral manifestation in the physical life,—this is the aim which, according to Sri Aurobindo and Mother, is demanded of us, and which can be fulfilled only by the descent and manifestation of the Supermind. There is, indeed, an ascending... absent in the current system of education. This was as it should be, considering that the aim of education was to help each individual discover the Divine Reality and work for Its manifestation in physical life. A decision was taken to bring out a quarterly Bulletin dedicated to Physical Education, and Mother prayed to Sri Aurobindo to write a Message and articles for this Bulletin. The first issue ...
... Pranayama the Hathayogin is able to control, suspend and transcend the ordinary fixed operation of the Pranic energy which is all that Nature needs for the normal functioning of the body and of the physical life and mind, and he becomes aware of the channels in which that energy distributes itself in all its workings and is therefore able to do things with his body which seem miraculous to the ignorant... and set in action, but those which are of a more remote potentiality and seem to our average experience difficult or impossible. But the Pranic energy supports not only the operations of our physical life, but also those of the mind in the living body. Therefore by the control of the Pranic energy it is not only possible to control our physical and vital functionings and to transcend their ordinary ...
... being. But if in passing from one domain to another we renounce what has already been given us from eagerness for our new attainment, if in reaching the mental life we cast away or belittle the physical life which is our basis, or if we reject the mental and physical in our attraction to the spiritual, we do not fulfil God integrally, nor satisfy the conditions of His self-manifestation. We do not become... nature. Brahman is integral and unifies many states of consciousness at a time; we also, manifesting the nature of Brahman, should become integral and all-embracing. Besides the recoil from the physical life, there is another exaggeration of the ascetic impulse which this ideal of an integral manifestation corrects. The nodus of Life is the relation between three general forms of consciousness, the ...
... stance." 16 Regarding the confounding of the vital and the body-consciousness with mind, Sri Aurobindo explains: "Mind identifies itself to a certain extent with the movements proper to physical life and body and annexes them to its mentality, so that all consciousness seems to us to be mental. But if we draw back, if we separate the mind as witness from these parts of us, we can discover that... mentalised. Yet it has not, in its independent motion, the mental awareness which we enjoy; if there is mind in it, it is mind Page 33 involved and implicit in the body and in the physical life: there is no organised self-consciousness, but only a sense of action and reaction, movement, impulse and desire, need, necessary activities imposed by Nature, hunger, instinct, pain, insensibility ...
... from life into mind, from mind into the spirit.” 27 Sri Aurobindo wrote even more explicitly: “A theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with a scientific theory of form-evolution and physical life-evolution; it must stand on its own inherent justification: it may accept the scientific account of physical evolution as a support or an element, but the support is not indispensable. The scientific... the earth who would use a new faculty called reason upon the materials of his inner and outer existence, who would dominate by that power his instincts and habits, change the circumstances of his physical life, build for himself houses of stone, manipulate Nature’s forces, sail the seas, ride the air, develop codes of conduct, evolve conscious methods for his mental and spiritual development. Man, because ...
... operative processes of the material organs themselves and, it may well be, in their very constitution and their importance; they could not be allowed to impose their limitations imperatively on the new physical life. To begin with, they might become more clearly outer ends of the channels of communication and action, more serviceable for the psychological purposes of the inhabitant, less blindly material in... which one would become conscious and aware of all goings on in it, would pour their energies into material nerve and plexus and tissue and radiate them through the whole material body; all the physical life and its necessary activities in this new existence could be maintained and operated by these higher agencies in a freer and ampler way and by a less burdensome and restricting method. This might ...
... impression on our mind and our life-being, which are the parts of us that are of the same order as itself, and can only indirectly and through them, if at all, influence the physical world and physical life. If it objectivises itself, it must be to a subtler sense in us and only derivatively to the out ward physical sense. This derivative objectivisation is certainly Page 802 possible;... under certain conditions, even while in the body; a fortiori must he be able to do it when out of the body, and to do it then completely, since there is no longer the disabling condition of the physical life bound down to the body. The consequences of this relation and this power of transference are of immense importance. On the one side they immediately justify, at any rate as an actual possibility ...
... blind conservative attachments, settled grooves of nature, its doubt and disbelief in all that is beyond itself, its faith in the inevitability of the fixed functionings of the physical mind, the physical life and the body, that they may be replaced by a new power which establishes its own greater law and functioning in form and force of Matter. Even the inconscient and subconscient have to become conscient... and spiritual Mind could found themselves securely upon it and reach their own perfection; they would become in the earth-existence a hierarchy of states of consciousness rising out of Mind and physical life to the supreme spiritual level. Mind and mental humanity would remain as one step in the spiritual evolution; but other degrees above it would be there formed and accessible by which the embodied ...
... attainable by humanity through Yoga must be included in the scope of the integral ^ method. Nor would these have any raison d'être unless employed for an integral mental and physical life. Such a mental and physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. Thus we would arrive at a synthesis of the three degrees of Nature and ...
... psychical prana immensely and becomes, as the mind grows, a thing with difficulty limited, insatiable, irregular, a busy creator of disorder and disease. Moreover, the psychical prana leans on the physical life, limits itself by the nervous force of the physical being, limits thereby the operations of the mind and becomes the link of its dependence on the body and its subjection to fatigue, incapacity... a transmitting channel for the Idea and Will in the buddhi, obedient to its suggestions and commands; the prana then becomes a passive means of effectuation for the mind's direct control of the physical life. This control, however abnormal to our habitual poise of action, is not only possible,—it appears to some extent in the phenomena of hypnosis, though these are unhealthily abnormal, because there ...
... This is an exaggeration and a confusion due to our identification of consciousness with mentality and mental awareness. Mind identifies itself to a certain extent with the movements proper to physical life and body and annexes them to its mentality, so that all consciousness seems to us to be mental. But if we draw back, if we separate the mind as witness from these parts of us, we can discover that... mind and to that extent mentalised. Yet it has not, in its independent motion, the mental awareness which we enjoy; if there is mind in it, it is mind involved and implicit in the body and in the physical life: there is no organised self-consciousness, but only a sense of action and reaction, movement, impulse and desire, need, necessary activities imposed by Nature, hunger, instinct, pain, insensibility ...
... greater a freedom and capacity than in our physical living; it may be called the desire-world, for that is its principal characteristic. Moreover, it is not fixed in one hardly variable formula as physical life seems to be, but is capable of many variations of its poise, admits many sub-planes ranging from those which touch material existence and, as it were, melt into that, to those which touch at the... existence. These possess powers, senses, capacities which are always secretly acting in us, are connected with and impinge upon our physical Page 454 organs and the plexuses of our physical life and mentality. By self-development we can become aware of them, possess our life in them, get through them into conscious relation with the life-world and other worlds and use them also for a more ...
... more control its operations. Practically, in drawing back from the body we draw back from the physical life-energy also, even while we distinguish the two and feel the latter nearer to us than the mere physical instrument. The entire conquest of the body comes in fact by the conquest of the physical life-energy. Along with the attachment to the body and its works the attachment to life in the body ...
... narrowest limitations, but to a constant impurity, which renews itself every time it is rectified, and to all sorts of disorders, some of which are normal, a violent order, part of our ordinary physical life, others abnormal, its maladies and disturbances. With all this Hathayoga has to deal; all this it has to overcome; and it does it mainly by these two methods, complex and cumbrous in action, but... movement of respiration as a sort of key which opens to him the control of all these five powers of the Prana. He becomes sensibly aware of their inner operations, mentally conscious of his whole physical life and action. He is able to direct the Prana through all the nāḍīs or nerve-channels of his system. He becomes aware of its action in the six cakras or ganglionic centres of the nervous system ...
... symbolism a rich and varied manifestation of the flame of divine will and knowledge in the physical life of man, seizing on its growths, all its being, action, pleasure, making it its food, अन्नं, and devouring and turning it into material for the spiritual existence. But this manifestation of the spirit in the physical life of man was made available by the Bhrigus to each human creature, विशे विशे,—we must ...
... right impulse, the right action, the right sense of things and reaction to things. In the body he initiates a similar Page 85 but still more automatic correct response to the things of physical life, sensation, bodily experience. Usually it is the psychic light in the mind that is first lit of the three, but not always—for sometimes it is the psycho-vital flame that takes precedence. In... objective images. But if the vision behind the poem is subjective, the objection holds no longer. The mystic subjective vision admits a consciousness in physical things and gives them a subtle physical life which is not that of the material existence. If a consciousness is felt in the stars and if that consciousness expresses itself in subtle physical images to the vision of the poet, there can be ...
... I put it that from this point of view the soul of man like the soul of Nature can be regarded as an unfolding of the spirit in the material world. Our unfolding has its roots in the soil of the physical life; its growth shoots up and out in many directions in the stalk and branches of the vital being; it puts forth the opulence of the buds of mind and there, nestling in the luxuriant leaves of mind... that or throws into its mould his life-suggestions, his thought, his religious idea, and, if he arrives at some vision of an inner spiritual truth, he puts even that into forms and figures of the physical life and physical Nature. 1 Poetry at a certain stage or of a certain kind expresses this turn of the human mentality in word and in form of beauty. It can reach great heights in this kind of mental ...
... Dhammapada begins with conjugate verses; here is the first one: In all things the primordial element is mind. Mind predominates. Everything proceeds from mind. Naturally, this concerns the physical life, there is no question of the universe. If a man speaks or acts with an evil mind, suffering follows him as the wheel follows the hoof of the bullock that pulls the cart. That is to say,... may die the next moment, immediately, automatically, there occurs in you a detachment from all material things; it is logical that from then on you think only of what does not depend upon this physical life and which is the only thing that will still belong to you once you have left this body, that is to say, the eternal existence. The Buddha did not use the word "Divine", but it is essentially the ...
... devotion or the way of works. But the way of works is precisely the one which keeps you in physical life and makes you find your liberation in it; and perhaps this is the most effective way of all but also the most difficult. For most aspirants the way of meditation, concentration, withdrawal from physical life, rejection of physical activities is certainly easier than the way of action. But they leave ...
... planes and the descent of these higher planes into the physical plane, which can change circumstances. So too, if one succeeded in bringing down the supramental plane permanently into the physical life, physical life would be transformed, that is, it would change totally. But only on this condition. I do not speak of this in that article, that's another subject. Anything else? Why does one feel ...
... quite a natural gesture—and it is done without the least regret, that's all. And the moment you are in your psychic being, you have that feeling, spontaneously, effortlessly. You soar above the physical life and have the sense of immortality. As for me, I consider this the best remedy. The other is an intellectual, common-sense, rational remedy. This is a deep experience and you can always get it back... consciousness that it becomes every second a battle. All feelings, all sensations, all thoughts, all reflexes, all attractions, all repulsions, all existing things, all that forms the fabric of our physical life must be overcome, transformed and freed from all their habits. This is a battle of every second against thousands and millions of enemies. Unless you feel you are a hero, it is better not to try ...
... lly. But with all that I have learned about pujas, about certain scriptures and certain rituals as well, the necessity for a 'process' has become very clear to me. It's the same as in physical life; in physical life, everything needs a process, as we know, and it is the knowledge of processes that constitutes physical science. Similarly, in a more occult working, the knowledge and especially the RESPECT ...
... suicide: Petit, it's to help you take a step forward. It's very good. You know, the big difficulty is that importance and above all that sense of absolute reality we attach to physical life. It's not physical life that's important: it's Life; it's not physical consciousness that's important: it's Consciousness. So when you are free, you can use... well, all the materiality you want. One should ...
... Individualization is only a means to make the innumerable details of the Consciousness more complex, more refined, more coherent. And "individualization"... we shouldn't mistake it for physical life; physical life is ONE of the various means of that individualization, with such fragmenting and such limitation that it compels a concentration that intensifies the details of the development; but once ...
... ... But what disappointed me was that it was all very familiar. But it is very familiar! It's very familiar, extraordinarily so. With me too, it's like that. Far more familiar than our physical life.... Oh, but then you did go there for real. I mean I remember having seen Sri Aurobindo fifteen years ago: he came during my sleep and put his hand on my heart—there was such an emotion... in... like that." Yes, exactly, it shows you really did go there. It's really "like that." As for me, I find it more... familiar, more (what's the word?) simple, you know, than our own life. Our physical life here seems... ( Mother puffs up her cheeks ). We make a lot of fuss about very little.... Oh then, you can be sure that you really went there! But the place where I met him looked a little like ...
... dissolution of the physical ego was a necessary part of the process of the physical transformation, and that the disappearance of the physical ego was not an insuperable bar to the continuance of the physical life. In Mother's words: ... And the disappearance of that [physical] ego... for a long time one has had the impression that if the ego disappears, the being disappears, the form disappears—but... Actually, Mother means the bodily mind. ³ Ibid., pp. 343-4. Page 212 I have the impression that I am on the way to discovering... the illusion that must be destroyed so that physical life can be uninterrupted—discovering that death comes from a... a distortion of consciousness. That's it. It's this close, you know (Mother makes a gesture as if she were about to grasp the secret) ...
... alone entirely real and human existence has no real meaning. The world is an illusion from which we have to awaken. The recommended path is that of renunciation and rejection of physical life and matter. Page 23 (The Cosmic Terrestrial View) The Cosmic Terrestrial View is the exact opposite. It considers cosmic and physical existence as the only reality... Spirit and Matter has also to be perfected Page 24 and brought into unity in complete integration. To discover the Divine Reality and to work for its full manifestation in physical life is the Integral Aim of Life. All life must be transformed by the highest divine light and power. The educational process should be, as noted above, exploration; and every student ...
... even the common people in their ethical nature and to turn them towards some initial developments of their psychic being, and to conceive the idea of a knowledge and truth other than that of the physical life and to admit even a first conception of some greater spiritual Reality. But the deeper and esoteric meaning of the Veda was reserved for the initiates, for those who were ready to _____... many must necessarily remain for ever on the lower rungs of life and only a few could climb into the free air and light, but were moved by the spirit to regenerate all and the totality of physical life on the earth. It is true that this spirit was not at all times and in all its parts consciously aware of its own total significance. But the total drift of the manifold sides and rich variations ...
... contact that we choose, will be the type of Yoga that we practise. THE SYSTEMS OF YOGA Hatha Yoga dealing with the life and body aims at the supernormal perfection of the physical life and its capacities and goes beyond into the domain of the mental life. Rajayoga operating with the mind aims at a supernormal perfection and enlargement of the capacities of the... clearly and radically, not revive religion or religious spirit, but present the ideal of spiritual perfection which consists of an integral realization of the spirit and its full manifestation in physical life." Page 182 ...
... The Evolution of Language HUMAN language was born out of the necessity of inter-communication among human beings living together. The necessity naturally related to the physical life and its demands and requirements. Man being a mental being sought intercommunication through his mind. So mind yoked to the physical demands gave the first form and pattern to human speech. Language... something of their experience and illumination through the word, the human tongue. It is extremely interesting to see how a material, constructed or formed to satisfy the requirements of an ordinary physical life Page 214 is being turned into an instrument for luminous and effective communication and expression of other truths and realities in the hands of these seer-creators ( kavi-kratuh) ...
... a situation: his language, his culture even built upon an outward view of things, upon the mode and manner of his physical reactions to impacts of the gross outward world, the brute objects of physical life. The liberation of the mind, at least the higher mind, as an instrument of expression for the human consciousness was achieved to a remarkable degree in the Upanishads generally, particularly... ,¹ it is a supreme revelation, it is supremely evocative but it is built up of negatives. The Vedic rishis followed a different line, as I said; they did not evade or reject the materials of a physical life, they boldly grasped them and used them as signs, symbols, embodiments of other truths and realities. They accepted the sun, the moon, the stars, man and woman, even the normal activities of life ...
... these results should be contained in the widest formula of the synthesis finally to be effected by humanity. These results are envisaged to be employed for an integral mental and physical life, and the mental and physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. As a result, a synthesis is accomplished of the three degrees of Nature ...
... even the common people in their ethical nature and to turn them towards some initial developments of their psychic being, and to conceive the idea of a knowledge and truth other than that of the physical life and to admit even a first conception of some greater spiritual Reality. But the deeper and esoteric meaning of the Veda was reserved for the initiates, for those who were ready to understand... theory that many must necessarily remain for ever on the lower ranges of life and only a few climb into the free air and the light, but they were moved by the spirit to regenerate the totality of physical life on the earth. It is true that this spirit was not at all times and in all its parts Page 103 consciously aware of its own total significance. But the total drift of the manifold sides ...
... the earth; not merely individual achievement but a collective one for the earth; not merely realisation of the Divine, but realisation of the integral Divine and its integral manifestation in the physical life, this is the aim which, according to Sri Aurobindo, is demanded of us, and it can be fulfilled only by the descent and manifestation of the Supermind. This is the aim Sri Aurobindo puts forward... intense divine force; tamas becomes Page 29 shama, the divine quiet, rest, peace. But this can be done, according to Sri Aurobindo, in its fullness in the physical only when the physical life is finally transformed by the supramental power. This is quite different from what is known as spiritual liberation or Mukti. Spiritual liberation is an important step in the integral Yoga ...
... so-called lower but stronger movements, by controlling them and purifying them into their true elements. The ordinary man, every man in fact, has to live with his body and vital being, with the physical life and the vital force as his main supports. Since these things exist, they must have a purpose. They alone can delve into the mystery of the Page 116 ordinary life who have been living... be ignored, nor is it proper to do so. It is here that Tantra steps in. That is why I have said that Tantricism has found a ready acceptance among those who are concerned particularly with the physical life, the "natural men". These men have been derided and despised by orthodox Vedantists and by men at the top of the social hierarchy. That is why the Tantrics have had to form esoteric groups and often ...
... with your earth plane. You must not exaggerate the importance of the earth-plane. Even for us the external, physical life of man does not matter much. Not that the earth-plane is not important. It is important according to what you can put into it. Otherwise, how is the physical life of man better than that of an ant ? In order to bring down any higher spiritual force into the earth-plane you ...
... food gradually as people who fast generally do. He suffered no diminution of mental or vital energy, but found that a certain diminution of material substance was taking place. He concluded that physical life would be impossible without food. Two talks of Sri Aurobindo on the subject of fasting are reproduced below: Disciple: "Is it possible to do without food?" Page 142 ... therefore is to find out the right idea and the right way of harmony; to restate the ancient and eternal spiritual truth of the Self so that it shall reembrace, permeate and dominate the mental and physical life; to develop the most profound and vital methods of psychological self-discipline and self-development so that the mental and psychical life of man may express the spiritual life through the utmost ...
... became aware of the enormous difference, as it were) is that everything here, except for what takes place very deeply within, appeared to me absolutely artificial. None of the values of ordinary, physical life are based on truth. Just as we have to get cloth and sew it to make dresses for ourselves and then wear them, so also to feed ourselves we need to get things from outside and put it inside our bodies... instrumentation and even of their existence. The centers [of consciousness] would pour their energies into material nerve and plexus and tissue and radiate them through the whole material body; all the physical life and its necessary activities in this new existence could be maintained and operated by these higher agencies in a freer and ampler way and by a less burdensome and restricting method. This might ...
... progress in growth has come to an end, that is, it is not indispensable for him to take birth again in a body. Till then rebirth is a necessity, for it is through rebirth that he grows; it is in the physical life and in a physical body that he gradually develops and becomes a fully conscious being. But once he is fully formed, he is free, in this sense that he can take birth or not, at will. So there, one... tired of progressing or is not capable Page 204 of progressing in the present constitution, but in any case it stops progressing and after a time decomposes. Those who lead a purely physical life reach a kind of summit, then they slide down very quickly. But now, with the general collective human progress, there is behind the physical progress a vital progress and a mental progress, so that ...
... of all that the material world expresses through its forms, and the whole side of the forms of sensations of the physical life, are men who live in their senses; and when they enjoy all these things, well, we call them sensuous. Here, instead of being applied to the outer physical life, it is applied to the life of the spirit, to ideas and what is beyond ideas. And all that world, seen under the ...
... at its basis to the same order of phenomena as the creation of vital organisms in physical Nature. It uses, that is to say, primarily external and physical methods governed by the principles of physical life-energy intent on the creation of living forms, although its inner object is to deliver, to manifest and to bring into secure working a supraphysical, a psychological principle latent behind the... themselves; they live either by interchange with other vital organisms or partly by that interchange and partly by devouring others; for these are the processes of assimilation common to separated physical life. In unification of life, on the other hand, an assimilation is possible which goes beyond this alternative of either the devouring of one by another or a continued separate Page 367 ...
... useful adaptation, just mechanism and seeks to build up a well-ordered, well-informed and efficient human life. Both take it that man is partly a mental, partly a physical being with the mentalised physical life for his field and reason for his highest attribute and his highest possibility. But if we follow to the end the new vistas opened by the most advanced tendencies of a subjective age, we shall be... before us the greater ideal of a deeply conscious self-illumined, self-possessing, self-mastering soul in a pure and perfect mind and body. The wider field it seeks will be, not the mentalised physical life with which man has started, but a new spiritualised life inward and outward, by which the perfected internal figures itself in a perfected external living. Beyond man's long intelligent effort towards ...
... course the centres themselves remain—for they are in the subtle body and it is from there that they act on the corresponding physical centres. No, the subconscient is an instrument for the physical life and disappears [ after death ]. It is too incoherent to be an organised enduring existence. Lines of Force and Consciousness What is exactly your theory? There is one thing—influences—everybody... human incarnations or births have naturally a psychic being. It is only other types like the vital beings that have not, and that is precisely the reason why they want to possess men and enjoy physical life without being themselves born here, for so they escape the psychic law of evolution and spiritual progress Page 547 and change. But these formations [ the vital fragments of a dead person ...
... through takes another form in the physical—though sometimes there is an exact correspondence; but this little is at the basis of our outward existence. All that we become and do and bear in the physical life is prepared behind the veil within us. It is therefore of immense importance for a Yoga which aims at the transformation of life to grow conscious of what goes on within these domains, to be master... supraphysical planes. What was meant by the sea of red colour and stars depends on the character of the red colour. If it was crimson, what he saw was the sea of the physical consciousness and physical life as it is represented to the inner symbolic vision; if it was purple red, then it was the sea of the vital consciousness and the vital life-force. Perhaps, if he had not stopped his sense of the ...
... essential play of the new principle itself; it includes a taking up of that which is lower into the higher values: the divine or spiritual life will not only assume into itself the mental, vital, physical life transformed and spiritualised, but it will give them a much wider and fuller play than was open to them so long as they were living on their own level. Our mental, physical, vital existence need... real, our hidden being or an upthrow from its depths. Our surface being has been formed with this subliminal help by an evolution out of the Inconscient for the utility of our present mental and physical life on earth; this that is behind is a formation mediating between the Inconscient and the larger planes of Life and Mind which have been created by the involutionary descent and whose pressure has ...
... seekers of perfection to be a great impediment and it has been the habit to turn from it with contempt, denial or aversion and a desire to suppress altogether or as far as may be the body and the physical life. But this cannot be the right method for the integral Yoga. The body is given us as one instrument necessary to the totality of our works and it is to be used, not neglected, hurt, suppressed or... physical consciousness has a very large determining power on the music made by this human harp of God; the notes we get from the spirit, from the psychic soul, from the greater life behind our physical life cannot come in freely, cannot develop their high, powerful and proper strain. This condition must be reversed; the body and the physical consciousness must develop the habit of admitting and shaping ...
... higher functions is it normally capable of something more than the workings of a physical mentality subjected to life. We may put it in this ascending order. We have first a body supported by the physical life-force, the physical prana which courses through the whole nervous system and gives its stamp to our corporeal action, so that all is of the character of the action of a living and not an inert ... the inner instrument, the antaḥkaraṇa . Buddhi is really an intermediary between a much higher Truth-mind not now in our active possession, which is the direct instrument of Spirit, and the physical life of the human mind evolved in body. Its powers of intelligence and will are drawn from this greater direct Truth-mind or supermind. Buddhi centres its mental action round the ego-idea, the idea that ...
... This sense of difference from the vital actions and the physical being is very marked; for although the Purusha feels his mind to be involved in life and body, yet he is aware that even if the physical life and body were to cease or be dissolved, he would still go on existing in his mental being. But the sense of difference from the mind is more difficult and less firmly distinct. But still it is there;... superficial mentality opens to his self-knowledge. A last and greatest intuition is an inner awareness of something which he more essentially is, something as high above mind as mind is above the physical life and body. This inner awareness is his intuition of his supramental and spiritual being. The mental Purusha can at any time involve himself again in the superficial action from which he has drawn ...
... is for the purposes of our normal human existence power of conscious being emerging in matter, liberating from it and in it mind and the higher powers and supporting their limited action in the physical life,—just as what we call mentality is power of conscious being awaking in body to light of its own consciousness and to consciousness of all the rest of being immediately around it and working at first... material, which is to the ignorance of his practical surface consciousness his original principle. Mind in him, though he is an embodied mental being, has to bear the control of the body and the physical life and can only by some more or less considerable effort of energy and concentration consciously control life and body. It is only by increasing that control that he can move towards perfection,—and ...
... makes of all sense and sensation a key to or a vessel of the divine and infinite Ananda. Page 866 The supramental sense can act in its own power and is independent of the body and the physical life and outer mind and it is above too the inner mind and its experiences. It can be aware of all things in whatever world, on whatever plane, in whatever formation of universal consciousness. It can... action, often bringing a loss of hold upon life and a disturbance or an injury to other parts of the being. It not only acquires its own right order within itself but its right relation with the physical life on one side and with the spiritual truth of being on the other and the whole becomes a harmonious manifestation of the embodied spirit. It is always the originating supermind that contains within ...
... category in which everything, but everything is in regard to the Divine, in the Consciousness of the Divine—all is marvelous, all is easy! And I am speaking of material things, of the material, physical life (for psychological things, we've known it for long), I mean material things like little discomforts of the body, or reactions, feeling pain or not, circumstances going wrong, not being able to swallow... whole—and it is projected successively on a screen. ( Mother goes into contemplation ) I have the impression that I am on the way to discovering... the illusion that must be destroyed so that physical life can be uninterrupted—discovering that death comes from a... a distortion of consciousness. That's it. It's this close, you know ( Mother makes a gesture as if she were about to grasp the secret ...
... I'm always turning in circles, the same groove... Yes. ...something has to break, PHYSICALLY break. It could keep on turning like that for centuries. Hmm!... But life is like that. Physical life is like that—for everyone. This feeling of it turning round and round and round and round—and it's the same for people, objects, countries, the whole world. Something changes, of course, but... long time. He's had enough of being shut in. It was a kind of rage against something that shuts you in. But note that this is not something particular to you, for as I have told you, all physical life feels like that to me, as though people were confined in a kind of... shell—this feeling of separation, isolation. This division everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. It's dreadful. Every encounter ...
... which has shaped itself into it, will be free in all respects. It can dissolve at will and re-form at will. Who can say for sure how long evolution will take to arrive at a wholly divine physical life? Sri Aurobindo once remarked that perhaps 300 years would be wanted. The change has certainly to be gradual if it is not to be a temporary miraculous imposition of Supernature upon Nature but a... may look like a revolution. Yet definite signs of the change can come much before 300 years. In closing we may distinguish between the Supramental Body which will be the transformed human physical life and the Supramental Body which will be the direct material manifestation of beings belonging to the Supermind itself. The latter will not ever have known a past of earthly development and so will ...
... the earth who would use a new faculty called reason upon the materials of his inner and outer existence, who would dominate by that power his instincts and habits, change the circumstances of his physical life, build for himself houses of stone, manipulate Nature’s forces, sail the seas, ride the air, develop codes of conduct, evolve conscious methods for his mental and spiritual development. And if such... there is needed a concrete experience and a more living and full-bodied language.” (LD 357) “A theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with a scientific theory of form-evolution and physical life-evolution; it must stand on its own inherent justification; it may accept the scientific account of physical evolution as a support or element, but the support is not indispensable. The scientific ...
... that." It's true—it's true, but it's a bit like baiting a fish. I don't much like it. Let it be your own manner of serving the Divine, of relating to Him, loving Him, of joining Him to your physical life, being close to Him and drawing Him close to you—that way it's beautiful. Each time you say the Word, let it be an invocation, let it be like the recitation of a word of love; then it's beautiful... a touch of beauty, a touch of charm and delight for the Lord. There, that's all.... Mon petit... ( Mother gazes a long time at Satprem ). For me, you know, japa means a moment when all physical life is EXCLUSIVELY for the Divine. A moment when nothing but the Page 70 Divine exists—every single cell of the body, each second, is EXCLUSIVELY for the Divine, there is nothing but the ...
... change should be the spontaneous and inevitable expression of an inner transformation. Normally, all improvement of the conditions of physical life should be the blossoming to the surface of a progress realised within. 29 March 1958 There can be no physical life without an order and rhythm. When this order is changed it must be in obedience to an inner growth and not for the sake of external ...
... Ordinarily, the supra-physical produces a direct effect or a tangible impression on our mind and our life-being, and can only indirectly and through them, if at all, influence the physical world and physical life. If it objectivises itself, it does so to subtler senses in us and only derivatively to the outward physical sense. In examples of the faculty of second sight and also of those of psychic faculties... appeal of this view is that neither the cosmic nor the terrestrial nor the supra-terrestrial life has any ultimate meaning and that renunciation is a sole path of knowledge, that acceptation of physical life is the act of the ignorant, and that cessation from birth is the right use of human birth. This supra-cosmic view, which is held by certain schools of Vedantic monism in varying formulations, is ...
... (Antariksha) 5 Matter Earth (the three earths) Our earth, according to the Veda, has been shaped out of the dark inconscient ocean of existence, and our physical life lifts its high formations and ascending planes towards the heaven of mind having its own formations. The streams of the clarity and the honey ascend out of the Subconscient Ocean upwards and they... regard to the infirmities of the scientific theory of evolution, Sri Aurobindo points out that the theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with the scientific theory of form-evolution and physical life. The theory of spiritual evolution may accept the scientific account of the physical evolution as a support or an element, but that support is not indispensable. What is common between the theory ...
... that are reached in terms of an ascending process of harmonization and, in that process, development of quest of spiritual inspiration and revelation and their manifestation in various domains of physical life. Every developed culture, therefore, inspires methodologies of transmission of accumulated normative lessons of culture to succeeding generations, and this process of transmission is greatly secured... promoted what can be called mercantile barbarism, and that too, even in the setting of a science-based civilization. It is barbarism because its gospel is to support and aggrandise the needs of physical life, and it seeks triumph of consumerism, which can be sustained only by supporting an unjust economic and social order, environmental disasters and by inducing people to remain confined to a perpetual ...
... l Reality and the eventual manifestation of the intended manifestation of the divine will in the physical life consists of the most difficult endeavour, and that process is the process of the integral yoga. This task culminates in Page 57 manifestation of the divine will in physical life, and in this task, the importance of the individual is critical. As Sri Aurobindo states: "The ...
... a new faculty called reason upon the materials of his inner and outer existence, who would dominate by that power his Page 65 instincts and habits, change the circumstances of his physical life; it would have been impossible for that Ape to conceive that a rational animal would build for himself houses of stone, manipulate Nature's forces, sail the seas, ride the air, develop codes of... found themselves securely upon it and reach their own perfection. They would become, according to Sri Aurobindo, a hierarchy of states of consciousness in the earth-existence rising out of Mind and physical life to the supreme supramental level. In the context of this development, mind and mental humanity would remain as one step in the spiritual evolution; but other degrees above it would be there formed ...
... arriving at spiritual perfection. And if we study the Yoga of the Veda in its inmost significance, we find that there was an intense research into the possibilities of spiritual manifestation in physical life. Even though this research may not have been completed, there was a secret knowledge that the highest light is contained in the darkest caves of the physical or the inconscient, and that one must... manifestation of Spirit in Matter, leading to an unprecedented perfection and even a mutation of the human species. Sri Aurobindo's discovery of the Supermind and its possibility of full operation in physical life may be regarded as the most significant gift of renascent India to humanity's effort to overcome its crisis. This has also a momentous consequence for education. The new education that must ...
... beyond all manifestations and enter into some ineffable Nirvana or into the featureless unity of the indefinable Existence. And the path that is recommended is that of renunciation and rejection of physical life, the call of the spirit, the recoil from Matter. Painting by Mayaura, Auroville II ... all-seeing purpose in the terrestrial creation; a divine plan is working itself out through contradictions and perplexities. To discover the Divine Reality and to work for its full manifestation in physical life is the integral aim of life. All life must be accepted, but all life must be transformed by the highest divine light and power. ...
... is not something opposed to or inconsistent with a full vital and physical manifestation; on the contrary, it carries in it the only possibilities of the full fullness of the vital force and the physical life on earth.... The Supramental is simply the Truth-Conscious- Page 397 ness and what it brings in its descent is the full truth of life, the full truth of consciousness in Matter. One... forbearance, forgiveness and unbounded compassion, and how he confronted and rebutted these silly charges with his usual salve of peerless humour. And this happened in the closing year of his physical life, in 1950 to be precise. The background to the exchange between Sri Aurobindo and his disciple is as follows. Sri Aurobindo Ashram was formally established at Pondicherry in the year 1926 ...
... mental and vital individuality to persist without the Page 155 support of the material body, as well as to overcome any excessive detaining attachment to the physical plane and the physical life. (Ibid., p. 797) If the conditions are not fulfilled, there would be immediate rebirth and no sojourn in the other worlds in the intematal period. (Q. 16): Does the soul remember... end of its pilgrimage? Must it always take a physical body? (A. 31): "Not necessarily; but the soul needs to have achieved a before it has the power to choose whether to return to the physical life or to rest outside the manifestation." (CWM, Vol. 17, p. 78) "Other seekings also there are and these too find their means of self-fulfilment; a withdrawal into the supreme peace or ecstasy ...
... being are in their actuality already an unalloyed boon and his physical organization a picture of perfection? For, are we not too poignantly aware of the grossness and limitation of our present physical life, the various inconveniences of our animal body, its unregenerate earth-nature and impulses and appetites that tend to drag down man's soaring spirit and frustrate the winged visions of his soul... pull of earth and follow the heavenlier intuitions of its psychic parts, the heart's ideal and the soul's yearnings. On the mind the body imposes the boundaries of the physical being and the physical life and the sense of the sole complete reality of physical things with the rest as a sort of brilliant fireworks of the imagination, of lights and glories that can only have their full play in heavens ...
... XV The Evolution of Language Human language was born out of the necessity of intercommunication among human beings living together. The necessity naturally related to the physical life and its demands and requirements. Man being a mental being sought intercommunication through his mind. So mind yoked to the physical demands gave the first form and pattern to human speech. ... something of their experience and illumination through the word, the human tongue. It is extremely interesting to see how a material, constructed or formed to satisfy the requirements of an ordinary physical life is being turned into an instrument for luminous and effective communication and expression of other truths and realities in the hands of these seer-creators (kavi-kratu ḥ ). They take the materials ...
... a situation: his language, his culture even built upon an outward view of things, upon the mode and manner of his physical reactions to impacts of the gross outward world, the brute objects of physical life. The liberation of the mind, at least the higher mind, as an instrument of expression for the human consciousness was achieved to a remarkable degree in the Upanishads generally, particularly... ", it is a supreme revelation, it is supremely evocative but it is built up of negatives. The Vedic rishis followed a different line, as I said; they did not evade or reject the materials of a physical life, they boldly grasped them and used them as signs, symbols, embodiments of other truths and realities. They accepted the sun, the moon, the stars, man and woman, even the normal activities of life ...
... to be conscious of yourself, to be conscious of the universe and to be conscious of the Divine who dwells in you and permeates the world and then to manifest the Divine, in your physical life and in the physical life of the world. Page 62 ...
... partial. If you take the mental being of man you will find that there is what may be called the pure mental part of it, which is high above the head and communicates through the brain with the physical life. It is the – "thinking mind". It is concerned chiefly with reasoning, creations of mental forms and the activity of the mental will. Then there are the emotions and sensations which are not... all mental movements. On the vital plane Prakriti represents itself as desires – in short, as action of the vital force. On the physical plane it represents itself as the unchangeable law of physical life. Disciple : When the Purusha separates itself from Prakriti, how is it possible for it to aspire for something higher ? Sri Aurobindo : It is not the Purusha but the Prakriti which ...
... consciousness, in order to follow a line of independent and separate development instead of a merger life of solidarity with the Supreme. The result was immediate and drastic-the precipitation of a physical life and an earthly existence which negated the very principles of the original nature of the godheads and brought forth exactly their contraries: instead of Light there brooded Darkness and Inconscience... power of the vision of a god, but it is an indispensable aid, a precious instrument for the canalisation and expression of that vision, for the intimate application of the divine inspiration to physical life and external conduct. If nothing else, it is a sort of blue print which an engineer of life cannot forego if he has to execute his work of building a new life accurately and beautifully and perfectly ...
... notions, or even secret intimations and visions of deeper truths and greater realities – to take body, to find a local habitation and name and be firmly stabilised for experience or utilisation in physical life. There was indeed a hiatus in the human consciousness of the earlier period. Take, for example, the earliest human civilisation at its best, of which we have historical record, the Vedic culture... depth and height is a thing of wonder. But between that world, an almost occult world and this world of the physical senses there is a gap. That world was occult precisely because of this gap. The physical life and mind could translate and represent the supra-physical only in figures and symbols; the impact was direct, but it expressed itself in hieroglyphs. Life itself was more or less a life of rites ...
... conscious-to be conscious of yourself, to be conscious of the universe and to be conscious of the Divine who dwells in you and permeates the world and then to manifest the Divine, in your physical life and in the physical life of the world. Page 256 ...
... perfect instrument for whatever work one has to do. Changes in outer or physical life, if not dictated Page 600 by the needs of the inner development but only by the call of external novelty, can hardly lead to any lasting good. As Sri Aurobindo explained in one of his letters: There can be no physical life without an order and-rhythm. When this order is changed, it must be ...
... you see, and all that is really changing is the way consciousness perceives things. So pushing this knowledge to its limit—that is, applying it generally—life (what we usually call "life," the physical life of the body) and death are THE SAME THING, SIMULTANEOUSLY... it's just that the consciousness moves back and forth, back and forth. I don't know if I am making myself clear. But it's fantastic.... cautiously. And I now recall, with a kind of dizziness, those words of Mother just two years before the Mystery of 1973: I am on the way to discovering... the illusion that must be destroyed so that physical life can be uninterrupted. 14 Dying to Death You could say that birds live in a perfectly natural state but they die just the same—does death really exist for them? To notice death, an "I" ...
... To find the secret is to have the power. To stand upright before death, upright before life, at the point where this death dies out and where this life dies out—or else is rekindled to another PHYSICAL life, which is no longer life or death, but something else. Perhaps the life divine. Another clearing. A formidable transition. You will tell them. This is the transition we are going to try... in the clearing of the next world, with the eyes of the next being, we will find what She was seeking, She who said, I am on the way to discovering the illusion that must be destroyed so that physical life can be uninterrupted, 15 And let there be no mistake: the discovery is not yet there—it has to be made. Maybe even many will have to make this discovery for it to be truly done. Then ...
... become master and enjoyer, to grow in Power; but until it escapes from the bonds of individuality it must be subject to its three badges of limitation, Death, Desire and Incapacity.—The nature of physical life imposes death because all life exists by a mutual devouring and struggle and Life itself feeds upon the forms it creates; but the fundamental justification ofDeath is the necessity of a constant ...
... material existence. Therefore his complete perfection is through the ascent to supermind and the conquest of the physical also by the supramental substance so that he will be able to command a diviner physical life and conquer death in a divine body. Page 485 ...
... he is essentially the mental being in a terrestrial body, the manu . Quite apart from the existence of a soul or self one in all creatures, the body is not even the phenomenal self of man; the physical life also is not himself; both may be dissolved, man will persist. But if the mental being also is dissolved, man as man ceases to be; for this is his centre and the nodus of his organism. On the ...
... they were trained by them to develop their ethical nature, to turn towards some initial development of their psychic being, to conceive the idea of a knowledge and truth other than that of the physical life and to admit even a first conception of some greater spiritual Reality which was the ultimate object of human worship or aspiration. This religious and moral force was the highest reach of the external ...
... organic living being with a collective or rather—for the word collective is too mechanical to be true to the inner reality—a common or communal soul, mind and body. The life of the society like the physical life of the individual human being passes through a cycle of birth, growth, youth, ripeness and decline, and if this last stage goes far enough without any arrest of its course towards decadence, it ...
... Indian memory and dominant in Indian imagination, have borne always the same witness and swelled always the same lofty and distant appeal,—renunciation the sole path of knowledge, acceptation of physical life the act of the ignorant, cessation from birth the right use of human birth, the call of the Spirit, the recoil from Matter. For an age out of sympathy with the ascetic spirit—and throughout ...
... passing away on account of old age and physical causes. Whatever the purely clinical picture, it must have behind it a significance integral with his highly significant and immeasurably more-than-physical life of spiritual attainment. That there should be a clinical picture instead of a miraculous vanishing trick is exactly in keeping with Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. His Yoga was meant to be a process ...
... consciousness belonging to them be made to impose that law and power on our dense matter and substitute their purer, higher, intenser conditions of being for the grossness and limitation of our present physical life and impulses and habits. If that be so, then the evolution of a nobler physical existence not limited by the ordinary conditions of animal birth and life and death, Page 244 ...
... write that the Buddha is smiling with gentle irony", but the Buddha's smile can only be a smile of perfect understanding before a luminous accomplishment. And in this state in which already the physical life has lost for you so much of its concrete reality, whether one is in the solitudes of the Himalayas or in the solitude of a house on the road to N., it should be equally easy to live in the deep ...
... one's impulses, the situation would become more clear. When people allow their consciousness to remain in a turmoil, all their life becomes a turmoil. Do not expect any satisfaction from physical life and you will no more be tied to it. Let nothing short of Perfection be your ideal in work and you are sure to become a true instrument of the Divine. It is better to use the energies received ...
... our material conflicts. , 15 February 1958 Every outer change must be the spontaneous and inevitable expression of an inner transformation. Normally, every improvement of the condition of physical life must be the flowing out on the surface of a progress realised internally. 29 March 1958 Do not ask questions about the details of material existence of this body; they are in themselves of ...
... the Absolute. ud ā na —one of the five prāṇas it moves upward from the body to Page 417 the crown of the head and is a regular channel of communication between the physical life and the greater life of the spirit. See also prāṇa. Upanishads — a class of Hindu sacred writings, regarded as the source of the Vedanta philosophy. upari budhna e ṣām —their ...
... and our life-being, which are the parts of us that are of the same order as itself, and can Page 175 only indirectly and through them, if at all, influence the physical world and physical life. If it objectivises itself, it must be to a subtler sense in us and only derivatively to the outward physical sense. This derivative objectivisation is certainly possible; if there is an association ...
... and only seem incoherent to the waking intelligence because the logic and law of their sequences is different from the logic and law which the physical reason imposes on the incoherences of physical life. But if one gets the guiding clue and if one has some dream-experience and dream-insight, then it is possible to seize the links of the sequences and make out the significance, often very profound ...
... influences by which he can proceed, if they are developed, to a higher human evolution. If the inner subtle-physical Purusha insists, he can arrive at the idea of a finer, more beautiful and perfect physical life and hope or attempt to realise it in his own or in the collective or group existence. In others it is the vital self, the being of life, who dominates and rules the mind, the will, the action; ...
... subconscious in all Matter and evolving in Matter, has developed these physical organs in order to apply its inherent capacities of sight, hearing, etc. on the physical plane by physical means for a physical life; but they are inherent capacities and not dependent on the circumstance of terrestrial evolution and they can be employed without the use of the physical eye, ear, skin, palate. Supposing that ...
... The utility of the psychic experiences and knowledge of the invisible worlds as of other Yogic experiences is not to be measured by our narrow human notions of what may be useful for the present physical life of man. In the first place, these things are necessary for the fullness of the consciousness and the completeness of the being. In the second place, these other worlds are actually working upon ...
... Yoga. I have always been in agreement with this view: moreover, I have never had any hesitation in the use of a spiritual force for all legitimate purposes including the maintenance of health and physical life in myself and in others .... I put a value on the body first as an instrument, dharmasadhana, or, more fully, as a centre of manifested personality in action, a basis of spiritual life and activity ...
... is not something opposed to or inconsistent with a full vital and physical manifestation; on the contrary, it carries in it the only possibility of the full fullness of the vital force and the physical life on earth. It is because it is so, because it was so revealed to me and for no other reason that I have followed after it and persevered till I came into contact with it and was able to draw down ...
... knowledge to wisdom! … Conception precedes manifestation and expression.” “A theory of spiritual evolution,” writes Sri Aurobindo, “is not identical with a scientific theory of form-evolution and physical life-evolution [e.g. the Darwinian theory]; it must stand on its own inherent justification: it may accept the scientific account of physical evolution as a support or element, but the support is not ...
... also painted or drew some of the places she visited – among them the Daiunji temple – and people she met, such as Rabindranath Tagore. ‘The art of Japan is a kind of a direct mental expression in physical life. The Japanese use the vital world very little. Their art is extremely mentalized; their life is extremely mentalized. It expresses in detail quite precise mental formations. Only in the physical ...
... through takes another form in the physical—though sometimes there is an exact correspondence; but this little is at the basis of our outward existence. All that we become and do and bear in the physical life is prepared behind the veil within us. It is therefore of immense importance for a Yoga which aims at the transformation of life to grow conscious of what goes on within these domains, to be master ...
... good and kind men who are boorish and rude in their manners, so there may be very spiritual men (I mean here by spiritual men those who have had deep spiritual experiences) who have no grasp over physical life or action (many intellectuals too, by the way are like that) and are not at all careful about their manners. I suppose I myself am accused of rude and arrogant behaviour because I refuse to see ...
... it is a hard job to get it to change at all except under a strong pressure of circumstances. Page 204 Especially in the physical parts, the body, the physical mind, the physical life movements, there is this resistance; the tamasic element in Nature is powerful there, what the Gita describes as aprakasa, absence of light, and apravrtti, a tendency to inertia, inactivity ...
... doubt anywhere in the world, and his mysticism is won Known for its large, comprehensive, balanced and harmonious character—a mysticism eminently healthy with its stress on a transformation of physical life no less than of the inner being. Again, all the world has recognised in him an intellect that has marshalled and organised the results of his integral spiritual experience in a most wide-sweeping ...
... Yes, from earliest girlhood you have felt called to the spiritual life. But you have something of an ascetic in your nature and this, coupled with the typical woman in you, has made your physical life too hard-working. All women want to keep their rooms spick and span - a worthy ideal but not to be followed over-rigidly if it taxes one's health. A little dust here and there, a bit of disorder ...
... get detached and prepare ourselves progressively for a truly restful death. The Mother, Words of the Mother - III: Old Age and Death In fact, if you do not expect any satisfaction from physical life, you are no more tied to it and get above all sorrow. The Mother, Words of the Mother - II: Material Desires ...
... February 25, 1932 Q. What is meant by turning the subjective side of experience into objective result? Is it to put the experience in practice—in actual physical life? A. No, in each plane there is an objective as well as a subjective side. It is not the physical plane and life alone that are objective. Sri Aurobindo ...
... remain under the Divine protection. On my side I shall do what can be done to help. This subconscient world is one of the places where wander those who have put an end violently to their physical life. It is wiser to avoid going there at all. ...
... strangely created. What remains after death is the same material energy or life-force persisting in the seed transmitted to the children and active for the farther development of the mental and physical life carried with it. Nothing is left of us except what we so transmit to others or what the Energy which shaped the individual by its pre-existent and its surrounding action, by birth and by environment ...
... by mind and given their values by an intellect bound to the conceptions of physical Space and circumstance and using for the language of a higher psychological experience figures drawn from the physical life and the experience of the senses. But the plane of consciousness to which the liberated human being arises is not dependent upon the physical world, and the cosmos which we thus include and are ...
... objective in its normal mentality. It succeeded in expressing the supreme spiritual experiences, so difficult to put at all into speech, in forms Page 45 and images proper to the simplest physical life and the most external customary mentality converting them into physical symbols of the supraphysical and then, by a rapid liberation, in its own proper voice, so producing the sacred poetry of the ...
... spiritualisation of mind, life and body is the thing to be achieved, the conscious presence of the Spirit even in the physical consciousness and material body, an age which puts Matter and the physical life in the forefront and devotes itself to the effort of the intellect to discover the truth of material existence, had perhaps to come. On one side, by materialising everything up to intellect itself ...
... admits what is supraphysical and begins to see things in harmony with the higher knowledge. It becomes an instrument for externalising that knowledge in the pragmatic perceptions and actions of the physical life. It sees things as they are and deals with them according to the larger Truth with an automatic rightness of perception and will and reaction to impacts. To sense things and react mentally ...
... there is no psychic, for the vampire is a vital being—but in all humans (even if dominated by a vital being or vampire force), there is a psychic veiled behind it all. The Vital Body The physical life cannot last without the body nor can the body live without the life force, but the life in itself has a separate existence and a separate body of its own, the vital body, just as the mind has a ...
... themselves and only seem incoherent to the waking intelligence because the logic and law of their sequences is different from the logic and law which the physical reason imposes on the incoherences of physical life. But if one gets the guiding clue and if one has some dream-experience and dream-insight, then it is possible to seize the links of the sequences and make out the significance, often very profound ...
... strangely beautiful and suggestive forms, dreams and symbols. I have read some of his poems which touch these behind-worlds with as much actuality as an ordinary poet would achieve in dealing with physical life—this is not surprising in a Celtic poet, for the race has the key to the occult worlds or some of them at least—but this strange force of suggestive mystic life is not accompanied by a mental precision ...
... Culture The idea of culture begins to define itself for us a little more clearly, or at least it has put away from it in a clear contrast its natural opposites. The unmental, the purely physical life is very obviously its opposite, it is barbarism; the unintellectualised vital, the crude economic or the grossly domestic life which looks only to money-getting, the procreation of a family and ...
... grow or perfect itself. As the individual lives by the life of other individuals, so does the nation by the life of other nations, by accepting from them material for its own mental, economic and physical life; but it has to assimilate this material, subject it to the law of its own nature, change it into stuff of itself, work upon it by its own Page 70 free will and consciousness, if it would ...
... subjective, an imaginative, a purely emotive satisfaction and pleasure. If there were not this factor, the physical mind of man left to itself would live like the animal, accepting his first actual physical life and its limits as his whole possibility, moving in material Nature's established order and asking for nothing beyond it. But this vital mind, this unquiet life-will comes in with its demands and ...
... preliminary conversion can be effected; it amounts to a greater or less spiritualising of our mental motives, our character and temperament, and a mastery, stilling or changed action of the vital and physical life. This converted subjectivity can be made the base of some communion or unity of the soul in mind with the Divine and some partial reflection of the divine nature in the mentality of the human being ...
... essential to it have been temporarily suspended. And new evidence of phenomena has been brought forward to establish that the plant, to which we can still deny any conscious reaction, has at least a physical life identical with our own and even organised essentially like our own though different in its apparent organisation. If that is proved true, we still have to make a clean sweep of our old facile and ...
... influences by which he can proceed, if they are developed, to a higher human evolution. If the inner subtle-physical Purusha insists, he can arrive at the idea of a finer, more beautiful and perfect physical life and hope or attempt to realise it in his own or in the collective or group existence. In others it is the vital self, the being of life, who dominates and rules the mind, the will, the action; then ...
... presented in a light which illumines all their activities and shows them the highest law of their own freedom. It will not, for instance, escape from scientific materialism by a barren contempt for physical life or a denial of Matter, but pursue rather the sceptical mind into its own affirmations and denials and show it there the Divine. If it cannot do that, it is proved that it is itself unenlightened ...
... luminous Dawns of the Forefathers, to their descendants, to a human race already turning in spirit towards the lower levels and the more easy and secure gains—secure perhaps only in appearance—of the physical life and of the intellect and the logical reason. But these are only speculations and inferences. Certain it is that the old tradition of a progressive obscuration and loss of the Veda as the law ...
... principle of Light and Heat in things, or Indra anything more than the god of the sky and the rain or of physical Light, or Vayu anything more than the divinity in the Wind and Air or at most of the physical Life-breath. In the lesser gods the naturalistic interpretation has less ground for confidence; for it is obvious that Varuna is not merely a Vedic Uranus or Neptune, but a god with great and important ...
... steeds of swiftness; Agni is there as the light and flame of its far-extended existence which has broken the limitations of the material being and he is full of the joys of this new and rich supra-physical life. Now the third state, the free mental being, is to be perfected by a richly varied and luminous play of thought and word ending in the manifestation of the highest reach of the mental realms, the ...
... sought to justify his refusal on ethical and rational grounds, but he has merely cloaked by words of apparent rationality the revolt of his ignorant and unchastened emotions. He has spoken of the physical life and the death of the body as if these were the primary realities; but they have no such essential value to the sage and the thinker. The sorrow for the bodily death of his friends and kindred is ...
... man is founded,—enjoyment of all by renunciation of all through the exclusion of desire. ( Verse 1, line 2 ) Page 13 There is then declared the justification of works and of the physical life on the basis of an inalienable freedom of the soul, one with the Lord, amidst all the activity of the multiple movement. ( Verse 2 ) Finally, the result of an ignorant interference with the ...
... to remain in the wide consciousness aloof from the play of the energies—they regarded the latter as something belonging to the life of illusion which would fall away only by the rejection of the physical life through knowledge. It is when you oscillate from one consciousness to another that you seem to lose the higher one or feel as if it were lost. By keeping it within always, one is able to regard ...
... No, these indications of time and these voices were not commands from the Mother. I have indicated to you the truth of this matter; you must follow the rules laid down by the Mother for the physical life; if any change has to be made, either she herself will let you know or you have to get sanction for it from her. No voice heard within can prevail against her word and no intimation that comes through ...
... very good and kind men who are boorish and rude in their manners, so there may be very spiritual men (I mean those who Page 655 have deep spiritual experiences) who have no grasp over physical life or action (many intellectuals too are like that) and are not at all careful about their manners. I suppose I myself am accused of rude and arrogant behaviour because I refuse to see people, do not ...
... them the very law of its being and it is a hard job to get it to change at all except under a strong pressure of circumstances. Especially in the physical parts, the body, the physical mind, the physical life movements, there is this resistance; the tamasic element in Nature is powerful there, what the Gita describes as aprakāśa , absence of light, and apravṛtti , a tendency to inertia, inactivity ...
... Sadhana through Work Letters on Yoga - II Chapter IV Practical Concerns in Work Order and Rhythm There can be no physical life without an order and rhythm. When this order is changed it must be in obedience to an inner growth and not for the sake of external novelty. It is only a certain part of the surface lower vital nature which seeks always external ...
... the sadhana. If you want the psychic in the physical, you cannot get it by merely sitting in meditation and having abstract experiences; you can get it only by seeking Page 249 it in physical life and action, by work for the Mother, obedience and surrender in work to the Mother who is present in her own body here. 15 September 1932 When I am alone for some time, I feel aspiration in ...
... earth and take a human body and accept to share in the evolution. It is because they do not want to do this that the vital beings try to possess men so that they may enjoy the materialities of physical life without having the burden of the evolution or the process of conversion in which it culminates. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: Terminology What exactly is the soul or psychic being ...
... earth. If it were not so, they would not have disappeared. The object of supramentalisation is a body fitted to embody and express the physical consciousness on earth so long as one remains in the physical life. It is a step in the spiritual evolution on the earth, not a step in the passage towards a supraphysical world. The supramentalisation is the most difficult part of the change arrived at by the ...
... are not even capable of feeling that, who have nothing in them corresponding to that or, if they have something, it is not awakened), they will look at the life here and tell you, "It is like the physical life—you have perhaps some ideas of your own, but there are many who have their own ideas; perhaps you do things in a special way, but there are lots of people who also do things in a special way. After ...
... over it, and this is not an easy thing to do. In most cases, this activity is even heightened, because, as the body is asleep, the internal faculties are no longer focused on or used by the physical life. It is sometimes said that in a man's sleep his true nature is revealed. Indeed, it often happens that the sensory being, which throughout the whole day has been subjected to the control of ...
... 1951 What is the difference between Japanese art and the art of other countries, like those of Europe, for example? The art of Japan is a kind of directly mental expression in physical life. The Japanese use the vital world very little. Their art is extremely mentalised; their life is extremely mentalised. It expresses in detail quite precise mental formations. Only, in the physical ...
... intact in the consciousness. 69 * And the moment you are in your psychic being, you have that feeling [looking at death without fear], spontaneously, effortlessly. You soar above the physical life and have the sense of immortality. As for me, I consider this the best remedy [for overcoming fear of death].... This is a deep experience and you can always get it back as soon as you recover the ...
... gross body of our complex existence. These possess powers, senses, capacities which are always secretly acting in us, are connected with and impinge upon our physical organs and the plexuses of our physical life and mentality. By self-development we can become aware of them, possess our life in them, get through them into conscious relation with the life-world and other worlds and use them also for a more ...
... be emphasised. A young child should aspire for beauty, not for the sake of pleasing others or winning their admiration, but for the love of beauty itself; for beauty is the ideal which all physical life must realise. Every human being has the possibility of establishing harmony among the different parts of his body and in the various movements of the body in action. Every human body that undergoes ...
... soul will do, where it will go—it all depends on what it has decided before leaving the body. And this capacity to keep around itself the being that has been fully organised and unified in its physical life, will allow it to really choose what it wants to do. And this also represents a very different field of possibilities, from sing consciously from one body into another, directly—there are instances ...
... this kind of work, this harmonisation and organisation of the being around the divine Centre can only be done in a physical body and on earth. That is truly the essential and original reason for physical life. For, as soon as you are no longer in a physical body, you can no longer do it at all. And what is still more remarkable is that only human beings can do it, for only human beings have at their ...
... this has not yet been achieved, this concrete permanence. Yet, it was of matter, for there was sight, touch, hearing. But hearing doesn't need to be very material: the sounds of the subtle physical life, its vibrations can be heard very well; and quite strangely, it is hearing and smell which seem to be the most permanent in the subtle physical world, more so than the perception of form—and also ...
... lower world. That is spiritual perfection, the perfection that comes from yoga—quite independent of the body and the physical world—which, in ancient times, meant first rejecting the body and the physical life so as to have a relation only with the higher world and finally with the Divine. That is the higher perfection. And the lower perfection is to be able to make the human being in his present form ...
... To find their soul and the Divine? Of course. But they did not succeed? Page 351 No, Sri Aurobindo says that in the Vedic age they tried to bring the spiritual life into the physical life, but he says that the means they employed, the paths they followed at that time are no longer any good now. Just imagine us before an altar making a Puja !... It won't do now, it is not suitable ...
... teachings and also the relativity of circumstances... to what extent a thing is so relatively important! For the moment it may be capital, it may lead you to life or to death—I am not speaking of physical life and death, I am Page 358 speaking of the life and death of the spirit—but this is for the moment; and when you have made a certain progress, when you have grown a few years older from ...
... thinks he knows what he wants to learn, he goes away. It is not the same thing. And it is not the same conditions as when one comes with a definite and single aim like realising the Divine in his physical life and nothing else in the world counts for him but that. In order to choose you must at least know a little the elements to choose from. And for that you must have a certain inner formation, a certain ...
... not at all like that—but it was conventional, artificial and without any true life, so the reaction was to the very opposite, and naturally to another absurdity: "art" was no longer to express physical life but mental life or vital life. And so came all the schools, like the Cubists and others, who created from their head. But in art it is not the head that dominates, it is the feeling for beauty. ...
... understands nothing in these domains, but from the rational point of view it is naturally the sovereign judge. For everything that concerns the ordinary life, and as I say, the mental, vital and physical life of man, a perfectly reasonable being, one who lives according to his reason, cannot make a mistake from this point of view. It is only if one says, "Human life restricted to these planes is not ...
... are generally those who can put their ideas into order and can also organise their character and can finally control their movements. And then, if you make progress, you succeed in governing your physical life; you begin to have a control over your physical movements. If you take life in that way, truly it be comes interesting. If one lives in a confusion, a disorder, an inner and outer chaos in which ...
... very advanced stage of evolution—it is the psychic. So, this is what happens: the psychic has alternate periods of activity and rest; it has a life of progress resulting from experiences of the physical life, of active life in a physical body, with all the experiences of the body, the vital and the mind; then, normally, the psychic goes into a kind of rest for assimilation where the result of the progress ...
... or material destiny of a being comes from his paternal and maternal forebears, from the physical conditions and circumstances in which he is born; one should be able to foresee the events of his physical life, his state of health and approximately how long his body will last. But then there comes into play the formation of his vital being (the being of desires and passions, but also of impulsive energy ...
... altogether his own and which he must express in his life. Now what is this truth? This is the question I have been asked: “What is this truth of the being, and how is it expressed externally in physical life?” It is expressed in this way: each individual being has a direct and unique relation with the Supreme, the Origin, That which is beyond all creation. It is this unique relation which must be ...
... which makes for the right impulse, the right action, the right sense of things and reaction to things. In the body it initiates a similar but still more automatic correct response to the things of physical life, sensation, body experience. Usually it is the psychic light in the mind that is first lit of the three, but not always—for sometimes it is the psycho-vital flame that takes precedence. In ordinary ...
... 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 over material things, and their dealing with physical life is likely to be slovenly and helpless in its movements and at the mercy of every passing force. An ideal of this kind may be good for those who Want it, but it is not our Yoga. For we want ...
... 2) The power of faith. 21 1) In what sense is our yoga an adventure? It can be called an adventure because it is the first time that a yoga aims at transformation and divinisation of physical life instead of escape from it. 2) Why is faith so supremely important in yoga? Because we are aiming at something quite new that has never been done before. 3) What is its determining power ...
... procedure that is as complete as possible. Each one will then have to apply as much of it as he can in the best possible way. The tapasya or discipline of beauty will lead us, through austerity in physical life, to freedom in action. Its basic programme will be to build a body that is beautiful in form, harmonious in posture, supple and agile in its movements, powerful in its activities and robust in its ...
... people who lead an ordinary life, though also for students of yoga — I mean people who are primarily interested in a purely physical material life but who try to attain more perfection in their physical life than is usual in ordinary conditions. It is a very difficult task but it is a kind of yoga. These people call themselves "materialists" and they are apt to get agitated or irritated if yogic terms ...
... also be emphasised. A young child should aspire for beauty, not for the sake of pleasing others or winning their admiration, but for the love of beauty itself; for beauty is the ideal which all physical life must realise. Every human being has the possibility of establishing harmony among the different parts of his body and in the various movements of the body in action. Every human body that undergoes ...
... body is capable of progressive development; through each individual formation, the physical substance progresses, and one day it will Page 31 be capable of building a bridge between physical life as we know it and the supramental life which is to manifest. 28 November 1958 ...
... without discouragement or despair. He fights like a man to the end. Natures that lack faith also lack endurance and courage. Sri Aurobindo tells us that for human beings the degree of success in physical life depends on the degree of harmony between the individual and universal physical Nature. Some people have a will which is spontaneously in tune with the will of Nature, and they succeed in everything ...
... various functions of the body, their development and their functioning. 16 February 1972 Sweet Mother, Could you write something on discipline for us? Discipline is indispensable to physical life. The proper functioning of the organs is based on a discipline. It is precisely when an organ or a part of the body does not obey the general discipline of the body that one falls ill. Discipline ...
... n. Grant that it may be also our sole occupation and that all our actions may help us towards this single goal. 1 January 1951 We stand in the Presence of Him who has sacrificed his physical life in order to help more fully his work of transformation. He is always with us, aware of what we are doing, of all our thoughts, of all our feelings and all our actions. 18 January 1951 ...
... same for all, that Thy law is manifested; for every one this manifestation is different according to his temperament, that is, according to the mission which for the moment is assigned to him in physical life. But what is unchangeable and universal is the happy peace, the luminous and immutable serenity of all those who are solely consecrated to Thee, who no longer have any darkness, ignorance, egoistic ...
... psychic formation at the centre of the being that continues after death; all the rest is dissolved, goes to pieces, scattered here and there, the individuality exists no longer. Now, how often in the physical life does the psychic being take part consciously in what the physical being does?... I am not speaking of people who do yoga and are a little disciplined; I am speaking of average people who have a ...
... you see, and all that is really changing is the way consciousness perceives things. So pushing this knowledge to its limit—that is, applying it generally—life (what we usually call "life," the physical life of the body) and death are THE SAME THING, simultaneous... it's just that the consciousness moves back and forth, back and forth ( same gesture ). I don't know if I am making myself clear. But it's ...
... sometimes happens that when you go out of your body, when you exteriorise yourself during sleep and are conscious in the vital world, you can live a vital life that is just as conscious as the physical life. I have known people—not many have this capacity of going out of their body—but I have known people who had such a strong interest in their experiences in the vital world that in the end they refused ...
... possibility of integral realisation ceases; so long as one is alive, nothing is impossible. What cannot be acquired or conquered during life can certainly not be done after death. It is the physical life which is the true field for progress and realisation. Beloved Mother, I must either be transformed or cease to be. It is impossible to cease to be ; nothing that belongs to the manifested ...
... expression of a perfect Divine. I saw this Secret (which is getting more and more perceptible as the Supramental becomes clear), I saw it in the everyday, outer life, precisely in this very physical life which all spirituality rejects ... a kind of accuracy or exactitude right down to the atom. I am not saying that the 'Divine' becomes perfect in Matter—the Divine is already there—but that THE ...
... Self, but this physical body is capable of a progressive development; the physical substance progresses through each individual formation, and one day it will be able to build a bridge between physical life as we know it and the supramental life that is to manifest. ...
... constant, like swells on the sea ( Mother shapes great waves ): it seems to flow on behind everything; it comes and shows its face for a moment, then vanishes. In the very tiny things of life—yes, physical life—the joy of these things, the joy life contains, this luminous, special kind of vibration, rises up as if to remind us that it's here; it is here, it mustn't be forgotten, it's here—but it's kept ...
... honesty and a sense of the dignity of all we do so that we may do it as it should be done. If we could truly, perfectly know all the details of the ceremony of life, the worship of the Lord in physical life, it would be wonderful—to know, and no longer to err, never again to err. To perform the ceremony as perfectly as an initiation. To know life utterly ... Oh, there is a very interesting thing ...
... Agenda 1951-1960 Undated 1958 When you are exteriorized during sleep and conscious in the vital world, you can live a vital life as conscious as the physical life. I have known people who had this capacity and who were so intensely interested in their experiences in the vital world that they returned only with regret to their bodies. If you are conscious ...
... in her very last Playground class, on November 28, 1958 , Mother said: "Through each individual formation, physical substance progresses, and one day it will be able to build a bridge between physical life as we know it and the supramental life that is to manifest." ...
... supreme Ananda and forget life as it really is. What does all this mean? It is the natural and indispensable counterpart of the moments—so numerous and so frequent!—when you are attached to the physical life and you understand and appreciate only that. The two extremes always alternate in experience until one has found the poise of the total and synthetic truth. That alone can give the true Freedom ...
... own accord. There was obviously a necessity: all that comes is necessary, I know that, otherwise it wouldn't come. But that memory didn't bring with it any sense or perception of a danger to your physical life, not in the least. I don't have that perception, while I did have it two years ago. Now I don't have it. But I remember that for a few days I was occupied with that memory, as part of a vast ...
... Weaknesses Words of the Mother - II Material Desires Do not expect any satisfaction from physical life and you will no more be tied to it. For our passage in the material world, what is indispensable to our life and action is put at our disposal according to the place we should occupy there. The more we are consciously in contact with our inner being ...
... Supramental Words of the Mother - III Transformation There is a Supreme Divine Consciousness. We want to manifest this Divine Consciousness in the physical life. Blessings. The goal is not to lose oneself in the Divine Consciousness. The goal is to let the Divine Consciousness penetrate into Matter and transform it. The Divine Consciousness ...
... important than saying it. But since you're unhappy, I am telling you: that's how it is. Maybe it's a habit of inner revolt—you aren't a rebel by nature, by any chance? I tried to find out why your physical life began (well, not quite began, but you were very, very young, just the same) with such a painful experience [the concentration camps]. And I saw why: it was like a separation—not "separation," but ...
... as useless as saying, "You won't be cured," both are equally incorrect from the point of view of the true Truth, and unsatisfactory for someone who has had a first contact with a life other than physical life. Page 209 Even when the patient asks you, "I'll be cured, won't I?" or when he asks how long he is going to last, there is a way of answering, even materially, which is neither yes nor ...
... afterwards. Cream-coloured? Yes, the colour of ... like this box, if you like. Not really cream, it was a pink ... a mixture of pink and cream. 2 Ah! The feet are the symbol of physical life, and according to what I once saw (your dream seems related to that), EACH part of his body represented someone—or rather represented his, Sri Aurobindo's, MODE of expression in someone. 3 ...
... experience. ( Mother remains "looking" for a long time, then suddenly looks very amused ) I've just had a vision... of what a life will be like in which beings of the supramental will mingle with physical life... It will be... You know, for three quarters of humanity, it will be a terrible panic! Someone appears all of a sudden ( Mother laughs ), and just when you want to say something to him, ploff! ...
... quickly, and that if she didn't recover, it would show it was really time for her to go, but then she would go with ... her body benefiting, so to speak, the substance benefiting from all the good of physical life, and with her inner being in the best conditions. Of course, the inner being in the best conditions is the case for everyone, for all those who pass away here (but I generally don't have the ...
... with the capacity of being conscious of the Lord's consciousness. That's exactly it. ( silence ) Before that experience, when I was in the consciousness of all the sufferings and horrors of physical life, at one point something came (it didn't "say"—we are forced to use words, but all this takes place without mentalization), an impression... to translate I would say, "Aren't you afraid of going ...
... infallible and incorruptible light, is sought to be made one with the sukshma sharira, the subtle body of our psychological activity, and finally with the sthula sharira, the gross body that is our physical life. This oneness is the authentic next step of evolution fulfilling the urge towards perfection which is the distinguishing sign of man who is "something to be surpassed", the urge so long broken up ...
... Rishis took their images from the physical struggle between the human representatives of these cults and applied them to the spiritual conflict, just as they employed the other details of their physical life to symbolise the spiritual sacrifice, the spiritual wealth, the spiritual battle and journey. But it is perfectly certain that in the Rig-veda at least it is the spiritual conflict and victory, ...
... physical consciousness has a very large determining power on the music made by this human harp of God; the notes we get from the spirit, from the psychic soul, from the greater life behind our physical life cannot come in freely, cannot develop their high powerful and proper strain. This condition must be reversed; the body and the physical consciousness must develop the habit of admitting and shaping ...
... of any of these, not to speak of having any conscious control over them. But aware or not, we cannot deny the fact of occult experience that all that we 'become and do and bear' in the physical life is prepared behind the veil within us. For it is a mistake to imagine that we live physically only, with the outer mind and life alone. As a matter of fact, "we are all the time living and acting ...
... substratum of Matter, — and indeed cannot be recognized, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, "until we have a science of mental life and spiritual existence as sound as our present science of physical life and the existence of Matter." 3 When that day arrives the man of science will wake to the discovery that "not only the elements of our physical body, but those of our subtler vital being ...
... of the spiritual life that the inner divinity is meant not to tear away from the outer form but to awaken that form to a natural kinship with it. It is also a reminder to the champions of the physical life that the ultimate source of this life's full flowering lies in that inner divinity and its awakening touch on matter. Mukherjee's double reminder catches in a fine crystallisation of ...
... them at present would be replaced by centres of concentration of force and energy that are receptive of higher forces and that would, by a sort of alchemy, use these latter for necessities of physical life." 1 About the process of materialisation of energy the Mother says: "Those who have practised occultism sufficiently know the process of materialising subtle energies to put them ...
... Page 431 Mother watching a pole vaulter and waiting to note down the results of the competition. love of beauty itself: for beauty is the ideal which physical life has to realize. In every human being there is the possibility of establishing harmony among the different parts of the body and the different movements when (he body is in action. The human body ...
... limitations are too obvious to be questioned. Even when the highest consciousness is proposed to be reconciled with the bodily existence, there is a full acknowledgement of the limitations of the physical life as it is lived under the conditions of the present organisation of consciousness. What is proposed, therefore, is that the bodily life should undergo a great perfection and even an evolutionary ...
... things. And it is indeed true that at a certain stage of the development of Indian culture, a deep influence has been cast on Indian collective psyche, bringing about a tendency to consider physical life as somewhat unreal. Yet India is also well known as the native place of Yoga. Therefore knowledge about body and spirit and methods appropriate to perfection of body and spirit could evolve ...
... natural gesture — and it is done without the least regret, that's all. And the moment you are in your psychic being, you have that feeling, spontaneously, effortlessly. You soar above the physical life and have the sense of immortality. As for me, I consider this the best remedy. The other is an intellectual, common-sense, rational remedy. This is a deep experience and you can always get it back ...
... are things man holds dear to his heart. Without them life loses its charm and significance. Mind and sensibility must be free to roam, not turned and tied to the exclusive needs and interests of physical life, free, that is to say, to discover and create norms and ideals and truths that are values in themselves and also lend values to the matter-of-fact terrestrial life. It is not sufficient that all ...
... reach of human mentality.... And when one cannot understand, the only thing is to keep a respectful silence." Another utterance on 18.1.51: "We stand in the Presence of Him who has sacrificed his physical life in order to help more fully his work of transformation. "He is always with us, aware of what we are doing, of all our thoughts, of all our feelings and all our actions." Surendra Mohan avers ...
... grave and meaningful sonorous recital the Lamas used to fix the dying man's consciousness on to a relatively higher level, far removed from the occupations and preoccupations of the fast-vanishing physical life of the person. They used to narrate within the hearing distance of the dying man the descriptions of the different supraphysical worlds and tell him where he would be on each successive day of the ...
... as to deny its existence and the reality of the material universe. Most of the religions have put their curse upon Matter and have made the refusal or the resigned temporary endurance of the physical life the test of religious truth and of spirituality". 3 The traditional spiritual seeker has found the earth a rather impossible place for any spiritual being; earth-nature appears to him ...
... the 'lofty and distant appeal' to renounce all 'longing to build heaven on earth' and accept the stern and dour message of "renunciation [as being] the sole path of knowledge, acceptation of physical life the act of the ignorant, cessation from birth the right use of human birth, the call of the Spirit, the recoil from Matter." 4 These, then, are the two great denials — the materialist's ...
... subconscious in all Matter and evolving in Matter, has developed these physical organs in order to apply its inherent capacities of sight, hearing, etc. on the physical plane by physical means for a physical life... [But] sight and the other senses are not mere results of the development of our physical organs in the terrestrial evolution... they are inherent capacities [of Mind] and not dependent on the ...
... with their centre of attention on 300 to 600 students. Teachers received no remuneration, but the Mother provided for everyone of them board, lodging, clothing and other minimum needs of physical life on a very modest scale. Students were largely residents of the boardings maintained by the Centre, looked after by teachers of the Centre. Although there was one vacation of one month a half (N ...
... respect of understanding of inner states of consciousness, of widening horizons of environment, and of value of relationships and internal complexities Page 34 of psychological and physical life. At a lower level, this clarity is conceptual, but as we ascend higher and higher, it assumes the nature of intuitive and inspirational enlightenment. Love is that indefinable but powerful force ...
... disabling scepticism and from comforting arrestation of quest of knowledge, and progress will be accelerated by ardent aspirations to realise higher spiritual truths and their manifestation in physical life; c)The new world of the future will cultivate material life so as to make it prosperous and rich and it will replace poverty wherever it exists by elimination of drudgery, exploitation and slavery ...
... "cycle of rebirths", "janma-cakra-nivṛtti". And that is supposed to be the ultimate spiritual goal placed before all sadhakas. And this is so because the traditionalists affirm that man's physical life upon earth cannot but constitute an uninterrupted series of karmas and each karma represents a new fetter for the soul tying Page 135 it to Ignorance (avidyā) and to the painful ...
... Spirit. Indeed, all life is an evolving expression of the Spirit, and therefore, a truly spiritual culture embraces all life and transforms it into spiritual terms. A spiritual manifestation in the physical life would be the only possible and acceptable solution to this conflict between asceticism and materialism. And it is in this direction that India needs to move forward and fashion itself for the new ...
... These chakras or lotuses are in the physical man closed or only partly open, with the consequence that only such powers and only so much of them are active in him as is sufficient for his ordinary physical life, and so much mind and soul only is at play as will accord with its needs. This is the reason why the whole energy of the soul does not seem to be at play in the physical body and life, and the secret ...
... on our mind, our life-being, our spiritual being, or other parts of us that are of the same order as itself, and can only indirectly and through them, if at all, influence the physical world and physical life. Even if the concerned supra-physical object objectivises itself, it must be to a subtler sense in us and only derivatively to the outward physical senses. It is true that sometimes, this derivative ...
... qualification in this acceptance. All life is accepted but all life is transformed by the highest supramental consciousness. The aim is to work for the establishment of supermind as a grade in physical life, in the same way as life is established in matter and mind is established in material life by the evolutionary process of Nature. It was this work which was undertaken by Sri Aurobindo and by the ...
... because of its treasures of spiritual knowledge, discover further secrets whereby Spirit and Matter can be synthesised, and the luminous knowledge of the spirit can illumine and transform the physical life of the earth. India has also the possibility of becoming a pioneering partner in the task of formulating new forms of the largest aggregate in which each nation can relate itself with other nations ...
... chakras or lotuses are in the physical man closed or only partly open, with the consequence that only such powers and only so much of them are active in him as is sufficient for his ordinary physical life, and so much mind and soul only is at play as will accord with its needs. This is the reason why the whole energy of the soul does not seem to be at play in the physical body and life, and the secret ...
... al building, it may be concluded, can be erected upon these shifting quick- sands. But the theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with the scientific theory of form-evolution and physical life-evolution. According to the theory of spiritual evolution, there are three stages in the process of becoming. An involution of the spirit in the inconscience is the beginning. An evolution in the ...
... heavily drunk, D running after a girl in a drunken condition. Aren't these dreams a sufficient cause to awake one to a sadness? Not unless you believe that they point to something real in the physical life. Why should one be sad for a mere dream? Am I seeing my own condition in others' forms? No. These are dreams on the vital plane. Such dreams may be mere formations in the vital without any ...
... in which all his major works were published serially. Page 48 [Reading from Srinvantu, 64-66 86 ]: The art of Japan is a kind of directly mental expression in physical life. The Japanese use the vital world very little. Their art is extremely mentalised; their life is extremely mentalised. It expresses in detail quite precise mental formations. Only in the physical ...
... realism, for there are realistic paintings which belong to a very high order. That art was conventional, artificial, lifeless. Now the reaction to this movement said: we do not concern ourselves with physical life any more, the reality as we see with outward eyes is no longer our business; we want instead to express the vital life, the mental life. Hence came a whole host of reformers and rebels—cubists, ...
... of all, very often it means that the child lacks sufficient vitality. The vital is not strong enough to take care of external objects. Another reason may be that he does not find interest in the physical life; his interest may lie in the direction of mental occupation, imagination or dreaming etc. Or again it may be a lack of self-control and discipline. Anyway the result is the same. That is ...
... Himself out of Himself and looked at Himself. And now He wants to take the joy of this possibility of being Himself with the full knowledge of Himself. It becomes much more interesting. All physical life has the vital as its origin. The vital has the mental reality as its origin. The mental itself has another origin. And so on. Nothing can be manifested upon earth physically unless it has at ...
... could not be fully achieved; for the foundations were not properly laid, the basic ground was not prepared. Any higher structure of the mind and overmind must be built upon man's vital being and physical life. The new creation left out of account these realities of basement, so one had to come down, forgetting for the moment the higher realisation, into these darker regions and make a thorough cleaning ...
... from the crown of the head to the tip of his toe-nail. In fact, a poor or a prosperous life is in no direct or even indirect ratio to a spiritual life. All the miseries and immediate needs of a physical life do not and cannot detain or delay one from following the path of the ideal; nor can all your riches be a burden to your soul and overwhelm it, if it chooses to walk on-it can not only walk, but ...
... also be understood that because the divine protection is there upon whosoever belongs to the Divine, this protection should not be taken to mean exclusively the preservation of the individual's physical life and its accessories. Divine protection, in its true and real sense, means the soul's welfare so that nothing can bring harm to it or be an obstacle to its happy growth and divine fulfilment. Protection ...
... body to make further progress. Till then rebirth is a necessity, it is compulsory; for it is through reincarnation i.e. by taking up a new body that he progresses, develops and grows. It is in the physical life and in the physical body that the soul slowly builds itself until it becomes a fully conscious being. But once it is fully formed, Page 398 it is free either to take birth or ...
... be discerned in the literature of every country. As human life has two aspects – the natural and the spiritual – even so every literature has a popular and a classical style. The natural or the physical life is the foundation, and it supplies all necessary elements. But man's duty and .his fulfilment consist in building up the spiritual life on this basis, and to mould the natural elements into the ...
... grafted on the Mother's Divine music – a blend of the two. It was a great mystery, and a great, as I said, a great phenomenon, this free interchange between the physical world, the physical life and the other heavenly or otherworldly worlds. There was a mixture, a co-mingling, and at times a fusion of these two different dissimilar realms. And it was a very concrete, a very living phenomenon ...
... appeal of this view is that neither the cosmic nor the terrestrial nor the supra-terrestrial life has any ultimate meaning and that renunciation is a sole path of knowledge, that acceptation of physical life is the act of the ignorant, and that cessation from birth is the right use of human birth. This supra-cosmic view, which is held by certain schools of Vedantic monism in varying formulations, is ...
... spiritualisation of the mind, life and body is the thing to be achieved, the conscious presence of the Spirit even in the physical consciousness and material body, an age which puts Matter and the physical life in the forefront and devotes itself to the effort of the intellect to discover the truth of material existence, had perhaps to come. On one side, by materialising everything up to the intellect ...
... an aim of all spiritual disciplines, but their ultimate end was self-transcendence and they were also almost exclusively concerned with the individuals. They had little bearing on the social and physical life of the collectivity. The world was not an object of interest for the Page 19 yogins and spiritual seekers of old. There has now been an awakening to the possibility of ...
... go as high as possible and have the largest experiences,. .but the external mind remains an instrument of Ignorance.” In More Lights on Yoga, Page 352 he remarks, "The whole physical life must be transformed. This material world does not want a mere change of consciousness in us. It says in effect, 'You retire into bliss, become luminous, have the divine knowledge, but that does ...
... Truth and enlightening mankind to hasten the rule of Divine's Love upon the earth." She declared, "There is a Supreme Divine Consciousness. We want to manifest this Consciousness in the physical life." In furtherance of the realisation of Sri Aurobindo's ideal of human unity, the Mother inaugurated 'Auroville' on 28 February, 1968, "which is meant to be an International City, a living ...
... visitations from the greater world were rare, they gave to the human being some idea of his spiritual possibilities. The ordinary life of man was humdrum, occupied with very ordinary needs of physical life and the satisfaction of little desires. "Man laboured on his little patch of earth For means to last, to enjoy, to suffer and die." But yet there was in the midst of all this ...
... dynamic movement in life. So man has to start with the idea, with the concept that he is a spirit and then he can evoke that spirit into movement in his mental life, in his vital life and in his physical life; then the determinism of Page 33 Nature will eventually change. This means that the present constitution of man is not final, that man as at present constituted is ...
... word, things will definitely improve. Meanwhile, it was strange, but it was surely heading for somewhere, faster and faster. I felt her gradually establishing herself in that “uninterrupted physical life,” and all kinds of ailments that had never ceased assailing her for so many decades were as if frozen or had stopped showing: heart attacks, terrible neuritis, eye haemorrhages, colds, raging toothaches ...
... of old mental formations and in turning the heavy and the obscure and the ugly into lightness and luminosity and beauty: This is the conquest that is being done, this tremendous change: that physical life must be governed by the higher consciousness and not by the mental world. It is a change over of authority.... It is difficult. It is hard. It is painful. Naturally there is breakage, but... that ...
... being. But if in passing from one domain to another we renounce what has already been given us from eagerness for our new attainment, if in reaching the mental life we cast away or belittle the physical life which is our basis, or if we reject the mental and physical in our attraction to the spiritual, we do not fulfil God integrally, nor satisfy the conditions of His manifestation. We do not become ...
... insult to Sri Aurobindo who is here with us, conscious and alive." And on 18 January 1951, she gave a firmer assurance still: We stand in the Presence of Him who has sacrificed his physical life in order to help more fully his work of transformation. He is always with us, aware of what we are doing, of all our thoughts, of all our feelings and all our actions. The Samadhi ...
... Heaven), eternal and in one nest" (Rig-Veda 1.62.7). A living body goes to investigate the state where one is supposedly dead, over there in the "other world," as they say, and discovers another physical life operating under other laws, which is not in "another world" but separated from us only by a certain cellular barrier: an opaque periphery. The beyond of the fish is not the realm of the dead, but ...
... but this physical body is capable of a progressive development; through each individual formation, the physical substance progresses, and one day IT WILL BE CAPABLE OF MAKING A BRIDGE BETWEEN PHYSICAL LIFE AS WE KNOW IT AND THE SUPRAMENTAL LIFE THAT WILL MANIFEST. 2 The body will be the bridge. The key is in the body. The whole mystery begins there. Hence the supreme importance She attached ...
... most violent or most commonplace everyday actions. Most of the religions have put their curse upon Matter, He would write, and have made the refusal or the resigned temporary’ endurance of the physical life the test of religious truth and of spirituality. The older creeds, more- patient, more broodingly profound, not touched with the torture and the feverish impatience of the soul under the burden ...
... represents that it is a battle of every instant. All feelings, all sensations, all thoughts, all reflexes, all attractions, all repulsions, all that exists, all that forms the very fabric of our physical life must be overcome, transformed and freed from all its habits. This is a battle of every second against thousands and millions of enemies. 28 And in that first issue of the Arya, Sri Aurobindo ...
... the supra physical planes. What was meant by the sea of red ether and stars depends on the character of the red colour. If it was crimson what he saw was the sea of the physical consciousness and physical life as it is represented to the inner symbolic visions. If it was purple red, then it was the sea of the vital consciousness and the vital life-force. Perhaps if he had not stopped his sense of the ...
... beginning, Mother had been fantastically gifted with vision, but I have intentionally avoided that subject, first because we have had enough of marvelous visions: we would quite simply like to see our physical life better; second, "psychics" have taken up so much space in our magazines with their dubious visitations that the subject is devalued, like everything else: we are in the age of a general devaluation ...
... individual formation (in other words, what we have undergone through evolution), the physical substance progresses...." And she added: "And one day, it will be capable of making a BRIDGE between physical life as we know it and the life we might call supramental, as Sri Aurobindo did, the life of the next species – it's the PHYSICAL body that will make the BRIDGE." It isn't on the summits of consciousness ...
... restate the ancient and eternal 31. It was discontinued after some time. Page 383 spiritual truth of Self so that it shall re-embrace, permeate and dominate the mental and physical life; to develop the most profound and vital methods of psychological self-discipline and self-development so that the mental and psychical life of man may express the spiritual life through the utmost ...
... is transformed, one may go as high as possible and have the largest experiences...but the external mind remains an instrument of Ignorance." In "More Lights on Yoga", he remarks, "The whole physical life must be transformed. This material world does not want a mere change of consciousness in us. It says in effect, 'You retire into bliss, become luminous, have the divine knowledge, but that does ...
... Sri Aurobindo's was quite the opposite. "I have never had any hesitation," he wrote to Dilip, "in the use of a spiritual force for all legitimate purposes including the maintenance of health and physical life in myself and in others —that is indeed why the Mother gives flowers not only as a blessing but as a help in illness." We have already seen with Mother that the main cause of bodily illness ...
... many Bringers had come one after another, come from age to age, yet it was still ignorance and suffering and cruelty that had the material world in their firm grip. Nothing much had changed in the physical life. The human mass go on preferring darkness to light, ignorance to knowledge, falsehood to truth. Life and matter were constantly preyed upon by the nasty undivine forces, as they had always been ...
... functions of the body, their development and their functioning. 16 February 1972 * * * Sweet Mother, Could you write something on discipline for us? Discipline is indispensable to physical life. The proper functioning of the organs is based on discipline. It is precisely when an organ or a part of the body does not obey the general discipline of the body that one falls ill. Discipline ...
... invites us to embark upon the adventure of life. To make a clear and willed choice. She beckons us to probe the mystery of existence. That is why, to put it in Mother's words, "It is the substance of physical life which wants to know its profound law."- As Mother peeled off layer after layer of mystery wrapped round the cell, she could say: "A certitude at the bottom of Matter that the solution lies ...
... a new world, a true world, and expression of the Truth-Consciousness. And it will be, it must be,—and the sooner the better! It should not, however, be just a subjective change. The whole physical life must be transformed. The material world does not want a mere change of consciousness in us. It says in effect: “You retire into bliss, become luminous, have the divine knowledge; but that does ...
... Jauhar's Correspondence with The Mother 13 August 1969 There is a Supreme Divine Consciousness. We want to manifest that Divine Consciousness in the physical life. Bonne Fête to Surendranath. With love and blessings 13 August 1969 ...
... Rishis took their images from the physical struggle between the human representatives of these cults and applied them to the spiritual conflict, just as they employed the other details of their physical life to symbolise the spiritual sacrifice, the spiritual wealth, the spiritual battle and journey. But it is perfectly certain that in the Rig Veda at least it is the spiritual conflict and victory, ...
... subconscious in all Matter and evolving in Matter, has developed these physical organs in order to apply its inherent capacities of sight, hearing, etc. on the physical plane by physical means for a physical life; but they are inherent capacities and not dependent on the circumstance of terrestrial evolution and they can be employed without the use of the physical eye, ear, skin, palate. Supposing that there ...
... mind has to be fixed firmly in the moment of the physical death, yaṁ smaran bhāvaṁ tyajati ante kalevaram , must have been one into which the soul was at each moment growing inwardly during the physical life, sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitaḥ . "Therefore," says the divine Teacher, "at all times remember Me and fight; for if thy mind and thy understanding are always fixed on and given up to Me, mayi ...
... and its outward representation is not the first object or the direct motive. There is a real and a very vivid and vital representation, but it is more of an inner psychical than of the outward physical life. A critic of high repute speaking of the Indian influence in a famous Japanese painting fixes on the grand strongly outlined figures and the feeling for life and character recalling the Ajanta frescoes ...
... the natural world cannot cease from action, not for a moment, not for a second; his very existence here is an action; the whole universe is an act of God, mere living even is His movement. Our physical life, its maintenance, its continuance is a journey, a pilgrimage of the body, śarīra-yātrā , and that cannot be effected without action. But even if a man could leave his body unmaintained, otiose ...
... work in life, organising all the circumstances of your life but not with a deliberate choice of the details; and in fact very few things are deliberate and conscious in the organisation of the physical life of human beings. Most of the time that's what happens. If you ask someone, "Why have you done this?"—"That's how it happened." It is always like that: "That's how it happened." At least seventy-five ...
... It could very well be his mind. Mother, can one enter into communion with his Jivatman without the ego being dissolved? That's what Sri Aurobindo says. He says that the ego survives the physical life, the bodily life; this is perfectly correct. There is a vital ego and a mental ego which can continue to exist for quite a long time. But one can have experiences without the ego being dissolved ...
... the music comes from, upon its origin. What does "its origin" mean? Its starting point. Just as the spring is the source of the river. Are there many sources for everything? All physical life has the vital and mental life as its origin. The mental and the vital reality have themselves another origin, and so on. Nothing can be manifested physically upon earth that has not a higher truth ...
... are generally those who can put their ideas into order and can also organise their character and can finally control their movements. And then, if you make progress, you succeed in governing your physical life; you begin to have a control over your physical movements. If you take life in that way, truly it becomes interesting. If one lives in a confusion, a disorder, an inner and outer chaos in which ...
... very necessary for the human mind in its normal functioning, but one can arrive at a different working that's more complete, more subtle. Naturally, physically one is bound to be limited, for in physical life one depends a great deal on time and space, and also it is difficult to realise great things without special concentration. But if one wants to lead a higher and deeper life, I believe one can acquire ...
... knows and, by the association of inner movements, believes it has found some knowledge, which can never be but a reflection of something else, and if it wants to impose this knowledge upon the physical life, then it leaves its role and becomes a tyrant—this happens quite often to it, it is then completely perverted and instead of helping the sadhana, it brings it down. You can easily make this observation ...
... centre of the being that continues after death; all the rest is dissolved, goes to pieces, scattered here and there, the Page 32 individuality exists no longer. Now, how often in the physical life does the psychic being take part consciously in what the physical being does?... I am not speaking of people who do yoga and are a little disciplined; I am speaking of average people who have a ...
... instruments, however perfected they may be. Here one must once again make something else intervene, other regions, other realities than purely material ones, including the mind which belongs to the physical life, the terrestrial life. One can know everything, but one must know the way. And the way is not learnt through books, it cannot be written in numbers. It is only by practising... And here then ...
... The utility of psychic experiences and knowledge of the invisible worlds as of other yogic experiences is not to be measured by our narrow human notions of what may be useful for the present physical life of man. In the first place these things are necessary for the fulness of the consciousness and the completeness of the being. In the second place these other worlds are actually working upon us ...
... and desire and duality. I have always made that quite clear—that indulgence of desire is no more part of this Yoga than it is of Sannyasa. One must be able to use and handle physical things and physical life, but from the spiritual consciousness, not from the level of the vital ego. 27 November 1935 It is surprising that you should miss, that so many here should miss the point that to be so much ...
... quite a natural gesture—and it is done without the least regret, that's all. And the moment you are in your psychic being, you have that feeling, spontaneously, effortlessly. You soar above the physical life and have the sense of immortality. As for me, I consider this the best remedy. The other is an intellectual, common-sense, rational remedy. This is a deep experience and you can always get it back ...
... Yoga. I have always been in agreement with this view: moreover, I have never had any hesitation in the use of a spiritual force for all legitimate purposes including the maintenance of health and physical life in myself and in others—that is indeed why the Mother has given flowers, not only as a blessing but as a help in illness. I put a value on the body first as an instrument, dharmasādhana , or, more ...
... procedure that is as complete as possible. Everyone will then have to apply it as far as he can and as best he can. The Tapasya or discipline of beauty will take us through the austerity of physical life, to freedom in action. The basic programme will be to build a body, beautiful in form, harmonious in posture, supple and agile in its movements, powerful in its activities and resistant in its health ...
... beauty must also be insisted upon. A young child should aspire for beauty, not for the sake of pleasing others or gaining fame, but for the love of beauty itself: for beauty is the ideal which physical life has to realise. In every human being there is the possibility of establishing harmony among the different parts of the body and the different movements when the body is in action. The human body ...
... this kind of work, this harmonisation and organisation of the being around the divine Centre can only be done in a physical body and on earth. That is truly the essential and original reason for physical life. For, as soon as you are no longer in a physical body, you can no longer do it at all . And what is still more remarkable is that only human beings can do it, for only human beings have at their ...
... blind conservative attachments, settled grooves of nature, its doubt and disbelief in all that is beyond itself, its faith in the inevitability of the fixed functionings of the physical mind, the physical life and the body, that they may be replaced by a new power which establishes its own greater law and functioning in form and force of Matter. Even the inconscient and subconscient have to become conscient ...
... be abolished from the world. That is the only way. 3 February 1972 * Sweet Mother, Could you write something on discipline for us? Discipline is indispensable to physical life. The proper functioning of the organs is based on a discipline. It is precisely when an organ or a part of the body does not obey the general discipline of the body that one falls ill. ...
... this kind of work, this harmonisation and organisation of the being around the divine Centre can only be done in a physical body and on earth. That is truly the essential and original reason for physical life. For, as soon as you are no longer in a physical body, you can no longer do it at all . And what is still more remarkable is that only human beings can do it, for only human beings have at ...
... under certain conditions, even while in the body; a fortiori must he be able to do it when out of the body, and to do it then completely, since there is no longer the disabling condition of the physical life bound down to the body. The consequences of this relation and this power of transference are of immense importance. On the one side they immediately justify, at any rate as an actual possibility ...
... Coming back to the physical world, they are likely to be worse there than even ordinary people; for they have lost the mastery over material things, and their dealing with Page 24 physical life is likely to be slovenly and helpless in its movements and at the mercy of every passing force. An ideal of this kind may be good for those who want it, but it is not our Yoga. For we want the ...
... want a new world, a true world, an expression of the Truth-Consciousness. And it will be, it must be—and the sooner the better! It should not, however, be just a subjective change. The whole physical life must be transformed. The material world Page 128 does not want a mere change of consciousness in us. It says in effect: "You retire into bliss, become luminous, have the divine knowledge; ...
... for people who lead an ordinary life, though also for students of yoga—I mean people who are primarily interested in a purely physical material life but who try to attain more perfection in their physical life than is usual in ordinary conditions. It is a very difficult task but it is a kind of yoga. These people call themselves "materialists" and they are apt to get agitated or irritated if yogic terms ...
... life it has just finished upon earth—the conditions in which its next life will be passed. Here I must tell you a very important thing: the psychic being can progress and form itself only in the physical life and upon earth. As soon as it leaves a body, it enters into a rest which lasts for a more or less long time according to its own choice and its degree of development—a rest for assimilation, for ...
... a new world, a true world, an expression of the Truth Consciousness. And it will be, it must be—and the sooner the better! It should not, however, be just a subjective change. The whole physical life must be transformed. The material world does not want a mere change of consciousness in us. It says in effect: "You retire into bliss, become luminous, have the divine knowledge: but that does not ...
... herd, you become the one who leads the herds and governs all their movements instead of allowing them to dominate him.... One is bound; in ordinary life one is bound to all these activities of the physical life and all the needs it represents—the need for food, sleep, activity, rest, etc.—well, instead of being an animal, that is, one subjected to these things and obliged to submit to them, one becomes ...
... altogether his own and which he must express in his life. Now what is this truth? This is the question I have been asked: "What is this truth of the being, and how is it expressed externally in physical life?" It is expressed in this way: each individual being has a direct and unique relation with the Supreme, the Origin, That which is beyond all creation. It is this unique relation which must be ...
... difference has become apparent to me in all its enormity, so to say—everything here, except what goes on within, very deep within, seemed to me absolutely artificial. None of the values of the ordinary physical life are based on truth. And just as to clothe ourselves we have to obtain some cloth and sew clothes to put on when we want to wear them, so too to feed ourselves we need to take things from outside ...
... of which one would become conscious and aware of all going on in it would pour their energies into material nerve and plexus and tissue and radiate them through the whole material body; all the physical life and its necessary activities in this new existence could be maintained and operated by these higher agencies in a freer and ampler way and by a less burdensome and restricting method. This might ...
... well. For all this darkness, all this inconscience, all this ignorance is not at all something personal. It is the condition of the world, Page 359 the state of matter, the state of physical life. And it enters you, makes you act; it's like something pulling the strings of the puppet. All these desires, all these impulses, all these currents of force are things which pass through you, which ...
... Some people are spontaneously free from fear even in their body; they have a sufficient vital equilibrium in them not to be afraid, not to fear, and a natural harmony in the rhythm of their physical life which enables them to reduce the illness spontaneously to a minimum. There are others, on the other hand, with whom the thing always becomes as bad as it can be, sometimes to the point of catastrophe ...
... their independence and their purpose in life. And it is simply a perversion, a deformation which is a denial of the life-instinct, it is an unhealthy interference of thought and vital impulse in physical life. It is an unhealthy impulse which does not usually exist even in animals. In this case, instinct in animals is infinitely more reasonable than human instinct—which, besides, doesn't exist any more ...
... compulsion, of necessity—of fatality still more—had disappeared completely. All the illnesses, all the happenings, all the dramas, all that: disappeared. And this concrete and so brutal reality of the physical life: gone completely. I lived this state for more than an hour and a half this morning. Afterwards, I was obliged to return... to a state which appears to me artificial, but which is compulsory because ...
... be conscious of the Lord's consciousness. That is exactly what it is. ( Silence ) Before this experience, at the time when I was in the consciousness of all the sufferings, the horrors of physical life, at a certain moment something came (which did not "speak"; one is obliged to use words, but all this happens without mentalisation), it was an impression: if I translated, I would say, "Aren't ...
... category in which everything, everything exists in relation to the Divine, in the Consciousness of the Divine—everything goes on wonderfully! Easy! And I speak of material things, of the material physical life (morally speaking it has long been known to be like that), but things material, that is to say, the small inconveniences of the body, its reactions, having pain or not, circumstances going bad, ...
... earth and take a human body and accept to share in the evolution. It is because they do not want to do this that the vital beings try to possess men so that they may enjoy the materialities of physical life without bearing the burden of the evolution or the process of conversion in which it culminates. I hope this is clear and solves the difficulty. The three stages you speak of 1 are stages ...
... itself it results more often in one's building up an inner world of one's own in which you can live very well satisfied, so long as you live in yourself, apart from any close contact with external physical life; but it does not stand the test of objective experience. In each plane there is an objective as well as a subjective side. It is not the physical plane and life alone that are objective. ...
... the established Power. But even before any such necessity arises, the principle of regulation of all things by the State would have extended itself to the regulation of the mental as well as the physical life of man by the communal mind, which was the ideal of former civilisations. A static order of society would be the necessary consequence, since without the freedom of the individual a society cannot ...
... philosophy, religion, this is man's real business, these are his true affairs. To be is for him not merely to be born, grow up, marry, get his livelihood, support a family and then die,—the vital and physical life, a human edition of the animal round, a human enlargement of the little animal sector and arc of the divine circle; rather to become and grow mentally and live with knowledge and power within himself ...
... accustomed to look on himself as a body and a life, the physical animal with a certain moral or immoral temperament, and the things of the mind have been regarded as a fine flower and attainment of the physical life rather than themselves anything essential or the sign of something essential, so and much more has the community regarded that small part of its subjective self of which it becomes aware. It clings ...
... each other in a richer and larger unity and mutual consequence. Similarly, the subjective search for the self may, like the objective, lean preponderantly to identification with the conscious physical life, because the body is or seems to be the frame and determinant here of the mental and vital movements and capacities. Or it may identify itself with the vital being, the life-soul in us and its emotions ...
... Vyana, pervasive, distributes the vital energies throughout the body. A fifth, the Udana, moves upward from the body to the crown of the head and is a regular channel of communication between the physical life and the greater life of the spirit. None of these are the first or supreme Breath, although the Prana most nearly represents it; the Breath to which so much importance is given in the Upanishads ...
... sexual desire—sometimes by increasing enormously the vital force in the body they can even exaggerate in a rather startling way the force too of the sexual tendency, which, being at the base of the physical life, is always difficult to conquer. The one thing to do is to separate oneself from these movements, to find one's inner self and live in it; these movements will not then any longer appear as belonging ...
... and desire and duality. I have always made that quite clear—that indulgence of desire is no more part of this Yoga than it is of Sannyasa. One must be able to use and handle physical things and physical life, but from the spiritual consciousness, not from the level of the vital ego. It is the old vital nature that feels its human worldly desires will not be satisfied and feels like this. All ...
... the evolution of consciousness can go no further. Even if a something definite and independent which we call a soul exists, it is limited by its natural conditions here where Matter is the basis, physical life the condition, mind the highest possible instrument; there is no possibility of an action of consciousness apart from the body or surpassing this physical, vital or mental Nature. This fixes the ...
... original features of the Gods of Greece and Rome. This change was evidently due to a cultural development in these early peoples who became progressively more mentalised and less engrossed in the physical life as they advanced in civilisation and needed to read into their religion and their deities finer and subtler aspects which would support their more highly mentalised concepts and interests and find ...
... which the Divine here seeks to reveal Itself, if the Indian saying is true that the body is the instrument provided for the fulfilment of the right law of our nature, then any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation. Such a refusal may be, owing to some secret law of their development, the ...
... executive agent of all its activities and the knower of their significance. Page 867 A theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with a scientific theory of form-evolution and physical life-evolution; it must stand on its own inherent justification: it may accept the scientific account of physical evolution as a support or an element, but the support is not indispensable. The scientific ...
... nervous impact and physical indication; it conceives too a mental figure of unity, and in its activity and its will it can create and possess more directly—not only indirectly as in the ordinary physical life—and in other minds and lives as well as its own. But still even this pure mentality does not escape from the original error of mind. For it is still its separate mental self which it makes the judge ...
... the earth who would use a new faculty called reason upon the materials of his inner and outer existence, who would dominate by that power his instincts and habits, change the circumstances of his physical life, build for himself houses of stone, manipulate Nature's forces, sail the seas, ride the air, develop codes of conduct, evolve conscious methods for his mental and spiritual development. And if such ...
... far as to deny its existence and the reality of the material universe. Most of the religions have put their curse upon Matter and have made the refusal or the resigned temporary endurance of the physical life the test of religious truth and of spirituality. The older creeds, more patient, more broodingly profound, not touched with the torture and the feverish impatience of the soul under the burden of ...
... constitute itself on the same principle as the life of the gnostic individual. In our present human Page 1067 existence there is a physical collectivity held together by the common physical life-fact and all that arises from it, community of interests, a common civilisation and culture, a common social law, an aggregate mentality, an economic association, the ideals, emotions, endeavours ...
... attraction to the superior delight of an absorbed and exclusive self-experience which does not allow us to stay any longer in these lower terms than we are compelled to stay by the continuance of our physical life and body. But if either in the course of our Yoga or as the result of a free return of our realised Self upon the world and a free repossession of its Prakriti by the Purusha in us, we become ...
... chakras or lotuses, however, are in physical man closed or only partly open, with the consequence that only such powers and only so much of them are active in him as are sufficient for his ordinary physical life, and so much mind and soul only is at play as will accord with its need. This is the real reason, looked at from the mechanical point of view, why the embodied soul seems so dependent on the bodily ...
... clearly and strongly to the will. It seems more receptive. It's more supple, more expressive too. But materialized, it would appear like pure chaos. It seems to me to be the symbolic place of physical life. For example, within a small space, you can have a very wide action, which reaches very far.... In that way there were, as though in adjacent rooms, people who live very far, in North India or in ...
... has chilled and thinned away into sentiment verging at its extreme on an unreal fineness. "There is then an attempt," says Sri Aurobindo, 4 "to get back to the natural fullness of the vital and physical life, but the endeavour fails in sincerity and success because it is impossible; the mind of man having got so far cannot return upon its course, undo what it has made of itself and recover the glad ...
... his life-suggestions, his thought, his religious idea, and, if he arrives at some vision of an inner spiritual truth, he puts even that into forms and figures of the physical life and physical Nature". 20 "A primitive epic bard like Homer," Sri Aurobindo has said, "thinks only by the way and seems to be carried constantly forward ...
... self-expressed here in a boundless fragmentation; the All-Blissful has put on a huge insensibility out of which it struggles by pain and hunger and desire and sorrow. Elsewhere the Divine is; here in physical life, in this obscure material world, it would seem almost as if the Divine Page 165 is not but is only becoming, θϵος ουк ἐσᴛɩν αλλα ϒɩϒνεᴛαɩ. This gradual becoming of the Divine out of ...
... find out the right idea and the right way of harmony; to restate the ancient and eternal spiritual truth of the Self so that it shall re-embrace, permeate, dominate, transfigure the mental and physical life; Page 145 to develop the most profound and vital methods of psychological self-discipline and self-development so that the mental and psychical life of man may express the spiritual ...
... life with its continuity of recurrences. As the body is a dissoluble construction, a composite and combination, so the soul too is a dissoluble construction and combination; the soul life like the physical life sustains itself by a continuous flux and repetition of the same workings and movements. As this constant hereditary succession of lives is a prolongation of the one universal principle of life by ...
... decently garbed or wears a plausible appearance or can mumble anything that resembles some familiar password. Especially is this so in subtle matters, those remote from the concrete facts of our physical life and environment. Even men who will reason carefully and acutely in ordinary matters and there consider vigilance against error an intellectual or a practical duty, are yet content with the most ...
... Before, those who had inner experiences would say, "Yes, up above, that's the way it is, but here..." Now the "but here" will soon cease to be. This tremendous change is what's being conquered, so physical life may be ruled by the higher consciousness and not by the mental world. It's the change of authority.... It's difficult. It's hard. It's painful. There is some damage done, naturally, but... But truly ...
... physical and that world ). There are so many, so many things to learn. Yes! ( silence ) Only those with a physical body have the kind of reactions—pleasure, displeasure—we have in physical life. The others no longer have it. That seems to disappear with the purely physical consciousness. ( silence ) More and more I get the feeling we know nothing. That's all. That there is an infinite ...
... appeared to me in what might be called its enormity): everything here, except for what happens within and at a very deep level, seemed absolutely artificial to me. Not one of the values of ordinary physical life is based upon truth. Just as we have to buy cloth, sew it together, then put it on our backs in order to dress ourselves, likewise we have to take things from outside and then put them inside our ...
... Congo, 4 for example, it seemed to me... Pardon me, but that is childishness!... I don't know. That's not how I see it, in any case ... To live in the forest physically, an intense physical life where one is free, where one is pure, where one is far away ... Above all, to stop this thing from grinding on, finished with the head, and finished with thinking whatever it might be. If there ...
... full, conscious participation. Speaking of individualization, there's a question I've been wondering about: when one speaks of the 'central being,' this central being is not something here in physical life, is it?... It's above.... It is above and within and everywhere! ( Mother laughs ) No, unless you learn to think at all times with the fourth dimension, you will never understand anything ...
... body would demand a sufficient change of the most material part of the organism, its constitution, its processes and its setup of nature." Sri Aurobindo conceives of the possibility where all the physical life and its necessary activities could be maintained and operated by higher agencies and grades of consciousness in a freer and ampler way and by a less burdensome and restricting method. The evolutionary ...
... doing it.) He passed away on 8 February 1966. The Great Helper of all had reached out and helped him “UP”. What conclusions to draw on Dara? Or should we do so at all? To do so, looking at his physical life, may or may not amount to much. He did practically nothing — his life was rather notable for that. But the man was more than just his (rather big) physical self. There were depths in him which would ...
... theory of form-evolution and his theory of the evolution of consciousness in these words: "A theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with a scientific theory of form evolution and physical-life evolution; it must stand on its own inherent justification: It may accept the scientific account of physical evolution as a support or an element, but the support is not indispensable. The ...
... away on account of old age and physical causes. Whatever the purely clinical picture, it must have behind it a significance integral with his highly significant and immeasurably more-than-physical life of spiritual attainment." Furthermore, Sethna explained: “The evolutionary was always Page 293 fused with the revolutionary in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga of the Supermind ...
... essentials or Reality – crystal clear. About the theory of evolution, for instance, he wrote: “A theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with a scientific theory of form-evolution and physical life-evolution; it must stand on its own inherent justification: it may accept the scientific account of physical evolution as a support or element, but the support is not indispensable. The scientific ...
... procedures of the spirit in matter, and its results are ever higher gradations of material forms. ‘A theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with a scientific theory of form-evolution and physical life-evolution; it must stand on its own inherent justification: it may accept the scientific account of physical evolution as a support or an element, but the support is not indispensable. The scientific ...
... to me in what one might call its enormity): everything here, except what goes on within, very deep within, appeared to me absolutely artificial. None of the values of the ordinary life, of the physical life, are based on the truth … This artificiality, this insincerity, this complete lack of truth became so shockingly apparent to me that one wonders how, in so false a world, we can make any valid ...
... itself it results more often in one's building up an inner world of one's own in which you can live very well satisfied, so long as you live in yourself, apart from any close contact with external physical life; but it does not stand the test of objective experience. Probably what you felt today was the Mother's bringing down of Supramental Light with the object of changing this power of subjective ...
... true from the point of view of the external senses and objective knowledge is opposed by spiritual knowledge which is based on subjective experiences which are not verifiable by objective tests. Physical life suffers from the experience of dualities like heat and cold, hunger and thirst, pain and pleasure, attractions and repulsions etc. which are so true to ordinary human consciousness but there is ...
... force of all creatures is the necessity of finding the right kind of food and enough of it. 2 Indeed, the proper type of material alimentation is so very imperative for the viability of physical life that in organisms other than man, that have not yet become 'reflectively' aware of the 1 Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, p. SO. 2 Cf. sarvāṇi ha vā ...
... I have always been in agreement with this view: moreover, I have never had any hesitation in the use of a spiritual force for all legitimate purposes including the maintenance of health and physical life in myself and in others – that is indeed why the Mother has given flowers, not only as a blessing but as a help in illness. I put a value on the body first as an instrument, dharmasadhana or ...
... idols continued. The Mother never failed to encourage me: 29.6.56 Bonjour To My dear little child To my sweet Huta who is a true lover of Beauty, this Divine aspect of physical life. With my love and blessings, The Grace is always with you. ...
... affirmative, since the point is indeed to LIVE this supramental consciousness), but she does reply directly to what is BEHIND Satprem's question—that is, this fundamental, deep-rooted assumption that physical life is the sole, concrete reality. × This conversation was interrupted before Mother could conclude ...
... daily life. When I am meditating or walking or even seeing someone, it's different: physical things fade away, they lose their significance. But in this case, it's when I am in the very midst of physical life. It was odd this morning because on one side I felt ("one side"—it's not even a side; I don't know how to explain, they are both together) the body was unwell, most unharmonious (someone in an ...
... the conquest of all its movements and the realisation of the Divine here. It can be called an adventure because it is the first time that a yoga aims at transformation and divinisation of physical life instead of escape from it. Page 34 We want to translate into physical terms, as perfectly as possible, the inspiration sent by the Lord for the accomplishment of His work upon earth ...
... arrived, you write that the Buddha "is smiling with gentle irony", but the Buddha's smile can only be a smile of perfect understanding before a luminous accomplishment. And in this state in which physical life has already lost for you so much of its concrete reality, whether you are in the solitude of the Himalayas or in the solitude of a house on the road to N, it should be equally easy to live in the ...
... Most dreams are like that. Some people have a Page 308 very conscious mental life and are able to enter the mental plane and move about in it with the same independence they have in physical life; these people have mentally objective nights. But most people are incapable of doing this: it is their mental activity going on during sleep and assuming forms, and these forms give them what they ...
... dignity of what one does, so that one does it as it should be done. If one could know all the details truly, perfectly, all the details of the ceremony of life, of the worship of the Lord in physical life, it would be wonderful—to know and not to make more mistakes, never make any more mistakes. One performs the ceremony with the perfection of an initiation. Page 354 ...
... excellently. Go to him and simply be what you are, without blackening nor embellishing, with the sincerity and simplicity of a child. He knows your soul and its aspiration; speak to him of your physical life and of your need for space, solitude, untamed nature, the simple and free life. He will understand and, in his wisdom, will see the best thing to do. And what he decides will be done. My ...
... who had inner experiences used to say, "Yes, up there it is so, but here..." Now the "but here" very soon will no longer be. This is the conquest that is being done, this tremendous change: that physical life must be governed by the higher consciousness and not by the mental world. It is a change over of authority.... It is difficult. It is hard. It is painful. Naturally there is breakage, but... But ...
... ego, because the work was already done long ago on the physical ego). It might be thought that the form of the body is a point of concentration, and that without this concentration or hardness, physical life would not be possible. But that's not true. The body is really a wonderful instrument; it's capable of widening and of becoming vast in such a way that everything, everything—the slightest gesture ...
... New Age Association: In what sense is our Yoga an adventure? We may say it is an adventure because it is the first time that the yoga aims at the transformation and divinization of physical life, instead of aiming at escaping from it. Why is faith supremely important in the yoga? Because we are aiming at something completely new which Page 152 has never been ac ...
... first few weeks, for the child the separation is painful, and so the physical contact is necessary—the touch—the contact with the skin to give the child the taste of life and the understanding of physical life. 1 That's possible. But nowadays doctors say, "The last thing you should do is touch your child—put it in a cradle. You should not touch it because that will deform it." It runs quite counter ...
... transition. A sort of mechanical fixity is probably going to disappear, that's my belief; it's the first thing that will change, a sort of mechanical fixity that was necessary to... You understand, physical life was extremely mechanical so as to be able to function normally; well, Page 34 that's what is now disappearing. But the transition is difficult. There. ...
... government, and when they left, they asked if I could give them something. I gave them this: "There is a Supreme Divine Consciousness. We want to manifest this divine Consciousness in the physical life." Soon afterwards Page 244 There was someone in America whom I would often see at night, a woman. I would go there, talk, and people answered.... Some of those night activities ...
... all your difficulties from day to day. Outwardly the hymn's phrase applied to me forty years ago because of the defective left leg I had to put up with. 1 could not lead a normal safe physical life, fully self-helped. But there was also an inward relevance of those words. I seemed to lack a will powerful enough to push me through the spiritual life successfully. A call had come - but even ...
... wanting it to be like this or like that, little by little we get detached and prepare ourselves progressively for a truly restful death. In fact, if you do not expect any satisfaction from physical life, you are no more tied to it and get above all sorrows. I may add that the Mother, elsewhere in her writings, has discerned the play of a dramatic impulse in the self-destructive move, which ...
... of work, as with someone you meet daily. And it goes on, and every night it's different people. So it makes hundreds and hundreds of people with whom I work. It's very concrete: concrete like physical life (it's in the subtle physical). Concrete in the sense that when you eat, you have the taste of it; when you touch, you have the feel of it; you have the smell. And what stories! Stories... fantastic ...
... of compulsion, of necessity (and even more of fate) had com-plete-ly vanished. All the illnesses, all the events, all the dramas, all of it—vanished. And this concrete and so stark a reality of physical life—completely gone. The interesting point is that the experience arose from my encounter with Purani last night. I met Purani in a certain world and he was in a certain state, like the one I have ...
... Aurobindo lives, life unfolds very, very harmoniously: people come and go, there are meals even.... But all that obeys more general laws, and a sense of security and certainty not to be found in physical life. And the symbolism is more exact (I don't know how to express it...), the symbolic transcription of things is less distorted, more exact. This is the subtle physical as I know it, I can't say ...
... It's in this "problem" that I have been living these past few days. And mark you, it isn't at all the speculation of a higher being or a being who belongs to other worlds: it's the substance of physical life that wants to know its own inner, deeper law. ( silence ) It's amusing: all the mental constructions men have tried to live and realize on earth come to me, like this, from every side, to ...
... face all problems, but when you come down here, it's so ugly, so petty, so miserable.... We are such slaves to our needs, oh!... For one hour, two hours, you hold on, and after... And it's true, physical life is ugly—not everywhere, but anyway... I always think of plants and flowers: that's really lovely, it's free from that; but human life is so sordid, with such crude and imperious needs—it's so sordid ...
... To share the suffering and endure earth's wounds And labour mid the labour of the stars. 57 It is this immortal soul within us that supports the human scene— our mental, vital and physical life; it "takes on itself their anguish and defect." It is this hidden godhead that uplifts us from light to greater light. It is in the inmost "chamber of light and flame" that The secret deity ...
... our hidden being or an upthrow from its depths. Our surface being has been formed with this subliminal help by an evolution out of the Inconscient for the utility of our present mental and physical life on earth; this that is behind is a formation mediating between the Inconscient and the larger planes of Life and Mind which have been created by the involutionary descent and whose pressure has ...
... to another of the three states of consciousness and its corresponding state of matter. His vital and physical functions operated only in gross matter, and they determined accordingly that his physical life was the result of consciousness working in the Waking-State on gross matter. His mental and intuitional processes were found to operate freely and perfectly in subtle matter, but in gross matter ...
... blind driven inertia of our base. This too the supreme Diplomat can use, He makes our fall a means for greater rise. 15 Her comment runs: This is the great difficulty in the physical life. It is the strength of the old habit that pulls down the body to its old way. Then comes the struggle, and if the faith is sufficient, if the ardour for progress is there, then out of this fall ...
... instinct telling right from wrong. I may also remark in passing that Hamlet's "mortal coil" is not, as commonly believed, the body serving as a shell for the soul, but the turmoil and commotion of physical life. It is surprising how the word could be understood as "shell". The dictionary affords no ground. It gives us a choice between the archaic sense of "disturbance, much ado, noise" or the common one ...
... truly needed. The Ashram is meant for those who want to consecrate their lives to the Divine. There is a supreme Consciousness. We want to manifest this Divine Consciousness in the physical life. The habit of always furnishing in presence of a mistake a favourable explanation —this favourable explanation seems to jump out from the mind spontaneously and automatically—trying to obviate ...
... material conflicts. 15.2.1958 1958-03-29 Every outer change must be the spontaneous and inevitable expression of an inner transformation. Normally, every improvement of the condition of physical life must be the flowing out on the surface of a progress realised internally. 29.3.58 1958-07-23 In the final analysis, seeing the world such as it is and seems meant to be irremediable ...
... Sri Aurobindo, the advent of the divine superman would mean a reversal of the present law of human consciousness and life. The divine superman Page 18 does not reject Matter and physical life, although he transforms it. One realizes that the soul has descended into the Inconscient and assumed the disguise of Matter for the adventure and the joy of creation and discovery. Life is seen ...
... body would demand a sufficient change of the most material part of the organism, its constitution, its processes and its set-up of nature.' Sri Aurobindo conceives of the possibility where all the physical life and its necessary activities could be maintained and operated by higher agencies and grades of consciousness in a freer and ampler way and by a less burdensome and restricting method. The evolutionary ...
... Upanishads where the Vedic aim of perfectibility was restated in its fullness. According to Sri Aurobindo, that over-emphasis on the salvation of the individual and the rejection of the cosmic and physical life, has been the cause of much of the gradual decline of Indian vigour and vitality in the later centuries of Indian history. As Sri Aurobindo states: "Now certainly there is an emphasis in the ...
... individual and collective life, in its inner and outer aspects in such a way that the law of the individual development and of collective development harmonise with each other. The purely physical life, devoid of mental interests and pursuits is the opposite of culture; it is barbarism. The unintellectualised vital, the crude economic or the grossly domestic life which looks only to money-getting ...
... to mediate between God and man, but it wants to train all aspects of man all sections of human society, and all ranges of the potentialities so that God can manifest in all His aspects in man's physical life. The Vedic stage prepared the natural external man for spirituality. The Second stage which covers the Puranic period takes up his outward life into a deeper mental and psychical living and brings ...
... spirit in which I seek the Supermind, no hunting for greatness for myself or others.'21 Thus the aim that Sri Aurobindo pursued was to transform by the descent of the supramental Light the physical life into the Page 14 life divine. Not merely the liberation of the Spirit, but also the liberation of Nature, the transmutation, radical and complete, of the Aparā Prakriti into the Parā ...
... find ourselves identified with vitality working in our body, we are only partly aware of its operations. We find that our mind identifies itself to a certain extent with the movements proper to physical life and body and annexes them to its mentality. But we can discover that life and body have a consciousness of their own, which is obscure, limited and automatic. That awareness is submental; but we ...
... life. This surface consciousness is sustained by self-experience, memory and ego, and although its limits can be expanded indefinitely, it remains ordinarily limited and confined to demands of physical life which admit a large gamut of emotional and mental life, farthest reaches of which fall short of the awareness that is normal to the dwelling in the subliminal consciousness, higher consciousness ...
... supra-physical produces a direct effect or a tangible impression on our mind and our life-being, and can only indirectly and through them, if at all, influence the page - 37 physical world and physical life. If it objectivises itself, it does so to subtler senses in us and only derivatively to the outward physical sense. In examples of the faculty of second sight and also of those of psychic faculties ...
... be concluded, be erected upon these shifting quick- sands. In reply, it may be urged that the theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with the scientific theory of form- evolution and physical life-evolution. According to the theory of spiritual evolution, there are three stages in the process of becoming. An involution of the spirit in the inconscience is the beginning. An evolution in the ...
... which had still remained undiscovered; and they opened the way by which the supermind can be manifested on the earth as a gradation of the earth-life, and, as a result, there could appear even in physical life, by the very process of transformation of matter itself, a divine body, which shall be free from the inevitability, even in the earth life, of the law of Death. Page 64 ...
... meaning and fulfilment of human life on earth. According to the Mother, the aim of life is integral, and it consists of knowing the supreme Divine Reality and working for its full manifestation in physical life. Page 300 The Mother The Ascent to Truth A Drama of Life in a Prologue, Seven Stages and an Epilogue PERSONS OF THE DRAMA THE PHILANTHROPIST THE ...
... importance for education and teachers and pupils. Ideals of Education The Vedic ideal of education, as we saw earlier, was to achieve, through the practice of brahmacharya, a mastery over physical life and a conquest over the supraphysical planes of luminous knowledge and power so as to effect a kind of synthesis between material prosperity and spiritual liberation and immortality. This ideal ...
... earth^we shall see that it is, firstly, to discover and realize that greater Reality, which is called in the Upanishad, the Brahman, and secondly, Page 85 to manifest that Reality in physical life in fullness. Since this task is a long one, we require to be ready for a long journey and work out patiently these two tasks as quickly as possible and also as perfectly as possible. The Katha ...
... in recent times a growing perception that the human body is not a tomb but a temple of the Spirit and that there is discernible in us a spiritual will which wants to manifest itself fully in the physical life. It is also being increasingly perceived that the physical body can, with the aid of spiritual capacities, attain to greater peaks of excellence and perfection. This perception came to be developed ...
... does not deserve to participate in the framework of "Free Progress", or still more, he does not deserve to be here. Here are some words of the Mother: "Discipline is indispensable to physical life.... Discipline is indispensable to progress. It is only when one imposes a rigorous and enlightened discipline on oneself that one can be free from the discipline of others." ...
... they perceive that the human nature should not be viewed in narrow terms of what is only primary, ignoring what is the chief motivation in human life. According to them, basic necessities of physical life are only primary, but the chief wants of human life are rational, aesthetic, ethical and spiritual. In any case, whatever silken garment we may put on consumerism and however attractive d ...
... physical conscious ness has a very large determining power on the music made by this human harp of God; the notes we get from the spirit, from the psychic soul, from the greater life behind our physical life cannot come in freely, cannot develop their high, powerful and proper strain. This condition must be reversed; the body and the physical consciousness must develop the habit of admitting and shaping ...
... experience of clarity in respect of understanding of inner states of consciousness, of widening horizons of environment, and of value of relationships and internal complexities of psychological and physical life. At a lower level, this clarity is conceptual, but as we ascend higher and higher, it assumes the nature of intuitive and inspirational enlightenment. Love is that indefinable but powerful force ...
... promoted what can be called mercantile barbarism and that too, even in the setting of a science-based civilization. It is barbarism because its gospel is to support and aggrandise the needs of physical life, and it seeks triumph of consumerism, which can be sustained only by supporting an unjust economic and social order, environmental disasters and by inducing people to remain confined to a perpetual ...
... the resources of his unregenerate ego-bound mental-vital consciousness, Sri Aurobindo writes: "In our present human existence there is a physical collectivity held together by the common physical life-fact and all that arises from it, community of interests, a common civilisation and culture, a common social law, an aggregate mentality, an economic association, the ideals, emotions, endeavours ...
... in the form of Sanskrit mantras that constituted a system of 'Sapta Chatushthaya' (seven tetrads). This programme related to the work of the descent and manifestation of the Supermind in the physical life. We find reference to this system in his record of Yoga,² which is a meticulous and scientifically scrupulous record of fact and experience. Each of the Chatushthayas laid down the summits³ ...
... inner experiences used to say: 'Yes, up there it is like that, but here....' Now, the 'but here', soon will not be any more. We are making the conquest of that, that formidable change: that the physical life must be directed by the superior consciousness and not by the mental world. It is the change of authority.... It is difficult. It is laborious. It is painful. Naturally, there will be some ...
... his mind and heart; he yearns after the far-off glories of heaven, that is to say, supraterrestrial realms of existence that may open their portals to him after the dissolution of his earthly physical life; finally, the supreme and supracosmic transcendent Reality enthralls him with its bare and solitary snowy grandeur. Thus he is confronted with a conflict of his life-motives and the simultaneous ...
... has ventured to approach and study in depth the evolutionary world-vision of these great spiritual Masters, in so far as it bears upon the ultimate glorious transformation of man's body and his physical life upon earth. As is by now well-known, the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo has for its objective among other things: (i)to make spiritual experiences real to the whole consciousness ...
... objective images. But if the vision behind the poem is subjective, the objection holds no longer. The mystic subjective vision admits a consciousness in physical things and gives them a subtle physical life which is not that of the material existence. If a consciousness is felt in the stars and if that consciousness expresses itself in subtle physical images to the vision of the poet, there can be ...
... were under control: His eating, drinking, speaking, walking, everything was at a measured pace, in a measured quantity, and with a measured manner. To use our Sanskrit terms, His ideal in His physical life was the Aryan ideal of dhira and sthira - still and steady, and so, no dramatisation at all. About that we'll speak more as we go along. So that vision of Sri Aurobindo was the most ...
... clearly and radically, not revive religion or religious spirit, but present the ideal of spiritual perfection which consists of an integral realisation of the spirit and its full manifestation on physical life". To pursue this to its logical conclusion, we have to set up institutions, which will make a detailed study of all religions in their deeper meaning and bring about a reconciliation of ...
... clearly and radically, not revive religion or religious spirit, but present the ideal of spiritual perfection which consists of an integral realization of the spirit and its full manifestation in physical life.' 6 Page 120 HOME ...
... The skilful Penman's unseen finger wrote His swift intuitive calligraphy... 187 Everyday phenomena, mundane occurrences, facts and features in our mental, vital and physical life are thus touched up again, and Page 351 again, and yet again, to yield meanings relevant to the vast spiritual drama unfolded in Savitri. The 'four basic elements' of ...
... could not be fully achieved because the foundations were not properly laid, the basic ground was not prepared. Any higher structure of the mind and Overmind must be built upon man's vital being and physical life. The new creation left out of account these realities of basement, so we had to come down, forgetting for the moment the higher realisation, into these darker regions and make a thorough cleaning ...
... From that point of view the progress of his growth has ended. That is to say, it is no longer necessary for him to be reborn in a body. Till then reincarnation was obligatory. For it is in the physical life and in the physical body that he grows little by little until he becomes a wholly conscious being. But once he is completely formed, he is free, in the sense that he can, at will, take a body ...
... Himself and looked at Himself. And now He wants to take the joy of this possibility of being Himself with the full knowledge of Himself. It becomes much more interesting. ⁂ All physical life has the vital as its origin. The vital has the mental reality as its origin. The mental itself has another origin. And so on. Nothing can be manifested upon earth physically unless it ...
... embrace the entire human race, a new race of men must be created and not merely a small select group. And in that new creation must be included not only the inner being of man but also his vital and physical life. In other words, we have to come down to the lower levels and work for the purification there, in order to raise them beyond themselves by the infusion of the higher consciousness and make them ...
... a body to make further progress. Till then rebirth is a necessity, it is compulsory; for it is through reincarnation—taking up a new body that he progresses, develops and grows. It is in the physical life and in the physical body that the soul slowly builds itself until it becomes a fully conscious being. But once it is fully formed, it is free either to take birth or not to at will. There then ...
... have used an epigrammatic phrase to express this truth and even chosen the stronger word to give an edge to it. People are called sensual when they are occupied solely with the sensations of the physical life, with the forms and formations and movements of the material world, when they live with their senses and enjoy the things of the senses. The same tendency instead of going out towards the external ...
... here a few of those writings: Page 333 Page 334 22.6.58 My beloved child, You are for me the living and perfectly representative symbol of the physical life ready for the transformation and wanting that transformation consciously. In all the plenitude of the Supreme Presence I say to you: "I love you." - Mother Page 335 ...
... everything physically. There is a mixture of facts, tradition and psychic experience as well as history. Disciple : How did the poet get them ? Did he get them by psychic intuition or from the physical life only ? Sri Aurobindo : You can't take these things so literally and scientifically. The poet was not writing history, he was only writing poetry. He may have got his materials from the ...
... body and its circumstances. Whether one is poor or rich, successful or frustrated, happy or unhappy, one can always listen and follow the call of the Spirit. It may be that for most men the physical life is of first and primary importance and they look upon the spiritual life, 'if ever they do, as a secondary pursuit; even as children consider food and play as the one thing needful, study or mental ...
... for there are realistic paintings which belong to a very high order. That art was conventional, artificial, I lifeless. Now the reaction to this movement said: we do not concern ourselves with physical life any more, the reality as we Page 417 see with outward eyes is no longer our business; we want instead to express the vital life, the mental life. Hence came a whole host of reformers ...
... From that point of view the progress of his growth has ended. That is to say, it is no longer necessary for him to be reborn in a body. Till then reincarnation was obligatory. For it is in the physical life and in the physical body that he grows little by little until he becomes a wholly conscious being. But once he is completely formed, he is free, in the sense that he can, at will, take a body or ...
... of all, very often it means that the child lacks sufficient vitality. The vital is not strong enough to take care of external objects. Another reason may be that he does not find interest in the physical life; his interest may lie in the direction of mental occupation, imagination or dreaming etc. Or again it may be a lack of self-control and discipline. Anyway the result is the same. That is to say ...
... in silent prayer and consecration. The most blessed Service tree amply fulfils its name by offering the Samadhi day and night, a cool shade and sweet-scented flowers. Thus came to a close the physical life of the One who, without the world knowing it, worked unceasingly for the world and will continue doing so, careless of human reward of any kind and accepting the success of his mission as the only ...
... aspiration however was still present there and made use of these normal modalities of life to express and embody itself. We leave it at that, but the point of the matter is this: the material, the physical life that is in your body is made interesting, even the body itself becomes not only living but beautiful because of the presence of the soul in it, embalming it, perfuming it. If you are able ever to ...
... of necessity - of fatality still more - had disappeared completely. All the illnesses, all the happenings, all the dramas, all that: disappeared. And this concrete and so brutal reality of the physical life: gone completely. When she returned from that liberating experience to ordinary life, she had only a smile for life's useless complications. She realised that, if everything was the result ...
... that had become available during the last fifteen years. In the process, a few footnotes have been added, the references updated and the bibliography enlarged. A new Chronology of the Mother's physical life, compiled by the Sri Aurobindo Archives & Research Library, appears here for the first time. The present one-volume edition owes a great deal to the collabora. tion between Sri Jayantilal ...
... beauty also must be insisted upon. A young child should aspire for beauty, not for the sake of pleasing others or gaining fame, but for the love of beauty itself: for beauty is the ideal which physical life has to realise. In every human being there is the possibility of establishing harmony among the different parts of the body and the different movements when the body is in action. All human body ...
... conceptions down here seem so laughable, so comical. 26 As the Mother sees it, 27 everything here, everything outward, is artificial, misleading, false; '"none of the values of the ordinary physical life is based upon truth". Dress, food, speech, exertion, reward, all are governed by falsity and artificiality. The accidents of birth and circumstance largely determine earthly 'success'. Thus a man ...
... understand, the only thing to do is to keep a respectful silence. Page 504 Then, with a ring of finality, on 18 January 1951: We stand in the Presence of Him who has sacrificed his physical life in order to help more fully his work of transformation. He is always with us, aware of what we are doing, of all our thoughts, of all our feelings and all our actions. 7 The Samadhi itself ...
... life assumes a mental hue and acquires a rudimentary mental value. And yet the mind that has developed in the animal is involved in the action of the senses, and the hungers and craving of the physical life —it cannot get beyond them. From this welter of the citta, instincts come and impulses, by it are formed the vital and physical habits of the animal, which are nothing better than crystallizations ...
... transformed nature. "Rebirth is a necessity, it is compulsory; for it is through reincarnation...taking up a new body...that he (the psychic being) progresses, develops and grows. It is in the physical life and in the physical body that the soul slowly builds itself until it becomes a fully conscious being.”¹ ¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part VII by Nolini Kanta Gupta. Page 94 ...
... We want a new world, a true world, an expression of the Truth-Consciousness. And it will be, it must be—and the sooner the better. It should not, however, be just a subjective change. The whole physical life must be transformed. The material world does not want a mere change of consciousness in us. It says in effect: 'You retire into bliss, become luminous, have the divine knowledge; but that does not ...
... Grant that it may be also our sole occupation and that all our actions may help us towards this single goal."4 1 January 1951 "We stand in the Presence of Him who has sacrificed his physical life in order to help more fully his work of transformation. "He is always with us, aware of what we are doing, of all our thoughts, of all our feelings and all our actions."5 18 January ...
... first founders of knowledge. Page 177 to a human race already turning in spirit towards the lower¦ levels and the more easy and secure gains, secure perhaps only in appearance of the physical life and of the intellect and the logical reason."6 " The Rig Veda is one in all its parts. Whichever of its ten Mandalas we choose, we find the same substance, the , same ideas, the same images ...
... or a third state in Matter. A deathless state. With Mother, I watched that wonderful hope slowly grow, that possibility of an unbroken life—"I am seeking the illusion that must be destroyed for physical life to be uninterrupted," she would say—a life in which you can continue to grow, to develop, to widen, to increase in beauty and knowledge without needing to cut short everything abruptly and start ...
... that atomic film, a different state of Matter behind that hardened crust. On one side, the hole of death and pain; on the other side universal life, without any possibility of pain. A “funny” physical life on two levels, a paradoxical duality: This body’s life is a miracle, She said in April, 70, after a series of heart attacks. Which means that if it weren’t what it is and the way it is, anyone ...
... volatilize in this tide of solid power. But not being imprisoned in a fixed, hardened form, this body—this new body—can move about or blend into everything, everywhere. It is life innumerable. It is physical life without separation. It is the great unity of Life—unity of Matter, of Consciousness—lived materially. It is the wonder of that life that was being prepared by thousands of years of painful separation ...
... the right way of harmony; Page 403 to restate the ancient and eternal spiritual truth of the Self so that it shall re-embrace, permeate, dominate, transfigure the mental and physical life; to develop the most profound and vital methods of psychological self-discipline and self-development so that the mental and psychical life of man may express the spiritual life through the utmost ...
... " Even if it be discovered hereafter that under certain chemical or other conditions Life makes its appearance, all that will be established by this coincidence is that in certain physical circumstances Life manifests, not that certain chemical conditions are constituents of Life, are its elements or are the evolutionary cause of a transformation of inanimate into animate Matter. Here... short-lived; it holds them for some decades or some centuries, then passes to another generalisation, another theory of things. This happens even in physical Science where the facts are solidly ascertainable and verifiable by experiment...." The Life Divine , SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 828 ... acme. ( Silence ) There is in life a certain tendency to imitate, a sort of effort to copy "something". One can find very striking examples of this in animal life—it even begins already in plant life, but in animal life it is very striking. One could give numerous examples. And so, in that sense, one might very well conceive of a sort of effort of animal life to attempt to copy, to imitate, to ...
... expressed in words, body's prayer in works. Work is the prayer in its dynamic and concrete form, it is the utterance of the physical, the language it knows in order to ask for and seek the union with the Divine. It is the holy ritual expressing and embodying in the physical, material life, one's adoration, one's adhesion to the ideal, to the deity one worships. Work or service expressing h... of existence are essentially problems of harmony." In life, which is necessarily corporate life (a centre essentially means a training and a realisation in corporate life) the first and last necessity is harmony, that is to say, understanding and union among the members of the Page 48 corporate life. That is a self-evident truth understood and accepted by one and all... group, that is to say, a centre, like the individual can successfully grow into a living and harmonious dynamic Truth only when it has in its consciousness at every moment and in every movement of its life the never-failing Presence of the Divine Mother, for thus only a centre can become a divine embodiment and incarnation of the Supreme Mother for the expression and realisation of her truth upon this ...
... expressed in words, body's prayer in-works. Work is the prayer in its dynamic and concrete form, it is the utterance of the physical, the language it knows in order to ask for and seek the union with the Divine. It is the holy ritual expressing and embodying in the physical, material life, one's adoration, one's adhesion to the ideal, to the deity one worships. Work or service expressing harmonisation... Aurobindo: "All problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony." In life, which is necessarily corporate life (a centre essentially means a training and a realisation in corporate life) the first and last necessity is harmony, that is to say, understanding and union among the members of the corporate life. That is a self-evident truth understood and accepted by one and all. But the crux... group, that is to say, a centre, like the individual can successfully grow into a living and harmonious dynamic Truth only when it has in its consciousness at every moment and in every movement of its life the never-failing Presence of the Divine Mother, for thus only a centre can become a divine embodiment and incarnation of the Supreme Mother for the expression and realisation of her truth upon this ...
... bring an end to his physical terrestrial life, it can by no means make an end of his existence altogether. He denies any truth to the dogmatic assertion that he is merely an ephemeral spark of consciousness bubbling for a while in the eternal ocean of death and non-existence. Did not Victor Hugo represent the undying hope of humanity when he declared at the close of his life: "I feel ... equivalence is not found in life; (5) The historical argument: the fact that the belief is widespread and ancient, showing it to be deep-seated in human nature." 1 Whatever may be the logical validity of these arguments, the fact remains that man has variously viewed the phenomenon of physical death as a portal to a future and greater discarnate life, or as a temporary sleep and... But all these views as well as other allied ones accept physical death as a settled fact of life and look forward only beyond the grave for any possible glory of the Spirit balking the material body's death and disintegration. On the other hand, the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo seeks to realize for man a radical victory over physical death itself, achieved here in the conditions ...
... you can revive a drowned man by pulling his physical organs into function again, that is, by resorting to physical devices life can be restored. If you know how to reintroduce the power that sets the organs to action, after the body is wounded or dead, you can revive the man. The real question is whether it is the being of the man that comes back to life, or it is some other spirit that wants to... fields whereas its extreme application is meant for spiritual life. Non-violence or Ahinsa as a spiritual attitude and its practice is perfectly understandable and has a standing. You may not accept it in toto but it Page 137 has a basis in the Reality. You can live it in spiritual life but to try to apply to all life seems too much. Such an application ignores the great principle... immediately after a man dies. You find that he visits either a relation or a friend. If the fact of his death is not known or if the man is not known to be living far away, people mistake it for an actual physical presence. Page 130 There are many authentic cases of this kind. My poetic brother Mono Mohan's friend Stephen Philips said that his Mother had visited him after her death. Mono ...
... "And it is by no means a dream, this, not a Page 258 baseless construction : surely she will return! Surely she will appear before us, visibly even to the neuron physical state. "Life is universal; it is one; eternal; unchangeable; it changes but in the form, and it reigns, sovereign unifier, in her who, being individualized, has not quit us for long. "Already She... article. THE EMPTY PLACE "No more do we see her dear form, of harmonious lines, her likable face so good and so tender, furrowed Page 257 by long years of a Psychic Fighter's life; nor her sweet smile like sunbeam which chases away sadness, nor her calm and majestic bearing fit for a pre-eminent Victress! "No more do we hear her melodious voice, her gentle words inspired... children kiss no more her small hands of a Sensitive, her small industrious and diligent hands, ceaselessly occupied with works of art and literature, as also —and above all —with the care of the sacred life of the Home, the blessed shelter of love! "We heard her tell the story of a long-ago ghost who, from time to time, came to sit by the family hearth among her own people. "Will she, too, return ...
... veil of material process, or else that mind is only a process of life and life only a process of matter. Therefore finally we have to suppose the physical theory capable of explaining by purely material causes and a material constitution the mystery of the emergence of life in matter and the equal mystery of the emergence of mind in life. It is here that difficulties begin to crowd in which convict it... Even with regard to life, which is by a great deal the lesser difficulty, the discovery of certain chemical or other physical and mechanical conditions under which life can be stimulated to appear, will prove no more than that these are the favourable or necessary conditions for the manifestation of life in body,—such conditions there must be in the nature of things,—but not that life is not another new... crown of the Spirit's development of life on earth, has been confirmed by the patient and detailed scrutiny of physical science,—an aeonic development, though the farther Hindu conception of a constant repetition of the principle in cycles is necessarily incapable of physical evidence. One thing more seems now equally certain that not only the seed of all life was one,—again the great intuition of ...
... can influence by its resistance. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Vital Being and Vital Consciousness The nervous part of the being is a portion of the vital—it is the vital physical, the life-force closely enmeshed in the reactions, desires, needs, sensations of the body. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Vital Being and Vital Consciousness ... September 1956 As there is a physical mind, so there is a physical vital—a vital turned entirely upon physical things, full of desires and greeds and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Vital Being and Vital Consciousness The physical vital is the being of small desires and greeds etc.—the vital physical is the nervous being; they are closely... etc. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Physical Consciousness Yes—they [the lower vital, the physical vital and the material vital] become very clear to the increasing consciousness. And the distinctions are necessary—otherwise one may influence or control the lower vital or a part of the physical vital and then be astonished to find that something intangible but apparently invincible ...
... ordered, more perfect enjoyment of his vital and physical existence, perpetuation, reproduction, possession, enjoyment, expansion. There is a higher law of mental being and nature of which he is bound to become aware and to seek to impose it on his life and his action. At first he is very predominantly governed by the life needs and the movement of the life energies, and it is in applying his mental energy... Karma Man is not after all in the essence of his manhood or in the inner reality of his soul a vital and physical being raised to a certain power of mental will and intelligence. If that were so, the creed that makes our existence a manifestation of aWill to life, a Life Force moved by no other object than its own play, heightening, efficient power, expansion, might have a good chance of... external world around him and the need of utilising its opportunities and of meeting its siege and dangers causes his mind to be much obsessed by life and external action and the utility of thought and will and perception for his dealings with the physical and life forces, and to this preoccupation the finer more disinterested action and subtler cast of motive of the mind nature demanding its own inner ...
... more complex physical instrumentation for a more complex nervous activity. Once it has attained a certain complexity of physical instrumentation, life seems able indefinitely to refine in some subtle way its action of nervous power so as to support a more and more fine and complex action of mentality. How far this development of mentality can go and how far it is dependent on the physical apparatus... said to be constituted of life and body, nervous action and reaction in a physical body. Nervous action does not appear to constitute of itself consciousness, any more than physical impact and consequent atomic disturbance appears of itself to constitute nervous action. As a correspondent or resultant nervous communication, charge and discharge is necessary to manifest life, so a resultant or correspondent... The simplest elementary psychology deals with three notes of a limited scale,—the body and physical field and its impacts, the life and body and biological and physiological processes, the mental being and its conscious experience and action. This is a scale of ascension. The nature of the physical field is the first fact; it determines everything else; it gives the impacts which awaken the ...
... being and the physical nature. "² "The psychic being has always been valid, consenting to the play of mind, physical and vital, experiencing everything through them in the ignorant mental, vital and physical way." ³ " Atma is not the same as psychic-Atma is the self which is one in all, calm, ever at peace, always free. The psychic being is the soul within that experiences life and develops... consciousness in me can dispose its stress in this way or the other way; it may go down into the physical and work there in the physical nature keeping all the rest behind or above for the time or it may go up into the overhead level and stand above mind, life and body seeing them as instrumental lower forms of itself or act seeing them at all and merged in the free undifferentiated Self or it may throw... ² Ibid P. 342 ³ Ibid P. 349 Page 146 " The nervous part of the being is a portion of the vital—it is the vital-physical, the life-force closely enmeshed in the reactions, desires, needs, sensations of the body. The vital proper is the life-force acting in its own nature, impulses, emotions, feelings, desires, ambitions, etc., having as their highest centre what we may call ...
... translation, 690; use in sadhana, 690, 691; "the Ultimate Poet", 692 Sayaji Rao, Maharaja, 38,46ff, 63,66 Sea at Night, The, 176 Secret of the Veda, The, 404ff; unity of physical & cultural life throughout India, 450; no racial or linguistic chasm between 'Aryan' and 'Dravidian', 450-51; little 'history' in the Vedic hymns, 450-51; Veda, a treasure-house of spiritual culture, 451;... 762-3; physical education and the Body Divine, 582-3; development of Ashram services, 584, 585-6; as laboratory for Yoga, 584; choice of disciples & allotment of work, 584-6; work as a field for sadhana, as sacerdocy, 586; network of services, 586; research in Yoga, 586; locked struggle and Yogic battle, 587; aftermath of 24 Nov. 1926, 587,590; the integral Yogin, 588; sadhana at physical and inconscient... 48 Synthesis of Yoga, The, 404ff, 415,448,490, 492, 514, 516, 550ff; structure of 55051; French & Hindi translations, 551; "all life is Yoga", 551; towards self-perfecton, 551; harmony of inner and outer activity and experience, 551; three rungs in life's ladder, 562; different Yogas & a synthetic Yoga, 552, 562; Hatha, Raja, 553ff; Kundalini Sakti, 554; samadhi, 554; Karma Yoga, 554; Jnana ...
... entity which is the true soul, there are also the subliminal or deeper realities of Mind, Life and Matter: The subliminal mind in us is open to the universal knowledge of the cosmic Mind, the subliminal life in us to the universal force of the cosmic Life, the Page 423 subliminal physicality in us to the universal force-formation of cosmic Matter... 19 There are, then... would point out, the paradise of Sachchidananda is always "on the further side". Of the four "principles" in the lower hemisphere (aparārdha ), we are normally aware of three: Matter (the physical body). Life (nerve-energy or prāna) and Mind. The fourth. Psyche, is the "double soul" in man, the superficial desire-soul of our normal experience and the quintessential psychic-soul that is a portion... "descent" - or "upward", "downward" or "inward" - have to be understood in a psychological and not a strictly physical sense, and our temporal images are but desperate attempts to convey the realities of extra-temporal processes. Unlike the orthodox scientific evolutionist, Sri Aurobindo affirms that Life cannot emerge from Matter unless it is already involved in it, Page 425 for it is not ...
... versus Materialism, the emergence of life or mind is not on a par with that of physical properties. The simple reason for the disparity is: the latter are not really unpredictable at all. Physical chemists have successfully predicted the properties of atoms and molecules and collections of molecules, which they have never observed. No limits can be set to the physical chemist's power Page 259 ... cell is a polyphasic chemico-physical system which is integratively organised. Hence there comes about that it can answer to what is described as 'life'." Again: "The processes going forward in it are co-operatively harmonized. The total system is organized.... Many considerations force on us the conception of the cell as 'organization'." Elucidating the nature of life at all stages and levels, Sherrington... cannot, under the present physical postulates, be derived from the mathematics of matter experimentally known to us but calls for a broadening of those postulates constitutes the "immanent" whole supporting the action of the "transcendent" whole that vitality really is. But matter and life are not to be regarded as two opposed or entirely distinct principles. Life is indeed more fundamental and ...
... you to explain. But first read her letter, please. The nervous part of the being is a portion of the vital – it is the vital-physical, the life-force closely enmeshed in the reactions, desires, needs, sensations of the body. The vital proper is the life-force acting in its own nature, impulses, emotions, feelings, desires, ambitions, etc., Page 91 having as their highest... enlightened movements of the soul? You wrote also of pain in the Life Divine, “Without experience of pain we would not get all the infinite value of the divine delight of which pain is in travail.” One can’t help feeling that such utterances are somehow deep and profound and that chiefly because through deep pain (even physical) one feels a strange sense of fulfilment a fulfilment one might not... at all and never to me who misses His touch so much and feels life and karma almost like a mockery without Him? Subjective visions can be as real as objective sight – the only difference is that one is of real things in material space, while the others are of real things belonging to other planes down to the subtle physical; even symbolic visions are real in so far as they are symbols ...
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