Search e-Library

ALL Search Options Find in Savitri Index of Proper Nouns CWSA Index CWM Index Feedback
Find in Savitri Index of Proper Nouns CWSA Index CWM Index



APPLY FILTER/S
English [2149]
A Centenary Tribute [11]
A Follower of Christ and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo [2]
A Greater Psychology [25]
A National Agenda for Education [3]
A Philosophy of Education for the Contemporary Youth [1]
A Philosophy of Evolution for the Contemporary Man [4]
A Philosophy of the Role of the Contemporary Teacher [1]
A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best [7]
A Scheme for The Education of Bengal [7]
A Vision of United India [4]
A stream of Surrender : Minakshi-Amma [1]
Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic [10]
Among the Not So Great [4]
Ancient India in a New Light [2]
Arguments for the Existence of God [3]
Arjuna's Argument At Kurukshetra And Sri Krishna's Answers [2]
Aspects of Sri Aurobindo [12]
Aspiring Swan [1]
At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo [3]
Auroville references in Mother's Agenda [2]
Autobiographical Notes [8]
Bande Mataram [3]
Beyond Man [20]
Bhagavadgita and Contemporary Crisis [4]
Blake's Tyger [3]
Blessings of the Grace [5]
By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin [1]
By The Way - Part II [5]
By The Way - Part III [4]
Champaklal Speaks [2]
Champaklal's Treasures [4]
Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II [7]
Child, Teacher and Teacher Education [5]
Children's University [1]
Classical and Romantic [7]
Collected Plays and Stories [1]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 [22]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 [11]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 [18]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 [27]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 [7]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 [4]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 [16]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 [3]
Conversations with Sri Aurobindo [1]
Down Memory Lane [1]
Early Cultural Writings [18]
Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo [1]
Education For Character Development [4]
Education and the Aim of human life [3]
Education at Crossroads [5]
Education for Tomorrow [5]
Emergence of the Psychic [5]
Essays Divine and Human [17]
Essays in Philosophy and Yoga [36]
Essays on the Gita [28]
Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo [10]
Evolution II [1]
Evolution and the Earthly Destiny [22]
Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God [12]
Evolving India [1]
Finding the Psychic Being [1]
From Man Human to Man Divine [11]
Growing up with the Mother [2]
Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1 [7]
Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2 [7]
Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 3 [6]
Guidance on Education [2]
Hitler and his God [4]
Homer and the Iliad, Sri Aurobindo and Ilion [1]
How to Bring up a Child [2]
Hymns to the Mystic Fire [9]
I Remember [6]
Ideals of Auroville [1]
Images Of The Future [2]
In the Mother's Light [28]
India's Rebirth [4]
Indian Identity and Cultural Continuity [1]
Indian Poets and English Poetry [5]
Innovations in Education [3]
Inspiration and Effort [2]
Integral Yoga - Major Aims, Methods, Processes and Results [5]
Integral Yoga of Transformation [4]
Integral Yoga, Evolution and the Next Species [3]
Integral yoga and Evolutionary Mutation [2]
Isha Upanishad [22]
Karmayogin [3]
Kena and Other Upanishads [15]
Landmarks of Hinduism [7]
Lectures on Savitri [3]
Letters on Himself and the Ashram [19]
Letters on Poetry and Art [13]
Letters on Yoga - I [28]
Letters on Yoga - II [17]
Letters on Yoga - III [20]
Letters on Yoga - IV [24]
Life of Sri Aurobindo [6]
Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 1) [2]
Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2) [9]
Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3) [11]
Light and Laughter [5]
Lights on Yoga [4]
Living in The Presence [1]
Man-handling of Savitri [3]
Marie Sklodowska Curie [2]
Memorable Contacts with The Mother [3]
Moments Eternal [3]
More Answers from the Mother [6]
Mother or The Divine Materialism - I [12]
Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III [12]
Mother or The New Species - II [20]
Mother steers Auroville [1]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Five [5]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Four [1]
Mother's Chronicles - Book One [1]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Six [4]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Three [6]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Two [1]
Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960 [15]
Mother’s Agenda 1961 [19]
Mother’s Agenda 1962 [21]
Mother’s Agenda 1963 [18]
Mother’s Agenda 1964 [15]
Mother’s Agenda 1965 [12]
Mother’s Agenda 1966 [7]
Mother’s Agenda 1967 [17]
Mother’s Agenda 1968 [11]
Mother’s Agenda 1969 [8]
Mother’s Agenda 1970 [13]
Mother’s Agenda 1971 [2]
Mother’s Agenda 1972-1973 [1]
Mrinalini Devi [1]
My Burning Heart [1]
Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth [6]
Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body [16]
Nachiketas [2]
Nala and Damayanti [1]
Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo [17]
Nishikanto - the Brahmaputra of inspiration [1]
Notebooks of an Apocalypse 1973-1978 [1]
Notebooks of an Apocalypse 1978-1982 [1]
Notes on the Way [14]
Old Long Since [1]
On Art - Addresses and Writings [3]
On Education [16]
On Savitri [1]
On Sri Aurobindo's Savitri [4]
On The Mother [49]
On Thoughts and Aphorisms [11]
On the Path [3]
On the Way to Supermanhood [1]
Our Light and Delight [5]
Our Many Selves [12]
Overman [5]
Parables from the Upanishads [2]
Parvati's Tapasya [1]
Patterns of the Present [8]
Perspectives of Savitri - Part 1 [14]
Perspectives of Savitri - Part 2 [14]
Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays [17]
Philosophy of Indian Art [1]
Philosophy of Value-Oriented Education [5]
Prayers and Meditations [2]
Preparing for the Miraculous [11]
Principles and Goals of Integral Education [2]
Problems of Early Christianity [5]
Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga [3]
Questions and Answers (1929-1931) [11]
Questions and Answers (1950-1951) [18]
Questions and Answers (1953) [12]
Questions and Answers (1954) [17]
Questions and Answers (1955) [20]
Questions and Answers (1956) [15]
Questions and Answers (1957-1958) [17]
Record of Yoga [41]
Reminiscences [3]
Savitri [10]
Science, Materialism, Mysticism [10]
Seer Poets [4]
Selected Episodes From Raghuvamsam of Kalidasa [1]
Significance of Indian Yoga [3]
Six Talks [2]
Socrates [1]
Some Answers from the Mother [9]
Some Letters from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother [1]
Spiritual bouquets to a friend [1]
Sri Aurobindo - 'I am here, I am here!' [1]
Sri Aurobindo - A dream-dialogue with children [1]
Sri Aurobindo - His Life Unique [3]
Sri Aurobindo - The Poet [6]
Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master [8]
Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history [22]
Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision [8]
Sri Aurobindo And The Mother [6]
Sri Aurobindo And The Mother - On India [3]
Sri Aurobindo And The New World [1]
Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga [5]
Sri Aurobindo came to Me [7]
Sri Aurobindo for All Ages [7]
Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness [1]
Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume I [3]
Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume II [2]
Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume III [2]
Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV [6]
Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine [10]
Sri Aurobindo's Message [2]
Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects [6]
Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study [15]
Sri Krishna In Brindavan [3]
Sri Rama [1]
Sudhir Kumar Sarkar: A Spirit Indomitable [1]
Supermind in Integral Yoga [5]
Sweet Mother [2]
Synthesis of Yoga in the Upanishads [3]
Synthesis of Yoga in the Veda [4]
Taittiriya Upanishad [3]
Talks by Nirodbaran [6]
Talks on Poetry [4]
Talks with Sri Aurobindo [6]
Teilhard de Chardin and our Time [6]
The Aim of Life [6]
The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri [5]
The Birth of Savitr [2]
The Crucifixion [1]
The Destiny of the Body [30]
The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual System and The Mother's Contribution to it [1]
The Divine Collaborators [6]
The Future Poetry [11]
The Gita and its Synthesis of Yoga [1]
The Golden Path [4]
The Good Teacher and The Good Pupil [12]
The Growth of a Flame [1]
The Hidden Forces of Life [10]
The Human Cycle [19]
The Indian Spirit and the World's Future [6]
The Inspiration of Paradise Lost [1]
The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo [25]
The Life Divine [43]
The Mind Of The Cells [1]
The Mother (biography) [16]
The Mother - Past-Present-Future [9]
The Mother Abides - Final Reflections [6]
The Mother on Auroville [3]
The Mother with Letters on the Mother [15]
The New Synthesis of Yoga [2]
The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo [2]
The Practice of the Integral Yoga [6]
The Problem Of Aryan Origins [4]
The Psychic Being [10]
The Renaissance in India [23]
The Revolt Of The Earth [1]
The Riddle of This World [5]
The Secret Splendour [1]
The Secret of the Veda [22]
The Signature Of Truth [3]
The Story of a Soul [1]
The Sun and The Rainbow [6]
The Sunlit Path [6]
The Supreme [2]
The Synthesis of Yoga [48]
The Thinking Corner [2]
The Veda and Human Destiny [1]
The Veda and Indian Culture [2]
The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo [12]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 1 [2]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10 [12]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11 [8]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 2 [2]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 3 [3]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 4 [2]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 5 [3]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 6 [2]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7 [2]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8 [3]
Towards A New Social Order [1]
Towards A New Society [3]
Towards the Light [1]
Tribute to Amrita on his Birth Centenary [1]
Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo [7]
Uniting Men [2]
Varieties of Yogic Experience and Integral Realisation [3]
Vedic and Philological Studies [10]
Visions and Voices [1]
Visions of Champaklal [4]
Visions-Experiences-Interview [1]
Wager of Ambrosia [3]
What I Have Learnt From The Mother [2]
Words of Long Ago [6]
Words of the Mother - I [9]
Words of the Mother - II [3]
Words of the Mother - III [8]
Work - an offering [1]
Filtered by: Show All
English [2149]
A Centenary Tribute [11]
A Follower of Christ and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo [2]
A Greater Psychology [25]
A National Agenda for Education [3]
A Philosophy of Education for the Contemporary Youth [1]
A Philosophy of Evolution for the Contemporary Man [4]
A Philosophy of the Role of the Contemporary Teacher [1]
A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best [7]
A Scheme for The Education of Bengal [7]
A Vision of United India [4]
A stream of Surrender : Minakshi-Amma [1]
Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic [10]
Among the Not So Great [4]
Ancient India in a New Light [2]
Arguments for the Existence of God [3]
Arjuna's Argument At Kurukshetra And Sri Krishna's Answers [2]
Aspects of Sri Aurobindo [12]
Aspiring Swan [1]
At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo [3]
Auroville references in Mother's Agenda [2]
Autobiographical Notes [8]
Bande Mataram [3]
Beyond Man [20]
Bhagavadgita and Contemporary Crisis [4]
Blake's Tyger [3]
Blessings of the Grace [5]
By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin [1]
By The Way - Part II [5]
By The Way - Part III [4]
Champaklal Speaks [2]
Champaklal's Treasures [4]
Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II [7]
Child, Teacher and Teacher Education [5]
Children's University [1]
Classical and Romantic [7]
Collected Plays and Stories [1]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 [22]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 [11]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 [18]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 [27]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 [7]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 [4]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 [16]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 [3]
Conversations with Sri Aurobindo [1]
Down Memory Lane [1]
Early Cultural Writings [18]
Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo [1]
Education For Character Development [4]
Education and the Aim of human life [3]
Education at Crossroads [5]
Education for Tomorrow [5]
Emergence of the Psychic [5]
Essays Divine and Human [17]
Essays in Philosophy and Yoga [36]
Essays on the Gita [28]
Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo [10]
Evolution II [1]
Evolution and the Earthly Destiny [22]
Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God [12]
Evolving India [1]
Finding the Psychic Being [1]
From Man Human to Man Divine [11]
Growing up with the Mother [2]
Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1 [7]
Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2 [7]
Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 3 [6]
Guidance on Education [2]
Hitler and his God [4]
Homer and the Iliad, Sri Aurobindo and Ilion [1]
How to Bring up a Child [2]
Hymns to the Mystic Fire [9]
I Remember [6]
Ideals of Auroville [1]
Images Of The Future [2]
In the Mother's Light [28]
India's Rebirth [4]
Indian Identity and Cultural Continuity [1]
Indian Poets and English Poetry [5]
Innovations in Education [3]
Inspiration and Effort [2]
Integral Yoga - Major Aims, Methods, Processes and Results [5]
Integral Yoga of Transformation [4]
Integral Yoga, Evolution and the Next Species [3]
Integral yoga and Evolutionary Mutation [2]
Isha Upanishad [22]
Karmayogin [3]
Kena and Other Upanishads [15]
Landmarks of Hinduism [7]
Lectures on Savitri [3]
Letters on Himself and the Ashram [19]
Letters on Poetry and Art [13]
Letters on Yoga - I [28]
Letters on Yoga - II [17]
Letters on Yoga - III [20]
Letters on Yoga - IV [24]
Life of Sri Aurobindo [6]
Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 1) [2]
Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2) [9]
Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3) [11]
Light and Laughter [5]
Lights on Yoga [4]
Living in The Presence [1]
Man-handling of Savitri [3]
Marie Sklodowska Curie [2]
Memorable Contacts with The Mother [3]
Moments Eternal [3]
More Answers from the Mother [6]
Mother or The Divine Materialism - I [12]
Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III [12]
Mother or The New Species - II [20]
Mother steers Auroville [1]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Five [5]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Four [1]
Mother's Chronicles - Book One [1]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Six [4]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Three [6]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Two [1]
Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960 [15]
Mother’s Agenda 1961 [19]
Mother’s Agenda 1962 [21]
Mother’s Agenda 1963 [18]
Mother’s Agenda 1964 [15]
Mother’s Agenda 1965 [12]
Mother’s Agenda 1966 [7]
Mother’s Agenda 1967 [17]
Mother’s Agenda 1968 [11]
Mother’s Agenda 1969 [8]
Mother’s Agenda 1970 [13]
Mother’s Agenda 1971 [2]
Mother’s Agenda 1972-1973 [1]
Mrinalini Devi [1]
My Burning Heart [1]
Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth [6]
Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body [16]
Nachiketas [2]
Nala and Damayanti [1]
Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo [17]
Nishikanto - the Brahmaputra of inspiration [1]
Notebooks of an Apocalypse 1973-1978 [1]
Notebooks of an Apocalypse 1978-1982 [1]
Notes on the Way [14]
Old Long Since [1]
On Art - Addresses and Writings [3]
On Education [16]
On Savitri [1]
On Sri Aurobindo's Savitri [4]
On The Mother [49]
On Thoughts and Aphorisms [11]
On the Path [3]
On the Way to Supermanhood [1]
Our Light and Delight [5]
Our Many Selves [12]
Overman [5]
Parables from the Upanishads [2]
Parvati's Tapasya [1]
Patterns of the Present [8]
Perspectives of Savitri - Part 1 [14]
Perspectives of Savitri - Part 2 [14]
Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays [17]
Philosophy of Indian Art [1]
Philosophy of Value-Oriented Education [5]
Prayers and Meditations [2]
Preparing for the Miraculous [11]
Principles and Goals of Integral Education [2]
Problems of Early Christianity [5]
Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga [3]
Questions and Answers (1929-1931) [11]
Questions and Answers (1950-1951) [18]
Questions and Answers (1953) [12]
Questions and Answers (1954) [17]
Questions and Answers (1955) [20]
Questions and Answers (1956) [15]
Questions and Answers (1957-1958) [17]
Record of Yoga [41]
Reminiscences [3]
Savitri [10]
Science, Materialism, Mysticism [10]
Seer Poets [4]
Selected Episodes From Raghuvamsam of Kalidasa [1]
Significance of Indian Yoga [3]
Six Talks [2]
Socrates [1]
Some Answers from the Mother [9]
Some Letters from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother [1]
Spiritual bouquets to a friend [1]
Sri Aurobindo - 'I am here, I am here!' [1]
Sri Aurobindo - A dream-dialogue with children [1]
Sri Aurobindo - His Life Unique [3]
Sri Aurobindo - The Poet [6]
Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master [8]
Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history [22]
Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision [8]
Sri Aurobindo And The Mother [6]
Sri Aurobindo And The Mother - On India [3]
Sri Aurobindo And The New World [1]
Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga [5]
Sri Aurobindo came to Me [7]
Sri Aurobindo for All Ages [7]
Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness [1]
Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume I [3]
Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume II [2]
Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume III [2]
Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV [6]
Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine [10]
Sri Aurobindo's Message [2]
Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects [6]
Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study [15]
Sri Krishna In Brindavan [3]
Sri Rama [1]
Sudhir Kumar Sarkar: A Spirit Indomitable [1]
Supermind in Integral Yoga [5]
Sweet Mother [2]
Synthesis of Yoga in the Upanishads [3]
Synthesis of Yoga in the Veda [4]
Taittiriya Upanishad [3]
Talks by Nirodbaran [6]
Talks on Poetry [4]
Talks with Sri Aurobindo [6]
Teilhard de Chardin and our Time [6]
The Aim of Life [6]
The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri [5]
The Birth of Savitr [2]
The Crucifixion [1]
The Destiny of the Body [30]
The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual System and The Mother's Contribution to it [1]
The Divine Collaborators [6]
The Future Poetry [11]
The Gita and its Synthesis of Yoga [1]
The Golden Path [4]
The Good Teacher and The Good Pupil [12]
The Growth of a Flame [1]
The Hidden Forces of Life [10]
The Human Cycle [19]
The Indian Spirit and the World's Future [6]
The Inspiration of Paradise Lost [1]
The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo [25]
The Life Divine [43]
The Mind Of The Cells [1]
The Mother (biography) [16]
The Mother - Past-Present-Future [9]
The Mother Abides - Final Reflections [6]
The Mother on Auroville [3]
The Mother with Letters on the Mother [15]
The New Synthesis of Yoga [2]
The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo [2]
The Practice of the Integral Yoga [6]
The Problem Of Aryan Origins [4]
The Psychic Being [10]
The Renaissance in India [23]
The Revolt Of The Earth [1]
The Riddle of This World [5]
The Secret Splendour [1]
The Secret of the Veda [22]
The Signature Of Truth [3]
The Story of a Soul [1]
The Sun and The Rainbow [6]
The Sunlit Path [6]
The Supreme [2]
The Synthesis of Yoga [48]
The Thinking Corner [2]
The Veda and Human Destiny [1]
The Veda and Indian Culture [2]
The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo [12]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 1 [2]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10 [12]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11 [8]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 2 [2]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 3 [3]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 4 [2]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 5 [3]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 6 [2]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7 [2]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8 [3]
Towards A New Social Order [1]
Towards A New Society [3]
Towards the Light [1]
Tribute to Amrita on his Birth Centenary [1]
Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo [7]
Uniting Men [2]
Varieties of Yogic Experience and Integral Realisation [3]
Vedic and Philological Studies [10]
Visions and Voices [1]
Visions of Champaklal [4]
Visions-Experiences-Interview [1]
Wager of Ambrosia [3]
What I Have Learnt From The Mother [2]
Words of Long Ago [6]
Words of the Mother - I [9]
Words of the Mother - II [3]
Words of the Mother - III [8]
Work - an offering [1]
CURATED    ALL   
Showing 600 of 2149 result/s found for Physical material, body mind

Mother’s Agenda 1965  >  August 31, 1965

... That's the mind I mean, that completely material mind. The other one, the physical mind, has been organized for a long time. So what is the difference between this material mind and the physical mind? How would you define the physical mind in contrast with this material mind? The physical mind is the mind of the physical personality formed by the body. It grows with the body, but it isn't... this physical mind, the one that underwent the transfer of power? That isn't the physical mind. The physical mind, it's a long time since... It is the material mind—not even the material mind: the mind OF MATTER. 1 It is the mental substance that belongs to Matter itself, to the cells. That's what was formerly called "the spirit of the form," when it was said that mummies kept their bodies intact... most unconscious part of the physical mind, and that's what connects the physical mind with this material substance. But that's already an organized mind, you understand? It is the most material part, the one that borders on the mind... (what can we call this mind?), we can't even call it “corporeal mind”: it is the mind of the cells, a cellular mind. This cellular mind exists in animals, and there ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1965

Letters on Yoga - I  >  The Physical Consciousness

... things and return to them the reaction of an equal Ananda without dislike or desire. The Physical Parts of the Mind and Emotional Being Everything has a physical part—even the mind has a physical part; there is a mental physical, a mind of the body and the material. So the emotional being has a physical part. It has no location separate from the rest of the emotional. One can only distinguish... is a manifestation of material forces supported by a vital-physical energy which is the vital energy precipitated into matter and conditioned by it. The Material Consciousness or Body Consciousness By material is meant the body consciousness, the consciousness of Matter etc. Physical is a wider term. There is for instance a physical mind (which cannot be called material) dealing with outside... pain, physical illness etc. The vital physical forces can be received from anywhere by the body, from around, below or above. The order of the planes is in reference to each other, not in reference to the body. In reference to each other, the vital physical is below the physical mind, but above the material: but at the same time these powers interpenetrate each other. The body energy ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Notes on the Way  >  21 August 1965

... mummies kept their body intact as long as the spirit of the form persisted. 1 It is that mind, this wholly material mind. The other, the physical mind, was organised long ago. Then what is the difference between this material mind and the physical mind? The physical mind is the mind of the physical personality formed by the body. It grows with the body, but it is not the mind of Matter: it is... in the body—it is less uncertain of the future. It came to it, as if to tell it: "It will be like that." If that remains, it is evident immortality. How do you define this physical mind which was made the object of the transfer of power? It is not the physical mind. It is long since the physical mind has changed.... It is the material mind—not even the material mind: it is the mind of Matter... most unconscious part of the physical mind and that is the link joining the physical mind and this material substance. But it is already an organised mind, you must understand. It is the most material part touching the mind.... How can one call this "mind"? You cannot even call it the bodily mind―it is the mind of the cells, it is a cellular mind. This cellular mind exists in animals, and even a little ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Notes on the Way

The Life Divine  >  The Ascending Series of Substance

... divine mind of the perfected human soul and the very gross and seemingly undivine body or formula of physical being in which we actually dwell. That formula is the result of a certain fixed relation between sense and substance from which the material universe has started. But as this relation is not the only possible relation, so that formula is not the only possible formula. Life and mind may manifest... into the material being; the material creature must open to a wider and wider play of their activities in Matter, and all that is needed is a fit receptacle, medium, instrument. That is provided for in the body, life and consciousness of man. Certainly, if that body, life and consciousness were limited to the possibilities of the gross body which are all that our physical senses and physical mentality... were the material of three bodies, gross physical, subtle and causal, in all of which the soul actually and simultaneously dwells, although here and now we are superficially conscious only of the material vehicle. Page 273 But it is possible to become conscious in our other bodies as well and it is in fact the opening up of the veil between them and consequently between our physical, psychical ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Letters on Yoga - I  >  The Parts of the Body and the Centres

... . The leg indicates the physical (material) consciousness. All below the Muladhara is the range of the physical consciousness proper including the mental physical, vital physical, material physical. This [ aspiration rising from the legs ] would indicate therefore an aspiration from Matter (bodily Matter). The Sides of the Body The two sides of the body are supposed to represent two different... The Parts of the Body and the Centres The Parts of the Body in Yoga Different parts of the body indicate for this purpose different parts of the nature. The head is the seat of the mind (buddhi) and the lower part of the mouth, chin, neck are the seat of the external or physical mind. It indicates that the force is working there to change and prepare this part of the mind and get rid of resistance... are growing more complete. The physical opening needs a great quietude which replaces the tamasic inertia of body Page 246 nature by a true peace. Then all else can be done. The Legs and Feet It is the material consciousness that is indicated by the legs and feet. Below the feet is the subconscient. There is no big centre below the Muladhara in the body, but there are minor centres ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  The Divine Body

... possessed by the common mind of the race. Occultism means rightly the use of the higher powers of our nature, soul, mind, life-force and the faculties of the subtle physical consciousness to bring about results on their own or on the material plane by some pressure of their own secret law and its potentialities, for manifestation and result in human or earthly mind and life and body or in objects and events... ion of the form of the thoughts and a battery of their insistence on the body and the outside world where they could then become effective directly, communicating themselves without physical means from mind to mind, producing with a similar directness effects on the thoughts, actions and lives of others or even upon material things. The heart would equally be a direct communicant and medium of interchange... We have to suppose that the body is constructed by the agency of chemical elements building up atoms and molecules and cells and these again are the agents and only conductors at the basis of a complicated physical structure and instrumentation which is the sole mechanical cause of all our actions, thoughts, feelings, the soul a fiction and mind and life only a material and mechanical manifestation ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Kena and Other Upanishads  >  The Superlife - Life of Our Life

... 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, just as the physical scientist by his knowledge of the workings of material forces is able to do things with them which would... of its existence? By that purification of our mind and body and that subtilisation of our means of sensation and knowledge which become possible through Yoga. We become capable of analysis other than the resolution of forms into their gross physical elements and are able to distinguish the operations of the pure mental principle from those of the material and both of these from the vital or dynamic which... obedience to conscious or subconscious mind and in the conditions of material force and material form. While the mind is that movement of Nature in us which represents in the mould Page 65 of our material and phenomenal existence and within the triple term of the Ignorance the knowledge aspect of the Brahman, the consciousness of the knower, and body is that which similarly represents the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Kena and Other Upanishads

Essays Divine and Human  >  The Science of Consciousness

... are the soul and body of physical science. Matter itself is only an utility of Spirit or Being or Nature for physical process and action. Material energy is an instrumental dynamis for that utility or else an original dynamis which has no other sense of its operations. We get beyond to a higher sense only when [we] get beyond material to mental, psychical and spiritual energy, to mind, soul and spirit... our physical mind. The true nature and rationale of this priority appear in the descending scale. There we see the true development of the universe. Spirit of self-being develops self of conscious energy which supports its self of cosmic bliss, which acts on the finite by supermind, which offers its differentiations to mind, relates them in life, fixes them phenomenally in body of material substance... general basis and materials with general human nature and with his type, race, class, nation, but yet possessed of its own principle of particular individuation. It is this which reigns in his mentality, vital being, physical being and stamps itself upon them, but in itself it is neither mental, vital nor physical, but proceeds from a secret principle superior to all these; mind, life and body are only means ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays Divine and Human

A Scheme for The Education of Bengal  >  The Divine Body

... possessed by the common mind of the race. Occultism means rightly the use of the higher powers of our nature, soul, mind, life-force and the faculties of the subtle physical consciousness to bring about results on their own or on the the material plane by some pressure of their own secret law and its potentialities, for manifestation and result in human or earthly mind and life and body or in objects and... communication of the form of the thoughts and a battery of their insistence on the body and the outside world where they could then become effective directly, communicating themselves without physical means from mind to mind producing with a similar directness effects on the thoughts, actions and lives of others or even upon material things. The heart would equally be a direct communicant and medium of interchange... We have to suppose that the body is constructed by the agency of chemical elements building up atoms and molecules and cells and these again are the agents and only conductors at the basis of a complicated physical structure and instrumentation which is the sole mechanical cause of all our actions, thoughts, feelings, the soul a fiction and mind and life only a material and mechanical manifestation ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Scheme for The Education of Bengal

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Planes of Our Existence

... bliss-sheath, through the causal or spiritual body, and less directly through the mental body, nor are their secret powers absent from the workings of the vital and material existence. Our conscious spiritual being and our intuitive mind awaken in us as a result of the pressure of these highest worlds on the mental being in life and body. But this causal body is, as we may say, little developed in the... collective mind of humanity; and for the same reason that we are not aware of the greater part of our own being which is subconscient or subliminal to our waking mind and is always influencing and in an occult manner determining our surface existence. It is because we use, normally, only our corporeal senses and live almost wholly in the body and the physical vitality and the physical mind, and it is... is always involved, his life towards death, his physical being towards dis-aggregation. His delight of being depends on the relations of this imperfect consciousness with its environment based upon physical sensations and the sense-mind, in other words on a limited mind trying to lay hold on a world external and foreign to it by means of a limited body, limited vital force, limited organs. Therefore ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Lower Triple Purusha

... than the physical existence. We have in the same way to go yet higher and raise ourselves into the mental self. By doing so we can become the mental self and draw up the physical and vital being into it, so that life and body and their operations become to us minor circumstances of our being used by the Mind-soul which we now are for the execution of its lower purposes that belong to the material existence... dominance of our mental and vital parts by the body and the physical nature which seems at first sight to justify the theory of the materialists that mind and life are only circumstances and results of physical force and all their operations explicable by the activities of that force in the animal body. In fact entire subjection of the mind and the life to the body is the characteristic of an undeveloped... mentalised physical nature; we do not actually live on those planes, for if we did we could very soon arrive at the conscious control of the body by the life-power and of both by the sovereign mind; we should then be able to determine our physical and mental life to a very large extent by our will and knowledge as masters of our being and with a direct action of the mind on the life and body. By Yoga ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Record of Yoga  >  Notes on Physical Transformation

... the power of the will and aspiration to bring the divine realisation into the body. These forces can do miracles under the right conditions; and now they are quite strong enough to produce miraculous results on the subjective plane, in the physical consciousness, the physical mind and the vital physical, but the most material is not yet ready. The attempt was therefore premature. In order that it should... . Hunger and the rest come from the vital in the body. It was this bodily vital which was ready and desirous of abstaining from food, but the most material parts were not ready. But being without a voice and accustomed to obey and act only as an instrument, they gave no sign except the fading of the flesh and physical weakness. Now this material part is most important and indispensable. It is the... it brings you a step nearer to the completeness, it is itself also more dependent than the first on its instrument, the body. It can exist in itself, but for its completeness it must become an entirely physical and material strength, for which there should be as a tool a strong body. The other two stabilities and especially the last are still unattained. The last is the most difficult of all; it is ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Physical Nature and its Purification-1

... The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo CHAPTER XV THE PHYSICAL NATURE AND ITS PURIFICATION PART I BY physical nature Sri Aurobindo means the physical mind, the physical part of life, called the physical-vital or nervous being, and the body. Before we enter upon the process of their purification, we had better be clear about what these terms... modem mind is a combination of the vital mind and the physical, exploiting the intellect for its own ends. Page 266 merely physical, economic being, the human animal. It will be a reversion to the dead uniformity of a mechanised society, bound up with its material needs and their satisfaction, and harnessing the intellect to the service of Matter. But the soul and the higher mind of... and material life, but can bring those glories down into his earthly nature, and achieve a dynamic harmony of divine existence. Therefore, any philosophy or culture that clips his spiritual wings and chains him to the material- life is, by the very logic of evolution, an obscurantism,, a reactionary movement doomed to a disastrous defeat. The physical mind, the sense-mind, the vital mind and the ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

In the Mother's Light  >  The Human Body

... spaces of the vital world. And you have no longer a defence; there is not the physical body any longer to rush back into far safety.”² The greatest spiritual achievement has to be made here, in this material world, in this physical body. Is the body dense and inert and reluctant ? The reason is that much of it is yet sub- merged in the obscurity of the Subconscient and the Inconscient, ... structure, texture, and organic functions. The second fact¹which supports our theory of physical transformation, is the existence of the subtle or etheric body, just behind the gross body. Through the medium of this subtle body, the soul or the mind can, if it knows how to do it, influence and change the gross body to an unimaginable extent. It can purify or enlighten it, fill its nerves and tissues... revealed, the crux of the physical birth of man to be resolved. What is the body? What is its proper function and destiny ? What is the right way of dealing with it ? What is the secret of its mastery and transformation ? These are some of the questions we shall Page 262 briefly consider here in the light of the Mother's teachings. The body is the material form of the self-manifesting ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light

On Education  >  Perfection Of The Body (Sri Aurobindo)

... in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot be unless the body too undergoes a transformation, unless its action and functioning attain to a supreme capacity and the perfection which is possible to it or which can be made possible.     I have already indicated in a previous message a relative perfection of the physical consciousness in the body and of the mind, the life, the character... call genius is part of the development of the human range of being and its achievements, especially in things of the mind and will, can carry us halfway to the divine. Even what the mind and will can do with the body in the field proper to the body and its life, in the way of physical achievement, bodily endurance, feats of prowess of all kinds, a lasting activity refusing fatigue or collapse and continuing... that our physical exercises can make one ready; in others a developed individual will, skill of mind and quick perception, forcefulness of life-energy and subtle physical impulsion are more prominently needed and may even be the one suScient trainer. All must be included in our conception of the natural powers of the body and its capacity and instrumental fitness in the service of the human mind ancl ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   On Education

Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body  >  Perfection of the Body

... psychic, the mental, the vital and it must be the aim of our physical culture also. If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use. Sariram khalu dharmasadhanam, says the old Sanskrit adage, — the body is the means of fulfilment of dharma, and dharma means every... is part of the development of the human range of being and its achievements, especially in things of the mind and will, can carry us Page 704 halfway to the divine. Even what the mind and will can do with the body in the field proper to the body and its life, in the way of physical achievement, bodily endurance, feats of prowess of all kinds, a lasting activity refusing fatigue or collapse... aspects of the body consciousness, one which seems to be a kind of automatism carrying on its work in the physical plane without any intervention of the mind and in parts even beyond any possibility of direct observation by the mind or, if conscious or observable, still proceeding or capable of continuing, when once started, by an apparently mechanical action not needing direction by the mind and continuing ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Perfection of the Body

... earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot be unless the body too undergoes a transformation, unless its action and functioning attain to a supreme capacity and the perfection which is possible to it or which can be made possible. I have already indicated in a previous message a relative perfection of the physical consciousness in the body and of the mind, the life, the character which... psychic, the mental, the vital and it must be the aim of our physical culture also. If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use. Śarīraṁ khalu dharmasādhanam , says the old Sanskrit adage,—the body is the means of fulfilment of dharma, and dharma means every... call genius is part of the development of the human range of being, and its achievements, especially in things of the mind and will, can carry us half-way to the divine. Even what the mind and will can do with the body in the field proper to the body and its life, in the way of physical achievement, bodily endurance, feats of prowess of all kinds, a lasting activity refusing fatigue or collapse and continuing ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

A Scheme for The Education of Bengal  >  Perfection Of The Body

... in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot be unless the body too undergoes a transformation, unless its action and functioning attain to a supreme capacity and the ' perfection which is possible to it or which can be made possible. I have already indicated in a previous message a relative perfection of the physical consciousness in the body and of the mind, the life, the character... call genius is part of the development of the human range of being and its achievements, especially in things of the mind and will, can carry us halfway to the divine. Even what the mind and will can do with the body in the field proper to the body and its life, in the way of physical achievement, bodily endurance, feats of prowess of all kind, a lasting activity refusing fatigue or collapse and continuing... our physical exercises can make one ready; in others a developed individual will, skill of mind and quick perception, forcefulness of life energy and subtle physical impulsion are more prominently needed and may even be the one sufficient trainer. All must be included in our conception of the natural powers of the body and its capacity and instrumental fitness in the service of the human mind and will ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Scheme for The Education of Bengal

Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2  >  The Physical

... working was directly on my physical, how is it that I was not conscious of it till it began to have peace and Force?           1 According to Sri Aurobindo. the physical consciousness includes the physical mind and the physical-vital as well as the consciousness of the gross material body. Therefore, the last-named does not coincide with the whole physical consciousness but is only a... influence of the physical inertia or when one is down in this part of the consciousness the mind feels like the material Nature that action of will is impossible. Mind and vital nature are Page 20 on the contrary all for will and initiative and so when one is in mind or vital or acting under their influence will feels itself always ready to be active.         The mind and vital... Mother's light.       It is because the subconscient being just below the physical, the enlightened physical can act on it directly and completely in a way in which mind and vital cannot and by this Page 28 direct action can help to liberate the mind and vital also.         At present the body does not resist sadhana but it is very weak. It cannot support the movement ...

Nagin Doshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2

Our Many Selves  >  The Physical

... both are largely conditioned by the gross material bodily part which is almost entirely subconscient to our experience. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Physical Consciousness Everything has a physical part—even the mind has a physical part; there is a mental physical, a mind of the body and the material. So the emotional being has a physical part. It has no location separate from the... disease of mind or body to which the physical being is subject in Nature. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Physical Consciousness The vital body surrounds the physical body with a kind of envelope which has almost the same density as the vibrations of heat observable when the day is very hot. And it is this which is the intermediary between the subtle body and the most material vital body... Letters on Yoga - I: The Physical Consciousness The physical nerves are part of the material body, but they are extended into subtle nerves in the subtle body and there is a connection between the two. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Physical Consciousness The vital physical on the other hand is the vehicle of the nervous responses of our physical nature; it is the field and ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Our Many Selves

Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III  >  9: Innumerable Life

... time, Mother’s physical cells had the sensation they would explode or 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... classified as dreams, dreams, dreams. 64 Then two physicals? Or a single one within two degrees of Matter, two ways of living the same Matter, separated by the barrier of the physical Mind. A true physical, as Sri Aurobindo said, and the other. True Matter, Matter seen and lived by the cells of the body, and the other seen and lived by the Mind? But for the ordinary consciousness that lives in the... this first body of fear, they will be able to become aware in their direct manner of the material universe, and discover their own means of locomotion. It is a new species that is forming itself, with a new perception, of course, but a very material species, probably even more material than that of our Mind. It is the supramental species. And finally, it is quite right and logical that an evolution ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

Letters on Yoga - I  >  The Planes or Worlds of Consciousness

... contains the others in itself in principle. In the physical consciousness there is a physical mind, a vital force and action which we call the vital physical, and the physical proper or material. Mind has its own realms and life has its own realms just as matter has. In the mental realms life and substance are entirely subordinated to Mind and obey its dictates. Here on earth there is the evolution... evolution with matter as the starting point, life as the medium, mind emerging from it. There are many grades, realms, combinations in the cosmos—there are even many universes. Ours is only one of many. The Planes and the Body The heavenly worlds are above the body. What the parts of the body correspond to are planes—subtle physical, higher, middle and lower vital, mental.. Each plane is in com... forms which will connect them with the material domain and, as it were, reproduce or project their action here. And each thing created here has, supporting it, Page 129 subtler envelopes or forms of itself which make it subsist and connect it with forces acting from above. Man, for instance, has, besides his gross physical body, subtler sheaths or bodies by which he lives behind the veil in ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Levels of the Physical Being

... The flesh has a consciousness as well as the mind—all the consciousness is connected together so if the mind is freed, there is no reason why there should not be an effect on the physical also. The Body Man is not a body alone—the body is only a small part of his being. One should not attach too much importance to the life of the body. The body is only an incident in the progress of the... to mind and vital and physical. It is in the outer physical consciousness that the difficulty still tries to persist and brings the restlessness sometimes into the physical mind, sometimes into the nerves, sometimes in the shape of bodily trouble into the body. But all these things can and must go. Even the illnesses can go entirely with the growth of peace and power in the nerves and physical cel... This happens in all parts of the being, but it is especially true of the physical parts—physical mind yielding to habitual thoughts, physical vital yielding to habitual desires and impulsions etc., body yielding to habitual sensations, illnesses etc. etc. Often sadhaks write, "But I don't want these things, even my vital and body feel uncomfortable and wish them away, then why do they come?" It is because ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV

Kena and Other Upanishads  >  The Necessity of Supermind

... organism. On the contrary, according to the theory of a material evolution upheld by modern Science, man is only matter that has developed mind by an increasing sensibility to the shocks of its environment; and matter being the basis of existence there is nothing, except the physical elements, that can survive the dissolution of the body. But this formula is at most the obverse and Page 34 ... other; they can be viewed as complements forming a single truth. For the involution of Mind, its latency in the material Force of the physical universe and in all its movements does not preclude the existence of a mental world beyond and above the reign of the physical principle. In fact, the emergence of such a latent Mind might well depend upon and would certainly profit by the aid and pressure of forces... early Vedantic conclusions. However this may be, even from the standpoint of the sole material world Man in the substance of his manhood is a mind occupying and using the life of the body—a mind that is greater than the Matter in which it has emerged. He is the highest expression of the Will in the material universe; the Force that has built up the worlds, so far as we are able to judge of its intention ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Kena and Other Upanishads

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Psychology of Self-Perfection

... too is capable of refining to subtler forms of substance in which it becomes more apparently a formal density of life, of mind, of spirit. Man himself has, besides this gross material body, an encasing vital sheath, a mental body, a body of bliss and gnosis. But all matter, all body contains within it the secret powers of these higher principles; matter is a formation of life that has no Page 626... ient existence. By a developing power of Yoga he can become aware of these concealed worlds hidden from his physical, materialised mind and senses which know only the material world, and then he becomes aware that his material existence is not a thing apart and self-existent, as the material universe in which he lives is also not a thing apart and self-existent, but is in constant relation to the higher... at present live, the spirit's energy of life works between the two terms of mind and matter, supporting and effecting the formulations of substance of matter and working as a material energy, supporting the formulations of consciousness of mind and the workings of mental energy, supporting the interaction of mind and body and working as a sensory and nervous energy. What we call vitality is for the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

The Mother Abides - Final Reflections  >  A Canadian Question

... has discipleship on the material level in the path of the Integral Yoga come to an end? Obviously, the immediate programme of a physical transformation is postponed—not cancelled. But what we have been given is not less of a miracle. Mother has prepared for us her new body in the inner world, in the subtle physical, which is as living and tangible as her physical body, even though not as concrete... this new transformed body and she describes it as presented to her vision. That body she has built up in her long arduous labours, built up in a complete form and left with us and with humanity. This new body of hers, prepared behind the material curtain, she sought to infuse into the material form, even press or force into it this new element; but Matter and man's physical nature were not yet... Aurobindo speaks of an inner mind, an inner vital, an inner physical. Only the other day the passage was read out at the Playground meditation. The golden body, the new body, is formed out of an inner mind, an inner vital and an inner physical, renewed and reshaped. We can show our love for her, requite the debt that we owe to her Grace, by admitting her Presence into our physical being and allowing her ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother Abides - Final Reflections

The Life Divine  >  Life

... and the sense-mind goes on unnoticed but constant and perfect; it has all become subconscious and only in one activity or chain of activities is the mind luminously active. While I write, the physical act of writing is largely or sometimes entirely done by the subconscious mind; the body makes, unconsciously as we say, certain nervous movements; the mind is awake only to the thought with which it is occupied... well as a will to grow and be, indicative of a submental, a vital-physical organisation of consciousness-force hidden in the form of being. The fact would seem to be, then, that as there is a constant dynamic energy in movement in the universe which takes various material forms more or less subtle or gross, so in each physical body or object, plant or animal or metal, there is stored and active the... but mentally alive or that life has gone out of the body while mind still inhabits it, but only that the ordinary physical functioning is suspended, while the mental is still active. So also, in certain forms of trance, both the physical functionings and the outward mental are suspended, but afterwards resume their operation, in some cases by external stimulation, but more normally by a spontaneous ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Supramental Sense

... 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 be aware of the things of the material universe even in the trance of samadhi, aware of them as they are or appear to the physical sense, even as it is of... almost material, sometimes actively material communication—a complete though temporary physical materialisation seems to be possible—with the powers, forces and beings of other worlds and planes. There may even be a complete breaking of the limits of the physical consciousness and the material existence. The awakening of the psychical consciousness liberates in us the direct use of the mind as a sixth... process: its dependence on the physical impressions is the result of the conditions of the material evolution, but not a thing fundamental and indispensable. Mind is capable of a sight that is independent of the physical eye, a hearing that is independent of the physical ear, and so with the action of all the other senses. It is capable too of an awareness, operating by what appears to us as mental impressions ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Difficulties of the Physical Nature

... into the mind and vital and perhaps also the physical consciousness (if it is complete). The restlessness of the physical is probably due to the peace and silence having touched the physical but not yet penetrated the material or body consciousness. The old restlessness is there in the body struggling to remain, although it cannot invade either mind or vital or even in a general way the physical consciousness... obscure and stiff and not plastic, yielding only little by little. The physical mind can be more easily opened and converted than the rest, but the vital physical and material physical are obstinate. The old things are always recurring there without reason and by force of habit. Much of the vital physical and most of the material are in the subconscience or dependent on it. It needs a strong and sustained... When there is a strong influence of the physical inertia or when one is down in this part of the consciousness the mind feels like the material Nature that action of will is impossible. Mind and vital nature are on the contrary all for will and initiative and so when one is in mind or vital or acting under their influence will feels itself always ready to be active. When the mental will acquiesces ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV

Questions and Answers (1950-1951)  >  19 February 1951

... sometimes the subtle physical, this is when one sees one's body stretched out—for the physical vision to remain conscious, it must be a very material part of the being which goes out; one must go out very materially in the subtle physical body or in the most material vital. But usually it is the vital which goes out and still more often the mental being; but when it is the mind which goes out one is... state. The body follows the consciousness of the inner being and its own consciousness is asleep—for the body has a consciousness. All the parts of the being, including the most material, have an independent consciousness. Hence when you go to sleep dead tired, when your physical body needs rest absolutely, your physical consciousness sleeps, while the consciousness of your subtle physical body or your... your vital or of your mind does not sleep, it continues its activity; but your physical consciousness is separated from the body, it is asleep in a state of unconsciousness, and then the part which does not sleep, which is active, uses the body without the physical consciousness as intermediary and makes it do things directly. That is how one becomes a somnambulist. According to my experience, the waking ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1950-1951)

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5  >  A Canadian Question

... its material embodiment. What is expected of us is to see this golden Mother within us and try to become, as she always wanted, her golden children, within and without. Sri Aurobindo speaks of an inner mind, an inner vital, an inner physical. Only the other day the passage was read out at the playground-meditation.³ The golden body, the new body, is formed out of an inner mind, an inner... the material level in the path of the Integral Yoga come to an end?   Answer:     Obviously, the immediate programme of a physical transformation is postponed – not cancelled. But what we have been given is not less of a miracle. Mother has prepared for us her new body in the inner world, in the subtle physical which is as living and tangible as her physical body... easily mounted up the ladder of consciousness with the aid of her body, almost playfully like children. Now a little bit of austerity will be needed to go on our own, the austerity will be needed to bring our external life and physical consciousness in line with her own consciousness, to prepare them, to make them ready. Her material body offered an unconditional help and protection, now all that will ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5

On Education  >  Mother's Action in a Class of Children Aged Sixteen to Eighteen

... reply: Death is the phenomenon of decentralisation and dispersion of the cells which make up the physical body. Page 340 The consciousness is, by its very nature, immortal, and in order to manifest in the physical world, it assumes more or less lasting material forms. The material substance is in course of transformation in order to become a multiform and increasingly perfect and... with time? How can the physical being prevent this deterioration? That is precisely what the transformation of the body is: the physical cells not only become conscious, but receptive to the true Consciousness-Force; that is, they allow the working of this higher Consciousness. That is the work of transformation. How does the will, the central light, which is not material, act on the gross matter... must look into yourself, look inside; do not try to know by reading books or to find out what is happening in the vital and the mind: what you feel, what you think about death. The research should be carried out exclusively on a material plane: what is death, from the physical point of view? You must concentrate and find the answers in yourself. Don't make any speeches. Say only one sentence. The ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Education

The Destiny of the Body  >  Theories of Existence and Attitudes towards the Body

... supreme and entire divine transfiguration of the body itself. But in order to grasp and appreciate in full the import and importance of this dynamic seer-vision of the apotheosis of the material body here upon earth in the very conditions of the material Universe, we must try to have a perspective view of different attitudes to the physical body and diverse conceptions regarding its ultimate... there cannot be any individual personal existence outside of the material body. Consciousness having no independent non-material source or support but being only an operation of material energy acting in and upon a particular structural pattern of Matter, must perforce cease to exist with the dissolution of the physical body. The survival of man in any form after death is untenable. Since... and a material universe: in Matter, life appears and living physical beings: in Life, Mind manifests and embodied living and thinking beings. And this is the actual state of the evolutionary ascent with Mind and Man as its highest products. But Sachchidananda has yet to emerge fully in manifestation. Therefore this evolution, this spiritual progression cannot stop short with Mind and with ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  The Double Trinity

... is also the mind, the mind with its own activities, its thoughts, ideas, imaginations; those two seek expression through the body taking the help of the senses. All this forms the outer personality of man – its sign and symbol is the material body. Behind this physical person figured in physical body there is the subtle person and it expresses itself in a subtle body. The subtle body, because it... it were. The first is the external person whom we recognise by his name and form. It is indeed the physical body in and through which nature and character express themselves or try to express themselves as best they can. For the body, the material body is both an expression and a limitation, the body is not capable of expressing all that is behind it against which it acts as a dam with a few sluices... it is subtle, does not mean that it is formless. This too has a form which has not the rigidity of the material body, is not bound like the physical body in a contour of fixed unchangeable unchanging lineament. The form, supple and flexible, changes in shape and colour – like a mass of cloud according to the nature of its movements and activities and yet maintains its identity and is recognisable as ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Three Steps of Nature

... get free from the trammels of her first vital and physical realisations. For here in man we have a distinction which is of the utmost importance. He has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself... leads the life and the body, 3 not the animal who is led by them. The true human existence, therefore, only begins when the intellectual mentality emerges out of the material and we begin more and more to live in the mind independent of the nervous and physical obsession and in the measure of that liberty are able to accept rightly and rightly to use the life of the body. For freedom and not a skilful... , just as mind itself has so taken possession of the body that the physical being no longer lives only for its own satisfaction but provides the foundation and the materials for a superior activity. The assertion of a higher than the mental life is the whole foundation of Indian philosophy and its acquisition and organisation is the veritable object served by the methods of Yoga. Mind is not the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Kena and Other Upanishads  >  The Question. What Godhead?

... activities of the Mind, Life-Force, Speech, Senses. The question is, kena , by whom or what? In the ancient conception of the universe our material existence is formed from the five elemental states of Matter, the ethereal, aerial, fiery, liquid and solid; everything that has to do with our material existence is called the elemental, adhibhūta . In this material there move non-material powers manifesting... Question. What Godhead? Mind is the agent of the lower or phenomenal consciousness; vital force or the life-breath, speech and the five senses of knowledge are the instruments of the mind. Prana, the life-force in the nervous system, is indeed the one main instrument of our mental consciousness; for it is that by which the mind receives the contacts of the physical world through the organs of knowledge... vital breath enables us to bring up and speed outward from the body this speech that we use to express, to throw out into a world of action and new-creation the willings and thought-formations of the mind. It is propelled by Vayu, the life-breath; it is formed by Agni, the secret will-force and fiery shaping energy in the mind and body. But these are the agents. Who or what is the secret Power that ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Kena and Other Upanishads

The Destiny of the Body  >  The Mystery of Matter

... the truth of the material universe." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 212) "Our substance does not end with the physical body; that is only the earthly pedestal, the terrestrial base, the material starting point.... There are behind our gross physical being other and subtler grades of substance with a finer law and a greater power which support the denser body and which can.... the necessary clue to the solution of the problem of substantial replenishment of the body without the aid of any material aliments. It is through the process of the direct tapping and materialisation of energy that the New Body can very well meet its material needs. And since energy is not limited to its physical forms alone but rises through an ascending scale, as we have seen in the previous chapter... the body's needs. But the supramentally transfigured body will surely bring into play the necessary instrumentation. And we may well conceive that in the New Body "material organs as we know 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 ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

The Hidden Forces of Life  >  Existence and Influence of Hidden Worlds

... conscious being in other worlds than the physical after the dissolution of the physical body. On the other side they open to us the possibility of an action of the higher planes on the material existence which can liberate the powers they represent, the powers of life, mind and spirit for the evolutionary intention inherent within Nature by the very fact of their embodiment in Matter. Sri Aurobindo ... a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are situated in the consciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into connection with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a subconscient residue remaining, and enter all planes... subtle instruments than those of gross physical Matter, claims in the end the same validity as the truth of the material universe. The worlds beyond exist: they have their universal rhythm, their grand lines and formations, their self-existent laws and mighty energies, their just and luminous means of knowledge. And here on our physical existence and in our physical body they exercise their influences; here ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Hidden Forces of Life

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10  >  Love and Love

... Being, however various they may appear in outward name and form. But the physical consciousness, the physical body, this very material frame have for us upon earth, a divine significance. They are not to be despised or thrown out. On the contrary, our object is to take special care of the body, to cleanse it of its outward dross, make it sound and free from disease, to immortalise it... light charge the body too with a transfiguring force or energy. Page 134 This material body of man has the marvellous advantage of being united, of being able to unite itself with the Supreme Consciousness. Indeed as through his consciousness man has the privilege of ascending to the supreme consciousness, even so in and through the same consciousness, the physical cell also has the... the privilege of establishing a contact with the Supreme Substance. What is true of man's mind and life is true also of the material cell. Even as life impulses and mental knowings can be uplifted and transfigured, these physical cells too may achieve the same transfiguration because in man all these elements share equally in the Divine Substance lodged there. Of the animal, the lower creation, we cannot ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  Love and Love

... Bliss, one Divine Being, however various they may appear in outward name and form. But the physical consciousness, the physical body, this very material frame have for us upon earth, a divine significance. They are not to be despised or thrown out. On the contrary, our object is to take special care of the body, to cleanse it of its outward dross, make it sound and free from disease, to immortalise it... through that pure light charge the body too with a transfiguring force or energy. This material body of man has the marvellous advantage of being united, of being able to unite itself with the Supreme Consciousness. Indeed as through his consciousness man has the privilege of ascending to the supreme consciousness, even so in and through the same consciousness, the physical cell also has the privilege of... of establishing a contact with the Supreme Substance. What is true of man's mind and life is true also of the material cell. Even as life impulses and mental knowings can be uplifted and transfigured, these physical cells too may achieve the same transfiguration because in man all these elements share equally in the Divine Substance lodged there. Of the animal, the lower creation, we cannot say the ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

Isha Upanishad  >  The Eternal in His Universe

... longer existing, the physical body must necessarily disintegrate since it has no longer a soul to support it and keep naturally together the gross material atoms out of which it is constructed. But because the physical body is destroyed or dropped off, it does not follow that no body is left. Man goes on existing after death in his Dream-State and moves & acts with his subtle body; it is this dream-state... transcend the limitations and errors of the physical senses and train his mind to act even in the physical body with the rapidity, directness and unlimited range proper to a psychical organ whose function is to operate in subtle as well as in gross matter. To see where the physical eye is blind, to hear where the physical ear is deaf, to feel where the physical sense is callous, to understand thoughts... es into that gross physical condition which is all that Science has hitherto been able to analyse and investigate. In man also as in the larger Cosmos each spiritual State lives in and uses its corresponding medium of matter and out of that matter shapes for itself its own body or material case. He has therefore a causal body for his Sleep-State or causal self, a subtle body for his Dream-State ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Isha Upanishad

Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  August

... the difference between the physical mind and the material mind ? Sri Aurobindo : The material mind is a part of the physical Disciple : What is the physical? Sri Aurobindo : As I have not got the same inspiration of the subject, I shall ask X. to explain it { a pause ). I spoke about four things in the physical : (1) physical mind, (2) Physical Vital, (3) Matter proper and... say so. When I speak of the resistance of the material world, I do not mean the external material but the subtle material. There is the subtle and the external material and when I say that Matter is impenetrable, I mean that the subtle material has not accepted the Truth, the material mind has not accepted the higher truth. The cells of the material body have a consciousness of their own and that c... knowledge of the exter­nal world, it depends upon the evidence of the senses. The "physical vital" is life limited by the material body, – the life-force bound up in matter. It is life moving in the nervous system. It cannot exist apart from the material body. It is quite different from the vital being proper with its relative freedom. It is life subject to the laws of matter. There is a tremendous power ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Yoga - I  >  The Lower Nature or Lower Hemisphere

... dynamic mind, physical perceptive mind); the vital—1st emotional vital with all the emotional movements in it; 2nd the central vital (the larger desires, passions, ambitions, forces of work, possession, conquest); 3rd the lower vital (all the small egoistic movements of desire, enjoyment, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, vanity etc. etc.); 4th the physical energies concerned with the material life and... ent) above the material universe which we see; there is a mental plane (self-existent) above the vital and material. These three together,—mental, vital, physical,—are called the triple universe of the lower hemisphere. They have been established in the earth-consciousness by evolution—but they exist in themselves before the evolution, above the earth-consciousness and the material plane to which the... accurately in a few words; but roughly thoughts are of the mind, emotions are of the heart, desires are of the vital. On the surface they are all mixed together, but behind they come from separate parts of the being. The Adhara The Adhara is that in which the consciousness is now contained—mind-life-body. The Adhar means the mind, life and body as instruments of the expression of the being—the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1  >  The Physical Being

... away, for our physical body may get fatigued by the constant working." Is this a fact?       Yes, the ordinary physical consciousness is not able to hold the contact and it does get tired — also it cannot assimilate much at a time. But it is not always the Divine who takes away the pressure; the lower consciousness itself loses it or gives it up.       Why is the physical mind so much open... Evidently there has been much progress there.       When the Mother's Force tackles the physical, cannot the body allow it to work quietly as the mind and vital do?       The law of the physical is inertia, dullness, obstruction to whatever is new or not yet established.       Even when the physical throws up inertia, is it not possible to cast off dullness and sorrow brought in by the inertia... has acted sufficiently on the conscious parts like the vital and physical?      With many these experiences are the first they get.       The Fire around the body continues. It has enveloped the being like an armour. But what is its effect in the body? — a fiery intensity in the cells and the pores. Can this be true? The mind refuses to believe it.       It can very well be true. ...

Nagin Doshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1

The Life Divine  >  The Philosophy of Rebirth

... of past developments into that trifling vehicle, a particular mental and physical stamp to the new individual mind and body thus 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... by mind, an element of mind which is being taken up by spirit: the animal is still present in its humanity; the very nature of the human being presupposes a material and a vital stage which prepared his emergence into mind and an animal past which moulded a first element of his complex humanity. And let us not say that this is because material Nature developed by evolution his life and his body and... would then function as an inner body, just as the gross physical form by its organisation at once individualises and houses the animal mind and life. On the former supposition, we must admit that the animal too survives the dissolution of the physical body and has some kind of soul formation which after death occupies other animal forms on earth and finally a human body. For there is little likelihood ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

The Life Divine  >  The Order of the Worlds

... conscious being in other worlds than the physical after the dissolution of the physical body. On the other side they open to us the possibility of an action of the higher planes on the material existence which can liberate the powers they represent, the powers of life, mind and spirit for the evolutionary intention Page 819 inherent within Nature by the very fact of their embodiment in Matter... of the material Nescience. This veil exists because the soul in the body has put behind it these greater possibilities in order that it might concentrate exclusively its consciousness and force upon its primary work in this physical world of being; but that primary work can have a sequel only by the veil being at least partially lifted or else made penetrable so that the higher planes of mind, life... manifestation of the material cosmos, to aid the evolution or in some sense as a result of it. This is a notion which the physical mind, starting in all its ideas from the material universe as the one thing which it knows, has analysed and can deal with in a beginning of mastery, might easily tend to accept, if obliged to admit a supraphysical existence; it could then keep the material, the Inconscience ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Illness and Health

... be able to detach yourself from the body consciousness, so that the body alone feels the pain, the mind and the vital are not affected. It is a detachment of even the physical mind from the pain that makes one able to go on as if nothing were there, but this detachment of the physical mind is not easy to acquire. It is by an attack on your physical consciousness that the old forces are... suggestion; it becomes a reality because your physical consciousness accepts it. It is like a wrong suggestion in the mind; if the mind accepts it, it becomes clouded and confused and has to struggle back into harmony and clearness. It is so with the body consciousness and illness. You must not accept but reject it with your physical mind and so help the body consciousness to throw off the suggestion.... part of the attack on the physical consciousness,—the attack on the body Page 556 is used to raise these ideas and the ideas are used to make it more difficult for the body to recover. At a certain stage attacks fall heavily on the body because the opposing forces find it more difficult than before to upset the mind or vital directly, so they fall on the physical in the hope that that will ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV

The Destiny of the Body  >  Conclusion

... subtle organs of a very different character or, if anything material was needed, instruments that would be forms of dynamism or plastic transmitters rather than what we know as organs." 1 To minds attached to the present form of things this sort of revolutionary changes in the physical structure and functioning of the human body may appear to be a senseless and impossible chimera. But,... present food-habit of the body that will be replaced by something direct and refined. The liberation of the body from its utter dependence for its very existence upon the assimilation of material aliments will undoubtedly have a great repercussion on the very structure and organ-systems of our body . For even a little reflection reveals to us that our physical system along with that of other... brought into existence as responses to the basic need for the material alimentation of the body. And all this has brought about such a complication in our physical structure! At the same time it has created for the body almost a vicious circle. For although it is a fact that in order to assure the supply of energy-aliments to the body, these complex organ-systems had to be elaborated, a great ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Supermind in Integral Yoga  >  Part Four

... our body and our awareness that we have of our physical existence. To begin with, we find ourselves largely identified with our body, and yet we find that most of the operations of our own body are really subconscious to our mental being. Similarly, even though we may find ourselves identified with vitality working in our body, we are only partly aware of its operations. We find that our mind identifies... . The material existence has only a physical, not a mental, individuality. It is only when evolution proceeds to develop forms of life and forms of mind that individuality begins to appear. This individuality takes the form of the mental, vital and physical ego-sense. Developing from inconscience to self-conscience, from nescience of self and things to knowledge of self and things, the Mind arrives... in the material world or upon other planes by aid of perceptible images, not only images of things visible, but of sounds, touch, smell, taste, movement, action, of all that makes itself sensible to the mind and its organs. For the mind in Samadhi has access to the inner space called sometimes the cidākāśa, to depths of more and more subtle ether which are heavily curtained from the physical sense ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Supermind in Integral Yoga

Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  15 May 1957

... one finds a great resistance in the body. What is the reason? The mind does not interfere, but there is a resistance. The greatest resistance comes from the physical, there is a special resistance of the physical. Where is the greatest resistance?... In your head. ( Laughter ) This is not a special case. Most often what refuses most to change is the physical mind—so obstinate, isn't it, in the conviction... your body before your mind has been transformed. Just try, let us see! You cannot move a finger, say a word, walk one step without the mind's intervention; so with what instrument are you going to transform your body if your mind is not already transformed? If you remain in the state of ignorance—of perfect ignorance, I might say—which your mind is in at present, how do you expect your body to... bottommost means of material functioning, but this could not be anything perfect or complete. A fully conscious body might even discover and work out the right material method and process of a material transformation. For this, no doubt, the spirit's supreme light and power and creative joy must have manifested on the summit of the individual consciousness and sent down their fiat into the body.... " Page ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)

Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision  >  The Life Divine : Some Aspects

... which might be considered here is the place of the physical body in the scheme of Supramental transformation. The movement of ascent from Mind to Supermind and the descent from Supermind to the mental, vital and physical consciousness brings about the transformation of nature. For example. Mind would function as the Mind of Light, not as at present, a mind subject to half-light _____________________... of ameliorating the material condition of the masses all over the world. Man has established himself as the undisputed king among creatures of the earth and he is expanding his physical consciousness to outer space claiming it as his domain. Mind has succeeded in mastering material energy by the knowledge of its processes. Even with regard to mind's control over material energy, long ago Sri... Page 15 and half-darkness. The question is how would it affect th< laws of the body ? Is it possible to transform the gross an( seemingly undivine body into a divine body ? Or is there a divine use of the body as there is of mind and life ? Or metaphysically, if the Spirit has assumed form, a material form, what is the place of Form in the ultimate fulfilment' Though the Upanishad has not ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  Samadhi

... the waking state is the consciousness of the material universe which we normally possess in this embodied existence dominated by the physical mind. The dream-state is a consciousness corresponding to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane behind, which to us, even when we get intimations of them, have not the same concrete reality as the things of the physical existence. The sleep-state is a consciousness... we cannot get back from the physical mind to the higher planes or degrees of consciousness without receding from the waking state, without going in and away from it and losing touch with the material world. Hence to those who desire to have the experience of these higher degrees, trance becomes a desirable thing, a means of escape from the limitations of the physical mind and nature. Samadhi or Yogic... movement, action, of all that makes itself sensible to the mind and its organs. For the mind in Samadhi has access to the inner space called sometimes the cidākāśa , to depths of more and more subtle ether which are heavily curtained from the physical sense by the grosser ether of the material universe, and all things sensible, whether in the material world or any other, create reconstituting vibrations ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Integral Yoga of Transformation  >  Part Three

... other. The body-energy is a manifestation of material forces supported by vital-physical energy which is the vital energy precipitated into matter and conditioned by it. Mental-Physical and Material Mind (Mind of the Cells) 31 The mental-physical (which is the same as the physical Mind) is a mind at the service of the physical. It is the mind conditioned by the physical, and it is... thinking Mind, dynamic Mind and externalizing Mind. The vital is divided into three parts, the emotional vital, the central vital and the lower vital. The physical refers to the material or physical consciousness or corporeal consciousness and to the physical body. The thinking Mind is concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right. It reasons and perceives with ideas of infinity, eternity... objects; they do not, so much as in waking mind, convey forms of objects for the mind's documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Integral Yoga of Transformation

Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  26 June 1957

... 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 a certain sense of contact which is very, very concrete. Only, this heavy material presence of a physical body which occupies an absolutely... gross material procedure. A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any of the heavy limitations in the growth and development of its mind and material body inevitable... —not the permanence given by the physical body as we know it materially. There are phenomena, yes, that can even be seen, but they are fleeting. There is no stability, the stability in matter, the fixity has not been acquired. I mean there is a contact, there is even the contact of touch, there is a perception, but there isn't the permanence given by the material body. They are transient phenomena which ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)

Letters on Yoga - I  >  Transformation and the Body

... includes the transformation of the whole physical mind, vital, material nature—not by imposing siddhis on them, but by creating a new physical nature which is to be the habitation of the supramental being in a new evolution. I am not aware that this has been done by any Hathayogic or other process. Mental or vital occult power can only bring siddhis of the higher plane into the individual life—like... about these things. This passage about the body, for instance—although St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much pro found spiritual knowledge (profound rather than wide, I think)—I would not swear to it that he is referring to the supramentalised body ( physical body ). Perhaps to the supramental body or to some other luminous body in its own space and substance, which he found... Vaishnavas speak of a divine body which will replace this one when there is the complete siddhi. But, again, is this a divine physical or supraphysical body? At the same time there is no obstacle in the way of supposing that all these ideas, intuitions, experiences point to, if they do not exactly denote, the physical transformation. The physical Nature does not mean the body alone but the phrase includes ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

The Life Divine  >  The Two Negations: The Refusal of the Ascetic

... subtle instruments than those of gross physical Matter, claims in the end the same validity as the truth of the material universe. The worlds beyond exist: they have their universal rhythm, their grand lines and formations, their self-existent laws and mighty energies, their just and luminous means of knowledge. And here on our physical existence and in our physical body they exercise their influences; here... and even our sensational experience begin to change,—of Matter as one existence and of bodies as its formations in which the one existence separates itself physically in the single body from itself in all others and again by physical means establishes communication between these multitudinous points of its being. Mind we experience similarly, and Life also, as the same existence one in its multiplicity... the question cannot be solved by logic arguing on the data of our ordinary physical existence; for in those data there is always a hiatus of experience which renders all argument inconclusive. We have, normally, neither any definitive experience of a cosmic mind or supermind not bound up with the life of the individual body, nor, on the other hand, any firm limit of experience which would justify us ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III  >  11: The Transformation

... cellular life governed by the Mind of the cells, by that small indestructible, universal vibration. And as I did not understand very well back then what this new Mind was, I asked Mother: “How do you define this physical Mind, that which was subject to this transfer of power?”— That isn’t the physical Mind. It is the material Mind—not even the material Mind: the mind OF MATTER. It is the mental substance... functioning of the body. On the other hand, once effectively converted, it will be one of the most precious instruments for the stabilization of the supramental Light and Force in material Nature. 105 It is Mother’s whole experience: once delivered from the hypnotism of the physical Mind, this corporeal, cellular mind began to fix the supramental vibration and form a new body. It began to repeat... why that mind alone was left, She said after the radical cleansing of 1968 . If you like, in appearance I had become an idiot, I didn’t know anything. And it’s that mind that developed, slowly, slowly. Sri Aurobindo said that if the physical Mind is transformed, the body’s transformation will follow quite NATURALLY. We’ll see! 106 And we wonder whether the formation of this new body is not only ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  The Mounting Fire

... all movements, especially all the automatic reactions of the physical that form the roots of the material existence. The whole physical being if it is to embody a new life in a new organisation must concentrate at one point within itself and find or found there the Fire, the dynamic Divine Will in its most concrete reality – the body's self and soul: the yajamana, the human figure of the Divine... and functioning. I am speaking specially of the physical and material basis of mind and consciousness, for unless this basis is changed there can be no change in the structure of the being, and in the movement of outward life; even the consciousness would not change radically or permanently: a stable transformation can come only when the material stuff has undergone a reversal. The human brain... to kindle this fire that apparently lies extinguished, the Vedic Rishis have a whole ritual of the process. They speak, first of all, of preparing the seat for Agni – barhi: it is the material casing of the body, and then one takes two pieces of the arani, species of wood or fuel, and rubs them one against the other till the fire leaps out. It refers to an aspiration, a concrete and concentrated ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

Mother or The New Species - II  >  23: The True Earth

... planes. I MATERIALLY see all sorts of things, which aren't visible to others. But it's MATERIALLY. A funny state.... 14 And then, for sight, for instance, sometimes I see more clearly with my eyes closed than with them open, and the vision is the SAME, physical, purely physical vision; but a physical that seems... more complete, I don't know what words to use. 15 Basically, as if the body were seeing... consciousness of the cells of the body. At cellular level, at the bottom-most of the material ladder, the living and the dead are together, there are no longer two sides: there is a single side—just as there is no longer "over there" or "here," "yesterday" or "today." And yet it is a material world, for if the cells are not material, then what is? It means that our physical world extends in quite an unexpected... True Matter, light at last. The only law, that of consciousness. The only density, that of consciousness. The only existing bodies: conscious bodies. The end of the phantoms. At the cellular border, the body, freed from the enveloping spell of the physical Mind, forgets about heaviness, thickness, powerlessness, separation and distance, past and future—it forgets death. It forgets the laws ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine  >  Matter

... Aurobindo says man is the instrument because he is one who holds in himself,—material substance, vital substance, mental substance. Man brings the whole evolved powers of the cosmos to a point; and his substance does not end with the body. A more perfect physical body, also, can be evolved if man admits the possibility. The body cannot be denied the possibility of changing into a higher substance than... Independent of material life, if you can conceive of life plane—where matter is not indespensable to life,—there life acts on impulse and desire. There it is not limited by matter at all. So that a spirit in the vital world, can have hunger which is practically insatiable. And there desire is not limited by the formula of material substance. There is no limit because there is no physical body to limit its... the mental being. Therefore mind wants to take up the attitude that ultimate wisdom lies in rejecting matter—rejecting physical existence or the material world or the plane of matter. This, Sri Aurobindo believes, is not correct and holds that it is not the integral and ultimate wisdom. To take up this attitude as the last word of wisdom because life or mind are limited in their operations when ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine

Questions and Answers (1929-1931)  >  16 June 1929

... and receptive in his mind, the mind, touched by the power of Yoga, begins to change and progress swiftly. There may be the same rapidity of change in the vital consciousness if that is ready, or even in the body. But in the body the transforming power of Yoga is operative only to a certain degree; for the receptivity Page 85 of the body is limited. The most material plane of the universe... I can look and tell you the reason, but there is no general rule. The ailments of the body are not always the outcome of a mental disorder, disharmony or wrong movement. The source of the malady may be something in the mind, it may be something in the vital; or it may be something more or less purely physical, as in illnesses that arise from an outer contact. Again, the disturbance may be the result... before it can affect the physical body, touch another layer of the being that surrounds and protects it. This subtler layer is called in different teachings by various names,—the etheric body, the nervous envelope. It is a subtle body and yet almost visible. In density something like the vibrations that you see around a very hot and steaming object, it emanates from the physical body and closely covers it ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1929-1931)

The Life Divine  >  The Evolutionary Process - Ascent and Integration

... belongs to the domain of mind mostly for its utility for the support, comfort, use, satisfaction and entertainment of his physical and sensational existence. For the physical mind takes its stand on matter and the material world, on the body and the bodily life, on sense-experience and on a normal practical mentality and its experience. All that is not of this order, the physical mind builds up as a restricted... soul takes, as we may say, a nervous-material view of its whole physical existence so as to get out of it all the vital-physical intensity possible; for it seems to have some intense excitations of a mute life-vibration in it,—perhaps, though that is difficult for us to imagine, more intense relatively to its lower rudimentary scale than the animal mind and body in its higher and more powerful scale... feel the unseen dynamic forces and realities behind the material universe. There is an inner life-mind which does not need for its perceptions the evidence of the physical senses, is not limited by them; for on this level our inner life and the inner life of the world become real to us independent of the body and of the symbols of the physical world which alone we call natural phenomena, as if Nature ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision  >  Some Contribution of Sri Aurobindo to Psychology

... above. The order of the planes is in reference to each other, not in reference to the body. In reference to each other, the vital physical is below the physical mind, but above the material; but at the same time these powers interpenetrate each other."11 ( iv) SUBCONSCIENT " In our yoga we mean by the subconscient that quite submerged part of our being in which there... subtle vital. One says subtle physical to distinguish from gross material physical, because to our normal experience all physical is gross, sthula. But the vital is in its nature non-material, so that the adjective is superfluous."10 * * * " This question has no practical meaning for the vital physical forces can be received from anywhere by the body, from around, below or above... old thoughts old mental, vital and physical habits or an obscure mind full of obstinate Sanskaras, impressions, associations, fixed notions, habitual reactions formed by our past, an obscure vital full of the seeds of habitual desires, sensations and nervous reactions, a most obscure material which governs much that has to do with the condition of the body. If is largely responsible for our illnesses; ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Supermind in the Evolution

... a chimera. Fundamentally, physical science regards evolution as a development of forms and vital activities; the development of a larger and more capable consciousness is a subordinate result of the development of life and form and not a major or essential characteristic or circumstance and it cannot go beyond limits determined by the material origin of mind and life. Mind has shown itself capable of... 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 limits of our evolution here. It might be suggested also that until something clearly... present or apparent character of the evolution here as it is presented to us by physical science, it might be urged that there is no warrant for expecting any emergence of a principle higher than human mind or of any such thing as superhuman beings in a world of Matter. Consciousness is itself dependent upon Matter and material agencies for its birth and its operations and an infallible Truth-consciousness ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Letters on Yoga - I  >  The Vital Being and Vital Consciousness

... vital. One says subtle physical to distinguish from gross material physical—because to our normal experience all physical is gross, sthūla . But the vital is in its nature non-material, so the adjective is superfluous. By material vital, we mean the vital so involved in matter as to be bound by its movements and gross physical character. The action is to support and energise the body and keep in it the... The Lower Vital, the Physical Vital and the Material Vital Below the navel is the lower vital plane, which is ignorant and obscure, the seat of small desires, greeds, passions and enjoyments. 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. That [ seeking... a synthetical sense of these powers is as necessary as the analysis. Mind for instance is everywhere. The physical mind is technically placed below the vital and yet it is a prolongation of the mind proper and can act in its own sphere by direct touch with the higher mental intelligence. And there is too an obscure mind of the body, of the very cells, molecules, corpuscles. Haeckel, the German materialist ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Mother's Chronicles - Book Five  >  Why a Body

... "There is a physical aspect to things," he said, writing in greater detail, "and there is an occult supraphysical aspect — one need not get in the way of the other. All physical things are the expression of the supraphysical. The existence of a body with physical instruments and processes does not, as the 19 th century vainly imagined, disprove the existence of a soul which uses the body even if it... for us spiritual life does not mean contempt for Matter but its divinization. We do not want to reject the body but to transform it...." And Sri Aurobindo has given us a master-key : "A fully conscious body might even discover and work out the right material method and process of a material transformation." Page 164 ... attack the subconscient mind in the body; sometimes also the vital mind or mind proper — prepare the illness by fear or thought of illness. The doctors themselves said that in influenza or cholera in the Far East ninety percent got ill through fear. Nothing to take away the resistance like fear. But still the subconscient is the main thing." Because, thrown away from the mind, fear can be "seen passing ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

In the Mother's Light  >  Physical Transformation

... the external nature 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, 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,... It must be translated into the terms of the physical being for the "earthly transfiguration." This work of physical transformation is no morbid obsession with the body. It is, in fact, only when one rises far above the body-consciousness that one gains the power to transform the body. Deploring the engrossing care for the preservation of the body, which is almost universal in men, the Mother... man, but the physical nature has been left almost unreclaimed. Its customary habits and tendencies, its crude appetites and impulses, its mechanical reactions and responses to outward impacts have always been the disgust and despair of even the greatest of spiritual men. Hathayoga, rightly practised, gives considerable control over the physical body, but not over the whole physical nature; and ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light

The Divine Collaborators  >  Physical Transformation

... "Unless the external nature 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... It must be translated into the terms of the physical being for the "earthly transfiguration." This work of physical transformation is no morbid obsession with the body. It is, in fact, only when one rises far above the body-consciousness that one gains the power to transform the body. Deploring the engrossing care for the preservation of the body, which is almost universal in men, the Mother... man, but the physical nature has been left almost unreclaimed. Its customary habits and tendencies, its crude appetites and impulses, its mechanical reactions and responses to outward impacts have always been the disgust and despair of even the greatest of spiritual men. Hathayoga, righty practised, gives considerable control over the physical body, but not over the whole physical nature; and even ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Divine Collaborators

Mother’s Agenda 1968  >  September 28, 1968

... understand! We can answer "Yes," quite simply—so as to tell them, "Mind your own business!" "After death, what is the part of the being that becomes aware that one is dead?" Any part of the being that lives on becomes aware that the body is no longer there! It depends. "How can one say with certainty that the physical body is dead?" Only when it decomposes. "You said, 'Decomposition... hands papers to Satprem ). Page 266 "How does one become conscious of the physical being?" See that, the physical being! It's senseless! You answer: "The near totality of humanity is conscious ONLY of the physical being. Through education, the number of people conscious of their vital and mind goes on increasing. As for the human beings conscious of their psychic being, their... psychic being? The physical being. Physical! It's senseless!... It's the brain, that's all. Here it's more interesting: "Can one have the experience of death without dying?" Surely! You can have the experience in a yogic way, you can even have it materially if... ( laughing ) if death is brief enough not to give the doctors time to declare you dead!... Page 267 They ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1968

Mother’s Agenda 1962  >  January 12, 1962

... the psychological experiences, experiences in the mind, even the most material mind, or in the vital or the physical consciousness—the physical CONSCIOUSNESS—but not in the body. That's something new, it started only three or four years ago. All the rest is easy. Everything up to that point is settled—settled very nicely. Since the physical transformation is so difficult, one is tempted to wonder... "materialize" something, to work occultly—to create a new body by occult means.... That was the idea: for a few beings to first attain, here in this physical world, a level of realization giving them the power to materialize a supramental being. I once told you I put a body on a vital being 7 —but I couldn't have made that body material; it would have been impossible: something is lacking. Something... ly, if I really want to make use of this body's possibility without having to face the necessity of changing it because it can't follow along, then, materially, I would really need, as much as possible, to stop having to gulp down all sorts of things that drag me years backwards. It's difficult... difficult. So long as there's no question of physical transformation, the Page 36 p ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1962

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Ladder of Self-Transcendence

... it becomes the physical self of a physical universe in the reign of a physical Nature. Spirit is then absorbed in its experience of Matter; it is dominated by the ignorance and inertia of the tamasic Power proper to physical existence. In the individual it becomes a materialised soul, annamaya puruṣa , whose life and mind have developed out of the ignorance and inertia of the material principle and... For life in Matter works in dependence on the body; mind in Matter works in dependence on the body and on the vital or nervous being; spirit itself in Matter is limited and divided in its self-relation and its powers by the limitations and divisions of this matter-governed and life-driven mind. This materialised soul lives bound to the physical body and its narrow superficial external consciousness... ss, and it takes normally the experiences of its physical organs, its senses, its matter-bound life and mind, with at most some limited spiritual glimpses, as the whole truth of existence. Page 466 Man is a spirit, but a spirit that lives as a mental being in physical Nature; he is to his own self-consciousness a mind in a physical body. But at first he is this mental being materialised ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Essays Divine and Human  >  Man and Superman

... 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 physical operation of Nature... lower states developed up to a point at which Mind-intelligence could descend into the organised living body and take up the earth-past to mentalise and transform it, so Mind in man has to develop up to a point at which a consciousness greater than Mind can descend into the mind and living body and take up the human material to supramentalise and transform it into godhead. This is man's rise to the Infinite... grew and a mental boundary beyond which he cannot pass. For mind is the man, mind cramped into a body and entangled in the intricate machinery of a laborious and precarious physical organism which helps it less than it hampers. Mind's only data for knowledge are the motions of terrestrial life, the motions and processes of the physical world and its own processes and motions. Its notions about other ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays Divine and Human

A Greater Psychology  >  Psychical Phenomena

... and elsewhere Page 244 than in the physical body, communication in the psychical body or some emanation or reproduction of it, oftenest, though by no means necessarily, during sleep or trance and the setting up of relations or communication by various means with the denizens of another plane of existence. ...The physical mind is only a little part of us and there is a much more... action or some willed or unwilled effectiveness on our minds or vital being or through them even on the body. These transcriptions, impresses, thought images, life images, projections of the consciousness may also be representations or creations not of the physical world, but of vital, psychic or mental worlds beyond us, seen in our own minds or projected from other than human beings. And as there... possibility of a more direct, concretely sensible, almost material, sometimes actively material communication — a complete though temporary physical materialisation seems to be possible — with the powers, forces and beings of other worlds and planes. There may even be a complete breaking of the limits of the physical consciousness and the material existence. The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 844-46 ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11  >  The Mounting Fire

... movements, especially all the automatic reactions of the physical that form the roots of the material existence.         The whole physical being if it is to embody a new life in a new organisation must concentrate at one point within itself and find or found there the Fire, the dynamic Divine Will in its most concrete reality — the body's self and soul: the yajam ā na, the human figure of the... functioning.         I am speaking specially of the physical and material basis of mind and consciousness, for unless this basis is changed there can be no change in the structure of the being, and in the movement of outward life; even the consciousness would not change radically or permanently: a stable transformation can come only when the material stuff has undergone a reversal.         The... one to kindle this fire that apparently lies extinguished, the Vedic Rishis have a whole ritual of the process. They speak, first of all, of preparing the seat for Agni— barhi: it is the material casing of the body, and then one takes two pieces of the ara ṇ i species of wood or fuel, and rubs them one against the other till the fire leaps out. It refers to an aspiration, a concrete and concentrated ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11

A Greater Psychology  >  The Manifold Being

... being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the... inwards a mind-self, a life-self, a physical self; there is a being of mind, a mental Purusha, expressing something of itself on our surface in the thoughts, perceptions, activities of our mind-nature, a being of life which expresses something of itself in the impulses, feelings, sensations, desires, external life-activities of our vital nature, a physical being, a being of the body which expresses... view of the government of the nature by the inner principle. In some human beings it is the physical Purusha, the being of body, who dominates the mind, will and action; there is then created the physical man mainly occupied with his corporeal life and habitual needs, impulses, life-habits, mind-habits, body-habits, looking very little or not at all beyond that, subordinating and restricting all ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best  >  Mutation of the Human Species

... level of the physical consciousness and physical substance and into sub-conscience and the inconscience. The third step would be that of transformation of the inconscience and fixing of the supramental consciousness page - 127 into the material substance. This entire process implies that the gulf that exists between Mind and Supermind has to be bridged; the passages between the mind and supennind... and The New Divine Body Sri Aurobindo has envisaged the development of the Divine Body, and he has written in his "The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth" on the structure and functioning that the divine body will have, when it will visibly be operating physically on the physical earth in the same way in which the human physical body is today operating on the physical earth. That, when it... and intervenes, mind, life and body too can attain to the full power of the truth in them and their full possibility of perfection. This, no doubt, would not take place at once, but an evolutionary progress towards it could begin and grow with increasing rapidity towards its fullness. page - 129 All men might not reach that fullness till a later time, but still the human mind could come to stand ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best

The Life Divine  >  The Boundaries of the Ignorance

... being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the... ss 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 life and body—even the most physical parts of life—have a consciousness of their... even such an elemental awareness as primitive animal forms may have, but in us partly taken up by the 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 ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960  >  May 10, 1958

... if the mind accepts, the body and the vital refuse. And when the body refuses, it refuses with the stubbornness of a stone. Is it not due to the body's unconsciousness? No. From the minute it is conscious, it is conscious of its own falsehood! It is conscious of this law, of that law, of this third law that fourth law, this tenth law—everything is a 'law.' 'We are subject to physical laws: this... number of people, it is their body, the physical body, that obstinately resists. The difficulty is greater for Westerners than for Indians. It's as though their substance were steeped in falsehood. It also happens with Indians, of course, but generally the falsehood is much more in the vital than in the physical—because after all, the physical has been utilized by bodies belonging to enlightened beings... Aurobindo told me, 'You are She,' at the same time he bestowed upon my body this attitude of absolute authority. But as I had the inner vision of this truth, I concerned myself very little with the imperfections of the physical body—I didn't bother about that, I only used it as an instrument. Sri Aurobindo did the sadhana for this body, which had only to remain constantly open to his action. 1 ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Rebirth, Evolution, Heredity

... a psychical power behind the 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... the problem of our being. One of these is the ancient view that not only incidence of body and life on mind and soul, but incidence of mind and Page 283 soul on body and life have to be considered. Here too there is the evolutionary idea, but physical and life evolution, even the growth of mind, are held to be only incidental to a soul evolution of which Time is the course and the earth... explains nothing,—between mental action and its accompaniment of suggestive or instrumental physical functionings. She is determined, if she can, to explain every supraphysical phenomenon by some physical fact; psychological process of mind must not exist except as result or rendering of physiological process of body. This set resolution, apparently rational and cautious of ascertainable and firmly tangible ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Lights on Yoga  >  Planes and Parts of the Being

... open ourselves - to the power of the Mother. In the mind it manifests itself as a divine mind-force or a universal mind-force and it can do everything that the personal mind cannot do; it is then the Yogic mind-force. When it manifests and acts in the vital or the physical in the same way, it is there apparent as a Yogic life-force or a Yogic body-force. It can awake in all these forms, bursting outwards... all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self. There is the universal mental, the universal vital, the universal physical Nature and it is out of a selection of their forces and movements that the individual mind, vital and physical are made. The soul comes from beyond this nature of mind, life and body. It belongs to the transcendent... is not a formation Page 16 of physical nature alone, therefore it does not cease with the body. There is a mental and vital ego also. The base of the material consciousness here is not only the Ignorance, but the Inconscience-that is, the conscious ness is involved in form of Matter and energy of Matter. It is not only the material consciousness but the vital and the mental too ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Lights on Yoga

The Hidden Forces of Life  >  Forces of Illness and Accident

... Accident The suggestions that create illness or unhealthy conditions of the physical being come usually through the subconscient—for a great part of the physical being, the most material part, is subconscient, i.e. to say, it has an obscure consciousness of its own but so obscure and shut up in itself that the mind does not know its movements or what is going on there. But all the same it is a... in the envelope itself before it penetrates the material body. Then one may feel some effect, e.g. feverishness or a tendency to cold, but there is not the full invasion of the malady. If it can be stopped earlier or if the vital envelope of itself resists and remains strong, vigorous and intact, then there is no illness; the attack produces no physical effect and leaves no traces. Sri Aurobindo ... attack the subconscient mind in the body, sometimes also the vital mind or mind proper—prepare the illness by fear or thought of illness. The doctors themselves said that in influenza or cholera in the Far East 90 per cent got ill through fear. Nothing to take away the resistance like fear. But still the subconscient is the main thing. If the contrary Force is strong in the body, one can move in the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Hidden Forces of Life

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  The Reincarnating Soul

... terrestrial existence; it takes material from the common matter-stuff, life-stuff, mind-stuff of the physical world and during earthly life it is constantly absorbing fresh material, throwing out what is used up, changing its bodily, nervous and mental tissues. But this is all surface work; behind is the foundation of past experience Page 275 held back from the physical memory so that the superficial... case of flesh is to stumble about in the ignorance, to confirm the error of the material mind and the senses. The body is a convenience, the personality is a constant formation for whose development action and experience are the instruments; but the Self by whose will and for whose delight all this is, is other than the body, other than the action and experience, other than the personality which they... inhabit the physical frame? What is it that the Soul draws out from the body when it casts off this partial physical robe which enveloped not it, but part of its members? What is it whose issuing out gives this wrench, this swift struggle and pain of parting, creates this sense of violent divorce? The answer does not help us much. It is the subtle or psychical frame which is tied to the physical by the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  17 July 1957

... of the body could be... Mother, in the physical education we practise here our aim is a greater and greater control over the body, isn't it? So, as Sri Aurobindo has said in what we read last time, that the Hatha-yoga and Tantric methods give a very great control over the body, 1 Why don't we introduce these methods into our system? These are occult processes for acting on the body—the Tantric... or which we have to make in our work if it is a physical work, do not help or help very little, almost negligibly, to develop the muscles and to create harmony in the body? These same movements, on the other hand, if they are made consciously, deliberately, with a definite aim, suddenly start helping you to form your muscles and build up your body. There are jobs, for instance, where people have to... ciousness the necessary physical transformation and its consequences. This might be found in the system of Chakras revealed by Tantric knowledge and accepted in the systems of Yoga, conscious centres and sources of all the dynamic powers of our being organising their action through the plexuses and arranged in an ascending series from the lowest physical to the highest mind centre and spiritual centre ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)

Sri Aurobindo And The Mother  >  The Mother Continues Sri Aurobindo's Work

... total unimportance of the external, material expression of the body's condition; the consciousness OF THE BODY was absolutely indifferent to external, physical signs, whether they were like this or like that (the BODY'S consciousness was what had experienced the identity). And this body-consciousness had the perception of the EXTREME RELATIVITY of the most material expression. I am translating... the activities of the physical mind can be clarified, controlled, mastered, silenced, and if the mind of cells can be allowed to function in its purity without being overlaid by the magic spell of the physical mind, then the mind of cells can receive and fix the supramental vibrations, and a new rhythm of supramental functioning in the body can be established. The cellular mind is, in fact, the link... CHANGES THE BODY'S TRUE CONSCIOUSNESS. Although we are in the habit of thinking that the body is very disturbed when it's ill, when something is going wrong, it's not so. It isn't disturbed in the way we understand it. Then what is disturbed if not the body? Oh, it's the physical mind, this stupid mind! It makes all the trouble, always. It isn't the body at all? No! The body is VERY ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo And The Mother

A Scheme for The Education of Bengal  >  Supermind In The Evolution

... a chimera. Fundamentally, physical science regards evolution as a development of forms and vital activities; the development of a larger and more capable consciousness is a subordinate result of the development of life and form and not a major or essential characteristic or circumstance and it cannot go beyond limits determined by the material origin of mind and life. Mind has shown itself capable of... 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 limits of our evolution here. It might be suggested also that until something clearly recognisable like... apparent character of the evolution here as it is presented to us by physical science, it might be urged that there is no warrant for expecting any emergence of a principle higher than human mind or of any such thing as superhuman beings in a world of Matter. Consciousness is itself Page 197 dependent upon Matter and material agencies for its birth and its operations and an infallible Tru ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Scheme for The Education of Bengal

Mother or The New Species - II  >  11: The Mind's Magic

... between the purely material substance and the primary form of evolved Mind we call the physical Mind. It is through the body that one communicates with the rest of the world, through this cellular mind. It is what makes everything communicate (except us). If we were suddenly reduced to having our cerebral mind and a little pair of human eyes, we would see a dead, photographic world, a crust of the... asked Mother, "what is disturbed if it's not the body?" Oh, its the physical mind, this stupid mind! It makes all the trouble, always. "It's not the body?" I insisted. No! "But then what suffers?" Suffering also comes through the physical mind, because if this entity is calmed down, we no longer suffer—exactly what happened to me! The physical mind, you see, makes use of the nervous substance; if we... the external, material expression of the body's condition: the consciousness OF THE BODY was absolutely indifferent to external, physical signs, whether they were like this or like that... such as swollen legs or a malfunctioning liver.... Well, it was all utterly unimportant: IT IN NO WAY CHANGES THE BODY'S TRUE CONSCIOUSNESS. Although we are in the habit of thinking that the body is very disturbed ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

The Life Divine  >  Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge

... than the physical our true existence, because we are even in our instrumental or expressive nature predominantly mind and not matter, mental much rather than physical beings. That growth into the full mental being is the first transitional movement towards human perfection and freedom; it does not actually perfect, it does not liberate the soul, but it lifts us one step out of the material and vital... present body between a single birth and death. As our regard does not go farther back in the past, so it does not extend farther out into the future; thus we are limited by our physical memory and awareness of the present life in a transient corporeal formation. But this limitation of our temporal consciousness is intimately dependent upon the preoccupation of our mentality with the material plane and... self-possession and self-mastery. These changes are possible only Page 767 by a withdrawal from our absorbing material preoccupation,—that does not necessitate a rejection or neglect of the life in the body,—and a constant living on the inner and higher planes of the mind and the spirit. For the heightening of our consciousness into its spiritual principle is effectuated by an ascent and a ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

The Destiny of the Body  >  The Double Denial

... "we have to suppose that the body is constructed by the agency of chemical elements building up atoms and molecules and cells and these again are the agents and only conductors at the basis of a complicated physical structure and instrumentation which is the sole mechanical cause of all our actions, thoughts, feelings, the soul a fiction and mind and life only a material and mechanical manifestation... transmuting action of consciousness upon the material body is a sheer figment of imagination. For the conception of a consciousness as a separate unity functioning or even existing independently of the physical brain, seems to lack in validity. Is consciousness really anything more than an aspect of the brain's reaction to the events occurring within the body? According to the adherents of various... of matter (causative materialism), or else conscious processes are in reality material in character (equative materialism). 5 Indeed, recent findings of physiological, psychological and pathological researches bear evidence to the "concomitance of psychical processes with physical, their dependence on material phenomena such as the functioning of the brain, the correlation of mental development ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Early Cultural Writings  >  Hathayoga

... with the eye on the body is the fulfilment of the tamasic or material man. The realisation of God in self with the eye on the antahkaran or heart and mind is the fulfilment of the rajasic or psychic man. The realisation of God in self with the eye on the spirit is the fulfilment of the sattwic or spiritual man. And each fulfils himself by rising beyond himself. When the material man fulfils Page... upon it and never be commanded by it. The second object was to conquer physical nature, by developing the four physical siddhis, laghima, anima, garima, mahima. By perfect laghima man can rise into the air and tread the winds as his natural element; by perfect anima he can bring the nature of the subtle body into the gross body, which the fire will no longer burn, nor weapons wound, nor Page 504... numerous others such as the extraordinary means by which they clean out daily all the physical impurities of the body. By these numerous and difficult physical practices they attain an extraordinary power, vitality, virility, longevity, and are also able to attain knowledge transcending the ordinary human bounds, leave the body in Samadhi and, in one word, exercise every mere power that comes by Yoga. But ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Early Cultural Writings

A Philosophy of Evolution for the Contemporary Man  >  An Experiment in Evolution

... and in the organization of its material workings. As Sri Aurobindo points out, 'A radical transformation of the functioning and, it may well be, of the structure and certainly of the two mechanical and material impulses and driving forces of the bodily system would be imperative ... A total transformation of the body would demand a sufficient change of the most material part of the organism, its constitution... near and annulling. distance, cognising what is now beyond the body's cognizance, acting where action is now out of its reach or its domain, developing subtleties and plasticities which could not be permitted under present conditions to the needed fixity of a material frame. These and other numerous potentialities might appear and the body become an instrument immeasurably superior to what we can now... consciousness the necessary physical transformation and its consequences. This might be found in the system of Chakras revealed by Tantric knowledge and accepted in the systems of Yoga, conscious centres and sources of all the dynamic powers of our being organising their action through the plexuses and arranged in an ascending series from the lowest physical to the highest mind centre and spiritual centre ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Philosophy of Evolution for the Contemporary Man

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Rebirth and Soul Evolution

... survives the dissolution of the body. On the other hand, if there is any element in us, still more the most important of all, which cannot be so accounted for, but presupposes a past or admits a future evolution other than that of the race mind and the physical ancestry, then some kind of soul birth becomes a logical necessity. Now it is just here that the claims of physical and vital evolution and heredity... Certainly it has been shown that our body and the most physical part of our life action are very largely the results of heredity, but not in such a way as to exclude an Page 289 assisting and perhaps really predominant psychical cause other than the ancestral contribution. It has been shown if you will that our conscious vitality and those parts of mind which depend upon it, something of... There is room enough for all three methods and there is no reason why our complex modern mind should not proceed simultaneously by all of them at once. For if the sceptical or provisional attitude makes us more ready to modify our image of Truth in the light of new material of thought and knowledge, the religious mind also, provided it keeps a certain firm and profound openness to new spiritual experience ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  Sadhana of the Body: Physical Transformation in the Integral Yoga

... Thus in our body, "the outer force and figure of being, what we might call the formal or form existence as distinguished from the immanent or secretly governing consciousness, is lost in the physical action, is so absorbed into it as to be fixed in a stereotyped self-oblivion unaware of what it is and what it is doing." (Ibid., p. 711) 5.But behind the outer veil of material inconscience... although still remaining material, will be of an altogether different sort. For, corresponding to the supramental consciousness of the gnostic being there exists what Sri Aurobindo calls "supramental substance". This supramental substance alone can confer on the physical body the status of a worthy mansion for the self-manifesting Spirit. And this, "not in the sense of any attachment of obligatoryrestriction... present the notation of the body and the 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 ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga

A Greater Psychology  >  Liberation and Transformation

... one may and usually does still go on in the outer parts of Nature thinking with the intellect or at best the intuitive mind, willing with a mental will, feeling joy and sorrow on the vital surface, undergoing physical afflictions and suffering from the struggle of life in the body with death and disease. The change then only will be that the inner self will watch all that without getting disturbed... kind of will, another luminous nature of emotion and aesthesis, another constitution of the physical consciousness that must come in by the supramental change. Letters on Yoga, pp. 18-19 Transformation means that the higher consciousness or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. There is a higher consciousness of the true self, which is... become a glorious counterpart of the supramental super-life above. The physical consciousness and physical being, the body itself must reach a perfection in all that it is and does which now we can hardly conceive. It may even in the end be suffused with a light and beauty and bliss from the Beyond and the life divine assume a body divine. But first the evolution of the nature must have reached ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Integral Perfection

... other yogas in its ideal of the physical perfection is its absolute insistence on the invulnerability of the gross physical body to all attacks of the forces of disruption and disintegration in the material world. It is not any kind of dematerialisation that is held up as the ideal, or the assumption of a bright, etheric body, but the divinisation of the physical body itself in all its cells and nerves... could be achieved, all that was intended to be achieved, was the realisation of some of the marvellous possibilities of the subtle physical in the gross body; and the ultimate aim of these yogas being the renunciation of the material life, no further perfection of the body was thought either necessary or possible. But the Integral Yoga makes the bringing down of these dynamic principles of perfection... us take the body first. We do not know, we do not even care to inquire, what incalculable powers slumber in the depths of our physical being, and what potentialities are involved in its relation with the subtle and the causal body. All spiritual experience testifies to the existence of a subtle body behind our gross physical frame; and a causal body behind the subtle. This causal body is made of ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

The Life Divine  >  Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality

... 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, the psychic being, that survives and carries mind and life with it... victory of soul and mind and life over the Inconscience and the limitations of material Nature. But such a survival could only persist in the subtle body; the being would still have to discard its physical form, pass to other worlds and in its return put on a new body. The awakened mental Purusha and vital Purusha, preserving the mind sheath and the life sheath of the subtle body which are usually... into a new birth and keep a vivid and sustained sense of a permanent being of mind and life constituted by the past and continuing into the present and future; but the basis of physical existence, the material body, could not be preserved even by this change. The physical being could only endure, if by some means its physical causes of decay and disruption could be overcome 2 and at the same time it ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Beyond Man  >  Chapter Twenty-seven: The New Body

... in her body, she knew that. Her mentor showed her how the formation of the new body had to be done ‘for hours and hours, and that insisted and did not want to go away. It insisted till the body had thoroughly understood. And there is no need of a material intervention … The material intervention was replaced by an intervention in the subtle physical, which was sufficient.’ In the true physical. ‘It was... before I can overcome this uneasiness.’ 12 These words cannot be interpreted in any other way than that the Mother already had a new subtle-physical body in 1954 besides and apart from her visible, gross material body. It was in this subtle-physical body that many saw her in their dreams and visions. ‘They see me like I really am,’ she said. The above quoted statements of May and September 1957... one [the subtle, true physical consciousness] has become almost more concrete and real than the physical consciousness. The purely material consciousness is more vague than [the true physical consciousness]. It gives the impression of being something that is not very … secure, yes, not very secure. Isn’t that strange.’ 28 February 1970: ‘My body is now bent materially, but during the night ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Beyond Man

The Life Divine  >  Matter

... encasing seed. The mind, life and body of man depend upon this physical principle, and if the out-flowering of Life is the result of Consciousness emerging into Mind, expanding, elevating itself in search of its own truth in the largeness of the supramental existence, yet it seems also to be conditioned by this case of body and by this foundation of Matter. The importance of the body is obvious; it is... not very surely, towards a partial and costly victory for the Mind in which it conquers, represses or even slays the vital cravings, impairs the physical force and disturbs the balance of the body in the interests of a greater mental activity and a higher moral being. It is in this struggle that the impatience of Life, the disgust of the body and the recoil from both towards a pure mental and moral existence... spirit. This, it is said, is the work of Mind or else, since evidently Thought does not directly create or even perceive the material form of things, it is the work of Sense; the sense-mind creates the forms which it seems to perceive and the thought-mind works upon the forms which the sense-mind presents to it. But, evidently, the individual embodied mind is not the creator of the phenomenon of Matter; ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

The Destiny of the Body  >  The Vision

... and potentialities of mind and thus truly become Man. But who can affirm that the human body and man's physical 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 ea... beyond 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... Aurobindo calls Supermind or the divine Gnosis, these limitations and liabilities, 'obscurities and ambiguities' of the material body of man will be transcended, the animal propensities and cravings and drives overcome, the denials and resistances and the tardy responses of the physical being surmounted, even the inconscient and unregenerate parts illumined and transmuted into their divine counterparts ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

A Greater Psychology  >  The Outer (Surface) Being

... domain of mind mostly for its utility for the support, comfort, use, satisfaction and entertainment of his physical and sensational existence. For the physical mind takes its stand on matter and the material world, on the body and the bodily life, on sense-experience and on a normal practical mentality and its experience. All that is not of this order, the physical mind builds up as a ... and, as thinking mind is the highest step she can now attain, the perfected mental man is the rarest and highest of her normal human creatures. To go farther she has to bring into the mind and make active in mind, life and body the spiritual principle. The Life Divine, pp. 717-20 The Physical Mind The true thinking mind does not belong to the physical, it is a separate... is only to receive the physical impression and its nervous translation and so become intelligently conscious of the object. ...we have to realise first that the mind is the only real sense even in the physical process: its dependence on the physical impressions is the result of the conditions of the material evolution, but not a thing fundamental and indispensable. Mind is capable of a sight that ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

Record of Yoga  >  7 January - 1 February 1927

... the decisive cure that had been taken to be the sense of the promise. The physical proof has been given that the thrill of Sahaituka Ananda can be eternised in the body, but the time is not yet. The nature of it is still subtle vital material with a strong beginning of density, not yet the dense entirely material Ananda. Page 1235 18 January 1927 Yesterday the representative +... movements of physical semi-discomfort) and is growing in intensity. Gnanam Brahma consciousness grows, but needs development of T³ & T² for full play. Increase in Ananda (Sahaituka, chiefly sparsha, but also the others), T³, T², Samadhi etc. All grows rapidly, but all is still imperfect. Page 1257 23 January 1927 Rapid increase and spread through the body of mental material & vital... shall continue, also the growth of T³ and T². The crisis in her body continues in all its adverse acuteness. The causes seem to be not personal, but due to circumstance favouring blind surrounding physical and vital physical influences. 20 January 1927 The adverse crisis continues in great violence. In this body there seems to be a turn for the better, not yet final and decisive. A ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

Overman  >  5: Overman

... means rightly the use of the higher powers of our nature, soul, mind, life-force and the faculties of the subtle physical consciousness to bring about results on their own or on the material plane by some pressure of their own secret law and its potentialities, for manifestation and results in human or earthly mind and life and body or in objects and events in the world of Matter.” (Sri Aurobindo:... which Yoga-knowledge outlines for us there is not only a subtle physical force but a subtle physical Matter intervening between life and gross Matter, and to create this subtle physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible … “A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to... instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light.” 4 After all we have learned in the previous chapter about “the new humanity” to be endowed with the Mind of Light, this new definition of the Mind of Light comes as a surprise. For as far as we know, in The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth Sri Aurobindo ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Overman

The Life Divine  >  Man and the Evolution

... is always superimposed on an already realised physical basis and acts by an extension of some established process of Nature. It is more conceivable that there was an opening of some existing body to a supraphysical influx so that it was transformed into a new body; but no such event can lightly be assumed to have taken place in the past history of material Nature: in order to happen it would seem to... longer in the darkness of the Ignorance and Inconscience. This terrestrial evolutionary working of Nature from Matter to Mind and beyond it has a double process: there is an outward visible process of physical evolution with birth as its machinery,—for each evolved form of body housing its own evolved power of consciousness is maintained and kept in continuity by heredity; there is, at the same time... for the body. It has to be noted that the human mind has already shown a capacity to aid Nature in the evolution of new types of plant and animal; it has created Page 876 new forms of its environment, developed by knowledge and discipline considerable changes in its own mentality. It is not an impossibility that man should aid Nature consciously also in his own spiritual and physical evolution ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III  >  3: The Mind of the Cells

... which changed all the data. Under that kind of fossilized crust of the physical Mind, something suddenly emerged, a crack, a hole in the carapace, and another voice, a new murmur in the body: There is a slight hope that this material mind, the mind of the cells, will be transformed—all of a sudden, here was all this mind saying a prayer. A prayer ... you know how I used to make prayers before,... and fragile a thing which stammered in her body, this mantra that repeated itself on its own, was the real knot of the battle that Mother had been fighting since 1958: ten years. Not that the Mind of the cells had not tried, many times, to supplant the physical Mind, but each time it was as if engulfed again or, at best, it passively obeyed the higher Mind and the spiritual Vision, like a baby somewhat... the physical body and its present form ... it was difficult; and when I tried and a deeper consciousness tried to manifest, it used to cause fainting. I mean that the union, the fusion, the identification with the Supreme Presence [or the Power, the “other thing,” the great Current] without that, WITHOUT THIS PHYSICAL MIND, by annulling it, caused fainting 4 . Which means that the physical Mind ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

The Life Divine  >  The Ascent of Life

... may break in the physical memory but need not destroy in the mental being itself and which may even by an eventual development bridge over the gap of physical memory created by death and birth of the body. Even as it is, even in the present imperfect development of embodied mind, the mental being is conscious in the mass of a past and a future extending beyond the life of the body; he becomes aware... predominance of Mind 1 which progressively imposes its own law more and more upon the material existence. For Mind by its greater subtlety does not need to devour in order to assimilate, 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... The terms of the problem presuppose the full emergence of Mind; for in vitality without conscious mind there can be no Page 214 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 ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

On Thoughts and Aphorisms  >  Aphorism - 69

... yoga and followed a discipline—it is relatively easy; on the psychological plane too, if you bring in this equality, it is not very difficult. But as soon as you come to the material plane, that is, the physical and then the body, it is not easy. The two conditions are: first, a power of expansion, of widening, that is unlimited, so to say, so that you can widen yourself to the dimension of the supramental... easy. But the body! It is very difficult, very difficult without the body losing—how to put it?—it's centre of coagulation; without it dissolving into the surrounding mass. And even then, if one were in the midst of Nature with mountains, forests and rivers, and great natural beauty, plenty of space, it would be rather pleasant! But one cannot take a single step materially, out of one's body, without coming... which is a very concrete, absolutely material one, when one is dealing with these cells which must remain cells and not evaporate into a reality which is no longer physical. And at the same time, they must have this suppleness, this lack of fixity which enables them to widen indefinitely. ( Silence ) The experience of the boat took place in the subtle physical. And the people who had dark patches ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Thoughts and Aphorisms

Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)  >  chapter 023

... ion of the body can lead to "duration of life at will".   Since such duration hinges on immunity in the body, let me cite another passage: "As for the question about the illness, perfection in the physical plane is indeed part of the ideal of the Yoga, but it is the last item and, so long as the fundamental change has not been made in the material consciousness to which the body belongs, one... the physical material being is not possible otherwise.   Sri Aurobindo's answer should put a finis to all talk of anyone undergoing the physical and material being's transformation on his own. Even by itself the talk appears to be no more than "sounding brass or tinkling cymbal" without the necessary background being perceived - in the person you refer to - of a supramentalised mind and... Mother when Sri Aurobindo for reasons of his own pulled his body out of the transformative process.   (2)If the Mother also withdrew from her body the immediate individual process of transformation of the body came to a halt. No doubt, a lot of Yogic progress was still possible, but the final leap to the transformation of the gross-physical substance, ensuring freedom from disease, ageing and death ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)

Mother’s Agenda 1961  >  January 31, 1961

... total unimportance of the external, material expression of the body's condition: the consciousness OF THE BODY was absolutely indifferent to external, physical signs, whether they were like this or like that (the BODY'S consciousness was what had experienced the identity). And this body-consciousness had the perception of the EXTREME RELATIVITY of the most material expression. I am translating it... the body is very disturbed when it's ill, when something is going wrong, it's not so. It isn't disturbed in the way we understand it. Then what is disturbed if not the body? Oh, it's the physical mind, this stupid mind! It makes all the trouble, always. It isn't the body at all? No! The body is VERY enduring. Then what suffers? Suffering also comes through the physical mind... condition for the establishment of true Harmony in the most material Matter—the most external, physical Matter ( Mother pinches the skin of her hand ). This experience has been like a stage—an indispensable stage for establishing this complete detachment; an indispensable stage so that the harmony of the body-consciousness (which came with the body's experience of the Divine) might have its effect upon ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1961

From Man Human to Man Divine  >  On Physical Transformation

... liability for the actually elaborated human body to act as the physical base for a divinised existence. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "Even if we suppose a soul, a conscious will at work in this body it could not arrive at a divine transformation if there were no radical change in the bodily instrument itself and in the organisation of its material workings. The transforming agent will be... supramental evolution will be to effectuate the necessary changes in the most material part of the organism, in its physical constitution and its bodily processes. As a consequence of the direct and overt intervention of Supermind, many of the organs of the present human body will be automatically changed in their material working and use, and the need of their instrumentation and even of their existence... existence including its most material foundation is the goal envisaged by the Yoga of Integral Transformation, we must seek for the clue that will resolve the age-old deadlock and open the portals to the transfiguration of our body. We have seen before that a 'static seizure' of the domains of the spirit in our inner consciousness is not sufficient for the physical transformation; for that ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   From Man Human to Man Divine

Science, Materialism, Mysticism  >  Matter Life Mind

... the highest characteristics we have shown the ultra-material to possess. Our study of parapsychology in the context of scientific findings on a statistical basis, supplemented by an examination of June's "collective unconscious", revealed mind as capable of operating not only in independence of the body and brain but also in independence of physical space and time, though having contact with them all... life and mind. This progressive domination is just what we seem to discover when we observe the results of evolution and the seeming shows itself as fact when we demonstrate, in contradiction of the old materialism no less than of Huxleyan monism, life and mind to be distinct powers operating on matter and to be neither useless material by-products nor helpless non-material correlates of physical happenings... processes life is independent of and not ruled by material organisation, Page 310 much less can mind in its distinction from matter be a mere helpless accompaniment of physical events. Yes, pluralism cannot be avoided in scientific philosophy. A plane of life and a plane of mind must be declared to exist together with the material plane. At the same time, within a certain range ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Science, Materialism, Mysticism

Letters on Yoga - III  >  Descent and the Lower Nature

... entered into the physical (physical mental, physical vital, material) consciousness. The two main obstacles here are the mechanical mind with its memories and desires of the past and the most outward sex movements; these have to be overcome (especially the mechanical mind, for the other may be easily overcome if not supported by the vital proper) for the Light to possess all the physical consciousness... into the physical consciousness direct in the sense that the rest can remain passive, but it must pass through the subtle to reach the material. All experiences that penetrate the centres are recorded in the body and seem to be the body's experiences, 1 but one has to distinguish between the reflection of the experiences there and the experiences that belong to the physical body consciousness... into the whole being (including the lower vital and body) that the basis and organisation [ of the being ] can be founded and settled. Descent into the Physical Consciousness and Body This is a very great progress—to be able to receive the higher consciousness while doing external things with the physical mind and body—it shows that the physical consciousness is fast opening. What you feel is indeed ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  The Ascending Series of Substance

... fulfilment. He has other bodies besides the physical in which he can become conscious and so enter into the supraphysical grades of substance and impose their law upon his 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... of assimilation, interchange, transmutation, unification.—There is such an ascending scale from the dense to the subtle even in material substance and beyond the subtlest material essence we have grades of other substance corresponding to the series of Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind and Spirit. Each, that is to say, is the basis of a world or other kind of existence in which these higher principles... force ascending from the inconscience of material substance to the infinite self-consciousness of spiritual. But all these principles are interconnected.Matter contains all of them and evolves them out of itself in obedience to the constant pressure of the higher worlds, an evolution which must continue until they are able to express themselves fully in the material principle.—Man is the fit instrument ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

In the Mother's Light  >  Transformation

... The constituents of the nature of man are the physical body, the vital, that is to say, the principle and active formation of life, and the mind. Behind this triple formation is the psyche or the soul evolving in this nature for a divinely perfect self-expression and self-fulfilment on earth. But the body, life, and mind, being derived from material inconscience, are normally turbid and impure, and... downward pull of material inertia greatly impeding its necessary self- modification and self-adaptation. The soul, exerting a steady ethicspiritual will, effects a certain amount of purification, sometimes even a great amount—it rays out something of its light into the mind, transmits something of its peace and calm and detachment into the vital, and controls some of the movements of the body, but it finds... of this long process is marked by an increasing emergence of the psychic being or the soul and its self-infusion into the mind, life and body. This is called psychicisation. The innate aspiration, devotion, love and joy of the psyche are transmitted into the Mind, life and body which, progressively cleansed of the taint Page 119 of the inconscience in Matter, begin to radiate ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Yoga and Hypnotism

... dream, no illusion of mystics. It is known that we can alter the associations of mind and body temporarily and that the mind can alter the conditions of the body partially. Yoga asserts that these things can be done permanently and completely. For the body conquest of disease, pain and material obstructions, for the mind liberation from bondage to past experience and the heavier limitations of space... of the contact, neither is their seat in the body; they are the result of association and their seat is in the mind. Vinegar is sour, sugar sweet, but to the hypnotised mind vinegar can be sweet, sugar sour. The sourness or sweetness is not in the vinegar or sugar, but in the mind. The heart also is the subject of the mind. My emotions are like my physical feelings, the result of association, and my... They are habits of the mind, nothing more In the same way though with more difficulty I can stop the reactions of physical pain and pleasure so that nothing will hurt my body. If I am a coward today, I can be a hero tomorrow. The cowardice was merely the habit of associating certain things with pain and grief and of shrinking from the pain and grief; this shrinking and the physical sensations in the vital ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Isha Upanishad  >  The Isha Upanishad

... spiritual, ideal or mental similarly translated. Inert physical bodies receive all the impacts that the mind receives, but being devoid of organised mentality, retain them only in the involved mind in matter and are incapable of translating them into mental symbols. Our bodies are naturally inert physical bodies moved by life & mind. They also receive all impacts, but not all of them are ... Life entering into body is dominated partly by the laws of body; it is therefore unable to impart its own full & uninterrupted energy to its form. Consequently there is no physical immortality. The organisation of individual animated life tends to hasten the period of dissolution by introducing shocks of an intensity of force alien to matter which wastes the material form by its activity. Therefore... Spirit and God. Man is a mental being, manu or manomaya purusha, who has entered into a vitalised material body and is seeking to make it capable of infinite mentality & infinite ideality so that it may become the perfect instrument, seat and temple of the manifest Sacchidananda. Mind in the material world is attentive to two kinds of knowledge, impacts from outside, corporeal or mental, received ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Isha Upanishad

Record of Yoga  >  Sapta Chatusthaya - Scribal Version

... there is full Arogya Shakti. (3) Immortality in the body. Utthapana is the state of not being subject to the pressure of physical forces. There are also three stages here: (1) When there is a great force, lightness and strength in the body (full of vital energy); this shows that the body is full of Prana Shakti. (2) When there is no physical weariness, no exhaustion of the brain or nervous centres... unhampered force in the mental power or in the physical power. In the physical it shows itself by an abnormal strength which is not muscular and may even develop into the power of increasing the size and weight of the body etc. Laghima is a similar power of lightness, that is to say of freedom from all pressure or weighing down in the mental, pranic or physical being. By Laghima it is possible to get rid... dream. [This happens when] 14 the mind proper is not acting at all in the physical consciousness and only [ ] 15 parts of the nervous system are awake. But when part of the mind remains as it were awake even in [ ] 16 sleep, then one may get [accurate] 17 records of true and actual experiences. These are not dreams but internal visions. Part of the mind is ranging through time and space or ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

Kena and Other Upanishads  >  Kena Upanishad: An Incomplete Commentary

... mind & life which are in this body can depart from it, intact & still organised, and act more freely outside it; mind can know even material things without the help of the physical eye, touch or ear; life itself is not conditioned necessarily, and mind is not even conditioned usually, though it is usually affected, by the state of the body or its movements. It can always and does frequently in our... & determine the condition of the body. Therefore mind is capable of freedom from the matter in which it dwells here,—freedom in being, freedom in knowledge, freedom in power. It is true that while working in matter, every movement of mind produces some effect & consequently some state or movement in the body, but this does not show that the mind is the material result of matter any more than steam... variously active in many bodies; not many minds, but one mind variously intelligent in many embodied vitalities. It is, at first sight, a plausible theory that life & mind are only particular movements of matter itself under certain conditions & need not therefore be regarded as independent immaterial movements of consciousness involved in matter but only as latent material activities of which matter ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Kena and Other Upanishads

Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  12 March 1958

... super-imposed on an already realised physical basis and acts by an Page 291 extension of some established process of Nature. It is more conceivable that there was an opening of some existing body to a supraphysical influx so that it was transformed into a new body; but no such event can lightly be assumed to have taken place in the past history of material Nature: in order to happen it would... potentials of the material Energy. It could only happen there by an intervention of a supraphysical force or law of Nature or by a creator Mind acting with full power and directly on Matter. An action of a supraphysical Force and a creator may be conceded in every new appearance in Matter; each such appearance is at bottom a miracle operated by a secret Consciousness supported by a veiled Mind- Energy or... conscious intervention of an invisible mental being to form the body he intended to inhabit or else a previous development of a mental being in Matter itself who would be already able to receive a supraphysical power and impose it on the rigid and narrow formulas of his physical existence. Otherwise we must suppose that there was a pre-existent body already so much evolved as to be fitted for the reception ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Involution and Evolution

... in either case concealed from us in the shell of material Nature. The Spirit which manifests itself here in a body, must be involved from the beginning in the whole of matter and in every knot, formation and particle of matter; life, mind and whatever is above mind must be latent inactive or concealed active powers in all the operations of material energy. The only alternative would be to drive in... humanity.Our humanity is the conscious meeting place of the finite and the infinite and to grow more and more towards that Infinite even in this physical birth is our privilege. This Infinite, this Spirit who is housed within us but not bound or shut in by mind or body, is our own self and to find and be our self was, as the ancient sages knew, always the object of our human striving, for it is the object... only slightly evolved in the dullness of the material covering? Material energy would be then Life packed into the density of Page 324 Matter and feeling out in it for its own intenser recognisable power which it finds within itself in the material concealment and liberates into action. Life itself would be an energy of a secret mind, a mind imprisoned in its own forms and quivering out ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Beyond Man  >  Chapter Nineteen: Twelve Quiet Days

... the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light... transformation of the mind of the body cells, of the matter of which the body consists, was called ‘the Mind of Light’ by Sri Aurobindo — of the supramental Light that is the supramental Vibration. About this completely new phenomenon on Earth he has first written in a series of articles requested by the Mother for the Bulletin of Physical Education , the quarterly of the section of physical education in the... enormous occult and spiritual capacities and now with the Mind of Light in her corporeal substance, was not the realization of material supramentality but of corporeal overmanhood as identified in this chapter. This is evident from statements like the one spoken by her on 10 May 1958, when she had accomplished that task. ‘I have told my body [in December 1950]: “You are going to realize that overmanhood ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Beyond Man

A Greater Psychology  >  Sri Aurobindo on the Self as Experienced in Yoga

... alter the whole make and economy of life in the material universe. 6 The third discovery to which one is led through the practice of yoga is that the personal self does not live, as we feel in our surface consciousness, in a private and solitary inner world circumscribed by the physical body and separated from all that is beyond the body, but is connected with the entire cosmos. ... and mostly trivial thoughts, a number of more or less imperative vital 4 needs, alternations of physical health and disease, a scattered and inconsequent succession of joys and griefs, frequent minor disturbances and vicissitudes and rarer strong searchings and upheavals of mind or body, and through it all Nature, partly with the aid of his thought and will, and partly without or in spite... forces. 9 Page 364 The fourth discovery to which yoga leads is that the make-up of physical, emotional and mental constituents which we regard as our self is only the apparent self of our external personality, concealing the real Self within. ...this little mind, vital and body which we call ourselves is only a surface movement and not our "self" at all. It is an external ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

Essays Divine and Human  >  The Problem of Consciousness

... [its] instrument made of its substance, dependent on [its] substance, inexistent without it. Mind is an action of Matter, not a separate power or force; there is nothing in it superior to the physicality of the body; it exists by the body and as a part of its activity, lasts along with it, dies with it. Mind is a product of gases, some operation of Nature's chemistry, glandular influences, nervous ... her very face and body. Page 288 Then only can both ends of the riddle be firmly seized and connected together, the whole of existence seen in one gaze and life compelled to unmask its fathomless significance[.] A mysterious something involved in Matter, concealed by it, evolving from it but in a material house or figure, striving to reveal itself in life and mind, but concealed by... contacts of things outside, to other material objects, bodies, movements, forces. Sense and sensation are the reply of the nerves to stimulus of external and material things or to internal stimuli that are still material. To the experience of the body the result of these, recoils, reflexes, reactions, may seem mental, but that cannot alter the fact that they are material products of the workings of Matter ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays Divine and Human

Questions and Answers (1956)  >  24 October 1956

... around his central psychic being a fully developed and organised mind, an absolutely surrendered and collaborating vital and an obedient, docile and supple physical being. This physical being, as it is fully developed, will have a subtle body—what Sri Aurobindo calls the "true physical"—which will infinitely surpass the limits of its body and have enough suppleness, plasticity, balance to be able to adhere... and fully developed beings has slowly prepared another being capable of receiving and assimilating it, and in order not to stop its material work when it leaves one body, it goes and joins another psychic being, merges with it, combines with it in another physical body; that is an extreme case, extremely Page 336 rare also, but one which forms part of an altogether traditional occult kn... the soul which wants to incarnate stays at times in a domain of the higher mind, quite close to the earth, having chosen its future home; or else it can descend further, into the vital, and from there have a more direct action; or again it can enter the subtle physical and very closely govern the development of its future body. Now the other question―the one about departure. Page 335 That ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1956)

The Riddle of This World  >  The Graded Worlds

... with the material domain and, as it were, reproduce or project their action here. And each thing created here has, supporting it, subtler envelopes or forms of itself which make it subsist and connect it with forces acting from above. Man, for instance, has, besides his gross physical body, subtler sheaths or bodies by which he lives behind theveil in direct connection with supra-physical planes of... corresponding movement of manifestation in the physical world. But something more is needed to turn that static or latent possibility into a dynamic potentiality or an actual urge towards a material creation. That something may be a call from the material plane, e.g., some force or someone on the physical existence entering into touch With a supra-physical power or world or part of it and moved to bring... we regard the vital or the subtle physical plane, We See great ranges of it, (most of it),existing in themselves, Without any relation with the material world and with no movement to affect or influence it, still less to precipitate a corresponding manifestation in the physical formula. At most we can say that the existence of anything in the vital, subtle physical or any other plane creates a possibility ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Riddle of This World

The Destiny of the Body  >  The Problem

... mental or vital fronts are more than neutralised by the deleterious effects produced on the physical system. As a matter of fact, in the prevailing state of the material organisation of our body, its supporting energies have to be maintained by food, sleep and such other physical means; and if the body is left insufficiently nourished there can develop in the being an overstrained condition of... "without it no physical form could have come into being or could remain in being...no material force could exist or act without it, for from it they derive their energy and movement and they are its vehicles." 1 Now, if this be a fact, as Sri Aurobindo has so forcefully put it, that it is " Life [that] forms body, it is not formed by it ," 2 its apparent dependence upon physical energy gathered... and the body is the eater; the body is established upon Prana." 1 Indeed, the material aspect of bodily life, of which alone we are normally aware, is no more than its outermost movement. In reality, the universal and immortal Life-Principle, anilam amṛtam, is superior to the principle of birth and death. Life does not come into play only with the formation of a viable body nor does ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Materialism

... possible action of body and matter on mind and life, but explored all the possible action of mind too on life and body; that opens undreamed vistas. And there is always the vast field of the action of mind in itself and on itself, which needs for its elucidation another, a mental, a psychic science. Having examined and explained Matter by physical methods and in the language of the material Brahman,—it... hold the mind of man to it for as long as it might be needed. Man does need to develop firmly in all his earthly parts, to fortify and perfect his body, his life, his outward-going mind, to take full possession of the earth his dwelling-place, to know and utilise physical Nature, enrich his environment and satisfy by the aid of a generalised intelligence his evolving mental, vital and physical being.... after all the whole formula of universal being. Physical science must necessarily to its own first view be materialistic, because so long as it deals with the Page 191 physical, it has for its own truth's sake to be physical both in its standpoint and method; it must interpret the material universe first in the language and tokens of the material Brahman, because these are its primary and its ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Mother’s Agenda 1964  >  October 7, 1964

... sea five "luminous cigars" go by, in single file, exactly the same color as those she had seen. But in their case, they saw it with their physical eyes. So that seems interesting. It was clearly a phenomenon of a subtle physical order (in its origin) or material vital (in its origin), but which manifested physically, and which may very well have come from other planets that are a little more subtle... gave it an imprint almost of pessimism and defeatism, which is certainly the greatest obstacle. This is the thing I am conscious of in my own work. The most material consciousness, the most material mind, is in the habit of having to be whipped into acting, into making effort and moving forward, otherwise it's tames. So then, if it imagines, it always imagines the difficulty—always the obstacle... to her own body ), this seems to be the lesson for these aggregates (bodies, you know, seem to me to be simply aggregates). And as long as there is, behind, a will to keep this together for some reason or other, it stays together, but... These last few days (yesterday or the day before), there was this: a sort of completely decentralized consciousness (I am always referring to the physical consciousness ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1964

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6  >  Observations

... That body must descend or reveal itself or clothe itself with a new material substance. That new material substance was being prepared in the Mother's body which was the workshop, as it were, for the Divine body. She has been building in this way not only a personal body of her own, the new Divine body, but also a 'generic' body for humanity at large out of which other personal bodies may be precipitated... Mother's body was not meant to give us, to make a gift to us of a transformed human body, for our contemplation, our delectation. It had a more serious purpose. It was to furnish the material stuff for the manifestation, the incarnation of the subtle Divine body preparing behind. . Humanity in its present embodied manifestation cannot be immediately changed, transmuted into the supramental body. That... into the material forms of the material world - the two forming but one indivisible act. The body that is being divinised can never suffer deterioration, neither in respect of its substance nor of its functionings. Page 33 There can only be a re-orientation or transforming of the cells and of their functions. Medicine in Mother's body is not for changing the body - helping ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6

The Destiny of the Body  >  The Vision of the Divine Body

... be unless the body too undergoes a transformation, unless its action and functioning attain to a supreme capacity" 1 and "the physical consciousness, and physical being, the body itself...be suffused with a light and beauty and bliss from the Beyond and the life divine assume a body divine." 2 Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo sounds a note of warning: "It is because he has developed or been given... in the field of body and Matter, its working will be "not an influence on the physical giving it abnormal faculties, but an entrance and penetration changing it wholly into a supramentalised physical". 4 Now, as regards the nature and character of this supramentalised physical making possible the appearance, here upon earth itself, of a wholly transfigured divine body , Sri Aurobindo... discuss in full the nature of this apotheosis of the material body of man, as envisaged in the Yoga-Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, nor can we indicate how far and in what way the insistent problems of fatigue and inertia, disease and decay, un-regenerated impulses and appetites are going to be solved in the transformed divine body to appear in time. We content ourselves with picking ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

The Life Divine  >  The Knot of Matter

... Page 258 awakes and seeks to impose itself on physical form and material force and to use all things at its own will and for its own need, when Mind awakes and seeks to know the who, the why, the how of itself and all things and above all to use its knowledge for the imposition of its own freer law and self-guiding action upon things, material Nature seems to yield, even to approve and aid, though... which pure mind works as its natural medium and which is far subtler, more flexible, more plastic than anything that our physical sense can conceive of as Matter. We can speak of a substance of mind because we become aware of a subtler medium in which forms arise and action takes place; we can speak also of a substance of pure dynamic life-energy other than the subtlest forms of material substance and... the finite. Nor can the emergence of mental consciousness in the material universe bring with it any promise of a divine fulfilment. For the principle of division is not proper to Matter, but to Mind; Matter is only an illusion of Mind into which Mind brings its own rule of division and ignorance. Therefore within this illusion Mind can only find itself; it can only travel between the three terms of ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Sri Aurobindo And The Mother  >  Appendix

... Aurobindo calls, the mental, the vital and the physical. The mind proper is divided into three parts—thinking Mind, dynamic Mind and externalising Mind. The vital is divided into three parts, the emotional vital, the central vital and the lower vital. The physical refers to the material or physical consciousness and to the physical body. The thinking Mind is concerned with ideas and knowledge in... inter-penetrate each other. The body-energy is a manifestation of material forces supported by a vital-physical energy which is the vital energy precipitated into matter and conditioned by it. The mental-physical or the physical Mind is the mind at the service of the physical. It is the mind conditioned by the physical, and it is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only... sense-mind, heart, the vital and sensational being and translate them by a luminous and harmonising conversion into a unity of the truth, power and delight of a living existence. It is the power also of overcoming physical limitations and developing a more perfect and divine instrumental body. The next element of perfection is that of the gnostic perfection in the physical body. The physical body ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo And The Mother

The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual System and The Mother's Contribution to it  >  The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual System

... the mummies kept their body intact so long as the spirit of the form persisted. It is that mind, this wholly material mind."¹ In the same talk she says about herself: "It is long since the physical mind has changed" - and explains: "The physical mind is the mind of the physical personality formed by the body but it is not the mind of Matter: it is the mind of the physical being." In differentiating... even the mind has a physical part; there is a mental physical, a mind of the body and the material..." (p.351). It is evidently the "mind of the body and the material" that he speaks of in writing of "the gross material part" thus: "it must be remembered that this too has a consciousness of its own, the obscure consciousness proper to the limbs, cells, tissues, glands, organs" (p.348). The... usage of the term "physical mind". She equates it to "the body mind" or "the mind that is in the body" and the letter editorially excerpted from Sri Aurobindo as relevant, with its mention of "this body mind" to signify "an obscure mind of the body, of the very cells, molecules, corpuscles", leaves us in no uncertainty about the Mother's meaning. She means by "the physical mind" the dim mental ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual System and The Mother's Contribution to it

Essays Divine and Human  >  Man and the Supermind

... differentiating essence of man is mind, the differentiating essence of superman will be supermind or a divine gnosis. Man is a mind imprisoned, obscured and circumscribed in a precarious and imperfect living but imperfectly conscious body. The superman will be a supramental spirit which will envelop and freely use a conscious body, plastic to spiritual forces. His physical frame will be a firm support... the transformed terrestrial body. A gnostic supermanhood is the next distinct and triumphant victory to be won by the spirit descended into earthly nature. The disk of a secret sun of Power and Joy and Knowledge is emerging out of the material consciousness in which our mind works as a chained slave or a baffled and impotent demiurge; supermind will be the formed body of that radiant effulgence.... which are beyond him, a dwarf enamoured of the heights. His mind is a darkened ray in the splendours of the universal Mind. His life is a striving exulting and suffering wave, an eager passion-tossed and sorrow-stricken or a blindly and dully toiling petty moment of the universal Life. His body is a labouring perishable speck in the material universe. An immortal soul is somewhere hidden within him and ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays Divine and Human

Evolution and the Earthly Destiny  >  In Quest of Reality

... same). The reality remains material: for light, physical light is not something spiritual or even immaterial. Well, let us proceed a little further. Admitted the universe is a physical substance (although essentially of the nature of light—admitted light is a physical substance, obeying the law of gravitation, as Einstein has demonstrated). Does it then mean that the physical universe is after all... the Pure Reason, viz., the Practical Reason; while the realities given by the senses and the judgments of the logical mind are of another section. It may be said one is physical, the other metaphysical. The positivists limit their field of enquiry and knowledge to the physical: they seek to keep the other domain quite apart as something imaginary, illusory, often unnecessary and not unoften harmful... light for, we all are come into a world of light and we ourselves, the elements of our physical frame are made of the very texture of light. So far so good. But it is evidently not far enough, for one 210 can answer that all this falls within the dominion of Matter and the material. The conception of Matter has changed, to be sure: Matter and energy are identified, as we have ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution and the Earthly Destiny

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Synthesis of the Disciplines of Knowledge

... Nature instals the base of these dynamos in the material bodies she has formed, makes these bodies the ground for her stations and connects the mental with the material by a nerve-system full of the movement of vital currents through which the mind becomes conscious of the material world and, so far as it chooses, of the vital world of Nature. Otherwise the mind would be conscious of the mental world first... Nature has created within her material unity separate-seeming bodies which the Soul manifested in material Nature enfolds, inhabits, possesses, uses; the Soul forgetting itself experiences only this single knot in Matter and says "I am this body." It thinks of itself as the body, suffers with the body, enjoys with the body, is born with the body, is dissolved with the body; or so at least it views its... glimpse the material. As it is, its attention is fixed on the body and the material world in which it has been installed and it is aware of the rest of existence only dimly, indirectly or subconsciously in that vast remainder of itself with regard to which superficially it has become irresponsive and oblivious. The Soul identifies itself with this mental dynamo or station and says "I am this mind." And ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Nachiketas  >   Appendix

... victory of soul and mind and life over the Inconscience and the limitations of material Nature. But such a survival could only persist in the subtle body; the being would still have to discard its physical form, pass to other worlds and in its return put on a new body. The awakened mental Purusha and vital Purusha, preserving the mind sheath and the life sheath of the subtle body which are usually... into a new birth and keep a vivid and sustained sense of a permanent being of mind and life constituted by the past and continuing into the present and future; but the basis of physical existence, the material body, could not be preserved even by this change. The physical being could only endure, if by some means its physical causes of decay and disruption could be overcome and at the same time it could... the material Inconscience and __________ 1. Even if Science, physical Science or occult Science, — were to discover the necessary conditions or means for an indefinite survival of the body, still, if the body could not adapt itself so as to become a fit instrument of expression for the inner growth, the soul would find some way to abandonit and pass on to a new incarnation. The material or physical ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Nachiketas

Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  17 April 1957

... psychic, the mental, the vital and it must be the aim of our physical culture also. If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use . Śarīram khalu dharmasādhanam, says the old Sanskrit adage,—the body is the means of fulfilment of dharma, and dharma means every... and can put them in contact with physical vibrations. Not only is it something that can be done, but it is something which is done. And all that is a science, a science which must itself be perfected, completed, and which will obviously be used for the creation and setting in action of new bodies which will be able to manifest the supramental life in the material world. But, as Sri Aurobindo says... here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot be unless the body too undergoes a transformation, unless its action and functioning attain to a supreme capacity and the perfection which is possible to it or which can be made possible. " The Supramental Manifestation, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 5 Mother, how can the functioning of the body "attain to a supreme capacity"? ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)

Words of the Mother - III  >  Transformation and the Parts of the Being

... Honesty in the physical mind: preliminary indispensable condition for transformation. Page 88 Integral offering of the vital: an important stage towards transformation. Renunciation of emotional desires: indispensable for transformation. Not only the mind and the vital, but the body also in all its cells must aspire for the divine transformation. Physical plasticity:... from the most material to the most subtle. Integral means horizontally in all the different and often contradictory parts which constitute the outer being, physical, vital and mental. The being organised around the psychic: the first stage of transformation. Mental opening: the first step of the mind towards transformation. Mental prayer: spontaneous in a mind aspiring for ... Let the physical offer itself sincerely to the Divine and it will be transformed. This is proof of the resolution to liberate oneself from the ego. Humility before the Divine in the physical nature: first attitude needed for transformation. Psychic light in the physical movements: the first step towards the transformation of the physical. Psychic light in the material movements: ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - III

Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga  >  Appendix

... perhaps inevitable. For if the 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... of mind, life and body so as to bring down the spiritual consciousness into these also and to fulfil thereby some secret intention in the creation of the material universe. Our yoga is in its principle a taking up and summarising and completing of this process, an endeavour to rise to the highest possible supramental level and bring down its consciousness and power into mind, life and body. ... We may say that here in India the reign of Intuition came First, intellectual Mind developing afterwards in the later philosophy and science. But in fact the mass of men at the time, it is quite evident, lived entirely on the material plane, worshipped the Godheads of material Nature, sought from them entirely material objects. The effort of the Vedic mystics revealed to them the things behind through ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga

The Mother - Past-Present-Future  >  Sri Aurobindo's Work and the Way to Its Fulfilment

... One is with reference to the "new body" which the Mother spoke of on several occasions as existing in the subtle-physical plane and acting upon the body in the gross-physical with a view to emerge into it and materially manifest a corps glorieux, "a body of glory", a divinely radiant form. The gross-physical, in order to effectuate the emergence in it of the new body, would have to get transformed to... Page 139 posing the organism. Moreover, just to have the physicalised mind or the physicalised life-force turned supramental would not render Sri Aurobindo and the Mother unapproachable or any sadhana impossible to do. As long as some part of the physical being—namely, the material constitution of the body—remained unsupramentalised, a point of contact with Sri Aurobindo and with the Mother... these wrong forces on the yet uncon-quered lower (physical) vital material plane." 2 Again we hear from Sri Aurobindo on December 31, 1934: "It is a little difficult to say whether all have to come down totally into the physical. The Mother and I had to do it because the work could not be otherwise done. We had tried to do it from above through the mind and higher vital, but it could not be because ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother - Past-Present-Future

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11  >  Body-Energy

... process in this way permeates the whole body and the entire material content of the body is filled with. consciousness and with its radiant energy.         There is however a basic preliminary necessity, a preparatory condition: the first essential condition under which the body can be conscious of itself is its freedom, its absolute freedom. The body must be liberated wholly and entirely, it... Sri Aurobindo - Part 11 Body-Energy   The Mother spoke once of the body being like a fortress, a strong shelter protecting you against enemy-attacks, the forces that are around roaming in the open spaces, the forces of physical and even moral disruption. The ancients used to refer to the body as a walled city the gates of which are to be carefully guarded... it is always under the orders of either the vital or the mind or both. Under the control of this dual masters—a cruel diarchy—the body has lost all its independent movements. The activities, almost all, of the present body are not really its own, they are expressions of an imposed will. In order to have and to be aware of its own will the body must be freed from its alien imposition and as soon as it ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  Body-Energy

... conscious, you, that is to say, your body must be conscious, must be aware always of what Page 333 it is doing: living, moving, acting; the body must be doing all that consciously, almost voluntarily: there shall be no in­ voluntary movements. Each physical gesture must know itself by feeling itself in the act. It is not that the mind should know, the mind can have only a memory, but that... cells. The process in this way permeates the whole body and the entire material content of the body is filled with consciousness and with its radiant energy. There is however a basic preliminary necessity, a prepara­tory condition: the first essential condition under which the body can be conscious of itself is its freedom, its absolute freedom. The body must be liberated wholly and entirely, it must... tidy. The body itself was worshipped as a holy thing almost as a Divinity by certain schools of spiritual discipline. These are, so to say various dimensions of the body; one more, somewhat of a different category, may be added. The body is a battery, an accumulation of energy, of energy and consciousness, of energy-consciousness. We are all familiar with the modern concept of the material particle ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III  >  12: The Permeation

... entered her body, it was as if, simultaneously, the “other world” hewed its path into this one and She found herself suddenly, with her eyes wide-open, in “Sri Aurobindo’s residence,” that so-called “lining” of the world where the living and the dead go around together as if there were nothing to it. So it becomes evident that what makes the veil between the two worlds is the physical Mind and what... everything,” even with her eyes open, was the process of infiltration, or of “permeation” as She would later say, of the true physical or true Matter into her body and into the whole body of the earth—it was not particular to her body, even though her body, and Sri Aurobindo’s body before, may have triggered the terrestrial phenomenon (before or simultaneously, because after all it was as far back as 1906... iridescent light. I felt it was the materiality brought by the trip. The materiality of the new world. And it seems that across the years, imperceptibly, the small iridescent scintillation has come closer, layer after layer, to the pure body, to pure Matter, as if truly we were separated from our own body by thick layers of consciousness without our being aware of it. The body is what is the farthest away ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

Beyond Man  >  Chapter Twenty-eight: The Caterpillar and the Butterfly

... supramentalized substance materially to the body of the Mother. On the night of 12 April 1962, the Mother died but took up her body again. On 17 November 1973, the Mother laid down the untransformable remainder of her gross material body but went on living materially, for ever, in her archetypal supramental body built up by her with the supramentalized true physical substance. The same kind... living and tangible as her physical body even though not as concrete. In one of her last Notes [ Notes on the Way ] she refers to this new transformed body and she describes it as presented in her vision. That body she has built up in her long arduous labours, built up in a complete form and left with us and with humanity. ‘This new body of hers, prepared behind the material curtain, she sought to infuse... ‘into the material form’; because gross matter was not yet ready, it has rejected the supramental body and the ‘material casing’ has broken down; what Nolini means with ‘perhaps broke through’ is not clear; 3. because the material, gross physical casing broke down ‘the immediate programme of a physical transformation is postponed — not cancelled.’ We find the opinion that the transformation process ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Beyond Man

Letters on Yoga - III  >  Experiences on the Subtle Physical, Vital and Mental Planes

... Experiences on the Subtle Physical, Vital and Mental Planes Subtle Physical Experiences Is it [ a strong and rapid heartbeat that shakes the whole body ] the physical nerves and heart—or in the subtle body? Often one feels a shaking and vibration of the subtle body and can feel as if heartbeats there, but if not experienced, it impresses as if it were a material phenomenon. It is evidently... after returning to the body (which is usually done with a clear consciousness of the whole process of getting into it) one can traverse the same scene in the physical body. But this is rare; the subtle wandering is on the contrary a frequent phenomenon, only when it is near to the physical world, all seems very material and concrete and the association of physical habits and physical Page 193 ... evidently in a subtle world, not the physical that you move; that is evident from the different arrangement of things, by such details as the third arm and the book marker removed yet there; but they show also that it is a subtle world very near to the physical; it is either a subtle physical world or a very material vital domain. In all the subtle domains the physical is reproduced with a change, the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III

At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo  >  20 September 1934

... into the mind and vital and perhaps also the physical consciousness (if it is complete). The restlessness of the physical is probably due to the peace and silence having touched the physical but not yet penetrated the material or body consciousness. The old restlessness is there in the body struggling to remain, although it cannot invade either mind or vital or even in a general way the physical consciousness... descends there, this restlessness will disappear. The sex-sensation came from the subconscient. When it is unable to manifest in the waking consciousness, it appears from the subconscient in sleep. The mind must not allow itself to be disturbed — it will go out with the rest. (20.9.34) ...

Sahana Devi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo

The Indian Spirit and the World's Future  >  The Passing of Sri Aurobindo: Its Inner Significance and Consequence

... gross material procedure. A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any of the heavy limitations in the growth and development of its mind and material body inevitable... new subtle body as well as a new gross one. Sri Aurobindo, at the hour of his physical withdrawal, was in a position to do much more than be the cosmic and transcendent Purusha that his supramental Yoga had made his incarnate personality. He could actually be that Purusha active in an indissoluble subtle body at once divine and human, in a far more direct constant touch with the material world than... the causal body - so that earth-terms themselves may be fulfilled and not merely serve as bright points of departure into the wide and the deep and the high. In short, the ancients lacked a full and organised possession of the Supermind's purpose and power: the fusion of the supra-mental light with the inmost soul and the descent of it into mind and life-energy and even the physical body, transforming ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Indian Spirit and the World's Future

Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Food

... in their character. They are heavy and material and at the same time excitant of certain strong material-vital forces. It is obvious that if one wants to conquer the physical passions and is still very much subject to the body nature and the things that affect it, free indulgence in onions is not advisable. It is only for those who have risen above the body consciousness and mastered it and are not... neglect the body and let it waste away; the body Page 419 is the means of the sadhana and should be maintained in good order. There should be no attachment to it, but no contempt or neglect either of the material part of our nature. In this Yoga the aim is not only the union with the higher consciousness but the transformation (by its power) of the lower including the physical nature. ... quite normal and proper in a life of Yoga!! It is good for the physical to be more and more conscious, but it should not be overpowered by the things of which it becomes aware or badly affected or upset by them. A strong equality and mastery and detachment must come in the nerves and body as in the mind, which will enable the physical to know and contact these things without feeling any disturbance; ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1  >  In Quest of Reality

... The reality remains material: for light, physical light is not something spiritual or even immaterial. Well, let us proceed a little further. Admitted the universe is a physical substance (although essentially of the nature of light – admitted light is a physical substance, obeying the law of gravitation, as Einstein has demonstrated). Does it then mean that the physical universe is after... the Pure Reason, viz., the Practical Reason; while the realities given by the senses and the judgments of the logical mind are of another section. It may be said one is physical, the other metaphysical. The positivists limit their field of enquiry and knowledge to the physical: they seek to keep the other domain quite apart as something imaginary, illusory, often unnecessary and not unoften harmful... for, we all are come into a world of light and we ourselves, the' elements of our physical frame are made of the very texture of light. So far so good. But it is evidently not far enough, for one Page 303 can answer that all this falls within the dominion of Matter and the material. The conception of Matter has changed, to be sure: Matter and energy are identified, as ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Unusual Experiences and States of Consciousness

... curious, because it is the vital mind that is there and the Romans always spoke of the mind as if it were in the heart. But memory and reading would rather be in the physical mind. But anyhow the brain is a conveying instrument for all these activities and can feel the strain if there is any. The best relief for the brain is when the thinking takes place outside the body and above the head (or in space... sight but by material Page 385 touch or other sense, (3) the handling of material objects by mind-energy or vital force, e.g. making a pencil move and write on paper. All these things are possible and have been done. It must be remembered that Energy is fundamentally one in all the planes, only taking more and more dense forms, so there is nothing a priori impossible in mind-energy or ... ways possible to use spiritual force or mind-power or will-power or a certain kind of vital energy to produce effects in men, things and happenings; but knowledge and much practice is needed before this possibility ceases to be occasional and haphazard and can be used quite consciously, at will or to perfection. Even then to have "a control over the whole material world" is too big a proposition; a local ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri  >  Eye the Organ of Vision

... of our mind which happens to be the present central principle of our consciousness is to receive the physical impression produced and its nervous translation and thus be aware of the object in question. But this account errs on many counts. The physical eye belonging to the physical body is meant only for a limited range of physical sight. But we have bodies other than the physical one: the... assumption that our physical eye is the only possible organ of vision and all sight has to depend on the proper employment of this physical eye. But this assumption too is not true to fact. Being governed by the overpowering experience of our physical mind we easily suppose that the fundamental thing in any "seeing operation" is the impression made by an external object on the physical organ of sight and... the subtle body {suksma satire) and the causal body (kārana sarìra), and these bodies have their corresponding "eyes". Our total being is not constituted of the gross material sheath (annamaya kosa) alone which is all that is visible and sensible to us. It is prāncakosātmaka, made up of four more sheaths: a vital sheath (prānamaya kosa), a mental sheath (manomaya kosa), ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

Essays Divine and Human  >  The Fullness of Yoga - In Condition

... rather his instincts & his intuitions; the more he Page 117 strives after health & hygiene, the more she multiplies diseases & insanities of mind and body. He has triumphed over supernaturalism, he has chained her down to the material, human & rational; immediately she breaks out fiercely into unthought-of revivals and gigantic supernaturalisms. Whatever work she is intent on, she will... a knowledge superior to material reason. She breaks out, therefore, she compels, she insists. Everywhere we see her striving to break the mental, moral & physical type she has created & to get beyond it to some new processes as yet not clearly discerned. She attacks deliberately the sound healthfulness & equilibrium of our normal type of intellectuality, morality & physical being. She is stricken also... limits of its egoistic nature have been & must necessarily, in spite of particular modifications, end in general failure. It is not only a mixed but a confused type, body & vitality interfering with mind & mind both hampered by & hampering body & vitality. Its search for knowledge, founded on sense contact, is a groping like that of a man finding his way in a forest at night; it makes acquaintance with ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays Divine and Human

Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Doctors and Medicines

... the Force. The mind may have faith and respond, but the lower vital and the body may not follow. Or if the mind and vital are ready, the body may not respond, or may respond only partially, because it has the habit of replying to the forces which produce a particular illness and habit is a very obstinate force in the material part of the nature. In such cases the use of the physical means can be resorted... the resistance in the body, which responds more readily to physical means in its ordinary consciousness. You refuse to speak to the Doctor and on the other hand your body is not yet able to receive the Forces in such a way as to cure it. When the body is not able to receive the Forces unaided , it is then that we send the Doctor and work through him—but here your mind comes in and refuses.... cure. Note that so long as the power is not entirely there, some aid of physical means need not be altogether rejected. Illness marks some imperfection or weakness or else opening to adverse touches in the physical nature and is often connected also with some obscurity or disharmony in the lower vital or the physical mind or elsewhere. It is very good if one can get rid of illness entirely ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV

Letters on Yoga - I  >  The System of the Chakras

... the lower vital (physical desires, small greeds, passions etc.). The throat centre is not the vital—it is the physical mind, the expressive externalising consciousness. What you feel may be the vital taking hold of the physical mind and using it for expression. The physical mind centre is in the throat and mouth—the vital physical is between the two lowest centres—the material consciousness is... Yes, it is so—it is the physical mind that acts like that [ rising up from the throat centre to cover the mind ]. The centre of the physical mind or externalising mind is in the subtle body in the throat and connected strongly with the speech—but it acts by connection with the brain. All forces that want to cover the consciousness rise up to do it, covering and acting on the mind centres if they can—because... in the body. It is a passage, not a centre. The centre is the thousand-petalled lotus just above the head, at that part. The crown is the place of passage between the body conscious ness with all it contains of mind and life and the higher being above the body. It is there that the two consciousnesses begin to meet. Page 236 The brain is only a centre of the physical consciousness ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Mother’s Agenda 1963  >  June 3, 1963

... Matter? Because they do have a power over Matter. Because it's very material—the brain is material! It's just a little less mechanical than the cellular mind. But it Is material; it isn't the higher mind, certainly: it's a mind confined to the body ( same gesture to the temples ). But the mind I was speaking of, the body-mind, is EVERYWHERE, in every cell: every cell has it within it; whereas that... the supermind Force and the transformation of the functioning of the body. On the other hand, once effectively converted, it will be one of the most precious instruments for the stabilisation of the supramental Light and Force in material Nature. ( XXII.340 ) It corresponds exactly to my own experience. It is this mind of the cells which seizes upon a mantra or a japa and eventually repeats... mantra. But is this the mind the Tantrics use? For instance, when you speak of the "deep blue light" in the physical mind, is it the same cellular mind? I don't think so. Because it's also through japa, mantras, the awakening of the physical consciousness, that the Tantric power operates. I think their power comes from a higher layer [higher than the cellular mind]. Because their action ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1963

Notes on the Way  >  12 January 1965

... within a cocoon of Peace. And then, if you could put, precisely into this mind that vibrates, stirs all the while, truly like a monkey, if you could put there... it is a Peace which acts directly in this material vibration—a Peace in which everything relaxes. Do not think, do not think of trying to transform this physical mind or to silence it or abolish it; all that is still activity. Simply let... ty, a good deal of rest. The difficulty is that I am very much absorbed by the condition of this body, it takes away much of my consciousness—the physical mind, for example, invades me completely. Yes, I know it very well. But that is always the difficulty, the difficulty of everyone. That is why in the past they used to tell you, "Get away! Leave it alone to flounder about—you get away." But... say it?) complete, as the struggle is more material. There has been for some time past (particularly since the first of January) a kind of bombardment of adverse forces—a fury, you know. Then you must remain like this ( Mother becomes immobile like a statue ), that is all. And when physically you have been shaken, you must not ask too much of the body, you must give it a good deal of tranquillity ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Notes on the Way

The Secret Splendour  >  Uncollected Work - Mind of Light

... into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question now was about the, direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. The physical mind receiving... called the Mind of Light."—Note received from the Mother.)   The core of a deathless sun is now the brain And each grey cell bursts of omniscient gold. Thought leaps—and an inmost light speaks out from things; Will, a new miracled Matter's dense white flame. Swerves with one touch the sweep of the brute world. Eyes focus now the Perfect everywhere. In a body changing... The Mother, after reading this poem, said that the first two lines were sheer revelation. That is, they catch exactly what happened when, on December 5. 1950. the Mind of Light was realised by her at the moment Sri Aurobindo left his body. The rest of the lines were, she said. an imaginative reconstruction of what the realisation had involved. Page 573 ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Secret Splendour

A Greater Psychology  >  Sri Aurobindo on the Structure and Organisation of the Being

... the conscious mind, life and body. In the subconscient there is an obscure mind full of obstinate Sanskaras, impressions, associations, fixed notions, habitual reactions formed by our past, an obscure vital full of the seeds of habitual desires, sensations and nervous reactions, a most obscure material which governs much that has to do with the condition of the body. It is largely... psychic (Fig.l). The outer being and the inner being have three corresponding parts — mental, vital, physical. Thus "There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self." 6 Figure 1. The Concentric... being consist of the mind (the mental), the life-self (the vital) and the body (the physical). Each of these parts has its own distinct type of consciousness, though in our ordinary awareness they are all mixed up. Each plane of our being — mental, vital, physical — has its own consciousness, separate though interconnected and interacting; but to our outer mind and sense, in our waking ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

Questions and Answers (1953)  >  5 August 1953

... in mental activity, if the mental activity is constant, can progress indefinitely. Mind in the human being does not stop functioning even when the physical instrument has deteriorated. It may no longer manifest its intelligence materially, if there is a lesion in the brain, for example, but nothing can prevent the mind Page 208 itself, independently of the instrument, from progressing, from... vital manifests certain desires and impulses, the more material mind comes to its aid and justifies and supports them with specious explanations and reasonings and excuses." Questions and Answers 1929-1931 ( 26 May 1929 ) × "This physical mind is usually in a kind of alliance with the lower vital ... ideas are quite current: "Oh! I am ill. Oh! my body is in a bad condition, what have I done? What crimes have I committed in the other life so that in this one..." This is all childishness. So there you are. Au revoir , my children. Page 216 × "This physical mind is usually in a kind of alliance with the lower ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1953)

The Mother (biography)  >  13: The Yoga of the Body Cells

... is something which remains unchanged unless you take care of it and persist in your effort. What is it? The body consciousness.’ 50 What is the body consciousness? ‘… The physical consciousness as a whole. But in this physical consciousness as a whole there is the physical mind – a mind that is occupied with all the ordinary things and responds to everything around you. There is also the vital... writing through my pen, speaking through my mouth and acting through my organizing power.’ 3 Yet the physical, material presence was not there any more. And therefore the Mother too had to perform a yogic master act. ‘When he went out of his body and entered into mine (the most material part of him, the part involved with external things) and I understood that I had the entire responsibility... also. If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument we have to use … A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother (biography)

In the Mother's Light  >  The Divine Union

... canalising of the supreme Love and Light into the material world and 2) the preparation and trans- formation of the physical being of man for the perfect Union and the eventual Manifestation. The Mother so much insists on service, because : 1) Union with the Divine cannot be integral if the body is excluded from it; for, the body, as much as the heart or the mind, has a birthright to a constant and complete... as is the entire earth in the material world, as is the material world in the entire universe.”¹ That is why there is an intense, unceasing aspiration in the Mother's body—it is not a mental or vital aspiration imposed upon the body, but the body's own separate, individual, unquenchable aspiration—for a dynamic union with the Supreme through service... "This body whose will is to become Thy docile... name for an unobstructed divine self-expression. Attuned to the same key, ring Sri Aurobindo's words : "Preserving and perfecting the physical, fulfilling the mental, it is Nature’s aim and it should be ours to unveil in the perfected body and mind the transcendent activities of the Spirit. As the mental life does not abrogate but works for the elevation and better utilisation of the bodily ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light

The Mind Of The Cells

... goes wrong. (Question:) So what is perturbed if not the body? Oh, it's the physical mind, this idiotic mind! That's what causes no end of trouble. But then what suffers? It's also through this physical mind, for if we calm that individual we no longer suffer! That's exactly what happened to me. You see, this physical mind makes use of the nervous substance; if we withdraw it from the... loose, is that of the intellectual mind; the second, with an already tighter and stickier mesh, is that of the emotional mind; then the compact mesh of the sensory mind, and finally the microscopic mesh of the physical mind — underneath it all is the body, that is to say, an unknown whose reality completely escapes us because all that comes from the so-called “body” is distorted, falsified and actually... spells, when she went out of the web of the physical mind, is highly instructive, if only to prove negatively the imprisoning, coordinating or directing power of the physical mind. It took Mother five years, from 1962 to 1967, to understand the mechanism: 67.2211 & 65.217 It began when the doctors declared I was seriously ill [in 1962]. Because the entire body was emptied of its habits and forces; I ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mind Of The Cells

A Centenary Tribute  >  Extracts from Amal Kiran's Works-The Passing of Sri Aurobindo

... new subtle body as well as a new gross one. Sri Aurobindo, at the hour of his physical withdrawal, was in a position to do much more than be the cosmic and transcendent Purusha that his supramental Yoga had made his incarnate personality. He could actually be that Purusha active in an indissoluble subtle body at once divine and human, in a far more direct constant touch with the material world than... of some gross material procedure. A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any of the heavy limitations in the growth and development of its mind and Page... cannot but be as inward, as profound as Sri Aurobindo living.   No Yogi dies in the ordinary meaning of the word: his consciousness always exceeds the formula of the physical body, he is beyond and greater than his material sheath even while he inhabits it, and his action on mankind is essentially through his free and ample spirit to which both life and death are small masks of a fully aware ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Centenary Tribute

The Destiny of the Body  >  The Ascending Scale of Energy

... theoretical bar to the New Body manifesting the capability of directly absorbing and utilising the physical energy that is all around us in the universe. But the New Body need not limit itself to the tapping of "the energies accumulated in the material and earthly world and [drawing] freely from this inexhaustible source." 2 Apart from the fact that "these material energies are obscure and... in all physical things from the electron and atom and gas up through the metal, plant, animal, physical man." 3 (iv)Thus all material aspects are only fields and forms of this Prana which "is in itself a pure energy, their cause and not their result." 4 Even in the functioning of our body it is this Pranic Shakti that is the essential "condition of all action, even of the most apparently... 1 It is then in the opening up of our physical system to the unimpeded action of this ultimate Source of all energies that we can expect to discover the most perfect and adequate means of meeting our body's energy-needs and thus liberate ourselves integrally from the binding necessity of gathering energy from the crude source of material aliments. But unfortunately there is a snag ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth  >  Where does the Jiva Go after Death

... after the physical body's dissolution, into different supraphysical realms, and, then, comes back into an almost unending series of successive rebirths upon earth. And all this with only one single aim in view, to ultimately bring about the full manifestation of a divine life upon earth itself and in a material-physical human or superhuman body. But what is the role and function of the mind, the... own, such as, his physical Page 82 being, vital being, mental being and others. Also, he has not only his gross physical body, visible and sensible to us, but has other bodies too; such as, a subtle physical body, a vital body, a mental body and others. His total being is constituted of five "Koshas" or sheaths and envelopes, such as, "Annamaya Kosha" (material envelope), "Prạnamaya... manner, even before it leaves the first body, looks out for a suitable new body, and when it is found, decides to quit the previous body, and this is what appears to other men as "death". And this is invariably followed by a new embodiment. But there is a snag here. For, this view implies that the "jivatma" is entirely dependent upon a physical-material body for its existence: it can never independently ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth

The Hidden Forces of Life  >  The Subconscient, the Subliminal and the Superconscient

... earth-life. Again behind our mind, our life, our conscious physical there is a larger subliminal consciousness,—there are inner mental, inner vital, inner more subtle physical reaches supported by an inmost psychic existence which is the animating soul of all the rest; and in these hidden reaches too lie a mass of numerous pre-existent personalities which supply the material, the motive-forces, the impulsions... unexpressed inarticulate consciousness which works below all our conscious physical activities. Just as what we call the superconscient is really a higher consciousness above from which things descend into the being, so the subconscient is below the body consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there. Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient... desires, sensations and nervous reactions, a most obscure material which governs much that has to do with the condition of the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly dis ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Hidden Forces of Life

Letters on Yoga - III  >  The Descent of the Higher Powers

... higher vital parts. From there it sends its stream into the whole body and begins to occupy the vital and physical centres—from the navel to the Muladhara. The coming of this experience, occupation of the body by the Force from above, is a great step forward in the sadhana. The fear of a syncope was due only to the sanskara in the mind; it must be dismissed. The Force can very well come down in the... They [ the mind and vital ] are always more open to the universal forces than the material. But they can be more restless than the material so long as they are not subjected to the peace from above. The movement of universality by itself cannot prevent the vital from disturbing—it is the complete surrender and the complete descent of peace into all the being down to the most material that can... one's mind, vital and body. How it is done or by what stages or how long it will take varies with each person. But this new consciousness is very different from the ordinary one and many things happen in its coming which would not happen to the mind and might seem strange to it—e.g. the dissolution of the ego and the opening into a wider self or spirit not limited by the body, to which the body is only ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III

Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga  >  Psychology of Integeal Yoga

... Aurobindo calls, the mental, the vital and the physical. The mind proper is divided into three parts thinking Mind, dynamic Mind and externalising Mind. The vital is divided into three parts, the emotional vital, the central vital and the lower vital. The physical refers to the material or physical consciousness and to the physical body. The thinking Mind is concerned with ideas and knowledge in... inter-penetrate each other. The body-energy is a manifestation of material forces supported by a vital-physical energy which is the vital energy precipitated into matter and conditioned by it. The mental-physical or the physical Mind is the mind at the service of the physical. It is the mind conditioned by the physical, and it is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only... objects; they do not, so much as in waking mind, convey forms of objects for the mind's documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Threefold Life

... Nevertheless it is possible to make the material man and his life moderately progressive by imprinting on the material mind the custom of progress, the habit of conscious change, the fixed idea of progression as a law of life. The creation by this means of progressive societies in Europe is one of the greatest triumphs of Mind over Matter. But the physical nature has its revenge; for the progress... the veiled spiritual being which is in the involution the cause of the others and in the evolution their result. Preserving and perfecting the physical, fulfilling the mental, it is Nature's aim and it should be ours to unveil in the perfected body and mind the transcendent activities of the Spirit. As the mental life does not abrogate but works for the elevation and better utilisation of the bodily... reproduction is the only possible material immortality. Self-preservation, self-repetition, self-multiplication are necessarily, then, the predominant instincts of all material existence. Material life seems ever to move in a fixed cycle. The characteristic energy of pure Mind is change, and the more our mentality acquires elevation and organisation, the more this law of Mind assumes the aspect of a continual ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

The Divine Collaborators  >  The Divine Union

... canalising of the supreme Love and Light into the material world and 2) the preparation and transformation of the physical being of man for the perfect Union and the eventual Manifestation. The Mother so much insists on service, because: I) Union with the Divine cannot be integral if the body is excluded from it; for, the body, as much as the heart or the mind, has a birthright to a constant and complete... is the entire earth in the material world, as is the material world in the entire universe." 1 That is why there is an intense, unceasing aspiration in the Mother's body—it is not a mental or vital aspiration imposed upon the body, but the body's own separate, individual, unquenchable aspiration—for a dynamic union with the Supreme through service...."This body whose will is to become Thy... Aurobindo's words: "Preserving and perfecting the physical, fulfilling the 1 Prayers and Meditations of the Mother —Nov. 19, 1912 2 For further details on the subject, refer to my book, "In the Mother's Light" in 2 Page 18 mental, it is Nature's aim and it should be ours to unveil in the perfected body and mind the transcendent activities of the Spirit. As the mental ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Divine Collaborators

The Psychic Being  >  What is Meant by the Psychic Being

... psychic. But that does not mean that they are entirely isolated from the soul. The soul is in the body in the same way as the mind or vital—but the body it occupies is not this gross physical frame only, but the subtle body also. When the gross sheath falls away, the vital and mental sheaths of the body still remain as the soul's vehicle till these too dissolve. The soul of a plant or an animal is... of that Purusha. If any being of the typal worlds wants to evolve, he has to come down to 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... the true soul which is a spark of the Divine Fire, a portion of the Divine. Because the soul, the psychic being uses the mind and the vital as well as the body as instruments for growth and experience it is itself looked at as if it were some amalgam or some subtle substratum of mind and life. But in Yoga if we accept all this chaotic mass as soul-stuff or soul-movement we shall enter into a confusion ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Psychic Being

Isha Upanishad  >  Chapter III: The Golden Rule of Life - Desire, Egoism and Possession

... . Mental beings, souls throned in mind, it is in mind our centre not in matter which is to us a mere case, circumference and result of mind, that we should seek our secret of bondage and our means of deliverance. All outward material action is in itself Maya, a thing without self-existent reality. Action is effected only as the outflow and physical symbol of mind; it has no inherent moral or spiritual... out to the unity & to realise the bliss but it seeks, mistakenly, through physical and emotional enjoyment in the jagat. Man desires illimitably because he is universal and illimitable; he cannot satisfy his desires illimitably because egoistic self-division persuades him to limit himself to his individual mind, life and body. Man desires with pain & weeping because by creating habitual wants, conventional... somewhere in our minds, and, particularly, it should be sought in the emotional part of our minds. For where the centre of our active being is, there must be the knot of our bondage, and there also must we seek for the secret of its unloosing. If we had been material beings or centred in matter, the knot would have been in some material habit and the release dependent on a material adjustment; for the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Isha Upanishad

Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III  >  2: A Body Without Memory

... the physical Mind which repeats and repeats its mortal refrain. A new agent of coagulation of Matter. We say that the molecules of protein are what gives shape to bodies (a giraffe, a mouse, a man) but it is the superficial, external translation, the material covering of a certain vibratory quality. If the vibration changes, the type of coagulation or materialization changes. If the physical Mind... transfers its accumulated, stereotyped push to you more and more: a pull, not a push. The great pull of the Future at every second. A Mind that would be the exact opposite of the physical Mind and would take its place⎯and was beginning to take its place in Mother’s body. Another Vibration takes the place of this small mortal trepidation which, as if panic-stricken by the rush of life, tries to close... It is the embryo of the new species. It is the key to the transformation of the body. For ten years, from 1958 to 1968, She strove to break through the web, purify the cells from their old recordings, that spell of the physical Mind, and now it had become the Work: the building up of a new type of body in Matter. × ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

Mother’s Agenda 1963  >  May 18, 1963

... but you're ruining your body." And that's where... ( laughing ) we would have to carry out all kinds of experiments, as they do with guinea pigs, to find out whether ecstasy has the power to restore order in the body. You suffer from, say, a physical trouble, purely physical (morally speaking, it goes without saying, the thing is quite clear; I mean something purely material). Something is disorganized... starts from the most material Nature ). What she has put is too red, but if it's too blue, it won't be good either—you understand the difficulty? Then after violet there is blue, which must be truly blue, not too light, but it must be a bright blue. Not too light Page 143 because there are three consecutive blues: there is the blue of the Mind, and then comes the Higher Mind, which is paler... × Mother seems to have forgotten the red of the vital, which comes between material Nature's violet and the Mind's blue. Thus we have twelve worlds: violet, red, blue (the Mind's three blues), yellow, then the Overmind's prismatic colors, which makes five lower worlds, then finally the three golds of the Supermind and the four ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1963

Essays Divine and Human  >  The Evolution of Consciousness

... 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 its own phenomenal opposites is the meaning and purpose of the terrestrial evolution. Evolution in its essence is not the development of a more and more organised body or a more and... shining preoccupation, her wonderful wager. Body appeared to evolve no more; life itself evolved little or only so much in its cycles as would serve to express Mind heightening and widening itself in the living body; an unseen internal evolution was now Nature's great passion and purpose. And if Mind were all that consciousness could achieve, if Mind were the secret Godhead, if there were nothing... hereafter. Nature laboured for innumerable millions of years to create a material universe of flaming suns and systems; for a lesser but still interminable series of millions she stooped to make this earth a habitable planet. For all that incalculable time she was or seemed busy only with the evolution of Matter; life and mind were kept secret in an apparent non-existence. But the time came when life ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays Divine and Human

A Greater Psychology  >  Self, Ego and Individuality

... be the mental, vital, physical ego; for that is always the creation, instrument and subject of mental, vital, physical Nature. This ego is not his real self, but an instrumentation of Nature by which it has developed a sense of limited and separate individual being in mind, life and body. By this instrumentation he acts as if he were a separate existence in the material universe. Nature has evolved... say, the individual soul or Jivatman identifying himself with the nodus of his mental, vital, physical experiences in the movement of universal Nature, with his mind-created ego, and, less intimately, with the mind, life, body which receive the experiences; for of these he can say "my mind, life, body," regarding them as himself yet partly as not himself and something which he possesses and uses... of changing mind-stuff, life-stuff, body-stuff taking different forms of mind and life and body from birth to birth, so that at no time is there any real self or conscious reason of existence behind all the flux or none except that Quiescent who cares for none of these things. There is a real and stable power of our being behind the constant mutation of our mental, vital and physical personality ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

Essays Divine and Human  >  Integral Yoga

... Divine in all its aspects indivisibly unified together. Whatever is beyond mind and life and body is spirit. But spirit can be realised even on these lower levels, in the spiritualised mind, in the spiritualised life-force, even in the spiritualised physical consciousness and body. But if thou rise not up beyond the mind-level, then in these realisations the spirit must needs be modified by the medium... Divine either by the way of the thinking mind or by the way of the heart or by the way of the will in works or by a change of the psychological nature-stuff or a freeing of the vital force in the body is not enough; all this is not enough. Through all these together it must be done and by a change of our very sense and body consciousness even to the material inconscience which must become aware of the... through any and every plane, on the mental, on the vital, on the physical, or on those which are higher than the mental[.] 155 All Yoga done through the mind alone or through the heart or the will or the vital force or the body ends in some one aspect of the infinite and eternal Existence and rests satisfied there, as the mind imagines for ever. Not through these alone shall thy Yoga move ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays Divine and Human

Questions and Answers (1929-1931)  >  5 May 1929

... of a perpetual and progressive movement of the material world to express it. Now if there is awakened somewhere upon earth a receptivity and openness sufficient to bring down in its purity something of the Divine Consciousness, this descent and manifestation in matter can change not only the inner life, but the material conditions also, the physical expression in man and Nature. This descent does... and action. It is something like an intermediary between the true knowledge, whose seat is in the higher regions above the mind, and realisation here below. The intellect or, generally speaking, the mind gives the form; the vital puts in the dynamism and life-power; the material comes in last and embodies. How is one to meet adverse forces—forces that are invisible and yet quite living and tangible... faith is not sufficient; it must be completed and enforced by a vital and even a physical faith, a faith of the body. If you can create in yourself an integral force of this kind in all your being, then nothing can resist it; but you must reach down to the most subconscious, you must fix the faith in the very cells of the body. There is, for instance, now abroad the beginning of a knowledge among the scientists ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1929-1931)

Mother or The New Species - II  >  7. Krishna in Gold

... Death is a mental phenomenon, not a material one. It is our mental body, as seen by the mind, lived by the mind, felt by the mind, that dies. It is a false death, as false as our life—it is the false life that dies. And it is a veil... over something else, which is material. No—not at all the paradise of a consciousness up above, after "death," but a material world of true Matter on the other side... the Mind. Another Matter in Matter, another continent in a continent. But we do not need to die to get there! That is the crux of the matter. We need only pull that veil back and let real life enter our life, true Matter enter our unclogged eyes and cells, and let in the true movement of Matter, its true malleability, its true light and warmth, its true form-creating power. The physical body appeared... consequences, everything science has discovered physically and materially) change * INSTANTLY. There are a number of things, certain material conditions of my body—material—that changed instantly. It did not last long enough for everything to change, but some things changed and never returned, they remained changed. In other words, if that consciousness were kept constantly, it would be a perpetual miracle—a ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

Notes on the Way  >  23 November 1968

... of the ordinary consciousness, as if in a mechanical way, but I have only to be quiet or concentrated for a moment and it is there. And it is the experience of the body , you understand, physical, material, the experience of the body: everything, everything is full, full; there is only That , and we are like... everything is as though shrivelled, a dried up rind, something like that, dried up. One... because of that and that", quite a material thing, altogether physical; and pouf! it goes away.... The consciousness changes and back it comes. If one remains sufficiently long in the true consciousness, the appearance, that is to say, what we call physical "fact", that itself disappears, not merely the pain.... I feel as though I had touched (there is no mind which understands, thank God!), I had... a small beginning. One would have the feeling, one would be certain of having touched the supreme Secret only if the physical were transformed.... According to the experience (just the little experience of a detail), it must be like that. And then, will it be at first one body in which this Consciousness will express itself, or should all, all be transformed?... A phenomenon of consciousness. ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Notes on the Way

Visions of Champaklal  >  Dreams - Types, Importance, Utility

... Inevitably, (in a dream) a wound received in the vital being is translated in the physical body.... If you receive a blow in the vital, the body suffers the consequence. More than half of our illnesses are the result of blows of this kind... men are not conscious of their vital.... If one knows how it reacts on the physical, one goes to its source and can cure oneself in a few hours. In dreams, you... when you are in the grip of a nightmare? You rush back into your body and shake yourself into your normal physical consciousness.... In the world of the vital forces you are a stranger.... its beings gather round you and want to encompass and get out of you all you have, to draw what they can and make it a food and a prey... the body is your fortress and your shelter.... after death you have the same... or less judge the time that the vision will take to be fulfilled. And the immediate things are already realised, they already exist in the subtle physical and they can be seen there.... They are only the reflection or projection of the image in the material world which will appear on the next day or in a few hours. There are all kinds of premonitory dreams. There are premonitary dreams that are fulfilled ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Visions of Champaklal

Notes on the Way  >  7 October 1964

... things (this physical mind); that has given a material power to separate itself from that and reject it. And it is after that that there was this turning of which I spoke just now, the turning in the circumstances as a whole, as if truly something decisive had happened. There was as though a confident joy: "Ah! We are free from this nightmare." And at the same time, a relief—a physical relief, as... the material consciousness (that is to say, the mind in Matter) has been formed under the pressure of difficulties—difficulties, obstacles, sufferings, struggles. It has been, so to say, "worked out" by these things and that has left upon it a stamp, almost of pessimism, defeatism, which is certainly the greatest obstacle. It is of this that I am conscious in my own work. The most material consciousness... 3 here ( Mother points to her body )—bodies appear to me simply as conglomerates and so long as there is a will behind to keep them together for some reason or other, they remain together.... In the last few days, yesterday or the day before, there was this experience: a kind of consciousness wholly decentralised (I am speaking always of the physical consciousness, not of the higher consciousness ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Notes on the Way

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10  >  Cycles of Creation

... outset a purely material universe of inorganic elements, then came the cycle of organic combinations, then the manifestation of life and next the mind and at present the mind at its peak capacity, which means the advent of the strange creature that has a miraculous destiny to accomplish. And that is to bring forth out of him the achievement and fulfilment of the next cycle. For the mind is there to... wholly transcending the frame of animality, born and existing in the purely supramental way. A supramentalised material universe or rather physical earth may itself put on a different, a radiant appearance and also the beings and creatures of the other levels of life and physical existence may also undergo a sea-change, but of that nothing need be or can be previewed at present. Page 7... or the preparation of such a body will in its turn naturally influence the rest of mankind and act so effectively and largely that the human race in general will put on a different aspect, the aspect of a humanity not of the Kaliyuga but of the Satyayuga. That is what the general human mind has been aspiring for and calling "Ramarajya". A humanity with a radiant mind, a purified, generous, un-egoistic ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  Cycles of Creation

... outset a purely material universe of inorganic elements, then came the cycle of organic combinations, then the manifestation of life and next the mind and at present the mind at its peak capacity, which means the advent of the strange creature that has a miraculous destiny to accomplish. And that is to bring forth out of him the achievement and fulfilment of the next cycle. For the mind is there to bring... transcending the frame of animality, born and existing in the purely supramental way. A supramentalised material universe or rather physical earth may itself put on a different, a radiant appearance Page 179 and also the beings and creatures of the other levels of life and physical existence may also undergo a sea change, but of that nothing need be or can be previewed at present... advent or the preparation of such a body will in its turn naturally influence the rest of mankind and act so effectively and largely that the human race in general will put on a different aspect, the aspect of a humanity not of the Kaliyuga but of the Satyayuga. That is what the general human mind has been aspiring for and calling "Ramarajya". A humanity with a radiant mind, a purified, generous, unegoistic ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body  >  Preface

... between the body and the Spirit and how spiritual powers, when applied to the physical, can create new dimensions to the entire domain of physical education and sports. (10) Part IX contains Sri Aurobindo's essay entitled "The Perfection of the Body" in which Sri Aurobindo perceives in the body the power to become an agent and a partner in the task of a total transformation of the mind, life and... of aspects of physical education and that we should have provided much richer material to illustrate the theme of the excellence of the human body. We admit the force of this argument, and we invite the readers to send us suggestions for suitable material which we can include in the second edition of this book. (6) In Part V, which has been entitled "Profounder Aspects of Physical Education", we... some of the basic and more profound questions relating to the. human body and physical education in the context of the broader aim of self-knowledge. We, therefore, decided to touch upon a number of relevant topics but at an introductory level. We felt that our task ought to be to present to the reader those aspects and materials which might initiate him or her into a further task of personal exploration ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body

The Destiny of the Body  >  The Conquest of Sleep

... the basic characteristics of individualised and divided Life in the body. Hence to cure our physical system of all liability to fatigue, the limitation of ego has to be totally abrogated not only in the inner parts of our being, but in the very physical consciousness and the material organisation of the body. Our body has to be brought into complete harmony with the demands of our own inner... the obscuration of the mind and soul and of their illumination, of subjection to pain and limitation and of self-mastery, of death and of immortality." 2 But what is the inherent reason for this fatigue of our body? Why does our physical system get periodically tired? Why can it not work in a continuous way? In the words of the Mother: "The fatigue of the body comes from an inner ... knowledge are equal and in perfect harmony; there alone Consciousness and Force arrive at their divine equation." 3 It is through the supramental transformation of our physical body, — that "is still a flower of the material Inconscience," 4 — down to its very cells and functionings that the law of incapacity and consequent fatigue will be finally abrogated and with it the 1 The Life ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Questions and Answers (1950-1951)  >  17 March 1951

... instantaneous. Do you perceive thought in the physical body, for example? Do you perceive thought apart from a material quality? It remains to be seen, doesn't it? Let me explain: if you go out of your body, if you go out of the vital world and enter the mental world, all relations are different from what they are for thought when in the body. Compared with the body, thought seems an immediate thing like... like light, for example, even more than light. But when you have nothing to do with the physical any longer and you enter the mind itself, there are relations which may be rendered by a certain time and certain space which do not exist for the physical consciousness but which exist for the mental consciousness. That then would be, if you like, the explanation of what you were saying, that Time changes;... be stopped. Light seems to me to be too material for this consciousness of simultaneity. Evidently when one emerges from form and enters the "frontier" state between form and the Formless, everything is simultaneous, but this is very far from the density of light. I wonder (it is possible, it is to be seen), but I doubt whether something physical could be capable of giving this simultaneous ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1950-1951)

Letters on Yoga - IV  >  The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga

... there—it is spread in the body. In the waking state it is overpowered by the conscious thinking mind and vital and conscious physical mind, but in the sleep state it comes on the surface. Habits and the Subconscient The subconscient is a thing of habits and memories and repeats persistently or whenever it can old suppressed reactions, reflexes, mental, vital or physical responses. It must be trained... feel. When the body is full of the new consciousness, Peace and Power at the same time, then this outward pressure is felt but can no longer disturb and finally it recedes to a distance (no longer pressing immediately on the physical mind or body) and either gradually or rapidly disappears. By environmental consciousness I mean something that each man carries around him, outside his body, even when... recurrence of old thoughts, interests or desires with which the physical mind is usually occupied. If that were all, the only thing would be to reject them, detach yourself and let them pass till they quieted down. But I gather from what you write that there is an attack, an obscure force using these recurrences to invade and harass the mind and body. It would be helpful if you could give an exact description ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV

Letters on Yoga - I  >  Spiritual Evolution and the Supramental

... which was perhaps inevitable. For if 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... remains and with it the opportunity for the adverse Forces. It is not immortality of the body, but the consciousness of immortality in the body that can come with the descent of Overmind into Matter or even into the physical mind or with the touch of the modified Supramental Light on the physical mind-consciousness. These are preliminary openings, but they are not the supramental fulfilment in... levels of mind, life and body so as to bring down the spiritual consciousness into these also and to fulfil thereby some secret intention in the creation of the material universe. Our Yoga is in its principle a taking up and summarising and completing of this process, an endeavour to rise to the highest possible supramental level and bring down its consciousness and powers into mind, life and body. The ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Notes on the Way  >  22 December 1971

... the physical mind. 1 It is this work which is being done in me for months now: the mind has been withdrawn and the physical mind has taken its place, and precisely, for some time, I have noticed that it was... (I was telling you that it was seeing everything in a different way, that its relation with things was different), I have noticed that this physical mind, the mind that is in the body, became... "There is too an obscure mind of the body, of the very cells, molecules, corpuscles. Haeckel, the German materialist, spoke somewhere of the will in the atom, and recent science, dealing with the incalculable individual variation in the activity of the electrons, comes near to perceiving that this is not a figure but the shadow thrown by a secret reality. This body-mind is a very tangible truth; owing... it one of the chief obstacles to permeation by the supermind Force and the transformation of the functioning of the body. On the other hand, once effectively converted, it will be one of the most precious instruments for the stabilisation of the supramental Light and Force in material Nature." Letters on Yoga , Cent. Vol. 22, p. 340 ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Notes on the Way

Emergence of the Psychic  >  Glossary

... individual — mind, life and body — are part of Prakriti. Nirvana — extinction (not necessarily of all bein g, but of being as we know it, extinction of ego, desire and egoistic action and mentality). Page 124 Overmind — see under spiritualised mind. the physical (being) — not the body alone, but the whole physical mind, vital, material nature, physical mind... man's intelligence. The ordinary mind has three main parts: mind proper, vital mind, and physical mind. The mind proper is divided into three parts: the thinking mind or intellect, concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right; the dynamic mind, concerned with the putting out of mental forces for the realisation of the ideas; and the externalising mind, concerned with the expression of... go beyond that. The mechanical mind, closely connected with the physical mind, goes on repeating without use whatever has happened. Overtopping the ordinary mind, hidden in our own superconscient parts, there are higher ranges of Mind, gradations of spiritualised mind leading beyond mind to the Supermind. In ascending order they are: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and Overmind. ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Emergence of the Psychic

Notes on the Way  >  24 June 1967

... above instead of doing all by the mind's effort." It is exactly so. "The importance of the body is obvious; it is because he has developed or been given a body and brain capable of receiving and serving a progressing mental illumination that man has risen above the animal. Equally, it can only be by developing a body or at least a functioning of the physical instrument capable of receiving and... to come to the end. It is a curve. Better to reach the end. It is too early to speak. ( After a silence ) The movements of the body almost in their totality are habitual movements. Behind, there is the consciousness of the physical mind (what I call the "cellular mind"), which is itself constantly conscious of the divine Presence and is keen on accepting nothing but That; so a whole work is going... The problem of mental and even vital contagion is, so to say, resolved, but the problem of material contagion still remains there. And in this material consciousness, there is the material mind that has so marvellously responded here, 1 but it has not yet the power to assert itself spontaneously against what comes from outside, this perpetual contagion, constant, constant, of every minute ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Notes on the Way

Mother or The New Species - II  >  13. The Paths of Universalization

... what, on the material level, must take the place of the physical ego... 5 It really seems like nothing, but in a way it means the dissolution of everything that constitutes the foundation or the power of cohesion of our body: what makes you feel as a body, "my" body—that is, the habit formed by the web. Millions of centered habits woven into a vibratory network, and making a physical "I," just as... being attacked in the same relentless fashion. Actually, it springs from everything in material consciousness that can still be touched by the adverse forces; that is, not exactly the body-consciousness itself but, one could say, MATERIAL SUBSTANCE AS IT HAS BEEN ORGANIZED BY THE MIND- the first stirrings of Mind in life making the passage from animal to human.... Well, something in there protests,... 13. The Paths of Universalization The web was not going to be undone in a day and the pure cellular mind simply appear, released from the hypnotism of the physical mind. That would have to wait until 1965. The true body has to be wrested from the night of the world, from the whole world. For the obstacles that prevent one from getting "over there" are not unfortunate ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

Mother’s Agenda 1968  >  June 15, 1968

... functionings of consciousness. Because it all appears to be purely material! It seems to me we should add a word giving an inner sense. Yes, for this body, it's what we might call "purely material": there's no vital or mental intervention. What generally happens to people is that the vital intervenes and so does the mind—that never, ever happens [in Mother]. That belongs to the past, there's... that an illness has purely physical causes. So it might be necessary to add somewhere the word "consciousness" or "psychological." You say, "It's always a disequilibrium in the being, a disequilibrium between various functionings, a disequilibrium between forces...." It gives an impression of being something purely material. There are no such things as purely material forces. If you like, the... desires, sensations and nervous reactions, a most obscure material which governs much that has to do with the condition of the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body-consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly dis ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1968

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Elements of Perfection

... by its action in the spiritual being and Nature body of the Purushottama. Page 694 The gnostic perfection, spiritual in its nature, is to be accomplished here in the body and takes life in the physical world as one of its fields, even though the gnosis opens to us possession of planes and worlds beyond the material universe. The physical body is therefore a basis of action, pratiṣṭhā , which... brings in a spiritualising and illumination of the whole physical consciousness and a divinising of the law of the body. For behind the gross physical sheath of this materially visible and sensible frame there is subliminally supporting it and discoverable by a finer subtle consciousness a subtle body of the mental being and a spiritual or causal body of the gnostic and bliss soul in which all the perfection... knowledge and conscious experience as the out-flowing of that consciousness, and all in the terms of that Page 696 one Ananda. His physical being will be one with all material Nature, his vital being with the life of the universe, his mind with the cosmic mind, his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine knowledge and will both in itself and as it pours itself through these channels, his spirit ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

The Destiny of the Body  >  Supermind the Master-Key

... plane, our body assumes a supreme importance in the total scheme of our achievement . For "the Page 260 body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of the action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all inner action." 1 So a full play of divine life demands as its essential prerequisite a fully transformed material body which... automatically deliver our physical being from the iron grip of the same law. The problem has to be faced and tackled on the plane of the body itself: the lion has to be tamed in its own den. Hence we proceed now to the consideration of the physical necessity for material aliments and try to see how this problem of bodily hunger may possibly be solved in the New Body that is going to appear... Truth demanded that the material world too should take part in this transformation and become an expression of the deeper Truth. But when this was told to people, many thought that it was possible to transform the body and its activities without troubling oneself at all with what was happening within — which is of course not quite true. Before you take up the work of physical transformation, which ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

The Destiny of the Body  >  Introduction

... intellectual age', to study in detail, in a few of its salient aspects, the divine transfiguration of the material body of man which is sure to come about in the future evolution of the race. We shall try to justify, on metaphysical as well as on scientific grounds, this glorious prospect of physical transformation and indicate in the light of the Supramental vision vouchsafed by Sri Aurobindo and the... 932 of them into a divine life and divine mentality must also render possible a conquest of our physical limitations by the power and principle of supramental substance." 1 Sri Aurobindo assures us that there will no doubt remain a material base for the New Body to appear in course of the contemplated supramental transformation, but it will be 'a new earth with divine structure'... dispositions the human body and man's physical being are not a whit better than any other animal body or existence? The grossness and limitations of our present physical 1 Sri Aurobindo on Himself, pp. 99, 109. 2 Letters on Yoga, p. 91. 3 Sri Aurobindo on Himself, p. 109. life, the various inconveniences of our animal body, its proneness to diseases ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  The World Tragedy

... has to be outside the gravitational field, not of his physical existence, (the astronauts are trying it today), but outside his physical or normal consciousness. He has to rise above the physical, material status of his being. There is the error that Hamlet committed in spite of his cultured and enlightened mind: not through the enlightened mind alone but through the enlightened heart, through the ... consciousness, and then the entry into the full blaze of light and force of Consciousness leading to a rebirth and re-embodiment in immortality, transforming the ignorant death-bound body into the glorious luminous body upon material earth, the embodiment of love Divine. Page 389 ... being wholly within and absolutely beyond can be and has to be brought out and down upon and into earth, established here below in the fullness of its own glory. That is the material epiphany, the transformation of the physical nature, the ultimate and inevitable destiny of earth and mankind. Such is the full cycle of human life – in the beginning the birth in mortality and in ignorance, then a process ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

Our Many Selves  >  The Vital

... The vital physical governs all the small daily reactions to out ward things—reactions of the nerves and the body consciousness and the reflex reactions and sensations; it motives much of the ordinary actions of man and joins with the lower parts of the vital proper in producing lust, jealousy, anger, violence etc. In its lowest parts (vital-material) it is the agent of pain, physical illness etc... 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... 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 still resists—it is the material vital with ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Our Many Selves

Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic  >  The Triple Labour of Association

... question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light." Amal Kiran writes apropos of the full circumstances... ion and the body will be kept lying on his bed as long as it remains intact." Later she reported: "As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he called the Mind of Light got realised in me." The Mother speaks of the Mind of Light as follows: "The Supermind had descended long ago — very long ago — into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly... establish it on the earth. So, about his passing, Sethna says: "No Yogi dies in the ordinary meaning of the word: his consciousness always exceeds the formula of the physical body, he is beyond and greater than his material sheath even while he inhabits it, and his action on mankind is essentially through his free and ample spirit to which both life and death are small masks of a fully aware ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1  >  Bypaths of Soul'sJourney

... vital or even a subtle physical movement or formation which can take a body creating a temporary, a transient personality or enter into another's body and another personality in order to go through a necessary experience and gather an element needed for the growth of its being and consciousness. One can recall here the famous story of Shankaracharya ! Who entered into the body of a king (just dead,... individual, no doubt, it has even a kind of recognisable form, but nothing of the kind by which matter or a material body is characterised. It is an essential form, form of the form, swar ū pa; it is a basic or typal individuality, the individual seated within the 'individual. The characteristic of material individuality is, as I have said, exclusiveness, where -as the soul individuality is characterised... labour as human mind ordinarily understands it. The soul in its inner consciousness knows all its evolutionary formations, remembers those of the past and foresees those of the future, when needed, and even determines them essentially. The mind ruling one incarnation cannot recall other incarnations, for it is a product of that incarnation and is meant to guide and control it; physical memory is a ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

Mother’s Agenda 1967  >  June 24, 1967

... instead of doing all by the mind's effort." That's exactly the point. Then: "The importance of the body is obvious; it is because he has developed or been given a body and brain capable of receiving and serving a progressive mental illumination that man has risen above the animal. Equally, it can only be by developing a body or at least a functioning of the physical instrument capable of receiving... better to reach the end. It's a curve—it's better to reach the end. It's too early to speak. ( After a silence ) The near totality of the body's movements are movements of habit. Behind, there is the consciousness of the physical mind (what I call the "cellular mind") which is constantly conscious of the divine Presence and anxious to allow nothing but That; then a whole work is going on to change, to... all in the consciousness of others. So that increases the work. The problem of mental, even vital, contagion is solved, so to speak, but the problem of material contagion remains. And in this material consciousness, there is this material mind which has so marvellously responded here ( in Mother ), but it doesn't yet have the power to assert itself spontaneously against what comes from outside ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1967

Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Remarks on the Current State of the Sadhana (1931-1947)

... 354 And how is it possible to perfect the mind and vital unless the physical is prepared—for there is such a thing as the mental and vital physical and mind and vital cannot be said to be perfectly prepared until these are ready. 7 November 1935 If the progress of the transformation of the body is so slow that it cannot keep pace with that of the higher parts, it seems that at any given... I can feel it manifesting—but then something asks how this can be possible, for the vital and the physical are not yet filled with it. The Pure Existence is not something abstract but substantial and concrete. Moreover it is descending into the body, so it is quite natural to feel it materially. 16 October 1934 I do not know who was X 's informant, but certainly the Mother never said to... necessary materials—not a sudden fiat of the Creator by which everything is done on a given date. It is a suprarational but not an irrational process. What is to be done, will happen—perhaps with a rush even—but in a workmanlike way and not according to fancy. However I will try to explain all that as far as possible—in principle only of course—as far as it can be explained to the physical mind which ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram

Parables from the Upanishads  >  Narada - Sanatkumara

... attainment is Knowledge. From Name or gross physical Word as our starting-point, we arrive in the end at its culmination as the knowledge of particulars, what we call the power of discrimination. But the growth and cultivation of the mind alone is not enough. For its sufficient development and capacity there is needed a physical capacity that has the body as its base. That is why, in the second stage... state of mind, in its physical functioning, the same state of peace has to be established over and over again in the depths of the inner being and on its ascending peaks. A somewhat similar method or process of working is noticeable in the path shown here by Rishi Sanatkumara to Narada. At the beginning of the series is the physical mind, at the end is the spiritual mind. The physical mind is the slave... power of work. Hence, under this category of Power, are grouped the fourfold series that constitute in essence the material world in its forms of solids, liquids, energy and air — the fifth or ethereal element is omitted for it is not relevant here. The solids form the body's material substance, the liquids give it life and mobility, energy is stamina and prowess, air gives it the sense of width and ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Parables from the Upanishads

The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Supermind's Descent and The Mind of Light

... mentality" and even the designation, "physical mind", is not always absent. Thus, while discussing Mind and Supermind in Chapter XVIII of The Life Divine, he³ writes: "To us mind seems to be determined by the body, because it is preoccupied with that and devoted to the physical workings which it uses for its conscious superficial action in this gross material world. Employing constantly that... the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving... distinguished from the physical mind and the physical vital. After the physical mind, the physical vital is what has to receive the supramental light and be its second centre of operation if the most material, the physical proper, is to be supramentalised and a complete divinisation of earth-nature accomplished. It should be obvious that, strictly speaking, the physical vital is the vitality ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  Hathayoga

... control of its functionings, so that the mind and will of the soul inhabiting the body may be no longer subject to the body or life or their combined limitations. The power of these exercises of breathing to bring about a purified and unobstructed state of the nervous system is a known and well-established fact of our physiology. It helps also to clear the physical system, but is not entirely effective... mere basis, the outward and inward physical conditions of the two instruments used by Hathayoga. There still remains the more important matter of the psychical and spiritual effects to which they can be turned. This depends on the connection between the body and the mind and spirit and between the gross and the subtle body on which the system of Hathayoga takes its stand. Here it comes into line with Rajayoga... of the lungs is Page 534 only the most sensible, outward and seizable movement of the Prana, the Breath of Life in our physical system. The Prana has according to Yogic science a fivefold movement pervading all the nervous system and the whole material body and determining all its functionings. The Hathayogin seizes on the outward movement of respiration as a sort of key which opens to ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Questions and Answers (1955)  >  27 July 1955

... many times; it produces a mixture, all that, as soon as it is no longer altogether material... It's because you have a skin that you don't enter into one another like that; otherwise even the subtle physical, you see... like a kind of almost perceptible vapour which goes out from bodies, which is the subtle physical, it intermingles terribly, and it produces all kinds of reactions, constantly, of one... stimulating the receptivity of the body to the energies for realisation. It is based upon something which is expressed in all kinds of ways; but it is a kind of admiration... how to put it?... a spontaneous and also charming admiration for heroism, which is in the most material physical consciousness. And this is a tremendous power for overcoming tamas and physical inertia. Besides it is upon this... more a physical action—preparing oneself for the physical action. It is more a way of opening oneself to the energy, the universal energy, to prepare for the action. It is a contact with the energy, the universal energy which is there, it is to help the body to participate in the work. At that moment it is something very physical. This is truly the basis of physical culture: to prepare the body for the ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)

A Greater Psychology  >  The Subconscient

... When the physical consciousness is being changed, 1 the chief resistance comes from the subconscient. It is constantly maintaining or bringing back the inertia, weakness, obscurity, lack of intelligence which afflict the physical mind and vital or the obscure fears, desires, angers, lusts of the physical vital, or the illnesses, dullnesses, pains, incapabilities to which the body-nature is... inarticulate consciousness which works below all our conscious physical Page 34 activities. Just as what we call the superconscient is really a higher consciousness above from which things descend into the being, so the subconscient is below the body-consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there. Just as the higher consciousness is... The subconscient in the ordinary man includes the larger part of Page 33 the vital being and the physical mind and also the secret body-consciousness. Letters on Yoga, p. 898 The subconscient is universal as well as individual like all the other main parts of the Nature. But there are different parts or planes of the subconscient. All upon earth is based on the Inconscient ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth  >  Some Knotty Problems of Rebirth

... immense victory of soul and mind and life over the basic limitations of material Nature. But is the conquest of physical death at all possible ever in the future upon earth? For, as Sri Aurobindo has warned us: "Even if Science, - physical Science or occult Science, - were to discover the necessary conditions or means for an indefinite survival of the body, still, if the body could not adapt itself... 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 the experiences of life even after the death of the body? (A.... rebirths of an individual human soul in different physical bodies upon earth is not a simple affair. It is an issue bristling with many problems of understanding; man's rational mind becomes inquisitive to know more about many of the tricky factors involved in this mysterious phenomenon. We give below a representative list of questions which puzzles man's mind faced with the prospect of rebirths he may have ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth

A Greater Psychology  >  Consciousness the Reality

... consciousness; to widen consciousness out of the limits of the ego and the body; to heighten it by an inner will and aspiration and opening to the Light till it passes in its ascent beyond Mind; to bring down a descent of the supramental Divine through self-giving and surrender with a consequent transformation of mind, life and body — this is the integral way to the Truth. Sri Aurobindo 1... whether, since even mental consciousness exists where we see inanimation and inertia, it is not possible that even in material objects a universal subconscient mind is present although unable to act or communicate itself to its surfaces for want of organs. Is the material state an emptiness of consciousness, or is it not rather only a sleep of consciousness — even though from the point of view of evolution... Essentially, we arrive at that unity which materialistic Science perceives from the other end when it asserts that Mind cannot be another force than Matter, but must be merely development and outcome of material energy. Indian thought at its deepest affirms on the other hand that Mind and Matter are rather different grades of the same energy, different organisations of one conscious Force of Existence ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

Essays on the Gita  >  The Core of the Gita's Meaning

... can he wholly accept mind as nothing but a servant of the life and body admitted to certain pure enjoyments of its own as a sort of reward for its service or regard it as no more than an extension and flower of the vital urge, an ideal luxury contingent upon the satisfaction of the material life. The mind much more intimately than the body and the life is the man, and the mind as it develops insists... insists more and more on making the body and the life an instrument—an indispensable instrument and yet a considerable obstacle, otherwise there would be no problem—for its own characteristic Page 565 satisfactions and self-realisation. The mind of man is not only a vital and physical, but an intellectual, aesthetic, ethical, psychic, emotional and dynamic intelligence, and in the sphere of... earth and in the body. The material and vital law is a rule of survival, of struggle, of desire and possession, of self-assertion and the satisfaction of the body, the life and the ego. All the intellectual reasoning in the world, all the ethical idealism and spiritual absolutism of which the higher faculties of man are capable cannot abolish the reality and claim of our vital and material base or prevent ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita

The Destiny of the Body  >  Life's Ingenuity and Supermind

... and what it is doing." 4 (v)But behind the outer veil of material inconscience and the iron grip of physico-chemical determinism, a secret involved Consciousness, cosmic and infinite, is always at work in our body. And without this supporting greater Consciousness-Force that is 'awake in all that sleeps', 5 our physical system itself would have no power of action, nor any organising coherence... s irruption of the phenomena of other-Nature into physical Nature or...a possession of the knowledge and power of the higher orders or grades of cosmic Being and Energy and the direction of their forces and processes towards the production of effects in the physical world by seizing on possibilities of interconnection and means for a material effectuality." 1 But why at all these misgivings... prompts us to make a basic suggestion. In order that the human body may be completely autotrophe, that is to say, grow altogether independent of other organisms for its nutritional requirements until at the end it totally transcends all needs for material alimentation, three conditions have to be preliminarily satisfied: (i)the body must acquire an almost infinite capacity for biosynthesis; ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8  >  Narada - Sanatkumara

... attain­ment is Knowledge. From Name or gross physical Word as our starting-point, we arrive in the end at its culmination as the knowledge of particulars, what we call the power of discrimination. But the, growth and cultivation of the mind alone is not enough. For its sufficient development and capacity there is needed a physical capacity that has the body as its base. That is why, in the second stage... state of mind, in its physical functioning, the same state of peace has to be established over and over again in the depths of the inner being and on its ascending peaks. A somewhat similar method or process of working is noticeable in the path shown here by Rishi Sanatkumara to Narada. At the beginning of the series is the physical mind, at the end is the spiritual mind. The physical mind is the slave... power of work. Hence, under this category of Power, are grouped the fourfold series that constitute in essence the material world in its forms of solids, liquids, energy and air - the fifth or ethereal element is omitted for it is not rele­vant here. The solids form the body's material substance, the liquids give it life and mobility, energy is stamina and prowess, air gives it the sense of width and ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8

Notes on the Way  >  21 January 1967

... back. And I see that for years the body and the whole bodily consciousness used to fall back into the old way, as a safety, as a means of safety, to escape. And now it has agreed not to do it any more, but to accept on the contrary: "Well, if it is dissolution, it is dissolution"—but it accepts whatever will be. In the mind, when the thing happens in the physical mind (it was years ago, but I had observed... plasticity, of fluidity, which seems to be a new way for the cells. It would probably be what materially must replace the physical ego; that is to say, the rigidity of the form appears to be yielding to this new way of being. But, well, we know the first contact is always very "surprising", but gradually the body gets accustomed. It is the moment of the passage from one way to the other which is a little... eyes, all the while. And you have a strange (for the body), a strange perception, at once of subtleness, of penetrability, if one may say so, of suppleness of form and positively not of an eradication but a considerable diminution of the rigidity of forms—eradication of rigidity, not eradication of forms: a suppleness in the forms. And the body itself, when for the first time it felt this in one part ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Notes on the Way

Letters on Yoga - III  >  The Human World

... falling of teeth [ in dream ] is symbolic usually of the breaking or falling off of habitual formations or sanskaras in the physical mind. Flesh The piece of flesh indicates something restless in the physical being which stands by its restlessness and excessive materiality in the way of the full flow of the Ananda. In the dream this became active and was eliminated by the pressure of the psychic... When you find yourself flying it is always the vital being in the subtle body in the vital world that is doing it. Flying during sleep over houses, streets, etc. simply means that the consciousness in the vital sheaths has gone out and is moving over places in the vital or subtle physical world (even sometimes the material); it is always in the vital sheath that one flies like that. The ascending... planes or levels and comes down again to the body. Ears The ears signify usually the place of inspired knowledge or else of inspired expression—red and gold mean truth and power joined together. Teeth Symbolically, if the dream is symbolic, the falling of teeth means the disappearance of old fixed mental habits belonging to the physical mind. Page 163 The breaking or falling ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III

A Centenary Tribute  >  Sri Aurobindo's Vision-Kireet Joshi

... and in the organisation of its material workings. As Sri Aurobindo points out, "A radical transformation of the functioning and, it may well be, of the structure and certainly of the too mechanical and material impulses and driving forces of the bodily system would be imperative... A total transformation of the body would demand a sufficient change of the most material part of the organism, its constitution... near and annulling distance, cognising what is now beyond the body's cognisance, acting where action is now out of its reach or its domain, developing subtleties and plasticities which could not be permitted under present conditions to the needed fixity of a material frame. These and other numerous potentialities might appear and the body     3 . The Supramental Manifestation , SABCL, Vol... God as relevant for it.     According to Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), evolution presupposes an involutionary process. If Life evolves in Matter, and Mind in Life, it must be because Life is involved in Matter and Mind in Life. The material Inconscience is the involved Super-conscience. Evolution is fundamentally a spiritual phenomenon. It is a phenomenon of an evolutionary self-building of Spirit ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Centenary Tribute

The Destiny of the Body  >  The Conquest of Mortality

... Science — were to discover the necessary conditions or means for an indefinite survival of the body, still, if the body could not adapt itself so as to become a fit instrument of expression for the inner growth, the soul would find some way to abandon it and pass on to a new incarnation. The material or physical causes of death are not its sole or its true cause; its true inmost reason is the spiritual... on of our actually limited and rigid existence, down to the very cells and functionings of the material body, that the law of death at present inevitable owing "to the law and compulsion of the All-Life in the material universe, to its law of supply of the material of form and demand on the material, its principle of constant intershock and the struggle of the embodied life to exist in a world... affranchise the body from the obligation of death. One must reach a state of consciousness involving even the consciousness of the body when one would be able to exclaim with the mystic of the Mahabharata: "No time ripens for me, time is not my Lord." 1 It is worth noting in this connection what the Mother has pronounced on the subject of indefinite durability of a physical body: "What ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Overman  >  6: The Consciousness of the Overman

... organs themselves in their material working and use and diminish greatly the need of their instrumentation and even of their existence. The centres in the material body … of 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... siddhi has an influence, a repercussion on the physical body, then the supreme siddhi must have a supreme, absolute influence. The Mother’s day-to-day experiences were baffling and could not have been possible without her avataric Yoga and, yes, the solidity of her physical constitution. In our experience our body feels like the centre or axis of the material universe, and this feeling is firmly grounded... organisms, that have acquired a spiritual consciousness? The Mother must have read the incomprehension in the mind of the persons she was talking to, for she said so often something like: “It is the experience of the body, you understand, physically, materially: the experience of the body!” 4 The aspiration, the equanimity, the sincerity – all basics of the Integral Yoga – were now to become qualities ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Overman

Mother's Chronicles - Book Six  >  The Kundalini

... is the Earth-centre in the body. "This centre commands the physical consciousness and the subconscient t." It is the main and immobile support of all bodily operations, "of the material parts of nature." 2.SWĀDHISHTHĀNA: located below the navel. The lotus is deep purple-red and has six petals. This lower abdomen centre's element is Water-water-centre in the body. This centre commands "the... and PATAlA. They are different regions of the underworld leading to hell. It will be remiss of me if I don't speak of NĀDIS, nerves. "The physical nerves" to quote Sri Aurobindo, "are part of the material body but they are extended into the subtle body and there is a connection between the two." We, of course, have thousands of nerves (72,000 says Tantra). But in the Kundalini yoga three... superimposed planes with the supermind over mind as the crucial nodus of the transition beyond the human into the Divine." These heavenly worlds are above the body. Below the body are the subconscient worlds. Pātāla, a place without light of consciousness is universal, therefore without bounds or end. It is "the dark unconscious infinite out of which this material universe has arisen—it is walled with ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Six

Visions of Champaklal  >  Visions - Experience, Transformation, Realisation

... vital and physical being can contact and meet concretely, quite as intensely as the mind and emotion can conceive and perceive and feel, the Divine in all things; it throws on the physical mind a transforming light that breaks its limitations, its conservative inertia, replaces its narrow thought-power and its doubts by sight and pours luminosity and consciousness into the very cells of the body. In... ful in everything in its appeal to the aesthetic mind and the senses: thus the sense is satisfied of God. We can have even the vital, nervous experience and practically the physical sense of the Self in all life and formation and in all workings of powers, forces, energies that operate through us or others or in the world; thus the life and the body are satisfied of God. All this knowledge and ... light is not primarily a material creation and the sense or vision of light accompanying the inner illumination is not merely a subjective visual image or a symbolic phenomenon: light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy. A consciousness ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Visions of Champaklal

Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body  >  Basic Programme for the Human Body

... at the same time care must be taken not to ask of the body more than the strictly necessary amount of effort, the energy required for growth and progress, and shut out most strictly all that produces exhausting fatigue and leads in the end to degeneration and decomposition of the material elements. Physical culture which aims at building a body capable of serving as a fit instrument for the higher... say, for example, that few austerities are so severe as those which physical culture demands 'or the perfection of the body. But of that we shall speak in due time. Before I begin describing the four kinds of austerity required, I must clear up one question which is a source of much misunderstanding and confusion in the minds of most people: it is about ascetic practices which they mistake for... organized with wisdom, its activities divided between wisely graded progressive exercises, required for the culture of the body and the kind of work you do. For both can and should form part of the physical Tapasya. With regard to exercises, each one should choose what suits best his body and, if possible, under the guidance of an expert on the subject who knows how to combine and grade the exercises for ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body

Kena and Other Upanishads  >  The Subject of the Upanishad

... a more precise and narrow inquiry. It concerns itself only with the 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... the supreme and final power? Is mind all or is this human existence only a veil of something greater, mightier, more remote and profound than itself? The Upanishad replies that there is such a greater existence behind, which is to the mind and its instruments, to the life-force and its workings what they are to the material world. Matter does not know Mind, Mind knows Matter; it is only when the... that which is more real than Mind. How to rise beyond the mind and its instruments, enter into himself, attain to the Brahman 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 ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Kena and Other Upanishads

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  Miracles - Their True Significance

... apart from the material or physical being there is the vital being, the Page 218 life-force and there is the mental being, the mind-force. And there are many other levels like these. A miracle happens, that is to say, a material formation behaves in an abnormal way because a force has come down from the vital region and has influenced or taken control of the material object. So the... higher energies whose action on the material plane is of deeper and higher category. A deeper or higher vital power can change radically your character and long-standing habits, help to mould them into a different, nobler and more beautiful pattern. The mind too is capable of performing miracles, a strong mental energy can dictate its terms to life and even to the body. Only the miracles here are not of... mechanism behind the event because it is not apparent to the external logical mind, if we had a slightly different perception, the whole glamour of a miracle would fall to the ground. A miracle is nothing but the intervention of a force from another plane of consciousness. It must be recognised at the very outset that the physical plane of existence is not the only reality, there are many other planes ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  Seeing the Mother in Visions and Dreams

... not white in colour but black. Why was that? It was probably the subconscient physical that you saw—that would explain the shadowy character; the stone indicates the material Nature. 30 September 1933 In the afternoon I went to sleep remembering the Mother. After a while I saw that my subtle mind, vital and body had risen up high into a beautiful world, profound and peaceful. Then I saw many... of Shiva nearly two feet high. Afterwards, out of this image the Mother emerges. She is in meditation. The sunlight falls just behind the Mother's body. What does it signify? Rocks = the physical (most material) being. An opening in the material making room for the formation of the spiritual consciousness there. Stone image of Shiva = the realisation of the silent Self or Brahman there (peace... was the Mother herself in her body of light with the Mahakali power in her, but not the actual form of Mahakali. 26 September 1933 Page 274 Last night I saw in a dream that Light from the Mother's body was coming down into my body and transforming it. Good—it is the opening of the physical consciousness to the Mother. 30 September 1933 The bodies I wrote about this morning were ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother

Questions and Answers (1954)  >  10 March 1954

... of things which go out of the body. Usually what goes out is something quite subtle, like the mind or the higher vital, and much remain in the body, enough for the body not to enter into trance. Among sleepers some even move about often in their sleep: there is one part of their being which is exteriorised but the most material part of their vital being is in the body. And as Page 52 long... of their body but remain in the physical domain. At the most they go into some mental region but they do not go into the domain of death. There are some who go there, but then, for the process to be complete... you must know that when one goes out of one's body, one remain tied to the body by a certain number of links—what shall I call them?... They may be vital links, links of the mind, psychic... belongs to a single plane, the material plane—the purely material physical, mental and vital plane. It is only a higher knowledge and a contact with the higher 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 ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1954)

Letters on Yoga - I  >  The Subconscient and the Inconscient

... gone. When the physical consciousness is being changed, the chief resistance comes from the subconscient. It is constantly maintaining or bringing back the inertia, weakness, obscurity, lack of intelligence which afflict the physical mind and vital or the obscure fears, desires, angers, lusts of the physical vital, or the illnesses, dullnesses, pains, incapabilities to which the body-nature is prone... unexpressed inarticulate consciousness which works below all our conscious physical activities. Just as what we call the superconscient is really a higher consciousness above from which things descend into the being, so the subconscient is below the body consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there. Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient... universal, therefore without bounds or end—the dark unconscious infinite out of which this material universe has arisen—it is walled with darkness on all sides, it seems also to have no bottom. The Light comes from above from the higher consciousness and coming down through the mind and heart and vital and physical has to pour down into this subconscient and make it luminous. "Patala" [ in an experience ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Appendix I: The Tangle of Karma

... them no adequate organisation and shape and body in his mental movements or his life-action or his physical and material consciousness and dynamis. The moment he tries to get at the absolute of the spirit, he feels himself obliged to reject body, to silence mind, and to draw back from life. It is that urgent necessity, that inability of mind and life and body to hold and answer to the spirit that is the... on the mental level the law of mind and turns its movements into an instrumentation of the free intelligence. Again man exists here in the body and the physical world; he is open more or less to the vast movements of a life plane and the free movements of a mental world that are far vaster and freer in their potentialities than anything that we call here life and mind, but he does not live in that free... alone; he is also, even if less exclusively than others, the vital and physical man; subject to the urgings of the life and the body, he participates in the vital and physical motives of Karma and receives the perplexed and intertwined return of these energies. It is not intended in his birth that he shall live entirely in mind, for he is here to deal with life and Matter as well and to bring as best ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  19 June 1957

... violent attacks could be repelled. If one has a minimum of control over the body, one can lessen its effects, but that is not immunity. It is this kind of trembling of material, physical Page 122 fear in the cells of the body which aggravates all illnesses. Some people are spontaneously free from fear even in their body; they have a sufficient vital equilibrium in them not to be afraid, not... succeed in making the body understand? That is not enough. A mental resolution is not enough, no. There Page 124 are subtle reactions in your body which do not obey the mental resolution, it is not enough. Something else is needed. Other regions must be contacted. A power higher than the mind's is needed. And from this point of view, all that is in the mind is always subject to... resistances or conditions of one's life, one's body. Even from the ordinary external point of view, it has been recognised for a very long time that it is a fall in the resistance of the vitality due to immediate moral causes which is always at the origin of an illness. When one is in a normal state of equilibrium and lives in a normal physical harmony, the body has a capacity of resistance, it has within ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)

Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Specific Illnesses, Ailments and Other Physical Problems

... period of growth is over. It may come in the period of material transformation at the end of the Yoga—but that is far off and I don't think there are any means by which it can be done otherwise. Bearing the Heat Dry heat is supposed to be less bad for the general health than Page 590 Specific Illnesses, Ailments and Physical Problems 591 damp heat. There is however usually less need... need of food and therefore less appetite. From the point of view of Yoga if one can keep a certain quiet in the material body, "peace in the cells", the heat is easier to bear. Page 591 ... incurable illness in reality—for what the doctors call such is only an illness for which they have not yet been able to discover a physical remedy. X has one force on her side, her faith and her will to survive for the sadhana; on the other side is a kind of destiny of the body which is strong but not absolutely insurmountable. Her faith must be left intact—and we must send force to help her. That is all ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV

The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  The Mother's Force and the Body

... The Mother's Force and the Body When can it be said that the material being is ready for the Divine? If the material consciousness is open, feels the Mother's Force working in it and responds, then it is ready. 11 June 1933 I feel the Mother's light, peace, beauty, joy and love descending from above into each strand of my hair. The whole body, calm and still, becomes absorbed... the physical consciousness. That is very good. It is the Force and Presence of the Mother from above that comes down like that into the body—first in the head and chest and afterwards into the whole body. It is the first fundamental experience of the sadhana from which all the rest begins—for until it comes all else is only preparation. Very often it takes people years to bring it into the body, and... well as anyone else here. 3 December 1933 Is the heat that I felt in the body the heat of the fever or the heat of the Mother's Force? It exerted a tremendous pressure on my mind, life and body. That has still to be seen. It is most probably the tapas heat; the question is whether it is turned partially in the body into fever. 7 June 1936 It is quite true that the Mother has been putting ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother

On Thoughts and Aphorisms  >  Aphorism - 11

... to be accomplished. Its descent into the physical body is necessarily a descent into darkness, ignorance, unconsciousness; and for a very long time it must labour simply to bring a little consciousness into the material substance of the body, before it can make use Page 29 of it for the experience it has come for. So, if we cultivate the body by a clear-sighted and rational method, at... which the body is capable of perfecting itself, one understands how useful this can be to the action of the psychic being which has entered into this material substance. For naturally, when it is in possession of an organised and harmonised instrument which is full of strength and suppleness and possibilities, its task is greatly facilitated. I do not say that people who practise physical culture... with the supramental reality. As it is, the physical body is truly nothing but a very disfigured shadow of the eternal life of the Self. But this physical 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 ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Thoughts and Aphorisms

A Greater Psychology  >  Evolution of Mankind: Psychological and Spiritual Growth of Society

... free from the trammels of her first vital and physical realisations. For here in man we have a distinction which is of the utmost importance. He has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself... leads the life and the body, 4 not the animal who is led by them. The true human existence, therefore, only begins when the intellectual mentality emerges out of the material and we begin more and more to live in the mind independent of the nervous and physical obsession and in the measure of that liberty are able to accept rightly and rightly to use the life of the body. For freedom and not a... equilibrium of vitality and matter, the sane, robust, long-lived human body is ordinarily found only in races or classes of men who reject the effort of thought, its disturbances, its tensions, or think only with the material mind. Civilised man has yet to establish an equilibrium between the fully active mind and the body; he does not yet normally possess it. Indeed, the increasing effort towards ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

Integral Yoga - Major Aims, Methods, Processes and Results  >  PART FOUR

... problem of opposites that Nature has solved and seeks always to solve better with greater complexities; for its perfect solution would be the material immortality of a fully organized mind-supporting animal body. The accordance of a conscious mind and conscious will with a form and a life in themselves not overtly self-conscious and capable at best of a mechanical or sub-conscious will is another problem... there is upward impulse of man towards the harmony and perfect integration of the body, life and mind with the supermind. That perfect harmony is the logical completion of a fundamental method of Nature and the very sense of her universal strivings. Sri Aurobindo states: "The accordance of active Life with a material of form in which the condition of activity itself seems to be inertia, is one problem... the intervening powers of Overmind and Spiritual mind would be able to 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 ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Integral Yoga - Major Aims, Methods, Processes and Results

Words of the Mother - III  >  6 January 1951

... remains unchanged unless you take care and persist in your effort. What is it? The body Page 292 consciousness. What is the body consciousness? The vital consciousness, of course—the physical consciousness as a whole. But then, in this physical consciousness as a whole, there is the physical mind—a mind that is occupied with all the ordinary things and responds to everything around you... consciousness, which is the awareness of sensations, impulses, enthusiasms and desires. Finally, there is the physical consciousness itself, the material consciousness, the body consciousness, and that is the one which has so far never been entirely transformed. The global, overall consciousness of the body has been transformed, that is, one can throw off the bondage of thought, of habits that one no longer... was not good," or "It was disgusting," or even "It was wicked." And don't think that there are people to whom this rule does not apply, for you cannot live in the physical world without having a share in the physical nature, and physical nature is essentially a mixture. You will see, when you become absolutely sincere, that there is nothing in yourself that is absolutely unmixed. But it is only when ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - III

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11  >  The Triple Cord

... the mind controlled by the senses, the impressions of the senses; its structure is patterned according to the impact of the physical and material objects. A clear, free physical mind embodies the pattern of the movements of the higher consciousness, not of the sense-dominated consciousness.         Even like the mind, the vital too has its threefold knots according to the three elements that ... drive, the push towards physical act and execution. Last, the physical too has the same threefold knots, first in the mental physical, second in the vital physical and thirdly in the physical physical, that is, the physical proper. The mind in the physical is the purely brain operation, the primitive original percepts that brain-cells emanate. The vital in the physical means the record of the nerves... Unwound the triple cord of mind and freed—                                                                     Savitri 1, 5 Page 18 knot has to be cut through and the thread to be scattered into the infinity of the deepest and of the widest being. The last barrier at the base of the human consciousness is the hard crust of the physical and the material being. It is closed to the ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  The Triple Cord

... structure is patterned according to the impact of the physical and material objects. A clear, free physical mind embodies the pattern of the movements of the higher consciousness, not of the sense-dominated consciousness. Even like the mind, the vital too has its threefold knots according to the three elements that constitute it. First, there is a mind in the vital, it is called mental-vital, there is... threefold knots, first in the mental physical, second in the vital physical and thirdly in the physical physical, that is, the physical proper. The mind in the physical is the purely brain operation, the primitive original percepts that brain-cells emanate. The vital in the physical means the record of the nerves, more or less that are sensations. Lastly, the physical physical means the most mechanical, the... widest being. The last barrier at the base of the human consciousness is the hard crust of the physical and the material being. It is closed to the regions behind, the occult sources of all external movements. This too * A greater force than the earthly held his limbs, Unwound the triple cord of mind and freed – Sri Aurobindo: Savitri 1.5 Page 318 has to be pulled down ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

The Sun and The Rainbow  >  Mind of Light (Poem)

... supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. The physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light." — Note received from the Mother)   The core of a deathless sun is now the brain And each grey cell bursts to omniscient gold. Thought leaps — and an inmost light speaks out from things; Will... MIND OF LIGHT     ("The Supermind had descended long ago — very long ago — into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also, but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question now was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental... Will, a new miracled Matter's dense white flame, Swerves with one touch the sweep of the brute world. Eyes focus now the Perfect everywhere. In a body changing to chiselled translucency, Through nerve on fire-cleansed nerve a wine of the Vast Thrills from heaven-piercing head to earth-blessing feet. The whole sky weighs down with love of the abyss. Deeper than ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Sun and The Rainbow

Preparing for the Miraculous  >  8: Sri Aurobindo’s Descent into Death

... it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. The physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light.” 18 Sri Aurobindo’s leaving the body meant a traumatic change for the Mother in ways we cannot even try to imagine. Which human can have an idea of... took upon him the Yoga of bringing down the Supermind into his physical body. As his physical body, like any other human body, was a formation of the terrestrial evolution, this also meant that he was bringing down the Supermind in the very stuff of the Earth. The Mother had taken upon her the building up of the Ashram, materially as well as spiritually, and the yoga of the sadhaks and sadhikas... his/her physical completeness, i.e. in a male/female body. If the Avatar had been present in only one body, the death of this body would have cancelled out any possibility of accomplishing the present mission successfully. (This illustrates how the planning and the completion of the mission of an Avatar is decided upon and pre-exists outside the dimensions, outside “the theatre” of the material world ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Preparing for the Miraculous

Record of Yoga  >  Automatic Writings, c. 1920

... as the real body of the psychic worlds is not present to the physical mind, but only appears like a dream or Page 1415 imagination, so to my psychic mind is the body of the material world. This presents a difficulty which most who do this writing do not appreciate. It is only spirits who are very near to the earth who can to some extent see it with similar eyes to physical beings and they... seeing in vision the form of what I was renewed though changed in the form of my new body. A seer with knowledge can know the identity of one he sees even though not known before to the physical mind. It will be begun. That is not necessary. That I should be directly descended. No; I have not the physical vision. It is not always easy to see from a distance, and if I depend on any of you... during which I must gather forces on the intermediary planes. After that I shall have again to enter into relation with the material plane, but of course in a different way, and gather powers and influences of the earth to form my earthly basis of personality, mind, life and body. Yes. I believe so; but it may be either in the direct surroundings or in dependent circles.. Possibly, ten or fifteen ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

Our Many Selves  >  The Subconscient

... into the body, so there is also a subconscient (something below our consciousness) below the feet. Matter is under the control of this power, because it is that out of which it has been created—that is why matter seems to us to be quite unconscious. The material body is very much under the influence of this power for the same reason; it is why we are not conscious of what is going on in the body, for the... of oneself, but as invasions—and rejected without allowing any depression or discouragement. If the mind does not sanction them, if the vital refuses to welcome them, if the physical remains steady and refuses to obey the physical urge, then the recurrence of the thought, the vital impulse, the physical feeling will begin to lose its last holds and finally they will be too feeble to cause any trouble... desires, sensations and nervous reactions, a most obscure material which governs much that has to do with the condition of the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly dis ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Our Many Selves

Blessings of the Grace  >  The Mother and Sri Aurobindo

... in different places. He is not limited, it is only the physical body that is limited, but not the subtle physical. The subtle physical penetrates everything and can go everywhere. It is not limited by the body. It is this ( the body ) that limits. It is the mind that cannot grasp. It is not with your mind that you can understand this. The mind cannot express, there is no means to express this. Only... imagine. I cannot describe it… He has left everything for me. Well, it is this physical body which is limited, which is bound and which does not allow a free play. Once the consciousness enters into this ( the body ), it is completely restricted in this material form. But He, He is everywhere. He is here in me, as well as everywhere in the world. He speaks to me. I ask Him things and he replies. We... there are no words, one cannot understand by the mind what it is. You know, when He left, … when He wanted to leave His body, He remained from the 5 th December till the 9 th …. At that time, He was charged with an unimaginable consciousness. It was a dynamic activity of the consciousness which radiated from His body. It was so concrete, so physical, that everything vibrated in Him with an astonishing ...

Mona Sarkar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Blessings of the Grace

Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  General Remarks on the Sadhana of the 1930s

... speculated on the subject that the body of the future race will be a luminous body ( corps glorieux ) and that might mean radio-active. But also it has to be considered (1) that a supramental body must necessarily be one in which the consciousness determines even the physical action and reaction to the most material and these therefore are not wholly dependent on material conditions or laws as now known... that time and itself decide the question. Will anyone leave his body even after manifesting the Divine in his physical body? It will depend upon the person whether he wants to leave it or not. 19 November 1933 You have said that the Overmind is not sufficient to deal with the physical. 3 Does this mean that the physical is not liberated or spiritualised even by the Overmind? There... would now need a physical change such as increased temperature. 18 November 1935 I agree that the action would not be "wholly dependent on material conditions or laws as now known", but that it will necessarily change material conditions or laws. If this necessity was not there, it could act under present conditions and laws—but it doesn't. But how is it going to change material conditions and ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Life Divine  >  The Double Soul in Man

... our physical birth and death, but is our true vital being behind the form of living which we ignorantly take for our real existence. Even in the matter of our being there is this duality; for behind our body we have a subtler material existence which provides the substance not only of our physical but of our vital and mental sheaths and is therefore our real substance supporting this physical form... constant relation and commerce with it. 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 subliminal physicality in us to the universal force-formation of cosmic Matter; the thick walls which divide from these things our surface mind, life, body and which Nature has to pierce with so much trouble,... the mind, the life and the body, since it is these parts of Nature that have to be developed as its instruments of self-expression, and it is long confined by their evolution. Missioned to lead man in the Ignorance towards the light of the Divine Consciousness, it takes the essence of all experience in the Ignorance to form a nucleus of soul-growth in the nature; the rest it turns into material for ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Mother’s Agenda 1963  >  April 6, 1963

... place in the material consciousness. Physically, the body has all the sensations—but not the hemorrhage, you understand. But it does have the sensations, that is, the effects: all the sensory effects. It goes on for a while and then follows a whole curve. All right. Once the battle is over, I take a look and wonder (I observe the whole thing, I see my body, which has been fairly shaken, mind you), I say... progress in the impersonalization of the physical, bodily consciousness, with consequences that are probably interesting, but impossible to explain to people who don't understand. For instance... ( silence ) I am conscious of the body, but it isn't the consciousness of this body ( Mother touches her body ): it's the consciousness of THE Body—it may be anyone's body. I am conscious, for instance, of... hemorrhage because it will soon come into the picture). Under the higher Influence, the body consciousness rejects it. Then begins the battle (all this takes place all the way down in the cells, in the material consciousness) between what we could call the "will for hemorrhage," for example, and the reaction of the body's cells. But it's very like a real battle, a real confrontation. And all of a sudden ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1963

Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth  >  The Mystery of Rebirth

... out of his being and associates them with material bodies, thus vivifying these latter with a spiritual principle. But this theory involves two paradoxes. Firstly, the hourly creation of beings having a beginning in time but no end in time and, moreover, being born by the birth of the physical body but somehow not ending with the dissolution of that body. Secondly, these individual beings are ... direct transmigrations of the soul from one body to another; death is supposed to be immediately followed by a new birth without any possibility of an interval. The passage of the soul is thus a circumstance in the uninterrupted series of a material procedure. The soul has no freedom from Matter; it is perpetually bound to its physical instrument, the material body, and dependent on it for the continuity... being) is the supreme Reality secret behind all appearances of the universe. Its Supermind (divine Mind or Gnosis) is the real creative agent and has arranged the cosmic order not directly as such but indirectly through the three subordinate and limiting terms of Mind, Life and Matter. The material universe is the lowest stage of a downward plunge of the manifestation leading to the involution ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth

The Life Divine  >  Death, Desire and Incapacity

... acquisition in Time. To this process change of form is essential, and for the soul involved in individual body change of form means dissolution of the body in subjection to the law and compulsion of the All-life in the material universe, to its law of supply of the material of form and demand on the material, to its principle of constant Page 205 intershock and the struggle of the embodied life... character. In the material world we inhabit Mind is involved and subconscious in Life, just as Supermind is involved and subconscious in Mind, and this Life instinct with an involved subconscious Mind is again itself involved in Matter. Therefore Matter is here the basis and the apparent beginning; in the language of the Upanishads, Prithivi, the Earth-principle, is our foundation. The material universe starts... universe. The energy of life in the body has to support the attack of the energies external to it in the universe; it has to draw them in and feed upon them and is itself being constantly devoured by them. All Matter according to the Upanishad is food, and this is the formula of the material world that "the eater eating is himself eaten". The life organised in the body is constantly exposed to the possibility ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

The Life Divine  >  The Triple Transformation

... view of the government of the nature by the inner principle. In some human beings it is the physical Purusha, the being of body, who dominates the mind, will and action; there is then created the physical man mainly occupied with his corporeal life and habitual needs, impulses, life habits, mind habits, body habits, looking very little or not at all beyond that, subordinating and restricting all his... Nature; but this action is occult and not obtruded on the surface. In the early material and vital stages of the evolution of being there is indeed no consciousness of soul; there are psychic activities, but the instrumentation, the form of these activities are vital and physical—or mental when the mind is active. For even the mind, so long as it is primitive or is developed but still too external, does not... a being of mind, a mental Purusha, expressing something of itself on our surface Page 929 in the thoughts, perceptions, activities of our mind nature, a being of life which expresses something of itself in the impulses, feelings, sensations, desires, external life activities of our vital nature, a physical being, a being of the body which expresses something of itself in the instincts, ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Appendix II: Matter

... here, mind, life, body, depend on Matter, evolve out of it; Matter is their support, conditions their emergence and action. Man rose out of the animal by developing a body capable of a progressive mental illumination; to rise beyond himself to a divine manhood or supermanhood he must develop a physical instrumentation or body capable of a still greater supramental illumination. But the body seems... assumes, the phenomena of Matter are the result of the dividing action of Mind. Consciousness Page 505 descending from Supermind appears asMind, an inferior power of Supermind, Force appears as Life, an energy instrumental to Mind; Mind descending into Life becomes by involution in it subconscient and gives to the material workings of Life the appearance of inconscience. The inconscience, inertia... inertia, atomic disaggregation of Matter is due to this involved action of Mind. The creative life-energy of Mind involved in Matter and there turned into what appears to us as an inconscient material Energy gives to form or substance of being on which it works the aspect of inconscience. Mind here is a first action of Supermind in the involutionary descent working in these conditions, separated from ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Mother’s Agenda 1962  >  August 4, 1962

... × It is very interesting to note that all these perceptions we consider physical, material (taste, color, etc.), Mother attributes to the mind. What then, is true physical perception? × Like the needle of an electroencephalograph... while still others are disruptive, contradictory. And each one is beginning to reveal its own particular nature. There are those stemming from people's thoughts (I sense them in my body, not in the mind: the material consequence of people's psychological state, and even their state of health). Some things are general and last a bit longer; others are momentary, lasting only a few seconds. The first... was 4 the result of all those years of experience in drawing the Supreme Presence down into the most material world—for that, you have to accept (how can I put it?...) corporeal oneness. Formerly (I mean before last April 13), the process was different; now it has totally changed. This body is nothing but a field of experience, it's no longer an individuality—not at all, at all, at all. But it's ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1962

The Sunlit Path  >  Concentration, Meditation, Work

... of the Body Those who despise physical activities are people who won't be able to take a single step on the true path of integral yoga, unless they first get rid of their contempt. Control of the body in all its forms is an indispensable basis. A body which dominates you is an enemy; it is a disorder you cannot accept. It is the enlightened will in the mind which should govern the body, and not... not the body which should impose its law on the mind. When one knows that a thing is bad, one must be capable of not doing it. When one wants something to be realised, one must be able to do it and not be stopped at every step by the body's inability or ill-will or lack of collaboration; and for that one must follow a physical discipline and become master in one's own home. It is very fine to escape... resist it—whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing—that's not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate. And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Sunlit Path

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1  >  God's Labour

... of consciousness the world and man in their endeavour for progress and evolution, to give the help wholly and completely from the innermost status of the self down to the most external physical body and the material field. This help again is a twofold function. The first is to make available, gather within easy reach, the high realisations, the spiritual treasures that are normally stored in a heaven... pleasure of the heart and emotions and enjoyment is divine Delight. Finally, our mind with its half-lighted thinking power, its groping after knowledge has at its back the plenary light of the Supermind. So the aim is not to reject or withdraw from the material, vital and mental existence upon the earth and in this body, but house in them, make them concrete vehicles, expressions and embodiments of... earth and among men and in the conditions of mortality, show thus by his living and labour that this earthly earth can be trans­formed into a heavenly earth and this human body into a "body divine". Matter or the physical body is not by itself the centre of gravity of the human consciousness; it is not that that pins the soul or the self to the life of pain and misery and incapacity and death ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

Education for Tomorrow  >  The Concept of Integral Education

... of the ancient secrets of the reign of Spirit over mind, life and the body and the modern secrets of utilisation of the life in perfecting the instrumentality of the body, life and mind. Integral education would not only aim at the integral development of personality, but it would also embrace all knowledge in its scope. It would pursue physical and psychical sciences not merely to know the world... mental, and up to a certain stage of development, the mind can act as the leader, justifying the description of the mental in the Taittiriya Upanishad, of manomaya as shariraprananeta (leader of the body and the vital). But the leadership of the mind is rather restricted, and as the rational, ethical and aesthetic powers begin to develop, the mind finds itself incapable of resolving the conflicts between... in which the human mind has achieved in certain directions an enormous development while in others it stands arrested and bewildered and can no longer find its way. A structure of the external life has been raised up by man's ever Page 13 active mind and life-will, a structure of an unmanageable hugeness and complexity, for the service of his mental, vital, physical claims and urges, ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Education for Tomorrow

Questions and Answers (1956)  >  5 September 1956

... its [life's] base; all are tied down by the body and its needs and desires to a trivial mind, petty desires and emotions, an insignificant repetition of small worthless functionings, needs, cares, occupations, pains, pleasures that lead to nothing beyond themselves and bear the stamp of an ignorance that knows not its own why and whither. This physical mind of inertia believes in no divinity other than... in that way. And when one can become so fully conscious of all these weaknesses and stupidities of the outer consciousness, all these falsehoods of so-called material knowledge and so-called physical laws, the so-called necessities of the body, the "reality" of one's needs; if one begins to see how very false, stupid, illusory, obscure, foolish all this is, one is truly very close to the solution. ... to enter into another state of consciousness than the ordinary physical consciousness. Sri Aurobindo has spoken—I believe I have read it to you, I think it's in The Synthesis of Yoga —of the true mind, the true vital and the true physical or subtle physical, and he has said that they co-exist with the ordinary mind, vital and physical, and that in certain conditions one may enter into contact with ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1956)

Mother’s Agenda 1964  >  September 23, 1964

... that this japa automatically triggered the physical mind into a great activity. The physical mind! Yes, that is to say, when I begin the japa, I am assailed by a number of material questions, tiny little material things that happened during the day and come back. Uninteresting things. The japa seems to act on that mind, on that bit of physical mind. Yes, it WANTS to act there. That's why... perception like a motion picture.... ( Then she goes on: ) ...There is a whole part of the most material consciousness, the utterly physical consciousness (precisely the one that participates in incalculable, minuscule activity of every day) which, of course, is very hard to bear. In ordinary life, it's tolerable, it's bearable because you take interest in it and sometimes pleasure—all that life... speed—weeks and months go by like that—and mornings, about three hours every morning, last like a century! Each minute is won at the cost of an effort. It is the time of the work in the body, for the body, and not just one body: for instance, all the vibrations from sick people, all those problems of life come from everywhere. And for those three hours, there is tension, struggle, acute seeking for what should ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1964

Early Cultural Writings  >  The Brain of India

... subtler form, out of the body. Immorality in act throws it out in the gross form; immorality of thought in the subtle form. In either case there is waste, and unchastity is of the mind and speech as well as of the body. On the other hand, all self-control conserves the energy in the retas , and conservation always brings with it increase. But the needs of the physical body are limited and the excess... may benefit the possessor or mankind. All human energy has a physical basis. The mistake made by European materialism is to suppose the basis to be everything and confuse it with the source. The source of life and energy is not material but spiritual, but the basis, the foundation on which the life and energy stand and work, is physical. The ancient Hindus clearly recognised this distinction between... use of the disused intellectual functions and providing for a richer and more real equipment of information, of the substance of knowledge and the materials for creation. If it could not triumphantly succeed, that was partly because it had to deal with minds already vitiated by the old system and not often with the best even of these, because its teachers had themselves seldom a perfect grasp of the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Early Cultural Writings

Letters on Yoga - I  >  The Jivatman in the Integral Yoga

... formation of Nature; but it is not a formation of physical nature alone, therefore it does not cease with the body. There is a mental and vital ego also. The base of the material consciousness here is not only the Ignorance, but the Inconscience—that is, the consciousness is involved in form of matter and energy of matter. It is not only the material consciousness but the vital and the mental too that... vital, the physical nature, grows by their experiences, carries the consciousness from life to life. It is the psychic Person, caitya puruṣa . At first it is veiled by the mental, vital and physical parts, limited by them in its self-expression by their limitations, bound to the reactions of Nature, but, as it grows, it becomes capable of coming forward and dominating the mind, life and body. In the... aware of it, is felt as something self-existent and eternal which is not identified with forms of mental, vital and physical personality,—these are only small expressions of its potentialities in Nature. What people call themselves now is only the ego or the mind or the life-force or the body, but that is because they think in the terms of the formations of Prakriti and do not see behind them. For ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga  >  Psychological Disturbances: A Model Based on Sri Aurobindo's Yoga

... removed my control and Page 94 left the control to the physical mind - it is the physical mind which doubts. So I made the following experiment: I went into a room, then came out of the room and closed the door. I had decided to close the door; and when I came to another room this mind, the material mind, the physical mind, you see, said, 'Are you sure you have locked the door?' Now, I did... able to disturb the mental and vital (proper) falls on the body and uses some physical cause (latent or growing) for the base of its action. For everything manifested in the physical must have a physical support or means for its expression." 44 Since, according to Integral Yoga, it is the defects and weaknesses of body, vital and mind in the individual that provide an opening for the action of... familiar terms used above. Whereas terms such as "mind", "vital", Page 84 "physical" and "psychic" are not new, they have special meanings in the language of Integral Yoga. In ordinary usage, "mind" has a rather vague and too broad a connotation: anything that does not clearly pertain to the body is often conceived to be related to the mind. Thus all processes of thinking, feeling and willing ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga

Essays on the Gita  >  The Creed of the Aryan Fighter

... the conception of himself as a life and a body, who does not accept the material and sensational touches of the world at their own value or at the value which the physical man attaches Page 61 to them, who knows himself and all as souls, learns himself to live in his soul and not in his body and deals with others too as souls and not as mere physical beings. For by immortality is meant not... blinded by his sensations and emotions, is not deceived by material appearances; he does not allow the clamour of his blood and his nerves and his heart to cloud his judgment or to contradict his knowledge. He looks beyond the apparent facts of the life of the body and senses to the real fact of his being and rises beyond the emotional and physical desires of the ignorant nature to the true and only aim... comprehension, for after all our seeking and declaring of knowledge and learning from those who have knowledge no human mind has ever known this Absolute. It is this which is here veiled by the world, the master of the body; all life is only its shadow; the coming of the soul into physical manifestation and our passing out of it by death is only one of its minor movements. When we have known ourselves as ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita

The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  Calling the Mother in Difficulty

... happened in your experience was that the vital being got free from the body through its desire to unite with the Mother Page 310 (you met the Mother on the border between the vital and physical) and lived with its own life independent of the body. It entered into the vital world and, not being sheltered any longer in the body, felt helpless at first, till it called the Mother. The appearance... vision. For in the centre of the forehead between the eyebrows is the centre of the inner mind, inner will, the inner vision and when that opens one begins to see and know what is to the physical eye invisible and to the surface mind unknowable. 11 October 1935 It is an obsession from the subconscient physical bringing back habitual thoughts, "I can't call rightly—I have no real aspiration" etc.;... Ignorance that begin to lay siege and then make a mass attack. Every time such an attack can be defeated and cast out, there is a clearance in the Adhar, a new field gained for the Mother in the mind, vital or physical or the adjacent parts of the being. That the place in the vital occupied by the Mother is increasing is shown by the fact that you are now offering a strong resistance to these sieges that ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10  >  Miracles - Their True Significance

... apart from the material or physical being there is the vital being, the life-force and there is the mental being, the mind-force. And there are many other levels like these. A miracle happens, that is to say, a material formation behaves in an abnormal way because a force has come down from the vital region and has influenced or taken control of the material object. So the material object instead... them into a different, nobler and more beautiful pattern. The mind too is capable of performing miracles, a strong mental energy can dictate its terms to life and even to the body. Only the miracles here are not of a dazzling kind that astound or confound you. They have a subder composition, yet they belong to the same category. In the mind itself miracles happen also when a higher light, a superior... Page 64 because it is not apparent to the external logical mind, if we had a slightly different perception, the whole glamour of a miracle would fall to the ground. A miracle is nothing but the intervention of a force from another plane of consciousness. It must be recognised at the very outset that the physical plane of existence is not the only reality, there are many other planes ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3  >  Mysticism and Occultism

... possession of the mechanical mind and bring about all kinds of disagreeable happenings – nightmares, various physical disturbances – you feel choked, bite or swallow your tongue and even more serious things. When you wish to go into trance, to have the experience of being outside the body, you must have someone by your side, not only to keep watch on your physical body, but also to prevent the vital... There is a still greater danger. When one goes out of the body in a more or less concrete or material way, retaining only a thin and fragile contact – a thread of light, as it were – with the body, this thread of contact must be protected, for the attack of the hostiles may come upon it and cut it; if it is cut one can no longer return into the body, and that means death. All that signifies that occultism... chemistry or physics; for occult knowledge is very much like scientific knowledge, only science deals with material objects and forces, while occultism deals with invisible entities and energies, their potentials of combination and association. And as by your chemical or physical knowledge you control material phenomena, in the same way by the occult knowledge you control subtle phenomena, make them active ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Conditions of Attainment to the Gnosis

... not one living in a mind world, but in a dominantly physical existence; his is Page 488 a mind cased in Matter and conditioned by Matter. Therefore he has to start with the action of the physical senses which are all channels of material contact; he does not start with the mind-sense. But even so he does not and cannot make free use of anything conveyed by these physical organs until and unless... to achieve in its completeness so long as we continue to feel ourselves, as we now feel, a consciousness lodged in an individual mind, life and body. There has to be a certain elevation of the Purusha out of the physical and even out of the mental into the vijñānamaya body. No longer can the brain nor its corresponding mental "lotus" remain the centre of our thinking, no longer the heart nor its c... the original force of our sensations and emotions rise out of the body and mind and take a free station above them. No longer have we the sensation of living in the body, but Page 490 are above it as its lord, possessor or Ishwara and at the same time encompass it with a wider consciousness than that of the imprisoned physical sense. Now we come to realise with a very living force of reality ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Talks on Poetry  >  The Heart and the Art of Poetry - Talk Twenty Seven

... he called his mind and which, in spite of seeming to depend on the brain for proper functioning, was not felt in any way like a physical process. His most direct experience of his most intimate and momentous self-activity gave him a sense of the non-material. The scientific thinkers forgot too that to imagine this strange entity called mind as evolving from merely a play of physical atoms, however... of the physical and intellectual activity of Paris in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. We must also examine the complex composition of his mind before we study the mind of his complex compositions. In his day Science had assumed undeniable authority. To ignore it seemed sheer escapism. The great Newton had stated in mathematical formulas the fixed laws of the heavenly bodies. According... however much we may endow them with attraction and repulsion, was to accept a more impossible miracle than to accept a non-material or spiritual origin for the physical universe — a Divine Being hidden within or behind phenomena and gradually manifesting itself as Matter, as Life, as Mind and pushing towards Supermind through even an Age of Atheism and Materialism. Indeed, the scientists did not attend ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks on Poetry

The Sun and The Rainbow  >  Aids to an Inquiring Seeker

... 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 possess what we may term a perfect perfection whereas the former will be the best and most perfect job made out of materials that were once... most physical part of Sri Aurobindo and directly mingling with his outermost centre of consciousness rather than indirectly through his mental and vital being. But the problem was to fix it there, a permanent light in what we may pinpoint as the physical mind, so that an immediate and settled action of the Supramental Consciousness instead of a come-and-go of it might develop in the material being... a result of Page 121 Sri Aurobindo's sacrifice of his own body. The whole resistance of what he had named the Inconscient, the root and support of all incapacity of the physical nature, including death, was, as it were, swallowed up into Sri-Aurobindo's body and nullified and exhausted there. Hence this body, semi-divinised and marked for total transformation, had to be given up and ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Sun and The Rainbow

A Scheme for The Education of Bengal  >  Brain Of India

... subtler form, out of the body. Immortality in act throws it out in the gross form; immorality of thought in the subtle form. In either case there is waste, and unchastity is of the mind and speech as well as of the body. On the other hand, all self-control conserves the energy in the retas, and conservation always brings with it increase. But the needs of the physical body are limited and the excess... may benefit the possessor or mankind. All human energy has a physical basis. The mistake made by European materialism is to suppose the basis to be every- thing and confuse it with the source. The source of life and energy is not material but spiritual, but the basis, the foundation on which the life and energy stand and work, is physical. The ancient Hindus clearly recognised this distinction between... use of the disused intellectual functions and providing for a richer and more real equipment of information, of the substance of knowledge and the materials for creation. If it could not triumphantly succeed, that was partly because it had to deal with minds already vitiated by the old system. and not often with the best even of these, because its teachers had themselves seldom a perfect grasp of the ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Scheme for The Education of Bengal

The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo  >  Aurobindonian Viewpoints

... divinised mind, vitality and body. So Sri Aurobindo speaks of a descent into us of what he designates as Gnosis or Supermind as well as of an ascent to it. The descent will mean an embodied existence of a divine order in every respect and no longer of an order that is flawed by the human and the mortal. Yes, in every respect there must be Godhead and immortality: even our physical stuff must... is a spiritual formation connected with the material formation that is our body. A spiritual body, whose substance and form are in absolute tune with the light and perpetuity that are proper to the Spirit, is all the time behind our unstable aggregate of elements and waits to manifest itself in it. Indian Yogas have often spoken of a causal body - kāraṇa śarīra - governing the gross... there are the celebrated Jeans-Eddington trends: what began as a tremendous stress on the physical has, in an important domain of Science, ended in a doubt in the mind of one scientific school whether the physical universe is its own explanation. The doubt does not remove the stress on the physical which is now an inalienable portion of whatever life-programme we may adopt, but it has robbed ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo

Integral Yoga, Evolution and the Next Species  >  Part Four

... it is not a suspension of consciousness, but it is gathering inward away from conscious physical response to the impacts of external things. If so, Sri Aurobindo points out, this material world is all existence that has not yet developed means of outward communication with the physical world. The subconscious mind is, again, not entirely different from the outer mentality, but only a grade of consciousness... one problem of opposites that Nature has solved and seeks always to solve better with greater complexities; for its perfect solution would be the material immortality of a fully organized mind-supporting animal body. The accordance of conscious mind and conscious will with a form and a life in themselves not overtly self- conscious and capable at best of a mechanical or sub- conscious will is... of Matter there are existences of which the physical senses are incapable of taking cognizance. He further points out that not only are there physical realities which are supra-sensible, but if evidence and experience are at all a test of truth, there are also senses which are supra-physical and can not only take cognizance of the realities of the material world without the Page 18 aid ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Integral Yoga, Evolution and the Next Species

Integral yoga and Evolutionary Mutation  >  Yoga and Evolution

... s can transcend the world; and it can even be affirmed that the ascetic has succeeded in proving that he can transcend the limitations of the body-life-mind complex and can gain the capacity of voluntary escape from the limitations imposed by material Nature. It is true that this proof does not amount to the proof of the power of the Spirit to transform Nature; but it can be argued that the capacity... the body. It has to be noted that the human mind has already shown a capacity Page 8 to aid Nature in the evolution of new types of plant and animal; it has created new forms of its environment, developed by knowledge and discipline considerable changes in its own mentality. It is not an impossibility that man should aid Nature consciously also in his own spiritual and physical evolution... of the divine life in the divine body. But before the appearance of the divine body, there will have to come about a radical change of consciousness that can be effected by the ascent to the supermind and the descent of the supermind in the physical consciousness. Even in the previous developments of evolution, even when it appeared that the change in the physical organization preceded the change ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Integral yoga and Evolutionary Mutation

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 5  >  THE BODY NATURAL

... if the body has not what it prescribes, it throws the suggestion into the body that it will become sick. The same with the mental factor. The physical mind has its own notions and schemes, pet ideas and plans (perhaps from what has been read in books or heard from persons) in respect of the body's needs; it thinks that if a certain prescription is not followed, the body will surfer. The mind and the... suggestion imposed on the body by the mental-vital who throw the Page 12 whole blame upon the body just to escape from the blame due to themselves. The vital is impatient and clamorous, and if it is all push and drive—towards physical execution and fulfilment—it is normally clouded and troubled and obscured and doubly twisted when counselled and supported by a mind, narrow and superficial... instinct; for they have no mind to tyrannise over the body nor is their vital of a kind to go against the normal demands of the body. The body, segregated from the mind and the vital, very easily can choose the right kind of food and the right quantity and even vary them according to the varying conditions of the body. Common sense is an inherent attribute of the body consciousness; it never errs on the side ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 5

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3  >  The Body Natural

... that it clings, and if the body has not what it prescribes, it throws the suggestion into the body that it will fall ill. The physical mind has its own notions and schemes, pet ideas and plans (perhaps from what has been read in books or heard from persons) in respect of the body's needs; it thinks that if a certain prescription is not followed, the body will suffer. The mind and the vital are thus close... opinion or suggestion imposed on the body by the mental – vital who throw the whole blame upon the body just to escape from the blame due to themselves. The vital is impatient and clamorous, and if it is all push and drive-towards physical execution and fulfilment – it is normally clouded and troubled and obscured and doubly twisted when counselled and supported by a mind, narrow and superficial, not seeing... instinct; for they have no mind to tyrannise over the body nor is their vital of a kind to go against the normal demands of the body. The body, segregated from the mind and the vital, can very easily choose the right kind of food and the right quantity and even vary them according to the varying conditions of the body. Common sense is an inherent attribute of the body consciousness; it never errs on ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11  >  The Labour of the Gods

... out here.         The brain thus is the controller-general of the whole physical system of the human body. In particular, however, it is the controller and regulator of the physical mind and the senses (the six indriyas of Indian psychology). This is the province of the basic earth principle, this range of material matter over which the Fire is the presiding deity. There are, however, other... control-room of physical existence and the brain being the controlling agent — the brain extending its range down the spinal column to its end at the last vertebra — this is the element that has to be treated and reorganised first and foremost if a physical reorganisation of human nature and behaviour is to be achieved. I explained — tried to explain — that this being the physical or material field, the... enzymes and endocrine secretions are the physical formations or outer formulations of the hidden vital fluid. This indeed is the function of the deity, Soma, Pawamana Soma, the flowing stream of Delight, who in effect is the true presiding godhead here. For it is this section of the body that is the stage for our whole world of enjoyment—for the play of all our physical delights as well as of all our ailments ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Yoga and Human Evolution

... the bondage to the body and the vital impulses. According to the scientific theory, the human being began as the animal, developed through the savage and consummated in the modern civilised man. The Indian theory is different. God created the world by developing the many out of the One and the material out of the spiritual. From the beginning, the objects which compose the physical world were arranged... but it does not turn in the same place; its rotations carry it forward. The animal is distinguished from man by its enslavement to the body and the vital impulses. Aśanāyā mṛtyuḥ , Hunger who is Death, evolved the material world from of old, and it is the physical hunger and desire and the vital sensations and primary emotions connected with the prāṇa that seek to feed upon the world in the beast... condition of the Roman Empire at a high stage of material civilisation and intellectual culture and which a distinguished British statesman declared the other day to be the condition to which all Europe approached. The development of the emotions is therefore the first condition of a sound human evolution. Unless the feelings tend away from the body and the love of others takes increasingly the place ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960  >  Undated 1958

... For me, the subtle physical is far more real than this distorted world, but to see it you have to be conscious there, whereas people want to get effects which give them the impression of the marvelous and the miraculous and they want the subtle physical to become visible in the material world IN SPITE OF the falsehood. What makes the great difference for the ordinary physical consciousness is this:... that appear miraculous to the physical consciousness happen in an altogether different way, but to it they are indeed miraculous since they don't depend on any physical processes. As I have said, 1 to travel from one place to Page 146 another there is no need for any means of transport, to feed ourselves it is not necessary to put external things into the body, to dress ourselves we have... falsehood, whereas the universal law is, get out of the falsehood and that will become true for you. For me, this subtle world is far more real than the material world—much truer, much more tangible, concrete, real—but for others in this material world to believe in the subtle worlds, either they must have some beginning of experience, or else they must agree to have confidence and say, 'All right ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960

A Greater Psychology  >  The Scientific Study of Consciousness

... stirred by this suggestion, we look at life and mind not merely as a phenomenon in Matter but as energies and see that they are quite other energies than the material, with their own peculiar qualities, powers and workings.... Only a limited range of the phenomena of life and mind could be satisfied by a purely biophysical, psycho-physical or bio-psychical explanation.... To know more we... the brain-cells, a physical reception of images and a brain-response, a reflex action or a reaction of Matter to the contacts of Matter. 9 One crippling consequence of such an epiphenomenal view of consciousness is the attempt to study consciousness — or mind, as it is generally called in Western psychology, — by studying solely its manifestations in the body and its expression in... we must have studied not only the actual or possible action of body and Matter on mind and life, but explored all the possible action of mind too on life and body; that opens undreamed vistas. And there is always the vast field of the action of mind in itself and on itself, which needs for its elucidation another, a mental, a psychic science. 14 The second prerequisite for the study ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

The Life Divine  >  The Two Negations: The Materialist Denial

... value to the vigorous figure by which the physical universe is described as the external body of the Divine Being. Nor,—so far divided apparently are these two extreme terms,—is that identification convincing to the rational intellect if we refuse to Page 8 recognise a series of ascending terms (Life, Mind, Supermind and the grades that link Mind to Supermind) between Spirit and Matter.... their being immeshed in Matter, missioned to work in a physical body, put in harness to draw one car along with the emotional desires and nervous impulses, are exposed to a mixed functioning in which they are in danger of illuminating confusion rather than clarifying truth. Especially is this mixed functioning dangerous when men with unchastened minds and unpurified sensibilities attempt to rise into the... imprisoned in its material formulation; and when the dividing ignorance is cured which gives us the sense of a gulf between Life and Matter, it is difficult to suppose that Mind, Life and Matter will be found to be anything else than one Energy triply formulated, the triple world of the Vedic seers. Nor will the conception then be able to endure of a brute material Force as the mother of Mind. The Energy ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

The Life Divine  >  The Divine Life

... for the dynamisation of consciousness in the physical existence and takes up and transforms the values of a world of material Nature. But always the whole foundation of the gnostic life must be by its very nature inward and not outward. In the life of the spirit it is the spirit, the inner Reality, that has built up and uses the mind, vital being and body as its instrumentation; thought, feeling and... ideal. The evolution of human mind and life must necessarily lead towards an increasing universality; but on a basis of ego and segmenting and dividing mind this opening to the universal can only create a vast pullulation of unaccorded ideas and impulses, a surge of enormous powers and desires, a chaotic mass of unassimilated and intermixed mental, vital and physical material of a larger existence which... expression and instrumentation of the self, is a third condition. Even the bodily life does not possess its own full being in its own kind if the consciousness does not exceed the body and feel its physical oneness with all material existence; the vital life does not possess its own full living in its own kind if the consciousness does not exceed the restricted play of an individual vitality and feel the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  10 April 1957

... on the material realisation, are people who completely lack control over their physical being. And to realise the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo the control of one's body is a first indispensable step. Those who despise physical activities are people who won't be able to take a single step on the true path of integral yoga, unless they first get rid of their contempt. Control of the body in all... basis. A body which dominates you is an enemy; it is a disorder you cannot accept. It is the enlightened will in the mind which should govern the body, and not the body which should impose its law on the mind. When one knows that a thing is bad, one must be capable of not doing it. When one wants something to be realised, one must be able to do it and not be stopped at every step by the body's inability... and for that one must follow a physical discipline and become master in one's own home. It is very fine to escape into meditation and from the height of one's so-called grandeur look down on material things, but one who is not master in his own home is a slave. ( Silence ) No questions over there? No? Mother, one of the problems that arises in physical activities is that in order to be ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)

Mother’s Agenda 1968  >  November 23, 1968

... things are there: a little of the ordinary consciousness, as if mechanically, but I just have to remain still or concentrated for a second and it's there. And it's the BODY'S experience, you understand, physical, material, the body's experience: everything, absolutely everything is full, full, there's NOTHING but That, and we are like... everything is like something shriveled, you know, like dried-up... "It's for this reason, that reason..."—quite a material thing, absolutely physical: poff! gone.... Your consciousness changes—it comes back. And if you stay long enough in the true consciousness, the appearance, that is, what we call the physical "fact" itself, disappears, not just the pain.... I have the feeling of having touched... (there's no mind to understand, thank God!), of having touched... it's a very small beginning. One would have the impression or certitude of having touched the supreme Secret only if the physical were transformed.... According to the experience (the experience in tiny details), that's how it should be. But then, would there first be ONE body in which this Consciousness was expressed, or must everything, but everything be transformed?... That I don't know. It ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1968

The Life Divine  >  The Human Aspiration

... The accordance of active Life with a material of form in which the condition of activity itself seems to be inertia, is one problem of opposites that Nature has solved and seeks always to solve better with greater complexities; for its perfect solution would be the material immortality of a fully organised mind-supporting animal body. The accordance of conscious mind and conscious will with a form and... of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled... his fully awakened mind, and usually even his practical parts only escape from the general necessity either by shutting out the problem or by accepting a rough, utilitarian and unillumined compromise. For essentially, all Nature seeks a harmony, life and matter in their own sphere as much as mind in the arrangement of its perceptions. The greater the apparent disorder of the materials offered Page ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Questions and Answers (1955)  >  29 June 1955

... but usually when one speaks of the physical it means material, concerning the body, doesn't it? For the moment there is no true being in the most material domain. It is only a kind of subtle prototype which is not materially realised. Page 215 ( To another child ) You have something to ask? Mother, are Time and Space particular only to the physical world or to other worlds also? ... does some good but not very much when this part is mixed with all the others which think of hundreds of different things at the same time, or when it goes down into the body, is all tied up precisely to that frightful slowness of material things, and when we have to take so many steps only to go from here to the door. In the vital with a leap one can be there; mentally there is no need even of a leap... upon earth, by a perfect health, a growing force, a continuous Page 214 progress; and then all that one would like to obtain from one's body one would obtain; and this can go as far as an almost unimaginable progress of perfection. The physical state as we see it with all its disharmonies, its weaknesses, its uglinesses, is the same deformation as that which has changed the higher vital ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)

Letters on Yoga - I  >  Science and Yoga

... equation between them and physiological processes and at the most mind and body react on each other as is inevitable since they are lodging together. But even a great physical scientist like Huxley recognised that mind was something quite different from matter and could not possibly be explained in the terms of matter. Only since then physical Science became very arrogant and presumptuous and tried to subject... to act on physical things. That is something which goes beyond mere magic. The direct power of mind-force or life-force upon Matter can be extended to an almost illimitable degree. It must be remembered that Energy is fundamentally one in all the planes, only taking more and more dense forms, so there is nothing a priori impossible in mind-energy or life-energy acting directly on material energy and... the mind is comprehensive and everything falls into its place in the whole. The Limitations of Science I think what you write is unexceptionable as a statement of the necessary limitations of physical Science to its own field. It is only in the occult sciences that one can find the necessary connection or bridge between the spiritual and material which X is demanding from the physical sciences ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Mother or The New Species - II  >  16: The Body is Everywhere

... the mesh of the physical Mind. When the physical Mind "sleeps," the cage opens up and everything is here. So it looks like the "other side" to us, a "dream," but it is only the other side of the physical Mind, the more or less hazy or distorted "dream" of the old body trying to recall what it saw and lived through the mesh. And now that the mesh has naturally come undone, in the body, in the cells of... returns to order. All this takes place in the material consciousness. Physically, the body has all the sensations—but not the hemorrhage, you understand. But it does have the sensations, that is, all the sensory effects. All right. Once the battle is over, I take a look and wonder (I observe the whole thing, I see my body, which has been fairly shaken, mind you), I say to myself "What in the world is... and this impossibility of any true conscious connection with the material world are both incorrect. There is something else. And more and more these days, I find myself facing the whole problem as if I had never seen it before... 13 Because She was facing the problem in her body. It was no longer metaphysical, it was purely physical. The "other thing" is truly another thing. Not an improvement, a ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7  >  The Trinity of Bengal

... awoke in Rammohan, and then its mind blossomed in Bankim, subsequently its life-energy burst forth in Vivekananda. In fact we may generalise that all disciplines and ways of creation proceed in the same order. The truth that is to manifest in the material world in a concrete physical form appears at first in an apperception of the inner heart, hrdi pratisya. The mind then seizes upon it and gives... leaving the core it starts revealing itself without. Finally, it incarnates in a body, possesses a gross physical form, becomes concrete and real. In the stirring of the Soul, in the intuition of the psychic being, the truth, in its dynamic expression, takes birth; there is its seed-form, its essential being. In the mind, the diverse lines of growth are first sketched out, the play, the kaleidoscope... pe of myriad possibilities. In the vital it becomes living and forceful with a definite mould. At last it brings down into the body its material shape. First then the awakening of the psychic Person. When this central being of a man becomes conscious, when it is Page 219 awakened from slumber or trance or from self-absorption, it opens its eyes to the outside world and its manifest ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7

Nachiketas  >  A Synoptic Essay on Immortality

... and which Sri Aurobmdo also confirms is that above the physical world, there is a Vital world, above that is a world of the Mind, and then there are several planes between the Mind world and the world of the Super-mind; these are worlds of Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Over-mind. On the top level, there are worlds of the Super-mind, of Bliss, of Consciousness and of Existence. In the... enters into the human body at birth and departs from the body on death. According to Sri Aurobindo, the individual soul, after the death of the body, travels along with its subtle physical, vital and mental sheaths into different worlds which are other than the world of physical existence; after this intermediary travel, having shed the subtle physical sheath in the subtle physical world, vital sheath... on the earth. When that state is achieved, not only the mind and life but even the body is fully supramemalised, and the body can also develop a new structure that can manifest Super-mind fully. In that state, the mind becomes immortal, life becomes immortal and even the body becomes immortal. This triple immortality of the mind, life and body is the sign that the Purushottama and Aditi have become ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Nachiketas

The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  The Mother's Knowledge and Her Emanations

... question of consciousness is involved ... Questions of consciousness of course she always knows even with her outermost physical mind. Material facts she can know but is not bound to do it. The matter however is too complex for answer in a short space. but as for material details, she does not know. What would be true to say, is that she can know if she concentrates or if her attention is... consciousness, sometimes by that of a material fact; but only Page 179 the bare fact, usually—e.g. it would not specify that it was hot khichari that was cooked or how Y or Z came in. Not that that is impossible, but it is unnecessary and does not happen unless needed. Anyway, please tell me how far Mother and you know about our physical, material affairs. In this case it was a... and Her Emanations In the case of X, I was under the impression that Mother could at once know of such things. Some even say that she knows everything—all that is material or spiritual. Good Lord! you don't expect her mind to be a factual encyclopaedia of all that is happening on all the planes and in all the Page 178 universes? Or even on this earth—e.g. what Lloyd George had ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother

Mother's Chronicles - Book Six  >  The Traveller

... Supramental physical body has not been brought down; otherwise it would have been there." As he explored the lowest rung of the lower hemisphere, and descended to the sub-material, the subconscient, the inconscient, he found practically no trace of any attempt to change anything whatever. "Up to the present time nobody has cared to bring down and apply this Power [Supermind] to the physical plane,"... Nolini said. "Sat, Chit and Ananda above; mind, life and body below; and the Supermind linking them up." The Supermind plane stands between the upper hemisphere—Sat, Chit and Ananda—and the lower hemisphere— life, mind and body. Nolini specified that "this was later elaborated in The Divine Plan." ] There one finds also the description of Super mind's three layers and its suns. Sri Aurobindo... exist as a new influence in the physical world and will be a direct manifestation of the Divine in our entire being and daily life." 1 Even to arrive at those planes of the Supermind, Sri Aurobindo had to, first of all, traverse the maze of continents that lay in between. Like any rational person Sri Aurobindo did not believe that man was confined to the physical body alone. Actually there are many ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Six

Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays  >  Educational Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo

... of the ancient secrets of the reign of Spirit over mind, life and the body and the modern secrets of utilisation of the life in perfecting the instrumentality of the body, life and mind. Integral education would not only aim at the integral development of personality, but it would also embrace all knowledge in its scope. It would pursue physical and psychical sciences, not merely to know the world... youth. New education insists on the development of the mind, life and body, it aims at development of these instruments for the discovery of the inner psychic being; it proposes to utilise mental, vital, physical perfection as instruments of the perfect manifestation of the inner and higher realities. The effort is to make the body supple, strong, agile and beautiful; the vital is to be trained... from profane. Page 147 VI A constant insistence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother has been on detailed perfection of the human mind, life and body. We may, therefore, turn to the three domains of mental education, vital education, and physical education as expounded and experimented upon at Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry and subsequently at the Sri Aurobindo International Institute ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays

The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri  >   Sight- Its Future Apotheosis

... undergo divine transformation, even the outer physical system of man, including all its forms and functions, has to submit itself to the unrelenting process of supramental transformation. As Sri Aurobindo has affirmed in one of his last prose writings, "The Divine Body", published in 1949: "...other numerous potentialities might appear and the body become an instrument immeasurably superior to... ess from the mind to the supermind and the consequent transformation of the being from the state of the mental to that of the supramental Purusha must bring with it... a transformation of all the parts of the nature and all its activities." There will be according- Page 89 ly a profound transformation in the physical senses, "a supramentalising of the physical sight, hearing... begins to shadow out, develop, delineate expressive forms of life touched by a supreme pure Existence, consciousness and bliss... The transformation of the physical being might follow this incessant line of progression and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of this higher greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit." (The Supramental Manifestation ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

Mother’s Agenda 1970  >  March 14, 1970

... e old laws of the mind that ruled everything. So then, all these years have been years spent preparing and preparing—freeing oneself and preparing—and these last few days, it was... ah! the body PHYSICALLY noting that things had changed. It has to be worked out , as they say, realized in every detail, but the change IS DONE—the change is done. Which means that the material conditions, which... even just the aspiration to, that higher Truth, when they come back into the [material] Fact, they are in front of this dreadfully painful thing, this perpetual negation by all circumstances), that formation, from which the body had completely freed itself, came back. It came back, but... when it came back, when the body saw it, it saw it AS ONE SEES A FALSEHOOD. And I understood how much it had changed... But truly, one can see—one can see. And that's the REAL CHANGE, that's what will enable the new Consciousness to express itself. And the body is learning, it's learning its lesson—all bodies, all bodies. ( silence ) That was the old division made by the mind: "Above, things are very fine, you may have all experiences and everything is luminous and marvelous; here, nothing doing." And the impression ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1970

Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  1 May 1957

... call genius is part of the development of the human range of being and its achievements, especially in things of the mind and will, can carry us halfway to the divine. Even what the mind and will can do with the body in the field proper to the body and its life, in the way of physical achievement, bodily endurance, feats of prowess of all kinds, a lasting activity refusing fatigue or collapse and continuing... beauty they create, testify, in spite of all the ignorant denial we can oppose, to the presence and power of consciousness of this Superconscience in every part and movement of the material universe. It is there in the body, has made it and its emergence in our consciousness is the secret aim of evolution and the key to the mystery of our existence." The Supramental Manifestation, SABCL, Vol. 16... seems at first to be possible, courage and refusal to succumb under an endless and murderous physical suffering, these and other victories of many kinds sometimes approaching or reaching the miraculous are seen in the human field and must be reckoned as a part of our concept of a total perfection.... " The body, we have said, is a creation of the Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)

Words of the Mother - II  >  Greed (for Food)

... ask for more than they can eat. Kindly suggest some simple way by which one can slowly diminish one's abject dependence on ordinary material food and open oneself more and more to the universal vital energy. There is no easy way to get over physical animality and vital greed. It is only an obstinate perseverance that can succeed. ... must eat to satisfy the needs of his body and not to meet the demands of his greed. 4 April 1937 If you prefer the pleasures of the palate to the union with the Divine, it is your own look-out and I have nothing to say, except that I do not approve, but each one must be free to choose whether he will rise above his lower nature or sink down in the material pit. My help is always for those who... Food) Greed for anything concerning physical consciousness, so-called necessities and comfort of whatever nature―this is one of the most serious obstacles to sadhana. Each little satisfaction you get through greed is one step backward from the goal. When you have a desire you are governed by the thing you desire, it takes possession of your mind and your life, and you become a slave. If ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - II

Questions and Answers (1950-1951)  >  28 April 1951

... the body was there, like that, and it was necessary to put a will into it, to push this body for it to get up and act. It is like that, this is tamas. Tamas is a purely material thing; it is very rare to have a vital or mental tamas (it may occur but through contagion), I believe it is more a tamas of the nerves or the brain than vital or mental tamas. But laziness is everywhere, in the physical, the... consciousness and physical Nature? Tell me, is your body absolutely conscious, conscious of itself, conscious of its functioning? No, then what is it? It can only be physical Nature. And if there is a physical Nature which is not conscious, it means that physical Nature and consciousness are not the same thing. Physical Nature includes everything that is physical: your body belongs to physical Nature, mountains... vital is an adventurous being), the physical obeys, it obeys the impulse, the inner order; then it consents to the change, the novelty, but it is an effort for it. But for the physical being and physical consciousness to be ready to receive the divine impulsion, they must be extremely plastic, because the vital uses coercion, it imposes its will, and the poor body has but to obey, while the Divine just ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1950-1951)

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  The Ascending Unity

... that physical mentality in man and animal, exists also in the plant with a fundamental identity; not only so, but it is akin to us by a sort of nervous psychology which amounts to the existence of a suppressed mind. A subconscient mind in the plant, it is now not unreasonable to suggest,—but is it not at the summits of plant experience only half subconscious?—becomes conscient in the animal body. When... notation of the act of nerve and body, but which can now be better accounted for by seeing in vital and physical phenomenon a consequence and minor notation of a soul-action which it at the same time hints and conceals from our sense-bound mentality. Finally, it makes of soul or spirit, no longer a miraculous accident or intervention in a material universe, but a constant presence in it and the secret of... him like the developed body has had a past subhuman evolution. This conclusion preserves the unity of Nature and its developing order; and it concurs with the persistent evidence of an interaction and parallelism which we perceive between the inward and the outward, the physical and the mental phenomenon,—a correspondence and companionship which some would explain by making mind a result and notation ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Questions and Answers (1953)  >  7 October 1953

... the physical manage to aspire, since it is the mind that thinks? As long as it is the mind that thinks, your physical is something that's three-fourths inert and without its own consciousness. There is a physical consciousness proper, a consciousness of the body; the body is conscious of itself, and it has its own aspiration. So long as one thinks of one's body, one is not in one's physical con... 293 One can develop one's physical consciousness so well that even if one is fully exteriorised, even if the vital goes completely out of the body, the body has a personal, independent consciousness which enables it to move, to do all kinds of very simple things without the vital's being there, quite independently. The body can learn how to speak: the mind and the vital may be outside it, very... one can discern very clearly what the poise of the body is, the need of the body in itself, and in what way the vital interferes and destroys this equilibrium most often and harms the development so much, because it is ignorant. And when the mind comes in, it creates yet another disorder which is added to the one between the vital and the physical, by introducing its ideas and norms, its principles ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1953)

Mother’s Agenda 1970  >  April 18, 1970

... they are here.... And the same will: it's not another will, it's the same; it's the divine Will through the psychic working in this body. So it acts there or here without difference. In other words, whether I am in this subtle physical or in the material physical, it's the same will, the same psychic will that acts—the SAME, exactly in the same way. Which means that... I don't know what the difference... the subtle physical and the material physical], but... how should I put it?... For everything to hold together, this way of being of the material consciousness continues (the material, physical consciousness), but in it a permeation takes place (it really is a permeation), which doesn't drive away the other, but... at length, it will probably transform it. It doesn't drive it [the material consciousness]... There are unimaginable things. But where is that? I don't know. (Satprem to Sujata:) Tell your dream. ( Mother continues ) It must be a region intermediary between the most material physical, vital and mind. There's everything imaginable, you can see the most extraordinary things. And that's how it is. Strangely, even, you have a power there: one drop of truth has a tre-men-dous power in ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1970

Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga  >  Sri Aurobindo and the Concept of the Unconscious in Psychology

... self-aware in our physical energy-substance." 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... objects; they do not, so much as in waking mind, convey forms of objects for the mind's documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication... inferior to mind. The physical consciousness of the body and that of the vital are in this sense submental, but they are not entirely subconscient, for in them consciousness Page 34 has already evolved a certain degree of its formulation and expression, though for the most part the operations of consciousness in the physical and vital parts of our being are subconscious to the mind and would ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga

The Life Divine  >  The Evolution of the Spiritual Man

... processes towards the production of effects in the physical world by seizing on possibilities of interconnection and means for a material effectuality. There are powers of the mind and the life-force which have not been included in Nature's present systematisation of mind and life in matter, but are potential and can be brought to bear upon material things and happenings or even brought in and added... Knowledge. In modern times, as physical Science enlarged its discoveries and released the secret material forces of Nature into an action governed by human knowledge for human use, occultism re ceded and was finally set aside on the ground that the physical alone is real and mind and life are only departmental activities of Matter. On this basis, believing material Energy to be the key of all things... Page 893 its exterior, he must dive deep below his own mental surface and the physical surface of Nature. This he can only do by knowing his inner mental, vital, physical and psychic being and its powers and movements and the universal laws and processes of the occult Mind and Life which stand behind the material front of the universe: that is the field of occultism, if we take the word in its ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

A Greater Psychology  >  Validity of Supraphysical and Spiritual Experience

... ion is certainly possible; if there is an association of the action of the subtle body and its sense-organisation with the action of the material body and its physical organs, then the supraphysical can become outwardly sensible to us. This is what happens, for example, with the faculty called second sight; it is the process of all those psychic phenomena which seem to be seen and heard by the... verifiable, is as valid as our conscious experience of a physical world and of visible bodies with whose invisible minds we daily communicate. Synthesis of Yoga, p. 531 Page 198 × Sūkṣma indriya, subtle organs, existing in the subtle body (sūkṣma deha), and the means of subtle vision and experience... than those of gross physical Matter, claims in the end the same validity as the truth of the material universe. The Life Divine, pp. 18-19 Page 178 ...the results [of the study of psychic phenomena] cannot be conclusive or sufficiently ample because they are sought for by methods of inquiry and experiment and standards of proof proper to the surface mind and its system of knowledge ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

Record of Yoga  >  December 1926 - 6 January 1927

... of the body will disappear altogether and no new ones will be possible. Page 1245 There is nothing complete yet done in the material physical Nature, and yet till that is done, there will be nothing complete in finality anywhere. Many things are established, but even the most advanced need the last touches or even many last touches. There is still the problem of the physical material... supramental life-energy is in the body, then all difficulties will be reduced to nothingness. It is the life-energy in all the body, not only in the seven centres that is demanded. Once in all the seven centres it cannot fail to pour through all the body. It must take possession of all the cells, the flesh, muscles, bones, blood, nerves, skin, hair; then the body will be ready for transformation... unassailable and invulnerable; that to be settled in its self-maintenance independently of food by one means or another. Today, one at least of these problems ought to be settled in effective physical principle. There can be no sense of security till that is done. Monday next. An ascending scale till then. The ascent today. No more for the present. The ascent began, but it has been ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

Mother or The New Species - II  >  12. The Infiltration

... superhumanity, not an improvement upon the animal: something else. Something that obeys another law which has no longer anything to do with universal gravity. And yet it takes place in a physical, material body. A divine, material reality. And a "divine" who is no longer "other"... who is what you are, who is everything. Not a "You" up there, at the back of beyond, whom one doesn't know; He is everywhere,... virtue of Matter and of the physical mind can be used in the other direction also and, "miraculously," it can start repeating a true sound instead of going on with its usual mortal rut—insofar as it can do it without traumatic consequences or a dangerous disruption of its vibratory mode. There is here a "borderline" which exactly illustrates the transition from the old material mode to the new mode, the... sudden weariness in my body, as if it were exhausted. 23 Little by little her body was becoming all bodies. Those innocent (or not so innocent) little thoughts and whisperings of the surrounding bodies were seen at their true value—almost immediately they show their true face, i.e., the death that is inside them. Each of those little murmurs is really, actually and materially a claw of death. We do ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

Our Many Selves  >  Our Manifold Being

... collective mind of humanity; and for the same reason that we are not aware of the greater part of our own being which is subconscient or subliminal to our waking mind and is always influencing and in an occult manner determining our surface existence. It is because we use, normally, only our corporeal senses and live almost wholly in the body and the physical vitality and the physical mind, and it is... ill-connected and mostly trivial thoughts, a number of more or less imperative vital needs, alternations of physical health and disease, a scattered and inconsequent succession of joys and griefs, frequent minor disturbances and vicissitudes and rarer strong searchings and upheavals of mind or body, and through it all Nature, partly with the aid of his thought and will, partly without or in spite of it... through other sheaths of our being,—so they are termed in the Upanishads,—other bodies, as they are called in a later terminology, the mental sheath or subtle body in which our true mental being lives and the life sheath or vital body which is more closely connected with the physical or food-sheath and forms with it the gross body of our complex existence. These possess powers, senses, capacities which are ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Our Many Selves

The Life Divine  >  Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable

... it is the original determinant of both mind and body. On the other side, in the opposite order of process,—that by which the mind can transmit its ideas and commands to the body, can train it to be an instrument for new action, can even so impress it with its habitual demands or orders that the physical instinct carries them out automatically even when the mind is no longer consciously willing them... functionings of the body help to determine the mind's psychological actions: for the body is not mere unconscious Matter; it is a structure of a secretly conscious Energy that has taken form in it. Itself occultly conscious, it is, at the same time, the vehicle of expression of an overt Consciousness that has emerged and is self-aware in our physical energy substance. The body's functionings are a necessary... inhabiting it before the waking Mind and Will can control or interfere. All this is possible because the body has a "subconscient" consciousness of its own which counts in our total self-expression; even, if we look at this outer instrumentation only, we can conclude that body determines mind, but this is only a minor truth and the major Truth is that mind determines body. In this view a still deeper ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  Psychology

... by it. Disciple : What is the physical?                Sri Aurobindo : What do you understand by the physical ? Disciple : We mean by it material objects without life and mind. Sri Aurobindo : That is not quite correct, because your body is material and yet it has got life and mind. In the physical itself you have got life and mind ; only, they are involved. But if you... conscious on the physical plane you will find that there is life and even mind in the cells of the body. Of course, the life and mind we find in the physical world are not the same as we find on the vital or the mental plane. But you can't deny that there is mind in it. It is that which performs the mechanical operations of the body with such a precision. The physical mind is the mind which sees only... people who set fine poetry in the mind but the moment they take up the pen nothing comes. Disciple : That is what happens to K. He says he has many things to write but as soon as he takes up his pen, only the pen and the ink remain.  ( Laughter ). Sri Aurobindo : And then there is the Physical proper, the material part. It is the consciousness of the body, you can say, almost the "flesh ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  The Labours of the Gods

... carried out here. The brain thus is the controller-general of the whole physical system of the human body. In particular, however, it is the controller and regulator of the physical mind and the senses (the six indriyas of Indian psychology). This is the province of the basic earth principle, this range of material matter over which the Fire is the presiding deity. There are, however, other provinces... control-room of physical existence and the brain being the controlling agent – the brain extending its range down the spinal column to its end at the last vertebra – this is the element that has to be treated and reorganised first and foremost if a physical reorganisation of human nature and behaviour is to be achieved. I explained – tried to explain – that this being the physical or material field, the... and endocrine secretions are the physical formations or outer formulations of the hidden vital fluid. This indeed is the function of the deity, Soma, Pawamana Soma, the flowing stream of Delight, who in effect is the true presiding godhead here. For it is this section of the body that is the stage for our whole world of enjoyment – for the play of all our physical delights as well as of all our ailments ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

Aspects of Sri Aurobindo  >  The sacrifice of Sri Aurobindo

... individualisation of the wide and the high, an organised being in whom the Supramental karana sarira or causal divine body has descended into the suksma sarira or subtle body built of mind-stuff, life-stuff and even what we may term subtle-physical as distinguished from gross-material stuff, he stands close to earth with his sacrificed corporeal substance as a firm irremovable base and centre in the... cryptic climax: after summing up in himself the aspiration of man in entirety — man the soul, the mind, the life-force, the body — and after bringing a power of complete godhead to answer this fourfold aspiration, Sri Aurobindo was throwing away the earnest of the final and supreme triumph, a physical being in which the very cells were beginning to flower into a divine substance such as the world had... impatient beat of the aspiring human heart. The possibility dawns of a rapturous acceleration of the Truth-Consciousness's transforming process — and a greater, more luminous mastery of material life, a deeper invasion of the body by the Immortal Existence, a swifter and more palpable progress towards the conquest of darkness and death for which the secret decisive blow was struck in that strangely fateful ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Aspects of Sri Aurobindo

Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo  >  Conclusion

... — in the mind and even in the vital: it was working in the physical also, but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question now was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving... sacrifice the Supramental Light which had been descending into the most outward physical since 1938 but could not be fixed there, was at last fixed in the earth-consciousness. This massive descent into his own body and extending through it into all Matter was a crowning achievement of his Yoga at the expense of his body's sacrifice and an act of unparalleled self-effacement for the sake of the earth... its physical counterparts, gets its full scope and can work more dynamically from above and behind. Sri Aurobindo could now make the path clear for the Manifestation in 1956. The Mother has said in the Bulletin of Physical Education that we have no idea of the tremendous work Sri Aurobindo has done in the occult worlds as a result of which all the crucial changes are taking place in her body. It ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Thoughts and Glimpses

... The world knows three kinds of revolution. The material has strong results, the moral and intellectual are infinitely larger in their scope and richer in their fruits, but the spiritual are the great sowings. Page 210 If the triple change could coincide in a perfect correspondence, a faultless work would be done; but the mind and body of mankind cannot hold perfectly a strong spiritual... of the greatest difficulty. All would change if man could once consent to be spiritualised; but his nature mental and vital and physical is rebellious to the higher law. He loves his imperfections. The Spirit is the truth of our being; mind and life and body in their imperfection are its masks, but in their perfection should be its moulds. To be spiritual only is not enough; that prepares a... still a hard, crude and vile ore which will not otherwise be smelted and shaped: as is his material, so is his method. Let it help to transmute itself into nobler and purer metal, his ways with it will be gentler and sweeter, much loftier and fairer its uses. Wherefore he selected or made such a material, when he had all infinite possibility to choose from? Because of his divine Idea which saw before ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Power of the Instruments

... being. The body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all inner action. All working of mind or spirit has its vibration in the physical consciousness, records itself there in a kind of subordinate corporeal notation and communicates itself to the material world partly at least through the physical machine... in the body or form is the condition of all action, even of the most apparently inanimate physical action. It is the universal Prana, as the ancients knew, which in various forms sustains or drives material energy in all physical things from the electron and atom and gas up through the metal, plant, animal, physical man. To get this pranic shakti to act more freely and forcibly in the body is knowingly... holding, dhāraṇa-śakti , in the physical consciousness, energy and machinery is the most important siddhi or perfection of the body. The result of these changes will be to make the body a perfect instrument of the spirit. The spiritual force will be able to do what it wills and as it wills in and through the body. It will be able to conduct an unlimited action of the mind or at a higher stage of the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

The Destiny of the Body  >  Mortality and Immortality: The Real Issue

... dissolution of the physical body. "The realisation of timeless immortality comes by the knowledge of self in the Non-birth and Non-becoming and of the changeless spirit within us: the realisation of time-immortality comes by the knowledge of self in the birth and Becoming and is translated into a sense of the persistent identity of the soul through all changes of mind and life and body; this too is... the body and make it a fit instrument for divine works and divine life would be its material expression only. (Ibid., p. 1232) We have ventured to state that the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother has for its ultimate goal the realisation * Sri Aurobindo's translation. Page 341 for man of a radical victory even over the process of physical death... towards the conquest of physical immortality , because "immortality beyond the universe is not the object of manifestation in the universe, for that the Self always possessed Man exists in order that through him the Self may enjoy Immortality in the birth as well as in the non-becoming." 2 And the secret sense of the cosmic Becoming is that" .. . here in the material body it [this Immortality] ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Integral Yoga, Evolution and the Next Species  >  Part Five

... spiritual significance and the physical change was only Page 50 instrumental. This relation was concealed by the first abnormal balance of the two factors, the body of the external inconscience outweighing and obscuring in importance the spiritual element, the conscious being. But once the balance has been righted, it is no longer the change of body that must precede the change of... nature, a change certainly of its mental and emotional and sensational constitution and also to a great extent of the body consciousness and the physical conditioning of our life and energies; but the change of consciousness will be the chief factor, the initial movement; the physical modification will Page 51 be a subordinate factor, a consequence. As to whether humanity will sink back... hitherto represented to its own existence. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "Mind has to cease to be mind and become brilliant with something beyond it. Life has to change into a thing vast and calm and intense and powerful that can no longer recognize its old blind eager narrow self or petty impulse and desire. Even the body has to submit to a mutation and be no longer the clamorous animal or the ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Integral Yoga, Evolution and the Next Species

On The Mother  >  The Realms Invisible

... what it attempts is to discover and bring to the material life the potencies and puissances of the Spirit through the agency of the subtler forces of the Mind, the Vital and the Physical. And Sri Aurobindo clinches the whole issue in the following passage: Its most important aim must be the discovery of the hidden truths and powers of the mind-force and the life-power and the greater forces... unexpected and even terrible things; to remain calm, to develop the mind's visual sense .... " 21 Again, the occult is not one but a whole congeries of worlds: ... a gradation of regions ... of more and more ethereal or subtle regions, anyway, those farther and farther removed in their nature from the physical materiality we ordinarily see. And each one of these domains is a world in itself... she had sought and she made phenomenal progress in occultism. She was able with easy freedom to put her physical body into a trance, and awake in one after another of her various subtle sheaths, visit the supra-physical planes, in one or another of her subtle bodies. Once she left her body in Tlemcen, reached Paris and made her presence felt by a group of friends by picking up a pencil, writing ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother

Notes on the Way  >  14 March 1970

... truly one can see—one can see. And that is the real change , it is that which will enable the new Consciousness to express itself. And the body is learning, learning its lesson—all bodies, all bodies. ( Silence ) It is the old division made by the mind: up above, it is quite all right, you may have all the experiences and everything is luminous, wonderful; here, nothing to be done. And the feeling... but the change is done —the change is done. That is to say, the material conditions elaborated by the mind, fixed by it ( Mother closes her two fists ), that appeared to be inevitable to such an extent that those who had a living experience of the higher worlds thought that one must flee from the world, give up this material world if one wanted to live in the truth (that is the basis of all these... the experiences (indeed, one did have them), but when one came back into this body... it was the old mental laws, for-mi-da-ble, which ruled things. And then, all these years have been years of preparation—preparation—liberation and preparation, and these days now it has been... ah! the physical recognition, made by the body, that it has changed. It has to be "worked out", as it is said, it has to ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Notes on the Way

Kena and Other Upanishads  >  Sense of Our Senses

... us mind by hypnosis and he will relate accurately every detail of the operation and its appropriate sufferings; for the stupor of the physical sense-organ could not prevent the larger mind within from observing and feeling. Similarly we know that a large part of our physical action is instinctive and directed not by the surface but by the subconscious mind. And we know now that it is a mind that... sight and the other senses are not mere results of the development of our physical organs in the terrestrial evolution. Mind, 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... life in the body brings to his embodied mind; and even of those bringings he knows, he can retain and utilise only so much as his surface mind-sense attends to and consciously remembers; but there is a larger subliminal consciousness within him which is not thus limited. That consciousness senses what has not been sensed by the surface mind and its organs and knows what the surface mind has not ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Kena and Other Upanishads

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  The Inconscient

... stages of science and philosophy. For we read in the Aitareya Upanishad that entering upon possession of the material world and the body, the Purusha, the Conscious Soul, asks himself, "If utterance is by speech and life by the breath, vision by the eye, hearing by the ear, thought by the mind," if in short all the apparent activities of the being can be accounted for by the automatic functioning of... positivism of the physical method. Yet facts emerge and with the facts a momentous conclusion,—the conclusion, that there is a "subliminal" self behind our superficial waking mind not inconscient but conscient, greater than the waking mind, endowed with surprising faculties and capable of a much surer action and experience, conscient of the superficial mind though of it the superficial mind is inconscient... nt forms are aggregations and constituted by subtler constituents which our ordinary faculties are unable to detect. These material constituents again are merely formulations of a Force which we cannot describe as material and of which the senses have no evidence. Yet the mind and the senses can live quite satisfied and convinced in this world of illusions and accept them as the practical truth—for ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Letters on Yoga - III  >  Experiences of the Self, the One and the Infinite

... nature it is necessary that the experience and seeing of the Purusha should spread to all the parts, mind, vital, physical, subconscient. Then the ego movements of Prakriti can also disappear gradually from one field after another till none is left. For this a perfect samata even in the cells of the body and in every vibration of the being is necessary— samaṁ hi brahma . One is then quite free from it... progressively replace the old things. They must indeed occupy not only head and heart but the whole body. The Self Experienced on Various Planes It is probably the true Cosmic Self or spirit with its cosmic consciousness and power that you feel on a plane above the ordinary mind or vital or physical—what plane is not as yet clear—for what you describe is common to this Self on whatever plane it... at unity [ of matter, energy and mind ]—unity is in the spiritual consciousness. The material point is only one point among millions of millions—so that is not the base of unity. But once you get the unity in consciousness, you can feel through that the unity of mind substance, mind force, etc., the unity of life substance (mobile) and life force, the unity of material substance and energies. Being— ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III

Hymns to the Mystic Fire  >  RV V.1

... the joy of life fulfil themselves there free from the restrictions of the material world in which it is an exile or invader seeking to dominate & use the rebellious earthly material for its own purposes. Agni sits in the lap of the mother, on the principle of body in the material human being, occupying there the vitalised mind consciousness which is man's present centre of activity & bringing into it... is that in all his forms of force from the mere physical heat in earth & in our bodies to the divine Tapas in us & without us by which God effects & supports the existence of the cosmos, —and because he is thus supremely the upholder of human life & activity, therefore he is kindled in the mid-space; his seat is on the fullness of the vitalised mind-consciousness in the microcosm, in the rapturous... he raises us to live in pure mind or yet beyond to the high plateaus of the pure ideal existence, adhi shnuná brihatá vartamánam, establishes & supports as the divine force that divine bliss in its seven forms in whatever houses of our being, whatever worlds of our consciousness, have been already possessed by our waking existence, life, body & mind, or life, body, mind and idea, dame dame dadhánah ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Hymns to the Mystic Fire

The Mother - Past-Present-Future  >  The Passing of the Mother

... changed." Who knows if the Mother's physical presence itself will long be absent! We are aware that the Supramental Body was already with her, waiting to fuse with the human form she had worn for our sake. We are aware also that the lengthy struggle she recently went through was only the Yogic endeavour of the human form to open completely to the Supramental Body. Perhaps this form did enough and its... its exalted agony was needed no more to enable the Supramental Body to manifest. Perhaps that Body, having assimilated the achievement of the other and thereby gained sufficient density for its subtle-physical substance, can now materialise itself on its own in a not too distant future. Whatever be the case, most certainly we have not seen the end of the Mother's earthly mission. A gigantic labourer... ion of the world's evolutionary life, down to its most material aspect, for which she toiled with the smiling "God-touch" that can accomplish all, shall take place as promised in God's good time. In the meanwhile we may rest our souls in the assurance she gave when the writer of these lines expressed his bewilderment on losing the physical presence of Sri Aurobindo—the gracious Master to whom he ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother - Past-Present-Future

Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga  >  Bondage-Liberation and Perfecton

... would progressively take up all the terms of intelligence, will, sense mind, heart, the vital and sensational being and translate them by a luminous and harmonising conversion into a unity of the truth, power and delight of a living existence. The next element of perfection is that of the gnostic perfection in the physical body. And the fifth element is arrived at when this perfection is pushed... plane of Truth- consciousness (rita-chit) and its descent into lower planes of the mental, vital and physical consciousness in the human body up to a point where the physical consciousness becomes so vast that the truth-consciousness can dwell in it. The Vedic Rishis have called that state the state of immortality. Parāshara speaks of the path which leads to immortality in the following words: 'They... the supreme Being, and in that case, at the fall of the body, all connection with Nature or Prakriti is cut off without any possibility of return. However, as long as the bodily life continues, the psychology of a liberated soul is so poised that the inner freedom is not lost even when outer activities of Prakriti of the body, life and mind, continue by the momentum of the past. At the same time ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga

Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays  >  Bondage, Liberation and Perfection

... would progressively take up all the terms of intelligence, will, sense-mind, heart, the vital and sensational being and translate them by a luminous and harmonising conversion into a unity of the truth, power and delight of a living existence. The next element of perfection is that of the gnostic perfection in the physical body. And the fifth element is arrived at when this perfection is pushed... flights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with the cosmic existence of the gods, pursued behind the symbols of the material universe into those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense of the material mentality. The crown of this synthesis was in the experience of the Vedic Rishis something divine, transcendent and blissful in whose unity the increasing... themselves. This experience culminates in the ascent to the plane of Truth-consciousness (rita-chit) and its descent into the lower planes of the mental, vital and physical consciousness in the human body up to a point where the physical consciousness becomes so vast that the truth-consciousness can dwell in it. The Vedic Rishis have called that state to be the state of immortality. Parashara speaks ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays

The Life Divine  >  The Problem of Life

... terms a perfect mentality, a perfect play of vital force, a perfect physical existence. But where in the radically imperfect shall we find the principle and power of perfection? Mind rooted in division and limitation cannot provide it to us, nor can life and the body which are the energy and the frame of dividing and limiting mind. The principle and power of perfection are there in the subconscient... Life and Mind, each with its own law of working. The Life is at war with the body; it attempts to force it to satisfy life's desires, impulses, satisfactions and demands from its limited capacity what could only be possible to an immortal and divine body; and the body, enslaved and tyrannised over, suffers and is in constant dumb revolt against the demands made upon it by the Life. The Mind is at war... Consciousness and Force in man in his present status of mind and life are principally three. First, he is aware only of a small part of his own being: his surface mentality, his surface life, his surface physical being is all that he knows and he does not know even all of that; below is the occult surge of his subconscious and his subliminal mind, his subconscious and his subliminal life-impulses, his ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Letters on Yoga - I  >  Sachchidananda: Existence, Consciousness-Force and Bliss

... mental being or physical being or whatever it may be. The consciousness in me can be utterly free of any sense of an individual "I" and yet 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 ... the Page 20 psychic being; if it ascends out of the body to the planes where self is naturally conscious of its wideness and freedom, it knows itself as the self and not the mind, life or body. It is this stress of consciousness that makes all the difference. That is why one has to concentrate the consciousness in heart or mind in order to go within or go above. It is the disposition of the... on the surface of ourselves. This surface (the ordinary waking mind of man) is what we think to be ourselves, the whole of us, because living awake on the surface we are conscious of that only. But within, with a sort of wall of obscurity or oblivion between it and the outer being, there is an inner being, an inner mind, vital, physical and an inmost or psychic being of which we are not aware. We are ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Letters on Yoga - II  >  Practical Concerns in Work

... to let your mind work only when its action is needed, the strain will lessen and disappear. This is indeed the transitional movement before the supramental working takes possession of the physical mind and brings into it the spontaneous action of the Light. Dealing with Physical Things Material things are not to be despised—without them there can be no manifestation in the material world. ... whole being down to the material fill with the true consciousness and the true power. That is true. 2 As things are, the vital falsehood seems to take a temporary advantage over the superior sattwic nature. Avoiding Disturbance Whenever anything untoward happens, it is essential not to allow any vibrations of disturbance or unrest in either the physical mind or the nerves. One must... Skill in works will come when there is the opening in the physical mind and the body. There is no need to be anxious about that now. Do your best and do not be anxious about it. Page 285 Compliments and Criticism That is a great error of the human vital—to want compliments for their own sake and to be depressed by their absence and imagine that it means there is no capacity. In this world ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II

A Greater Psychology  >  Consciousness: the Materialistic and the Mystical Views

... with the brain or mind because that is the centre for intellectual thought and mental vision, but consciousness is not limited to that kind of thought or vision. It is everywhere in the system and there are several centres of it,... 19 Consciousness, Body and Brain Materialism indeed insists that, whatever the extension of consciousness, it is a material phenomenon inseparable... who is conscious, thinks, speaks, perceives, wills, acts; it is an organised body in which certain chemical, molecular, cellular, glandular and nerve activities take place and certain material results and reactions of these activities take place in the brain which take the form of these phenomena. It is the body that thinks, perceives, wills, speaks, acts; it is Matter that goes through... Essentially, we arrive at that unity which materialistic Science perceives from the other end when it asserts that Mind cannot be another force than Matter, but must be merely development and outcome of material energy. Indian thought at its deepest affirms on the other hand that Mind and Matter are rather different grades of the same energy, different organisations of one conscious Force of ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

In the Mother's Light  >  The Subconscient and Inconscient

... Superconscient, the Divine. Fear is one of the gifts of the Subconscient to the body. The Mother says, "In fact, 90 per cent of illnesses are the result of the Subconscient fear in the body. In the ordinary consciousness of the body there is a more or less hidden anxiety about the consequences of the slightest physical disturbance. It can be translated by these words of doubt about the future : 'And... and the other half lie sunk in obscurity and be moved by the forces of Ignorance and False- hood. Inertia, weakness, dullness, an easy proneness to physical and psychological disturbances, inability to change and progress, a supine subjection to material conditions and circumstances, a general predisposition to suffering, fears, passions and restless desires are the normal constituents of the surface... waking or our subliminal being. When we sleep and the surface physical part of us, which is in its first origin here an output from the Inconscient, relapses towards the originating inconscience, it enters into this subconscious element, antechamber or sub-stratum, and there it finds the impressions of its past or persistent habits of mind and experiences,—for all have left their mark on our sub-conscious ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light

Words of the Mother - II  >  Experiences and Visions

... force was acting chiefly in the mind, the vital and, through it, in the physical. It is long since this time has passed. The force has come farther down in its action and now it is at work not only in the material but also in the subconscient and even in the inconscient. Unless you follow this descending movement and allow the force to act in your body and these material regions of the consciousness,... understand. 20 November 1949 Page 57 Sometimes when I meditate, the body seems to vanish. I do not feel any kind of physical sensation, but at the same time I am conscious of everything around me. My consciousness remains only like an idea in the head. At times there is not a single thought in my mind; thoughts do come in it, but they just pass without creating any kind of confusion... impression that the body wanted to prevent it. In order that the experience may not be dangerously deformed and painful, one should keep an absolute calm. It is only in the peace and the calm that the Divine Force expresses itself and acts. You know that for many years I have been in the habit of leaving my physical body and making exploratory tours in my subtle body. [Here the sadhak describes ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - II

Mother or The New Species - II  >  15. The First Exit from the Web or The New Type

... veil over the cellular consciousness. It is the return of the possession by the physical Mind —in other words, the return of the possession by death. But the problem was there, becoming more and more frequent and pressing: I constantly find myself facing this problem, which is utterly concrete, absolutely material when you're dealing with cells that have to remain cells and not vaporize into some... the consciousness... the consciousness which had been infused into the body through the vital (from the mind to the vital and from the vital to the body) started slowly, slowly emerging.... The same consciousness which was the vital's and the mind's monopoly has become corporeal: the consciousness acts in the body's cells. The body's cells grow into something conscious, entirely conscious. A consciousness... there, deep down, in the very depths. The mind has withdrawn, the vital has withdrawn, everything has withdrawn; when I was supposedly ill, the mind had gone away, the vital had gone away, and the body was left to itself—purposely. And that's why, it's precisely because the vital and mind had gone that it looked like a very serious illness. And then, in the body left to itself the cells little by little ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

A Greater Psychology  >  States of Consciousness

... it. Till then there may be direct contacts, communications, interchanges with cosmic forces, beings, movements, but not the full unity of mind with the cosmic Mind, of life with the cosmic Life, of body and physical consciousness with the cosmic material Energy and its substance. Again, there may be a realisation of the Cosmic Self which is not followed by the realisation of the dynamic universal... waking state is the consciousness of the material universe which we normally possess in this embodied existence dominated by the physical mind. The dream state is a consciousness corresponding to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane behind, which to us, even when we get intimations of them, have not the same concrete reality as the things of the physical existence. The sleep-state is a consciousness... first preparation is to work on the mind and vital and physical nature in such a way that the soul, the psychic being can have a chance Page 210 of manifesting itself and influencing the rest of the nature; for that purpose all the main darknesses in the mind and vital have to be combated and thrown out and the physical also prepared in a material way so that the descent may be possible ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

A Centenary Tribute  >  Sri Aurobindo's Vision-Aster Patel

... exceed itself. But not by an increase of its own activity - but by a silencing of it and by a grounding of the stuff of itself 'into the material base of one's being. Specifically - in the body itself.   Thus held in the body, the mind's habitual functioning undergoes a change. A kind of totality of perception - in which knowing, feeling and action form one single movement... and move and work. Our entire external personality - not only the body - but in a large measure, the life parts in us and several levels of the mind even, have their base in matter. We have a ground of rootedness in materiality. It is thus that we are here on the earth and live and function as we do.   And, yet, as the mind develops the activity innate to it and takes it to a high peak of ... existence as such. Matter goes straight to the point. It does not deduce, construe or build up.   But this settling down of the activity of the mind... in the base of the material substance of the body itself... does take place. With this, the mind's own functioning begins to change. It perceives, wills and moves into action in one direct movement of conscious being. And the concrete result and ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Centenary Tribute

A Greater Psychology  >  Purusha and Prakriti: Soul and Nature

... s and man is a creature and instrument of material energy, the spiritual self-evolution of Yoga can be only a delusion, hallucination, abnormal state of mind or self-hypnosis. In any case it cannot be what it represents itself to be, a discovery of the eternal truth of our being and a passing above the limited truth of the mental, vital and physical to the full truth of our spiritual nature.... depends in the embodied being. If the Purusha in us is passive and allows Nature to act, accepting all she imposes on him, giving a constant automatic sanction, then the soul in mind, life, body, the mental, vital, physical being in us, becomes subject to our nature, ruled by its formation, driven by its activities; that is the normal state of our ignorance. If the Purusha in us becomes aware of itself... creates the world which is the object of our mind and senses and creates too the mind and senses as a means of relation between the creature and the objective world in which he lives. In this outer appearance man in his soul, his mind, his life, his body seems to be a creature of Nature differentiated from others by a separation of his body, life and mind and especially by his ego-sense — that subtle ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best  >  Quest of Supra-physical Realities

... enlarge the control of mind over our own life and body or to act on the minds, lives, bodies of others or on the movements of cosmic Forces. There are, indeed, phenomena which appear to be miraculous, but according to occult sciences, they can be explained as happenings which occur in the material world on account of the operations of the hidden powers of subtle Matter, Life, and Mind. Examples of hypnotism... consciousness and also penetrate behind the appearances of the physical world; occultism provides an entry and even mastery of the knowledge and powers of the inner mental, vital, and physical being and their powers and movements and the universal laws and the processes of the occult Mind and Life which are claimed to be standing behind the material front of the universe; but owing to the perils of the occult... essentially the science of the subtle physical, vital and mental realities that pervade a large part of the inner being of subjective existence" and a large part of the universe in its aspects of objective vital and mental existence. According to occultism, there are powers of the mind and the life-force which are potential and can be brought to bear upon material things and happenings or even brought ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Soul and Its Liberation

... 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 Page 442 conscious not only of the bodies and outward self-expression of others, but intimately of their inner being, their minds, their souls and that in... . When we break out from ego and physical mind into the infinity of the spirit, we still see the world and others as the mind has accustomed us to see them, as names and forms; only in our new experience of the direct and superior reality of spirit, they lose that direct objective reality and that indirect subjective reality of their own which they had to the mind. They seem to be quite the opposite... ties of mind and matter. It is felt that these ties are inseparable from all earthly living or from all mental existence. Death is the king of the material world, for life seems to exist here only by submission to death, by a constant dying; immortality has to be conquered here with difficulty and seems to be in its nature a rejection of all death and therefore of all birth into the material world. ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Rebirth and Karma

... this all-important and independent power in me and what is the beginning and the end of its self-creation? Has it, even though it is something independent of the physical and vital present and past which gives to it so much of its material, itself no past and no future? Is it something which suddenly emerges from the All-Soul at my birth and ceases at my death? Is its insistence on self-creation, on... and pronounced as we rise in the scale, enlarges in mind, gets to enormous proportions when we come to the things of the spirit. That would seem to indicate that the cause of this significant uniqueness is something bound up with the very nature of spirit; it is something it held in itself and is bringing out more and more as it emerges out of material Nature into self-conscience. The laws of being are... not in a separate being, but in the life of the whole, and therefore I inherit the life of the whole. I am born physically by a generation which is a carrying on of its unbroken history; the body, life, physical mentality of all past being prolongs itself in me and I must therefore undergo the law of heredity; the parent, says the Upanishad, recreates himself by the energy in his seed and is reborn ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Mother or The Divine Materialism - I  >  18: The Physical Plunge

... eyes or to concen­trate—what does "concentrate” mean? To concentrate in one’s head? But it was his body that was concentrated, his body that did the yoga and radiated the yoga. "To plunge into the physical” means to live in the physical: we never live in the physical, we live Matter through the Mind, except perhaps for a few blissful gardeners or artisans (though most of the time even they continue... not even a true “vital" like that of the animal, but still the Mind creeping in and lurk­ing in Matter), once clarity has been achieved and the first jungle cleared, then the physical consciousness, the consciousness of the body, begins to emerge. A perfectly autonomous consciousness—once it has been freed from these two usurpers, the mind and the vital. And a con­sciousness endowed with quite peculiar... But one may and usually does still go on in the outer parts of Nature thinking with the intellect or at best intuitive mind, willing with a mental will, feeling joy and sorrow on the vital surface, undergoing physical afflictions and suffering from the struggle of life in the body with death and disease. 29 And he would keep repeating to his disciples: Our Yoga can suc­ceed only if the EXTERNAL ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The Divine Materialism - I

The Destiny of the Body  >  Attempts at 'Kayasiddhi' and Rejuvenation

... perfection of the material body of man, have in the majority of cases come down to us in the form of traditions and a lore whose sources sometimes have been lost in the obscure and remote past of the race. Thus, in the words of the Mother, "in a very ancient tradition, preceding even the Vedic and Chaldean traditions, there was already the question of a glorious body which would be plastic... elaboration of a bhāvadeha by Sahajiya Vaishnavas. 4 But none of these attempted Siddhis became intrinsic to the material body and hence could not be made to endure. As a matter of fact, as we shall see in the course of our study, "there can be no immortality of the body without supramentalisation; the potentiality is there in the yogic force and yogis can live for 200 or 300 years or more... or to find the remedy thereof. To anticipate the line of suggested solution, we may state forthwith that "even if Science — physical Science or occult Science — were to discover the necessary conditions or means for an indefinite survival of the body, still, if the body could not adapt itself so as to become a fit instru- 1 Raymond Pearl, "The Biology of Death", Encyclopaedia Britannica ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Mother’s Agenda 1966  >  September 30, 1966

... think)—I would not swear to it that he is referring 1 to the supramentalised body ( physical body ). Perhaps to the supramental body or to some other luminous body in its own space and substance, which he found sometimes as if enveloping Page 216 him and abolishing this body of death which he felt the material envelope to be. This verse like many others is capable of several interpretations... don't know if it's nonphysical, but it's a physical I am unaware of! And it's not substance as we now know it, and especially not the construction we now know. I don't know, but if it has to be a PHYSICAL body (as Sri Aurobindo said it would), it seemed to me (but that may be a daydream) that it could be like a lotus bud, for example: our present body is like a small, closed, hard lotus bud, and... intervention of the Mind; but the substance is essentially the same and it obeys the same laws of formation and construction. There isn't much difference, for instance, between the calf being formed in a cow's womb and the child being formed in its mother's womb. There is one difference: that of the Mind's intervention. But if we envisage a PHYSICAL being, that is, as visible as the physical now is and with ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1966

The Renaissance in India  >  Indian Art - 3

... from the anatomical norm of the physical body or else—and that is a rather different thing—an emphasis more or less pronounced on an unusual pose of limbs or body, and the question then is whether it is done without sense or purpose, a mere clumsiness or an ugly exaggeration, or whether it rather serves some significance and establishes in the place of the normal physical metric of Nature another purposeful... required by the two arts. The material in which we work makes its own peculiar demand on the creative spirit, lays down its own natural conditions, as Ruskin has pointed out in a different connection, and the art of making in stone or bronze calls for a cast of mind which the ancients had and the moderns have not or have had only in rare individuals, an artistic mind not too rapidly mobile and sel... the psychic line and turn of things and he replaces by them the material contours. It is not surprising that such a method should produce results which are strange to the average Western mind and eye when these are not liberated by a broad and sympathetic culture. And what is strange to us, is naturally repugnant to our habitual mind and uncouth to our habitual sense, bizarre to our imaginative tradition ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Renaissance in India

Early Cultural Writings  >  Art

... the thing itself, not the actual material body which largely conceals it. When he descends into the psychical part and seeks to express imaginations, emotions, or passing phases, he carries his method with him. Not content with expressing as much of the feeling as the actual body reveals, he sees the emotion in its fullness by dhyana or soul-sight and forces the body into a mould fit for its absolute... the causal world with which our superconscious selves are perpetually in touch; they manifest in the psychical and become part of our thought. That thought we put out into the material world and there it takes shape and body, as movements, as institutions, as poetry, Art and Knowledge, as living men and women. Man creates his world because he is the psychic instrument through whom God manifests that... studied in which the truth it expresses dawns on the mind by the process of revelation. This he transfers to canvas by letting his inspired and informed Will guide the pencil and the brush instead of using his intellect or merely technical means to find the best way of expression. He uses technique with power, but does not rely on it chiefly. The body he paints is the one which will in every part of it ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Early Cultural Writings

Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III  >  13: Cellular Time

... above all, there was a dazzling Light, a MASSIVE Peace , a Power, and also such sweetness ... something ... you felt it would be enough to melt a rock. And it’s the BODY’S experience, you understand, physical, material, the body’s experience: everything, absolutely everything is full, full, there’s nothing but THAT, and we are like... everything is like something shrivelled. You get the impression... know what the problem is. It was no longer at all the problem of death such as we conceive or see it: a body that ages, diseases that pile-up, deterioration, a wearing down. She had seen, lived the unreal absurdity of all these “natural laws” as soon as She had crossed the web of the physical Mind. They do not exist, death is something else. I have seen more and more often, more and more clearly, that... scarcely speak of a Mind) this kind of mind-like activity in Matter [the physical Mind] interfering it is sordid. I haven’t yet been able to eliminate it completely. There are moments when it’s brought to a dead halt. Oh, sometimes while I walk for the japa, everything is held like this, inflexibly. 22 [And Mother made a gesture as if She were suddenly immobilized: the physical Mind stops and it is ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

Autobiographical Notes  >  To and about V. Tirupati

... depressions, because it is not supported either by the mind above or by the body below. You must absolutely change all this, if you want the real transformation. You must not mind losing the vital exaltation; you must not mind coming into a normal physical consciousness, with a clear practical mind, looking at physical conditions and physical realities. You must accept these first, or you will never... condition of mind which still continues and at times rises to an alarming height dangerous to the sanity of his mind and the health of his body. The following are the peculiarities of this 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 the terrestrial body and the physical human... your body weak and the brain is easily tired. With rest and return of physical strength this will disappear. You say too that you cannot do things now that you were easily able to do before. But then you were keeping some kind of harmonious balance between the mind, the vital being and the body, and all were strong. Afterwards you went entirely into the vital and neglected and fatigued the body; you ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3  >  Lines of the Descent of Consciousness

... movements and activities of the apparent vehicle consisting of the triple nexus of Body (Matter) and Life and Mind. The extreme root of the psychic growth extends perhaps right into the body, consciousness of Matter, but its real physical basis and tenement is found only with the growth and formation of the physical heart. And yet the psychic individuality behind the animal organisation is very rudimentary... developed psychic being with the supreme splendour of its very source, the Jivatman, occurs in the Supermind. When this happens the supramental personality becomes incarnate in the physical body: Matter in the material plane is transformed into a radiant substance made of pure consciousness, the human personality becomes a living form of the Divine. Thus the wheel comes full circle: creation returns... force acting in a general way. It looks as if the physical transformation which is what is meant by an ascension or emergence in the evolutionary gradient were possible only by a physical impact embodying Page 53 and canalising the spiritual force: it is with his physical body that the Divine Incarnation seems to push and lift up physical Nature to a new and higher status. The occult ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3

The Mother (biography)  >  16: What Is to Be Done Is Done

... Lord is present, there is not one in a thousand to whom it is not frightening. And not in the reasoning, not in the mind: directly in the [material] substance.’ 12 And in the cells of that aged body Divinity concretized; and in that aged body there took shape, little by little, a body consisting of a new kind of substance. Although this was a new, in a sense culminating phase in her yoga, the ... in her body. During the experience the connection between the supramental and our material world was established. In fact she experienced the supramental Force as a supramental body, ‘a much greater and powerful being’ in her gross material body. This was the very first time that she reported the presence of a new body within her. So strong was the power acting through that supramental body on the... world in the fortress of our material body, are pervaded by all kinds of invisible elements and influences, as science has found out. Our vital being is like an open house to others; we catch their pleasant or unpleasant moods, the little poisoned arrows they aim at us unseen, their inner discomfort or disorders and, exceptionally, their health or good humour. Our mind is like ‘a market place,’ said ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother (biography)

Questions and Answers (1950-1951)  >  10 March 1951

... part of your mind is there; distance, so to say, does not exist. Of course, to have a mind centralised around the body requires good training. Few people have a mind with a well-defined form: it is like clouds which roll, come and go. Even to have a vital with a form similar to that of your physical body, an analogous form, it must be very much individualised, very much centralised. The mind still more;... naturally to find another physical brain in which to manifest. It is in this way that the mind of a great thinker may identify itself with another mind and be able to express itself. From the vital point of view, take the case of a great musician who has worked all his life to make his external being a good instrument for music; he has organised this vital power in his body for playing music; well... not concentrated upon the body, they go out and become more or less independent—a limited independence, but independence all the same—and they go to dwell in their own domains. The mind more so, for it is hardly held within the body, it is only concentrated but not contained in the body. The vital also goes beyond the body, but it is more concentrated upon the body. The mind however is such a supple ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1950-1951)

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3  >  Our Ideal

... ed vessel, an apt instrument to incarnate and dynamise in the physical and material field truths and realities that normally lie far and above. Something of the kind, though in a small measure, happens, for example, in a poet or an artist. A poet who moves by vision and inspiration is not, at least need not be, devoid of mind: the mind in ills case is not annihilated or even kept in abeyance, but ... descent which imposes an inexorable physical pressure as it were upon an earthly material which otherwise is slow to move and change. Even of this descent of the Divine Consciousness, however, there are varying degrees, in accordance with the nature of the work it has got to do. In the inferior ranges of evolutionary Nature – the lower hemisphere, as it is called, of Mind, Life and Matter-Descent is partial... degree of spiritualisation also; for the degree of the Spirit that Nature manifests in an earthly body will also be the measure to which the body itself is spiritualised. A perfectly dynamic spiritual Page 28 consciousness will have the power to perfectly spiritualise the body and life and mind. And this grade and power of the supreme Spirit Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind. We will ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3

On The Mother  >  A Chronology of the Mother's Life

... P.E.D. groups. - Dec 5 Sri Aurobindo leaves ,1 his body: 'He had gathered in his body a great amount of supramental force and as soon as he left... [it] passed from his body into mine. And I felt the friction of the passage... it was a material sensation.' 'As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body,, what he has called the Mind of Light got realised in me.' - Dec 7 'Lord, this... Pondicherry. Sri Aurobindo 'is still with us, alive and active. Sri Aurobindo belongs to the future'. - Dec 18 Her physical mind or body-mind is being developed in a very rapid manner. 'I could say truly that I have become another person. There is only this (the outer form of her body) which remains as it was....' 1972 Feb 21 'The whole day... I had a strong feeling that it was the birthday... her, 'Yes, the time of proclamations, of revelations is gone - now to action.' -Nov 22 Her 'physical mind... has been converted, has become silent... received the inspiration of the Consciousness. And it has begun again to pray.... But since it is happening in one body, it can happen in all bodies! I am not made of something different from the others. The difference is in consciousness....' ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother

Letters on Yoga - II  >  Peace

... are full in the vital and physical consciousness, it is this that remains always as a basis for the right movement of the whole nature. It is the same peace [ in the physical as in the vital ]—but is felt materially in the material substance, concretely in the physical mind and nervous being, as well as psychologically in the mind and vital or subtly in the subtle body. I presume that [... in the Mind, Vital and Physical Yes, certainly, there is a mental peace, a vital peace, a peace of the physical Nature. It is the peace of a higher consciousness that descends from above. Page 151 The silence and peace are there waiting to manifest. Let the mind and vital give all themselves and they will pour in and reveal themselves. There can be peace in the mind even when... nature and turned to the Light and Truth. The forces that stand in the way of sadhana are the forces of the lower mental, vital and physical nature. Behind them are adverse powers of the mental, vital and subtle physical worlds. These can be dealt with only after the mind and heart have become one-pointed and concentrated in the single aspiration to the Divine. If the peace or silence is once ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II

A Greater Psychology  >  The Inner Being; the Subliminal (Self)

... are powerful for creation in the material universe. The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 861-63 Sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch are really properties of the mind, not of the body; but the physical mind which we ordinarily use, limits itself to a translation into sense of so much of the outer impacts as it receives through the nervous system and the physical organs. But the inner Manas has... understanding and satisfaction of impulse. Our surface mind is hardly a true mentality, so involved, bound, hampered, conditioned is it by the body and bodily life and the limitations of the nerve-system and the physical organs. But the subliminal self has a true mentality superior to these limitations; it exceeds the physical mind and physical organs although it is aware of them and their works... constant relation and commerce with it. 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 subliminal physicality in us to the universal force-formation of Cosmic Matter; 1 the thick walls which divide from these things our surface mind, life, body and which Nature has to pierce with so much trouble ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

The Psychic Being  >  The Double Soul

... constant relation and commerce with it. 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 subliminal physicality in us to the universal force-formation of cosmic Matter; the thick walls which divide from these things our surface mind, life, body and which Nature has to pierce with so much trouble,... have a subtler material existence which provides the substance not only of our physical but of our vital and mental sheaths and is therefore our real substance supporting this physical form which we erroneously imagine to be the whole body of our spirit. So too we have a double psychic entity in us, the surface desire-soul which works in our vital cravings, our emotions, aesthetic faculty and mental... the physical body, bound by its past evolution in Matter, which lives and was born and will die, the other a subliminal force of life which is not cabined between the narrow boundaries of our physical birth and death, but is our true vital being behind the form of living which we ignorantly take for our real existence. Even in the matter of our being there is this duality; for behind our body we have ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Psychic Being

Early Cultural Writings  >  Rajayoga

... exists, removes the physical obstacles to the wakening of the Kundalini shakti. But even this process is not essential. The Rajayogin knows that by tranquillising the mind he can tranquillise the body, by mastering the mind he can master both the body and the prana. This is the great secret of the Rajayoga that mind is the master of the body, creates it and conditions it, body is not the master,... Rajayogin when his body seems not to belong to him or he to have any concern with it. He is not troubled by its troubles or gladdened by its pleasures; it has them to itself and very soon, because he does not give his sanction to them, they fall away from it. His own troubles and pleasures are in the heart and mind, for he is the rajasic and psychical man, not the tamasic material. It is these that... brought about by much simpler methods. The only physical process that the Rajayogin finds helpful enough to be worth doing, is nadishuddhi or purification of the nerve system by regular breathing and this can be done while lying, sitting, reading, writing, walking. This process has great virtues. It has a wonderfully calming effect on the whole mind & body, drives out every lurking disease in the system ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Early Cultural Writings

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 2  >  Lines of the Descent of Consciousness

... movements and activities of the apparent vehicle consisting of the triple nexus of Body (Matter) and Life and Mind. The extreme root of the psychic growth extends perhaps right into the body, consciousness of Matter but its real physical basis and tenement is found only with the growth and formation of the physical heart. And yet the psychic individuality behind the animal organisation is very rudimentary... developed psychic being with the supreme splendour of its very source, the Jivatman, occurs in the Supermind. When this happens the supramental personality becomes incarnate in the physical body: Matter in the material plane is transformed into a radiant substance made of pure consciousness, the human personality becomes a living form of the Divine. Thus the wheel comes full circle: creation returns... spiritual force acting in a general way. It looks as if the physical transformation which is what is meant by an ascension or emergence in the evolutionary gradient were possible only by a physical impact embodying and canalising the spiritual force: it is with his physical body that the Divine Incarnation seems to push and lift up physical Nature to a new and higher status. The occult seers ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 2

The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri  >  Sight in the Waking State

... most material." (CWM, Vol. 3, p. 13) However that may be, we now proceed to select some verses from Savitri characterising the sights of different parts of the waking consciousness of the majority of men, starting with his material body and culminating in Reason, the highest faculty, passing through the different rungs such as "little life", "greater life", "heart", "physical mind"... intellect, the will, the sense-mind, the desire-self, the heart, even the body-consciousness, all "see" in different ways. All these and other similar parts of the being are "like fields into which forces from the same planes of consciousness in the universal Nature are constantly entering or passing." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 947) Our mind and life and physical consciousness with all their... himself on the possession of mind, and his "seeing thoughts" fill in "the blanks left by the seeking sense" (268), it remains a patent fact that mind, the intellect and the reason of man cannot grasp "the naked body of the Truth" (517): they are for ever "baffled by her endless garbs" (517). There is always a limit to the capacity of mind's vision. (j) Limit of Mind's Sight : (1) "That ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 2  >  Our Ideal

... instrument to incarnate Page 10 and dynamise in the physical and material field truths and realities that normally lie far and above. Something of the kind, though in a small measure, happens in a poet or an artist, for example. A poet who moves by vision and inspiration is not, at least need not be, devoid of mind: the mind in his case is not annihilated or even kept in abeyance, but sublimated... which imposes an inexorable physical pressure as it were upon an earthly material which otherwise is slow to move and change. Even of this descent of the Divine Consciousness, however, there are varying degrees, in accordance with the nature of the work it has got to do. In the inferior ranges of evolutionary Nature—the lower hemisphere, as it is called, of Mind, Life and Matter— Descent is... earthly body will also be the measure to which the body itself is spiritualised. A perfectly dynamic spiritual consciousness will have the power to perfectly spiritualise the body and life and mind. And this grade and power of the supreme Spirit Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind. We will try to understand the nature of sublimation and transformation by analogy and illustration. Mind, for example ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 2

Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960  >  December 13, 1960

... face with a problem as old as the world which had taken on an extraordinary intensity. It's what Sri Aurobindo calls disbelief , and it's located in the most material physical consciousness—it isn't doubt (which mainly belongs to the mind), it is almost like a refusal to accept the obvious as soon as it doesn't belong to the little daily routine of ordinary sensations and reactions—a sort of incapacity... × Later, Mother added the following: 'In this regard—I don't know where, but somewhere—Sri Aurobindo spoke of this physical mind, and he said that there was nothing you could do with it; it must only be destroyed.' Mother may be alluding to the following passage from The Synthesis of Yoga : 'There is nothing to be done... automatism from constantly manifesting? It's truly an automatism; it doesn't respond to any conscious will, nothing. So what will it take to ... ? And it's QUITE INTIMATELY related to the body's illnesses (the old habits the body has of coming out of its rhythmic Page 492 movement, of entering into confusion)—the two things are very intimately linked. I'm deep in the problem. For me, 'the ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960

Evolution and the Earthly Destiny  >  Lines of the Descent of Consciousness

... movements and activities of the apparent vehicle consisting of the triple nexus of Body (Matter) and Life and Mind. The extreme root of the psychic growth extends perhaps right into the body, consciousness of Matter, but its real physical basis and tenement is found only with the growth and formation of the physical heart. And yet the psychic individuality behind the animal organisation is very rudimentary... developed psychic being with the supreme splendour of its very source, the Jivatman, occurs in the Supermind. When this happens the supramental personality becomes incarnate in the physical body: Matter in the material plane is transformed into a radiant substance made of pure consciousness, the human personality becomes a living form of the Divine. Thus the wheel comes full circle: creation returns... acting in a general way. It looks as if the physical transformation which is what is meant by an ascension or emergence in the evolutionary gradient were possible only by a physical impact embodying Page 52 and canalising the spiritual force: it is with his physical body that the Divine Incarnation seems to push and lift up physical Nature to a new and higher status. The ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution and the Earthly Destiny

The Renaissance in India  >  "Is India Civilised?" - 1

... materialistic motive is to lead human culture. Is the harmony of the spirit, mind and body to found itself on the gross law of our physical nature, rationalised only or touched at the most by an ineffective spiritual glimmer, or is the dominant power of spirit to take the lead and force the lesser powers of the intellect, mind and body to a more exalted effort after a highest harmony, a victorious ever-developing... n and it can serve no Page 59 compensating spiritual purpose. Spiritual and temporal have indeed to be perfectly harmonised, for the spirit works through mind and body. But the purely intellectual or heavily material culture of the kind that Europe now favours, bears in its heart the seed of death; for the living aim of culture is the realisation on earth of the kingdom of heaven. India... introduction to this all-important issue. A true happiness in this world is the right terrestrial aim of man, and true happiness lies in the finding and maintenance of a natural harmony of spirit, mind and body. A culture is to be valued to the extent to which it has discovered the right key of this harmony and organised its expressive motives and movements. And a civilisation must be judged by the manner ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Renaissance in India

Science, Materialism, Mysticism  >  Mysticism and Einstein's Relativity Physics

... by a very small amount of material substance. When energy is no longer a property of matter but a more comprehensive and fundamental phenomenon which is work-capacity with inertia, mass, weight of its own, it cannot be considered purely physical, though we cannot explicitly designate it as Life or Mind or Spirit. Or, rather, it becomes something in which the physical is subsumed under a mysterious... result not from states of mind but from the body's normality or defectiveness. Then there is physical subjectivity. Fart of the audience may be near me, part far from me. Or else some hearers may be standing in one place, others moving about. What I read will be received differently by the near, the far, the standing and the moving. The differences will depend neither on the mind's condition nor on the... the state of the body's organs but only on the circumstances of situation and motion. The minds may be all akin, the bodies may be utterly similar, and yet these differences will come to pass. For, they are purely physical and can be reproduced exactly by putting, in place of the people, recording instruments all alike. They arise from "observation" Page 18 in a sense in which observation ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Science, Materialism, Mysticism

The Mother (biography)  >  17: The Passage Perilous

... as I am and they say so.’ As early as 1962 she said that the new body was a body of the subtle physical, which in her case means the supramental. It happened that, in her new body, she went down from her room into the Ashram and did certain things, the results of which were materially there when she asked about it. That new body was, besides, not something temporary or ephemeral, but permanent, she... for humankind, took up her body again to hasten the advent of the New World. Later she described the important changes that had taken place in her during the experience of 12 April 1962. ‘The Mental withdrew [from her material body], the Vital withdrew, all withdrew. At the time when I was so-called ill the Mind had disappeared, the Vital had disappeared, and the body was left to itself, purposely... infused into the body by the Vital – from the Mental into the Vital, from the Vital into the body. When both were no longer there, the Consciousness rose slowly, slowly to the surface [of the cells]. All started with that burst of Love from the highest summit, the upper supreme height, and then little by little, little by little it came down into the body. And then the physical mind – which is something ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother (biography)

Mother’s Agenda 1963  >  July 31, 1963

... unsaid: an urgent need to cease all material activity in order to enable the body to receive fully—as fully as possible—the divine Force that will replace what has been removed. There is something absolute about that need: to stay totally still, quiet, letting the Force descend—permeate the body, rather. All physical activity must be suspended in some way, and if the material organization, or the habit, tends... I've made a discovery—not positively a discovery, but a confirmation. A rather interesting observation. There was a sort of periodicity in the attacks—can I call them "physical"?... They're not physical, although they're on the body. They didn't recur at exactly regular intervals, because the periods of time in between weren't always the same, but there was a sort of analogy, of similarity in the ... morning, or in the night, I don't remember); it was said to the body, not to me. The body was told that it would go on till complete purification, and that AT THAT POINT it will have the choice between continuing its work or... You see, once it has attained complete purification from the cellular point of view (not what people call physical "purity," that's not it), from the point of view of the divine ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1963

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Divine Shakti

... formulated in our physical mind, nervous being and corporeal case sustaining our various activities. But if we can once get beyond this first formation by some liberation of the hidden, recondite, subliminal parts of our existence by Yoga, we become aware of a greater life force, a pranic Shakti, which supports and fills the body and supplies all the physical and vital activities,—for the physical energy is... This pranic force we can use for any of the activities of life, body or mind with a far greater and effective power than any that we command in our present operations, limited as they are by the physical formula. The use of this pranic power liberates us from that limitation to the extent of our ability to use it in place of the body-bound energy. It can be used so to direct the prana as to manage... man is a creature and instrument of material energy, the spiritual self-evolution of Yoga can be only a delusion, hallucination, abnormal state of mind or self-hypnosis. In any case it cannot be what it represents itself to be, a discovery of the eternal truth Page 752 of our being and a passing above the limited truth of the mental, vital and physical to the full truth of our spiritual ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Supermind in Integral Yoga  >  Part Five

... Divinity would seem to be the task imposed on the spirit born into the material universe." 41 In the human consciousness, the individual soul has risen up to mental level; and since this consciousness is embodied in physical, vital and mental complex, it (the soul) is identified through its Purusha consciousness with the body, with the vital consciousness and power, and the mental consciousness... levels of consciousness into fully individualized mind, life and body. It is with this purpose that the individual, who is identified by exclusive concentration of consciousness with the ascending forms produced by the evolutionary movement that slowly seeks to find its heaven of joy and light even in the oppositions offered by the terms of embodied material existence; and it accepts the process of struggle... flights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with cosmic existence of the gods, pursued behind the symbols of the material universe into those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense of the material mentality. The crown of this synthesis is to be found in the experience of the Vedic Rishis, which was transcendental and blissful in whose unity the ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Supermind in Integral Yoga

The Life Divine  >  Mind and Supermind

... self-identification with the body. To us mind seems to be determined Page 179 by the body, because it is preoccupied with that and devoted to the physical workings which it uses for its conscious superficial action in this gross material world. Employing constantly that operation of the brain and nerves which it has developed in the course of its own development in the body, it is too absorbed in... what this physical machinery gives to it to get back from it to its own pure workings; those are to it mostly subconscious. Still we can conceive a life mind or life being which has got beyond the evolutionary necessity of this absorption and is able to see and even experience itself assuming body after body and not created separately in each body and ending with it; for it is only the physical impress... indications—not felt directly by the physical being—of vital impact and relation. Equally is it ignorant of itself; for it knows of its self only through a movement in Page 180 Time and a succession of lives in which it has used its variously embodied energies. As our physical instrumental mind has the illusion of the body, so this subconscious dynamic mind has the illusion of life. In that ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Mother’s Agenda 1961  >  August 5, 1961

... one has broken the barrier is the vital-physical body. It is around the physical body and with the physical it forms as it were the "nervous envelope." The force of a disease has to break through it to reach the body—except for the attacks on the most material parts. You can then feel the disease coming and also feel in the nervous envelope the part of the body which it is going to, or intending to,... attack because what is in the nervous envelope has a material counterpart in the body. Thus it is the vital-physical which is first attacked and then the force takes the form of a disease in the system. I had myself the experience of fever all around the body.' A.B. Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo , Volume I, p. 232 × ... aren't in your body: everything else goes out just as it does at the time of death, doesn't it? Oh, no! Not at all. No. The cataleptic state of trance is like death, yes, except for the link that remains—only a link remains, but otherwise one has entirely gone out. Actually, the body becomes cataleptic only when one has entirely gone out; otherwise everything that is most material in the vital remains ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1961

Mother or The New Species - II  >  22. The New Perception

... height; it is here, in the body consciousness. It would almost seem that without the web, the body lives in another world, which is nevertheless physical and material, because after all, that body lives by the clock, sensibly goes to bed on time and sees two hundred very physical people a day—and its perception is physical: New York is physical, the Chinese troops are physical, and so are the gutters... into the physical, as if the very perception of the body were changing and everything were physical, even the "other worlds"! I raised my eyes (I was sitting in front of a mirror, although I don't usually look at myself); I raised my eyes and looked, and I saw many things).... At that moment, I had an experience which made me say to myself "Ah! That's why, from the physical, purely material standpoint... gutters of Thebes. So then, what kind of physical? What is the truth of our material world? And in that same physical, behind the "veil of unreality," death does not exist, illness does not exist, gravity does not exist, rivers can be crossed effortlessly... as if the Matter we now live were a morbid invention of the Mind from one end to the other. A passing invention to make an individual cage. But this ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  She Is Always Present

... physically you mean corporeally, in her visible tangible material body, it is obvious that it cannot be. When you asked Mother the question she did not understand you to mean that—she said she could be present everywhere, and she meant, of course, in her consciousness. It is the consciousness and not the body that is the being, the person; the body is only a support and instrument for the action of the... sometimes with her physical mind. All knowledge is available in her universal self to her, but she brings forward only what is meant to be brought forward so that the work may be done. 13 August 1933 I had a dream in which I was walking alone in the desert. Was the meaning of the dream that this sadhana is very dry and difficult? No. It is perhaps how some part of the vital or physical consciousness... does it come? It is the feeling of the physical or outward being which is by its ignorance unable to feel the Mother's nearness. How can I convince myself of the falsity of this thought and drive it away? The Mother is always near and within, it is only the obscurity of mind and vital that do not see or feel it. That is a knowledge which the mind ought to hold firmly. 29 April 1937 ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother

The Mother Abides - Final Reflections  >  What Is to Be Done

... bottom. It is the utmost physical consciousness; in the absence of Mother's physical body we have plunged straight into the bog, into the mire of crude physical existence. So we have to start the work of purification from that level, from the consciousness identified with the body; we must try to do the cleansing of the body and the vital. Mind? Oh, mind too, the higher levels of mind, the mental proper... consciousness, its physical and especially its lower vital parts. Those who want spirituality in practical life must go down to the bottom and accomplish this purification. And the future? The future of what? The future of the individual soul is in Mother's arms. And the future of the creation is a new divine dawn; it is ready, absolutely ready for manifesting in the material; it is waiting, its... but also all that was represented in a human form, the entire terrestrial nature. They held their bodies as vessels to receive, on behalf of earth and man, what was to come down; they called it down, established it in this atmosphere and withdrew—for the mission for which they took up material form was done. Yes, the mission was fulfilled. Now the new consciousness will spread and make its ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother Abides - Final Reflections

Letters on Yoga - II  >  The Divine Force in Work

... in the ordinary course of Yoga that physical strength is replaced by a Yogic strength or Yogic life force which keeps up the body and makes it work, but in the absence of this force the body is denuded of power, inert and tamasic. This can only be remedied by the whole being opening to Yoga shakti in each of its planes—Yogic mind force, Yogic life force, Yogic body force. When doing this work... receive it. If the physical is in this condition and the work creates such reactions in it, it is no use forcing it violently and putting an overstrain upon it. It is better to educate and train the external material being slowly by bringing calm and peace and light and strength persistently into the nervous system and cells of the body. A violent compulsion on the body may well defeat its own... the time, the temperament, the activity of the vital, the mind's receptivity and response. The Yogi (or even certain strong and calm minds) is not carried away, as the mind and the vital often are, by the Ananda,—he holds and watches it and there is no mere excitement mixed with the divine flow of it through the conscious instrument and the body. There is a greater Ananda of samarpaṇa , of spiritual ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Integral Perfection

... always as a mental, vital and physical being and it aims at a human perfection well within these limits, a perfection of mind, life and body, an expansion and refinement of the intellect and knowledge, of the will and power, of ethical character, aim and conduct, of aesthetic sensibility and creativeness, of emotional balanced poise and enjoyment, of vital and physical soundness, regulated action and... spiritualised action of mind, life and body only its outward human expression. In order that this spiritual being may not be something vague and indefinable or else but imperfectly realised and dependent on the mental support and the mental limitations, it seeks to go beyond mind to the supramental knowledge, will, sense, feeling, intuition, dynamic initiation of vital and physical action, all that makes... of which it is only a half-light, life discovers its meaning in a greater power and will of which it is the outward and as yet obscure functioning, body finds its last use as an instrument of a power of being of which it is a physical support and material starting-point. They have all themselves first to be developed and find out their ordinary possibilities; all our normal life is a trying of these ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11  >  Cosmonautics

...         Now the discipline that the physical body is made to undergo at present in order to accustom itself to high flying may one day point to the way for a new adaptation and disposition for the body. As it is, the disruption that has been made in the earth atmosphere because of Science's new adventure is also a way to acclimatising the human body to new conditions. The new conditions are becoming... the burden is changing. The change is not perhaps very obvious today but the body has already been feeling it and expressing its reactions in the instabihty of the balance so long enjoyed by man. That is to say, the modern man physically lives or soon will have to live under a new set of circumstances and his physical body has to undergo a change commensurate with its habitat or it will have to disappear... travels are forcing the human body to adapt itself to new conditions and it is a very conscious discipline. The change in the body of living beings in the previous stages is due to an unconscious pressure brought, to bear upon it by an unconscious Nature. But now the situation is different: man is attempting consciously to surpass himself, he has begun to do it in the physical field with remarkable results ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11

Evolution and the Earthly Destiny  >  Cosmonautics

... world. Now, the discipline that the physical body is made to undergo at present, in order to accustom itself to high flying, may one day point to the way for a new adaptation and disposition for the body. As it is, the disruption that has been made in the earth atmosphere because of Science's new adventure is also a way to acclimatising the human body to new conditions. The new conditions are... the burden is changing. The change is not perhaps very obvious today but the body has already been feeling it and expressing its reactions in the instability of the balance so long enjoyed by man. That is to say, the modern man physically lives or soon will have to live under a new set of circumstances and his physical body has to undergo a change commensurate with its habitat or it will have to disappear... travels are forcing the human body to adapt itself to new conditions and it is a very conscious discipline. The change in the body of living beings in the previous stages is due to an unconscious pressure brought to bear upon it by an unconscious Nature. But now the situation. is different: man is attempting consciously to surpass himself, he has begun to do it in the physical field with remarkable results ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution and the Earthly Destiny

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  Cosmonautics

... the world. Now, the discipline that the physical body is made to undergo at present, in order to accustom itself to high flying, may one day point to the way for a new adaptation and disposition for the body. As it is, the disruption that has been made in the earth atmosphere because of Science's new adventure is also a way to acclimatising the human body to new conditions. The new conditions are... the burden is changing. The change is not perhaps very obvious today but the body has already been feeling it and expressing its reactions in the instability of the balance so long enjoyed by man. That is to say, the modern man physically lives or soon will have to live under a new set of circumstances and his physical body has to undergo a change commensurate with its habitat or it will have to disappear... travels are forcing the human body to adapt itself to new conditions and it is a very conscious discipline. The change in the body of living beings in the previous stages is due to an unconscious pressure brought to bear upon it by an unconscious Nature. But now the situation is different: man is attempting consciously to surpass himself, he has begun to do it in the physical field with remarkable results ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

Words of the Mother - III  >  4 November 1958

... at the center—it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest—and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one... of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the... denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - III

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5  >  A Programme for the Second Century of the Divine Manifestation

... The whole forms an indissoluble integral and unitary life. This collective integration means all individuals have one mind, one vital being, even one physical consciousness, not of course one material body but still a feeling of the' kind. One mind or one vital or one physical consciousness does not mean everyone has the same identical formations and movements in these respective regions, but all... being. Indeed each particle of the being must itself be a psychic or psychicised particle: a consciousness-photon. There is thus a vital photon, a mental photon, a photon of the physical consciousness even as the material photon. And all these in their hierarchic harmonious arrangement shall constitute the global system of the new person. Even so, there is to be a transmutation of the environment... at a single touch. Different in form, different in function, they are identical in their substantial composition, in their fundamental stuff-the organic plasma; even so, the minds of all, their vital movements, their physical movements too, however different and diverse, contrary or Page 17 contradictory, are in their own respective domains part and particles of the one ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5

Letters on Yoga - III  >  Kinds of Vision

... buffalo's ineffectual rush was your mind's transcription—the rush of some hostile force represented by the buffalo. Seeing Forms of the Divine and Other Beings 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... any concentration. As the flower was a subtle physical object, not entirely material in the ordinary sense of the word (though quite substantial and material in its own plane, not an illusion), a camera would not be able to detect it—except in the case of one of those abnormal interventions by which a subtle form has been thrown upon the material plate. It could be sensed in a dark room, though... by the material senses. There is also a psychic vision by which one can see the forms of the Gods or one of the many forms in which the Ishwara reveals himself to the Bhakta. There is too an inner or subtle sense and sight by which one can see and experience forms and happenings which are not present to the physical eye and also those which belong to other planes than that of the physical world ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III

The Secret of the Veda  >  The Foundations of the Psychological Theory

... clear discernment brings us our highest good. It is obvious that in such a passage these cows cannot be material herds nor would the giving of physical Light carry any sense in the context. In one instance at least the psychological symbolism of the Vedic cow was established with certainty to my mind. I then applied it to other passages in which the word occurred and always I saw that it resulted in the... establish any connection between the figure that rose in my mind and the Vedic hound of heaven, who was associated in my memory with the Argive Helen and represented only an image of the physical Dawn entering in its pursuit of the vanished herds of Light into the cave of the Powers of darkness. When once the clue is found, the clue of the physical Light imaging the subjective, it is easy to see that the... Dawn, is described as gomatī aśvavatī ; Dawn gives to the sacrificer horses and cows. As applied to the physical dawn gomatī means accompanied by or bringing the rays of light and is an image of the dawn of illumination in the human mind. Therefore aśvavatī also cannot refer merely to the physical steed; it must have a psychological significance as well. A study of the Vedic horse led me to the conclusion ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Secret of the Veda

What I Have Learnt From The Mother  >  Some Observation and Conclusions

... is the centroids of the "Mind of Light" in our body, the point where the mind and the body meet and become one. A Note It seems there is a new centre at the base of the hind brain. The pituitary gland is also situated here. As its proper functioning brings harmony and balance in the physical being and gives perfect coordination of the different muscles of the body (both voluntary and involuntary... the physical need at each moment, then one will have perfect control over one's body. It will then function properly, the decay will stop, and the movements that bring the decay can be prevented. Thus perfect control and mastery over this centre may bring physical immortality. Sri Aurobindo has spoken of "Mind of Light" that will serve as the liaison between the supermind and the physical being... then we will have conquered the decay of the body. We could stop the onset of this decay. If we can bring this chakra under our total control then we could attain even physical immortality. What Sri Aurobindo has called the "Mind of Light" will be able to work out with intervention of this chakra the conjunction of the Supramental and the physical being. This chakra that surrounds the pituitary ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   What I Have Learnt From The Mother

Questions and Answers (1950-1951)  >  19 March 1951

... you speaking of? Of the physical mind. Certainly not of the higher mind, for there are no adverse forces there. The reference is to the mind that deals with material things. Are there beings in the mental worlds? Yes, many. They are completely independent; they have their own life, their own relations among themselves, as in other worlds. Only for a physical consciousness, time and space... space are not the same in the vital or the mental worlds as in the physical world. For example, those who are in the physical consciousness have the impression that shiftings in the mind are instantaneous—compared with the higher consciousness they are not instantaneous, but compared with the physical consciousness, they are instantaneous, of an extreme rapidity. The beings of the mental world also... I believe philosophical, yogic and other systems use the word "spiritual" in a very vague and loose way. Whatever is not physical is spiritual! In comparison with the physical world all other worlds are spiritual! All thought, all effort which does not tend towards the material life is a spiritual effort. Every tendency which is not strictly human and egoistic is a spiritual tendency. This is a word ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1950-1951)

Words of the Mother - III  >  30 January 1951

... worlds. For example, the mind: if the mind is conscious, coordinated, well controlled, it can move about it in the mental world just as the body does in the physical world and see what this mental world is like, what is going on there, what are its characteristics and so on. These things are not invisible in themselves—they are invisible to the physical consciousness and the physical senses, but not to the... that they exist in a fixed place. But to understand that, to understand these things requires a mind capable of understanding that there are other dimensions than the purely material dimensions. For when you are told that your psychic being is in your body, that doesn't mean that if you open up your body you will find your psychic being inside. You will find your heart, your stomach and the rest, but... seen as in the physical world or as in dreams? We have to agree on what dreams are! There are dreams where Page 320 you see things so precisely, so concretely that the material world seems rather unreal in comparison. There are dreams like that where things are so intense, so precise, so concrete, so objective and leave you with such a vivid impression that the material world seems rather ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - III

Questions and Answers (1956)  >  5 December 1956

... positively material things like food and sleep: it is quite possible that, if he has not taken care to infuse, as it were, his new consciousness into his body, his need for food and sleep will remain almost the same and that he won't have much control over them. On the other hand, if he has taken care to unify his being and has infused his consciousness into the elements constituting his body, well, his... sleep that's unconscious and useless, except from a purely material point of view, he will have a productive and altogether conscious sleep. For food it will be the same thing. Instead of being a slave to his needs, usually in almost entire ignorance of what he needs, well, he will be perfectly conscious, at once of the needs of his body and the means of governing them. He will be able to control... you feel you are the world-personality; this sense of division and separation goes away, this limitation disappears. But you remain in your body, you are not compelled necessarily to lose your body; the body is something else. And it is precisely the body that he is speaking about in the last paragraph: "Transform the animal into the Driver of the herds." When one becomes a divine consciousness ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1956)

The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Psychic-The Delight-Soul

... cosmic principle in our individual composition is. double: we have two bodies, two lives, two minds and two souls. They are derived from the involutionary and evolutionary movements of Spirit. We have a gross physical body, annamaya śarīra, and a subtle physical body, s ū kṣma or linga, śarīra; a life-force working in our gross body and conditioned by its past evolution in Matter, and a s ū kṣma... to his unenlightened comprehension. If he lives mostly in his physical being, engrossed in the needs and cravings of his body and attached to his physical interests and relations, it is likely that his soul will not be able to go on a long journey of the supraphysical planes after the death of his present body,—the insistent material preoccupation of the nature will pull it down to earth. But if... ve in the material world. The Jivâtmâ is our eternal and central being, untouched by the mutations of our nature and unqualified by the varying forms assumed by our evolving soul here. It also projects a Purusha, a representative of itself on each plane of our consciousness—a manomaya puruṣa in the mind, a pr ā ṇamaya puruṣa in the vital, and an annamaya puruṣa in the physical—and exercises ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo's Message  >  The Glorious Future

... light of mind would draw down into it the superior or supreme power and light of the spirit and in an earthly body shed its parts of inconscience and become a perfectly conscious frame of the spirit. A secure completeness and stability of the health and strength of its physical tenement could be maintained by the will and force of this inhabitant; all the natural capacities of the physical frame... of the spirit; some fullness of the power of the spirit would be there. One would have overpassed the present limitations of mind: mind would become a seeing of the light of Truth, will a force and power of the Truth, Life a progressive fulfilment of the Truth, the body itself a conscious vessel of the Truth and part of the means of its self-effectuation and a form of its self-aware existence.... frame, all powers of the physical consciousness would reach their utmost extension and be there at command and sure of their flawless action. As an instrument the body would acquire a fullness of capacity, a totality of fitness for all uses which the inhabitant would demand of it far beyond anything now possible. Even it could become a revealing vessel of a supreme beauty and bliss, — casting the beauty ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Sri Aurobindo's Message

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Object of Knowledge

... creative Power, a means of expression for That which is expressed and expresses. Matter and our physical brain and nerves and body are the field and foundation for one action of a vital force that serves to connect the Self with the form of its works and maintains them by its direct dynamis. The material movements are an exterior notation by which the soul represents its perceptions of certain truths... are still not entirely that which the universe really is, either in itself or its nature. As all that we are is the play and form, the mental, psychic, vital and physical expression of a supreme Self unconditioned by mind and life and body, the universe too is the play and form and cosmic soul-expression and nature-expression of a supreme Existence which is unconditioned by force and matter, unconditioned... figure that points beyond itself to the reality behind it. Truth proceeds by a correction of the values our mind and senses give us, and first by the action of a higher intelligence that enlightens and sets right as far as may be the conclusions of the ignorant sense-mind and limited physical intelligence; that is the method of all human knowledge and science. But beyond it there is a knowledge, a ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Integral Yoga of Transformation  >  Part Six

... beyond the material world. Perfection of the body as the outer instrument of a complete divine living on earth is a necessary part of the supramental transformation. In its highest movement, Sri Aurobindo envisages illumination of the whole physical consciousness and a divinizing of the law of the body. The yogic literature, particularly relating to Hatha yoga and Tantra, speaks of physical siddhis acquired... spiritual being and Nature body of the Purushottama." 64 Gnostic Perfection and Divinizing the law of the Body The fourth element of perfection relates to the supramental Page 74 or Gnostic perfection and the physical body, and it aims at and accomplishes the transformation of life in the physical world as one of its fields and even though the super mind opens up possession of... infinite energy, all knowledge and conscious experience as the out flowing of that consciousness, and all in the terms of that one Ananda. His physical being will be one with all material Nature, his vital being with the life of the universe, his mind with the cosmic mind, his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine knowledge and will both in itself and as it pours itself through these channels, his spirit ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Integral Yoga of Transformation

Champaklal Speaks  >  The Flower Sentences

... successful future . 29.3.1930 Let gold be turned to the service of the Divine. So it will get purified and take its true place in Krishna's play in the material*. 26.4.1930 Surrender all falsehood ; your physical mind will be converted and a mental victory won. 1.5.1930 ... four are the conditions most important for conquest of the power over the most material vital . 28.10.1929 A mind quiet and filled with the sweetness of thoughts exclusively turned towards the Divine is the gate through which there will be the constant connection between the supramental light and the material being . 29.10.1929 Be simply sincere in your obedience to the Divine... of the Divine's Love . 20.10.1929 Reach through aspiration the intuitive mind ; then you will know what is meant by transformation . 21.10.1929 Peace in the physical cells leads first to health and then to transformation. 22.10.1929 Advance on the way with peace in the physical being as your ground and simple sincerity as your means and, sooner or later, you are ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal Speaks

Essays on the Gita  >  Above the Gunas

... limiting conditions, to identify itself with a life, mind and body that are oblivious of their inner spiritual reality and of the innate Godhead. To get back to self-knowledge and to the knowledge of the real as distinct from the apparent relations of the soul with Nature, to know God and ourselves and the world with a spiritual and no longer with a physical or externalised experience, through the deepest... taking up a body or by his continuous assumption of cosmic forms and powers because he exists always in this self-knowledge. His very nature is to be unchangeably conscious of his own eternity; he is self-aware without end or beginning. He is here the Inhabitant of all bodies, but as the unborn in every body, not limited in his consciousness by that manifestation, not identified with the physical nature... the primary determinant and underlies all the outer quantitative dispositions. In the basis of the physical world this is not apparent only because there the underlying ideative spirit, the Mahad Brahman, is overlaid and hidden up by the movement of matter and material energy. But even in the physical world the miraculous varying results of different combinations and quantities of elements otherwise ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita

Words of the Mother - III  >  The Supramental and the New Being

... conditions for the manifestation. Wisdom in the physical mind: a first step towards the supramental manifestation upon earth. ( Message for the fourth anniversary of the Supramental Manifestation upon earth ) It is only when the Supramental manifests in the body-mind that its presence can be permanent. 29 February 1972 Page 108 It is indispensable that each one finds... coming of the New Being. The mind must be silenced and replaced by the Truth-Consciousness—a consciousness of the whole harmonised with a consciousness of detail. The mind must be silent to allow the Supramental Consciousness to take its place. The Truth-Consciousness must pervade all the being, dominate all the movements and quiet the restless physical mind. These are the preliminary ... anywhere. And those who are not ready cannot do it wherever they are. 12 November 1971 The supramental transformation is hard labour and needs a strong body. For some time more, probably more than a hundred years, the physical body will need to eat in order to keep its strength; and we have to comply with this necessity. December 1972 ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - III

Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV  >  Correspondence 1949

... advantage of certain openings in the physical mind or the vital part, but not a real part of oneself or spontaneous creation in one’s own nature to create a confusion and darkness in the physical mind and to throw into it or awake in it mistaken ideas, dark thoughts, false impressions is a favourite method of these assailants, and if they can get the support of this mind from over-confidence in its own... this world but had an inner and intimate bearing on it, such as a feeling of the Infinite pervading material space and the Immanent inhabiting material objects and bodies. At the same time I found myself entering supraphysical worlds and planes with influences and an effect from them upon the material plane, so I could make no sharp divorce or irreconcilable opposition between what I have called ... being including the body and more specially what would be the nature of the perfection of the body. I indicated clearly that only by Yoga could there come a supreme and total perfection of all the instruments of the Spirit and the ascent of the whole being to the highest level and a divine life on earth and the assumption of a divine body. I made it clear that by human and physical means such as sports ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV

Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  29 May 1957

... live on the physical plane, in the physical consciousness, it is physical means and processes which have to be used in dealing with the body. And as the vast majority of human beings, even in the Ashram, live in a consciousness which, if not exclusively physical, is at least predominantly physical, it is quite natural for them to follow and obey all the principles laid down by physical science for... with the eyes of the ordinary physical consciousness, if you think of them with the ordinary physical consciousness, it will be ordinary physical means you will have to use to act on your body. These ordinary physical means make up the whole science which has accumulated through thousands of years of human existence. This science is very complex, its processes innumerable, complicated, uncertain, often... As soon as this opening occurs, one passes beyond the state in which life is purely physical—when I say "physical" I include the whole mental and intellectual life and all human achievements, even the most remarkable; I am speaking of a physical which is the summit of human capacities, of an earthly and material life in which man can express values of a higher order from the mental and intellectual ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6  >  The Golden Harvest

... Indeed this human body is the precious land from which one could reap a harvest of gold. For this body has the proud privilege of receiving the golden touch of the Divine materially and to hold it and maintain it. This materialisation of the Divine is the supreme alchemy of which the body is capable. There are other forms of union with the Divine, all forms of consciousness, of the mind, of the vital –... emotions, even sensations – all delightful but immaterial: even without the body they can be felt and experienced, they are true and real in their own authenticity. But the body brings in a new element, altogether different a phenomenon. It makes a thing living, real materially. The human body has this strange virtue of Touch – the body contact – which makes what is dead (matter) alive – mrtam kañcana bodhayanti... the way, of the supreme incalculable energy). Because of this supreme union and identification, even down to the material body, Radha feels that her body is no longer her own but Krishna's and therefore utterly sacred. She cries out as the Vaishnava poet says: "O sister, when this body dies, do not burn it or throw it into the river, but keep it suspended on a branch of the tamal tree. Tamal has ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6

Mother’s Agenda 1964  >  November 4, 1964

... in my life, I had the PHYSICAL experience of the Supreme's presence in a personal form. It wasn't a defined form, but it was a personal form. And it came in the wake of a series of experiences in which I saw the different attitudes of different categories of people or thinkers, according to their conviction. And it came as if that form were saying to my body (it was a PHYSICAL presence), as if it... if He were telling me, "Through you" (that is, through this, the body) "I am charging..." (it was like a conquest, a battle), "I am charging to conquer the physical world." That's how it was. And the sensation was really of an all-powerful Being whose proportions were like ours, but who was everywhere at once, and really of a physical "charge" to chase away all the dark little demons of Ignorance, and... astonishment made it go away. The first time in my life. Page 268 It was a physical presence, with a form, but a form... It was odd, it was a form... As soon as you try to describe it, it seems difficult. But I still have the memory of having seen a sort of form with a quite special—but MATERIAL—light and quality, and which... Yes, maybe it is ( Mother looks silently )... maybe that is ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1964

A Greater Psychology  >  The Psychic Being

... evolution in the material world. It is at first an undifferentiated power of the Divine Consciousness containing all possibilities which have not yet taken form, but to which it is the function of evolution to give form. This spark is there in all living beings from the lowest to the highest. The psychic being is formed by the soul in its evolution. It supports the mind, vital, body, grows by their... Being The inner being is composed of the inner mental, inner vital, inner physical, — but that is not the psychic being. The psychic is the inmost being and quite distinct from these. The word 'psychic' is indeed used in English to indicate anything that is other or deeper than the external mind, life and body, anything occult or supraphysical, but that is a use which brings confusion and... the true psyche. Letters on Yoga, p. 294 The being of man is composed of these elements — the psychic behind supporting all, the inner mental, vital and physical, and the outer, quite external nature of mind, life and body which is their instrument of expression. But above all is the central being (Jivatma) which uses them all for its manifestation: it is a portion of the Divine Self; ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

Autobiographical Notes  >  To and about Marie Potel

... communion than the active mind, and the "essence" can only be seized by identity or by direct communion. The active mind cannot do it except by falling silent and leaning on the psychic and on the internal sense. The universal Mental is not the "stuff and body of the Father-Mother". No doubt what you mean is that the universal mental like the universal vital and physical is one form of the expressive... which the Divine manifests and which is the true substance of all things, the one substance of which mind, life and body are lesser degrees, then no doubt that when it pours down as true being, as consciousness, as Ananda enables not only to face the universal mental as also the universal vital and physical but to work upon them and transform them. But is this what you have seen or is it something else... true connection with the vital-physical weakness of which you complain, nor can that kind of practice help you to transmit to the physical the exact light of Truth from the higher consciousness. It was the ignorant Mind in you which was attaching an undue importance to this "practical occultism" and it is the same mind which tries to connect two unconnected things. This mind in you makes the most fanciful ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes

The Life Divine  >  The Gnostic Being

... gnostic Force can act in the body, these things can be established; for their opposites come from a pressure of external forces on the physical mind, on the nervous and material life, on the body organism, from an ignorance that does not know how to meet these forces or is not able to meet them rightly or with power, and from some obscurity, pervading the stuff of the physical consciousness and distorting... perfect and faultless use of his divine material, for a true rhythm, ordered harmony, beauty in the life of Matter, in the utilisation of Matter. As a result of this new relation between the Spirit and the body, the gnostic evolution will effectuate the spiritualisation, perfection and fulfilment of the physical being; it will do for the body as for the mind and life. Apart from the obscurity, frailties... the vitality to act with its support: the body is the instrument of this action. But the body, even in obeying, limits and determines the mind's and the life's self-expression by the limited possibilities and acquired character of its own physical instrumentation; it has besides a law of its own action, a movement and will or force or urge of movement of its own subconscious or half-emerged conscious ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  The Significance of Rebirth

... the physical to the psychical level. As there is evident to our physical mind an Energy, action, motion, capable of creating by its material forces the forms and powers of the material universe, so there is for the Buddhistic vision of things an Energy, action, Karma, creating by its psychic powers of idea and association this embodied soul life with its continuity of recurrences. As the body is a... unretraceable road ending abruptly and perplexingly in a cul-de-sac; our physical dissolution is robbed of the cruellest poison of its sting. For the burden of death to man the thinking, willing, feeling creature is not the loss of this poor case or chariot of body, but it is the blind psychical finality death suggests, the stupid material end of our will and thought and aspiration and endeavour, the brute... life, mind, psyche, which can assent to cessation only by turning in enmity upon their own flame of nature, and the denial of it which the dull acquiescence of a body consenting inertly to death as to life brings in on us, is the whole painful irreconcilable contradiction of our double nature. Rebirth takes the difficulty and solves it in the sense of a soul continuity with a beat of physical repetition ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Record of Yoga  >  Sapta Chatusthaya

... forms of pleasure. A stage arrives even, when physical pain itself, the hardest thing for material man to bear, changes its nature in experience and becomes physical ananda; but this is only at the end when this human being, imprisoned in matter, subjected to mind, emerges from his subjection, conquers his mind and delivers himself utterly in his body, realising his true anandamaya self in every part... dualities; it means literally being seated above, superior to all physical and mental touches. The udasina, free from desire, either does not feel the touch of joy & grief, pleasure and pain, liking and disliking, or he feels them as touching his mind and body, but not himself, he Page 3 being different from mind and body and seated above them. Nati Nati is the submission of the... dehashaktih. The body is the pratistha in this material universe; for the working out of the divine lila on earth it is necessary that it should have especially the dharanasamarthyam or power of sustaining the full stream of force, of ananda, of widening knowledge & being which descends into mind and prana and the vital and bodily functions with the progress of the siddhi. If the body is unfit, the system ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

Mother’s Agenda 1965  >  January 12, 1965

... THE EARTH (I am not even referring to the material universe), only on the earth was there the Descent of divine Love that was the origin of the divine Presence in the heart of Matter. And naturally, as they don't have a psychic being, they don't know, they have no knowledge of the psychic being. Some of those beings even decided to take on a physical body in order to experience the psychic being—not... Peace that acts DIRECTLY in this material vibration—a Peace in which everything relaxes. Don't think—don't think you have to transform this physical mind or oblige it to fall silent or abolish it: all that is still activity. Simply let it run, but... bring the Peace, feel the Peace, live the Peace, know the Peace—the Peace, the Peace, the Peace. That brings fever down instantly—almost instantly... a lot of rest. My difficulty is that I'm very absorbed by this body. It absorbs me, it absorbs a lot of my consciousness. The physical mind, for instance, invades me completely. Yes, I know very well! But that's always the difficulty, it's everyone's difficulty. That's why in the past you were told, "Get away from it all! Let it puddle about peacefully—get away from it all." But we don't have ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1965

Words of the Mother - I  >  General

... ago—into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical Page 62... 62 mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light. 1 29 June 1953 As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he has called the Mind of Light got realised in me. 2 MOTHER'S SYMBOL The central circle represents the Divine Consciousness. The four petals represent the four powers of the Mother. The twelve petals represent... her four aspects and twelve attributes. Sri Aurobindo says, "The true basis of education is the study of the human mind, infant, adolescent and adult." But how does one study? Where does one start? What are the steps in this study? Do not ask me any questions about the mind; I am no longer interested in it. I am concentrated on union with the overmind. 9 December 1972 How to learn ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - I

Questions and Answers (1953)  >  20 May 1953

... happen before the transformation of the body? Before the transformation of the body?... This is a phenomenon of consciousness. For instance, the physical consciousness may have this experience even for years before the cells change. There is a great difference between the physical consciousness (the Page 57 body consciousness) and the material body. This takes a long time, because it is... ( Extract from a talk of Sri Aurobindo with a French scientist-disciple ) 8 May 1926 In the West the highest minds are turned not towards spiritual truth but towards material science. The scope of science is very narrow, it touches only the most exterior part of the physical plane. And even there, what does science know really? It studies the functioning of the laws, builds theories ever... is the ether: Akasha. But these five constitute only the grossest part of the physical plane. Immediately behind is the physical-vital, the element of life buried in matter. J. C. Bose is contacting this element in his experiments. Beyond is the mind in matter. This mind has a far different form than the human mind, still it is a manifestation of the same principle of organisation. And deep below ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1953)

Mother’s Agenda 1970  >  May 13, 1970

... him daily... But we have a body corresponding to that world, don't we?... I mean we, for instance, we human beings, do we have a body corresponding to that world? Some have a body in the subtle physical, oh yes!... Oh, yes. But not everyone? For some it's... fluid, that is, uncertain, but some do have a body.... I think people develop their subtle physical in the course of life. Yes... mental or a vital body, and you can develop those bodies. But this subtle physical, how do you develop it, how do you consciously make contact with it? ( after a long silence ) As for me, I didn't do it on purpose, so I don't know! In fact, I rather FOLLOWED Sri Aurobindo there, because before he left his body, I don't remember having had much contact with this subtle physical—I may have had... space between them ), and then between the two, it's... it's not yet. So then, what's going to happen between the two?... This ( the right hand, above ) is the subtle physical, and this ( the left hand, below ) is the material physical, and then, between the two, there is a confusion... or something that's not ready or... ( long silence ) Did you have anything else?... And you ( to Sujata ), do ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1970

Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God  >  6: The Chain of Being

... behaviour while in the body. Still, behind and in tandem with the Christian duality, the scale’s gradations, chiefly divided in the triad matter-life-mind, continued to determine the thinking. In science there were the material, vegetable and animal realms, the foundation of all natural classifications. Even materialistic Cartesians like La Mettrie wrote about a continuation in physical nature “from the... problem: how can the mind act upon and through the matter of the brain? According to Larry Witham this is “the mind-boggling question that divides brain theorists and philosophers alike: how can the quality of ‘mind’ [whatever this may be] exist at all in matter?” 3 “The enigmatic relation between conscious experience and the physical world, commonly known as the mind-body problem, has frustrated... ultimately lead to distortion, confusion and stunting ignorance. (The unsolved and presently unsolvable problems of the origin of life and the mind/body relation should make this clear.) Ken Wilber, widely read, has many pages in his books trying to show that the material “flatland” of science is far from the whole of reality. Two major sources of his synthetic effort are Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) and Arthur ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God

Evolution and the Earthly Destiny  >  The Immortal Person

... purpose of physical culture too should be a well-balanced and well-developed physical body, not only in a general sense, but in a very individualised mode. But all these varieties and modes of culture can be truly individualised and not merely ordered or organised, more or less on the surface, only when they obey and subserve the culture of the soul. The mind, the vital and the physical each has to... on, in other words, the development and organisation of the mind, the life and the body. So the individualisation and growth of the soul means a growth and individualisation of the mental being, the vital being and also of the physical being. Normally the purpose of intellectual culture is the growth and individualisation of the mind, the purpose of moral culture is the growth and individualisation... tion and individualisation of the material sheath itself. The very cells of the body are impregnated with the radiant substance of the supreme spiritual consciousness; they live the life of the spiritual individual, the personal divine embodied in the individual. When the whole Page 180 process is gone through and the work done, the individual body, physically too, shares in and attains ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution and the Earthly Destiny

A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best  >  Supermind in the Veda and the Aim of Immortality

... perfection includes perfection of mind and body. In the attainment of this perfection, therefore, the highest results of Rajayoga and Hathayoga are included; and 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... knowledge, power, joy, life and glory; these flights and rangings were synthesized with the cosmic existence of the Gods, pursued behind the symbols of material universe in those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense and the material mentality. The discovery of the supermind by the Vedic Rishis was of capital importance, and the victories which the Vedic Rishis attained have been extremely... rapidly towards the descent of the supermind on the earth and subsequent developments during which the supermind came to be fixed permanently in the physical consciousness in the Mother's body, which had become so universalized as to represent the body of the human species as a whole. The coming together of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is itself a matter of special significance. Two individuals ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1  >  The Immortal Person

... purpose of physical culture too should be a well-balanced and well-developed physical body, not only in a general sense, but' in a very individualised mode. But all these varieties and modes of culture can be truly individualised and not merely ordered or organised, more or less on the surface, only when they obey and subserve the culture of the soul. The mind, the vital and the physical each has to... n, in other words, the development and organisation of the mind, the life and the body. So the individualisation and growth of the soul means a growth and individualisation of the mental being, the vital being and also of the physical being. Normally the purpose of intellectual culture is the growth and individualisation of the mind, the purpose of moral culture is the growth and individualisation... n and individualisation of the material sheath itself. The very cells of the body are impre­gnated with the radiant substance of the supreme spiritual consciousness; they live the life of the spiritual individual, the personal divine embodied in the individual. When the whole Page 289 process is gone through and the work clone, the individual body, physically too, shares in and attains ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

Letters on Yoga - I  >  The Mind

... unity with the physical world. It [ the true physical mind ] can press upon it [ the physical vital ] the true attitude and feeling, make the incoming of the wrong suggestions and impulsions more difficult and give full force to the true movements. This action of the physical mind is in dispensable for the change of the whole physical consciousness even to the most material, though for that... that behaves like this, it is the mental physical or else the lowest part of the physical mind. But the main error here is in your description of the physical part of the mind—what you have described there is the mechanical mental physical or body-mind which when left to itself simply goes on repeating the past customary thoughts and movements or at the most adds to them such further mechanical... of the being [ the physical mind ] has no reason except its whims, its habits or an inclination to be tamasic. The physical mind is in the habit of observing things with or without use. The Physical Mental or Physical Mind and the Mental Physical or Mechanical Mind The physical mental or externalising mind is part of the mental consciousness, not part of the physical consciousness. But ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Mother’s Agenda 1969  >  July 26, 1969

... materializes, that's different. It's not the same thing as creating it. Yes. If Sri Aurobindo materializes again, but in another body... Ah, in a living body... In a living body, but made of another substance than the physical substance. Yes, but that's what I said: that substance, when, how, what?... But on a much lower level, lasting materializations have been made—like those stones... remain upon earth, one must go." Then I said to him, "I am ready, I'll go." Then he told me, "No, you can't go, your body is better than mine, you can undergo the transformation better than I can do." And the strange thing is that... It took place just before all his physical difficulties. But I didn't attach too much importance [to that conversation]; it's only when he left that it suddenly... whose luminous substance grows, develops, and when the time is ready, there would only be a transition to be made. That may be. At any rate, that he is in the subtle physical is certain. He is there all the time. But this body knows very well that it isn't endowed with exceptional capacities.... It doesn't delude itself. All it has is a faith Page 264 ardent, constant, intense, oh ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1969

The Destiny of the Body  >  The Involutionary Sleep

... inert and inanimate 1 2 Savitri, Book III, Canto IV, p. 336. 3 ya eṣa supteṣu jāgarti. (Katha Upanishad, V. 8) Page 180 Matter, living physical bodies and a creature like man in whom the mind consciousness has emerged into the open to look around and wonder? The essential difference lies in "the more or less involved or more or less evolved condition of cons... The Destiny of the Body Chapter IV The Involutionary Sleep "Is the material state an emptiness of consciousness, or is it not rather only a sleep of consciousness — even though from the point of view of evolution an original and not an intermediate sleep? And by sleep the human example teaches us that we mean not a suspension of consciousness... lids drooping over the orbs of the spirit dreaming in its body of Matter, resulting in the manifestation of growing intensities of self-awareness and world-awareness, — is this not what the process of evolution signifies in its most fundamental aspect? As a matter of fact, if we look upon the world and consider the living physical forms appearing on the surface of our globe, we cannot but ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Essays on the Gita  >  Works and Sacrifice

... 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, if he could stand still always like a tree or sit inert like a stone, tiṣṭhati , that vegetable or material immobility would not save him from the hands... existence; therefore all his methods of self-discipline are false and null. 1 The body's actions, even the mind's actions are nothing in themselves, neither a bondage, nor the first cause of bondage. What is vital is the mighty energy of Nature which will have her way and her play in her great field of mind and life and body; what is dangerous in her, is the power of her three guṇas , modes or qualities... cting their merely physical rule—with the practice of Yoga. But still there is an essential difficulty unsolved. Desire is the ordinary motive of all human actions, and if the soul is free from desire, then there is no farther rationale for action. We may be compelled to do certain works for the maintenance of the body, but even that is a subjection to the desire of the body which we ought to get ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita

What I Have Learnt From The Mother  >  Supramental Process of Action

... before it and wait peacefully. 5.The direction will come from above. 6.Receive it and implement it through your mind, life and body. 7.There should be no likes and dislikes and preferences. 8.Help will come. The right man will come. The resources will come. The material will come and right action will take place. Note: Absolute surrender, no personal reaction, no personal... Health Health may be defined as the harmonious functionings of all the body organs, resulting in a feeling of exceptional well being. Good health produces physical fitness which is comprised of health, strength, endurance and skill. To gain maximum health, the following things are necessary : 1.Physical exercise 2.Sufficient sleep and rest. 3.Healthy and wholesome food at... suiting to the nature of the individual as far as possible. 6.A happy and content heart and God's Blessings. Health is not an absence of disease only but a positive feeling. Health and physical fitness are absolutely necessary if we want to be successful in any kind of human endeavour. 26th February Page 11 ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   What I Have Learnt From The Mother

The Thinking Corner  >  The Attack on Romantic Idealism

... of the perfectly beautiful and blissful body, a most poignant cry for the apotheosis of physical existence, Page 117 in the love-poetry of the romantic idealists? These love-poets do not merely rise from the gross material into the subtle planes of sex shot with inklings of the psychic and the spiritual; they wish the gross material itself to be refined and irradiated by the... more than physical significance by enveloping it with the idealistic imagination, poets like Browning prepare the crude animal component of man for finding the concealed truth behind its appetites. What is it that sex in the body is seeking? To complete the fragmentary individual, to surpass his limits, to gain ecstasy, to placate his urge towards perpetuation. Does sex in the body achieve... attachment to frail and finite forms. Hence something more than the body's functions must be discovered to take sex nearer its goal. The first movement towards this something more is Browningesque romantic idealism which is nothing else than the experience of sex on subtle planes of consciousness where the hold of the raw and rigid physical is diminished. The subtle planes have windows opening to the ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Thinking Corner

Isha Upanishad  >  Chapter V: The Soul, Causality and Law of Nature.

... knower. He found first that mind really exists in man in its own self-sufficient consciousness, independently of the sense life turned upon the outer material world, even when it can only work or actually only works through the senses. Secondly, he found that mind in one form or body subconsciously & superconsciously knows & can watch mind & mind's working in other bodies directly or by means independent... Swar, to impose the mastery of Mind on the material world, he has, for the achievement of his object, two alternative principles to follow, either to conquer matter by matter, life by life or else to get behind both of them, discover pure mind & its powers & apply them to his eternal object. His achievements in the struggle with the laws of physical Nature on the physical plane itself are even now co... Here too the mind of man, after finding this second goal of its journeyings, discovers that which it took for a final haven to be only a resting place. Life-Energy & Material Form or Substance of Life-Energy constitute together the outward body of sensible things, the sthula sharira or gross body of Brahman. But, as we pursue our analysing and probing, we begin to suspect that Mind is an entity different ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Isha Upanishad

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Man - Slave or Free?

... and that even when the mind seems to act of itself and on its own material it is only associating, grouping together and manipulating the recorded experiences from outside objects. The very nature of mind is, according to them, a creation of past material experience transmitted by heredity with such persistence that we have grown steadily from the savage with his rudimentary mind to the civilised man... that mind is not only independent of external matter, but its master; it can not only reject and control external stimuli, but can defy such apparently universal material laws as that of gravitation and ignore, put aside and make nought of what are called laws of nature and are really only the laws of material nature, inferior and subject to the psychical laws because matter is a product of mind and... centre for the multifarious phenomena of mind and has therefore fixed upon the brain, the material organ of thought, as the only real centre. From this materialistic philosophy have resulted certain theories very dangerous to the moral future of mankind. First, man is a creation and slave of matter. He can only master matter by obeying it Secondly, the mind itself is a form of gross matter and not ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

The Destiny of the Body  >  Metaphysical Factors of Death

... in an attempt to replenish its own fund. Thus, in the matrix of the individual body, there is a constant and continuous two-way flow of energy: life-force supporting the physical stability, and the material body supplying the needs of life. But this is not always done in harmony; rather, life and body often act as "co-wives", sapatnātivyādhino, battling against each other to the detriment... creates and maintains them ? In the language of the Upanishad, the life-force acts as the anna, food, of the body, and at the same time it uses up the body as its own food. In other words, the life-energy in the individual creature continually provides the necessary stuff and materials with which the forms are being built up, maintained and renewed through a process of dynamic equilibrium.... only a division and conflict between the diverse demands and pulls of the mental, the vital and the physical beings, but what is worse, each of them is also divided against itself. Thus, "the capacity of the body is less than the capacity of the instinctive soul or conscious being, the physical Purusha within it, the capacity of the vital force less than the capacity of the impulsive soul, ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic  >  Excerpts from Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

... returning to the body (which is usually done with a clear consciousness of the whole process of getting into it) one can traverse the same scene in the physical body. But this is rare; the subtle wandering is on the contrary a frequent phenomenon, only when it is near to the physical world all seems very material and concrete and the association of physical habits and physical mental movements... evidently in a subtle world, not the physical  that you move; that is evident from the different arrangement of things, but such details as the third arm and the book-marker removed yet there show that it is a subtle world very near to the physical; it is either a subtle-physical world or a very material vital domain. In all the subtle domains the physical is reproduced with a change, the... then I go outside too. The room I move in is  not quite the same as the physical: the furniture is arranged somewhat differently. My conclusion is that I move in a subtle body in a subtle plane; but is that always unavoidable? Does one's subtle body never move in the very physical plane? In my latest experience I went to the pier, but the street through ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic

A Philosophy of Evolution for the Contemporary Man  >  Man is a Transitional Being

... in Matter, in a constant developing self- formulation till the form, even the physical body, can reveal the highest supramental knowledge and power and harmony is the key-note, the central significant motive of terrestrial existence. The theory of spiritual evolution may accept the scientific account of physical evolution as a support or an element, but the support is not indispensable. What... always had a spiritual significance and the physical change was only instrumental. This relation was concealed by the first abnormal balance of the two factors, the body of the external inconscience outweighing and obscuring in importance the spiritual element, the conscious being. But once the balance has been righted, it is no longer the change of body that must precede the change of consciousness;... nature, a change certainly of its mental and emotional and sensational constitution and also to a great extent of the body consciousness and the physical conditioning of our life and energies; but the change of consciousness will be the chief factor, the initial movement; the physical modification will be a subordinate factor, a consequence. As to whether humanity will sink back after the mutation of ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Philosophy of Evolution for the Contemporary Man

Evolution and the Earthly Destiny  >  Mind and the Mental World

... Mind and the Mental World THE world of the mind is a vast field, even vaster it seems than the physical world. The physical world extends, science tells us, to millions of light-years. We may say practically, it is an infinite extension and mind is a thing which surrounds, envelops this measureless extension. Mind surpasses the physical on another count, that is to... to say, in respect of speed. A material body at its best travels at the speed of light, that is to say, in a second it goes about 200,000 miles (a little less). But thought does not meet any obstruction in respect of distance; whatever the distance, it reaches its goal immediately, it does not take account of time. Perhaps because of its expansiveness and its speed, a Vedic Rishi sends up a prayer... of gathering and collecting together the dispersed uncontrolled thoughts and settling them in an ordered way in his consciousness. We must note, however, that mind and matter are two different categories and have different dimensions. Material space is not the same as mental space and the speed of light and the speed of thought are not commensurable. The mental world, the world of thoughts, is ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution and the Earthly Destiny

The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  The Burden of Humanity

... As for the question about the illness, perfection in the physical plane is indeed part of the ideal of the Yoga, but it is the last item and, so long as the fundamental change has not been made in the material consciousness to which the body belongs, one may have a certain perfection on other planes without having immunity in the body. We have not sought perfection for our own separate sake, but... and facing the difficulties of the realisation and transformation and overcoming them for ourselves. It has been done to a sufficient degree on the other planes—but not yet on the most material part of the physical plane. Till it is done, the fight there continues and, though there may be and is a force of Yogic action and defence, there cannot be immunity. The Mother's difficulties are not her own;... otherwise, it would be a very different matter. August 1936 The Mother has often lost flesh and put it on again. It is lasting longer this time because of the pressure of the struggle in the material part of Nature—for the main burden of the struggle on each plane has always fallen on her, since it is she who bears up all the others. 22 October 1936 Page 95 ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother

Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth  >  What is Death And What Happens at the Moment of Death

... questions come crowding in his mind demanding satisfactory answers; such as, (i) Granted that the physical body will be cremated or interred and, in any case, destroyed, but what about the consciousness of the individual? Does it survive the body's death, Yes or No? (ii) If Yes, what is it or who is it that survives? (iii) Will my personality remain intact even after my body dissolves? (iv) I am now... Such is the disconcerting complexity of the variegated worlds which exist beyond our well-known physical-material plane. But a question remains: Apart from the habitually dwelling denizens of these worlds, do human beings also have the ability to go to these worlds after they shed their physical bodies at death? If yes, to which of these worlds and up to what distance? And for how long do these disembodied... consciousness which will protect him in his exit, he is gripped by material things and it is a terrible inner battle to free himself from both his body and his attachments." (CWM, Vol. 6, pp. 449-50) Let us now examine more closely in our next chapter where the disembodied being finds himself just after he has left his physical body. In other words, what is the first step in his beyond-death journey ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth

The Destiny of the Body  >  Why Material Alimentation?

... conditions that have to be satisfied in the purely physical plane before a successful resolution of the problem of material food-intake can be at all feasible. Contrary to all deceptive appearances, a living body is not at all a static or finished product; it is rather in a state of dynamic flux, undergoing continual interchange of material with its environment. For some reason or other, whenever... everything else in a living body, are not immune from the 'dynamic status' already referred to. And this fact makes us comprehend the first reason why an organism should seek to get from outside a continual supply of proteins and of vital minerals. Let us investigate for other factors necessitating the intake of material aliments. At the outset, let us bear in mind a few salient points: ... foodstuffs must thus be supplied to the animal body and embodied life without material aliments becomes an altogether impossible proposition. Material need: Apart from fulfilling the energy-need of the body, various foodstuffs have to play another essential role, the r ô le plastique as it is termed in French: it is to supply the building materials for tissue repair and the construction of ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  10 July 1957

... themselves in their material working and use and diminish greatly the need of their instrumentation and even of their existence. The centres in the subtle body , sūkṣma śarīra, 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... subtle organs of a very different character or, if anything material was needed, instruments that would be forms of dynamism or plastic transmitters rather than what we know as organs. This might well be part of a supreme total transformation of the body, though this too might not be final. To envisage such changes is to look far ahead and minds attached to the present form of things may be unable to give... things in a new way. And it is still more difficult for the body to have a purely material perception of what a new world will be. Yet this perception must precede the material transformation; first one must feel very concretely the strangeness of the old things, their lack of relevance, if I may say so. One must have the feeling, even a material impression, that they are outdated, that they belong to ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)

Letters on Yoga - IV  >  The Transformation of the Physical

... pressure. The Physical Sadhana The physical sadhana is to bring down the higher light and power and peace and Ananda into the body consciousness, to get rid of the inertia of the physical, the doubts, limitations, external tendency of the physical mind, the defective energies of the vital physical (nerves) and bring in instead the true consciousness there so that the physical may be a perfect... resistance is becoming more of a physical character. That is to be expected, for it is the ordinary course that it is pushed down from the vital into the physical—moreover in the general sadhana now it is in the material and subconscient that the struggle is mainly going on. The part above the neck, like the neck itself, belongs to the externalising mind or physical mental. Your difficulties are likely... down the peace and wideness into the whole body or at any rate feel its effects there. If the whole mind admits the higher consciousness, that will be a definite step towards this. In dealing with the physical and subconscient the working is always slower than when it acts on the mind and vital because Page 365 the resistance of physical stuff is always heavier and less intelligent ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 5  >  TRUE CHARITY

... something else and comes from elsewhere: it is not directly proportional to material well-being. Unhappiness too is a psychological entity and consists in a special vibration of mind and vitality—and consequently of the physical being—due to a warp in the consciousness itself, in the core of the inner personality. The material conditions serve only to manifest it, maintain or aggravate it, but do not... Aurobindo - Part 5 VIII TRUE CHARITY Charity is commonly understood to consist in rendering material help to your fellow man, giving alms to the poor, medicine to the sick, money or material to those who need them and physical service also where that is required. All this is well and good. The world is ridden with diseases and privations and calamities. And... not create it—truly they are created by it. That is why the spiritual healers always refer to the bliss of the Spirit as the sole remedy for physical ills even, for disease, misery and death. And the unhappy mortals are always called to turn to the Divine alone in their distress— bliajasva mam. True charity consists in laying the healing balm upon the sore that lies hidden behind all external ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 5

Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960  >  May 24, 1960

... in samadhi, and which necessitates lying down—become constant in a physical body which moves about? There is something to discover there. And what form will it take? For in my consciousness, you see, it is constantly like that, this universal flood, but the problem is IN THE BODY: it's the problem of the Force in its most material form. And during the time my experience lasted, I had no feeling... without any personal reaction, nothing; there was nothing but the consciousness of the Supreme Action. It was the only thing existing. And of course, the whole ordinary and higher mind (as well as the physical mind, it goes without saying, for that must be abolished before going into trance), everything here in the head, above the head, around the head—absolutely immobile. After all that, towards... the fact that after all its preparation, the body consciousness was ready for a total identification with That—in my consciousness it's always the same, a perpetual, constant and eternal state in that it never leaves me. It's like that, and it never varies. What diminishes the immensity Page 373 of the Vibration are the limitations of the material consciousness which can color it and even ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960

Beyond Man  >  Chapter Twenty: The Golden Day

... ‘corporeal’ as well as ‘material’, and that the French word corporel may indicate the body as well as its elements, including the cells. Let us therefore define unambiguously the following terms needed to describe the process of the supramental transformation of the body: The mind of the body : the mental consciousness of the body as a whole; the mastery over the mind of the body is an elementary... but be a misjudgment. On the one hand, the supramental Force realized in the physical by Sri Aurobindo, the Mind of Light, had during his confrontation with death been transmitted to the Mother, so concretely that she had felt it as a friction every time that Force entered her body through the pores of its skin. The Mind of Light is the supramental Presence in the cells, and it would indeed be a bizarre... there in one way or another. Maybe it is because Sri Aurobindo wrote little and rather cryptically about the Mind of Light, and because the Mother in the first years after his passing rarely talked about her own sadhana, that the physical presence of the Mind of Light on Earth, in her body, has not been included in the Aurobindonian ‘system of yoga’ by the commentators, and that they do not seem to ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Beyond Man

Mother’s Agenda 1964  >  September 30, 1964

... a relatively very material domain: the physical, the immediate vital and the physical mind—not the higher, speculative or intellectual mind, no: the physical mind, the one that has an action on Matter, then the vital with all the vital's entities (he always mentions them, and he also gives the ways of mastering Page 215 them, of overcoming them), and then the physical. And when people around... do what the Lord wills—you shall do what He wills. And beware! you shall do what He wills." ( Mother laughs ) It makes me laugh, but it must be having some effect! It is very material, it's in the subtle physical. And it always takes that form; it doesn't say, "You should do this" or "You should do that," or "You shouldn't do this"...—nothing like that: "You SHALL do what the Lord wills," just... what they should or their reactions are wrong, or when there are difficulties in circumstances, anyway when things "grate" and Disorder gets worse, now there comes into me a sort of Power, a VERY MATERIAL Power, which goes like this ( gesture of pummeling ), which goes at things and pushes terribly hard—oh, what a pressure it makes!... And it comes without my willing it, it goes without my knowing ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1964

Record of Yoga  >  1 March - 10 April 1920

... there was the disappearance of the old intellectual into the intuitive mind and buddhi, and not only the thought-being, but the whole being including the consciousness in the body, the physical Ananda was brought up finally into this form, to the total exclusion of the old buddhi, sense and bodily consciousness. Here sattwa of the mind was changed into semi-luminous prakasha and jyoti of the mental intuition... thought-perception. It is the beginning of the final process in the luminous ideal reason. Sharira Ananda is again reviving, but as yet only in the basic Ananda. A strong invasion of Tamas in body and physical mind dispelled by the drashtri vijnana which it failed to suspend or lower in character. There is now an invasion of confused luminous lower ideality, and this fails to suspend, but tends to dilute... the physical consciousness; it did not belong to the system, but was imposed on it, so long as the outer mind could shoot in its arrows of suggestion or break in for a time and possess the surface. There is still a persistence of vague relics which are being steadily idealised out of existence. This is due to persistence of tamas element in the physical being and is part of laxity or physical depression ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  The Knot of Matter

... form and body of Spirit. There is an ascending series of substance and Spirit at the summit is itself pure substance of being. Brahman is the sole material as well as the sole cause of the universe and Matter also is Brahman; it is, like Life, Mind and Supermind, a mode of the eternal Sachchidananda.—Still, practically,Matter seems to be cut off from Spirit and even its opposite and the material existence... make divine the physical existence as well as the mind and life, unless our present view of Matter represents the sole possible relation here between sense and its object in which case, indeed, fulfilment must be sought only in worlds beyond. But there are other states even ofMatter and an ascending series of the gradations of substance, and their higher law is possible to the material being because... inconscient Force in whose mere action there appears to be no self-knowledge, mind or heart. In this huge no-mind Mind emerges and has to labour besieged and limited by the universal Ignorance and in this heartless Inconscience a heart has manifested which has to aspire opposed and corrupted by the brutality of material Force. This is the form-absorbed Consciousness returning progressively to itself ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Mother’s Agenda 1970  >  April 11, 1970

... Aurobindo about the difference between occult powers and the supramental realization. ) "The physical Nature does not mean the body alone but the phrase includes the transformation of the whole physical mind, vital, material nature—not by imposing Siddhis [occult powers] on them, but by creating a new physical nature which is to be the habitation of the supramental being in a new evolution. I am not... ...is not an influence on the physical giving it abnormal faculties... "No, it's not that at all! "...but an entrance and permeation... "Oh, yes. "...changing it wholly into a supramentalised physical." ( silence ) At any rate, in my case (I don't know whether all cases are similar), the trouble is that... In life's ordinary condition, the body has a sort of stable base as a... after all when he forgot to observe the conditions of the Siddhi. The working of the supramental power envisaged is not an influence on the physical giving it abnormal faculties but an entrance and permeation changing it wholly into a supramentalised physical. I did not learn the Page 143 idea from Veda or Upanishad, and I do not know if there is anything of the kind there. What I received ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1970

The Human Cycle  >  The Ideal Law of Social Development

... of the mental will which enables him under the secret control of the universal Will to manage more and more the materials and lines of his development and by the capacity in the end to go beyond himself, beyond his mentality and open his consciousness into that from which mind, life and body proceed. He can even, however imperfectly at present, get at his highest to some consciousness of the Reality... and refuse mental or physical commerce and interchange or spiritual or actual commingling with the rest of the world. For so it cannot 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... Page 72 × It may be said that since man is a mental being limited by the mind, life and body, this development and organisation of a power beyond mind, a supramental power, would be the creation of a new superhuman race and that the use of the words human and humanly would no longer be in place. This is no doubt ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle

Letters on Poetry and Art  >  Sources of Inspiration

... 17 October 1936 Poetry of the Material or Physical Consciousness The Vedic times were an age in which men lived in the material consciousness as did the heroes of Homer. The Rishis were the mystics of the time and took the frame of their symbolic imagery from the material life around them. 20 October 1936 Homer and Chaucer are poets of the physical consciousness—I have pointed that out... is quite usual for poets and musicians and artists to receive things—they can even be received complete and direct, though oftenest with some working of the individual mind and consequent alteration—from a plane above the physical mind, a vital world of creative art and beauty in which these things are prepared and come down through the fit channel. The musician, poet or artist, if he is conscious, may... the inner being, and the inner mind, vital, physical are not bound by the dull and narrow limitations of our outer physical personality and the small scope of the world it lives in. Its scope is vast, extraordinary, full of inexhaustible interest and, as one goes higher, of glory and sweetness and beauty. The difficulty is to get it through the outer human instruments which are so narrow and crippled ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Poetry and Art

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1  >  The March of Civilisation

... sense being, Page 212 his external, his physical and material personality. It is the age of Naturalism, Realism, Pragmatism, Scientism: it proclaims the birth of the economic man. From the heart and emotions we drop down into the field of the nervous and sensuous existence, from the vital sphere into the sphere of the body. And that is where we are today. It means that we have... various layers of our being, the different strands of consciousness from the higher to the lower, from the less dense to the more dense, from mind to the body. It means also in the same process a canalisation, materialisation and fixing upon earth and in the physical being of the increasing powers of the Light.         The Light as it descends from its own home above to the lower levels of our being... at the source the Græco-Roman culture. It was pre-eminently a culture based upon the powers of mind and reason: it included a strong and balanced body (both body natural and body politic) under the aegis of mens sana (a sound mind). The light that was Greece was at its zenith a power of the higher mind and intelligence, intuitively dyna­mic in one – the earlier –phase through Plato, Pythagoras, ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

Evolution and the Earthly Destiny  >  The March of Civilisation

... his sense being, Page 102 his external, his physical and material personality. It is the age of Naturalism, Realism, Pragmatism, Scientism: it proclaims the birth of the economic man. From the heart and emotions we drop down into the field of the nervous and sensuous existence, from the vital sphere into the sphere of the body. And that is where we are today. It means that we have been... various layers of our being, the different strands of consciousness from the higher to the lower, from the less dense to the more dense, from mind to the body. It means also in the same process a canalisation, materialisation and fixing upon earth and in the physical being of the increasing powers of the Light. The Light as it descends from its own home above to the lower levels of our being expresses... at the source the Greece-Roman culture. It was pre-eminently a culture based upon the powers of mind and reason: it included a strong and balanced body (both body natural and body politic) under the aegis of mens sana (a sound mind). The light that was Greece was at its zenith / a power of the higher mind and intelligence, intuitively dynamic in one—the earlier—phase through Plato, Pythagoras, Heraclitus ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution and the Earthly Destiny

Letters on Yoga - II  >  A Realistic Adwaita

... of forms other than constructed physical or constructed life-forms; they do not disintegrate but appear and disappear or at most fade out of manifestation. Mind itself as opposed to particular thoughts is something essential and permanent; it is a power of the Divine Consciousness. So is life, as opposed to constructed living bodies; so I think is what we call material energy which is really the force... ascents from the physical being and consciousness to the vital, the being dominated by the life-self, thence to the mental being realised in the fully developed man and thence into the perfect consciousness which is beyond the mental, into the Supramental consciousness and the Supramental being, the Truth-Consciousness which is the integral consciousness of the spiritual being. Mind cannot be our last... supports the cosmic action. But what do we mean by the individual? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego, a device of Nature which holds Page 395 together her action in the mind and body. This ego has to be extinguished, otherwise there is no complete liberation possible; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II

Mother’s Agenda 1965  >  May 29, 1965

... that this should be faced and overcome before any supramental realisation is possible in the earth-consciousness—for it is the attitude of the physical mind to spiritual things and as it is in the physical that the resistance has to be overcome before the mind can be overpassed in the way required for this yoga, the strongest possible representation of its difficulties was indispensable." Bulletin... explain all the phenomena before our eyes, he may even use physical forces and make them do whatever he likes (they have obtained amazing results from the material point of view), but if you just ask them this question, this simple question, "What is death?", in reality, they have no idea. They will describe the phenomenon as it occurs materially, but... if they are sincere, they are compelled to say that... now, with the intrusion of "something" that wasn't there—because that still belongs to the material field. 3 But I don't think that's what Sri Aurobindo meant; I think he meant that the world of the soul and the inner realities are so much more wonderful than the physical realities that all the physical "wonders" make you smile—it's rather that. Page 103 But the key you speak of, ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1965

Mother or The New Species - II  >  14: The Mechanism of the Contagion

... He would bring into the mental consciousness (the mental consciousness that governs all material movements [that is, the physical mind]) a supramental formation, or power, or force, that instantly ALTERED THE ORGANIZATION. With immediate results... that appear illogical because the process doesn't follow the course set by mental logic. 22 I still did not understand very well. I thought Sri Aurobindo... multiplication of facts of identification (one is it, and so one DOES it), for all the small things of Matter, the most trivial things in the material world. But it's the key. The key. 28 The key of material contagion. Only, the universalization of the body has to become total enough to be able to sow or rather awaken or reawaken everywhere the little twinkling of true light. A formidable ... a direct miracle (vital or material, that is) must necessarily involve a number of fallacious elements which we cannot accept—those miracles are necessarily fallacious miracles. 21 On the other hand, she said (and this is where I had my revelation), the number of miracles Sri Aurobindo performed in the Mind is incalculable. What on earth can miracles in the Mind be?... And Mother answered, ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

Sri Aurobindo And The Mother  >  Sri Aurobindo and The Mother

... received the Sacramental light; the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the Sacramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light. Two months after Sri Aurobindo withdrawal from the body, Mother wrote the following note, explaining briefly the main reason for Sri Aurobindo departure: The lack of the earth's receptivity and... from his body, what he had called the Mind of Light ² got realised here.... The Super mind had descended long ago—very long ago—into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received... Hatha Yoga selects the body and vital functionings as its instrument of perfection and realisation. The method is a concentration and effort of energy released by Asana and Pranayama in the outer and inner body for an object of physical perfection. Raja Yoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power. It effects a change of the ordinary fleeting mind by a process of Yama ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo And The Mother

The Mother (biography)  >  12: Sri Aurobindo’s Descent into Death

... Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light.’ 63 The transmission of the Mind of Light from Sri Aurobindo’s body into the body of the Mother, ‘with... yogic means. But she had been put in charge of the material build-up, while he was concentrating on fixing the Supramental in matter, which meant in the first place the matter of his own body. Now he had entered into death fully conscious and with all his yogic acquisitions – except those of the physical body, for the laying down of the physical body is of course what ‘death’ is about. That is why another... Avatar was present on Earth in his/her physical completeness, i.e. in two bodies. If the Avatar had been present in only one body, the death of this body would have cancelled any possibility of executing the present mission. This shows that the planning and the completion of the mission of an Avatar is decided upon and pre-exists outside the scope of the material world. We cannot even guess in what ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother (biography)

Questions and Answers (1955)  >  27 April 1955

... go out of one's body. When the body is in pain, when one has fever or is ill, you see, or the body is very ill, the only thing to do is to come out of it, to bring out one's vital being. And then, if one is a yogi and knows, one rises just above—so as to see his body; the vital being, if it has come out in a fairly material form, can see the body; one sees his own physical body, and then at that... sees himself dead... How does he see himself dead? Does he simply see the inert body or himself already dead, or does he take for dead what is not dead? You see, if you leave your body—by going out of the body as I explained a while ago—if you have gone out materially enough, in a very material vital, well, the body which is lying on the bed seems absolutely dead, but it is not dead for all that... is another more inner consciousness which awakens; yet one is not asleep, the body is not asleep, it is just made quiet. One can have visions even while remaining active. Some people have visions even amidst activity. Vision is another plane of perception which awakes. It is the senses in the mind or vital or physical which wake up and manage to pass their experiences to the outer consciousness ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)

Mother’s Agenda 1967  >  January 21, 1967

... see that for years the body and the whole body consciousness used to rush back into the old way to seek safety, as a measure of safety, in order to elude; but now, the body has been persuaded not to do it any more and on the contrary to accept, "Well, if it's dissolution, let it be dissolution." But it accepts what will be. Mentally, when that happens in the physical mind (it was years ago, but... and fluidity that seems to be a new mode of the cells. It would be probably what on the material level must take the place of the physical ego; that is to say, the rigidity of the form seems to have to give way to this new way of being. Of course, the first contact is always very ... surprising. But the body is getting used to it little by little. What's a little difficult is the moment of transition... closed, all the time. And one has a strange perception (for the body), a strange perception of subtlety, permeability (if I may call it that), of suppleness of form, and not exactly an elimination but a considerable lessening of the rigidity of forms (the rigidity is eliminated, but not the forms: a suppleness in the forms). And for the body itself, the first few times it felt that in some part or the ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1967

The Mother Abides - Final Reflections  >  The Mother and the Nature of Her Work

... must secure a beautiful vital. Not only that: for a fulfilment in the body and in the vital one must possess a mind beautiful. The physical education that the Mother has arranged for us here is to prepare us for the body beautiful. And the school that she has organised is for the cultivation of the mind. The cultivation of the mind, however, means not only storing it with information on various subjects... ; it enters into the vital region as we call it. Lastly the golden light enters your feet, Page 25 that is, possesses your physical limbs; it becomes concrete materially and present, as though solidified, in your very body: it builds the body beautiful. The Mother thus brings the golden light into the head of humanity, the top rung of its consciousness, and that work of initiation... consciousness, the new light. We must have a strong body, a beautiful body, a body that endures: for the new light is powerful, it is not merely light, it is force; one must be able to bear it and carry out its commands. Indeed, she came here in order to give a shape, a concrete and physical form, an earthly body to this Divine Light. Now the body beautiful is not by itself an end and fulfilment; ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother Abides - Final Reflections

Preparing for the Miraculous  >  7: Bridges across the Afterlife

... body-plus-mind may be added a soul, although the Western philosophers and theologians have generally identified the soul with the mind, both being “non-material.” According to the common yogic experience, however, a human being consists of several bodies or sheaths, material, vital, and mental, contained in each other. At the center of this complex being sits the soul or psychic being, which has taken up its... of physical science, which by now at least should be used to the astonishing and apparently impossible in its own backyard. Only the science of yoga, and its experiential knowledge of reality and the human personality, can explain them. A human being consists of more than a body, and even more than a body-plus-mind, as has been the belief in the West since its classical times. To this body-plus-mind... its bodies in reverse order when descending into a new terrestrial incarnation. The material body is the one that dies, while the vital and mental bodies survive for some time, still enveloping the soul. It is in this condition that everyone has to traverse the worlds that correspond to the state of his vital body and the development of his mental body. In most cultures and individual cases the ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Preparing for the Miraculous

The New Synthesis of Yoga  >  Part-2

... it in fullness, as a result of which the descent of the Supermind in the physical consciousness could result in fixing the Supermind in the mind of the cells of the body, which is the precondition of the attainment of the immortality of the body. The Vedic immortality was the attainment of the universalisation of the physical consciousness by the method of the ascent to and the resulting descent of... existence. The immortality of the mind, life and the body, which can be termed as a triple immortality, would fulfil on the physical plane the realisation of the essential immortality of the Spirit and that of the immortality of the psychic being or soul; but even then, as Sri Aurobindo points out: "The true immortality would still be the eternity of the Spirit; the physical survival would only be relative... riddled with the ego and with the limitations of the body, life and mind. There are, however, a few more composite systems of yoga where immortality is sought to be attained not only by withdrawal from the ego and from the life and mind and the body, but there are also processes that aim at enlargement of the powers of the mind and life and body to their maximum level of perfection; in some of these ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The New Synthesis of Yoga

Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  On Mantras

... the nature. The other opens the mind to self-realisation, to the consciousness of what is above mind, to the ascent of the consciousness out of the body and the descent of the higher consciousness into the body. 13 October 1934 OM is the mantra, the expressive sound-symbol of the Brahman Consciousness in its four domains from the Turiya to the external or material plane. The function of a mantra... rhythm and harmony and at last becomes one with every particle of his triple body (sthūla, sūkṣma, kāraṇa). Does this process include the transformation of the physical consciousness which Sri Aurobindo's yoga aspires to achieve? Or if it is different, in what way does it differ? I do not believe a mantra can change the physical consciousness. What it does, if it is effective, is to open the consciousness... is supposed Page 825 indeed to carry within itself. The mantra OM should therefore lead towards the opening of the consciousness to the sight and feeling of the One Consciousness in all material things, in the inner being and in the supraphysical worlds, in the causal plane above now superconscient to us and, finally, the supreme liberated transcendence above all cosmic existence. The last ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram

Questions and Answers (1955)  >  18 May 1955

... see, we must know that it is not the physical body which goes; it is the most material thing... the most material vital; and this is already very difficult. Usually it is the mental part of the vital which goes out; not the mind, the vital. For short distances one can go out from his body with the subtle physical, and in these cases one sees things materially as they are. But one can't go long distances... are troubled by the asuras. What, the wives of the gods who were troubled by the asuras? Yes! They too are closer to the material world? Is it in the vital world or in... It is in the vital world. (Pavitra) Mother, in the mind also, there are beings of the mind... There are beings of the mental world which are also sexless, not all, but many. There are many of them. There are some... those which have been formed, at present—for example in Jupiter there would be an atmosphere of ammonia and carbonic gas... Yes. So the formation is not the same after all? (Pavitra) The physical body, evidently, organic matter cannot be the same. Yes, the one people usually know... (Pavitra) ... cannot be the same. Cannot be the same, you see. Are there psychic beings up there ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6  >  The Mother - The Nature of Her Work

... must secure a beautiful vital. Not only so, for a fulfilment in the body and in the vital one must possess a mind beautiful. The physical education that the Mother has arranged for us here is to prepare us for the body beautiful. And the school that she has organised is for the cultivation of the mind. The cultivation of the mind, however, means not only storing it with information on various kinds... concrete and active expression, it enters into the vital region as we call it. Lastly the golden light enters your feet, that is, possesses your physical limbs, it becomes concrete materially and present, as though solidified, in your very body: it builds the body beautiful. The Mother thus brings the golden light into the head of humanity, the top rung of his consciousness, and that work of initiation... consciousness, the new light, we must have a strong body, a beautiful body, a body that endures: for the new light is powerful, it is not merely light, it is force, one must be able to bear it and carry out its commands. Indeed, she came here in order to give a shape, a concrete and physical form, an earthly body to this Divine Light. Now the body beautiful is not by itself an end and fulfilment; ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6

Mother or The New Species - II  >  10: The Other Side of the Veil

... most of us (at least those who are conscious) who meet the so-called dead after their physical disappearance. One simply goes into the mental world or the vital world. But here, it was through her body that She found the way, it was the consciousness of her body that found the way. Therefore it is obviously a material world, but another Matter than the one our usual senses understand—another Matter, or... those nine years building the missing link (or letting it be built) in the perception or the material substance. When it was clarified, She saw: her body consciousness saw. And things were already less "distant" than in the visions of line Al, A2, etc., they were more physical, almost as substantial as the physical world. 17 But if they were able to "come closer," how close can they get, where is the... that nicks your face, and the thousands of little so-called neighboring pieces of matter that surreptitiously teach you that your body is my body and everything is the body. Matter is vast. Matter is tremendously intermingled. And Mother's question in the midst of this material jungle reminds us precisely of the one of the higher ape confronted with a little elusive vibration he could not manage to fix ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Life and Death in the Ashram

... attacks come to the body, does that mean that the work of purification in the mind and vital is finished and that the body is being worked on? I don't know whether it can be put like that. Illnesses and attacks on the body can come during the period of the vital purification. But it is true that when the mind and vital have progressed and the main action of the sadhana is in the physical, then attacks... in the Body Sometimes during work, while issuing materials or counting money, the required amount comes up in the hand at the first attempt. This happens more frequently when the mind is quiet and at ease. Till now I thought it may be merely an accident. Is there anything in this? The correct counting is not an accident; there is a sort of intuitive consciousness that comes in the body and makes... do not mind that. I myself have never been a sportsman or, apart from a spectator's interest in cricket in England or a non-player member of the Baroda cricket club, taken up any physical games or athletics except some exercises learnt from Madrasi wrestlers in Baroda such as daṇḍ-baiṭhak , and those I took up only to put some strength and vigour into a frail and weak though not unhealthy body, but ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram

A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best  >  Integral Realization of the Integral Reality

... point of view, their assertion of the insistence on supra-terrestrial planes can be confirmed by a large body of knowledge, which has been developed by efforts that make a transition from the physical to the supra-physical, and it is even contended that the evolutionary movement in the material world is constantly aided by the forces and beings of these supra-terrestrial systems or planes of existence... the Veda and the Upanishads confirms a series of ascending terms, —Life, Mind, Supermind and the grades that unite Mind to Supermind - between Spirit and Matter. In fact, not only the Veda and the Upanishads but several other theories also maintain that there are supra-terrestrial worlds, which exist independent of the physical cosmos and earthly existence. These supra-terrestrial theories are not ... divine life on the earth would imply a way of living that develops higher instruments of world-vision and world-action for dynamisation of consciousness in the physical existence and takes up and transforms the values of a world of material Nature. page - 108 ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best

Mother’s Agenda 1965  >  July 24, 1965

... And usually my nightly activities are never in the material, they are always in the subtle physical, its densest part, if I may say so. Maybe I haven't even had in my life half a dozen visions with the material reality as it is: I saw the room as it is and heard the sound of Champaklal's voice clearly. Then I understood it was this physical mind dreaming, having an activity, and that it was to show... possibility of catastrophes. I saw that very clearly, it was part of the sadhana of this material mind. Then I offered it all to the Lord and stopped thinking about Page 191 it. And when I received your letter, I thought, "It's the same thing!" The same thing, it's a sort of unhealthy need this physical mind has to seek the violent shock of emotions and catastrophes to awaken its tamas. Only... earlier—similar, I will tell you in what. To begin with, last time I told you that this physical mind is being transformed; and three or four days ago, that is, before our last conversation, early in the morning I woke up abruptly in the middle of a sort of vision and activity, precisely in this physical mind. Which isn't at all usual for me. I was here in this room, everything was exactly as it is ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1965

Autobiographical Notes  >  To the Mother and Paul Richard

... the "Earth" of the Veda and Purana with the divine Principle, an earth which is said to be above our earth, that is to say, the physical being and consciousness of which this world and the body are only images. But the modern Yogas hardly recognise the possibility of a material union with the Divine. 31 December 1915 [7] The difficulties you find in the spiritual progress are common to us... world-play and the subjection of Matter and the body and the material world to the law of the higher heavens of the Truth. To these things towards which in my earlier ignorance I used to press forward impatiently before satisfying the first conditions—the effort, Page 290 however, was necessary and made the necessary preparation of the material instruments—I can now only look forward as a... dualities, in the sorrow and unsatisfied passion and labour, it finds it difficult to accustom itself to the divine largeness, joy and equipoise—especially the vital and material parts of our nature; it is they that pull down the mind which has accepted and even when it has long lived in the joy and peace and oneness. That, I suppose, is why the religions and philosophies have had so strong a leaning ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes

Overman  >  4: A First Sketch of Supermanhood

... The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light.” 25 These words of the Mother need some explanation... Mother received the Mind of Light from Sri Aurobindo into the cells of her body. “As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he has called the Mind of Light got realised in me”, the Mother afterwards told K.D. Sethna. “The Supermind had descended long ago – very long ago – into the mind and even into the vital [of Sri Aurobindo and herself]; it was working in the physical also but indirectly... kind of adventure. For, firstly, they tell us that a realisation of one of the spiritual levels has a direct repercussion on the physical body, on the adhara. We will have to come back to this when we learn about the work the Mother did for “the new humanity”. For the Mind of Light, which is the consciousness of that new humanity, is part of the spiritual levels, as we shall presently see. Secondly ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Overman

Mother's Chronicles - Book Six  >  The Programme

... convincing him of "material falsity." He was also aiming at the conquest of exhaustion. In the process he mastered four physical attributes. Mahimdand garima which give the body abnormal strength, and "may even develop into the power of increasing the size and weight of the body." Laghimd makes you so light that you can walk on air. Animd brings subtlety to the body, makes you as fine as... practised assiduously was levitation— utthapana. Mind you, it was not at all like the levitation with which we are familiar, when the whole body remains suspended in the air unmindful of the law of gravitation. What a delightful feeling of rest and lightness that gives! even if it occurs in our dreams. But Sri Aurobindo was out to conquer all laws of physical nature. He therefore went about it in his own... taken Sri Aurobindo quite a few years, and sometimes concentrated work, to bring about this physical change. It proved that eventually the psychic body had been able to alter the physical sheath into its own image. Among the many elements of Yogic perfection, siddhi, he had also undertaken to develop physical beauty— saundarya. A willed modification Page 300 of form. We find in his ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Six

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10  >  The Golden Bridge

... transcendence. And so on. Indeed, that is the hiatus, the inadequacy that still cripples and stultifies the mind, the physical mind in its attempt to seize other realities beyond. It is the mind which gives the formal structure, the pattern of expression in the material frame. The mind being bound to the life of the ignorant and outgoing senses is constitutionally incapable of receiving or holding... sense-bound mind. That is the inner story of the growth of language from the synthetic inflexional cohesive stage to its modern analytic discursive character. Still, however, it is not easy to completely ignore or Page 179 efface the influence of a concrete truth, a fact which is at the basis of human birth—the truth and fact of the body, of the external material objects. For... of such 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 ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10

Beyond Man  >  Chapter Twenty-three: Two Rooms

... no longer had to work in a physical body, he could move freely everywhere in the world and in all worlds, in many subtle bodies simultaneously. ‘He is as it were multiplied.’ But this encounter was special, completely new. It happened because the supramental Power had entered her body. The supramental world where Sri Aurobindo has his home was very near to the material world, and like the latter... that she found herself to be in the ‘subtle physical’. The more she became familiar with that world, the more she described it as concrete — ‘that subtle physical is very concrete’ — till she would find the subtle physical more concrete and more material than our world of gross matter and call it ‘a world much more concrete than the physical world’, ‘a physical which seems to me more complete.’ Once again... supramental world — and she was universalizing herself. Both processes of transformation went hand in hand. She found that the axis of the physical I, the referential axis in her body, was dissolving. Her body consciousness grew less and less restricted to her physical body; it was expanding, it was present in other things and in other persons. This was possible only by a transformation of the cells, which ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Beyond Man

Words of Long Ago  >  2 July 1912

... of activity: physical, vital, psychic and mental. They may have their play in one or several of these categories, simultaneously or successively, according to the quality and type of the manifestation of our activity. Physical contact is compulsory, so to say, since it depends on the fact that we have a physical body. It inevitably occurs with those who have provided us with this body and with all... clearly established—and this can only happen when there is enough order in our being to organise it in all its depth and complexity—we can and should give material help to those who are near to us for physical reasons. With certain exceptions, material help is the best assistance we can give to the members of our family or to those whom we chance to meet in the street, in trains, in ships, in buses,... all Page 71 those who are materially dependent on them. These are the relations of kinship. There are also relationships of proximity: neighbourhood in houses, in the various means of transport, in the street. (I may remark here—and this remark also applies to the other three categories—that this relationship is not necessarily exclusive: this is in fact rare, since we are seldom active on ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of Long Ago

Mother’s Agenda 1970  >  July 1, 1970

... well, here it is, this is it!" So then, I understood why the mind and the vital were sent away from this body, and the psychic being was left (naturally, it was the psychic being that governed all movements earlier, so it was nothing new, but there were no more difficulties: all the complications coming from the vital and the mind, which add their imprints, their tendencies, it was all gone). So... Do we have time for some Savitri ? Yes, Mother. In the last verses, Savitri said: Let those who were tied to body and to mind, Tear off those bonds and flee into white calm Is it Savitri who says that? Yes, Death told her one must leave one's body in order to find God's height.... ( Mother translates the sequel ) But how shall I seek rest in endless peace Who house... of both combined. And it was taller than her, it exceeded her on every side by about this much ( gesture extending beyond the physical being by about eight inches ). She was here, and it was like this ( gesture ). Its color was... this color that, if it became very material, would be Auroville's color [orange]. It was softer, as if behind a veil, it wasn't absolutely precise, but it was this color ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1970

Mother’s Agenda 1961  >  May 19, 1961

... × The physical mind. × Mother is alluding in particular to the physical mind ('this kind of mind-like activity in matter'). ... all had the taste of the Lord. I don't know how to make it clear. It was quite material, as if you had a mouthful of it, everything was full of it—it was like that. In such a PHYSICAL way! Like.... You might compare it to the most delicious taste you could ever have—it was the sense of touch and of taste—very, very material. It was like closing your hand on something solid—such a warm, soft vibration... bad vibrations]. Why is there a need to remember or to put up a struggle? Oh, a battle! It's not the body complaining, it doesn't complain at all—I am the one who complains! I think that it's doing its best, but it's thwarted by this type of (one can scarcely speak of a mind) this kind of mind-like activity in matter 3 interfering. t is sordid. I haven't yet been able to eliminate it completely ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1961

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10  >  Mind and the Mental World

... V Mind and the Mental World The world of the mind is a vast field, even vaster it seems than the physical world. The physical world extends, science tells us, to minions of light-years. We may say practically, it is an infinite extension and mind is a thing which surrounds, envelops this measureless extension. Mind surpasses the physical on another count, that is... is to say, in respect of speed. A material body at its best travels at the speed of light, that is to say, in a second it goes about 200000 miles (a little less). But thought does not meet any obstruction in respect of distance; whatever the distance, it reaches its goal immediately, it does not take account of time. Perhaps because of its expansiveness and its speed, a Vedic Rishi sends... gathering and collecting together the dispersed uncontrolled thoughts and settling them in an ordered way in his consciousness. We must note, however, that mind and matter are two different categories and have different dimensions. Material space is not the same as mental space and the speed of light and the speed of thought are not commensurable. The mental world, the world of thoughts ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  Mind and the Mental World

... Mind and the Mental World THE world of the mind is a vast field, even vaster it seems than the physical world. The physical world extends, science tells us, to millions of light-years. We may say practically, it is an infinite extension and mind is a thing which surrounds, envelops this measureless extension. Mind surpasses the physical on another count, that is to... to say, in respect of speed. A material body at its best travels at the speed of light, that is to say, in a second it goes about 200,000 miles (a little less). But thought does not meet any obstruction in respect of distance; whatever the distance, it reaches its goal immediately, it does not take account of time. Perhaps because of its expansiveness and its speed, a Vedic Rishi sends up a prayer... of gathering and collecting together the dispersed uncontrolled thoughts and settling them in an ordered way in his consciousness. We must note, however, that mind and matter are two different categories and have different dimen­sions. Material space is not the same as mental space and the speed of light and the speed of thought are not commensur­able. The mental world, the world of thoughts, is a ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

By The Way - Part III  >  P-143 to 189

... Physical and Vital Education (A Talk on All India Radio (Pondicherry) on 23.7.71) "The truth we seek is made of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge, Power and Beauty. These four attributes of the Truth will spontaneously express themselves in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind that of infallible power and strength and the body will be... Release of physical energy destroys matter. Conservation of energy consolidates matter. For a healthy, strong and beautiful body, -for a body that is capable of executing perfect harmony and strength in all possible movements, - the physical energy must be totally preserved without the slightest wastage. But energy is produced constantly in our body much more than we need for our physical existence... Aurobindo "he can do" I did not understand it then. After Sri Aurobindo left His body the Mother wrote to me on a piece of paper in French Page 150 ( I want to tell you to what point you are what Sri Aurobindo asked you to be when He left His body - the material support of my body, the energy that enables it to face all the ordeals after this sudden and irreparable ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   By The Way - Part III

Supermind in Integral Yoga  >  Part Seven

... infinite energy, all knowledge and conscious experience as the out-flowing of that consciousness, and all in the terms of that one Ananda. His physical being will be one with all material Nature, his vital being with the life of the universe, his mind with the cosmic mind, his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine knowledge and will both in itself and as it pours itself through these channels, his spirit... of intelligence, will, sense-mind, heart, the vital and sensational being and translate them by a luminous and harmonizing conversion into a unity of the truth, power and delight of a living existence. The next element of perfection is that of the Gnostic perfection in the physical body. The fifth element is arrived at when the perfection of Page 86 the body is pushed to its highest conclusion... conclusion which, according to Sri Aurobindo, brings in spiritualizing and illumination of the whole physical consciousness and divinizing of the law of the body. Finally, the sixth element is that of the perfect action and enjoyment of being on the supramental Gnostic basis. And this integrality of perfection would mark the status of the siddha or perfected soul who will live in union with the Purushottama ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Supermind in Integral Yoga

On Education  >  Four Austerities And Four Liberations (The Mother)

... 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 and organic function.     To get these results it will be good, in a general way, to form habits and utilise them as a help in organising the material life. For the body works... the same time care must be taken not to ask of the body more than the strictly necessary amount of effort, the energy required for growth and progress, and shut out most strictly all that produces exhausting fatigue and leads in the end to degeneration and decomposition of the material elements.     Physical culture which aims at building a body capable of serving as a fit instrument for the higher... say, for example, that few austerities are so severe as those which physical culture demands for the perfection of the body. But of that we shall speak in due time.     Before I begin describing the four kinds of austerity required, I must clear up one question which is a source of much misunderstanding and confusion in the minds of most people: it is about ascetic practices which they mistake for ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   On Education

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3  >  True Charity

... something else and comes from elsewhere: it is not directly proportional to material well-being. Unhappi­ness too is a psychological entity and consists in a special vibration of mind and vitality – and consequently of the physical being – due to a warp in the consciousness itself, in the core of the inner personality. The material conditions serve only to manifest it, maintain or aggravate it, but do not... Gupta - Vol. 3 True Charity CHARITY is commonly understood to consist in rendering material help to your fellow men, giving alms to the poor, medicine to the sick, money or material to those who need them and physical service also where that is required. All this is well and good. The world is ridden with diseases and privations and calamities. And... not create it – truly they are created by it. That is why the spiritual healers always refer to the bliss of the Spirit as the sole remedy for physical ills even, for disease, misery and death. And the unhappy mortals are always called to turn to the Divine alone in their distress – bhajasva mam. True charity consists in laying the healing balm upon the Page 187 sore that lies ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  The Golden Bridge

... transcendence. And so on. Indeed, that is the hiatus, the inadequacy that still cripples and stultifies the mind, the physical mind in its attempt to seize other realities beyond. It is the mind which gives the formal structure, the pattern of expression in the material frame. The mind being bound to the life of the ignorant and outgoing senses is constitutionally incapable of receiving or holding... prepossessions of the sense-bound mind. That is the inner story of the growth of language from the synthetic inflexional cohesive stage to its modern analytic discursive character. Still, however, it is not easy to completely ignore or efface the influence of a concrete truth, a fact which is at the basis of human birth – the truth and fact of the body, of the external material objects. For example, how... necessities of such 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, ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

Mother’s Agenda 1967  >  August 30, 1967

... belong to the subtle physical and where material life is being reorganized. It's immense—immense—and the crowd innumerable; but they are individualities, not a crowd, which means that I deal with each one of them. And there are also types of documents and writing tables, but there are no walls! It's a strange place. A very strange place. I have often wondered if the memory of physical forms is what makes... are those forms the reflection of material forms? To what extent ARE they really like that, or do we SEE them that way? I am not very sure yet. I had the same problem in the past when I used to go into the Overmind and see the Gods: I always had a kind of hesitation as to whether they really are like that, or whether we perceive them like that because of our physical habits.... There, after a time I... transcription in their brain.... The objective reality of the material world stems from the fact that if you see the same object ten times over, ten times it looks like itself, with differences that are logical, or that may be, for instance, differences of wear and tear—but there too it's like that! If you study carefully, even in the physical world no two people see things in exactly the same way. There ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1967

Mother or The Divine Materialism - I  >  15: An Upside-Down Volcano

... the body, not in the thought. If it opens in one human body, it will automati­cally open in the body of the earth. And no amount of words will change anything to that. But we can understand, if only with our minds, and hasten the evolutionary process —shorten the misery. And who knows, we might even find a brand-new interest in the world and witness, in a multi­tude of microscopic, material details... go, burst, dazzle, work miracles and turn into dust. But this one does not budge. As if the body were the place of the supreme stability. Once the body has understood, it has understood forever, and it never forgets. But it is the one that has to understand. Hence, the vanity of teaching. Only a material contagion can do it. Sri Aurobindo and Mother were going to spread the great supramental contagion... understand, that is, embrace a little of the world in our consciousnesses and eventually in our own bodies. Then we realize that curing a swollen eye can also cure a tumid pouch in some other place on earth—Serbia or Bengal—if need be. Sri Aurobindo had reached the point where the physical "I” (the "I” of the body) had to disappear so that the work in his own matter could flow out into all Matter. The first ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The Divine Materialism - I

Isha Upanishad  >  The Inhabiting Godhead: Life and Action

... the doing of works in this material world and a full acceptance of 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 ... 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 or sunless. By persisting in gross forms of ignorance, by... ss of unity and identity and is therefore not bound by the Ignorance, yet It Page 17 can, in mind, identify Itself with the object in the movement, absorbingly, to the apparent exclusion of the Knowledge which remains behind, veiled at the back of the mentality. The movement of Mind in Nature is thus able to conceive of the object as the reality and the Inhabitant as limited and determined ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Isha Upanishad

Letters on Yoga - III  >  Difficulties Experienced in the Process of Descent

... a complete one, since the physical does not share in it. By the descent the inertia changes its character. It ceases to be a resistance of the physical and becomes only a physical condition to be transformed into the true basic immobility and rest. You need not worry about that [ the body's tendency to sleep ]. When there is a strong inward tendency, the body not being yet conscious enough... experience. What happened was simply that the Force came down and tried to quiet the mind and hold the body still so that it might work. If you had not feared, that would have happened. But your terror made the mind and body resist and get the impression that they were being tortured or in danger. The feeling of the tough body and great force like a hand upon it is quite usual in this kind of experience and... I have heard from several in the first stages that the body was disinclined or felt unable to move about. It is of course an unnecessary reaction—the body wants to translate the pressure for inner immobility into an outward immobility. There is no connection between the descent of Peace and depression. Inertia there may be if the physical being feels the pressure for quietude but turns it into ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III

Kena and Other Upanishads  >  The Supreme Sense

... there is a mental world in which Mind and not Matter is the base. There sense would be quite a different thing in its operation. It would feel mentally an image in Mind and throw it out into form in more and more gross substance; and whatever physical formations there might already be in that world would respond rapidly to the Mind and obey its modifying suggestions. Mind would be masterful, creative,... theories about sense and mind and the Brahman. We know of sense only as an action of the organs through which embodied mind communicates with external Matter, and these sense-organs have been separately developed in the course of evolution; the senses therefore are not fundamental things, but only subordinate conveniences and temporary physical functionings of the embodied mind. Brahman, on the other... three sheaths of consciousness in us, the material, annakoṣa , in which the physical contact and image are received and formed, the vital or nervous, prāṇakoṣa , in which there is a nervous contact and formation, the mental, manaḥkoṣa , in which there is mental contact and imaging. We dwell centred in the mental sheath and therefore the experience of the material world has to come through the other two ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Kena and Other Upanishads

Mother or The New Species - II  >  18. The Changing of Time

... other mixtures, at the threshold of... the true body, we could say. A narrow threshold, which represents perhaps the primal insertion of Mind into Matter, just where the Mind connects with the cells: the subtlest form of the physical Mind, just when it is born, so to speak. A kind of minute tremor. I am now studying the way in which Matter, the body, can be in constant Harmony with the divine Presence... After musing awhile, Mother suddenly said: Material knowledge, I think—I mean the higher use of the physical Mind, which keeps you from entering the true room. Because I simply kept repeating, "I WANT TO GO THERE" (in other words, it was a crystal clear, imperative will).... "I have to say: I WANT TO GO—not that, not your methods!" 6 The physical Mind that makes you tilt into the mortal room.... the meaning has to be undone in the body, this sort of hypnotism of the physical Mind that imprisons the free and clear consciousness of the cellular Mind for which all this simply does not exist. One goes into the other room, and it no longer exists. Another life in life. We must be aware of what is. There is an "I wish" to be discovered in the body. Then, truly, it will be a "new ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

The Secret of the Veda  >  The Ribhus, Artisans of Immortality

... man originally only a single bowl, the physical consciousness, the physical body in which to offer the delight of existence to the gods. The Ribhus, powers of luminous knowledge, take it as renewed and perfected by Twashtri's later workings and build up in him from the material of the four planes three other bodies, vital, mental and the causal or ideal body. 11 Because they have made this fourfold... the divine light and substance by which the complete work can be done. These works and formations of immortality they effect, it is continually repeated, by the force of Thought, with the mind for field and material; they are done with power; they are attended by a perfection in the creative and effective act, svapasyayā sukṛtyayā , which is the condition of the working out of Immortality. These formations... enabled him thereby to live on the plane of the Truth-consciousness they are able to establish in the perfected human being the thrice seven ecstasies of the supreme existence poured into the mind, vitality and body. Each of these they can give perfectly by the full expression of its separate absolute ecstasy even in the combination of the whole. 12 The Ribhus have power to support and contain all ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Secret of the Veda

Mother or The New Species - II  >  4. The Supramental Descent

... through their own purer gestures and less clogged up bodies She was in the process of making them bring the answer into being. When you can be completely conscious of the infirmities and stupidities of the outer consciousness, she said to them, of the utter falsehood of so-called material knowledge and physical laws, the so-called needs of the body and the "reality" of these needs, if you begin to... must begin somewhere. "When is it going to happen?" For the mind or the higher intelligence to conceive of new things is easier than for the vital being, say, to feel things in a new way. And for the body it is still more difficult to have a purely material perception of what a new world will be. Yet, this perception must PRECEDE the material transformation; the strangeness of old things, their lack... EVEN MATERIALLY they must be felt as obsolete, and as part of a past which has no longer any reason to exist. 4 The body must begin to perceive what the new mode might be, and for this to happen, obviously the old mode must first become obsolete in its own eyes. The process is always the same: it is not so much a question of educating the body as of de-educating it, knocking off the Mind's spectacles ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

Mother’s Agenda 1964  >  October 10, 1964

... the Truth. There is no other way—all reasoning, all intelligence, all understanding, all that is totally useless with this physical mind. The only thing is to make contact. That's just what the cells value: the possibility of making contact. Making contact. On the material level, japa is very good for that. When your head is tired and you are a little weary of forever contradicting that pessimism... As Satprem prepares to leave, Mother inquires about his health: ...Now, the last stage is that the body should forget it has been ill; that's very important. Very difficult. It's very important. I am constantly struggling against pernicious suggestions. This physical mind gives me a lot of trouble—a lot of trouble. It has terrible apprehensions and fears. Oh, absolutely. ... (without being conscious of it), and when all those terrible things 2 happened to you, there was something that remained conscious, but those things "cultivated" the pessimism—that pessimism of the physical mind. And now you have to undo all that work. And what a work it is, phew!... Page 231 You understand, it was IMPOSSIBLE, impossible for me to believe in ("believe"—even understand) all ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1964

The Life Divine  >  Reality and the Integral Knowledge

... and the innumerable minute discoveries of physical Science. But a solution of the whole problem of existence cannot be based on an exclusive one-sided knowledge; we must know not only what Matter is and what are its processes, but what mind and life are and what are their processes, and one must know also spirit and soul and all that is behind the material surface: only then can we have a knowledge... idea of physical existence as the one fundamental existence and the relegation of consciousness, mind, soul or spirit to the position of a temporary outcome of the physical Energy in its cosmic action,—if indeed soul or spirit has any existence. All that is not physical and objective has a lesser reality dependent on the physical and objective; it has to justify itself to the physical mind by objective... the judgment of the physical or sense mind except when they project themselves into the physical, and even then that judgment is often incompetent or subject to caution; they can only be verified by other senses and by a method of scrutiny and affirmation which is applicable to their own reality, their own nature. There are different orders of reality; the objective and physical is only one order ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

The Destiny of the Body  >  The Evolutionary Waking

... became Matter and lay in the whirl, A body sleeping without sense or soul... Still consciousness was hidden in Nature's womb, Unfelt was the Bliss whose rapture dreamed the worlds. Being was an inert substance driven by Force. 2 'Lost in slumber, mute, inanimate', the material universe 'awaited life and sense and waking Mind.' The evolutionary nisus was at work to waken... tattvamajānataḥ. (Gaudapadacharyya, Māṇḍukya-kārikā ) 4 Savitri, Book II, Canto V, p. 161. Page 187 'a bright body of ignorance' is, because of the very circumstance of a separative ego-centred existence in a material, spatial and temporal universe, reducible to a state of sevenfold blindness. Thus, "We are ignorant of the Absolute which is the source of... selection of overtly mentalised experiences for our whole existence, — that is the fifth, the psychological ignorance. We are ignorant of the true constitution of our becoming; we take the mind or life or body or any two of these or all three for our true principle or the whole account of what we are, losing sight of that which constitutes them and determines by its occult presence and is meant ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Notes on the Way  >  1 July 1970

... both. And it was bigger than the person and in every way overtopped her by about so much ( gesture surpassing the physical body by about twenty centimetres ); she was there and it was like this ( same gesture ). And it had this colour... this colour... which if it became quite material would be the colour of Auroville. 1 It was fainter, as though behind a veil, it was not absolutely precise, but... really interesting. I was very interested. It was there, calm and quiet, and it said to me, "You were looking, well, there it is, yes, it is that!" And then I understood why the mind and the vital were sent out of this body, leaving the psychic being—naturally it was that which had been always governing all the movements, so it was nothing new, but there are no difficulties any more: all the complications... was red (but it was not like that). And its expression! An expression so fine, and sweetly ironical... oh! extraordinary, extraordinary. And you understand, I had my eyes open, it was almost a material vision. So one understands. All of a sudden all the questions have vanished, it has become very clear, very simple. ( Silence ) And it is precisely the psychic that survives. So, if it m ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Notes on the Way

Mother’s Agenda 1967  >  December 6, 1967

... states of being from the most material to the most subtle. 'Integral' means HORIZONTALLY in all the various and often contradictory parts that make up the outer being (physical, vital and mental)." Page 398 ( Then Mother listens to the reading of more unpublished letters of Sri Aurobindo's: ) "How can I receive Sri Aurobindo's light in the mind?" "It can always come if you... experiences at night: the body remains in trance, it's the physical consciousness; it was the physical consciousness, but in a subtle physical freed from all difficulties—and it was no better. You know, it was like a reply to the ambition of people here on earth who want life to be pleasant, easy, without difficulties, without conflicts and clashes and diseases and ... they say, "Oh, how charming all... it in the subtle world (in the material world it's always mixed with all kinds of trouble and effort and difficulty, so it's completely different), there, things are absolutely free of difficulties, completely harmonious, really, and it was NOTHING. You understand, when Sri Aurobindo was there, it was perfect, but when he withdrew ... tasteless. And it's the PHYSICAL consciousness that has those ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1967

The Destiny of the Body  >  A Semblance of Victory

... mental and even purely physical energies drawn directly from the universal source and not through the cumbersome process of material alimentation. Thus Sri Aurobindo certifies from his own personal experience 1 that "it is indeed possible even while fasting for very long periods to maintain the full energies and activities of the soul and mind and life, even those of the body, to remain wakeful... "we have to go back to food and the established material forces of Nature," 4 for "as her basic means for maintaining and renewing the gross physical body and its workings and inner potencies Nature has selected the taking in of outside matter in the shape of food, its digestion, assimilation of what is assimilable and elimination of what cannot or ought not to be assimilated." 5 We are... removed; it is the ineluctable withering away of the material substance of the body in starvation. Thus, as Sri Aurobindo himself has warned us: "One thing one does not escape and that is the wasting of the material tissues of the body, its flesh and substance." 3 And as long as this cardinal problem of preventing the disintegration of the gross material basis of life is not satisfactorily solved, "we ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Some Answers from the Mother  >  Letters to a Sadhak (1966-1969)

... the physical consciousness and making it rise gradually towards the Divine. Whereas Sri Aurobindo has said that to do his yoga, one must already have found the Divine and united with Him—then the consciousness descends through all the states of being down to the most material, bringing the Divine Force with it so that the Force can transform the whole being and finally divinise the physical body. ... force than the earthly held his limbs,... Unwound the triple cord of mind and freed The heavenly wideness of a Godhead's gaze." 14 What does "the triple cord of mind" mean? The cords symbolise the limitations of the mind; and there are three of them because there is a physical mind, a vital mind and a mental mind. 9 November 1968 Page 386 "The days were travellers... But isn't that the aspiration of every sincere sadhak? Total means vertically in all the states of being, from the most material to the most subtle. Integral means horizontally in all the different and often contradictory parts which make up the outer being (physical, vital and mental). 4 December 1967 The fragrance of the flowers given by the Mother is often something extraordinary ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Some Answers from the Mother

Record of Yoga  >  Miscellaneous Notes, c. 1914

... to our own physical and mental experiences while that is beyond ego infinite eternal and all-embracing. Page 1463 Therefore we have to get rid of the Ego in order to be Divine. Ego persists because of three things; first because we think we are the body; secondly because of desire; and thirdly because of the mental idea that I am a separate being existing in my own mind and body independently... situated. From this seat of activity, all actions emanate. Therefore the first Sadhana is not to feel ourselves either in the heart or in the mind but there just above the crown of [the] head. By these two means, we separate ourselves from body, life and mind. On account of this, misery cannot affect us and we will be above happiness and misery. Apart from all these, the main thing we effect thereby... the bliss of pure conscious existence and energy. Page 1460 Vijnana—Supra-mental knowledge—is the Causal Idea which, by supporting and secretly guiding the confused activities of Mind, Life and Body ensures and compels the right arrangement of the Universe. Buddhi—is the lower divided intelligence as opposed to Vijnana. Manas-chitta—is the life of sensations and emotions which are ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2  >  The Age of Sri Aurobindo

... policy of Real-politik is the thing needed in this world. To achieve something actually in the physical and material field, even a lesser something, is worth much more than speculating on high flaunting chimeras and indulging in day-dreams. Yes, but what is this something that has to be achieved in the material world? It is always an ideal. Even procuring food for each and every person, clothing and housing... preparation alone or in the largest measure brings about a physical realisation. The deeper we go within, the farther we are away from the surface, the nearer we come to the roots and sources of things even most superficial. The spiritual view sees and declares that it is the Brahmic consciousness that holds, inspires, builds up Matter, the physical body and form of Brahman. The highest ideal, the very... achieved on the material plane are first developed and matured and made ready behind the veil and at a given moment burst out and manifest themselves often unexpectedly and suddenly like a chick out of the shell or the young butterfly out of the cocoon. The Gita points to that truth of Nature when it says: "These beings have already been killed by Me." It is not that a long or strenuous physical planning ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2

Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960  >  November 4, 1958

... scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another comparison, it could be said that the physical body is at the center—it is the most material and the most condensed, as well as the smallest—and the more subtle inner bodies increasingly overlap the limits of this central physical body; they pass through it and extend further and further out, like water evaporating from a porous vase which... out of a more material body you awaken on some higher plane—you can have the same relationship with the things and people of that plane as with the things and people of the material world. In other words, there exists an entirely objective relationship that has nothing to do with your own idea of things. Naturally, the resemblance becomes greater and greater as you draw nearer the physical world, the... a human being who, through his occult knowledge, goes out of one of his 'bodies' (they are called sheaths in English) and enters into a more subtle body—in order to ACT in a more subtle body—and so forth, twelve times (you make each body come out Page 218 from a more material body, leaving the more material body in its corresponding zone, and then go off through successive exteriorizations) ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960

Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  11 December 1957

... that is, that beings belonging to higher worlds have, by a process of concentration and materialisation, built or formed for themselves bodies of physical matter. It probably wasn't the lower species which progressively produced a body which became the first human body. According to spiritual and occult knowledge, consciousness precedes form; consciousness by self-concentration produces its form; whereas... traditions, based perhaps on certain memories, but as they are altogether beyond any material proof, this knowledge is considered to be even more problematic than scientific imaginations Page 236 and deductions. For any inner logic, it is easier to understand and admit, but one has no more proof than one has material proof that there was one first man or that there were several first men or that... " 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 ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)

Record of Yoga  >  22 December 1913 - 15 January 1914

... temperament & using life & action as a boy's game,—the seat being not as formerly the mind & buddhi, but the intuitional mind and the temperament. Kamananda is now in possession of the physical system so far as to make itself always felt either in intensity, in subdued action or in a suppressed action effective on the body in secondary sensation, so that the system is not allowed to forget the ananda or... in intensity & frequency. Vishayananda is now finally generating itself subjectively in the mind's reception of all actions, sights, sounds, touches etc,—a few touches of pain & discomfort in the body alone resisting,—and objectively in the physical response to all experiences. It is now manifest in the other ananda touches, raudra, tivra, kama, vaidyuta; it is becoming frequent by itself in touches... but has once more been removed by still more unmistakable examples. The physical prakamya exists & will grow, but accounts for only a small part of the phenomena. Eg the smell of food at midnight, in a shut room, under the bed-clothes cannot be physical gandhadrishti. All the physical (ahaituka) anandas are now firm in the body; vaidyuta is still comparatively rare, vishaya seldom intense or prolonged ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

The Sun and The Rainbow  >  The Two Smiles

... background is not fed, the material scene naturally becomes the dominant reality but it is not capable of satisfying that intellect. The drama of the days, the challenge of passing beauty, the stir of bright bodies are not sufficient to bring smiles. Further, the intellect itself is not for the Indian the acme of consciousness: he lives neither in the life-force nor in the mind so much as in a sense of... unworldly or otherworldly as people sometimes make out, but it wants to value the material scene mostly In the light of what it can find in the secret background of the physical cosmos — the occult, the mystical, the spiritual. Occasionally, preoccupation with this background takes away its feel of the reality of the material scene and then we have the illusionist attitude wearily regarding the earth as... all wounds and frustrations, retains its pleasure in the very act of breathing. No doubt, the intellect too is very prominent in the West, but it is turned more upon the active material scene than upon the secret supra-physical background of our universe: therefore, even its nihilist moods catch something of that vital pleasure and the blackest intellectual despair still remembers that sunshine and shadow ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Sun and The Rainbow

Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  3rd February 1939

... that she has a capacity for the Yoga. But she must get rid of fear. Otherwise, all the experiences will stop. The letter shows that her inner mind is ready but her vital and the physical are not – the Page 201 vital is full of fear and the body suffers from bad health. As she herself says, it produces a conflict in the being which is not desirable. It may be better for her not to take... inside? These things, of course, are not physical. Disciple : But why can't the experience come quietly? Sri Aurobindo : The experience comes quietly but you make a row! If your head or physical body is being split then you could object to it. You ought to know by now that Page 202 all these experiences are in the subtle body. Disciple : I had also once or... and to know the ordinary symbols. (turning to X) You know V once in meditation saw that some golden beings came down and told him :  "Now we will cut your body and make it new." He cried out :  Never, never. He thought that his physical body was going to be cut. But the symbolism is quite clear :  the old elements in the nature would be thrown away and new ones brought in.  Disciple : ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Mother’s Agenda 1967  >  June 14, 1967

... pettiness of the physical consciousness—the material physical consciousness—which has an absolutely perverse taste for drama. Drama—the slightest thing has to make a drama: if you have a toothache, it becomes a drama 1 ; if you bang against something, it becomes a drama; if two nations quarrel, it becomes a drama—everything becomes a drama. The taste for drama. The slightest upset in the body, the least... immense. ( long silence ) Page 177 You said just a while ago that your body remembered an earlier death... Oh, yes. But you didn't say what that recollection was. Yes, everybody knows it: it happened at Tlemcen while I was working with Théon. I had gone out in a wholly material way, the body was in a cataleptic state, and something came, something occurred that cut the link... most things, at any rate) to the least little physical discomfort, it's like that: a very small, such a very small consciousness, petty and limited like that, and narrow, which makes a mountain out of a molehill. There you are. ( silence ) Page 174 Because what took place is nothing new, it has happened so many times before, but the body's experience was different.... Previously, the ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1967

Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God  >  15: Intelligence that is Consciousness that is Being

... execution, with the physical development of things in Matter and the law of development of Life and Mind in Matter; its account of the process may have to be considerably changed or may be dropped altogether in the light of new discovery; but that will not affect the self-evident fact of a spiritual evolution, an evolution of Consciousness, as progression of the soul’s manifestation in material existence.”... consisting only of matter produce consciousness? The mind-body problem remains vividly discussed though unexplained, and the present gross materialistic stance of neurobiology, that all is matter and that consequently life and consciousness are (epi)phenomena of matter, raises more questions than it answers. A television set is made of material components, yet nobody will contend that the news reader... and degraded in a physical brain.” (EDH 158) The material embodiment restricts the free abilities of the typal worlds. “Immense ranges of powers, influences, phenomena descend covertly upon us from the Overmind and the higher mental and vital ranges, but of these only a part, a selection, as it were, or restricted number can stage and realize themselves in the order of the physical world.” (LD 780) ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God

Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine  >  The Human Aspiration

... phenomena but the phenomena took place on the material plane and as they were dealing with the material plane and physical phenomena, it was within their right to take cognizance of what was happening. They refused. It was then that he was compelled to start the Psychic Research Society of London. There were eminent intellectuals and scientists who joined that body. The medium of the phenomena was a lady... about it because we were near him. But it was some years afterwards (when the War was over)—that he made a mention of it in order to bring home to the human mind the possibility of using other powers and forces than the physical and the material. He never claimed any personal credit for it, and he had clarity of vision to note that it was not the Supramental that was working but the Divine Consciousness... unknowable to mind, unknowable to senses, unknowable to speech. It is consciousness that must make the effort, because consciousness is not only mind, consciousness is not only body, consciousness is not only senses. Consciousness is that which uses the mind, the life, the nervous system, it uses the body. Now, if that consciousness makes an effort then that which to the mind, to the senses and ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine

Words of the Mother - III  >  The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth

... the Sadhana has undergone a great change, because it is now in the physical itself that you have to do it. Concentrate on the physical transformation; by physical I mean the mental, vital and body consciousness. You are trying to get the experience in your mind, but it is not the mind that can get it. Come out of your mind and you will understand what I mean. Man must understand that... happenings, all contacts, material or psychological, irrespective of their character and impact. The absolute and indisputable certainty of an infallible knowledge through identity. February 1961 Page 102 A perfect equality towards all circumstances, material or psychological, and an absoluteness in the knowledge—a knowledge that comes not through the mind but through identity. The... the sense of collective unity did not grow in proportion to the growth of power, the resulting conflict would be even more acute and chaotic than all our material conflicts. 15 February 1958 To celebrate the birth of a transitory body can satisfy some faithful feelings. To celebrate the manifestation of the eternal Consciousness can be done at every moment of the universal history. ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - III

Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III  >  16: Overlife

... superstructure. It is the cellular level, the one at which Mother lived, from which She saw the material world differently and which made her body live according to laws that were miraculous for a body assailed by age, heart attacks and the rush of the world. “As if the physical became double”: the old physical of the mental world, mental vision, mental laws, and the other one. So we understand now how... submitted to the laws of the Mind⎯the consciousness that is left in the body when everything else is asleep and the external organs are obliterated, blind, closed, that consciousness that is almost like that of a man who is dead to the world⎯which sees and perceives the physical world in another way, and not only does it see it differently, but it is submitted to other physical laws, which we never have... caterpillar’s very body. It was not another species that saw, not a higher vision of Mother: it was the body that saw, the body’s cells that saw, the very material consciousness that saw Matter and saw it in a different way, lived it in a different way. It was not outside of Matter, another type of Matter: it was Matter itself. For, one day, Mother made this very revealing remark: For the body consciousness ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

Champaklal's Treasures  >  “The Wizard of Oz”

... their importance and the least infraction of the rule, the least fault committed can have fatal consequences. It is the same in the material life and if one had the initiation into the true way of living, one could transform the physical existence. This body has neither the uncontested authority of a god nor the imperturbable calm of the sage. It is yet only an apprentice in supermanhood. ... the two black sections (first and last) show how things appear in the physical world, the coloured one expresses a similar sequence of events in the vital world, the world where one can go in deep sleep when one gets out of the body. So long as you have a body no true harm can happen to you in the vital world for the physical body acts like a protection and you can always return into it at will. ... life. The vital and physical feel them as weaknesses because they put a check upon the free expression of their impulsions based on the power of force. As usual, the mind, when it is not sufficiently educated, is the accomplice of the vital being and the slave of the physical nature whose crushing laws it does not know well through their half-conscious mechanism. When the mind awakens to the con ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal's Treasures

On Thoughts and Aphorisms  >  Aphorism - 10

... remain in a purely physical consciousness, you are entirely deceived. And this habit of demanding concrete, material proofs before accepting the reality of something, is one of the most glaring effects of ignorance. With that attitude any fool imagines that he can sit in judgment on the highest things and deny the most profound experiences. It is certainly not by dissecting a body which is dead because... departed from it that the soul can be found. Had the soul not departed, the body would not have been dead! It is to bring home to us the absurdity of this claim that Sri Aurobindo has written this Aphorism. It applies to all judgments of the critical mind and to all scientific methods when they would judge any but purely material phenomena. The conclusion is always the same: the only true attitude... commentaries (1958) On Thoughts and Aphorisms Aphorism - 10 10—My soul knows that it is immortal. But you take a dead body to pieces and cry triumphantly, "Where is your soul and where is your immortality?" It has often been repeated—but except in certain cases very rarely understood—that only like knows like. If ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Thoughts and Aphorisms

Mother’s Agenda 1972-1973  >  May 27, 1972

... knows and acts. And which uses this ( Mother Page 192 points to her body) to keep a contact with people. Yes, that's it, it's not a person anymore—sometimes, you know ( laughing ), I feel like a puppet ( gesture of dangling at the end of a string ) whose purpose is to enable contact with people. But the physical strength is like this ( wobbly gesture ).... I feel very strong—very strong... a trance, not at all: I am wide awake and FULLY active. I see things, I do things, I hear people, I... the whole time. But I forget—I simply forget about material life. Then someone comes and abruptly calls me back. I don't go out of material life, but... it appears different. ( silence ) Nothing to ask? No, Mother. Or to say? No, Mother, not really.... I am in the course of revising... it's luminous, it's clear, it's strong, it's wide.... Physically, too. It is PHYSICAL, that's what is amazing! Before, I used to withdraw into an inner state of being (I know them all, I've experienced them, I've had a conscious life), but all that, all that is... finished. Completely finished.... ( Smiling ) As if the physical world were becoming double. 1 Naturally, to the ordinary eye, I am ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1972-1973

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 5  >  MAN THE PROTOTYPE

... confined to the gross physical form of an object, even the most realistic artist does not hold up the mirror to Nature in that sense: he goes behind and sees the inner contour, the subtle figuration that underlies the external volume and mass. It is that that is beautiful and harmonious and significant, and it is that which the artist endeavours to bring out and fix in a system or body of lines and colours... objects that represent and incarnate them. Not only so. Our limited mind and senses are accustomed to view and recognise individuals alone as persons. But there are group personalities too. Thus each species has a generic personality, a consciousness and an ideal or intrinsic form also: the individuals on the physical plane are its various incarnations, projections and formations. Old Plato was... may have some idea of what it is like by taking recourse to the distinction that Greek philosophers used to make between the formal and the material cause of things. The prototype is the formal reality Page 22 hidden and imbedded in the material reality of an object. The essential form is made of the original configuration of primary vibrations that later on consolidate and become a ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 5

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7  >  Why are Dreams Forgotten

... dreams that you had immediately before: the communication between the physical and the subtle physical being close, you would be able to remember easily enough. Now if you begin from the beginning what happens is something like this. As you fall into sleep, the body becomes quiet and the vital too goes to rest; but the mind continues to be active, it has not gone to sleep. You have now what are... construct a bridge and very few people know how to do it; it requires more engineering skill than to build a material bridge. You may have very wonderful experiences in sleep, but you forget them all; perhaps you remember, as I have said, the last one, the one nearest to the physical mind. The Page 79 best way then to remember and become conscious of the whole night is to begin... kinds of ideas and imaginations set free. After a time the mind gets tired and falls silent; the vital has rested sufficiently and wakes up in its turn and moves about. Your dreams of the mental domain Page 78 are pushed back giving place to vital dreams. When you are active in the vital you very often go out of your body, visit all kinds of places and get involved in various exploits ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3  >  Why are Dreams Forgotten

... the dreams that you had immediately before: the communication between the physical and the subtle physical being close, you would be able to re-member easily enough. Now if you begin from the beginning what happens is something like this. As you fall into sleep, the body becomes quiet and the vital too goes to rest; but the mind continues to be active, it has not gone to sleep. You have now what are... to construct a bridge and very few people know how to do it; it requires more engineering skill than to build a material bridge. You may have very wonderful experiences in sleep, but you forget them all; perhaps you remember, as I have said, the last one, the one nearest to the physical mind. The best way then to remember and become conscious of the whole night is to begin at the end and go backward... built out of all kinds of ideas and imaginations set free. After a time the mind gets tired and falls silent; the vital has rested sufficiently and wakes up in its turn and moves about. Your dreams of the mental domain are pushed back giving place to vital dreams. When you are active in the vital you very often go out of your body, visit all kinds of places and get involved in various exploits and adventures ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3

Mother’s Agenda 1964  >  March 7, 1964

... permeation into material substance of the Ananda of the power of progress in Life." It wasn't a permeation into the Mind: it was a permeation into Life—into Life, into the material, earthly substance, which had become alive. Even plants participated in last night's experience: it isn't something that was the privilege of the mental being, it's the whole vital substance (vitalized material substance)... contact with it. I noticed (I've known it for some time, but it was quite concrete this time) that in my rest, as soon as I am at rest, the body is completely identified with the material substance of the earth, that is to say, the experience of the material substance of the earth becomes its own—which may be expressed by all sorts of things (it depends on the day, on the occasion). I had known for... personal consciousness, the consciousness of the body—of the body—was no more than a sort of convention necessary for maintaining contact. With the feeling that a step or two more—not many—will give THE Will (the supreme Will, that is) full power to act on this body. It [this body] wasn't much more interesting or important than many other bodies—it didn't at all have the sense of its importance ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1964

On the Path  >  1969

... With progress in the Yoga of the body, will there be a change in the material environment? Most certainly a greater harmony will be manifested in the material world, in the same way as the terrestrial appearance has changed much with the advent of the human species. 4.1.1969 In other words, Mother, it can be said that the transformation of the human body, the microcosm, will serve the... 1.3.1969 Page 76 In the Bulletin Mother has spoken of a body without mind and vital. That is to say, the body has its own means of living, something different from what is called the vital force or Prana? It is a rather special case. The body (in all well developed beings) has a mind and a vital more or less rudimentary which are its particularities and can be... 1969 Mother has said, "In the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, the transformation of the body is indispensable so far as it can be done." Are there limits to the transformation of the body? For the present, yes. But in the time, no. I am convinced that in two hundred years for example the physical body could be infinitely superior to what it is now — luminous, plastic, enduring, harmonious ...

Shyam Sunder Jhunjhunwala   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On the Path

Letters on Yoga - I  >  The Hostile Forces and Hostile Beings

... It is what Shakespeare described as the Devil quoting Scripture for his own purpose. At present what they are most doing is to try to raise up the obscurity and weakness of the most physical mind, vital, material parts to prevent the progress or fulfilment of the sadhana. As to Asuras, not many of them have shown signs of repentance or possibility of conversion up to now. It is not surprising... perturbs the being with rajasic or egoistic suggestions or excites the lower nature, then it is an adverse Force. The hostiles have themselves bodies though not of a gross physical kind—they see, but with a subtle seeing that includes not only bodies, but movements of forces, thoughts, feelings. Very great [ are the occult powers of the hostile beings ]—it is their occult powers and knowledge... ordinary mind and its ideas and perceptions—for there there are only two categories of influences recognisable, the ideas and feelings and actions of oneself and others and the play of environment and physical forces. But once one begins to get the inner view of things, it is different. One begins to experience that all is an action of forces, forces of Prakriti psychological as well as physical which ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Letters on Poetry and Art  >  Appreciation of Beauty

... psychic in others that gives a beauty which appears in the body but is not beauty of shape, colour or texture. Often the vital and mental character of persons who have physical beauty is not good, sometimes it is even repulsive. Many would refuse to recognise it as beautiful. If it is vital in its origin, it need not come from beauty of mind or character; it is something in the life-force which... have Page 707 been subjected to in the evolution out of the material Inconscience under the pressure of the Powers of the Ignorance. Are there people who have not been affected by this vital impurity and who appreciate beauty in a subtle aesthetic way only? Yes, certainly. Artists who have trained their mind to a purely aesthetic look at beauty and beautiful things—for one instance... Many Asiatics could not appreciate the beauty of European models or actresses, who are so lacking in modesty according to their conceptions. Modesty is not part of physical beauty, that is a mental-vital element. As for physical beauty, different races have different conceptions. Indians and Europeans like curves, Chinese detest them in a woman. An intellectual would find beauty only in an ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Poetry and Art

Sri Aurobindo And The Mother - On India  >  Sri Aurobindo - On the Present Crisis

... ideal. The evolution of human mind and life must necessarily lead towards an increasing universality; but on a basis of ego and segmenting and dividing mind this opening to the universal can only create a vast pullulation of unaccorded ideas and impulses, a surge of enormous powers and desires, a chaotic mass of unassimilated and intermixed mental, vital and physical material of a larger existence which... is a formation of the Reality, and there is a truth of the individual, an individual self, soul or spirit that expresses itself through the individual mind, life and body and can express itself too in something that goes beyond mind, life and body, something even that goes beyond humanity. For our humanity is not the whole of the Reality or its best possible self formation or self-expression, -the... been reached in which the human mind has achieved in certain directions an enormous development while in others it stands arrested and bewildered and can no longer find its way. A structure of the external life has been raised up by man's ever-active mind and life-will, a structure of an unmanageable hugeness and complexity, for the service of his mental, vital, physical claims and urges, a complex political ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Sri Aurobindo And The Mother - On India

On Education  >  The Science of Living

... discerning physical education, we must make our body strong and supple enough to become a fit instrument in the material world for the truth-force which wants to manifest through us. In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and the... for these Bulletins are meant more for people who lead an ordinary life, though also for students of yoga — I mean people who are primarily interested in a purely physical material life but who try to attain more perfection in their physical life than is usual in ordinary conditions. It is a very difficult task but it is a kind of yoga. These people call themselves "materialists" and they are apt to... cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Education

Beyond Man  >  Chapter Nine: From Man to Superman

... to a dimension behind the three outward dimensions familiar to us, and the point where it touches our material body is situated behind the heart, in the chakra of the heart. ‘Is the psychic being located in the heart?’ the Mother was asked by a little girl, and she answered: ‘Not in the physical heart, not in the heart muscle. It is in a fourth dimension, an internal dimension. But it is somewhere... tradition in this, the human body in the manifestation of the human being on Earth consists of several ‘sheaths’ (of the soul). The material, visible sheath, made out of what we call tangible matter, is only our most outward or ‘gross’ body. This material sheath is surrounded by or embedded in a vital sheath consisting of substance of the vital plane. It is in this vital body that we go in search of adventure... or stumblings which are inevitable in the Ignorance.’ ( Letters on Yoga , p. 441) Rebirth or reincarnation is the process of the growth of the soul in a material evolution. The soul necessarily takes on body after body because material bodies are not supple enough to adapt to the soul’s development. The soul always remains essentially what it is in all eternity, but it has taken up the adventure ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Beyond Man

Emergence of the Psychic  >  The Psychic Being - Its Nature and Function

... but this action is occult and not obtruded on the surface. In the early material and vital stages of the evolution of being there is indeed no consciousness of soul; there are psychic activities, but the instrumentation, the form of these activities are vital and physical, — or mental when the mind is active. For even the mind, so long as it is primitive or is developed but still too external, does... being the son of God. And so he was quite ready to give up his divine right because he was hungry, for a concrete, material thing, for food. This is a very old story, but it is eternally true. 28 — The Mother * ... from the very moment of birth in a physical body, there is in the being, in its depths, this psychic presence which pushes the whole being towards this fulfilment... Overmind, who are very eager to take a physical body on earth to have the experience of the psychic, for they don't have it. These beings certainly have many qualities that men don't, but they lack this divine presence which is altogether exceptional and exists only on the earth and nowhere else. All these inhabitants of the higher worlds, the Higher Mind, Overmind and other regions have no psychic ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Emergence of the Psychic

The Psychic Being  >  Atman, Jivatman and the Psychic

... evolution in the material world. It is at first an undifferentiated power of the Divine Consciousness containing all possibilities which have not yet taken form, but to which it is the function of evolution to give form. This spark is there in all living beings from the lowest to the highest. The psychic being is formed by the soul in its evolution. It supports the mind, vital, body, grows by their... of the inner being, sometimes the inner mental, sometimes the inner vital, sometimes, it may be, the inner or subtle physical Purusha. The inner being—inner mind, inner vital, inner or subtle physical—knows much that is unknown to the outer mind, the outer vital, the outer physical, for it is in a more direct contact with the secret forces of Nature. The psychic is the inmost being of all; a perception... prāṇamaya puruṣa , on the physical plane the true physical being, annamaya puruṣa . Each being, therefore is, so long as the Ignorance lasts, centred round his mental, vital or physical Purusha, according to the plane on which he predominantly lives, and that is to him his central being. But the true representative all the time is concealed behind the mind, vital and physical—it is the psychic, our inmost ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Psychic Being

The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Physical Nature and its Purification-2

... obscure and stiff and not plastic, yielding only little by little. The physical mind can be more easily opened and converted than the rest, but the vital-physical and the material-physical are obstinate. The old things are always recurring there without reason and by force of habit. Much of the vital-physical and most of the material are in the subconscience or depend on it. It needs a strong and sustained... Page 277 Light and Force into the physical nature including the body and its constituent cells, and steadily direct them to its subconscient and inconscient bases below. "The light brings the consciousness of what is there; the force has to follow and work on them (the obscure parts) till they change or disappear." The mind of the sâdhaka may not be able to see how the Mother's... is necessary, not less or more. There should be neither eagerness nor repugnance."¹ "Do not trouble your mind about food. Take it in the right quantity (neither too much nor too little), without greed or repulsion, as the means given you by the Mother for the maintenance of the body, in the right spirit, offering it to the Divine in you..."² To be preoccupied with food—its quality or quantity ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1  >  Sex Thoughts and Impulses

... coming from the front part of the sex centre. There are sometimes physical sex sensations too. However, all these reactions are in thought formations — there is never any impulse or conscious desire for the sex enjoyment in any part of the being— vital or physical.       It is therefore only the body and the most material part of the mind that are still affected.         Can a full bladder...       If sex is fought out up to the vital and remains only on the surface of the physical, cannot one have a "pure purity"?       It must be pushed out from the physical also, to have a complete purity of the whole being. The mind and vital can have a pure purity even when it is there on the surface of the physical.         Even when one has hardly any sexual feeling, how does the vital... the mind and the higher vital reject, they take this form which belongs to the vital-physical.       If you want to reject, you have to reject patiently and persistently — these forces are not going to give up so early.         Up to what stage do the sexual forces follow us?       There is no rule about that. Some get rid of them early, — others keep them till the physical and ...

Nagin Doshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1

Notes on the Way  >  30 September 1966

... than wide, I think)—I would not swear to it that he is referring to the supramentalised body (physical body). Perhaps to the supramental body or to some other luminous body in its own space and substance, which he found sometimes as if enveloping him and abolishing this body of death which he felt the material envelope to be. This verse 1 like many others is capable of several interpretations and... non-physical substance? I do not know if it is non-physical, but it is a physical that I do not know! And it is not the substance as we know it now, particularly not the construction that we know now. I do not know, but if it must be a physical body, as Sri Aurobindo has said; it seemed to me (but perhaps it is day-dreaming) that it might be like a lotus-bud for example; our present body is... that seems to require stages. Evidently, unless something happens (which we are obliged to call a "miracle", because one cannot understand how) how can a body like ours become a body wholly built and moved by a higher force and without a material support? This ( Mother holds the skin of her hand between her fingers ), how can this change into this other thing?... That appears impossible. That appears ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Notes on the Way

The Destiny of the Body  >  Foreword

... the scholarly thoroughness of its knowledge but also by the wide-ranging vitality of its insight. The theme is one of the most challenging that the mind of man has faced: the evolutionary prospects of the human body. The human body is a bundle of opposites. It combines an ingenious system of interrelated life-serving functions with a fragility of overall balance seeming to invite death... the symbolic expression of some truth of physical being which is not exhausted by the present possibilities of living and conscious matter . There is here a sense of Infinite riches in a little room — riches that could transfigure the limited-looking composite of solids, liquids and gases that ordinarily passes as the human body. Philosophers have attempted to understand... house, capable of rebuilding and transforming it into a Nature-image of the perfect Spirit-reality. Mukherjee's book should serve to carry to the all-scrutinising mind typical of our scientific age the conviction of the body's divine destiny. Pondicherry, 19.10.1975 K. D. Sethna (Amal Kiran) ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Record of Yoga  >  13 January - 8 February 1912

... mangalamaya nature is being impressed by the jnanam not only on the buddhi but on the sanskaras of the manas, chitta, prana and material body.                    Pure varna manifested this morning in a form, (dense crude), so that all the material and possible variation of material for the crude forms is, in a way, ready and regularised; only the perfect crude forms have to be subjected to the same process... while walking, eg on the thought which [proceeded] 3 undisturbed while the waking mind was unconscious, on the walk of the body or something in the immediate surroundings, on the fact of samadhi or an experience in the samadhi. External objects are, in this state, sensed not by the indriyas of the mind and body, but by the karana-indriya..          Ananda sahaituka of raudra and pain with bhoga;... 11. removed of itself. The body is ceasing to be affected with depression by the defect of anima, itself now much reduced in its stress, even after discontinuation of Page 61 activity. The lipi 8 is persistent and points to the early perfection of elementary utthapana by the removal of all nirveda, klanti or necessity of change of occupation for body or mind.            The thought, expression ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Ascent of the Sacrifice - II

... earth-life. Again behind our mind, our life, our conscious physical there is a larger subliminal consciousness,—there are inner mental, inner vital, inner more subtle physical reaches supported by an inmost psychic existence which is the animating soul of all the rest; and in these hidden reaches too lie a mass of numerous pre-existent personalities which supply the material, the motive-forces, the impulsions... inertia is at its base; all are tied down by the body and its needs and desires to a trivial mind, petty desires and emotions, an insignificant repetition of small worthless functionings, needs, cares, occupations, pains, pleasures that lead to nothing beyond themselves and bear the stamp of an ignorance that knows not its own why and whither. This physical mind of inertia believes in no divinity other than... can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working, separate ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Kena and Other Upanishads  >  The Supreme Word

... results in other minds than that of the user, but can produce vibrations in the mental and vital atmosphere which result in effects, in actions and even in the production of material forms on the physical plane. As a matter of fact, even ordinarily, even daily and hourly we do produce by the word within us thought-vibrations, thought-forms which result in corresponding vital and physical vibrations,... vibration of pure Existence, instinct with the perceptive and originative power of infinite and omnipotent consciousness, shaped by the Mind behind mind into the inevitable word of the Truth of things; out of whatever substance on whatever plane, the form or physical expression emerges by its creative agency. The Supermind using the Word is the creative Logos. The Word has its seed-sounds—suggesting... casts into forms the truth discerned and eventually, descending from plane to plane, reproduces it in the physical form or object created in Matter by etheric sound. Thus we see that the theory of creation by the Word which is the absolute expression of the Truth, and the theory of the material creation by sound-vibration in the ether correspond and are two logical poles of the same idea. They both ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Kena and Other Upanishads

Overman  >  2: Four Pillars

... the levels of Overmind and Supermind must have their physical contact points with a materially incarnated being once they have become actively conscious in that being. Another direct effect of the gradations of being are the multiple bodies or “sheaths” into which our soul has incarnated. There is not only the most obvious sheath, the material body, there is also a vital and a mental sheath (and p... evolved: material, vital and mental. Sri Aurobindo often stressed that the human being is specifically the mental being, the typical embodiment of the mental gradation of the universal manifestation. “The mind pre-eminently is man; he is a mental being and his human perfection grows the more he fulfils the description of the Upanishad, a mental being, Purusha, leader of the life and the body.” 47 ... spending numberless millions of years to evolve a material system of worlds empty of life in the beginning, a lesser but vast enough series of millions to develop an earth on which life can inhabit, a lesser series of millions to make possible and train, raise life itself with but a feeble and restricted apparatus of mind; but once it has found a body, a brain, a living apparatus not perfect, but still ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Overman

Record of Yoga  >  1 - 25 July 1912

... & utthapana maintained, physical ananda insisted on 3) Vijnanam made invariable, powers enforced in detail, samadhi extended. Sahitya was resumed today, the Life Divine commenced; also the systematic study of Magha, an orderly arrangement of material (छ dhatus) for the Structure of Sanscrit Speech and a review of past Prerana records begun. The insistence on physical ananda was not strong, but... of environing material mind in which sensitiveness to the apriyam survives feebly, but Page 82 these touches have only a brief persistence. The second chatusthaya is preparing its liberation in the defective points (kalyanasraddha, faith in the adesha, ishwarabhava, etc), but as yet only the sraddha in the yoga siddhi is decisively fulfilled. The reason in the annamaya mind opposes the perfect... of material will be done today, without interfering with other work. The last suggestion was fulfilled. All the usual work has been done, but the collection of material replaced the usual comment on R.V. Prerana was intermitted. The sixth chatusthaya was rendered vivid & invariable, the fourfold Brahman being seen everywhere in the whole & in each object, very vividly, except when the mind is not ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

Preparing for the Miraculous  >  3: Preparing for the Miraculous

... species beyond the human become a possibility. What such a transformed supramental body on our material planet will be, we cannot even try to imagine, for our mind is too limited. That matter, or the material living cell, can be refined is shown by the human body in its development from the body of the primate. Materialistic science, accepting to examine only the surface processes of things, is... Considering the intricacies it has taken for Homo sapiens to form on a physical basis prepared by his evolutionary predecessors, if the appearance of the supramental being on Earth is a still greater wonder, its realization will be vastly more complex. For what the incorporation of a supramental, i.e. divine consciousness in a material body demands, is that matter be divinized. Only then will the future species... suddenly the clock here [in her room at the Ashram] struck three, and this brought me back violently. There was a sensation of suddenly falling into my body. I came back with a shock but with the full memory… “When I was called back [into her material body] … I had a brief glimpse of myself – of my form in the supramental world, that is. … My upper part, particularly the head, was not much more than a ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Preparing for the Miraculous

Evolution and the Earthly Destiny  >  The Mystery of the Five Senses

... it is through the touch, the sublimated and most intense physical contact, that you have the direct contact with the substance of the Supreme, his very body. For what is Sat up there is Annam here, both are the same identical thing in a dual aspect. Continuing farther, if we go beyond the five senses, we have still another sense, it is mind, the sixth sense as the orthodox Indian view states. In... and it comes only when the mind is not there. But this also, as in the other cases, as in respect of the other senses, is an extreme view. Like the other senses the mind too can be turned inward or upward, made a receptive organ or instrument. When turned round, when it is the Mind of the mind, then there begins to appear the true knowledge. Then even this physical mind remains no more ignorant... constitution of the One Truth, also they are projected outwards to manifest and embody those very elements in the material manifestation and incarnation of the Supreme Divine: A magical accord quickened and attuned To ethereal symphonies the old earthy strings; ... ... it made The body's means the spirit's acolytes. 2 2 Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, Book 1, Canto III Page 229 ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution and the Earthly Destiny

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10  >  The Mystery of the five Senses

... is through the touch, the sublimated and most intense physical contact, that you have the direct contact with the substance of the Supreme, his very body. For what is Sat up there is Annam here, both are the same identical thing in a dual aspect. Continuing farther, if we go beyond the five senses, we have still another sense, it is mind, the sixth sense as the orthodox Indian view states. In... and it comes only when the mind is not there. But this also, as in the other cases, as in respect of the other senses, is an extreme view. Like the other senses the mind too can be turned inward or upward, made a receptive organ or instrument. When turned round, when it is the Mind of the mind, then there begins to appear the true knowledge. Then even this physical mind remains no more ignorant or... constitution of the One Truth, also they are projected outwards to manifest and embody those very elements in the material manifestation and incarnation of the Supreme Divine: A magical accord quickened and attuned To ethereal symphonies the old earthy strings... it made The body's means the spirit's acolytes. Savitri, Book I: Canto 3: P.32 Page 150 ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10

The Mother (biography)  >  18: The New Body

... that this body will be able to transform itself, I see no sign of this. But there is the consciousness, the physical consciousness, the material consciousness which becomes supramentalized. This is the work that is going on. This is what is important.’ 45 (26 April 1972) And this is what she has done by building a supramental body out of the supramentalized elements of her physical body. An important... or out of, her physical body a supramental body in which she existed while still in her physical body. She was existing in two ‘physical’ bodies at the same time, the one in the gross physical and the other in the subtle physical, which in her terminology meant the Supramental. The confirmation came on 24 March 1972: ‘For the first time, early in the morning, I saw myself, my body. I don’t know... are sent away so that the physical is truly left to its own resources.”’ 3 She had said almost literally the same in 1962, which shows the continuation and the deepening of the process. The yoga – and this should always be kept in mind – was taking place in the cells of the body, not in the vital, mental or spiritual parts of the being. More and more cells of her body were being spiritualized, ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother (biography)

Evolution and the Earthly Destiny  >  Upanishadic Symbolism

... bhutva—Aitareya, 1.2.4; Manasascandramah-Ibitl., 1.1.4. 4 Diviva caksuratatam—Rig Veda. Page 351 and the mind. The body has flowered into the mind through the life. The body gives the basis or the material, the life gives power and energy and the mind the directing knowledge. This triune world forms the humanity of man. But there is another aspect hidden behind this apparent nature... personality, the particular organisation of mind and vital based upon a recognisable physical frame. That is the first necessity for the aspiring mortal—for, it is said, the body is the first instrument for the working out of one's life ideal. But man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death lords it... Next, it enters the earth atmosphere and clothes itself with the earth consciousness. Then it waits and calls for the formation of the material body, first by the contribution of the father and then by that of the mother; when these two unite and the material body is formed, the soul incarnates. Apart from the question whether the biological phenomenon described is really a symbol and a cloak ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution and the Earthly Destiny

Letters on Yoga - III  >  Objects

... Chakra symbolises the action of Sri Krishna's force. The chakra is the energy at work and it brings the first opening of the consciousness in the gross physical plane, i.e. of the mental physical, psychic physical, vital physical and the material. Yes, the circular movement and the Chakra are always signs of energy in action, generally creative action. Page 185 Bow and Arrow ... of knowledge. Mirror, Square and Triangle The mirror between the eyebrows indicates that something in the inner mind has become able to reflect the Truth from above (golden light)—a square is a symbol of the truth beyond the mind as a triangle is the symbol of mind, life, body. Incense Stick and Tobacco The incense stick is the symbol of self-consecration. Tobacco is associated with... The bow is a symbol of the force sent out to reach its mark. The arrow is the symbol of the Force which goes to its aim. Gold = the Truth, Yellow = the mind, Green = the vital energy. The arrow of the spiritual Truth using the mind and the vital energy. Key Is it a key you saw? 1 If so the meaning is clear; it is the key to the divine realisation; the Mother is the key because it is ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III

Kena and Other Upanishads  >  The Great Aranyaka: A Commentary on the Brihad Aranyak Upanishad

... subtleties into primitive minds or of replacing barbarous superstitions by civilised mysticism. The Aswamedha or Horse-Sacrifice is, as we shall see, taken as the symbol of a great spiritual advance, an evolutionary movement, almost, out of the dominion of apparently material forces into a higher spiritual freedom. The Horse of the Aswamedha is, to the author, a physical figure representing, like some... flesh constituting materially this body of Time which the Sage attributes to his Horse of the worlds,—by movement in Space its periods are shaped & determined. Therefore we return always to the full idea of the Horse—not as an image of matter, not as a symbol of the unknown supra-material Power in its supra-material reality, but of that Power expressing itself in matter—materially, we might almost say... ought here to understand by it, "substance" or "body", the expression, in itself remarkable, will become even more luminous and striking. Not Matter then, but Time, a mental circumstance, is the body of this force of the material universe whose eye is the sun and his breath the wind. Are we then to infer that the Seer denies the essential materiality of Page 278 matter? does he assert it ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Kena and Other Upanishads

Letters on Yoga - III  >  Aspects of the Cosmic Consciousness

... because neither his vital nor his physical were cleared of certain very serious imperfections. Yes, it is the psychising and purification that have been going on, but you had some openings of contact with the cosmic consciousness which did not prolong themselves when you came into the physical. X 's ascents, I suppose, are more a going out of the body in his mind and vital than any stationing of... There is a rhythm in everything unheard by the physical ear and by that rhythm things exist. The Cosmic Will It is not possible for the individual mind, so long as it remains shut up in its personality, to understand the workings of the Cosmic Will, for the standards made by the personal consciousness are not applicable to them. A cell in the body, if conscious, might also think that the human... The Cosmic Consciousness and the Physical One cannot be high in the cosmic consciousness unless one has taken one's station above the body in a cosmic wideness which envelops the whole being. What you did was to open to it to a certain extent and then, instead of plunging into it at once as some do, your sadhana took the turn of coming down into the physical to prepare it. That is not altogether ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III

The Life Divine  >  Conscious Force

... on of force which is most easily intelligible to our intelligence, moulded as it is by contacts in Matter to which a mind involved in material brain gives the response. The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound. But vibration... starting-point for the true science of Force and its workings; it delivers us definitely from circumscription by the material and from the illusion of the obvious. Materialism indeed insists that, whatever the extension of consciousness, it is a material phenomenon inseparable from our physical organs and not their utiliser but their result. This orthodox contention, however, is no longer able to hold the... since even mental consciousness exists where we see inanimation and inertia, it is not possible that even in material objects a universal subconscient mind is present although unable to act or communicate itself to its surfaces for want of organs. Is the material state an emptiness of consciousness, or is it not rather only a sleep of consciousness—even though from the point of view of evolution an original ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Arguments for the Existence of God  >  Appendix 2

... most easily intelligible to our intelligence, moulded as it is by contacts in Matter to which a mind involved in material brain gives the response. The elementary * 1.3. + II. 2. 8. Page 112 state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon... for the true science of Force and its workings; it delivers us definitely from circumscription by the material and from the illusion of the obvious. Page 117 Materialism indeed insists that, whatever the extension of consciousness, it is a material phenomenon inseparable from our physical organs and not their utiliser but their result. This orthodox contention, however, is no longer able... since even mental consciousness exists where we see inanimation and inertia, it is not possible that even in material objects a universal subconscient mind is present although unable to act or communicate itself to its surfaces for want of organs. Is the material state an emptiness of consciousness, or is it not rather only a sleep of consciousness — even though from the point of view of evolution an ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Arguments for the Existence of God

The Life Divine  >  The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil

... those around us in the physical world, men, beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, germs and animalculae. But if there are invisible cosmic forces physical in their nature that act upon the body of inanimate objects, there is no valid reason why there should not be invisible cosmic forces mental and vital in their nature that act upon his mind and his life force. And if Mind and Life, impersonal forces... the increasing involution of consciousness in separative mind and life or only after the plunge into inconscience. This resolves itself into the question whether falsehood, error, wrong and evil exist originally in the mental and vital planes and are native to mind and life or are proper only to the material manifestation because inflicted on mind and life there by the obscurity arising from the Inconscience... long time held by the human mind as a traditional knowledge that when we go beyond the material plane, these things are found to exist there also in worlds beyond us. There are in these planes of supraphysical experience powers and forms of vital mind and life that seem to be the prephysical foundation of the discordant, defective or perverse forms and powers of life-mind and life-force which we find ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

In the Mother's Light  >  The Mind

... enlighten and modify them by his mind and, sooner or later, succeed in persuading them to seek and surrender to the Light. The mind can purify itself by renouncing its obsession with material objects, detaching itself from selfish vital interests and restraining its own discursive and desultory habits of thought and random vagrancy. Though not a possessor of knowledge, the mind is a seeker of it, and can... that of the human mind, even beyond the region of pure ideas.”² The mind forms thoughts, that is to say, partial and, in most cases, dwarfed and distorted representations of Truth, and transmits them to the vital (prāṇa) which infuses them with its own energy and passes them on to the physical being for materialisation in life. If we follow the ascetic way, we shall reduce the mind to a blank and... delight in vital power and the physical ego in material possession and comfort. But the knowledge it usually seeks is intellectually informative and not spiritually illuminative —flashy scraps and snippets, culled from various sources, which it can proudly store and trot out at will. The egoistic drive is always for self-gratification, whether it is on the physical level or the vital or the mental ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light

A Greater Psychology  >  Towards a Greater Psychology

... but the whole real foundation and regards human mind as only a subtle development from the life and the body. That may be the actual truth of the animal side of human nature and of the human mind in so far as it is limited and conditioned by the physical part of our being. But the whole difference between man and the animal is that the animal mind, as we know it, cannot get for one moment away... Let us say, then, in the tongue of our modern knowledge that the surface man in us is limited by his physical experiences; he knows only what his nervous life in the body brings to his embodied mind; and even of those bringings he knows, he can retain and utilise only so much as his surface mind-sense attends to and consciously remembers; but there is a larger subliminal consciousness within him... sensed by the surface mind and its organs and knows what the surface mind has not learned by its acquisitive thought. That in Page 291 the insect knows the anatomy of its victim; that in the man outwardly insensible not only feels and remembers the action of the surgeon's knife, but knows the appropriate reactions of suffering which were in the physical body inhibited by the anaesthetic ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2  >  Upanishadic Symbolism

... bhūtvā – Aitareya, 1.2.4; Manasascandramāh – Ibid., 1.1.4. 4Divīva caksurātatam – Rig Veda Page 18 and the mind. The body has flowered into the mind through the life. The body gives the basis or the material, the life gives power and energy and the mind the directing knowledge. This triune world forms the humanity of man. But there is another aspect hidden behind this apparent nature... personality, the particular organisation of mind and vital based upon a recognisable physical frame. That is the first necessity for the aspiring mortal-for, it is said, the body is the first instrument for the working out of one's life ideal. But man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death lords it... Next, it enters the earth atmosphere and clothes itself with the earth consciousness. Then it waits and calls for the formation of the material body, first by the contribution of the father and then by that of the mother; when these two unite and the material body is formed, the soul incarnates. Apart from the question whether the biological phenomenon described is really a symbol and a cloak for ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2

Problems of Early Christianity  >  Raised From The Dead Section II

... tion as by a concrete material body whose presence anyone might verify, we have to conceive Jesus' appearances in a special manner. Using Sri Aurobindo's terminology, we may suppose that God's will made Jesus create a replica of his third-heaven body in the substance which Sri Aurobindo puts between the vital plane and the gross-physical: that is, in the subtle-physical matter. A precipitation... of five degrees of our being, the material, the vital, the mental, the ideal, the spiritual or beatific and to each of these grades of our soul there corresponds a grade of our substance, a sheath as it was called in the ancient figurative language. A later psychology found that these five sheaths of our substance were the material of three bodies, gross physical, subtle and causal, in all of which... Aurobindo: 17 "Our substance does not end with the physical body; that is only the earthly pedestal, the terrestrial base, the material starting-point. As there are behind our waking mentality vaster ranges of consciousness subconscient and superconscient to it of which we become sometimes abnormally aware, so there are behind our gross physical being other and subtler grades of substance with a finer ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Problems of Early Christianity

The Life Divine  >  The Ego and the Dualities

... totality of physical Nature as the foundation of human existence in the material universe. We have the emergence of that Conscious Being in an involved and inevitably evolving Life, Mind and Supermind as the condition of our activities; for it is this evolution which has enabled man to appear in Matter and it is this evolution which will enable him progressively to manifest God in the body,—the universal... 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 a conception had been possible for the Ape-mind, it... redemption comes by the recovery of the universal in the individual and of the spiritual term in the physical consciousness. Then alone the soul in Nature can be allowed to partake of the fruit of the tree of life and be as the Divine and live for ever. For then only can the purpose of its descent into material consciousness be accomplished, when the knowledge of good and evil, joy and suffering, life and ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3  >  Man the Prototype

... confined to the gross physical form of an object, even the most realistic artist does not hold up the mirror to Nature in that sense: he goes behind and sees the inner contour, the subtle figuration that underlies the external volume and mass. It is that that is beautiful and harmonious and significant, and it is that which the artist endeavours to bring out and fix in a system or body of lines and colours... real objects that represent and incarnate them. Not only so. Our limited mind and senses are accustomed to view and recognise individuals alone as persons. But there are group personalities too. Thus each species has a generic personality, a consciousness and an ideal or intrinsic form also: the individuals on the physical plane are its various incarnations, projections and formations. Old Plato was... have some idea of what it is like by taking recourse to the distinction that Greek philosophers used to make between the formal and the material cause of things. The prototype is the formal reality hidden and imbedded Page 179 in the material reality of an object. The essential form is made of the original configuration of primary vibrations that later on consolidate and become ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3

Questions and Answers (1954)  >  8 September 1954

... are the substance of your body. It is not exactly matter, the mind is not quite material, but it is the very thing of which the mind is made. If there were no mental substance, there would be no mental being. It would be only a vibration; and even a vibration needs a medium to manifest itself. But if your body were not made of material substance, you wouldn't have a body. This is what is called substance... that people usually think that mind is just a mode of activity, whereas there is a mental substance as there is a vital Page 306 substance and physical substance. And as there is a substance, there is a corresponding world with an autonomous existence, that is to say, there can be a mind without any physical support. The physical body may disappear and the mind can continue to exist. It is... are the forces of the lower mental, vital and physical nature. Behind them are adverse powers of the mental, vital and subtle physical worlds. These can be dealt with only after the mind and heart have become one-pointed and concentrated in the single aspiration to the Divine." So?... Sweet Mother, what are the adverse powers of the subtle physical? What are the adverse forces? There are ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1954)

The Life Divine  >  The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature

... direction and becomes a cell of the mass body moved by the collective will or idea or the mass impulse. He has to stand apart, affirm his separate reality in the whole, his own mind emerging from the common mentality, his own life distinguishing itself in the common life uniformity, even as his body has developed something unique and recognisable in the common physicality. He has, even, in the end to retire... can become spiritually one with all; if he tries to achieve that oneness in the mind, in the vital, in the physical and has not yet a sufficiently strong individuality, he may be overpowered by the mass consciousness and lose his soul fulfilment, his mind fulfilment, his life fulfilment, become only a cell of the mass body. The collective being may then become strong and dominant, but it is likely to... nor is he the Eternal and the All; therefore by himself he cannot be the explanation of the cosmos of which his mind, life and body are so evidently an infinitesimal detail. The visible cosmos too, he finds, is not sufficient to itself, nor does it explain itself even by its unseen material forces; for there is too much that he finds both in the world and in himself which is beyond them and of which ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Supermind and the Life Divine

... of a spiritual existence. But this again could not be if mind, life and body were not taken up and transformed by a state of being and a force of being superior to them, a power of Supermind as much above our incomplete mental nature as that is above the nature of animal life and animated Matter, as it is immeasurably above the mere material nature. The Supermind is in its very essence a truth-... embodied being upon earth would have to rise out of the domination over it of its veils of mind, life and body into the full consciousness and possession of its spiritual reality, and its nature also would have to be lifted out of the consciousness and power of consciousness proper to a mental, vital and physical being into the greater consciousness and greater power of being and the larger and freer... intuition with an uncertain and disputed grasp, there could emerge Page 565 a true mind liberated and capable of the free and utmost perfection of itself and its instruments, a life governed by the free and illumined mind, a body responsive to the light and able to carry out all that the free mind and will could demand of it. This change might happen not only in the few, but extend and generalise ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Perspectives of Savitri - Part 2  >  The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

... and skies, Of beings less circumscribed than brief-lived men And subtler bodies than these passing frames, Objects too fine for our material grasp, Acts vibrant with a superhuman light. 9 Sight in the Spiritual Mind Planes To recapitulate: Once we cross the confines of the normal mind of man, we meet on our ascending climb a series of hierarchised luminous planes... Spirit in Mind, Life and Body. (Note: This whole section" Hemispheres of Existence" is a free adaptation of various passages from Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and Letters on Yoga.) Here are just a few verses from Savitri referring to this divine Gnosis, the Supermind: Now mind is all and its uncertain ray, Mind is the leader of the body and life... do things physically seen to the physical eye. "It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality... and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; ...

R. Y. Deshpande   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Perspectives of Savitri - Part 2

Evolution and the Earthly Destiny  >  Consciousness as Energy

... generous liberal view, chiefly decorative elements in human society. Mind-energy can draw dream pictures, beautiful perhaps, but inane; it is only muscular energy that gives a living and material body—a local habitation and a name— to what otherwise would be airy nothing. Energy, however, is not merely either muscular (physical) or cerebral. There are energies subtler than thought and yet more... two is not usually understood. In reality, however, thought or idea is a form of energy-action in the mind and mind is only one field or grade—not the most dynamic nor direct or immediate—among many for the play of consciousness, as I have already said. Mind energy, life energy, physical or material energy are various forms and stages in the expression of consciousness- energy (Chit-Tapas). The nature... over the universal power. All other energies—visible, tangible, concretised and canalised—are particular formations and Page 60 embodiments of this mother energy. Even the most physical and material energies—mechanical, electrical, nervous, etc.— .—are all derivatives and lesser potentials of this fount and origin. The mastery of the inner vital energy is the whole secret of what is known ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution and the Earthly Destiny

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3  >  Consciousness as Energy

... generous liberal view, chiefly decorative elements in human society. Mind-energy can draw dream pictures, beautiful perhaps, but inane; it is only muscular energy that gives a living and material body – a local habitation and a name­ – to what otherwise would be airy nothing. Energy, however, is not merely either muscular (physical) or cerebral. There are energies subtler than thought and yet more... is not usually understood. In reality, however, thought or idea is a form of energy-action in the mind and mind is only one field or grade – not the most dynamic nor direct or immediate­ – among many for the play of consciousness, as I have already said. Mind energy, life energy, physical or material energy are various forms and stages in the expression of consciousness­ energy (Chit-Tapas). The nature... universal power. All other energies – visible, tangible, concretised and canalised – are particular formations and Page 142 embodiments of till, mother energy. Even the mo", physical and material energies – mechanical, electrical, nervous, etc. ­-are all derivatives and lesser potentials of this fount and origin. The mastery of the inner vital energy is the whole secret of what is known ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3

Visions-Experiences-Interview  >  Flood of Grace and Golden Light

... golden red Light of Truth is verily the concrete physical form of the highest supreme consciousness. The descending Golden Light becomes the golden red Light when reaching into matter and the material world and the material body. The phenomenal universe which is derived and born from the supreme eternal Truth of Bliss, Light and Peace moves to reach and become the Truth of Bliss, Light and Peace... cells of the body, into the bones, muscles, tissues, brain and nerves, blood and its cells, skin and even the hairs, from the root to the end, and made them appear golden with a tinge of red. The whole body appeared a beautiful golden red body. I saw even the Sun of golden red Light rising up over the earthly sky, spreading its golden red Light of Truth into the whole material earth. The golden... when I entered into my body through the Brahmarandhra. I hear the Omkara-nada vibrating in me and, along with it, the Golden Truth-Light infiltrates into my adhara. The heart is filled with the consciousness of Grace which is indeed the Golden Light of Grace. The ego has been completely effaced. The golden Light of Truth also descended into me, into my mind, life and body and made them golden ...

Gangadhar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Visions-Experiences-Interview

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7  >  In Her Company

... here at this place was the Divine himself or herself, in a physical body. Nowhere else they could have this vision, this direct contact; that was what prompted them to come here. We had had, poor human creatures, this great opportunity for years. I have always spoken of it, the presence of Page 3 the Divine in a physical body. Even if you did not know, something in you knew and the... the path, the help is there; apart from the helpful person and forces accompanying you there is the supreme unfailing help from the Mother. The Divine came to us in the material body to help us. She has withdrawn, taken away the body outwardly, but the help She has left with us is there almost in the same way as before. In this age, the saints say, the Divine is near to us, quite near. When we were... the age of tapasya , one had to be a tapasvi to find God and reach him. But now it is different. God has come down to us and lodged himself in the material body. He continues to be in the earth atmosphere, but not very far from the material. In our childhood we used to hear that in Kali the practice of religion or spirituality has been made easy by the Divine Grace in view of man's frailty. In ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7

Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  On Books

... to-day a vaster field and more ample material than the Greeks had; but in the handling of it the present-day mind is not superior to the Greek mind in its handling of its limited material. Disciple : Writing about Plato, Emerson says that he is the epitome of the European mind for the last 2000 years. Sri Aurobindo : It is true; – the European mind got every- thing and owes everything... cidākāśa , which extends to infinity, and our material space is only a result of it. So time also is extension of Brahman in movement. You can see that time and space both are not the same for man every time. When your mind travels from Calcutta to London it is not in the material space and not in the time that you feel with the outer mind. It is in the mind itself that you move. Space also is a... being most purely reflects the Divine in the lower triplicity of mind, life and body. There are four higher levels : Sat, Chit, Ananda and Vijnana; they are in Knowledge while below in the three levels – mind, life and body – there is a mixture of Ignorance and knowledge. The psychic being is behind these three – mind, life and body; it is most open to the higher Truth; that is why it is indispensable ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Mother’s Agenda 1963  >  August 3, 1963

... Peace. It comes, and not only does it come, it seems to be firmly established. But if in that rest something suddenly flags and the old mental activity starts up (an activity of the mind of the cells, the most material mind), immediately that consciousness comes out of its rest with a jerk : "Ah, no! Not that, not that, not that!" Instantly the mental activity is stopped, and there is an aspiration for... August August Mother’s Agenda 1963 August 3, 1963 Physical Matter, physical substance—the very elementary consciousness that's in physical substance—has been so ill-treated (since man's presence on earth, I suppose, because before man, there probably wasn't enough self-consciousness to be aware of being ill-treated; the... ything, everything became stories: all the work, all that had to be done. But I stopped it completely, completely, as a dangerous thing—it gives a great material power (that's probably why the Swami asked you to do it), what it gives is a material power, but it's VERY bad, it falsifies all that comes from above. ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1963

Questions and Answers (1954)  >  28 July 1954

... "The physical is fixed, Page 257 it is a nuisance; it lacks plasticity, it lacks suppleness, it hasn't that fluidity which can enable us to merge into the Divine." But this was absolutely necessary, for without this... if you simply went out of your body (most of you can't do it because the vital being is hardly more individualised than the physical), if you came out of your body and went... which, when possessed and controlled, almost automatically brings along these more material expressions of money. And that is a kind of power. ( Silence ) It is a power of attracting certain very material vibrations, which has a capacity for utilisation that increases its strength—which is like the action of physical exercise, you see—it increases its strength through utilisation. For example, if... movements, by this constant action, the power increases—the power of attraction, a certain power of organisation also. That is to say, even somebody who has no physical means, who is not in those material circumstances where he could materially handle money, if he is in possession of this force, he can make it act, make it circulate, and if ever he finds it necessary, receives from it as much power as ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1954)

Mother or The New Species - II  >  8: The Triple End

... to do—somewhat brutally. And that is precisely the characteristic of the new Power at work in the world: it works materially, it creates the circumstances that compel our action. When a "problem" or a difficulty or a hesitation arises, it never gives a mental answer: it gives a physical answer, through facts and circumstances. It is a Power that acts exclusively and overwhelmingly at the level of naked... unthinkable is the transition from one to the other, more so than the reality of a body animated by supramental energies. That to live we depend on the circulation of blood, and on food to have blood, and so on and so forth, with everything this entails—what a terrible limitation and slavery! As long as material life depends on this kind of things, it is obvious we won't be able to divinize our... and taller, but that She was not materially like that. "Why didn't you come as you really are?" And Mother quite typically also replied, Had I not come as you are, I would never have been able to be close to you and tell you: "Become what I am. " 14 But of course! The world does not need to be struck down by a miracle, even by the miracle of one glorious body: it needs to find its own miracle ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

Education For Character Development  >  Methods of Education for Character Development

... training the body to feel and sense the psychic presence within and to learn to obey its governance. The emphasis on the development of strength, suppleness, calm, quiet, poise, grace and beauty in physical education, whether done by Yogic Asanas or by other methods of physical culture, such as games and sports, or Japanese Judo and similar exercises, will ensure the contact of the body with the psychic... role that physical education can play in the development of character has not been sufficiently understood. In our country, physical education has been neglected almost completely Page 29 and this neglect is one of the causes of the low morale of the people. It is, therefore, necessary to bring forth the value of physical education not only in regard to the fitness of the body but also... realisation. The body by its nature is a docile and faithful instrument. But it is very often misused by the mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, and by the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations. It is these which are the cause of bodily fatigue, exhaustion and disease. The body must therefore be free from the tyranny of the mind and of the vital; and this ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Education For Character Development

The Psychic Being  >  Influence and Action of the Psychic

... Nature; but this action is occult and not obtruded on the surface. In the early material and vital stages of the evolution of being there is indeed no consciousness of soul; there are psychic activities, but the instrumentation, the form of these activities are vital and physical,—or mental when the mind is active. For even the mind, so long as it is primitive or is developed but still too external, does... on Himself and the Ashram: Admission to the Ashram What you describe is the psychic fire, agni pāvaka , which burns in the deeper heart and from there is lighted in the mind, the vital and the physical body. In the mind Agni creates a light of intuitive perception and discrimination which sees at once what is the true vision or idea and the wrong vision or idea, the true feeling and the wrong... tact 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. ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Psychic Being

Aspects of Sri Aurobindo  >  An Aurobindonian christian

... explicit about the basic divergence even where an apparent similarity may be discerned. He 22 speaks of "the transformation of the whole physical mind, vital, material nature — not by imposing siddhis [= abnormal faculties] on them, but by creating a new physical nature which is to be the habitation of the supramental being in a new evolution." And he continues: "I am not aware that this has been done... " — and then the following "some yogis have achieved it, I believe". His meaning is not quite clear. What "this achievement" signifies is most probably "the transformation of the whole physical mind, vital, material nature" spoken of in the other letter, as a result of "siddhis" imposed by "mental or vital occult power". The term "transformation" can cover many Yogic changes. A supramental transformation... Chaitanya of Ramalingam, whatever physical transformation they may have gone through is quite irrelevant to the aim of the supramentalisation of the body. Their new body was either a non-physical or subtle physical body not adapted for life on the earth. If it were not so, they would not have disappeared..." Another letter 21 says: "The idea of a transformation of the body occurs in different traditions ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Aspects of Sri Aurobindo

The Riddle of This World  >  The Ascending And the Descending Movement

... down to the most physical and for the bringing down of the divine consciousness into earth matter. When it not only touches the psychic but fuses with the higher mind, it is able to come into contact with and obey a greater light and knowledge. Ordinarily, the vital is either moved by the human mind and governed by its more or less ignorant dictates, or takes violent hold of this mind and uses it for... is the indispensable instrument for all action of the Divine Power on the material world and the physical nature. It is therefore only when this vital is transformed and made a pure and strong instrument of the Divine Shakti, that there can be a divine life. Then only can there be-a successful transformation of the physical nature or a free perfected divine action on the external world; for with our... in this Yoga the ascent to the Divine which it has in common with other paths of Yoga is not enough; there must be too a descent of the Divine to transform all the energies of the mind, life and body. November 28, 1929 Page 15 ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Riddle of This World

The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Integral Surrender

... paeans to the self- fulfilling Will of the Divine. THE SURRENDER OF THE BODY The surrender of the body means a surrender of all its movements to the divine Mother. It will not do, in the Integral Yoga, to reduce the action of the body to a minimum and limit it only to the bare maintenance of the physical frame, or to social or humanitarian beneficence, or to the performance of some... action of our life, if it is dispassionately scrutinised, will be found to be shot through with the threads of desire, whether it assumes physical forms, vital forms or mental. In the body it manifests as hunger and thirst, which engross and enslave our physical consciousness; and in the vital it manifests as turbulent lusts and passions, clamorous cravings and insatiate ambitions, that toss and torment... with this aspiring surrender of the body and its actions, there must go a thorough rejection of the "physical nature's stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, t mas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda ¹. The Words of the Mother. Page 114 may establish itself in a body growing always more divine...."¹ We ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

Mother’s Agenda 1964  >  August 26, 1964

... level, but on the physical level it's not true. On the physical level, it's a pure waste. The mind and vital are another affair, that's not interesting: we have known for a very long time that their life doesn't depend on the body—it depends on the body only in order to manifest. That's another affair. I am Page 175 speaking of the body, that's what interests me: the body's cells. Well,... naturally—all that is conscious remains conscious, eternally conscious—but for the cells of the body, the work has to be done all over again. At the most, there might be a greater new ability. How? When you are born again, your mind is more developed, your vital is more developed; well, the physical consciousness will be more capable of doing the work again. Provided dust retains consc... passed on to another body—unless you create another body. That is to say, before this body dissolves, a new creation should be there. Yes, either your own body should be transformed, or else you should create another body in some other way. But during your lifetime. I am perfectly convinced of that. What is said is all very well for the mind and vital, because the mind and vital are imm ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1964

Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision  >  Psychology

... advocates that a mental process must be taken as a whole, though it may allow analysis to be used as a supplementary method. To this school psychology is a study of psycho-physical organism of the human individual. According to it mind and body form one whole and are not disparate entities. As an illustration of its application we find a new explanation of perception of motion. Movement, it affirms, is not... but the " observer " also is constantly changing. The latest development in physical sciences tends to show that mind, and therefore subjectivity, cannot be altogether kept out from the field of physical sciences. In fact, after all the scientific observations have been made and the- proofs given, it is the mind that is at last called in to make the final choice of the conclusions. The same... of the subject. But the modern mind-which means European mind-is not prepared to accept the scientific nature of Indian psychology. To it all the Indian systems are empirical at their best. Modern psychology on the contrary claims to be scientific, it is supposed to be not empirical. It has got rid of the " soul " which it characterises to be a meta-physical entity in the field of psychology introduced ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision

A Greater Psychology  >  Sri Aurobindo on Human Development: a Transpersonal Perspective

... towards "a progressive self-manifestation of the Spirit in a material universe" 14 is characterised by a triple process: first, an evolution of increasingly more complex forms of Matter which can embody and express increasingly greater powers of consciousness; this is the physical aspect of evolution; secondly, after the emergence of Mind, a spiritual evolution consisting in an ascent towards pr... formation devised by the Consciousness-Force to hold together its action in the body, life and mind in order to aid in centralising the experiences of the outer consciousness, giving one a sense of a separate individuality which is mistaken for one's true self. The ego, which is felt as the "I", is thus a physical, vital and mental formation. It disappears when the true self is discovered. ... plane of Life above the material universe that assisted the emergence of life from Matter in which life already lay involved. It is a pressure from the Mind-plane that helped the emergence of mind which was already there involved in Life and Matter. It is the pressure of the spiritual worlds above Mind which is now preparing the manifestation of the Spirit yet slumbering in Mind, Life and Matter. The ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

The Destiny of the Body  >  The Mystery of Life and Death

... The Destiny of the Body Chapter IX The Mystery of Life and Death Birth is the first spiritual mystery of the physical universe, death is the second which gives its double point of perplexity to the mystery of birth; for life, which would otherwise be a self-evident fact of existence, becomes itself a mystery by virtue... progressive change alone can make it possible that death would no more be inevitable." 1 But since, due to reasons that we shall presently explore, this progressive change of the body and the physical being of man, responding fully to the demands made upon it by the divine Inhabitant in His infinitely progressive self-becoming, could not be so far effectuated, death has been put forward... securely and permanently in the mind, and as far as possible, one must identify one's consciousness with the life everlasting that is independent of any form but manifests itself in all forms. This gives the indispensable psychological basis from where to face the problem... "Life then does not die; but the forms are dissolved, and it is this dissolution that physical consciousness fears. And ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

The Hidden Forces of Life  >  Outside Suggestions and Vibrations

... first in the mental field, then becomes vital, then physical. I want to make it clear that it is not a question of the pure mind here, but of the physical mind; for in the physical consciousness itself there is a mental activity, a vital activity and a purely material activity, and all that takes place in your physical consciousness, in your body consciousness and bodily activity, penetrates first... extends far beyond the body; we have seen that even the subtle physical which is yet material pared with the vital being and in certain conditions almost visible, extends at times considerably beyond the visible limits of the physical body. This subtle physical is constituted of active vibrations which enter into contact or mingle with the vibrations of the subtle physical of others, and this reciprocal... use of you—you… what you call “yourself”, that is to say, your body; for apparently (I say apparently) it is something separate from your neighbour’s body. But that is only an optical illusion, because in fact all the time there are what may be called particles, even physical particles, like a sort of radiation which comes out of the body and gets mixed with others; and because of this, when one is very ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Hidden Forces of Life

Education and the Aim of human life  >  The Drawing of the New Age

... and full spiritual aim in society will regard man not as a mind, a life and a body, but as a soul incarnated for a divine fulfilment upon earth, not only in heavens beyond. which after all it need not have left if it had no divine business here in the world of physical, vital and mental nature. It will therefore regard the life, mind and body neither as ends in themselves, sufficient for their own s... of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled... let this new consciousness transform their life and nature. Then only can be removed the obstacles that block the way and humanity enter into a new creative age of civilization. No material prosperity, no advance of physical science, no religious revival, no social revolution can replace the necessary and Page 35 inevitable spiritual transformation. In his major works. The ...

Pavitra   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Education and the Aim of human life

Letters on Yoga - I  >  The Problem of Suffering and Evil

... "elemental" who had attained to the physical mind had been present at the different stages of the earth-history he would have argued like that. When only matter was there and there was no life, if told that there would soon be life on earth embodied in matter, he would have cried out, "What is that? It is impossible, it cannot be done. Life is possible only in a subtle body. It has never been and never will... cannot be done. That reasoning has not much value. It is the usual logic of the physical intellect which is bound by what is and believes that to be definitive. It has been used against all new or yet unaccomplished ideas or achievements and, when they have been accomplished, still urged against their successors. The physical mind always comes in with its fixed line Page 263 of the present and... Non-Existence? There is at least the possibility, there comes at a certain point the certitude that there is a far greater consciousness than what we call Mind, and that by ascending the ladder still farther we can find a point at which the hold of the material Inconscience, the vital and mental Ignorance ceases; a principle of consciousness becomes capable of manifestation which liberates not partially, not ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  Varieties of Yoga

... activities arise, and it seeks, even as Hathayoga with its physical material, first to purify and to tranquillise."¹ When the mind has been quieted, its passions quelled to a certain extent, and its aggressive egoism relentlessly discouraged, Râjayoga resorts to Asana and Prânâyâma almost for the same purpose as does Hathayoga: for stilling the body, purifying the nervous system and controlling the ... Hathayoga is founded on the truth that the human body is not "a mass of living matter, but a mystic bridge between the spiritual and the physical being".¹ It houses powers and energies which, once properly quickened and marshalled, can achieve the release of the human mind' and the soul from the cramping hold of Matter. The very body, which is the cause of man's bondage to ignorance and... unexplored countries of the being. Especially, its aim of physical transformation is an original aim of far-reaching consequences, which makes it descend into the inconscient and subconscient abysses in. order to purify and transform the human body, the life- energy and the physical consciousness of man at their very roots. It considers the body as a potential tabernacle of the unveiled Godhead, and ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Sex

... Page 515 things is that they have to be extruded outside the individual consciousness. Rejected by the mind and higher vital, they still try to hold on to the lower vital and physical. Rejected from the lower vital, they still hold the body by a physical desire. Rejected from the body, they retire into the environmental consciousness (sometimes the subconscient also, rising in dreams)—I mean... imagination is the last and most physical form—it often remains when the others have gone. The body dull and the mind half awake is indeed what gives it its opportunity. But if it is only for a few minutes and leaves no after effect, then the tendency ought to disappear after a time. Your dreams were mostly on the vital physical plane. There if there is any physical contact of a sexual or other... of the material creation which it alone can transform. Seek the Divine Love through the only gate through which it will consent to enter, the gate of the psychic being, and cast away the lower vital error. Page 500 The transformation of the sex-centre and its energy is needed for the physical siddhi; for this energy is the support in the body of all the mental, vital and physical forces ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV

Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body  >  Physical Education in Ancient India

... was the secret of this superhuman force of body and mind which we see pulsating in the heroes of Ramayana and Mahabharata? What was, it that stood behind a civilization which produced such characters? Without a great and unique discipline involving a perfect education of body, soul and mind, this would have been impossible. We will see later how physical education was an integral part of the educational... importance of the body to the spirit and of the spirit to the body were not worked out. As a result, in the course of history, India tended to neglect bodily life. The time has come now when the right balance of the body and the spirit should be achieved under a new ideal of divine life in a divine body. ___________________________ This essay is based on the material contained... Therefore knowledge about body and spirit and methods appropriate to perfection of body and spirit could evolve in India. Could this have happened in an environment generally indifferent to physical exercises and physical education? We should remember the heroes that India gave to herself who rep resent not only great qualities of courage and valour but also of physical strength and excellence ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1  >  Man and the Gods

... character of the human consciousness. In another view, however, the tables are turned and the opposite appears as the truth. Man, for example., has a physical body and nothing is more definite and fixed and rigid than this material sheath. The gods have no body, but they have a form which is supple and changeful, not hard and crystallised like the human figure. Gods, we said, are cosmic forces – lines (or... frame, we have said, is more fixed and rigid, being made of the material substance. It has not evidently the variability of the body of a god. And yet there is a deeper mystery: the human body is not or need not be so inflexible as it appears to be or as it usually is. It has considerable plastic capacities. We would say that the human body holds a marvellous juste milieu. By its solid concreteness... second line that the Psyche can adopt is to come down or remain upon earth and take a share in the fulfilment of the Divine Purpose in the world. That purpose is the transformation of the physical, making the material an embodiment of the divine Light and Power and Bliss and Immortality. A third development also may take place; this is not strictly speaking normal, not the logical and inevitable ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II  >  The Declaration of a True Slave of God

... d and that they no longer need my physical intervention to do their work well. It is enough that my presence among them is an inspiration and guide for them to keep a clear vision of the goal and not to go astray on the way. This leads quite naturally to a physical withdrawal into oneself so as to concentrate materially upon the work of transformation of the body. I can now leave them externally to... taken a physical body with the intention of transforming that body and making of it a fit instrument for His manifestation upon earth. But it is a fact also that, until now, He has failed to do so and for one reason or another. He had always to leave that physical body with the work of transformation unfinished. In order that the Divine may keep till a total transformation takes place, the body through... required conditions of harmony, strength, sincerity, endurance, unselfishness and poise in the physical, should consider the body in which the Divine incarnates, not only as the most important thing, but as the thing exclusively important, more important than the Divine's work itself, or rather that this body should become for him the symbol and the concretisation of the Divine's work upon earth. 3 ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II

The Life Divine  >  Memory, Ego and Self-Experience

... upon its own mental consciousness, generates impressions and changes in its mental experience and mental body, because only through the mind can it be aware of its changing physical habitation and its changing world-experience. Therefore there is, as well as a shifting or change of Time-point and Space-field, a constant modifying change of the sum of circumstances experienced in Time and Space and as... in its becomings. This development continues until the coordinating mind of knowledge and mind of will are fully able to possess and use all the material of self-experience. Such at least is the process of evolution as we see it governing the development of Mind out of the self-absorbed and apparently mindless energy in the material world. The ego-sense is another device of mental Ignorance by which... not for the co-ordinating mind, he would not at all accept his past as belonging to the person he now is, although he remembers perfectly well that it was in the same form of body and same field of mind-substance that it occurred. Mind-sense is the basis, memory the thread on which experiences are strung by the self-experiencing mind: but it is the co-ordinating faculty of mind which, relating together ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8  >  Regarding the Body

... effort, the concentration, the inner vision in a continued manner. You have to enter into the disposition of the cells, your inner physical organisation if the body is to answer to the force that descends. First of all, you must be conscious of your physical cells, you must know their different functions, the degree of receptivity in each, which of them are in good condition and which are not... when the body needs it. It may be you are not unaware at times of this exact need. But to know properly demands a discipline, continuous labour for years perhaps. Years indeed you require when it is a matter of control over your mind, of attaining a consciousness subtle enough to enable you to come in contact with the elements of transformation and progress, to know how to dose for your body the exact... exact amount of physical effort, material activity, expenditure and reception of energy, how to Page 86 secure the proportion between what is received and what is given out, how to utilise energy to reestablish equilibrium that was broken in order to push forward new cells that were lagging behind and then how to build up conditions for a further step in upward progress to be possible ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8

The Human Cycle  >  Civilisation and Culture

... often the half-civilised physical and vital barbarian by his unintelligent attachment to the life of the body, the life of the vital needs and impulses and the ideal of the merely domestic and economic human animal; but essentially and commonly he is the mental barbarian, the average sensational man. That is to say, his mental life is that of the lower substratum of the mind, the life of the senses... absorption upon Matter and Life and his own body and vital existence. This is necessary to the largeness of her purpose in him. His first natural absorption in the body and the life is narrow and unintelligent; as his intelligence and mental force increase, he disengages himself to some extent, is able to mount higher, but is still tied to his vital and material roots by need and desire and has to return... Chapter IX Civilisation and Culture Nature starts from Matter, develops out of it its hidden Life, releases out of involution in life all the crude material of Mind and, when she is ready, turns Mind upon itself and upon Life and Matter in a great mental effort to understand all three in their phenomena, their obvious action, their secret laws, their normal and abnormal p ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7  >  Some Dates

... this truth that has come forward in our consciousness, make it real on the physical plane, embody it in our external activity: in other words whatever you do you do the truth, whatever you speak you speak the truth; the Truth first appears in your mind, in your mental consciousness, then it realises itself in your physical activity. Number seven has a special meaning. The number seven gives the scheme... and the Divine Delight. Below in the lower half there is the mind, the vital and the body, – manas, prana and anna. Three above, three below, in between there is another joining the two, another principle or world, it is the Supermind, Mahas. The three higher worlds are invisible, beyond the normal consciousness; they become visible mind concrete when they pass through the Page 34 ... hemisphere. Now these are the seven principles of creation. Manifestation means the expression of the higher worlds, the supreme triple principles of Sat-Chit-Ananda in the lower triple principle of mind, life, body through the intermediary Supermind. Mahas-Supermind is the manifestation, the beginning of the creation and realisatton comes when the higher trinity is realised here below and embodied in the ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7

Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine  >  The Problem of Life

... In the mind, there is a surface mind, the ego and so on, and the subliminal Page 215 self. In the life also, there is an outer vital personality and an inner vital being, you can say, a subliminal vital being. There is a subtle physical body behind this gross physical body. Desire-soul is the projection of the psychic being in this world of ignorance—in the mind, life and body. When... the Page 214 self of man, not mind, life or body. The mental being in man is not his true being. Mind is his instrument. The true human being is- not the life-being or the vital-being in man. The true human being is not the body or force at work in the physical being. The true human being is a psychic being which uses mind, life and body as its instruments and is itself a projection... spontaneously, without making a conscious effort, to rise from the third to the fourth status. The second difficulty is this formula of our mind and life and body separated from universal life. Man as mind, life and body, or man the mental, the vital, and the physical being, is separated from the universal. First, he does not know himself fully. He is not conscious Page 210 of the whole ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine

Record of Yoga  >  1 - 31 January 1913

... and caveat; for it is growing evident that something will be done through this yantra in the field of life, although the material equipment seems to be entirely lacking. It is this lack of material equipment which is the real obstacle to perfect faith; the slowness of the physical siddhi is only an accessory cause of hesitation and would have no force if the equipment were given. These movements have... the direction, first, of abundance, secondly, of the recovery of the old activities that have been lost by the action of the Vritras, thirdly, of the perfection of their materials. Dream at night was frequently confused. The physical siddhi suffered a slight reaction. 18 January 1913 Trikaldrishti, that there would be news of an arrest today in Comilla; confirmed, but there were two arrests. Also... uninterruptedly in possession of the sthula body. It subsided for a time at mealtime without actually disappearing, but, now, immediately after meals, is again active. It continues even when walking or absorbed in other work or thought, but is less firm then and does not attain to the full intensity. Lipi in the morning attained its full spontaneous materiality and is in the course of attaining its full ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

The Renaissance in India  >  Indian Art - 4

... depends upon is a likeness to the creations of physical Nature and their intellectual, emotional and aesthetic significances, and his work of line and wave of colour are meant to embody the flow of this vision. The method of this art is always a transcript from the visible world with such necessary transmutation as the aesthetic mind imposes on its materials. At the lowest to illustrate, at the highest... soul to itself, the reproduction of the subtle embodiment which is the basis of the physical embodiment, the purer and finer subtle body of an object which is the very expression of its own essential nature, svabhāva . The means by which this effect is produced is characteristic of the inward vision of the Indian mind. It is done by a bold and firm insistence on the pure and strong outline and a total... garb of the spirit to the eye, but not the superfluous physicality which he carries with him as his burden. It is the ideal psychical figure and body of man and woman that is before us in its charm and beauty. The filling in of the line is done in another way; it is effected by a disposition of pure masses, a design and coloured wave-flow of the body, bhaṅga , a simplicity of content that enables the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Renaissance in India

Mother’s Agenda 1965  >  July 21, 1965

... some hope. I had always been under the impression of what Sri Aurobindo said: "This instrument [the physical mind] is useless, it can only Page 187 be got rid of...." 2 It was very difficult to get rid of it because it was so intimately linked to the aggregate of the physical body and its present form... it was difficult; and when I tried and a deeper consciousness tried to manifest... that this material mind, the mind of the cells, will be transformed. This is good news! Page 184 Isn't it! I am quite astonished. I noticed it yesterday or the day before. I wasn't well, anyway things weren't pleasant, and all of a sudden, here was all this mind saying a prayer. A prayer... you know how I used to say prayers before, in Prayers and Meditations : it was the Mind saying... it's becoming a little heavy going; and there I was, sitting, when all of a sudden, all this straightened up like a flame, oh, in a great intensity, and then it was as if this body-mind, on behalf of the body (it was the body beginning to be mentalized), were saying a prayer... ( Mother looks for a note ) And it very much has the sense of the oneness of Matter (this has been very strong for a long, ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1965

Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960  >  September 20, 1960

... Page 417 Along the way, I once went down into this physical mind for awhile to try to set it right, to organize it a little (it was done rather quickly, I didn't stay there long). So when I went inside X, I saw ... It was rather curious, for it's the opposite of the method we follow. In his material consciousness (physical and vital), he has trained himself to be impersonal, open, limitless... It looked like a pyramid; the smaller cubes formed a kind of base, the lower part of which faded into something cloudy, and then this passed imperceptibly downwards to a more material realm, or in other words, the physical mind. The cube on top was the largest and most luminous, and the least yielding—even inflexible, you could say. The others were somewhat less defined, and at the bottom it was very... help me. So, when I identified with him the other day during our meditation, I realized that he wanted to give silence, control and perfect peace to the physical mind. My own 'trick,' if you will, is to have as little relationship with the physical mind as possible, to go up above and stay there—this ( Mother indicates her forehead ), silent, motionless, turned upwards, while That ( gesture above the ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960

Growing up with the Mother  >  Questions and Answers on Sadhana and Life

... no easier than the mastery of the physical world; and everyone knows how much time and effort are needed merely to learn the things indispensable for leading one’s life properly, not to speak of “mastery”, which is truly something exceptional on earth. * * * Sweet Mother, What is Supernature? Supernature is the Nature superior to material or physical Nature—what we usually call “Nature”... balcony above Rue Saint Gilles, and all those standing below were able to have Her darshan . What is meant by the “silence of the physical consciousness”* and how can one remain in this silence? The physical consciousness is not only the consciousness of our body, but of all that surrounds us as well, all that we perceive with our senses. It is a sort of apparatus for recording and transmission... inconscience. We too carry it in ourselves, in the substance of our body, since the substance of our body is the same as that of the earth. But by evolution, this sleeping and hidden consciousness gradually awakens through the vegetal and animal kingdoms, and in them subconscience begins; this subconscience, with the appearance of mind in man, culminates in consciousness. This consciousness likewise ...

Tara Jauhar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Growing up with the Mother

The Indian Spirit and the World's Future  >  The Mystical and the Misty: An Answer to Some Queries about Sri Aurobindo

... the mind, the life-force and even the body would become divinised, fulfilling Nature's evolutionary labour and establishing on earth a perfect individual and collective existence manifesting in Time ever-new riches of the inexhaustible Infinite. When Sri Aurobindo passed away, the Supermind was in process of being established in his body. This means an extraordinary power over normal physical nature's... to say the least, transcended the physical body-formula. Mystical experience brings to light several "sheaths" other than the physical. The Yogi is awake in them at the same time he lives in the latter, and he can at any moment put his body in a state of trance and move out in them. Death, in the common connotation, is to him merely a permanent leaving of the physical sheath so that, unconnected with... "clinical" death: "The funeral of Sri Aurobindo has not taken place today. His body is charged with such a concentration of supramental light that there is no sign of decomposition and the body will be kept lying on his bed so long as it remains intact." It is no use saying, as our reader does, that after death the physical body immediately begins to decay and cannot be kept intact by any act of grace and ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Indian Spirit and the World's Future

The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri  >  Consciousness the Ultimate Determinant

... operations of that which has form, whether represented materially by vibration of sound or images of light or any other physical symbol." (SABCL, Vol. 12, p. 195) So we see that the deepest and highest consciousness of our inner subliminal being is the primary source of vision and sight: the subtle sense action through the psychical bodies are rather channels for this direct vision than its... particular level of consciousness different from that of the normal physical mind will have a different kind of sight of the object in view. This vision of the "seer" is bound to vary widely and naturally with the change in the quality and grade of the "seeing" consciousness. Thus there may possibly be a gross physical seeing, a subtle physical seeing, an ordinary vital seeing, an inner subliminal vital seeing... cannot rest with the action of the Page 26 sense-mind, the Manas of the ancient Indian spiritual psychology: it has to proceed still further. For, as Sri Aurobindo has so trenchantly put it: "...we have to realise - and this is more difficult to admit for our normal ideas in the matter - that the mind itself is only the characteristic instrument of sense, but the thing ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

Kena and Other Upanishads  >  The Parable of the Gods

... lower nature of mind, life and body can only envisage the many. Although therefore Indra, Vayu and Agni are the greatest of the gods, the first coming to know the existence of the Brahman, the others approaching and feeling the touch of it, yet it is only by coming into contact with the supreme consciousness and reflecting its nature and by the elimination of the vital, mental, physical egoism so that... its three planes, Indra on the mental, Vayu on the vital, Agni on the material. In that order, therefore, beginning from the material they approach the Brahman. Agni is the heat and flame of the conscious force in Matter which has built up the universe; it is he who has made life and mind possible and developed them in the material universe where he is the greatest deity. Especially he is the primary... appalling powers yet unknown and unmastered which may wreck the fair world they have built, upheave and shatter to pieces the brilliant harmony of the intellect, the aesthetic mind, the moral nature, the vital desires, the body and senses which they have with such labour established, on the side of the good the demand of things unknown which are beyond all these and therefore are equally a menace, since ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Kena and Other Upanishads

The Psychic Being  >  Evolution and the Psychic

... Evolution and the Psychic "This terrestrial evolutionary working of Nature front Matter to Mind and beyond it has a double process: there is an outward visible process of physical evolution with birth as its machinery,—for each evolved form of body housing its own evolved power of consciousness is maintained and kept in continuity by heredity; there is, at the same time... needed for the body. It has to be noted that the human mind has already shown a capacity to aid Nature in the evolution of new types of plant and animal; it has created new forms of its environment, developed by knowledge and discipline considerable changes in its own mentality. It is not an impossibility that man should aid Nature consciously also in his own spiritual and physical evolution and t... s in the physical birth and the body. But there is the other, the invisible factor; there is rebirth, the progress of the soul by ascent from grade to grade of the evolving existence, and in the grades to higher and higher types of bodily and mental instrumentation. In this progression the psychic entity is still veiled, even in man the conscious mental being, by its instruments, by mind and life and ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Psychic Being

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Rebirth

... another body; we shall be rewarded in another body for our virtues in this; and so it will go on ad infinitum . No wonder, the philosophers found this a bad business and proposed as a remedy to get rid of both sin and virtue and even as our highest good to scramble anyhow out of a world so amazingly governed. Obviously, this scheme of things is only a variation of the old spiritual-material bribe... which brought with it to the Western mind the humorous image of the soul of Pythagoras migrating, a haphazard bird of passage, from the human form divine into the body of a guinea-pig or an ass. The philosophical appreciation of the theory expressed itself in the admirable but rather unmanageable Greek word, metempsychosis, which means the insouling of a new body by the same psychic individual. The... it is true that the Supreme deals with the child soul according to its childishness and allows it to continue its sensational imaginations of heaven and hell for a time beyond the death of the physical body. Perhaps both these ideas of after-life and of rebirth as fields of punishment and reward were needed because suited to our half-mentalised animality. But after a certain stage the system ceases ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Sri Aurobindo's Message  >  Destiny of Our Troubled Human Existence

... y in a material and animal world was the first glint of a coming divine Light, — the first far-off intimation of a godhead to be born out of Matter. The appearance of the superman in the human world will be the fulfilment of that distant shining promise. ... Man is a mind imprisoned, obscured and circumscribed in a precarious and imperfect living but imperfectly conscious body. The superman... superman will be a supramental spirit which will envelop and freely use a conscious body, plastic to spiritual forces. His physical frame will be a firm support and an adequate radiant instrument for the spirit's divine play and work in Matter. ... Supermind or gnosis is in its original nature at once and in the same movement an infinite wisdom and an infinite will. At its source it is the... lications of that conscious delight, thrown out into being to be His playmates. The world is a formula, a rhythm, a symbol-system expressing God to Himself in His own consciousness, — it has no material existence but exists only in His consciousness and self-expression; we, like God, are in our inward being That which is expressed, but in our outward being terms of that formula, notes of that ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Sri Aurobindo's Message

The Life Divine  >  Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge

... boundaries of individuality and, carrying our surface mind with it, enters into the cosmic consciousness. The subliminal is separated from the cosmic through a limitation by the subtler sheaths of our being, its mental, vital, subtle-physical sheaths, just as the surface nature is separated from universal Nature by the gross physical sheath, the body; but the circumscribing wall around it is more transparent... whole nature. If the psychic and mental parts in us are strong, the vital comes under mastery and direction to an extent hardly possible to the surface mentality; even the body and the physical energies can be taken up by the inner mind and will and turned into a more plastic instrumentation of the soul, the psychic being. On the other hand, if the mental and Page 554 psychic parts are weak... intimate is the method of our dynamic part of mind associating itself with our sensations, feelings and desires: but in this association too the thinking mind can intervene and exercise a separative dissociated observation and control over both the dynamic self-associating part of mind and the vital or physical movement. All the observable movements of our physical being also are known and controlled by us ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Questions and Answers (1929-1931)  >  Different Kinds of Space and Time - Fearlessness on the Vital Plane

... in Yoga. For, so many blunders are due to the inability to act in the right way when you are in your vital and mental bodies. In dreams, for instance, you must remember that you are in the space and time of the vital world and not try to act as if you were still in your physical body. If you have the necessary knowledge of the state of things there, you can deal much more effectively with those vital... the forms of all cosmic existence: only, they vary on each level. Each world has its own space and time. Thus the mental space and time do not tally with what we observe here in the material universe. In the mind-world we can move forward and backward at our own will and pleasure. The moment you think of a person you are with him; and no matter how near you may be to somebody, you can still be far... must bear in mind their power of terrifying illusion, and cast out all fear. Once you face them boldly, unflinchingly, and look them straight in the eyes, they lose three-quarters of Page 165 their power. And if you call upon us for help, then even the last quarter is gone and they either take to their heels or dissolve. A friend of mine who used to go out in his vital body once complained ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1929-1931)

The Signature Of Truth  >  SPACE AND TIME

... so many blunders are due to the inability to act in the right way when you are in your vital and mental bodies. In dreams, for instance, you must remember that you arc in the Page 64 space and time of the vital world and not try to act as if you were still in your physical body. If you have the necessary knowledge of the state of things there, you can deal much more effectively with... forms of all cosmic-existence: only, they vary on each level. Each world has its own space and time. Thus the mental space and time do not tally with what we observe here in the material universe. In the mind-world we can move forward and backward at our own will and pleasure. The moment you think of a person you are with him; and no matter how near you may be to somebody, you can still be far... you. You must bear in mind their power of terrifying illusion, and cast out all fear. Once you face them boldly, unflinchingly, and look them straight in the eyes, they lose three-quarters of their power. And if you call upon us for help, then even the last quarter is gone and they either take to their heels or dissolve. A friend of mine who used to go out in his vital body once complained that he ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Signature Of Truth

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7  >  The Novel Alchemy

... whatever remains of the old creation. It seems that in the view of Chardin, the manifestation and establishment of an integral spirituality will one day set aflame the whole earth and the material body with its physical base. It is as if another world, but once it manifests here in full, its fiery energies will turn the old earth to ashes, perhaps reduce it to its primordial form. A school of scientists... Page 290 Or else is the new world to be conceived as something belonging to the supra-physical? But the supra-physical world too has its planes, and this new world may be the field of a spiritual realisation somewhere among these planes beyond life, mind and the above-mind. The Vedantins speak of the world of Brahman, they aim at realising the grand status of Brahman, brahma-loke... anything like a planet renovated into a "sidereal" body illumined by its own light and not that of another. It will not be a thing of the gross material world at all. It would rather come into being as if by rending through the old earth and destroying it, almost as a result of a universal catastrophe, pralaya. Would it then be something non-material? If it were to be made up of pure consciousness, ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7

Letters on Yoga - III  >  Feelings and Sensations in the Process of Descent

... into the vital and the body. Page 476 A sensation of coolness indicates usually some touch or descent of peace. It is felt as very cold by the human vital because the latter is always in a fever of restlessness. Pleasant coolness or coldness usually indicates a pacifying force bringing down calm or release. Knee to toe = the field of physical material consciousness. If... the force is flowing in or if it is there manifest in the body—but not when what is manifesting is peace and silence. Perforation If it is a feeling of a covering being perforated, then that is a sensation one often has when the Force is opening a way for itself through some resistance—here it must be in some part of the physical mind. Keep full reliance on the Mother. When one does that,... force passing through the centres) which helps to join the higher with the lower consciousness. As a result came the feeling of identity with myself in your body. The cough shows probably some difficulty against concentration in the physical mind. The best is not to force concentration, but to remain quiet and call and let things work themselves out through the force of the Mother. Page 478 ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III

Letters on Yoga - I  >  Karma and Heredity

... it is the vital and physical that have been developing—for the human to begin is it not necessary that there should be the descent of a mental being to take up the vital and physical evolution? And may it not well be that the mental beings who descend are not all of the same power and stature and, besides, do not take up equally developed vital and physical consciousness-material? There is also the... This hereditary part has to be got rid of and replaced by the true individuality spreading itself to the whole external nature. A very big stamp in most cases 1 —it is in the physical vital and physical material that the stamp chiefly exists—and it is increased by education and upbringing. Page 521 There is always a hereditary part of the nature which is a large portion of the... mother but all the ancestors), partly of what they bring with them. The part they get from the ancestors is called hereditary—it is part (not the whole) of the physical and lower vital consciousness, sometimes a little of the external mind also—it is a small portion of the external being, but although small, it is sometimes very persistent and active. The rest of the being, inner and a great part too ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

The Mother - Past-Present-Future  >  Prospects of the Physical Transformation

... Aurobindo. A breakthrough which would have taken long if he had remained within his body was achieved at one drastic stroke by his leaving it. The Mind of Light, the physical mind receiving the Supramental Light, was established in the Mother the moment Sri Aurobindo made his stupendous self-sacrifice. Sri Aurobindo's physical absence created indeed a gap in our Yogic lives and the fact that the Mother alone... forefront of universal evolution. In the meanwhile the Mother's new creation, already a multiform splendour in the subtle-physical, is trying to break forth into the gross-material, with her own body of glory in the van of the fight outward. By withdrawing from her earthly sheath she has not abandoned her mission nor has she withdrawn merely because her children proved unworthy. Unworthy in many... Prospects of the Physical Transformation* A CLARIFICATION OF THE PROBLEM Wide-eyed amazement, dim-eyed despondence, cold-eyed scepticism, sharp-eyed opposition as well as calm-eyed acceptance have met our reasoned presentation 1 of Nolini's brief pronouncement that the physical transformation, though not cancelled, has been postponed because of the Mother's giving up her body. We argued ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother - Past-Present-Future

On Thoughts and Aphorisms  >  Aphorism - 390, 391, 392, 393

... because our bodies have been fatally indoctrinated by the mind into false habits. 391—It is not the medicine that cures so much as the patient's faith in the doctor and the medicine. Both are a clumsy substitute for the natural faith in one's own self-power which they have themselves destroyed. 392—The healthiest ages of mankind were those in which there were the fewest material remedies. ... savages; but how long can they so remain after their physical consciousness has been contaminated by the mental aberrations of the civilised? As always Sri Aurobindo's words are prophetic. For only when humanity is cured of its mental aberrations will it be able to manifest the supramental consciousness and recover the natural health which the mind has lost for it. 14 March 1970 ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Thoughts and Aphorisms

The Psychic Being  >  Process of Psychic Growth and Development

... the work to be accomplished. Its descent into the physical body is necessarily a descent into darkness, ignorance, unconsciousness; and for a very long time it must labour simply to bring a little consciousness into the material substance of the body, before it can make use of it for the experience it has come for. So, if we cultivate the body by a clear-sighted and rational method, at the same time... 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 accomplished during its active existence... fulfil. From this point of view his 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 ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Psychic Being

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  The Mystery of the Five Senses

... sublimated and most intense physical contact, that you have the direct contact with the substance of the Supreme, his very body. For what is Sat up there is Annam here, both are the same identical thing in a dual aspect Continuing farther, if we go beyond the five senses, we have still another sense, it is mind, the sixth sense; it is in and through the mind that the other five senses... it comes only when the mind is not there. But this also, as in the other cases, as in respect of the other senses, is an extreme view. Like the other senses the mind too can be turned inward or upward, made a receptive organ or instrument. When turned round, when it is the Mind of the mind, then there begins to appear the true knowledge. Then even this physical mind remains no more ignorant... really see, there is an eye behind that sees, and so on with the other senses. Even this mind does not know, there is a mind of the mind that knows. That is the crucial point. With the eye of the eye one must see, with the hearing of an inner car one must hear, and one must know by the mind of the mind. Instead of opening these windows and doors outward they should be opened inward, turned ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

Prayers and Meditations  >  November 3, 1914

... sublimity; the physical body is glorified, supple, vigorous, energetic; the mind is superbly active in its calm lucidity, guiding and transmitting the forces of Thy divine Will; and all the being exults in an endless beatitude, a boundless love, a sovereign power, a perfect knowledge, an infinite consciousness.... It is Thyself and Thou alone who livest, even in the least atom of the body-substance itself... For quite a long time, Lord, my pen had fallen silent.... Yet hast Thou given me hours of unforgettable illumination, hours in which the union between the most divine Consciousness and the most material grew perfect, hours when the identification of the individual being with the universal Mother and of the universal Mother with Thee was so complete that the individual consciousness could perceive... say, one which is permanent, one with which the most external consciousness comes into contact as soon as any occasion allows it, as soon as it is no longer occupied with a definite intellectual or physical task. In all work, constantly, there is the perception of Thy invariable presence in Thy dual form of Non-Being and Being, but as though behind a fine veil woven by the indispensable concentration ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Prayers and Meditations

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  Regarding the Body

... effort, the concentration, the inner vision in a continuous manner. You have to enter into the disposition of the cells, your inner physical organisation, if the body is to answer to the force that descends. First of all, you must be conscious of your physical cells, you must know their different functions, the degree of receptivity in each, which of them are in good condition and which are not... when the body needs it. It may be you are not unaware at times of this exact need. But to know properly demands a discipline, continuous labour for years perhaps. Years indeed you require when it is a matter of control over your mind, of attaining a consciousness subtle enough to enable you to come in contact with the elements of transformation and progress, to know how to regulate for your body the exact... exact amount of physical effort, material activity, expenditure and reception of energy, how to secure the proportion between what is received and what is given out, how to utilise energy to re-establish the equilibrium that was broken in order to push forward new cells that were lagging behind and then how to build up conditions for a further step in upward progress to be possible etc., etc. The task ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

Beyond Man  >  Chapter Eight: Homo Sum

... execution, with the physical development of things in Matter and the law of development of Life and Mind in Matter; its account of the process may have to be considerably changed or may be dropped altogether in the light of new discovery, but that will not affect the self-evident fact of a spiritual evolution, an evolution of Consciousness, a progression of the soul’s manifestation in material existence.’... on of all the other worlds and one can touch them by touching something corresponding in the earth-atmosphere.’ 9 By this he does not mean the physical atmosphere, but the extremely complex invisible body of Earth, the living entity, her physical body being to our senses the perceptible exteriorization of it. Seen in this way the Earth is no longer some little globe spinning in space, one out... Evolution on Earth is a development, a growth of consciousness in material forms, which becomes ever more refined and complex as the growth proceeds. ‘The evolution has always had a spiritual significance and the physical change was only instrumental.’ 24 (Sri Aurobindo) It is consciousness which, by the described non-material processes, irresistibly drives evolution onwards and upwards, and works ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Beyond Man

The Destiny of the Body  >  The Misgiving and the Frown

... experiences, far from helping the health of the body — not to speak of accomplishing the conquest of death — is rather "inimical to the health of the body and tends to have a bad effect of one kind or another and even finally leads to a premature or an early dropping of the body." 1 Not only this, but according to the traditional belief held by many minds, progress in spirituality ought to lead to... Force, the Consciousness, 1 2 Bulletin of Physical Education, Vol. IX, No. 2, p. 85. 3 Ibid. (Italics ours) 4 Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 1230. (Italics ours) 5 Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 1230. Page 355 the new Power 1 that is capable of infusing into the material substance the vibration that has the capacity to transform... things going to be attempted through the action, upon body and matter, of a progressively growing consciousness acquired through the agency of Yoga and rising higher and higher in the scale of its luminous potency till we reach the absolute potency of Supramental Gnosis, we must at once meet and dispose 1 2 Bulletin of Physical Education, Vol. IX, No. 2, p. 85. Page 351 ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7  >  The Culture of the Body

... asana and pranayama for health purposes. Once the body is in good health, it needs to be made strong and given fitness and capacity. To this end we have recourse to special exercises known as gymnastics. The third stage of physical culture consists in making the body able and efficient; this may be described as the utilisation of the body's strength and capacity. This is where calisthenics or agility... It concerns another phase or aspect of physical culture. What I mean is that the body must not only be healthy, strong and efficient, it must also become conscious. Ordinarily, our bodily functionings and movements take place mostly without our knowledge, as in an unconscious instrument or machine. The aim of physical exercises should be to render the body a conscious instrument, through a willed... function of all right consciousness is to drench the being in light by transmitting its light, bring in a purity as a result of which even the body down to its gross material elements becomes thoroughly washed and purified. For acquiring health which is the body's first essential need, there is no better means or a more effective medicine. In this way, the farther we ascend towards the heights and gain ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7

Mother’s Agenda 1962  >  August 28, 1962

... that true change in the physical results from a kind of PENETRATION. The most material physical substance no longer has that unreceptive sort of density, a density that resists penetration: it is becoming porous, and thus can be penetrated. Several times, in fact, I've had the experience of one vibration quite naturally changing the quality of the other—the subtle physical vibration was bringing about... a noticeable change in the purely physical vibration. Page 320 That seems to be the process, or at least one of the most important processes. And it's growing more and more prominent. I spend almost every night in that realm; and even during the day, as soon as the body is motionless, there's this perception of the two vibrations, and of the physical vibration almost becoming porous.... vibrations, especially, are difficult for the body—it must be very, very quiet, well under control, very peaceful, or else it panics. Because it's used to vibrations whose effects follow a regular pattern, so if the pattern changes there's a kind of frightened jolt. That must be avoided, the body has to be very gently kept under control. What the mind thinks, what it expects to see, looks so childish ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1962

Mother’s Agenda 1962  >  May 15, 1962

... both planets and atoms in a single mathematical equation. Mother's body-consciousness is one with the movement of the universe, Mother lives the "unified-field theory" in her body. In so doing she opens up to us not merely one more physical theory, but the very path to a new species on earth, a species that will physically and materially live on the scale of the universe. The posthuman species might... world. My physical consciousness has been universalized for a long, long time, it encompasses all terrestrial movements 3 ; but the body is limited solely to this small concentration of substance ( Mother touches her body )—that's what I call the body-consciousness. And when I said, "I have left the body," 4 it certainly didn't mean I have left the physical consciousness—my overall contact... suffers—it's not the body that has a sore, you understand. It is difficult to express. But that's my experience. Yesterday I observed it with special care, to be able to tell you about it. But are you making a distinction between the body-consciousness and the physical consciousness?... Oh yes! The physical consciousness is something very complex; it includes the whole physical, conscious world ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1962

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Nature of the Supermind

... Yoga is to raise the human being from the consciousness of the ordinary mind subject to the control of vital and material Nature and limited wholly by birth and death and Time and the needs and desires of the mind, life and body to the consciousness of the spirit free in its self and using the circumstances of mind, life and body as admitted or self-chosen and self-figuring determinations of the spirit... l in their secret government, but mental, vital and physical in their overt process. The outward matter, life, mind do not possess this occult action of the supermind, even while possessed and compelled by the necessity it imposes on their workings. There is what we are sometimes moved to call an intelligence and will operating in the material force and the atom (although the words ring false because... preparatory purification of the mental, vital and physical nature, a liberation from the knots of the lower Prakriti, a consequent replacement of the egoistic state always subject to the ignorant and troubled action of the desire soul by a large and luminous static equality which quiets the reason, the emotional mind, the life mind and the physical nature and brings into us the peace and freedom of ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

The Human Cycle  >  Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age

... in mind that must develop itself individually and collectively in the life and body through the play of an ever-expanding mental existence. This greater idea would realise that the elevation of the human existence will come not through material efficiency alone or the complex play of his vital and dynamic powers, not solely by mastering through the aid of the intellect the energies of physical Nature... overtakes all attempts of the vitalistic, the intellectual and mental, the spiritual endeavour to deal with material man through his physical mind chiefly or alone; the endeavour is overpowered by the machinery it creates and becomes the slave and victim of the machine. That is the revenge which our material Nature, herself mechanical, takes upon all such violent endeavours; she waits to master them by their... seekings of Bhrigu, son of Varuna. For first the seeker found the ultimate reality to be Matter and the physical, the material being, the external man our only self and spirit. Next he fixed on life as the Reality and the vital being as the self and spirit; in the third essay he penetrated to Mind and the mental being; only afterwards could he get beyond the superficial subjective through the supramental ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle

Record of Yoga  >  Undated Notes, c. December 1926

... 6) The centre intermediate between the navel and the Muladhara. The lower vital; it connects all the above centres with the physical 7) The last centre or Muladhara. Material support of the vital; initiation of the physical. All below is the subconscient physical. Page 1343 ... (aspiring, receiving, grasping, assimilating the creation; divided here into the mind and psyche, there unified in Soul-Mind, Brahman.) The Sun of Life (dynamically externalising the creation). The Sun of Everlasting Form (stabilising and containing the creation). These are the seven powers of the Truth-Mind above the body. Undated Notes - V The Sun of Truth, originating the supramental creation... brain. Basis or support in Life-Mind for the Supramental; initiative centre of the illumined Mind. 2) The centre between the brows in the middle of the forehead. Will, vision, inner mental formation, active and dynamic Mind. 3) The centre in the throat. Speech, external mind, all external expression and formation. 4) The heart-lotus. Externally, the emotional mind, the vital mental: in the inner ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

On Education  >  The Human Mind (Sri Aurobindo)

... the processes it involves, his habit of studying only so much as he must to avoid punishment or to pass an immediate test, his resort to active habits and vigorous physical exercise. In India the disastrous effects of the system on body, mind and character are only too apparent. The first problem in a national system of education is to give an education as comprehensive as the European and more thorough... THE HUMAN MIND The true basis of education is the study of the human mind, infant, adolescent and adult Any system of education founded on theories of academic perfection, which ignores the instrument of study, is more likely to hamper and impair intellectual growth than to produce a perfect and perfectly equipped mind. For the educationist has to do, not with dead material like the artist... but with an infinitely subtle and sensitive organism. He cannot shape an educational masterpiece out of human wood or stone; he has to work in the elusive substance of mind and respect the limits imposed by the fragile human body.     There can be no doubt that the current educational system of Europe is a great advance on many of the methods of antiquity, but its defects are also palpable. It ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   On Education

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Karma and Justice

... where is the firm link of correspondence between the ethical and the more vital and physical hedonistic powers of life? How does my ethical good turn into smiling fortune, crowned prosperity, sleek material good and happiness to myself and my ethical evil into frowning misfortune, rugged adversity, sordid material ill and suffering,—for that is what the desire soul of man and the intelligence governed... the ethical standard, a strict association or identity of result of virtue with some getting of his interest and pleasure and result of sin with some loss of materially or vitally desirable things and the infliction of mental, vital or physical pain. Human law proceeds on this principle by meeting the grosser more obvious offences with punishment and avenging pain or loss and on the other hand assuring... satisfied precision. At the same time the popular mind in its attempt to combine the idea of a life beyond with the notion of rebirth, supposes a double prize for virtue and a double penalty for transgression. I am rewarded for my good deeds in heaven after death until the dynamic value of my virtue is exhausted and I am then reborn and rewarded again materially on earth. I am punished in hell to the equivalence ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Our Many Selves  >  Glossary of Names and Terms

... prāṇamaya puruṣa —soul in life; the (true) vital being. the physical (being) —not the body alone, but the whole physical mind, vital, material nature. physical mind —See under mind . physical vital —the part of the vital that is turned entirely upon physical things, full of desires and greeds and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane. psyche —the soul; spark of the Divine before... larger part of the vital being and the physical mind and the secret body-consciousness. It is not to be confused with the subliminal: the subconscient is a nether diminished consciousness, the subliminal is an inner consciousness larger than our surface existence. the subliminal —the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical, with the soul or psychic entity supporting... man's intelligence. The ordinary mind has three main parts: mind proper, vital mind, and physical mind. The mind proper is divided into three parts: the thinking mind or intellect, concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right; the dynamic mind, concerned with the putting out of mental forces for the realisation of the ideas; and the externalising mind, concerned with the expression of ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Our Many Selves

The Destiny of the Body  >  The Role and Function of Sleep

... would not automatically and necessarily convert our physical sleep into a state of perfectly recuperative blissful repose. For, as we have remarked more than once, our body's sleep does not entail the sleep of our whole being nor for that matter indicate a total abeyance of all consciousness. In fact, during the dormancy of our physical mind, our consciousness withdraws from its surface preoccupation... possess in this embodied existence dominated by the physical mind. The dream state is a consciousness corresponding to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane behind.... The sleep state is a consciousness corresponding to the supramental plane proper to the gnosis, which is beyond our experience because our causal body or envelope of gnosis is not developed in us.... The Turiya beyond is the con... interregnum of physical sleep proves to be a period of encephalic recuperation in which the rest of the body indirectly participates. This scientific account of the function of sleep may be true as far as it goes, that is to say, so far as the purely physical system of man is concerned; but it does not constitute the whole truth of the phenomenon. As we shall presently see, our body's sleep plays ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body

The Secret of the Veda  >  Foreword

... high-seated Truth, to the Far, to the Secret, to the Supreme. All these associations are lost to us; our minds are obsessed by ideas of a ritual sacrifice and a material cord. We imagine perhaps the son of Atri bound as a victim in an ancient barbaric sacrifice, crying to the god of Fire for a physical deliverance! A little later the seer sings of the increasing Flame, "Agni shines wide with vast Light... of different forms but of one mind, suckle the same divine Child." We understand nothing. Dawn and Night are of different forms, but why of one mind? And who is the child? If it is Agni, the fire, what are we to understand by Dawn and Night suckling alternately an infant fire? But the Vedic poet is not thinking of the physical night, the physical dawn or the physical fire. He is thinking of the al... devoured him and wonder at the rapid transitions of the primitive mind? It is only when we discover that the "vast Light" was a fixed phrase in the language of the Mystics for a wide, free and luminous consciousness beyond mind, that we seize the true burden of the Rik. The seer is hymning his release from the triple cord of mind, nerves and body and the uprising of the knowledge and will within him to a ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Secret of the Veda

Sri Aurobindo And The Mother - On India  >  Sri Aurobindo - The Hour of God

... beauty and all delight. Physical he seeks for this immortal substance; Vital he seeks after immortal life and the infinite power of his being; mental and partial in knowledge, he seeks after the whole light and the utter vision. Page 50     To possess these is to become the superman; for he is to rise out of mind into the Supermind. Call it the divine mind or knowledge or the ... change that is effected by the transition from mind to Supermind is not only a revolution in knowledge or in our power for knowledge. If it is to be complete and stable, it must be a divine transmutation of our will too, our emotions, our sensations, all our power of life and its forces, in the end even of the very substance and functioning of our body. Then only can it be said that the Supermind is... the real Purusha. For that which is above the mental being is the superman. It is to be the master of thy mind, thy life and thy body; it is to be a king over Nature of whom thou art now the tool, lifted above her who now has thee under her feet. It is to be free and not a slave, to be one and not divided, to be immortal and not obscured by death, to be full of light and not darkened, to be full of ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Sri Aurobindo And The Mother - On India

Mother or The New Species - II  >  6. A Veil

... urge would proceed to a change of the organs themselves in their material working and use and diminish greatly the need of their 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... begins to change the perspectives of the body drastically and can accelerate the laborious process a thousand times over: it is the opening of the centers of consciousness, or chakras, which are the relay stations for the universal energies through the various planes of our body. In fact, our physical organs and the various plexuses are a rough expression or material adaptation of those centers of energy... within a continent; both are equally material, but one is left behind, we might say, it is old, obsolete, merely hanging on, and the other is developing under the old crust. This is as far as we can go mentally. Now it remains for us to look at the evolution of the process in Mother, in the experience of her body, in the flesh. In a way, hers is the witness-body of the world, the evolutionary crucible ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

Champaklal's Treasures  >  Myself and My Creed: The Declaration of a True Slave of God

... d and that they no longer need my physical intervention to do their work well. It is enough that my presence among them is an inspiration and guide for them to keep a clear vision of the goal and not to go astray on the way. This leads quite naturally to a physical withdrawal into oneself so as to concentrate materially upon the work of transformation of the body. I can now leave them externally to... taken a physical body with the intention of transforming that body and making of it a fit instrument for His manifestation upon earth. But it is a fact also that, until now. He has failed to do so and for one reason or another, He had always to leave that physical body with the work of transformation unfinished. In order that the Divine may keep till a total transformation takes place, the body through... required conditions of harmony, strength, sincerity, endurance, unselfishness and poise in the physical, should consider the body in which the Divine incarnates, not only as the most important thing, but as the thing exclusively important, more important than the Divine's work itself, or rather that this body should become for him the symbol and the concretisation of the Divine's work upon earth. 3 ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal's Treasures

A Greater Psychology  >  The Inconscient

... concealed at the outset by the involution of the Spirit, the Divine Reality, in a dense material Inconscience; a veil of Inconscience, a veil of insensibility of Matter hides the universal Consciousness-Force which works within it, so that the Energy, which is the first form the Force of creation assumes in the physical universe, appears to be itself inconscient and yet does the works of a vast occult... mental being but carries along with him even at his highest elevation the mould of original animality, the dead weight of subconscience of body, the downward pull of gravitation towards the original Inertia and Nescience, the control of an inconscient material Nature over his conscious evolution, its power for limitation, its law of difficult development, its immense force for retardation and f... on, self-limitation until it is ready to surpass it. This is the Inconscience and Ignorance that we see at work in the material universe. It is not a denial, it is one term, one formula of the infinite and eternal Existence. The Life Divine, pp. 318-19 The body... is a creation of the Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of itself and much of its hidden ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

Letters on Yoga - III  >  Ascent and Descent

... to open ourselves—to the power of the Mother. In the mind it manifests itself as a divine mind-force or a universal mind-force and it can do everything that the personal mind cannot do; it is then the Yogic mind-force. When it manifests and works in the vital or physical in the same way, it is then apparent as a Yogic life-force or a Yogic body-force. It can awake in all these forms, bursting outwards... centre of the physical consciousness. The Energy descends through all the levels and centres, mind centres, vital centres, physical centre and fills the whole body with the higher existence and consciousness. The ascent is the liberation (mukti) and when once this ascends, one is liberated from the body consciousness, one no longer feels the body as a form, no longer feels contained in the body, but widens... in that. The body or the physical mind is sometimes startled or alarmed at these experiences because they are abnormal to it; but there is no ground for alarm,—these are usual experiences in the Yoga. There is a Yoga Shakti lying coiled or asleep in the inner body, not active. When one does Yoga, this force uncoils itself and rises upward to meet the Divine Consciousness and Force that are ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Realisation of the Cosmic Self

... longer in a purely individual narrowness. We shall take up the mind not as a separate mentality imprisoned in a petty motion, but Page 372 as a large movement of the universal mind, the life not as an egoistic activity of vitality and sensation and desire, but as a free movement of the universal life, the body not as a physical prison of the soul but as a subordinate instrument and detachable... Matter, a cell of the cosmic Body. We shall come to feel all the consciousness of the physical world as one with our physical consciousness, feel all the energies of the cosmic life around as our own energies, feel all the heart-beats of the great cosmic impulse and seeking in our heart-beats set to the rhythm of the divine Ananda, feel all the action of the universal mind flowing into our mentality... and the inhabitant of all existences. The self behind our mind, life and body is the same as the self behind the mind, life and body of all our fellow-beings, and if we come to possess it, we shall naturally, when we turn to look out again upon them, tend to become one with them in the common basis of our consciousness. It is true that the mind opposes any such identification and if we allow it to persist ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

The Renaissance in India  >  A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - 3

... their influence, the whole of Indian thinking. The ancient civilisation of India founded itself very expressly upon four human interests; first, desire and enjoyment, next, material, economic and other aims and needs of the mind and body, thirdly, ethical conduct and the right law of individual and social life, and, lastly spiritual liberation; kāma, artha, dharma, mokṣa . The business of culture and social... than the materialistic view of the quite physical and ephemeral nature of human life? There is nothing in the most ascetic notes of the Indian mind like the black gloom of certain kinds of European pessimism, a city of dreadful night without joy here or hope beyond, and nothing like the sad and shrinking attitude before death and the dissolution of the body which pervades Western literature. The note... truth of physical Nature; physical Science had not then arrived at the great universal generalisations which would Page 124 have made and are now making that synthesis entirely possible. Nevertheless from the beginning, from as early as the thought of the Vedas, the Indian mind had recognised that the same general laws and powers hold in the spiritual, the psychological and the physical existence ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Renaissance in India

Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)  >  chapter 015

... which was also material, though in a secret way, something which was an authentic translation of the supraphysical Reality into a sense-delight directly within the body and separate from any preparation to be taken in from outside.   I have used the epithet "material" for the sweet secretion, but truly speaking the tongue reflects, as it were, a sensation in the subtle-physical body which is ours... the way to it nothing can be a better portent for my future. Without it neither the mind nor the body can be taken as totally given to God. The vital energy is the most effective element in us and it is the element by which the mind can have an impact on earth-circumstances and by which the body can carry out the mind's dreams and designs as well as its own hungers. But it is our most intractable part:... that the Divine Ananda, the Supreme Bliss, can manifest itself in terms of physical sensation and be felt as a sweetness Page 164 dripping upon the tongue through the brahmarandhra, the subtle opening that can take place at the top of the head to the spiritual ranges of consciousness beyond the brain-mind. This sweet sensation, says Sri Aurobindo, the Rishis of the Rigveda named ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)

The Life Divine  >  Man in the Universe

... yet to climb beyond Mind to a higher principle, a higher status, a higher dynamism in which universe and individual become aware of and possess that which they both are and therefore stand explained to each other, in harmony with each other, unified. The disorders of life and mind cease by discerning the secret of a more perfect order than the physical. Matter below life and mind contains in itself... unveiling. Out of the rhythmic slumber of material Nature unconscious of the Soul and the Idea that maintain the ordered activities of her energy even in her dumb and mighty material trance, the world struggles into the more quick, varied and disordered rhythm of Life labouring on the verges of self-consciousness. Out of Life it struggles upward into Mind in which the unit becomes awake to itself and... and mind awaken to the sense of this want in the form of a striving and seeking ignorance and a troubled and baffled desire which are the first steps towards self-knowledge and self-fulfilment. But where then is the kingdom of their self-fulfilling? It comes to them by the exceeding of themselves. Beyond life and mind we recover consciously in its divine truth that which the balance of material Nature ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  Gnosis and Ananda

... Ananda, but, if clung to till the end, miss the inexpressible truth of those surpassing felicities. First in order comes the lure of an earthly reward, a prize of material, intellectual, ethical or other joy in the terrestrial mind and body. A second remoter greater version of the same fruitful error is the hope of a heavenly bliss, far exceeding these earthly rewards; the conception of heaven rises... possession by the Self within us and an unregulated dynamic possession by the physical and the vital Nature without us. The mind soul and mind consciousness in man, manomaya puruṣa , can in the same direct way reflect and enter into Sachchidananda by a reflection of the Soul as it mirrors itself in the nature of pure universal mind luminous, unwalled, happy, plastic, illimitable, or by absorption in the... that the purpose and law of the birth-series is for the soul in the body to rise from plane to plane and substitute always the rule of the higher for the rule of the lower play even down to the material field. The bliss-soul neither disdains to help that ascent from above nor fears to descend down the stairs of God into the material birth and there contribute the power of its own bliss nature to the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Mother’s Agenda 1963  >  July 20, 1963

... "yantram" seems to exasperate the physical mind. Doesn't it set something at rest in your mind? Generally, it makes the most material mind extremely active. Extremely active...? I have great difficulty keeping a hold on it. A domestic detail, for instance, some utterly material things invade my consciousness. The rest is always quiet, but utterly material things become very active. ... We can only arm ourselves with patience, that's all. That's the only thing we can do. Be patient. But materially, is your body better or...? Because that's where the progress is taking place. ( silence ) All the habitual rhythms of the material world have changed.... The body had based its sort of sense of good health on a certain number of vibrations, and whenever those vibrations... perfection that neglects no detail—otherwise, it isn't... As soon as you enter the mental realm, of course, the mind says, "Ah, no! No, it's a waste of time." It isn't, but the mind regards all that as twaddle. ( silence ) I said just now that when I come out of those moments of trance, the body feels, "Oh, I've forgotten to live...." It isn't "live," it's the feeling: I've forgotten to act or concentrate ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1963

Mother's Chronicles - Book Five  >  A Conscientious Scientist

... neither those of the domain of the physical senses nor of the domain of rational or scientific enquiry. Just as scientific enquiry passes beyond that of the physical senses and enters the domain of the infinite and infinitesimal about which the senses can say nothing and test nothing —for one cannot see and touch an electron or know by the evidence of the sense-mind whether it exists or not or decide... Sadhana also as usual and I found that I was not in the least weak at the end of twenty-three days. But the flesh began to grow less and I did not find a clue to replacing the very material part that was reduced in the body." After a moment's pause he said, "There must be some clue and I had solved the problem almost nine-tenths." A smile twitched his Page 190 lips. "But because I did... had to write again and again to many of his disciples that food should be eaten for the maintenance of the body and not out of any greed. He would not allow the sadhaks to neglect their bodies. "It is a mistake to neglect the body," he wrote severally to sadhaks, "and let it waste away; the body is the means of sadhana and should be maintained in good order." Imagine my delight when I came across that ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  On Medicine

... has broken the barrier is the vital-physical body. It is around the physical body and with the physical it forms as it were the "nervous envelope". The force of a disease has to break through it to reach the body – except for the attacks on the most material parts. You can then feel the disease coming and also feel in the nervous envelope the part of the body which it is going to, or intending to... Disciple : Are there other bodies than the physical? Sri Aurobindo : There is in fact no gap in man's sheaths. It is a gamut or scale ascending from the lowest to the highest plane; and the principle of each is repeated in all. Thus all is in each. Otherwise the world cannot go on. There are four other bodies different from the material physical body which we have. Disciple : What... happens when the man dies and his physical body disappears? Sri Aurobindo : When a thing disappears it may go into the next plane which is not the gross material, but is physical all the same. So there is no question of dematerialisation Disciple : There is an idea of materialisation and dematerialisation in the case of occult phenomena. For instance if a material object appears, and then disappears ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo

On Education  >  The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations

... 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 health and organic functioning. To achieve these results, it will be good, as a general rule, to make use of habit as a help in organising one's material life, Page 50... that few austerities are as strict as those which physical culture demands for the perfection of the body. But we shall return to this point in due time. Page 48 Before starting to describe the four kinds of austerity required, it is necessary to clarify one question which is a source of much misunderstanding and confusion in the minds of most people. It is the question of ascetic practices... time great care must be taken not to demand more from the body than the effort which is strictly necessary, the expenditure of energy that fosters growth and progress, while categorically excluding everything that causes exhaustion and leads in the end to physical decline and disintegration. A physical culture which aims at building a body capable of serving as a fit instrument for a higher consciousness ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Education

Questions and Answers (1955)  >  23 November 1955

... the determinism of the world as it is at present—this world which is a mixture of the physical, vital, mental and of something of a spiritual influence or infusion (quite veiled), everything that happens is the combination of all this—if we go out of all that (we can do it), if we rise above the physical, material world as it is, and enter another consciousness, we perceive things totally differently... other case, it is God who has entered a human body. What is human is only the body, the outer form, not the consciousness. In the first case it is the human consciousness which has attained its perfection. Page 375 That's all? Something over there? Sri Aurobindo says here: "The divine working is not the working which the egoistic mind desires or approves; for it uses error in order... had enough knowledge to see why it is like that, then at the same time you could say, "Look, there is something like a force, a consciousness, a power which acts and which is not from the material domain. Materially, logically, this is what should have happened, and it did not happen." You say, "Ah! It was his good luck", don't you? And then you are satisfied, it's all right for you. Page 378 ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)

Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body  >  What is Health

... understanding of the relativity of health and disease will lead to an increasing respect for one's material body, and that a fuller flowering of health will ensue. To transcend health care, to experience health as irrelevant, is not to neglect it. It is rather to regard all matter, including one's physical body, as alive Page 120 and beyond health, grounded with conscious thought in the implicate... at appropriate hours. There should be unpolluted and pure semen in the body. Over and above he should experience perfect coordination of mind, intelligence and body organs. These are considered the important symptoms of the healthy individual. _______________________________________________ From S.H. Deshpande, Physical Education in Ancient India Page 127 ... 8. Health can be expressed in terms of objective measurements — laboratory, tests, physical examinations, x-rays, etc. 8. All measurements refer to objects belonging to the explicate order, and are thus not primary They defy the unanalyzable wholeness of the underlying totality in which all material bodies are grounded. As such, all measurements are arbitrary and are poor indicators of health ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body

On the Path  >  1968

... a living statue made with a material external to the sculptor. But naturally this is only a very approximate explanation. 11.3.1968 In the supramental world You are in a supramental body in a permanent way. Here we see You in the human body. What relation is there between these two bodies? Very cordial, but not constant in the physical way. . . 19.3.1968 ... than the earthly held his limbs, Unwound the triple cord of mind and freed The heavenly wideness of a Godhead's gaze." 2 What does "the triple cord of mind " mean? The cords symbolise the limitations of the mind; and there are three of them because there is a physical mind, it vital mind and a mental mind. 9.11.1968 "The days were travelers on a destined road,... that S.J even the body can remember You, Here is something very good. It is a good beginning. And the body's remembrance is much more stable than ?he mind's or the vitals'. 1.12.1968 "His failure is not failure whom God leads" 1 Because it is part of the play? It is the human mind that has the conception of success and failure. It is the human mind that wants one thing ...

Shyam Sunder Jhunjhunwala   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On the Path

Visions of Champaklal  >  Dreams - Origin, Formation

... have fantastic dreams, absurd dreams. “The mind is an instrument of formation, of organisation and action.” Why? The mind gives a form to the thoughts. This power of formation forms mental entities whose life is independent of the mind that has formed them.... There is a mental substance just as there is a physical substance, and on this plane the mind can emanate innumerable forms. These forms can... similar to the repose of our physical being, we must have achieved a perfect control over it, and this is not an easy thing to do. As a general rule, each individual has a period of the night that is more favourable for dreams... One must learn how to quieten one's mind, make it completely blank, and then when one wakes up, one feels refreshed. One must relax the whole mind in he pure white silence... can be objectivised and seen, and that is one of the most common explanations for dreams.... When you are asleep, your eyes are closed, the physical is asleep and the mind and vital become active. On the mental plane all the formations made by the mind—the actual “forms” that it gives to the thoughts return and appear to you as if they were coming from outside and give you dreams.... Some people ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Visions of Champaklal

A Follower of Christ and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo  >  The First Move

... explicit about the basic divergence even where an apparent similarity may be discerned. He 22 speaks of "the transformation of the whole physical mind, vital, material nature - not by imposing siddhis [=abnormal faculties] on them, but by creating a new physical nature which is to be the habitation of the supra-mental being in a new evolution". And he continues: "I am not aware that this has been done... " - and then the following "some yogis have achieved it, I believe". His meaning is not quite clear. What "this achievement" signifies is most probably "the transformation of the whole physical mind, vital, material nature" spoken of in the other letter, as a result of "siddhis" imposed by "mental or vital occult power". The term "transformation" can cover many Yogic changes. A supramental transformation... Chaitanya or Ramalingam, whatever physical transformation they may have gone through is quite irrelevant to the aim of the supramentalisation of the body. Their new body was either a non-physical or subtle physical body not adapted for life on the earth. If it were not so, they would not have disappeared..." Another letter 21 says: "The idea of a transformation of the body occurs in different traditions ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Follower of Christ and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo

Mother or The New Species - II  >  24. The Transformation of the World

... is a world of Falsehood. And this world of Truth is PHYSICAL, it is material: it's not up above, it is material. * AND THAT'S WHAT MUST COME TO THE FORE AND TAKE THE PLACE OF THE OTHER. "The true physical?" I asked Mother. Yes, the true physical. 18 So, with a sort of feeling of wonder, we are beginning to catch a glimpse of the physical world in which the laws of Falsehood no longer apply:... way) which is the vibration of Truth in the Physical, in which state the Physical must be so as to respond to the Truth—so as to BE the Truth.... You know, it's something which is absolutely immobile, which PHYSICALLY does not budge. Mentally, it's nothing, it's easy. It is like a physical magnet for the true physical vibrations. It doesn't go through the Mind or through intelligence or even through the... A kind of immobility in the physical Mind: nothing reacts there. There, at the cellular threshold, beneath the coating of the Physical Mind, the laws of the false world end—the laws of false matter. And we cross the river very easily, we go through the shower of stones, and swamps full of snakes, and everything quite easily. It is that true world, that true physical, which is terrestrially in ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II

Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Desire

... they allow them to play, whatever physical wants they have, they try to satisfy. We say then that the activities and feelings of men are controlled by their Prakriti, and mostly by the vital and physical nature. The body is the instrument of the Prakriti or Nature—it obeys its own nature or it obeys the vital forces of desire, passion, etc. But man has also a mind and, as he develops, he learns to... would indicate that they are no longer acting on the mind and emotional being only, but fully on the vital also—that is a great progress. The desires you refer to are those of the vital-physical in the subtle physical consciousness—impulse to talk, essential hunger, thirst, etc. Peace and quietude full in the vital-physical and subtle physical and down even in the lowest levels are necessary for... for the whole change to be made. The heat of which you speak is that of this subtle principle of vital-physical desire which exists for its own sake, not for the real needs of the body—that is why physical satisfaction does not diminish it. These habits of the physical vital are almost automatic in their action and it takes either a very strong will or a persistent effort of self-discipline to ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 4  >  Consciousness as Energy

... generous liberal view, chiefly decorative elements in human society. Mind-energy can draw dream pictures, beautiful perhaps, but inane; it is only muscular energy that gives a living and material body—a local habitation and name—to what otherwise would be airy nothing. Energy, however, is not merely either muscular (physical) or cerebral. There are energies subtler than thought and yet more dynamic... two is not usually understood. In reality, however, thought or idea is a form of energy-action in the mind and mind is only one field or grade—not the most dynamic nor direct or immediate—among many for the play of consciousness, as I have already said. Mind energy, life energy, physical or material energy are various forms and stages in the expression of consciousness-energy (Chit-Tapas). The nature... power one has command over the universal power. All other energies—visible, tangible, concretised and canalised—are particular formations and embodiments of this mother energy. Even the most physical and material energies— mechanical, electrical, nervous, etc.—are all derivatives and lesser potentials of this Page 35 fount and origin. The mastery of the inner vital energy is the whole ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 4

Letters on Yoga - II  >  Seeking the Divine

... and reshapes the physical consciousness also. Another method Page 7 is to stand back detached from the movements of the mind, life, physical being, to regard their activities as only a habitual formation of general Nature in the individual imposed on us by past workings, not as any part of our real being; in proportion as one succeeds in this, becomes detached, sees mind and its activities... the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one must open the silent mental consciousness upward to all that is above mind. After a time one feels the consciousness rising upward and in the end it rises beyond the lid which has so long kept it tied in the body and finds a... would then be no cause to say, "I do not know the Divine. I have never felt or met Him"; it would be a gate too for other experiences and make it easier to see the Divine in the material object, in the human form, in the body. It was not a condition that the Mother was laying down when she said this; it was simply a suggestion which, if something in you could seize and profit by it, would make things ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II

Mother’s Agenda 1962  >  August 8, 1962

... felt physically (the rest is very still), it's always physical. But it triggered a kind of very rapid movement of the physical consciousness (within the most material substance), and caused a dislocation. And so 2 the day before yesterday, that old formation suddenly returned and made me understand one aspect of the body's nature, the way the body is CONSTRUCTED and the usefulness of that construction... Superficially, it [the body's characteristic of attracting ordeals] could be called a sort of karma, but that's not what it is. It's actually like one of the pivots—not a central one, but one of the pivots of the body's invisible action, of its consciousness. And it is expressed by attracting certain circumstances. A whole range of things having to do with the physical body has thus become very clear... tion; that's the only idea left, the only will. ( silence ) For several days before that incident, something else had been coming, a kind of imaginative and creative vision of the most material physical possibilities for the future. I've had this great formative power ever since my earliest childhood, but I had channeled it and stopped it because I considered it useless. But it came back recently ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1962

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1  >  Physics of Philosophy

... have such a revolutionary and unortho­dox view. He seems to take courage from Dirac also. Dirac too cannot admit an annihilation of the material world. His proposal to save and salvage it follows a parallel line. He says that the world presented or pictured by physical science may not be and is not the actual world, but it posits a substratum of reality to which it conforms: the pattern presented by ... beyond space and time we may all be members of one body. In brief, modern physics is not altogether antagonistic to an objective idealism like that of Hegel." (p. 204)l A la bonne leure ! That runs close to Upanishadic knowledge. It means that the world is objective – it is not the figment of an individual observer; but it is not material either, it is consciousness in vibration. (Note the... Eddington would say. What are facts? What is life? Anything more than what the senses and the mind have built up for us? Jeans himself is on the horns of a dilemma.1 Being a scientist, and not primarily a mathematician like Eddington, he cannot very well acquiesce in the liquidation of the material world; nor can he refute successfully the facts and arguments that Science itself has brought forward ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Lights, Visions, Dreams

... change or the vision with the stilling of the physical consciousness in the body. 30 October 1934 Last night I had a dream that you had come out of your seclusion for once; you were tall, quite young, but very dark. I began to wonder if this was Sri Aurobindo of former years! Page 518 No. It is not likely. It is probably some subtle physical form—the one corresponding to the Shiva element... signify the manifestation of Sri Aurobindo's divine light on the physical plane? Page 517 Yes. Then I saw that Sri Aurobindo's light was manifesting on a sea along with another light of pale blue colour. Does this mean that in the vastness of consciousness Sri Aurobindo's divine light is manifesting through the Intuitive Mind consciousness? Yes. 15 October 1933 I saw Sri Aurobindo... the same? 21 April 1933 Two days back in a dream I saw Sri Aurobindo coming towards me. His body and dress were blue. Why did I see him in this colour and not any other? It is the basic light Sri Aurobindo manifests. 23 June 1933 Sri Aurobindo's light is not a light of the illumined mind—it is the divine Illumination which may act on any plane. 7 September 1933 Someone was giving ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram

Visions of Champaklal  >  Visions - Symbols, Symbolism

... indicates an illumination of the consciousness, the colour, the play of forces mental (yellow), physical and vital, but forces making for enlightenment of these parts of the being. The flowers usually indicate a psychic activity. The light is often seen in front before the centre of inner vision, mind and will which is between the eyebrows in the forehead. The light outside means a touch or... force descending upon the mind, light around a general enveloping influence. A glow means a subdued but rich light or else a sort of warm exhilaration of a luminous kind. The sounds of bells and the seeing of lights and colours are signs of the opening of the inner consciousness which brings with it an opening also to sights and sounds of other planes than the physical. What one sees or hears... necessary in other planes. This figure may have belonged to the subtle physical plane. The many-headed or many-armed figures belong usually to the vital plane.... The world you see is in some subtle physical plane where men see the gods according to their own idea and images of them. It is the vital plane—probably the vital physical. It is mostly there that the beings of the vital world appear with ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Visions of Champaklal

In the Mother's Light  >  The Odyssey of the Psychic

... through its liberated and 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... leaving its old body. If it did so, its next incarnation would perforce be a mere duplication or repetition of its previous personality. This popular notion does not square with the fact of the soul's post-mortem journeying in the different worlds described in the religious books of India. What actually happens is that after death the soul continues to live in the subtle-physical body for some time—the... It may enter the body of a pig or a dog or any other animal. But his soul or central being can never take an animal body. Such projection of a part being into non-human birth can be but a temporary episode in the life of the man for the exhaustion of his abnormal animal appetites. Another thing that happens sometimes is that a certain formation, mental, vital or subtle-physical, of a dead man may ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11  >  The Ideal Centre

... consecrated work or service is the prayer of the body. Mind's prayer is 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... mechanical execution of outward acts performing certain duties however conscientiously or meticulously. It is indeed a ritual of prayer and self-dedication, adhesion and surrender of the most dynamic and material parts of our being—the most unresponsive and insensible elements—to the One Divine Will.         And this brings us to the major, the cardinal mantra of a centre, the mantra which Sri Aurobindo... inspiration, the single fount of all movements collective and individual. And a third mantra not less living or less urgent has been given by the Mother: "Let us work as we pray, for indeed work is the body's best prayer to the Divine." Here we learn of the way, the process that is to be followed, the skill as it were, for realising the goal.         And for a final comprehension and direction we ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  The Ideal Centre

... consecrated work or service is the prayer of the body. Mind's prayer is 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... mechanical execution of outward acts performing certain duties however conscien­tiously or meticulously. It is indeed a ritual of prayer and self­dedication, adhesion and surrender of the most dynamic and material parts of our being – the most unresponsive and in­sensible elements – to the One Divine Will. Page 342 And this brings us to the major, the cardinal mantra of a centre, the mantra... inspiration, the single fount of all movements collective and individual. And a third mantra not less living or less urgent has been given by the Mother: "Let us work as we pray, for indeed work is the body's best prayer to the Divine." Here we learn of the way, the process that is to be followed, the skill as it were, for realising the goal. And for a final comprehension and direction we are to remember ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

I Remember  >  P-321 to 346

... my work on the most material level - I did not see in thee the man, but the human being capable of supramentalisation, the aspiration for physical perfection, the effort towards total transformation, the will to divinise the body and a natural and spontaneous capacity to do so, a physical harmony already partly realised and a growing possibility of expressing materially the psychic consciousness... 3. The vital and the mind must not rule over the body. They spoil it by their ideas, their impulses and their desires (their excessive demands spoil the body). 4. Cooperation from the mind and the vital (a long process). They are a great force. 5. The body has to be protected and taken care of by an application of the knowledge of health, hygiene, physical exercise, preventive and... and curative medicine. 6. Growth of the body consciousness - the special role of physical education leading to gradual control, mastery and transformation of the body. 7. Physical education can help a lot in developing body consciousness. The body must be kept in a perfectly balanced state - Physical Sat-Chit-Ananda. Page 327 8. Integral progress - this is the ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   I Remember

The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Mother

... Overmind into the physical being of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother the greater aim seemed on the point of achievement. The Mother remarked in 1954 that even as far back as 1938 she used to see the Supermind appearing in Sri Aurobindo's body but what could not be done at that time was to fix it in the most outer physical being. The first fixing took place in circumstances mind-bafflingly dramatic... some day for even her physical eyes. A number of years she spent in Algeria, learning the higher occultism from a Polish adept, Theon by name, and his still more profoundly experienced English wife: Alma. Under them she would put her physical body into a trance and awake progressively in her subtle sheaths: putting to sleep the subtle sheath next to the physical, she would grow aware... whole force of mortal fate into his semi-divinised body and in the act of giving up this body exhausted that force in essence and principle and drew down to earth and fixed there the supramental Light. He took a drastic short cut towards a goal which otherwise would have taken decades to approach. Soon after he withdrew from his physical envelope the Mother and a number of disciples saw the ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo

On The Mother  >  Return to France

... above our earth, that is to say, the physical being and consciousness of which the world and the body are only images. But the modern Yogas hardly recognise the possibility of a material union with the Divine. 25 What was remarkable and distinctive about the experience was that her consciousness, having merged in the Divine, came back directly to the body. As she told her disciples on 8 October... s immersed in divine contemplation, the whole being enjoyed a supreme and vast felicity. Then was the physical body seized, first in its lower members and next the whole of it, by a sacred trembling which made all personal limits fall away little by little even in the most material sensation. The being grew in greatness progressively, methodically, breaking down every barrier, shattering... circumstances have changed," she wrote in her diary on 19th April, which makes it impossible for work on the physical plane to be done as ardently desired. What has happened? The physical being, far from accomplishing the transformation, is only seized with dull impassivity, The constructing mind has recognised its mistake and surrendered to the Divine Will. The vital is both contained and contented ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother

The Human Cycle  >  Civilisation and Barbarism

... distrust of novelty, his slowness to seize intelligently and assimilate, his downward propensity and earthward gaze, his vital and physical subjection to his heredity, all these and more are his heritage from the subhuman origins of his life and body and physical mind. It is because of this heritage that he finds self-exceeding the most difficult of lessons and the most painful of endeavours. Yet it... intelligence. Science in its very nature is knowledge, is intellectuality, and its whole work has been that of the Mind turning its gaze upon its vital and physical frame and environment to know and conquer and dominate Life and Matter. The scientist is Man the thinker mastering the forces of material Nature by knowing them. Life and Matter are after all our standing-ground, our lower basis and to know their... we have to start; he is our index and our foundation. The Self of man is a thing hidden and occult; it is not his body, it is not his life, it is not—even though he is in the scale of evolution the mental being, the Manu,—his mind. Therefore neither the fullness of his physical, nor of his vital, nor of his mental nature can be either the last term or the true standard of his self-realisation; ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle

Questions and Answers (1954)  >  18 August 1954

... insists that it should be done physically, totally, materially, that it should not remain in the air, you see, like a mental or vital action, but that it should be a physical realisation in all its details, and all the details be perfect, that nothing be neglected. So all that the others undertake in the other domains she concretises and brings to its material perfection. I have a question from the last... vibration; and instantly one throws upon it light, knowledge and truth, and all things are put back in their place. That happens instantaneously. But I insist that even on the most material body, and in the most material way, the effect is not the same. Besides, it is very simple to understand, for if the effect were the same, it would have no happy consequence of any kind for the Divine to take upon... has used "embodied beings", beings with a body upon earth. ( Silence ) Questions? Sweet Mother, I did not understand: "She throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine...." Did not understand? Because you don't have a poetic mind, so... It is a poetic image to express... You must not understand these things with a positivist mind; you must have a little feeling for the harmony ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1954)

Patterns of the Present  >  5: Science, Scientism, Modern Technology

... and the innumerable minute discoveries of physical Science. But a solution of the whole problem of existence cannot be based on an exclusive one-sided knowledge; we must know not only what Matter is and what are its processes, but what mind and life are and what are their processes, and one must know also spirit and soul and all that is behind the material surface: only then can we have a knowledge... reported by him in two slim volumes which he has called Sweet Mother I and II. The gross physical body is heavy, extremely limited in its possibilities, vulnerable, deficient in its perceptions, bound to its age, subject to illness and death, and not unjustly felt by some as a prison. The supramental body will be a body of light, with lightness as one of its characteristics, being able to go where it wishes... letter: “The physical scientists have their own field with its own instruments and standards. To apply the same tests to phenomena of a different kind is as foolish as to apply physical tests to spiritual truth. One can’t dissect God or see the soul under a microscope. So also the subjection of disembodied spirits or even of psychophysical phenomena to tests and standards valid only for material phenomena ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Patterns of the Present

Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2  >  THE TRUE YOGIC CONSCIOUSNESS

... pen refuses to manifest it through a material thing like paper!       Material things are not to be despised — without them there can be no manifestation in the material world.         The following flowers present themselves repeatedly before me: "Psychic purity" (Jasminum), "Purity in the blood" (Pimpinella major) and "Aspiration in the physical for the supramental light" (Ixora ... same time.       All is very good — to live on a higher plane and see the action in the physical from it as something separate is a definite stage in the movement towards transformation.         The mind and vital are simply flooded with the experiences. In the consciousness of the physical also the experiences are beginning, while the background of peace and silence is always maintained... in it. Now, it seems as if she has begun to come into me and be with me more and more.       It is the next thing that must be perfected.          It seems to me, Lord, that my physical body is opening to the Mother's experiences. There is nothing to be said about the Page 287 peace and silence — they appear to be there all the time, but something else happened ...

Nagin Doshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2

Questions and Answers (1954)  >  23 June 1954

... aware that there was between the subtle-physical and the most material vital a small region, very small, which was not sufficiently developed to serve as a conscious link between the two activities. So what took place in the Page 186 consciousness of the most material vital did not get translated exactly in the consciousness of the most subtle physical. Some of it got lost on the way because... vital, when you begin to come out from your physical consciousness and enter a more subtle consciousness, you put your vital to Page 185 sleep, you say to it, "Rest now, keep very quiet", and then you enter your mental activity and say to the mind, "Rest now, remain very quiet", and you put it to sleep also; and then you come out of the mind into a higher region, and there, if it begins... are foods which help the body to become subtle and others which keep it in a state of animality. But it is only at that Page 179 particular time that this becomes very important, not before; and before reaching that moment, there are many other things to do. Certainly it is better to purify one's mind and purify one's vital before thinking of purifying one's body. For even if you take all ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1954)

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Perfection of the Mental Being

... to be the mental, vital, physical ego; for that is always the creation, instrument and subject of mental, vital, physical Nature. This ego is not his real self, but an instrumentation of Nature by which it has developed a sense of limited and separate individual being in mind, life and body. By this instrumentation he acts as if he were a separate existence in the material universe. Nature has evolved... a soul in body, which puts forth life as its activity and mind as the light of that activity. This soul in body is the physical conscious being, annamaya puruṣa , which uses life and mind characteristically for physical experience,—all else being regarded as a consequence of physical experience,—does not look beyond the life of the body and, so far as it feels anything beyond its physical individuality... stand upon mind for self-knowledge and world-knowledge and thinks of himself as an individual for self-experience and world-experience, for an inward action and an outward-going action, but is yet different from mind, life and body. 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 ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Isha Upanishad  >  The Worlds - Surya

... being struggling to become conscious of itself in desire and sensation; the result is the emergence of Mind. So at least it appears to us in the ascending or evolutive movement. Wherever there is Matter, Life and Mind are present involved or evolving. So also, Life and Mind have some kind of material form as the condition of their activities. These three appear not as triune, owing to their domination... death into a new body; the mental being in man is not so rigidly bound to the vital and physical,—on the contrary, the latter are ordinarily dissolved together after death, and there must therefore be, before the soul is attracted back towards terrestrial existence, an interval in which it assimilates its terrestrial experiences in order to be able to constitute a new vital and physical being upon earth... organisation of consciousness has for its field Bhuvarloka, the worlds of free vital becoming in form. We may conceive also of an organised state of consciousness in which Mind liberates itself from subjection to material sensation and becoming dominant determines its own forms instead of being itself determined by the forms in which it finds itself as a result of life evolution. This formation ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Isha Upanishad

Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II  >  Rajani Palit

... and strong, the emotional and vital being purified and the physical consciousness so opened that the body can hold and retain the consciousness and power. I notice that at the time you had it the body also expressed it. This is sign that the capacity is already there in your physical being. The calm and strength will descend from above, what you have to do is to open yourself and receive and at the... predisposition of which vital invasion takes advantage. It is especially the physical consciousness and physico-vital which contain the germs or materials of this predisposition. The physical being is always changing its constituents and in each period of seven years a complete change is effected. If the symptoms of this predisposition in the nature are detected and wise influence and training used... not be decisive in the Psychic sense, that is to say the intruder cannot take full possession but also he cannot be thrown out entirely. In that case anything may happen, a shattered mind and health, the death of the body or a disturbed, divided and permanently abnormal nature. The third and worst possibility is that the intruding being may succeed and take entire possession. In that case the fits ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II

Autobiographical Notes  >  To Rajani Palit

... and strong, the emotional and vital being purified and the physical consciousness so opened that the body can hold and retain the consciousness and power. I notice that at the time you had it the body also expressed it. This is a sign that the capacity is already there in your physical being. The calm and strength will descend from above, what you have to do is to open yourself and receive it and at... predisposition of which the vital invasion takes advantage. It is especially the physical consciousness and the physico-vital which contain the germs or materials of this predisposition. The physical being is always changing its constituents and in each period of seven years a complete change is effected. If the symptoms of this predisposition in the nature are detected and a wise influence and training... not be decisive in the psychic sense, that is to say, the intruder cannot take full possession but also he cannot be thrown out entirely. In that case anything may happen, a shattered mind and health, the death of the body or a disturbed, divided and permanently abnormal nature. The third and worst possibility is that the intruding being may succeed and take entire possession. In that case the fits ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3  >  Ever Green

... accustomed vibrations on the normal levels of your existence, the physical, vital and mental; and even you can go beyond your psychic formation and be the wide, the vast, the limitless, the Infinite itself, void of all name and form. And then with that virgin consciousness drop straight into the world of material life and form, into your body and bodily reactions. The world will give itself up to you in... You can make an experiment even on your physical body, i.e. take the physical consciousness too to share in your adventure of ever new discovery. Thus you may, for example, forget your habit of eating or even walking, truly forget and try to learn over again, even as you did for the first time as a child. You have to acquire consciously a capacity of the body that has become an almost unconscious reflex... reflex action. It is a wonderful and exhilarating experience. Naturally you cannot repeat too often or carry too far an experiment of this kind on the physical plane. But you can freely deal with your inner life and consciousness. You can make your mind and your vital a clean slate, as much as you like: not once in your life, but every moment of your life. And then see how the world impinges upon your ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3

Evolution and the Earthly Destiny  >  Physics or Philosophy

... have such a revolutionary and unorthodox view. He seems to take courage from Dirac also. Dirac too cannot admit an annihilation of the material world. His proposal to save and salvage it follows a parallel line. He says that the world presented or pictured by physical science may not be and is not the actual world, but it posits a substratum of reality to which it conforms: the pattern presented by ... reality beyond space and time we may all be members of one body. In brief, modern physics is not altogether antagonistic to an objective idealism like that of Hegel." (p. 204) 1 A la bonne heure! That runs close to Upanishadic knowledge. It means that the world is objective—it is not the figment of an individual observer; but it is not material either, it is consciousness in vibration. (Note the word... Eddington would say. What are facts ? What is life ? Anything more than what the senses and the mind have built up for us? Jeans himself is on the horns of a dilemma.1 Being a scientist, and not primarily a mathematician like Eddington, he cannot very well acquiesce in the liquidation of the material world; nor can he refute successfully the facts and arguments that Science itself has brought forward ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution and the Earthly Destiny

The Mother (biography)  >  10: The Laboratory

... be known, even if trivial. ‘You don’t expect her mind to be a factual encyclopaedia of all that is happening on all the planes and in all the universes? Or even on this earth, e.g. what Lloyd George 93 had for dinner yesterday?’ asked Sri Aurobindo. ‘Questions of consciousness, of course, she always knows even with her outmost physical mind. Material facts she can know but is not bound to do it. What... us into the physical consciousness. Many have followed – some immediately without sufficient preparation in the mind and vital, some holding on to the vital and mind and living still between the three, some totally but with a prepared mind and vital. The total descent into the physical is a very troublesome affair – it means a long and trying pressure of difficulties, for the physical is normally obscure... her Prayers and Meditations. ‘Behind the physical body [of the Mother] there are many forms and powers and personalities of the Mother,’ wrote Sri Aurobindo; and: ‘She has many personalities and the body is plastic enough to express something of each when it comes forward.’ 62 Many disciples and visitors have told how aspects of the Mother’s physical appearance suddenly became godlike, or of seeing ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother (biography)

Science, Materialism, Mysticism  >  Did Classical Physics Bear Out Materialism

... responsibility on to the last member of an interminable series of particles be said to satisfy the mind with a clearly physical or dogmatically materialistic view of nature. The scientific mind fails and we are in the realm of magic, and some power which is not bound by our mind's capacity of physical conception but can achieve the impossible and whose working can be grasped by only some speech-transcending... described by Einstein as metaphysical, with no real place in science. Newton said that the centrifugal force developed by a rotating body was due to the body's relation to absolute space. Here an unobservable factor, absolute space, is involved as the cause of an observed physical phenomenon. According to Einstein, science could not invoke such an entity as the cause of anything. Absolute space and time,... and accuracy any theory previously advanced, induced philosophers as a body to accept such action as possible." Bolton, of course, is asking us not to reject Einstein on the score of contradiction of common sense or logic; but his reference to Newton serves excellently our purpose of showing that the suggestion of the supra-physical or occult is as strongly ascribable to Newtonian gravitation as to Einstein's ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Science, Materialism, Mysticism

Mother’s Agenda 1970  >  July 11, 1970

... " form, as we might call it (that is to say, the Grace helping and assisting and healing), it's white like milk. And if I want a wholly material action (but this is quite recent—it's since this new Consciousness came), then in its physical action, on the physical, it's become slightly colored: it's luminous, golden with some pink in it, but it's not pink... ( Mother takes a hibiscus next to her ).... zed his body in January or February 1874, leaving a promise that he would return at the time of the God of the vast Grace-Light." × Sri Aurobindo writes this about the chakra at the base of the spine: "The Muladhar is the centre of the physical consciousness proper, and all below in the body is the sheer... sheer physical, which as it goes downward becomes increasingly subconscient, but the real seat of the subconscient is below the body, as the real seat of the higher consciousness (superconscient) is above the body." ( Bases of Yoga , p. 133) ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1970

Questions and Answers (1955)  >  23 February 1955

... more. So this puts you in a kind of state of excitement, and if your body is very strong and can bear being without food for a certain length of time, then you keep your balance and can use these energies for all kinds of things, as for example, to progress, to become more conscious and transform your nature. But if your physical body doesn't have much in reserve and grows considerably weak from not eating... ate when he was hungry, without any rule of any kind. Perhaps he had his tastes and preferences too, we know nothing much about it, but he lived much more materially, much less mentally and vitally than now. Surely primitive man was very material, very near the animal. And as the centuries pass, man becomes more mental and more vital; and as he becomes more vital and mental, naturally refinement is... desire, all attraction, all movements of the vital, because when you eat simply because the body needs to eat, the body will tell you absolutely precisely and exactly when it has had enough; you see, when one is not moved by a vital desire or mental ideas, one grasps this with surety. "Now it is enough," says the body, "I don't want any more." So one stops. As soon as one has ideas or else desires in the ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)

Record of Yoga  >  9 January - 14 February 1917

... occasional and uncertain because usually rendered by the physical mind intellectually and not ideally. Re परिष्कृतस्य रसिन इयमासुतिश्र्चारुर्मदाय पत्यते Page 919 The Ananda purified felt a little afterwards flowing through the sukshma body like a sweet and delightful wine (juice of grapes). 10 January 1917 Sensitiveness of pranic body; intense pranic and emotional & sensational telepathy... but the utthapana was forcefully depressed in the body, not abolished even in the physical prana; and revived and resumed work though with a wounded force. Page 951 (2) Reaction in arogya. One of the chronic rogas which was on the point of abolition, reasserted tendencies of recurrence, but with a minimum force producing very slight material results. Another which was being depressed, revived... was to form by mental-physical pressure images out of akashic material, the material being of seven kinds,—chhaya, dhuma, tejas, jyoti, varna, agni, prakasha. The result was a blur of material shaping itself into forms. A second method was sudden manifestation of form partial or complete out of other akashas into the physical. The second is now preferred. Mental and physical pressure are abandoned ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study  >  Savitri As poetic Expression

... regarding the context these lines: "In the enormous spaces of the self The body now seemed only a wandering shell, His mind the many-frescoed outer court Of an imperishable Inhabitant." Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 5. Here we have the experience of the Self described wherein the physical body seems only the outer shell wandering from place to place in the enormous, unlimited... saw not God". Naturally one is surprised,—Why? Because if it is the Divine Spirit that is using the mind as an instrument, the mind should immediately and spontaneously be able to see God. See how the poet justifies the divine wisdom which permits the ignorance to the mind: "A material interim diplomacy Denied the truth that transient truths might live And hid the deity in creed... made of material elements, compounds and objects. It extends from the earth to the stars, and the farthest solar systems and to the groups of nebula; but Nature is not only material, it is also living. It contains the whole world of life from the insects and invisible germs to the largest animals Page 93 and the most evolved creatures. The same Nature is also mental and contains mind and ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Supermind and Humanity

... ends in Matter and the creation of the material universe. What we see here is not the planes or worlds of the descent in which mind and life can keep something of their truth and something of the light of the spirit, something of their true and real being; here we see an original inconscience and a struggle of life and mind and spirit to evolve out of the material inconscience and in a resultant ignorance... there is this law: even the body has an unexpressed knowledge of Page 576 its own, a just instinct in its action within certain limits and this when not interfered with by life's desires and mind's errors can work with a certain accuracy and sureness. But Supermind alone has the truth-consciousness in full and, if this comes down and intervenes, mind, life and body too can attain to the full... this power had no other capital result on the material world in which it had come down to intervene. One cannot but conclude that the influence, the change made would be far-reaching, even enormous: it would not only establish the Supermind and a supramental race of beings upon the earth, it could bring about an uplifting and transforming change in mind itself and, as an inevitable consequence, in the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Emergence of the Psychic  >  Growth of the Psychic Being

... accomplished. Its descent into the physical body is necessarily a descent into darkness, ignorance, unconsciousness; and for a very long time it must labour simply to bring a little consciousness into Page 77 the material substance of the body, before it can make use of it for the experience it has come for. So, if we cultivate the body by a clear-sighted and rational method... 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 accomplished during its active existence... is there progress, only in the physical world; it is not acquired everywhere. In the psychic world there is a kind of blissful repose. One remains what one is, without any movement. 73 — The Mother * In this progression [of the soul] the psychic entity is still veiled, even in man the conscious mental being, by its instruments, by mind and life and body, it is unable to manifest fully ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Emergence of the Psychic

Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga  >  Integral Yoga

... Hatha Yoga selects the body and vital functionings as its instrument of perfection and realisation. The method is a concentration and effort of energy released by Āsana and Prānāyāma in the outer and inner body for an object of physical perfection. Rāja Yoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever- power. It effects a change of the ordinary fleeting mind by a process of Yama... much diminished in their working by having to depend on the human instrumentation of mind, vital and physical. Only when these are quieted, they get a fuller force and reveal more their character.'14 The descent of the Overmind and the consequent transformation of the lower instruments of the mind, life, body and the inconscient mark a further decisive stage in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. It is... according to Sri Aurobindo, there is to be an ascent into the planes of the higher dynamic action and the descent of the powers of these planes into our mind, life and body. These planes are those of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, and Overmind preparing the ascent and descent of the Supermind.13 It is this process that is specifically called in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo the process ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga

The Life Divine  >  The Eternal and the Individual

... a particular mind and body is abolished. But is all truth of individuality and individualisation abolished? does the Purusha cease to exist or does he become the world-Purusha and live intimately in innumerable minds and bodies? We do not find it to be so. He still individualises and it is still he who exists and embraces this wider consciousness while he individualises: but the mind no longer thinks... have to use were minted 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... to base our conception of a truth in our terrestrial being and the possibility of a divine Life in material Nature. There our chief need is to discover the origin and nature of the Ignorance Page 380 which we see emerging out of the inconscience of matter or disclosing itself within a body of matter and the nature of the Knowledge that has to replace it, to understand too the process of ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine

Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history  >  The Yoga and The Ashram

... the mind would be incomplete without the education of the body, and it was no more than the reaffirmation of the Hellenic ideal of a healthy mind in a healthy body. But there was something else as well, rather more characteristic of the ancient Indian ideal: If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis... and unfailing interest in life. 69 The concern one brings to the well-being and efficiency of one's physical body has further to be extended in respect of one's dealings with other physical or material things as well. In handling houses, furniture, machines, cars, and other physical things ever so apparently insignificant, it would be wise to remember that each entity - a chair, a pen, a mirror... at the material or physical base - the emphasis now being on Karmayoga in its many forms expressive of the Ashram's variegated communal life. To build except on a supramental base would have been to repeat the familiar "old fiasco" once again. The building of the Life Divine had to be - it could only be on strong physical foundations:-the consciousness that had been the monopoly of the mind and heart ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history

Questions and Answers (1954)  >  29 December 1954

... selfishness; the result, you see, is that instead of being able to withdraw in a slightly higher consciousness which will protect him in his exit, he is gripped by material things and it is a terrible inner battle to free himself from both his body and his attachments. In fact, you see—I say except for a very few, so few that one can hardly speak about them—all men live in a total ignorance, Page... through. That is to say, the help is reciprocal. The psychic, when it has an influence on the outer life, brings to it light, order and quietude and the joy of the divine contact. But also the physical being, the body-consciousness—if it is identified with the psychic consciousness, and through that learns what kind of experience the psychic being wants to have—can help it to have Page 447 these... the sense that it no longer needs any new life. If it wants to come back to the physical world, it returns, because it has something to do there and it chooses freely to return. But till then, till this liberation, it is compelled to return to have all the experiences it needs. Well, if it happens that once the physical being is developed and conscious enough and has enough goodwill to be able to become ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1954)

Letters on Yoga - I  >  Rebirth

... the mental kind to which we give the name. The consciousness is merely covered, not lost or abolished by the so-called Inconscience of material Nature and then by the half-conscious ignorance of mind, life and body. It manifests, as the individual mind and life and body grow, as much as may be of the consciousness which it holds in potentiality, manifests it in the outward instrumental nature as far as... 1) The psychic being stands behind mind, life and body, supporting them; so also the psychic world is not one world in the scale like the mental, vital or physical worlds, but stands behind all these and it is there that the souls evolving here retire for the time between life and life. If the psychic were only one principle in the rising order of body, life and mind on a par with the others and placed... becoming a serpent. These are popular romantic superstitions. The soul takes birth each time, and each time a mind, life and body are formed out of the materials of universal Nature, Page 534 according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future. When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Sri Aurobindo And The Mother  >  Towards the Transformed Body

... p between the physical ego (ego-sense of the physical) and the life of the body. Mother found that the 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... settle in the physical mind.² And that's just the work being done in me for months now: the mind had been removed, and the physical mind is taking its place, and for some time I had noticed that it was... (I told you that it was seeing everything in a different way, that its relationship with things was different), I have been noticing these past few day; that the physical mind, the mind that is in the... from her body, but for some special reason there was an inner order that prohibited her during this period of physical sadhana to exteriorise herself. It was perhaps an inner insistence so that the solution to the problem of transformation could be found in the body itself. As Mother had once said: 'Salvation is physical.' During this entire process of transformation of the physical, Mother often ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo And The Mother

From Man Human to Man Divine  >  Science and Spiritual Knowledge

... behind his own and its exterior, he must dive deep below his own mental surface and the physical surface of Nature. This he can only do by knowing his inner mental, vital, physical and psychic being and its powers and movements and the universal laws and processes of the occult Mind and Life which stand behind the material front of the universe.... He must know also the hidden Power or Powers that control... mostly in his surface mind, life and body, there is an inner being within him with greater possibilities to which he has to awake and can awake through the process of the psychological discipline of Yoga; b)he has to open the ranges of this inner being and to live from there outward, governing his outward life by an inner light and force; c)there are states beyond the material, - supraphysical... necessary sides of the manifested Reality and of equal value. Only they are of different orders of reality. "The objective and physical is convincing to the physical or externalising mind because it is directly obvious to the senses, while of the subjective and the supraphysical that mind has no means of knowledge except from fragmentary signs and data and inferences which are at every step liable to error ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   From Man Human to Man Divine

The Secret of the Veda  >  Surya Savitri, Creator and Increaser

... energies (Hotras) in the human being, one corresponding to each of the seven constituents of his psychological existence,—body, life, mind, super-mind, bliss, will and essential being. Their irregular action or wrong relation, caused and maintained by the obscuration of knowledge in Mind, is the source of all stumbling and unhappiness, of all evil act and evil state. Surya, Lord of Knowledge, puts each... divine and not a human faculty. Man's mind is not constituted of the self-luminous truth, like the divine mind; it is a sense-mentality, Manas, which can receive and understand 2 Truth, but is not one with it. The light of knowledge has to present itself in this human understanding tempered so as to suit its forms to the capacities and limitations of the physical consciousness. And it has to lead up... other,—the sensational, aesthetic and emotional mind, the pure intellect and the divine intelligence. The fullness and perfection of these triple worlds of mind exists only in the pure mental plane of being, 3 where they shine above the three heavens, tisro divaḥ , as their three luminosities, trīṇi rocanāni . But their light descends upon the physical consciousness and effects the corresponding ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Secret of the Veda

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  The Boundaries of the Ignorance

... is only a superimposition, a visible summit; the great body of our being is submerged or subliminal.—The subliminal self perceives, remembers, understands, uses all that we fail to perceive, remember or use. It provides all the material of our surface being which is only a selection from its wider existence and activity. It is only the physical and vital part of our existence which is, properly speaking... Matter, a single eddy of the one indivisible Life, a single station of the one indivisible Mind, a single soul-manifestation of the one indivisible Spirit. Yet it is only by knowing the One that this individual mind, life, body, soul can know itself or its action.—Thus ignorance of self is the nature of our mind, but an ignorance full of the impulse towards self-possession and self-knowledge. A many-sided... speaking, subconscient; the subliminal self is the true mental being and in relation to our waking mind it is rather secretly circumconscient; for it envelops as well as supports. Of all this larger part of our being we are ignorant.—We are ignorant also of the superconscient, that which we ordinarily call spirit or oversoul; yet this we find to be our highest and widest self, Sachchidananda creating ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  Miracles

... energy. You can say it is the kinetic vital energy, It can produce a physical effect if it is strong enough and can lay hold on the vital-physical being. It is really the vital-physical that lays hold on the material object and deals with it. Disciple : One can understand a case in which there is intervention of another physical mind, say in the case of mesmerism. Sri Aurobindo : In mesmerism... Disciple : A symbol is a significant form of a plane of being which presents to the human mind Reality belonging to another plane e.g. the flag of a nation. Sri Aurobindo : In a sense everything here, on this earth-plane is symbolic of something that is beyond the physical plane. Our bodies, the vital being, the mental being are all a symbol – they are a whole range of symbols. There... it may appear in a human body. Page 173 4-9-1926 Disciple : Yesterday you said about a table being moved across the room. Such an obvious physical effect you said could be produced by will-power. Sri Aurobindo : It is not exactly will-power – that is only  a way of saying.  Of course, the power represents itself as will-power to the mind. The will is there as a c ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Science, Materialism, Mysticism  >  Einstein's Four-dimensional Continuum

... creativity the physical counterpart or expression of the freewill of a cosmic con­sciousness. We have definitely to look beyond materialism if we accept Minkowski's fusion of space and time to be actual. And Einstein's general relativity theory, which came ten years after his special or restricted one, does not in the least forbid us to do so. What that theory does is just to link up material masses with... experience is very different really from our older pre-Einsteinian picture of it, yet it still remains objective in a certain valid sense so far as the human mind is concerned. But, objective or no, the main point stands that material properties appear to be basically identical with space-time structure. And we may add that the whole implication of Einstein's repeated effort to create a "unified... of being an identity-in-difference. The revolution in physical concepts here is surely pro- founder than what the formalists make out. Although no absolute is yet on the scene, the relativities already suggest some kind of fusion in the nature of space and time. The suggestion, however, loomed a little remote until Minkowski put his mind to the relativities. And it loomed a little remote Page ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Science, Materialism, Mysticism

The Sunlit Path  >  Mundane Affairs

... all tension in the physical being, try... that is, in the body try so that the body lies like a soft rag on the bed, that it is no longer something with twitchings and cramps; to relax it completely as though it were a kind of thing like a rag. And then, the vital: to calm it, calm it as much as you can, make it as quiet, as peaceful as possible. And then the mind also—the mind, try to keep it like... subconscient this horrible notion that only material realities are real and that to be concerned with things that are not material represents a wonderful spirit of sacrifice, an almost sublime effort. Not to be preoccupied from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn with all the little physical satisfactions, physical pleasures, physical sensations, physical preoccupations, is to bear evidence of a remarkable... so-called joys of life. This insistence on the exclusive reality of the physical world, of physical pleasures, physical joys, physical possessions, is the result of the whole materialistic tendency of human civilisation. It was unthinkable in ancient times. On the contrary, withdrawal, concentration, liberation from all material cares, consecration to the spiritual joy, that was happiness indeed. ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Sunlit Path

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 6  >  EVER GREEN

... accustomed vibrations on the normal levels of your existence, the physical, vital and mental; and even you can go beyond your psychic formation and be the wide, the vast, the limitless, the Infinite itself, void of all name and form. And then with that virgin consciousness drop straight into the world of material life and form, into your body and bodily reactions. The world will give itself up to you... an experiment even on your physical body, i.e. take the physical consciousness too to share in your adventure of ever new discovery. Thus you may, for example, forget your habit of eating or even walking, truly forget and try to learn over again, even as you did for the first time as a child. You have to acquire consciously a capacity of Page 53 the body that has become an almost... reflex action. It is a wonderful and exhilarating experience. Naturally you cannot repeat too often or carry too far an experiment of this kind on the physical plane. But you can freely deal with your inner life and consciousness. You can make your mind and your vital a clean slate, as much as you like; not once in your life, but every moment of your life. And then see how the world impinges upon your ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 6

A Greater Psychology  >  The Superconscient: Gradations of the Higher Consciousness

... and penetrating with it and transforming the inconscience of the material basis. A last transition from Overmind to Supermind and a descent of Supermind must therefore intervene at this stage of evolutionary Nature. Overmind and its delegated powers, taking up and penetrating mind and the life and body dependent upon mind, would subject all to a greatening process; at each step of this process... own substance not only the mind of thought, but the heart and life and the sense and physical consciousness: already all these have their own peculiar powers of intuition derivative from the hidden Light; the pure power descending from above can assume them all into itself and impart to these deeper heart-perceptions and life-perceptions and the divinations of the body a greater integrality and... life-movements; it infuses into the sense a direct and total power of spiritual sensation so that our vital and physical being can contact and meet concretely, quite as intensely as the mind and emotion can conceive and perceive and feel, the Divine in all things; it throws on the physical mind a transforming light that breaks its limitations, its conservative inertia, replaces its narrow thought-power ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology

Letters on Yoga - II  >  Distinctive Features of the Integral Yoga

... secondly, the character of this manifestation as a spiritual evolution with Yoga as a means for Page 373 the transformation of mind, life and body into the instruments of a spiritual and supramental perfection. The universe is not only a material but a spiritual fact, life not only a play of forces or a mental experience, but a field for the evolution of the concealed spirit. Human life... this world but had an inner and intimate bearing on it, such as a feeling of the Infinite pervading material space and the Immanent inhabiting material objects and bodies. At the same time I found myself entering supraphysical worlds and planes with influences and an effect from them upon the material plane, so I could make no sharp divorce or irreconcilable opposition between what I have called the... of the supermind) and yet retain an earthly body. It was because of this failure that the spiritual effort of India culminated in Mayavada. Our Yoga is a double movement of ascent and descent; one rises to higher and higher levels of consciousness, but at the same time one brings down their power not only into mind and life, but in the end even into the body. And the highest of these levels, the one ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II

The Mother - Past-Present-Future  >  The Mother

... descent of the Overmind into the physical being of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother the greater aim seemed on the point of achievement. The Mother remarked in 1954 that even as far back as 1938 she used to see the Supermind appearing in Sri Aurobindo's body but what could not be done at that time was to fix it in the physical being. The first fixing took place in circumstances mind-bafflingly dramatic. Twelve... his semi-divinised body and in the act of giving up this body exhausted that force in essence and principle and drew down to earth and fixed there the supramental Light. He took a drastic short cut towards a goal which otherwise would have taken decades to approach. As soon as he withdrew from his physical envelope the supramental Light made its permanent base in the Mother's body, beginning with the... higher occultism from a Polish adept, Theon by name, and his still more profoundly experienced English wife. Under them she would put her physical body into a trance and awake progressively in her subtle sheaths: putting to sleep the subtle sheath next to the physical, she would grow aware in the one on a deeper level: she thus climbed the whole grade of what occultists have charted out as supraphysical ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother - Past-Present-Future

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  The Story of Dr. Faustus Retold

... 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 meet it, contact it... have come to know of it, that is to say, not the soul but the sweetness that the soul induces in the material flesh. There must be some truth in the suggestion. Consequently a rishi's body must be all the more appetising to the rakshasa, for it must contain a larger store of swetneess, a rishi's body enshrining a larger and greater soul in view of his rishihood. Also we know there are some types... soul. I will tell you now the moral of it. Each one of us, each human being has, or rather is, a soul. In reality we have or are two beings – an external outside being with its outward body and heart and mind, with all their ordinary desire movements and within that as under a cover lies your true being, your soul, that is made not of desire but of Truth. The outer person of desire is made of ignorance ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

Letters on Yoga - II  >  Mantra and Japa

... union with the Mother, her presence within the heart and the action of her Force in the nature. The other opens the mind to self-realisation, to the consciousness of what is above mind, to the ascent of the consciousness out of the body and the descent of the higher consciousness into the body. There is not necessarily any difference of Force. 1 Usually the Mother's name has the full power in... Chapter II Mantra and Japa The Word The word is a sound expressive of the idea. In the supra-physical plane when an idea has to be realised, one can by repeating the word-expression of it, produce vibrations which prepare the mind for the realisation of the idea. That is the principle of the Mantra and of japa. One repeats the name of the Divine and the vibrations... the external or material plane. The function of a mantra is to create Page 323 vibrations in the inner consciousness that will prepare it for the realisation of what the mantra symbolises and is supposed indeed to carry within itself. The mantra OM should therefore lead towards the opening of the consciousness to the sight and feeling of the One Consciousness in all material things, in the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II

Letters on Yoga - III  >  Experiences on the Higher Planes

... wideness of the Divine—that is to say one feels the very cells sharing in that peace and wideness. This is possible even if the material body is ill. In most cases it is the subtle body that feels like that, but as the subtle penetrates everywhere the gross physical, the physical body also feels like that. But then it does not feel disturbed by the pains or motions of the illness—they do not affect its peace... those of the mind opening to the higher mental planes and trying to bring down something from them and their powers into the mind, life and body. (2) E.g. his classification of four worlds (Parvati-Shankar etc.) is an attempt of the mind to interpret something he had seen, but it has not got it at all right. If Mahasaraswati stopped him at this moment, it must have been because his mind was making... see, discern and control all that is in the mind, vital and body. It is the meeting-place of the ascending and descending forces, as you see. Breaking into the Spiritual Consciousness Of course, Krishnaprem's view about the canalisation of Niagara is my standpoint also. 1 But for the human mind it is difficult to get across the border between mind and spirit without making a forceful rush or ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  Purification - The Lower Mentality

... are the spirit enveloped in mind, a soul evolved here as a mental being in a living physical body, it must naturally be in the mind, the antaḥkaraṇa , that we must look for this desideratum. And in the mind it is evidently by the buddhi, the intelligence and the will of the intelligence that the human being is intended to do whatever work is not done for him by the physical or nervous nature as in the... life and physical mind. The essential turn of the soul to possession and enjoyment of the world consists in a will to delight, and the enjoyment of the satisfaction of craving is only a vital and physical degradation of the will to delight. It is essential that we should distinguish between pure will and desire, between the inner will to delight and the outer lust and craving of the mind and body. If we... of its dependence on the body and its subjection to fatigue, incapacity, disease, disorder, insanity, the pettiness, the precariousness and even the possible dissolution of the workings of the physical mentality. Our mind instead of being a thing powerful in its own strength, a clear instrument of conscious spirit, free and able to control, use and perfect the life and body, appears in the result a ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Words of the Mother - III  >  Doctors and Medicines

... should be treated as such. A broad mind, a generous heart, an unflinching will, a quiet steady determination, an inexhaustible energy and a total trust in one's mission—this makes a perfect doctor. After all, an illness is only a wrong attitude taken by some part of the body. The chief role of the doctor is, by various means, to induce the body to recover its trust in the Supreme Grace... 1961 Page 156 To go from one doctor to another is the same mistake as to go from one Guru to another. One is on the material plane what the other is on the spiritual. You must choose your doctor and stick to him if you do not want to enter into physical confusion. It is only if the doctor himself decides to consult another or others that the thing can be done safely. 14 March 1961... cures. Medicines have little effect; it is the faith in medicines that cures. Get treated by the doctor whom you trust and take only the medicines that inspire trust in you. The body only has trust in material methods and that is why you have to give it medicines—but medicines have an effect only if the Force acts through them. Allopaths ordinarily cure one thing, only to the detriment of ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - III

The Mother on Auroville  >  New Consciousness

... thousands of years were needed; today, with his mind, man can will and hasten a transformation towards a man who shall be God. This transformation by the help of the mind—by self-analysis —is a first step; afterwards, it is necessary to transform the vital impulses: that is much more difficult, and especially to transform the physical. Every cell in our bodies must become conscious. This is the work... what extent does the building of Auroville depend on man's acceptance of spirituality? The opposition between spirituality and material life, the division between the two, has no meaning for me, for in truth life and the spirit are one and it is in and by physical work that the highest spirit must manifest. 19.4.1968 * Humanity is not the last rung of the terrestrial creation. Evolution... show clearly! On top of that, it does not give you any material power. There again, X once said—he was speaking of the true hierarchy, the hierarchy based on each one's power of consciousness—the individual or individuals who are at the very summit necessarily have the least needs; their material needs become less as their capacity of material vision grows. And that is very true. It is automatic and ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Mother on Auroville

Record of Yoga  >  10 June - 29 September 1914

... sense of the material hopelessness of the ideal. Siddhi in vijnana, physical ananda etc is felt to be certain & probable in saundarya but not certain. The faith in Kriti is still insistent on proof in the actuality. Arogya — Jala 3 times. 21 July 1914 V सं पृच्छसे समराणः शुभानैर्वोचेस्तत्रो हरिवो यत्ते अस्मे— Script— That is the active effective side of the Divine Mind must be made... distance. Especially, the dasyabuddhi is greatly strengthened, & the Tapas. Physical alasya still persists & resists the pranic utthapana, but it is being constantly overborne. Mental utthapana is almost complete, ie the uninterrupted energy of the mind for action, pranic utthapana is only resisted by the défaillances of the body. The two are now moving towards a continuous variable energy; change of... false experiential logic in the mind, which lays too much stress on the defect and on a certain attempt of the exterior smarana to rush upon the ananda & claim it as its effect by a rapid self-association. Entire continuity is delayed by old memories in the body which help in keeping up the idea of inability of dharana and the habit of discontinuance. The other physical anandas are more subject to these ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

The Sun and The Rainbow  >  Sex and Spirituality

... evolving phenomenon here and pressing for entire manifestation. The Spirit's substance, according to Sri Aurobindo, must possess a divine materiality as the archetype of our body, and our body must have been evolved in order ultimately to express that materiality. At present it is a pallid image of the archetype, the supporting truth. Our Yoga must be such as would enable the archetype to shine out... escape the body's barrennes caused by replacing that clutch with no other physical process, not only the inner being but the outer as well must be able to partake of the Divine's nature: then alone the rush for sexual self-completion and for vicarious immortality through one's children will be checked — then alone the poverty which seems to spread over bodily existence will be avoided. The body must find... perpetuity because of the descent of the Divine and His undying Spirit into the atoms of the body: so the need to perpetuate the race by having children will be no more, even as the need sex tries to answer for a physical sense of union in which the ego-fragment seeks completeness will disappear because of a divine body-experience that is not shut off from the Beatific and the Perfect. Page 70 ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Sun and The Rainbow

Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga  >  Sri Aurobindo

... was working in the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the Supramental light; the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called... remarked that I felt like leaving this body of mine. He spoke out in a very firm tone, 'No, this can never he. If necessary for this transformation I might go, you will have to fulfil our Yoga of supramental descent and transformation.' It was on 5 December 1950 at 1.26 a.m. that Sri Aurobindo left his physical body, and yet for 111 hours the body remained intact and undecomposed. As the... questioning mind: "Are such siddhis as utthapana (levitation) possible?" I then suddenly found myself raised up in such a way that I could not have done it myself with muscular exertion. Only one part of the body was slightly in contact with the ground and the rest was raised up against the wall. I could not have held my body like that normally even if I had wanted to and I found that the body remained ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga

Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Dreams

... over places in the vital or subtle physical world (even sometimes the material); it is always in the vital sheath that one flies like that. The ascending movement is 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... sleep of the body is more deep,—the dreams are there but the body consciousness does not note them or remember that it had them. The consciousness goes into another plane of existence [ during sleep ] and, as the physical consciousness is not connected with or takes no part in the experience there, when it returns, nothing is remembered. The subconscient remains in the body [ during sleep... they are the formations of your own mind or vital; sometimes they are the formations of other minds with an exact or a modified transcription in yours; sometimes formations come that are made by the non-human forces or beings of these other planes. These things are not true and need not become true in the physical world, but they may still have effects in the physical if they are framed with that purpose ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV

Beyond Man  >  Chapter Twelve: Krishna and the World of the Gods

... to descend in the body of Sri Aurobindo, to establish himself in it, you understand?’ 12 In 1926 Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had already realized the Supermind in the mental and vital parts of their embodied personality. To bring the Supermind into the material part — the crucial and by far the most difficult step in the process — their material substance and the material substance of the whole... greater Forces or Gods of the Overmind, had consented, at their request, to descend and establish himself in matter — in Sri Aurobindo’s material body, purified by years of intense and advanced yoga. This means, mirabile dictu , that from 24 November 1926 onwards that body housed two great beings! In the same conversation, the Mother mentions the exact meaning of Datta’s inspired words — an inspiration... gradation of the lower hemisphere’; this gradation is separated from the higher hemisphere of divine Unity by a ‘golden lid’ — the gate human beings cannot pass through without casting off their material body. It is as if by that lid the Light of Unity is filtered into rays of (apparent) division — a division which is subdivided endlessly into our mental consciousness which can no longer conceive of ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Beyond Man

Lights on Yoga  >  The Goal

... supermind. The earth is a material field of evolution. Mind and Life, Supermind, Sachchidananda are in principle involved there in the earth-consciousness; but only Matter is at first organised; then life descends from the life plane and gives shape and organisation and activity to the life principle in Matter, creates the plant and animal; then mind descends from the mind plane, creating man. Now Supermind... ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter. This is an exceedingly difficult aim and difficult Yoga; to many or most it will seem impossible. All the established forces of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness are opposed to it and deny it and try to prevent it, and the Sadhak will find his own mind, life and body full of the... bringing of the divine Truth down on the Page 1 earth, not only into the mind and vital but into the body and into Matter. Our object is not to remove all "limitations" on the expansion of the ego or to give a free field and make unlimited room for the fulfilment of the ideas of the human mind or the desires of the ego-centred life-force. None of us are here to "do as we like", or to ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Lights on Yoga

Letters on Yoga - I  >  The Supermind or Supramental

... containing it. Till then there may be direct contacts, communications, interchanges with cosmic forces, beings, movements, but not the full unity of mind with the cosmic Mind, of life with the cosmic Life, of body and physical consciousness with the cosmic material Energy and its substance. Again there may be a realisation of the Cosmic Self which is not followed by the realisation of the dynamic universal... transforms mind, life and body—not the Sachchidananda consciousness which supports impartially everything. But it is by having experience of the Sachchidananda, pure existence-consciousness-bliss, that the ascent to the supramental and the descent of the supramental become (at a much later stage) possible. For first one must get free from the ordinary limitation by the mental, vital and physical formations... calm and silence I conducted a pretty strenuous political activity and have also taken my share in keeping up an Asram which has at least an appearance to the physical senses of being solid and material! If you deny that these things are material or solid (which of course metaphysically you can), then you land yourself plump into Shankara's illusionism, and there I will leave you. You will say however ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I

Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study  >  Trends in Modern English Poetry

... intensity of a mental perception, and then he asks: "yet how persuade a mind that the thing seen Is habitant of the cerebral cave And has elsewhere no materiality?" All knowledge of man is within his mind and belongs to the mind. The world is a flux and the flux takes place in the mind. He almost makes out that all knowledge is only a mode of the subject, Continuing the same line... nourishing all the different functions of the body social and enriching the dry starved and unproductive sands—the peoples and turning the sands into a fertilizing delta, is a proper acme to the poet's inspiration which invokes the peoples in the following words:- "Rise, Will of life in brothers". The physical body serves as a very apt symbol of the body social. In contradiction to the theory of class... speech which comes from the deeper Soul. It is not mind that is the creator of the highest poetry. It is imaginative intellect that is the general basis of poetic creation, but at its highest, creation comes out of inspiration from above the intellect. But very seldom the whole body of poetry is received direct from the original higher source. The mind, the brain, the critical intellect and many other ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study

Education at Crossroads  >  Education at Crossroads

... one another. The physical being is often in conflict with the vital pursuits, and when the vital ambitions and attractions impose upon the physical body their own burden, the physical often revolts or collapses. The demands of physical health are often in clash with the demands of the vital being. Again, the demands of the vital being are in conflict with the demands of the mind when it wants to... skilfully, carefully and diligently is the sure basis of the material stability of a culture and of making Matter subservient to the higher aims of culture, — even of spiritual culture. 12. Physical Education Well balanced healthy body is the means of realisation of the highest ideals. Shariram adyam khalu dharma sadhanam . Hence, physical education that aims at health and strength, agility and... manifestation, the manifestation of Matter of which our own physical being is but a symbolic knot; the second is the manifestation of Life, of which our own individual vital being is but a symbolic knot; the third is the manifestation of the mind, of which our own individual mind is but a symbolic knot; and the fourth is the manifestation of the Super-mind, the corresponding sheath in our being is still to ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Education at Crossroads

Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1  >  Dreams

... over my body — up to the material layer! It was something more than the touch of a fiat. This time my physical consciousness experienced being taken more inside than above. It was no more bound by the ignorant nature. Page 226       It is obviously an experience. It is not symbolic, so you can't ask what it signifies—it was a thing that happened, just as on the physical plane Mother... rendered in terms familiar to the physical mind — e.g. shopkeeper, police etc. though arranged in a different way from the physical. I cannot say they are clear and precise in significance as the mental dreams are.       The dream is a seeing of things that have their truth on the vital plane.       You do not know that you live on other planes as well as on the physical and that what happens there... and that the mind gives them the forms of men or women, with whom we are acquainted on the physical plane. Is it true?       It is not parts of our own real "being" usually. It is different forces and forms of nature — whether of Page 219 general nature or of our own nature, also ideas, impulses etc., the formations of our outer personality, or mind, vital etc. ...

Nagin Doshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1

Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body  >  Nutrition

... Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body Page 138 Nutrition Introduction There is a story told in the East of two fakirs who had spent years in seclusion studying yoga, having learned extraordinary feats of physical and mental control and mastery of their minds and bodies. Standing on the banks of the Ganges they fell into one another's company... instinctively what it means to feed children. Nourishment must be of the total being, at the most material level but also at subtler and subtler levels of the being. The material base of the food must be proper, but so must be many other circumstances around it which contribute to the total care of the body. Wholesome character of the food, beauty in presentation, subtle art of enhancement of flavours... of food, or else, when breath or "prana", so termed in the Sanskrit, may suffice to provide strength and energy to subtler but still material bodies. This day might come later but for us, today, the urgency remains of a proper approach to nutrition, so that our bodies Page 141 are maintained in a peak condition of health and longevity. The excerpts that we are presenting below, ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body

Emergence of the Psychic  >  Psychic Transformation

... psychic transformation there are three main elements: (1) the opening of the occult inner mind, inner vital, inner physical, so that one becomes aware of all that lies behind the surface mind, life and body — (2) the opening of the psychic being or soul by which it comes forward and governs the mind, life and body turning all to the Divine — (3) the opening of the whole lower being to the spiritual truth... the mind, life and body and turn and open them all fully to the Divine, removing all that is opposed to that turning and opening. This is what is called in this yoga the psychic transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental, vital, physical) co... and no sense of its greater joy and strength for fulfilment. Our physical part has to give up its instincts, needs, 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 ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Emergence of the Psychic

Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness

... presupposes a material and a vital stage which prepare his emergence into mind and an animal past which moulded a first element of his complex humanity. And let us not say that this is because material Nature developed by evolution his life and his body and his animal mind, and only afterwards did a soul descend into the form so created... for that supposes a gulf between soul and body, between soul... which are only the physical translation or the material concentration of this current behind, may in the course of evolution be replaced by a direct action of the centers of consciousness, which would simply radiate their energy throughout the new body, just as the heart, blood and nerves now radiate throughout our present body. This is how the Mother once explained the future body to the ashram children:... tension and constant buzz of the thinking mind, from the tyranny and restlessness and endless demands of the vital mind, from the stupidity and fears of the physical mind, we begin to appreciate what the body is without all these exhausting encumbrances, and we discover that it is a marvelous instrument – docile, enduring, and full of unlimited goodwill. The body is the most misunderstood instrument of ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness

Notes on the Way  >  22 November 1967

... monopoly of the vital and the mind has become that of the body: the consciousness is working in the cells of the body. The cells of the body are becoming something conscious, wholly conscious. A consciousness that is independent, not depending at all upon the vital or the mental consciousness: it is a bodily consciousness. ( Silence ) And this physical mind of which Sri Aurobindo said that... ss that was infused into the body by the vital (from the mental into the vital, from the vital into the body), when both had disappeared, the consciousness emerged slowly, slowly. That started with a burst of the Love from the highest summit, the last supreme altitude, and then little by little, little by little, it came down into the body. And then this physical mind, that is to say, something altogether... belonging to the body that makes them move and do things quite independent of the mind and the vital. I mean to say that when I am before the mirror for shaving, if I do not put within me the mantra or an aspiration coming from the heart, well, it is an inert block that is shaving, and add to that the physical mind whirling. But if I put a mantra or a mental will... But no! It is the body that ends ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Notes on the Way

The Renaissance in India  >  The Renaissance in India - 4

... itself to a physical knowledge and its practical fruits or to the knowledge of life and man and mind based upon the idea of matter or material energy as our starting-point; a spiritualised culture will make room for new fields of research, for new and old psychical sciences and results which start from spirit as the first truth and from the power of mind and of what is greater than mind to act upon... action and the suppleness and variety of her mind will not be less, but greater than of old. Spirituality is not necessarily exclusive; it can be and in its fullness must be all-inclusive. But still there is a great difference between the spiritual and the purely material and mental view of existence. The spiritual view holds that the mind, life, body are man's means and not his aims and even that... of the desire of the soul of man for development, expansion, increasing vigour and joy, light, power, perfection. Spirit without mind, Page 33 spirit without body is not the type of man, therefore a human spirituality must not belittle the mind, life or body or hold them of small account: it will rather hold them of high account, of immense importance, precisely because they are the conditions ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Renaissance in India

The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Higher and the Lower Knowledge

... but in supermind, mind, life and body; to possess him with the spirit, with the mind, with the vital and the physical consciousness; and it is again for all these to be possessed by him, so that our whole being is one with him, full of him, governed and driven by him. It is, since God is oneness, for our physical consciousness to be one with the soul and the nature of the material universe; for our... though we live physically on the material plane and in normal outward-going life the mind and soul are preoccupied with material existence, this externality of our being is not a binding limitation. We can raise our internal consciousness from plane to plane of the relations of Purusha with Prakriti, and even become, instead of the mental being dominated by the physical soul and nature, the gnostic being... deeper and get a completer view and experience, each of these lines brings us face to face with God. Science at its limits, even physical Science, is compelled to perceive in the end the infinite, the universal, the spirit, the divine intelligence and will in the material universe. Still more easily must this be the end with the psychic sciences which deal with the operations of higher and subtler planes ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga

Integral Yoga - Major Aims, Methods, Processes and Results  >  PART FIVE

... in order to be secure, must find a physical base. Everything that has evolved has had a material basis. The same rule will apply to the evolution of the supermind on the earth. For that purpose, supramental consciousness must not only descend in the physical consciousness, but it must also be fixed in the physical consciousness. On the other hand, the physical Page 83 substance itself... appearance on the earth of a new divine body. There will be, in other words, the development of the next supramental species. Sri Aurobindo has even described the essential features of the divine body in his book ' The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth'. And the Mother's own experimental research in the physical transformation confirms the formation of the divine body of the new species, at least, in... Not only that, just as the evolution of the thinking mind has led the evolutionary process to develop a human body with special characteristics and structure that distinguish it from the body of the Darwinian Ape, similarly, there would come about, according to Sri Aurobindo, in the evolution of a supramental being the appearance also of a body, which would be appropriate to the operation of the s ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Integral Yoga - Major Aims, Methods, Processes and Results

The Psychic Being  >  Nature of the Psychic Being

... the mind, the life and the body, since it is these parts of Nature that have to be developed as its instruments of self-expression, and it is long confined by their evolution. Missioned to lead man in the Ignorance towards the light of the Divine Consciousness, it takes the essence of all experience in the Ignorance to form a nucleus of soul-growth in the nature; the rest it turns into material for... it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being—"no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers —and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity and ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature. This soul is obliged to accept the human... individual is aware always of its universality and transcendence, it is yet its deputy in the forms of Nature, the individual soul, caitya puruṣa , supporting mind, life and body, standing behind the mental, the vital, the subtle-physical being in us and watching and profiting by their development and experience. These other person-powers in man, these beings of his being, are also veiled in their ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Psychic Being

Record of Yoga  >  29 - 30 September - 31 December 1914

... Vijnana. Trikaldrishti is proving true even when it reveals itself to the body, the physical sensations, the obscure mind etc. Eg. an object sought in the darkness, the hand instinctively seeks the right place, if not interfered with by the mind. A physical consciousness presents itself of a certain fact or event, the mind being without a clue is unable to specify, although the kind of fact or event... manas understands and no longer sanctions choice; it is now only the physical & pranic elements that have the habitual reactions which come from the mental choice. These have to be eliminated for perfection of Samata, for perfection of Shakti.         The Ishwara will choose through the Vijnana & work out through mind, prana & body obeying the Vijnana. Page 666             There must be... overpower but failed. A great force of physical tapas is present in the body, but failed entirely for a time in the evening. Afterwards it recovered itself.     Long sleep is at present the habit of the body which thinks Page 678 it necessary to recuperate itself from the strain which the pranic parts of the body feel less & less but the physical still consciously or subconsciously undergoes ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

Mother’s Agenda 1969  >  October 1, 1969

... constantly here! Constantly, whatever the body may be doing—whether it sees people or looks after itself or sleeps—it's always, always there, conscious, vibrating. I say, "It can be done"—but it's a fact. Only, what's needed is... the general obstacle is that most people's physical consciousness is very dark; it's made only of needs, desires, the most material reactions, but what's needed is to awaken... the vital and the mind that are like this ( zigzagging gesture ), unsteady Especially the vital, which is interested in all kinds of things. Naturally, the two are interdependent: the ego must be abolished—the RULE of the ego must be abolished. Generally, people think it's not possible to abolish the physical ego; not only is it possible, Page 361 it's DONE, and the body continues, it keeps... .. I think it's all come back into place. Page 359 Difficulties? Physical consequences? Yes. As for me, I've always felt his contact as something very beneficial. It depends on... what one needs. But it doesn't matter. For me, it has given me a lot of work, because I had harmonized the body's transformation with the requirements of the work, and I had managed to find a harmony ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1969

Our Many Selves  >  The Mental

... mode of activity, whereas there is a mental substance as there is a vital substance and physical substance. And as there is a substance, there is a corresponding world with an autonomous existence, that is to say, there can be a mind without any physical support. The physical body may disappear and the mind can continue to exist. It is here that it is important to understand that there is a mental substance... chief functions of the physical mind is to doubt. If you listen to it, it will always find a thousand reasons for doubting. But you must know that the physical mind is working in ignorance and full of falsehoods. The Mother Words of the Mother - II: The Mind Sweet Mother, is the physical mind the same as the mechanical mind? Almost. You see, there is just a little difference, but not... not much. The mechanical mind is still more stupid than the physical mind. The physical mind is what we spoke about one day, that which is never sure of anything. I told you the story of the closed door, you remember. Well, that is the nature of the physical mind. The mechanical mind is at a lower level still, because it doesn’t even listen to the possibility of a convincing reason, and this happen ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Our Many Selves

Sri Aurobindo came to Me  >  Messenger of the Incommunicable

... soul into a veritable temple of delight. Had it been otherwise he would not have written in the same message (on the perfection of the body): "If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside: for the body is the material basis... Shariram khalu dharmasadhanam...the means Page 244 of fulfilment of dharma and dharma means every ideal... certain openings in the physical mind or vital part, but not a real p art of oneself or spontaneous creation in one's own nature. To create a confusion and darkness in the physical mind and to throw into it or awaken in it mistaken ideas, dark thoughts, false impressions is a favourite method of these Page 248 assailants, and if they can get the support of the mind from over confidence... this world but had an inner and infinite bearing on it, such as a feeling of the Infinite pervading material space and the Immanent inhabiting material objects and bodies. At the same time, I found myself entering supraphysical worlds and planes with influences and an effect from them upon the material plane, so I could make no sharp divorce or irreconcilable opposition between what I have called the ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo came to Me

Mother’s Agenda 1965  >  August 21, 1965

... images in the sense that it wasn't purely material, physical as we know it here, but in a symbolic, imaged physical (in which the material world is seen as clay). It was very interesting. Page 224 Only, there was a very great intensity of transformation, and (how can I explain?)... It's like a shift in the directing will. And then, there was materially, physically, a sort of surprise, and a... call it?... A transfer of power. The cells, the whole material consciousness, used to obey the inner individual consciousness—the psychic consciousness most of the time, or the mental (but the mind had been silent for a long time). But now this material mind is organizing itself like the other one, or the other ones, rather, like the mind of all the states of being—do you know, it is educating itself... silence ) This morning, for example, several times for a certain length of time (I don't know how long, but not a very short time: a quarter of an hour, half an hour, I don't know), the body's cells, that is, the body's form had the experience that staying together or dissolving depends on a certain attitude—an attitude or a will; something that has to do with will and attitude. And with the perception ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1965

Lights on Yoga  >  Appendix

... the separative ego is not a creation of birth in the physical body; the mental and the vital have it also. So, so long as the mental and vital are subject toignorance, the ego will last also. When the psychic being goes into rest it naturally takes it with the essence of its past experience and in coming back it takes up a mental, vital and physical existence which has the mark of the ego and the ignorance... Napoleon had a strong vital, but not one organised round the psychic being. * "The ego is a formation of Nature; but it is not a formation of physical nature alone, therefore it does not cease with the Page 54 body. There is a mental and vital ego also." (Pp. 16-17) Does this mean that the ego is carried by the psychic as a separate principle after death just... the Personal being the only highest truth are mind created quarrels derivative from this dividing aspect of the Overmind. The Overmind does not deny any in the aspects as the Mind does, it admits them all as aspects of the One Truth, but by separating them it originates the quarrel in the more ignorant and more limited and divided Mind, because the Mind cannot see how two opposite things can exist together ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Lights on Yoga

Our Light and Delight  >  The Birth-Centenary of the Mother

... then was to fix it there. In 1950 Sri Aurobindo gave up his body in a strategic self-sacrifice and the Supramental Light was drawn for good and fixed in the physical mind of the Mother, constituting what he had called the Mind of Light. We have learnt from the Mother that Sri Aurobindo, in leaving his body, sacrificed his own personal fulfilment in order to hasten the fulfilment of mankind... most concretely into our body's self-awareness. One may even affirm that it was as if she had put one foot forward Page 213 from that world into our earth-air and we could touch it not only with our inner consciousness but also with the very brain-mind that deals with the physical world. A vast opening took place in hundreds of us, blending the body-sense itself with her radiant... permanently his physical substance so as to start supramentalising it. She told Roger that because the physical supramentalisation had not been there Page 217 Sri Aurobindo's body could undergo death. To me she said: "Clearly, Sri Aurobindo did not have the supramental body, and neither do I have it. But that does not mean that the Supermind was not in his body. The two things ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Our Light and Delight

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1  >  A Chapter of Human Evolution

... name for Athena, Minerva, is significantly derived by scholars from Latin mens, which means, as we all know, mind. The Greek Mind, as I said, is the bridge thrown across the gulf existing between the spiritual, the occult, the intuitive and the sensuous, the physical, the material. Since the arrival of Page 222 the Hellenes a highway has been built up, a metalled macada-mised... continues the tradition. The Mind of Reason is a kind of steel-frame for other movements of consciousness – pure ideas, imaginations or instinctive and sensory 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... 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 and ceremonies, and mind a field of metaphors and legends and parables ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

The Hidden Forces of Life  >  The Psychic

... Nature; but this action is occult and not obtruded on the surface. In the early material and vital stages of the evolution of being there is indeed no consciousness of soul; there are psychic activities, but the instrumentation, the form of these activities are vital and physical—or mental when the mind is active. For even the mind, so long as it is primitive or is developed but still too external, does not... consciously and fully its dictates. An occult mental and vital and subtle-physical action intervenes, mixes with it, tries to use it and turn it to its own profit, dwarfs its divinity, distorts or diminishes its self-expression, even causes it to deviate and stumble or stains it with the impurity, smallness and error of mind and life and body. After it reaches the surface, thus alloyed and diminished, it is... but it does not become these things nor is it touched or changed by these opposites of itself which so powerfully affect its outer instrumentation of mind, life and body. For the soul, the permanent being in us, puts forth and uses mind, life and body as its instruments, undergoes the envelopment of their conditions, but it is other and greater than its members. If the psychic entity had been from ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Hidden Forces of Life

Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God  >  11: The Scientific Method

... evidence that the mind is not only necessary, but may be integral to our understanding of the physical universe.” 49 “The problem for biology is that the model of physics, held up as the paradigm for science, is not applicable because the analogies of mass, velocity and distance do not exist for organisms.” (Lewontin 50 ) The classical machine model fails in biology. A material molecule cannot... directly experienced by the senses; life and mind – and the non-material worlds of occultism, religion and fantasy or superstition conjured by them – could not. The fundamental materialism of science, and its offhand dumping of all else, have become so common that at present to academic science and its popularization the world is wholly and exclusively material. Galileo’s second premise was that science... ” 23 “Scientific laws only give a schematic account of material process of Nature – as a valid scheme they can be used for reproducing or extending at will a material process, but obviously they cannot give an account of the thing itself,” writes Sri Aurobindo, 24 and certainly not of a living organism. “… We live in the surface mind of ignorance, do not know what is going on behind and see ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God