... part of a man's being are left behind in the physical world; the vital elements in the corresponding vital world; and the mental elements in the mental world. Just as the soul first drops its physical sheath at the moment of so-called "death", it discards too its vital and mental sheaths after some time, short or long, depending on many variable circumstances. But that does not mean that nothing will... realm, there are regions of happy and pleasant experiences but there are regions too which offer very unpleasant and painful experiences to the wandering being. An individual, discarding his gross physical sheath at death and then pursuing his course of other-worldly journey, may have to come at some stage to these so-called "heavens" and "hells" and be acquainted with their corresponding delightful or ...
... attained when it can effectuate its permanent release from this gross terrestrial body and depart to a desired supraterrestrial world of existence and experience at the fall of the present physical 'sheath'. In this connection we may recall, for comparison, the Christian doctrine of the body — in particular, St. Paul's gospel of a 'glorious body'. In the Pauline anthropology, it is not... mental human culture. Now, the same rule is bound to hold in the case of a prospective divine transfiguration of terrestrial life. A supramental transformation even of what is called our 'physical sheath', annnamaya ko ṣ a, is absolutely indispensable for a truly divine living in the world. As Sri Aurobindo has so trenchantly put it: "It can only be by developing a body or at least ...
... that was the real issue! What ailed him then? Or was the disease more serious? Let us go back to the origin of his illness and follow the sequence of events that ended with his leaving the physical sheath and were apparently its cause and try to discover the truth behind the appearance. One day we came to notice that Sri Aurobindo's urination had increased in freqency. He wanted to know the reason... me even in his last moment. They were a reminder of the pledge he had given before that he would never forsake me. After this utterance, followed the final plunge. At 1.26 a.m., leaving his physical sheath, "the Colonist from Immortality" departed from the earthly habitation, in the presence of the Mother who stood near his feet with an intense penetrating gaze, an incarnation of divine strength ...
... ess in a state of illuminated Sleep.He began his task as the supreme animal, Pashu, Vanara, Nrisingha, developing all these potentialities purely in the annamaya kosha Page 518 or physical sheath of his being in Annam & Prana; he went on as the mixed animal, first the Pishacha or scientific, curious animal, then the Pramatha or aesthetic, curious animal; and from these levels climbed to ...
... evolution to a totally transformed existence both of life and form in a divinised earth-nature." These words hold out the prospect that Sri Aurobindo who has already a divinised subtle physical sheath may employ the supramental mode of manifestation for the purpose of presiding in the domain of Matter itself over the new humanity which the Mother will initiate. In that dawn of God's gold the ...
... consciousness in which the dream-state disappears more or Page 238 less abruptly, effacing the fugitive impression made by the dream events (or rather their transcription) on the physical sheath. If the waking is more composed (less abrupt) or, if the impression is very strong, then the memory remains at least of the last dream. In the last case one may remember the dream for a long ...
... and this meant a voluntary, conscious descent into hell. Such was her Love for humanity. She found that the vital and mental components or sheaths had been taken away from that body; only the physical sheath remained, the physical interface with Matter. ‘The whole body has been emptied of its habits and forces, and slowly, slowly, slowly the cells have then woken up to a new receptivity and have opened ...
... find and feel the Mother's concrete physical presence inside the Ashram building. One day mn the Ashram meditation hall, in front of the Mother's sacred bed (the bed on which her pure and holy physical sheath had been kept for some days after she had assumed the inner golden body), I was meditating. With open eyes and not in an inner vision, I saw the Mother sitting on the bed with a glowing divine ...
... for "dying" were, we may here Page 39 simply say: "Her aim was to install in the world a Divine Body and thereby aid her children to get divinised. She has given up her present physical sheath in order somehow to bring closer, to concretise further, the secret Supramental form that she has spoken of as awaiting materialisation through the labour of her Aurobindonian Yoga." Page ...
... ultimate divinisation of the very cells of the human body with the power of that great discovery of Sri Aurobindo and herself, the truth-conscious all-illuminative Supermind, she chose to give up her physical sheath. The advantage resulting from such an act, under the challenging circumstances prevalent in earth-life, is suggested in an utterance of her own. 1 There she conveys to us that Sri Aurobindo now ...
... rapidity is a strong contrast to the occasional slow & slight progress covering many months & the usual failure of all success in other attempts of the psychic body to alter by mental force the physical sheath into its own image. 8 July 1913 Programme. (1) Aishwarya begins to reign. For a time the power and the knowledge both seemed to have retrograded & the first to be almost annulled; ...
... is a turn over of the consciousness in which the dream-state disappears more or less abruptly, effacing the fugitive impression made by the dream events (or rather their transcription) on the physical sheath. If the waking is more composed (less abrupt) or, if the impression is very strong, then the memory remains at least of the last dream. In the last case one may remember the dream for a long time ...
... it to be all right, get cured, and for the untoward thing to vanish. The Mother Questions and Answers (1950 - 1951): 27 January 1951 All illnesses pass through the nervous or vital-physical sheath of the subtle consciousness and subtle body before they enter the physical. If one is conscious of the subtle body or with the subtle consciousness, one can stop an illness on its way and prevent ...
... the problem in some detail, and sometimes one makes interesting discoveries. The question is like this: "When an especially developed soul leaves the body, does it take with it the subtle physical sheath? When it reincarnates, how does it introduce this into the new body?" Even to answer this, as I have told you, it would be necessary to write volumes or to speak for hours. For, to tell the ...
... evolution to a totally transformed existence both of life and form in a divinised earth-nature." These words hold out the prospect that Sri Aurobindo who has already a divinised subtle physical sheath may employ the supramental mode of manifestation for the purpose of presiding in Page 132 the domain of Matter itself over the new humanity which the Mother will initiate. In ...
... and shaping themselves to these higher strains and not they, but the nobler parts of the nature must determine the music of our life and being." 2 Thus a divine transformation of our physical sheath, annamaya ko ṣ a, is an indispensable concomitant of a truly divine living in the world. But in the present status of consciousness of man the mental being, this transformation cannot be achieved ...
... too, that the physical body's hunger and thirst and the particular way of their satisfaction are but reflections 1 2 Sri Aurobindo's translations. Page 246 in the physical sheath, annamaya ko ṣ a, of something that is operative in all other sheaths or koṣas of our being. And unless we effectuate a transfiguration of the very principle of Hunger and the manner of its ...
... being? or an amalgam of both? I don't quite understand. The psychic being is supposed not to choose, but rather to form in accordance with its past and future evolution a new mental, vital and physical sheath each time it is born. But the placid or tacit observation does not seem to apply to the psychic being, but to the Jivatman. Moreover you seem to say this is done at the beginning of the evolution ...
... and shaping themselves to these higher strains and not they but the nobler parts of the nature must determine the music of our life and being." 3 Thus a divine transformation of our physical sheath, annamaya ko ṣ a, is an indispensable concomitant of a truly divine living in the world. But in the actually realised status of consciousness of man the mental being, this transformation can ...
... 1 This fatigue is of a different type from what is normally known as tiredness due to excessive physical or mental strain. It is psychological in its character and affects the vital-physical sheath. To give an example: when we are forced to listen to a long, boring lecture we feel lethargic. It is this kind of fatigue that is experienced here. Page 111 You threw ...
... surroundings, moving in a shadowy world, and with the uncertain and faltering steps of a child. The average European has a strong basis of the earth-nature in him; he is heavily enclosed in his physical sheath and firmly placed upon the material world. Therefore he keeps a very stable terrestrial equilibrium and is not easily ousted from his earthly footing; his is not a nature easily upset from its ...
... consciousness acting through the nerves. But it must be admitted that they have exceeded Virochana by one step, going either within or above. They have discovered an intermediate link between the physical sheath and the higher supra-physical. In ancient times 'self' would always signify the Psychic Being and never the self-centered body. The moderns may ask: "Is it obligatory that one should have ...
... Mother 23 September 1964 Ma douce Mère, I would like to know about one thing. It is said that a man has five sheaths or vehicles. The physical sheath falls away at the time of death. The vital and the mental get dissolved when the soul arrives at last at the psychic plane of rest where, in a trance sleep, it assimilates its experiences of past ...
... experience. The feeling of coldness of the body in the first is one of the signs — like the immobility and stiffness of D's experience — that the consciousness is with drawing from the outer or physical sheath and retiring in side. The crystallisation was the form in which he felt the organisation of an inner consciousness which could receive at once firmly and freely from above. The crystals Page ...
... It had 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 ...
... the adverse forces trying to break through it and can interfere, stop them or reinforce the nervous envelope. Or we can feel the symptoms of illness, fever or cold for instance, in the subtle physical sheath before they are manifest in the gross body and destroy them there, preventing them from manifesting in the body. Take now the call for the Divine Power, Light, Ananda. If we live only in the outward ...
... its prema-kama elements and of the Ishwaradarshana, but easily recovers them. The external asamata now is failing in its touch on the mind as well as on the buddhi; it touches only the physical sheath and affects the physical prana, but by evanescent touches, even when it is allowed to act without any attempt at expulsion. There is an attempt of the asiddhi to confuse the Devibhava and ...
... of experience. The feeling of coldness of the body in the first is one of the signs—like the immobility and stiffness of Y 's experience—that the consciousness is withdrawing from the outer or physical sheath and retiring inside. The crystallisation was the form in which he felt the organisation of an inner consciousness which could receive at once firmly and freely from above. The crystals at once ...
... there is a turnover of the consciousness in which the dream state disappears more or less abruptly, effacing the fugitive impression made by the dream events (or rather their transcription) on the physical sheath. If the waking is more composed (less abrupt) or, if the impression is very strong, then the memory remains at least of the last dream. In the last case one may remember the dream for a long time ...
... a mere Page 228 creature of surroundings & sensational impact from outside. Its province has been the psychical and spiritual world. It has not concerned itself minutely with man's physical sheath, but rather with what is vital & elemental in the matter of which he is made, the law of the workings of the breath and the elemental forces within him, the relation of the various parts of his ...
... 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, is indeed less a wall than a fence. The subliminal has besides a formation of consciousness which projects itself beyond all ...
... members. Pushed to its highest conclusion this movement 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 ...
... 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 the subtle sheaths, the Page 153 physical loses its support and vitality. Inasmuch as this support is lost, there is a death unlike the temporary departures ...
... "psychotomy" of the soul, with its Sthula, Sukshma and Karana Shariras. An arbitrary assumption, transmitted from ancient times, poetic, but based on nothing but fancy. "A permanent leaving of the physical sheath so that, unconnected with the subtle sheaths, the physical loses its support and vitality", is, when translated into common language, a euphemistic expression for death. But you say about the yogi ...
... turning over, of the consciousness in which "the dream-state disappears more or less abruptly, effacing the fugitive impression made by the dream events (or rather their transcription) on the physical sheath." 1 If the return to waking consciousness is more composed and less abrupt, then perhaps the memory remains of the last of the dreams or of the one that was the most impressive during sleep ...
... evolutionary efflorescence of life here upon the terrestrial plane, our physical body assumes a supreme importance in the total scheme of our spiritual achievement. A divine transformation even of our physical sheath, annamaya ko ṣ a, is an indispensable concomitant of a truly divine living in the world. But in the actually realised status of consciousness of man the mental being, this transformation can ...
... psyche. The attention Sri Aurobindo paid to the Chakras in his writings is related to the transformation of the gross body with the aid of the potentialities of the Chakras in the subtle- physical sheath: it does not imply any lack of attention to the psychic being, the spiritual core of the bodily transformative process. 7) What Sri Aurobindo said in The Life Divine and even afterwards ...
... in the dynamics of the Integral Yoga was required in 1950. When Sri Aurobindo and the Mother saw the necessity of one of them abandoning the body and Sri Aurobindo chose to withdraw from his physical sheath on December 5, he began to operate from behind the scene as a power of manifestation from the subtle-physical plane where he had established himself and as a power of evolution from the Inconscient ...
... 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, is indeed less a wall than a fence. The subliminal has besides a formation of consciousness which projects itself beyond ...
... adverse forces trying to break through it and can interfere, stop them or reinforce the nervous envelope. Or we can feel the symptoms of illness, fever or cold, for instance, in the subtle physical sheath before they are manifest in the gross body and destroy them there, preventing them from manifesting in the body. 17 Environmental Consciousness (The Circumconscient) The ...
... ble hurried movement. We seem to have odd beings within ourselves. Last night I was glared at by some people in the subtle world and they closed in upon me. I managed to escape back to my physical sheath, but there was a kind of crash over my spine and when I woke up I found myself awfully sick with a peculiar broken feeling in the back. I wondered what I should do. No doctor could have helped ...
... planes. There are, according to this Upanishad, five sheaths, koshas, and our soul is encaged in these koshas. The first is called the Page 17 annamaya, which refers to the physical sheath; the second is called the prāṇamaya, which refers to the vital sheath; the third is called, the manomaya, which refers to the mental sheath. These three are familiar to all of us who have ...
... 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 in the vital world, and mental sheath in the mental world and rest in its own world, which Sri Aurobindo calls the Psychic world, it gets reborn into ...
... these higher strains and not they, but the nobler parts of the nature must determine the music of our life and being." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 702) Thus, a divine transformation of our physical sheath, annamaya kosa, becomes an indispensable concomitant of a veritable divine living in the physical world. But in the actually elaborated status of consciousness of man the mental being, this ...
... turning over, "of the consciousness in which the dream-state disappears more or less abruptly, effacing the fugitive impression made by the dream events (or rather their transcription) on the physical sheath." (Letters on Yoga , pp. 1493-94) If the return to waking consciousness is more composed and less abrupt, then perhaps the memory remains of the last of the dreams or of the one that was the ...
... radical break with the past, signifying a crucial step, a decisive change in the course and process of evolution. The development of the highly complex and elaborate organisation that is the physical sheath , annamaya ko ṣ a, of man, capacitated 'a reversal or turn-over of the consciousness, a reaching to a new height and a looking down from it at the lower stages', 1 also the development of ...
... moving in a shadowy world, and with the uncertain and faltering steps of a child. The average European has a strong basis of the earth-nature in him; he is heavily enclosed in his physical sheath and firmly placed upon the material world. Therefore he keeps a very stable terrestrial equilibrium and is not easily ousted from his earthly footing; his is not a nature easily upset from its ...
... could go from sheath 1 to sheath till she arrived at the threshold of the Formless? She had learned to do that from the Théons in Algeria. The sheath next to the body is called the subtle physical sheath. Is that what the Theosophists call the 'aura' ? It is a sort of consciousness surrounding the body, but individual, through which we are in contact with the cosmic forces and with other beings ...
... knowledge-soul, the Spirit poised in gnosis, vijñānamaya puruṣa , and puts on the nature of its infinite truth and power, if he lives in the knowledge-sheath, the causal body as well as in these subtle mental, interlinking vital and grosser physical sheaths or bodies, then, but then only he will be able to draw down entirely into his terrestrial existence the fullness of the infinite spiritual consciousness;... psychological structure. It is possible for man to awaken to this higher mental consciousness, to become this mental being, 1 put on this mental nature and live not only in the vital and physical sheaths, but in this mental body. If there were a sufficient completeness in this transformation he would become capable of a life and a being at least half divine. For he would enjoy powers and a vision... in one or other of its own cosmic principles. Poised in the principle of Matter, 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 ...
... ordinary, not in the yogic sense) and that of the sitters, vital sheaths left by the departed or perhaps occupied or used by some spirit or some vital being, the departed himself in his vital sheath or else something assumed for the occasion (but it is the vital part that communicates), elementals, spirits of the lowest vital physical world near earth, etc., etc. A horrible confusion for the most part—a... psychic. The soul gathers the essential elements of its experiences in life and makes that its basis of growth in the evolution; when it returns to birth it takes up with its mental, vital, physical sheaths so much of its Karma as is useful to it in the new life for further experience. It is really for the vital part of the being that śrāddha and rites are done—to help the being to get rid of... beliefs even when they have some foundation are seldom enlightened and accurate. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: Rebirth The psychic does not give up the mental and other sheaths (apart from the physical) immediately at death. It is said that it takes three years on the whole to get clear away from the zone of communicability with the earth—though there may be cases of slower or quicker ...
... psychic. The soul gathers the essential elements of its experiences in life and makes that its basis of growth in the evolution; when it returns to birth it takes up with its mental, vital, physical sheaths so much of its Karma as is useful to it in the new life for further experience. It is really for the vital part of the being that Shraddha and rites are done - to help the being to get rid... 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 disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally, the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is close. This is the general course for ordinarily developed human... forces playing in it, etc. He feels 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 established direct knowledge of the different sheaths. Is the whole of the inner being made up of sheaths only? Yes. Sheaths is simply a term for bodies, because each is superimposed on the other and acts as a covering and can be cast Page 114 off. Thus the physical body itself is called the food sheath and its throwing off is what is called death. ... directly, and not merely as reflections from the subtle physical. Now it is for you to correct me. Have you a clear feeling of the subtle body as separate from the outer body or of the mental and vital and subtle physical sheaths which comprise the subtle body? If not how can you say which is of the subtle body and which is of the physical? The influence and action of the Mother's... through different states of consciousness. Are there really nerves in the subtle physical sheaths? Yes, there are nerves in the subtle body. Yesterday not only my consciousness but the body also felt horizontally wide and vertically huge. And then I experienced that 1 was the Self. When the physical began to widen out still more, I was afraid of a possibility of ego aggrandisement ...
... —consisting of pure consciousness; transcendental. Circumconscient — the subliminal has a formation of consciousness which projects itself beyond the mental, vital, subtle physical and gross physical sheaths and forms a circumconscient, an environing part of itself, through which it receives the contacts of the world outside us. cittākāś a — mental ether. Consciou... expansion, etc. The physical mind is that part of the mind which is concerned with physical things only; limited by the physical view and experience of things, it mentalises the experience brought by the contact of outward life and things, but does not go Page 411 beyond that. The mechanical mind, closely connected with the physical mind, goes on repeating without... Psychic(al) —ordinarily, the term, used as an adjective, means: 1. mental as opposed to physical; 2. outside physical or natural laws. In his earlier writings Sri Aurobindo used the term in similar senses. Thus he spoke about "psychic(al) Prana", meaning Prana which is subtler and more inward than the physical Prana; and he referred to clairvoyance, telepathy, etc. as psychic(al) phenomena. However ...
... because the higher action has still to pass through a retarding and diminishing conscious substance,—that of the physical consciousness. The final stage of the change will come when the supermind occupies and supramentalises the whole being and turns even the vital and physical sheaths into moulds of itself, responsive, subtle and instinct with its powers. Man then becomes wholly the superman. This... the Self conceiving the idea of creation, where we should expect "he thought", it says instead "he saw". It is to the spirit what the eyes are to the physical mind and one has the sense of having passed through a subtly analogous process. As the physical sight can present to us the actual body of things of which the thought had only possessed an indication or mental description and they become to us... is formed and heard in the intuitive mind or supermind and need not at first except in certain highly gifted souls come out easily into speech and writing, but that too can be freely done when the physical consciousness and its organs have been made ready, and this is a part of the needed fullness and power of the integral perfection. The range of knowledge covered by the supramental thought, experience ...
... being follows, if the occult view of these things is correct, a similar outward process, for the soul as nucleus draws to itself for birth and aggregates the elements of its mental, vital and physical sheaths and their contents, increases these formations in life, and in its departing drops and disaggregates again these aggregates, drawing back into itself its inner powers, till in rebirth it repeats... that the outward physical Page 192 signs and operations of life are suspended, but the mentality is there self-possessed and conscious although unable to compel the usual physical responses. Certainly, it is not the fact that the man is physically dead 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... as 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 ...
... wouldn't this answer by the Mother mean; "Our true beings - subtle-physical, vital, mental - remain the same for us from life to life down the ages. They, no less than our psychic being, have continuous survival. And the psychic being picks them up while acquiring new subtle-physical, vital and mental sheaths to accompany the physical body into which it is born."? When I turn to Sri Aurobindo I don't... Karma? Also, what becomes of the vital and mental beings after the dissolution of the vital and mental sheaths? A: The outer form only dissolves, unless that too is made conscious and is organised round the divine centre. But the true mental, the true vital and even the true subtle-physical persist: it is that which keeps all the impressions received in earthly life and builds the chain of... analogous vein: 'The soul gathers the essential elements of its experiences in life and makes that its basis of growth in the evolution; when it returns to birth it takes up with its mental, vital, physical sheaths so much of its Karma as is useful to it in the new life for further experience" Here there is no pointer to where the Karma resided and to any compulsive chain of Karma: the soul picks and chooses ...
... psychic. The soul gathers the essential element of its experiences in life and makes that its basis of growth in the evolution; when it returns to birth it takes up with its mental, vital, physical sheaths so much of its Karma as is useful to it in the new life for farther experience. It is really for the vital part of the being that śrāddha and rites are done—to help the being to get rid of... 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 disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is due. This is the general course for ordinarily developed human beings... the circle of suffering and evil. Assimilation in the Psychic World The soul after it leaves the body travels through several states or planes until the psychic being has shed its temporary sheaths, then it reaches the psychic world where it rests in a kind of sleep till it is ready for reincarnation. What it keeps with it of the human experience in the end is only the essence of all Page ...
... normally the vital being with its personality exists after the dissolution of the physical body for some time only; afterwards it passes away into the vital plane where it remains till the vital sheath dissolves. Next one passes in the mental sheath, to some mental world; but finally the soul leaves its mental sheath also and goes to its place of rest. If the mental is strongly developed, then the... 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 not altogether dormant—only its means... 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 is not this gross physical body only, but the subtle body also. When the gross body 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 not dormant—only its means of expression ...
... mental, vital and physical sheaths and their contents, increases their formations in life, and in its departing drops and disaggregates again these aggregates, drawing back into itself its inner powers, till in rebirth it repeats the original process.’ 11 In other words the psychic being forms an adhara , a complex body consisting of several sheaths of mental, vital and physical substance and energy... psychic being and the material, the physical. It looks as if this is something that is being done.’ A new body? The new body? However that be, her psychic being was ‘completely transparent,’ which had been the reason why she had not noticed it during all this time. For she was that psychic being; she existed and acted from that core and had thus perceived the sheaths around it (the mental, the vital... psyche is ‘behind’ the other gradations and uses them for its growth, just as the psychic world is ‘behind’ the other worlds. The psyche uses the substance of the various levels of existence as its sheaths or coatings in the material manifestation in order to climb the World Stair from the lowest Inconscience, into which it was sent as pure Love, up to the highest Ananda , which is its origin. Sri ...
... wholly awakened, becomes the conscious sheath of the soul around which it is formed. And thus identified with the Divine, it becomes His perfect instrument in the world, Page 1 There is a nirvana behind the vital, a nirvana behind the psychic, a nirvana behind the mind; there is a nirvana on every level, even behind the physical - it's death. And those who withdraw... The soul gathers the essential elements of its experiences in life and makes that its basis of growth in the evolution; when it returns to birth it takes up with its mental, vital, physical sheaths so much of its Karma as is useful to it in the new life for further experience. It is really for the vital part of the being that sraddha and rites are done — to help the being to... need for the future. Page 37 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 disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is close. This is the general course for ordinarily developed ...
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