... 79, 307, 343 See also Environmental consciousness Civilisation, and barbarism distinguished, 274-75 defined, 274-75 cf. Culture Clairvoyance, 79, 82, 244, 248 cf. Psychical phenomena Conscience, 89, 91 Conscious Being, 105, 345-46 See also Purusha Consciousness, 3-11, 162-65, 180 and brain, 3, 332-33, 334 cosmic, see Cosmic consciousness a creative... Prakriti, 86, 384 higher and lower, 106 See also Nature; Purusha and Prakriti Psychic, the psychic, see Psychic being use of word "psychic", 89fn Psychical phenomena, 243-49 cf. Clairvoyance; Telepathy Psychical (psychic) consciousness, 79-83, 243-49 Psychic being (soul-personality, the psychic), 15, 84-95, 107, 337, 344-45... 34, 36 and the subliminal, 72 Subconscious (inner) mind, 4, 290- 91, 337 Subliminal (being, self), the, 4, 12, 13, 23, 38, 72-83, 307, 342-44, 362-63 and psychical phenomena, 248-49 and the subconscient, 72 See also Inner being Subliminal consciousness, 291-92 See also Psychical consciousness Subliminal mind, see Subconciou (inner) ...
... masters of the Yogic science thousands of years ago. But the European scientists have not discovered any sure and certain methods, such as they have in dealing with gross matter, for investigating psychical phenomena. They can only observe the most external manifestations of mind in action. But in these manifestations the mind is so much enveloped in the action of the outer objects and seems so Page 14... the springs of its action or any regularity in its workings. The European scientists have therefore come to the conclusion that it is the stimulations of outside objects which are the cause of psychical phenomena, 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... primal entity from which all proceeds, so Yoga analysis arrives at a primal spiritual entity from which all proceeds. It is also able to locate and distinguish the psychical centre to which all psychical phenomena gather and so to fix the roots of personality. In this analysis its first discovery is that mind can entirely isolate itself from external objects and work in itself and of itself. This does ...
... forms of sight, sound, contact, but which also as a sort of subordinate operation, subordinate but necessary to completeness of presentation, does image in these forms. This is evident in psychical phenomena. Those who have carried the study and experimentation of them to a certain extent, have found that we can sense things known only to the minds of others, things that exist only at a great ... evolution and they can be employed without the use of the physical eye, ear, skin, palate. Supposing that there are psychical senses which act through a psychical body, and we thus explain these psychical phenomena, still that action also is only an organisation of the inherent functioning of the essential sense, the Sanjnana, which in itself can operate without bodily organs. This essential sense is ...
... sound, contact, but which also as a sort of subordinate operation, subordinate but necessary to completeness Page 56 of presentation, does image in these forms. This is evident in psychical phenomena. Those who have carried the study and experimentation of them to a certain extent, have found that we can sense things known only to the minds of others, things that exist only at a great distance... evolution and they can be employed without the use of the physical eye, ear, skin, palate. Supposing that there are psychical senses which act through a psychical body, and we thus explain these psychical phenomena, still that action also is only an organisation of the inherent functioning of the essential sense, the Sanjnana, which in itself can operate without bodily organs. This essential sense is the ...
... vital consciousness and sense, this direct sensation and perception of and response to the play of subtler forces than the physical, are often included without distinction under the head of psychical phenomena. In a certain sense it is an awakening of the psyche, the inner soul now hidden, clogged wholly or partially covered up by the superficial activity of the physical mind and senses that brings... sense live and see and feel and experience is something subtler, freer, more plastic than that of the physical Page 881 mind and sense. As long as we are dominated by the latter, psychical phenomena may seem to us less real, hallucinatory even, but the more we acclimatise ourselves to the psychical and to the ether of being which it inhabits, the more we begin to see the greater truth and ...
... Centre the Sadhana seems to have taken a different turn from that in the Krishnagore centre. It seems to be marked by an immediate opening and rapid development of the psychical consciousness and psychical phenomena. This turn has great possibilities but also by itself great danger. In the complete Sadhana there are two powers necessary, the masculine, Purusha or Ishwara power coming down in knowledge, light ...
... And if the physical scientist points to a number of indicative facts and hopes one day to triumph over these formidable difficulties, there is growing up on the other side an incipient mass of psychical phenomena which are likely to drown his theory in fathomless waters. The insuperability of these always evident objections is beginning to be more widely recognised, but since the past still holds considerable ...
... Longmans Green & Co., London, New York, Toronto), 1951, p. 25. Page 4 For, Blake's middle world seems considerably to overpass the dubious, fluctuant mass of what we commonly term "psychical phenomena." According to Sri Aurobindo, 11 "Blake lives ordinarily far up in this middle world of which Coleridge only catches some glimpses or at most stands occasionally just over its borders. His ...
... assumed as a scientific working hypothesis and seen how it affects our view, meets our problems and difficulties, whether it can give a satisfactory clue to some of the riddles of physical and psychical phenomena. A scientific supposition (or intuition) is held to be true if it can be applied invariably to facts of life and experience and if it can open up to our vision and perception new facts. The trend ...
... centre the Sadhana seems to have taken a different turn from that in the Krishnagore centre. It seems to be marked by an immediate opening and rapid development of the psychical consciousness and psychical phenomena. This turn has great possibilities but also by itself great dangers. In the complete Sadhana there are two powers necessary, the masculine, Purusha or Ishwara power coming down in knowledge ...
... despised". A crucial distinction that one needs to make on the spiritual path is the difference between the psychical and the spiritual. Due to an inadequate knowledge of yogic psychology, psychical phenomena and experiences—which pertain to the inner or subliminal consciousness, a realm of darkness as well as light—are often confused with spiritual experiences, which pertain to the higher co ...
... Centre the Sadhana seems to have taken a different turn from that in the Krishnagore centre. It seems to be marked by an immediate opening and rapid development of the psychical conscious and psychical phenomena. This turn has great possibilities but also by itself great danger. In the complete Sadhana there are two powers necessary, the masculine, Purusha or Ishwara power coming down in knowledge, light ...
... assumed as a scientific working hypothesis and seen how it affects our view, meets our problems and difficulties, whether it can give a satisfactory clue to some of the riddles of physical and psychical phenomena. A scientific supposition (or intuition) is held to be true if it can be applied 'invariably to facts of life and experience and if it can open up to our vision and perception new facts. The ...
... mother, Suhag Kumari, had several visions of gods and goddesses, and after her death, Father became interested in the 'spirit-world.' Sri Aurobindo wrote him letters explaining the logic of the psychic phenomena. I have taken a small portion from a long letter of his as Prologue. You will, however, relish a journey with Mirra to the mysteries of an unusual, if not bizarre, nature, where the past ...
... artillery division. He served as a sub-lieutenant. Though it was a tough life, they did have quite a bit of leisure time. It was during these leisure times young Philippe came across some books on psychic phenomena, magic, occultism etc. dubbed as “nonscientific” and studied them. Inevitably he discovered India. Philippe did not arrive straightaway in India. He first reached Japan. He started a laboratory ...
... barrier of the physical mind is broken or even swung a little open, there come the experiences themselves if the temperament is favourable. Hence are born visions and other such phenomena—all those that are miscalled psychic phenomena. Even imagined experiences (honestly imagined) can help to mental realisation and mental realisation can be a step to total realisation. Mental Knowledge and Spiritual... When the consciousness undergoes, sees or feels anything spiritual or psychic or even occult, that is an experience—in the technical Yogic sense, for there are of course all sorts of experiences that are not of that character. Feelings themselves are of many kinds. The word feeling is often used for an emotion, and there can be psychic or spiritual emotions which are numbered among Yogic experiences, such... settle and become part of the consciousness that realisation is complete. One develops by spiritual knowledge and experience which Page 6 comes from above the mind or one develops by psychic perception and experience which comes from within—these are the two main things. But it is also necessary to grow by inner mental and vital experiences and visions and dream experiences play a large ...
... always seemed to me a rather absurd and impertinent way of investigating psychic phenomena and the mysteries of the after-life. Usually it is something worse, and is an exploitation of the emotions of some over-credulous people who seek relief or escape from mental trouble. I do not deny the possibility of some of these psychic phenomena having a basis of truth, but the approach appears to me to be all wrong... and precise knowledge and deliberate reasoning, according to the method of science, must be followed. This method may not always be applicable in our quest of truth, for art and poetry and certain psychic experiences seem to belong to a different order of things and to elude the objective methods of science. Let us, therefore, not rule out intuition and other methods of sensing truth and reality. They ...
... if a poltergeist kicks up an unseemly row in a house, all that is classed under psychic phenomena and regarded as a fit object for psychic research, though these things have nothing whatever to do with the psychic. Again much in Yoga itself that is merely occult, phenomena of the unseen vital or mental or subtle physical planes, visions, symbols, all that mixed, often perturbed, often shadowy, often... Yoga - III: The Psychic Being and Its Role in Sadhana People do not understand what I mean by the psychic being, because the word psychic has been used in English to mean anything of the inner mental, inner vital or inner physical or anything abnormal or occult or even the more subtle movements of the outer being, all in a jumble; also occult phenomena are often called psychic. The distinction... given a wide extension of meaning which carries it far beyond that province. All phenomena of an abnormal or supernormal psychological or an occult character are dubbed psychic; if a man has a double personality changing from one to another, if an apparition of a dying man, something of his mere vital sheath or else a thought form of him, appears and stalks through the room of his wondering friend, if ...
... 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 outer senses and are not sensed inwardly through representative or interpretative or symbolic images which bear the stamp of an inner experience or have... 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 by... begins to be justified by new-born forms of scientific research. The increasing evidences, of which only the most obvious and outward are established under the name of telepathy with its cognate phenomena, cannot long be resisted except by minds shut up in the brilliant shell of the past, by intellects limited in spite of their acuteness through the limitation of their field of experience and inquiry ...
... spiritual discipline, because what Sri Aurobindo says apropos of the photograph implies a very unusual "psychic" development. "Psychic" refers not to a sort of mediumistic opening to occult planes as understood in so-called "psychic phenomena" but to the inmost soul which Sri Aurobindo terms "the psychic being", indicating the true spiritual individual behind the apparent mental-vital-physical personality... personality ruled grossly or subtly by what he dubs "the ego". The emergence and activity of the psychic being are the key to the special process that constitutes Sri Aurobindo's "Yoga of Supramental Descent and Transformation". The psychic being is the only directly divine element in the evolving human composite. All the others, even at their highest, function as part of the cosmic formula... and realisations than the psychic being's progressive emergence and activity: none of the constituents of our human composite can be neglected, all have to grow to their finest spiritual potential, but, while they contribute to the ultimate richness of manifestation, they do not form the pivotal power of Page 134 it. That power is the psychic being - a sun round which they ...
... of his wondering friend, if a poltergeist kicks up an unseemly row in a house, all that is classed under psychic phenomena and regarded as a fit object for psychic research, though these things have nothing whatever to do with the psyche. Again much in Yoga itself that is merely occult, phenomena of the unseen vital or mental or subtle physical planes, visions, symbols, all that mixed, often perturbed... vagueness and much misprision of the true nature of this soul and it is given a wide extension of meaning which carries it far beyond that province. All phenomena of an abnormal or supernormal psychological or an occult character are dubbed psychic; if a man has a double personality changing from one to another, if an apparition of a dying man, something of his mere vital sheath or else a thought-form... its basis without which no transformation is possible. In this transformation there are four elements, the psychic opening, the transit through [the] occult, the spiritual release, the supramental perfection. If any of the four is unachieved, the Yoga remains incomplete. I mean by the psychic the inmost soul-being and the soul nature. This is not the sense in which the word is used in ordinary parlance ...
... superior chance of arriving as near to the truth as is now possible. Again, we see two scientists, absolutely agreed on all positive physical problems, confronted Page 582 with the phenomena of the psychical world, partly true, partly the conscious or half conscious frauds of exploiters & illusions of enthusiasts. One turns eagerly to the new subject, examines widely, believes readily, is discouraged... scrupulous use of hypothesis & exact reasoning. A beginning has been made in this direction in Europe by the examination of the abnormal conditions of hypnosis, divided personality & rare mental & psychic phenomena as well as in the tendency of psychology towards the abandonment of the superficial, academic and unfruitful methods of the past. But it is doubtful whether the scientific method will bear as... confusion, is there any other class of data handled by metaphysics which will help us out of the difficulty? Certain psychological experiences are so handled; notably, the phenomena of sleep, the phenomena of samadhi, the phenomena of ultimate experience in consciousness. But how are we to know that these experiences bear the construction put on them or justify the conclusions drawn from them? how are ...
... the light waves but then they thought that they were hypnotised and so they tried the photographic plate and found the photo of a hand. These phenomena like the eye-less sight, or emission of light waves or cures by occult powers are mostly "psychic" phenomena. It is absurd to try to explain them away and still more absurd to doubt them. Disciple : A missionary, it seems, has cured a blind man... description of his psychic body or his physical body – because we see that form of his in our own psychic vision even to-day. T Sri Aurobindo : What on earth does it matter whether he Page 146 lived on the physical plane or not ? If the thing is true pn the psychic and spiritual plane it is all that matters. As long as you find Krishna as a divine Power on the psychic, or on the... mixture of facts, tradition and psychic experience as well as history. Disciple : How did the poet get them ? Did he get them by psychic intuition or from the physical life only ? Sri Aurobindo : You can't take these things so literally and scientifically. The poet was not writing history, he was only writing poetry. He may have got his materials from the psychic intuitive plane, and from ...
... 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 outer senses and are not sensed inwardly through representative or interpretative or symbolic images which bear the stamp of an inner experience or have... objective order of other-worldly experience that seized most the imagination of mankind in the past, but it was put by popular belief into a gross-objective statement which unduly assimilated these phenomena to those of the physical world with which we are familiar; for it is the normal tendency of our mind to turn everything into forms or symbols proper to its own kind and terms of experience. This... plane looks more like the result and not the origin of these greater terms, derivatory from them, even partly dependent on them in its evolutionary endeavour. 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 realise Page 810 ...
... term as used in his later writings, he wrote: "I use the word psychic for the soul as distinguished from the mind and the vital. All movements and experiences of the soul would in that sense be called psychic, those which arise from or directly touch the psychic being.... " He continued to use the word "psychical" to refer to phenomena connected with the subliminal (inner mind, inner vital, inner... 413 Psychical consciousness — the consciousness of the subliminal or inner being. Psychic being —the divine portion in the individual which evolves from life to life, growing, by its experiences until it becomes a fully conscious being. The term "soul" is often used as a synonym for "psychic being", but strictly speaking, the soul is the undifferentiated psychic essence, whereas... 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, subsequently he stated: "The word psychic is indeed used in English to indicate anything that is other or deeper than the external mind ...
... when they emerge, it is by a coming to the surface of its powers or operations. These emergent operations of the subliminal being or some of them are now fragmentarily studied under the name of psychic phenomena,—although they have ordinarily nothing to do with the psyche , the soul, the inmost entity in us, but only with the inner mind, the inner vital, the subtle-physical parts Page 556 ... 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 and... their independent and separate nature and action and a harmonisation of them by the mental being in us, leader of the life and body, 1 —or, better, by the central psychic entity,—is not so difficult, provided we have the right psychic and mental will in the endeavour: for if it is with the vital-ego motive that we make the entry into the subliminal being, it may result in serious dangers and disaster ...
... of matter once it is stripped of its old habit of being a man or a lizard. Once it is simply a body in the midst of the great earth body. Why all this talk about “psychic” phenomena when the body's cells are perfectly and simply “psychic,” without fuss and high-sounding words? And not only are they clairvoyant and porous, but they do not have a whit of ego: “me” is everyone, sinner or saint, dolt or... no other mechanism in this process: like an old fish that has enough of swimming round and round and would like to breathe another air. It is, after all, quite symbolic that I became aware of the phenomena while walking in rows of four in a tight-collared jacket and a Sunday cap. It may well be time to “lighten” this human “situation.” Our cranium is as refractory as the trilobite's carapace... of it notwithstanding the “laws” – which were only the laws of the old scientific and medical creatures. The two difficult “object lessons” are the heart and the brain. So you have difficult heart phenomena, long or searing and close enough to the “limit” – once, twice, ten times. If you go and consult the doctor, you are done for. A moral for you: never go and consult the doctor of fishes if you wish ...
... of Jesus like the miracles of multiplying food, changing water into wine, healing the sick and casting out evil spirits (in healing psychological disease), like similar phenomena in other religious traditions, as 'psychic phenomena' showing the power of mind over matter, but not as the actual divinisation of matter as in the resurrection. Perhaps I should also add that in the resurrection Jesus... nothing ever happens without the observer. However, we know of many physical processes, even at the level of quantum phenomena, that do occur without any direct intervention of the observer." Ken Wilber, an eminent philosopher of science, referring to the level of quantum phenomena where the debate is really relevant, writes: "As for the so-called participant/observer in physics, or the necessity... a "psychic phenomenon", but "not as an actual divinisation of matter as in the resurrection". However, if we go by Paul who is the first to talk of the resurrection and puts all the instances previous to his own experience on the road to Damascus on a par with what he was a witness to, we should be inclined to look upon all the "appearances" of Jesus after death as "visions" - that is, psychic phenomena ...
... physical mind is broken or even swung a little open, there come the experiences themselves if the temperament is favourable. Hence visions, etc.—all [the manifestations] that are miscalled psychic phenomena. As for prayer, no hard and fast rule can be laid down. Some prayers are answered, all are not. An example ? The eldest daughter of my maternal uncle, K.K. Mitra, Editor of Sanjivani, not... this unconditional humility. Kanai says it is a psychic experience and an important one. Please let me know if it is. It was certainly an experience and as Kanai 33 very accurately described it an experience of great value, a psychic experience Par excellence. A feeling of velvety softness within—an ineffable plasticity within is a psychic experience and can be Page 97 nothing... meant by psychic love. Love is love and not merely goodwill. Psychic love can have a warmth and a flame as intense and more intense than the vital, only it is a pure fire, not dependent on the satisfaction of ego-desire or on the eating up of the fuel it embraces. It is a white flame, not a red one; but white heat is not inferior to the red variety in its ardour. It is true that the psychic love ...
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