... seeing and thinking—it is only a high activity of the mind and its vision moving on the wings of imagination, but still akin to the intellect proper, though exalted above it. The Higher Mind is a spiritual plane,—this does not answer to that description. But the larger poetic intelligence like the larger philosophic, though in a different cast of thinking, is nearer to the Higher Mind than the ordinary... I am not speaking here of the 'descent' in Yoga by which the higher realisation can come down into the inferior planes and enlighten or transform them. I mean that the Higher Mind is itself a spiritual plane and one who lives in it has naturally and normally the realisation of the Self, the unity and harmony everywhere, and a vision and activity of knowledge that proceeds from this consciousness but... intense beauty of emotion; a fine subtlety of true perception, an intimate language. The expression 'sweetness and light' can very well be applied to the psychic as the kernel of its nature. The spiritual plane, when it takes up these things, gives them a wider utterance, a greater splendour of light, a stronger sweetness, a breath of powerful audacity, strength and space." * THIS ERRANT ...
... divine in you put out to be dynamic in the play. But when we speak of the spiritual we are thinking of something that is concentrated in the Divine rather than in the external manifestation. The spiritual plane is something static behind and above the outward play; it supports the instruments of the nature, but is not itself included or involved in the external manifestation here. But in speaking of... intense beauty of emotion, a fine subtlety of true perception, an intimate language. The expression "sweetness and light" can very well be applied to the psychic as the kernel of its nature. The spiritual plane, when it takes up these things, gives them a wider utterance, a greater splendour of light, a stronger sweetness, a breath of powerful audacity, strength and space. Sri Aurobindo Letters ...
... seeing and thinking—it is only a high activity of the mind and its vision moving on the wings of imagination, but still akin to the intellect proper, though exalted above it. The Higher Mind is a spiritual plane,—this does not answer to that description. But the larger poetic intelligence like the larger philosophic, though in a different cast of thinking, is nearer to the Higher Mind than the ordinary... I am not speaking here of the "descent" in Yoga by which the higher realisation can come down into the inferior planes and enlighten or transform them. I mean that the Higher Mind is itself a spiritual plane and one who lives in it has naturally and normally the realisation of the Self, the unity and harmony everywhere, and a vision and activity of knowledge that proceeds from this consciousness but ...
... into the different parts of the being. That aided by the psychic development and aiding it Page 418 changes the external nature. It was an experience (by ascension) of the spiritual plane of being above in which there is absolute peace and light and Ananda. It is this that has to descend into the mind, vital and body and be the constant condition and the basis for the final tra... intended to establish the fundamental experiences of the Realisation. It is the beginning of a very decisive experience and realisation—first, the Ascent above the mind (head) into the spiritual plane. It is here that one releases and is released into the vastness, fullness, solace, freedom, peace and joy of the Infinite and becomes aware of the universal Self and the Divine. Its realisation ...
... 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 spiritual plane nothing else matters. He is true for us. The physical is merely the shadow of the psychic. Disciple : To-day our friend asked me again ...
... enables us to see how the quotation from Wordsworth, without necessarily being superior qua poetry to that from Abercrombie, is more close to the hidden Divine by deriving its rhythm from a more spiritual plane. And it is also by a different kind of rhythm, more even than of vision and expression, that we perceive how that line of Wordsworth's is still not the intensest spirituality. The Divine is unmasked... fact that the entire description of Savitri and especially the part Page 125 I have been commenting upon is word and vibration charged with actual deific states — the highest spiritual plane with its own native accent. Failure to tackle the Mantra, and. in general all overhead poetry, in the right receptive way will lay its contents, more than those of any other type of mystical ...
... while others are false and misleading, or they may be a sort of artistry of that plane. Visions do not come from the spiritual plane—they come from the subtle physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic or from the planes above the Mind. What comes from the spiritual plane are experiences of the Divine, e.g. the experience of self everywhere, of the Divine in all, etc. There is a whole range ...
... but is itself diminished and altered in the process. There is an intermittent higher action or a dual working of the nature. Or we find that the Shakti for a time raises the being to a higher spiritual plane and then lowers it back into the inferior levels. These alternations must be regarded as the natural vicissitudes of a process of transformation from the normal to the spiritual being. The tra... apparent how this ideal of active self-mastery can be reconciled with the apparently opposite ideal of self-surrender and of becoming the assenting instrument of the divine Shakti. But in fact on the spiritual plane there is no difficulty. The Jiva cannot really become master except in proportion as he arrives at oneness with the Divine who is his supreme Self. And in that oneness and in his unity with the ...
... receives) that is true and effective. Page 390 [3] [August-September 1927] I do not think it necessary to answer the personal question you put me or announce who I am on the spiritual plane. If I am what your question suggests, it is not for me to declare it but for others to discover. I prefer also to make no reply to the question about the Mother, at least in the form in which... lead to a breaking rather than a divine building of the nature, or even there might be a reception of hostile forces instead of the true light and power. This is the law of the relation on the spiritual plane: the consent of the disciple must be at every moment free, but his confidence, if given, must be complete and the submission to the guidance absolute. This is the one real issue that your recent ...
... and thinking — it is only a high activity of the mind and its vision moving on the wings of imagination, but still akin to the intellect proper, though exalted above it. The Higher Mind is a spiritual plane,—this does not answer to that description. But the larger poetic intelligence like the larger philosophic, though in a different cast of thinking, is nearer to the Higher Mind than the ordinary... am not speaking here of the 'descent' in Yoga by which the higher realisation can come down into the inferior planes and enlighten or transform them. I mean that the Higher Mind is itself a spiritual plane and one who lives in it has naturally and normally the realisation of the Self, the unity and harmony everywhere, and a vision and activity of knowledge that proceeds from this consciousness ...
... divine in you put out to be dynamic in the play. But when we speak of the spiritual we are thinking of something that is concentrated in the Divine rather than in the external manifestation. The spiritual plane is something static behind and above the outward play; it supports the instruments of the nature, but is not itself included or involved in the external manifestation here. But in speaking... a fine subtlety of true perception, an intimate language. Page 35 The expression "sweetness and light" can very well be applied to the psychic as the kernel of its nature. The spiritual plane, when it takes up these things, gives them a wider utterance, a greater splendour of light, a stronger sweetness, a breath of powerful audacity, strength and space. The silent Soul of all ...
... any other. What on earth does it matter whether Krishna lived on the physical plane or not? If his experience is real on the psychic and spiritual plane, it is all that matters. As long as you find Krishna as a divine Power on the psychic and spiritual plane his life on the physical plane does not matter. He is true, he is real. The physical is only a shadow of the psychic. Disciple : I find ...
... works not dictated by desire but by the law of right living or by the essential nature, its knowledge, its ideal, its faith in itself and the Truth it sees, its śraddhā . Or else, on a higher spiritual plane, they are dictated by the will of the Master and done with the mind in Yoga, without any personal attachment either to the action or to the fruit of the action. There must be a complete renunciation ...
... vital forces and the methods current on that lower plane. The work we have to do does not belong to that plane and cannot be done by current methods. It can only be done by rising to a higher spiritual plane and working silently from there on the forces in action so as to prepare a favourable field for the growth of the true consciousness and the true life-action. So long as that is not done, to engage ...
... "Jivatman" the same as what they call kūṭastha? No. Kutastha is the अक्षर पुरुष [ akṣara puruṣa ]—it is not the Jivatman. What is the plane on which the Jivatman stands? It is on the spiritual plane always that is above the mind, but there it is not fixed to any level. Is there anything like union of one's psychic being with another's? No. Affinity, harmony, sympathy, but not union ...
... to be dynamic in the play. But when we speak of the spiritual we are thinking of something that is concentrated in the Divine rather than in the Page 63 external manifestation. The spiritual plane is something static behind and above the outward play; it supports the instruments of the nature, but is not itself included or involved in the external manifestation here. But in speaking of ...
... power. There is a power, a divine movement that spreads, diffuses, throws out freely forces and things and whatever else it possesses on all the levels of nature from the most material to the most spiritual plane. Behind the generous man and his generosity is a soul-type that expresses this movement; he is a power for diffusion, for wide distribution. There is another power, another divine movement that ...
... experiences of all kinds, but there is no mental clarity or order, neither do they rise above the mind. It is only the minority of men who live in the mind or in the psychic or try to live on the spiritual plane. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - IV: The Nature of the Vital In the ordinary life, people accept the vital movements, anger, desire, greed, sex etc. as natural, allowable and legitimate ...
... universal and infinite source of love,— We bade adieu to love the old, We heard another lover then, Whose forms are myriad and untold, Sigh to us from the hearts of men. He lives on the spiritual plane to which so much of this poetry is an indistinct or a less distinct aspiration, and his whole self-expression is bathed, perhaps rendered sometimes a little remote and unseizable by its immergence ...
... seeing and doing things there. There are thousands of different kinds of experience. Visions are a special kind of experience in which the inner eye is active. Visions do not come from the spiritual plane—they come from the subtle physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic or from planes above the Mind. What comes from the spiritual planes are experiences of the Divine, e.g. the experience of ...
... environment and circumstances, was the ideal of the Vedic sages, attainable only by ascending beyond our mortal mentality to the luminous Truth of our being, the supramental infinities on the spiritual plane of our existence. ...
... Pythagorean, Stoic and Epicurean, which were dynamic not only for thought but for conduct of life and developed a discipline, an effort at inner perfection of the being; this reached a higher spiritual plane of knowledge in later Christian or Neo-pagan thought-structures where East and West met together. But later on the intellectualisation became complete and the connection of philosophy with life ...
... must go beyond the truth of physical phenomenon and process, we must know what is within and behind it. For we are not merely embodied minds; there is a spiritual being, a spiritual principle, a spiritual plane of Nature. Into that we have to heighten our force of consciousness, to widen by that still more largely, even universally and infinitely, our range of being and our field of action, to take up ...
... of human possibility and a powerful psychological discipline, — as we should say in India, a Yoga, — by which they hoped to realise their ideal." 18 Yes, an India-Greece rapprochement on the spiritual plane cannot help being seen. But simply because Sri Aurobindo is Indian by birth he does not attribute to India all that bears the stamp of spirituality in Greece. He has himself mentioned some proofs ...
... ecstasy would seem to a god to be ridiculously thin and vapid and edgeless. Its capacity of duration also is pitifully brief and measurable by the moments. 38 In experience even on the spiritual plane so long as we do not transcend the spirit in mind, there is a difference between peace and Ananda. Peace is the Divine static, Ananda the Divine dynamic. Peace is a negative-positive; it is positive ...
... true in its own sphere and you can have realisation on any one or all three of these planes but ultimately as Vivekananda says, all the other two lead to Adwaita which is the highest truth on the spiritual plane. I am not competent to say anything about the teachings of different Philosophies but I shall only quote from Mahabharata the answer of Yudhisthir to Yaksha about— कः पन्था (What ...
... of the body's sleep. It is due to its subconscient foundation that sleep brings about this lowering of consciousness. And this is so on the physiological plane and much more so on the psycho-spiritual plane. The change in the activity of the nervous system during sleep manifests itself in the abolition, or at least depression, of what has been termed critical reactivity to external events ...
... time and which is scarcely remembered at present. As we have seen in the previous chapter, by far the greatest part of what the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have done for the world on the occult and spiritual plane is not known; it was ‘not on the surface for men to see,’ and they have not spoken about it. Of the little that is known, a kind of habitual selective process in the existing comments and exegeses ...
... touched by an intuition of God and of a supernatural Beyond. There is no direct occult experience, no immediate spiritual realisation at the back of it. Something from the occult domain and the spiritual plane was sure to come on the breath of the intense and authentic inspiration that was Dante's, but upon it and around it his poetic imagination has played. And, since he did not have, in the supreme ...
... Englishman! (laughter) He had not only a greater mastery over the English language than any born Englishman but also something of the sang-froid raised Page 82 to the spiritual plane: the Englishman's typical composure, coolness, in danger or agitating circumstances, was transformed in him into a superb, an infinite equanimity, a Himalayan poise, we may say. So, in the Aur ...
... points here. First and foremost, Savitri is an adventure in poetry. But the aim is not merely to write good poetry. The poetry has to be good by an ascension in poetic quality to the highest spiritual plane possible: this plane has to be creative in terms of poetic values. Savitri should express poetically the ever-higher peak reached by Sri Aurobindo's progressive spiritual ascension. Therefore ...
... experiences of all kinds, but there is no mental clarity or order, neither do they rise above the mind. It is only the minority of men who live in the mind or in the psychic or try to live in the spiritual plane. Letters on Yoga, p. 1297 As for the idea that the sadhana raises up things of the kind, the only truth in that is this that, first, there are many things in the ordinary man of which ...
... metre, in construction, both perfectly iambic lines, all light-heavy five times. It should also be noted that this line is essentially a narrative-descriptive line but of course belonging to a spiritual plane, here just the Higher Mind. The real Mantra with its compelling inspiration and the power of revelatory inevitability comes from the Overmind, the highest of the spiritual planes presently accessible ...
... ideas will not form an obstacle. Letters on Yoga, pp. 10-11 By divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation — the realisation of Self, Bhagwan or Brahman on the mental-spiritual plane or else the overmental plane. That is a thing (at any rate the mental-spiritual) which thousands have done. So it is obviously easier to do than the supramental. Also nobody can have the supramental ...
... environment and circumstances, was the ideal of the Vedic sages, attainable only by ascending beyond our mortal mentality to the luminous Truth of our being, the supramental infinities on the spiritual plane of our existence." (Sri Aurobindo, Secret of the Veda, SABCL, Vol. 10, 1971, p.480). " Vide., Kena Upanishad, IV.6. 12 RV.,VI.8.5. 13 Taittiriya Upanishad, Bhriguvalli, Ch ...
... the spiritualised ethics, which insists on ahimsa, on non-injuring and non- killing. According to the argument of this answer, the battle, if it is to be fought at all, must be fought on the spiritual plane and by some kind of non-resistance or refusal of participation. It may also advocate participation in the battle by taking recourse to non- violence and to soul resistance. (Non-violence has been ...
... could, of course, be a simple and straightforward solution. But the essential point is that man is a complex being. He lives simultaneously on the physical plane, vital plane, mental plane and spiritual plane, even though he might not experience all the planes with equal force of vividity. The main point is that man's satisfaction cannot arrive unless he constantly progresses, and this progress has ...
... knowledge of the Infinite and the mystery of the origin of the universe, the action of the determining power of the Infinite and the process of self-determination of the Infinite. But here on the spiritual plane when we attain to the Infinite and attain identity with it the world disappears, determinations are found to be substanceless name and forms having no reality, and the subject, the knower, also ...
... hostiles are active in the physical consciousness: the Theosophists call them 'obscure elementals''. But what is noteworthy is that the hostile beings and forces have absolutely no access to the spiritual plane. But why are these adverse forces and beings permitted by the Supreme to exist in the world and tempt and disturb the sadhakas in their spiritual Tapasya? There is a significant verse in ...
... and a good deal more. The idea that the Mother or I are spiritually great but ignorant of everything practical seems to be common in the Ashram. It is an error to suppose that to be on a high spiritual plane makes one ignorant or unobservant of the world or of human nature. If I know nothing of human nature or do not consider it, I am obviously unfit to be anybody's guide in the work of transformation ...
... plane. What descends from above is power of the higher Consciousness—but there is a Power of the vital, mental, physical planes also. Power is not a special characteristic of the psychic or of the spiritual plane. February 16, 1937 So you also fail to tell the precise meaning of the poem! Who the devil can give the precise meaning of inner things? Then it will never be understood. People ...
... of transformation? I think there is a difference, because you speak of a complete transformation—of mind, life and body. Obviously then, those whose realisation of the Divine was on the mental-spiritual plane did not have the physical consummation. There are different statuses (अवस्था) of the Divine Consciousness. There are also different statuses of transformation. First is the psychic transformation ...
... literary critics are baffled by it. As K.D. Sethna has emphasised, Savitri was not intended to be merely good poetry. "The poetry has to be good by an ascension in poetic quality to the highest spiritual plane possible: this plane has to be creative in terms of poetic values. Savitri should express poetically the ever-higher peak reached by Sri Aurobindo's progressive spiritual ascension. Therefore ...
... from me is purely spiritual. The only thing they can expect for the help they gave you and Mine. Z. is a spiritual return. And if they can receive it, it is all right. My only action is on a spiritual plane and when I decide to act in a case like this, it is from above. When C. R. came to me asking for help I did not act otherwise. For sometime he remained open and was able to receive something. He ...
... from a higher plane. But then it is essential to have the perception and feeling of the Divine in all. One can see the Divine in all behind the veil of the Gunas, the Nature qualities. From the spiritual plane one finds that the Gita is right about the Gunas and that man is made to do one thing or another by the action of the Gunas. That is why Ramakrishna said about a visiting Sannyasi that he was tamasic ...
... a promise if there is a call felt for a higher life or if the object or goal of life for which the promise was made has quite changed. Duty exists so long as you are on the moral plane. On the spiritual plane, one has to go where the call of the Spirit leads him. Duty no more binds him. DR. MANILAL: When people come here for Darshan and don't go back they receive plenty of letters accusing them of ...
... explained: "What you take for illusion has three levels of reality, the occult, the spiritual and the psychic. These different levels co-exist with this gross, earthly level. There is the spiritual plane and, deeper than this is the plane of consciousness and then the manifested planes. Human beings can station themselves on any of these three worlds, they can also have experiences or realisations ...
... Higher Mind: " The poetic intelligence is quite different; it is the mind and its vision moving on the wings of imagination akin to the intellect proper but lifted above it. The Higher Mind is a spiritual plane." "In the Higher Mind we are aware of a sealike downpour of masses of a spontaneous knowledge which assumes the nature of Thought but has a different character from the process of thought to ...
... "The poetic intelligence is quite different; it is the mind and its vision moving on the wings of imagination akin to the intellect proper but lifted above it. The Higher Mind is a spiritual plane, this is not."—Letters, Vol. III Page 258 "In the Higher Mind we are aware of a sealike downpour of masses of a spontaneous knowledge which assumes the nature of Thought but has ...
... love." Satyam refers us back to the "satya" in the last shloka and indicates like every other epithet there used the truth to the right nature of things, the ritam, in the vijnana, the ideal or spiritual plane of existence, where hatred ceases and evil ceases, because these are asatyam, perversions and misunderstandings of the play of God in the universe. अंगिरः । When applied to Agni, this epithet ...
... attitude. A spiritualised ethics insists on Ahinsa, on non-injuring and non-killing as the highest law of spiritual conduct. The battle, if it is to be fought out at all, must be fought on the spiritual plane and by some kind of non-resistance or refusal of participation or only by soul resistance, and if this does not succeed on the external plane, Page 563 if the force of injustice conquers ...
... support, but will be, as it were, the continuation and confirmation. It will also not need to propose new religions, because it will not limit itself—and will not limit God—to the religious and spiritual plane alone. Page 20 The first major change will no doubt consist in that. For these new beings will be born everywhere; we do not expect them to only appear in ashrams and temples ...
... identifies this as a subliminal reality, apprehended by the inner vision of mystics like Paul, of a subtle physical substance, a causal body, descending from Paul's "third heaven" (the ideal or spiritual plane, beyond the vital and the mental). It is a remarkable conclusion, unprecedented and calling for serious attention, bringing to bear on Christian tradition the full weight of the experiential evidence ...
... point of view. It is the vital that moves them, the mind being at its service, not its master. ... It is only the minority of men who live in the mind or in the psychic 19 or try to live in the spiritual plane. 20 ... most men live in their physical mind 21 and vital, except a few saints and a rather larger number of intellectuals. That is why, as it is now discovered, humanity has made little ...
... notice in Jnaneshwar the uninterrupted flow of what Sri Aurobindo would call the “overhead” expression, the language that comes with the power of word-sense and sound-sense native to some high spiritual plane above the mental. There is in it thought; there is in it the image; but the soul of its melody belongs to another world giving new values to thought and image; it is that soul who has taken birth ...
... staircase (at about 2 p.m.): (1) Yourself in a lovely moonlight with a self-luminous blue scarf. You looked the essence of magic, she says. Blue is the normal colour of the spiritual plane; moonlight indicates the spiritual mind and its light. (2) Mother in a powerful sunlight on a lion – her jagaddhatrT aspect, I infer. She looked so puissant, etc. It was probably ...
... wrote to a disciple. ‘The idea that the Mother or I are spiritually great but ignorant of everything practical seems to be common in the Ashram. It is an error to suppose that to be on a high spiritual plane makes one ignorant or unobservant of the world or of human nature. If I know nothing of human nature or do not consider it, I am obviously unfit to be anybody’s guide in the work of transformation ...
... physical contact, but of an inner psychic experience; precisely; he is protesting against her keeping him in the external vital and physical nature and insists on her taking him on the psycho-spiritual plane into spiritual union with her. All that is very good and very beautiful, but it is not enough: the union has indeed to be realised in the inner psycho-spiritual experience first, _________ ...
... never awake wholly to the fact that the entire description of Savitri and especially the part I have been commenting upon is word and vibration charged with actual deific states - the highest spiritual plane with its own native accent. Failure to tackle the Mantra, and in general all overhead poetry, in the right receptive way will lay its contents, more than those of any other type of mystical ...
... limited number of seers and sages and kept carefully secret from the mass of humanity—secrecy was always insisted on by the mystics. We may very well attribute this flowering of intuition on the spiritual plane to a rapid reemergence of the essential gains brought down from a previous cycle. If we analyse the spiritual history of India we shall find that after reaching this height there was a descent ...
... vainly endeavour to imprison in their categorical formulas. Beyond the mental and moral being in us is a greater divine being that is spiritual and supramental; for it is only through a large spiritual plane where the mind's formulas dissolve in a white flame of direct inner experience that we can reach beyond mind and pass from its constructions to the vastness and freedom of the supramental realities ...
... emotion, a fine subtlety of true perception, Page 84 an intimate language. The expression "sweetness and light" can very well be applied to the psychic as the kernel of its nature. The spiritual plane, when it takes up these things, gives them a wider utterance, a greater splendour of light, a stronger sweetness, a breath of powerful authority, strength and space. 20 October 1936 To get ...
... More generally, poetry always sways between two opposite trends, towards predominance of subjective vision and towards an emphasis on objective presentation, and it can rise too beyond these to a spiritual plane where the distinction is exceeded, the divergence reconciled. Again, it is not likely that the poetic imagination will ever give up the narrative and dramatic form of its creative impulse; a new ...
... plane. What descends from above is power of the higher Consciousness—but there is a Power of the vital, mental, physical planes also. Power is not a special characteristic of the psychic or of the spiritual plane. The Descent of Fire The fire is the divine fire of aspiration and inner tapasya. When the fire descends again and again with increasing force and magnitude into the darkness of human ignorance ...
... union with the Divine is the final aim. When one has some kind of constant union, one can be called a Yogi, but the union has to be made complete. There are Yogis who have only the union on the spiritual plane, others who are united in mind and heart, others in the vital also. In our Yoga our aim is to be united too in the physical consciousness and on the supramental plane. Page 24 ...
... experiences of all kinds, but there is no mental clarity or order, neither do they rise above the mind. It is only the minority of men who live in the mind or in the psychic or try to live on the spiritual plane. Of course most men live in their physical mind and vital, except a few saints and a rather larger number of intellectuals. That is why, as it is now discovered, humanity has made little ...
... and a great deal more. The idea that the Mother or I are spiritually great but ignorant of everything practical seems to be common in the Asram. It is an error to suppose that to be on a high spiritual plane makes one ignorant or unobservant of the world or of human nature. If I know nothing of human nature or do not consider it, I am obviously unfit to be anybody's guide in the work of transformation ...
... Supermind), but get first these foundations in the liberated nature. By divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation—the realisation of Self, Bhagavan or Brahman on the mental-spiritual plane or else the overmental plane. That is a thing (at any rate the mental-spiritual) which thousands have done. So it is obviously easier to do than the supramental. Also nobody can have the supramental ...
... question about the power to change, to develop, to awaken faculties that were not there before; this Page 488 power exists already, but it can be raised to an acme by being lifted to the spiritual plane. The force put on the gentleman you speak of at least made it necessary for him to change if he remained here. He had no will in the vital to change and so did not remain here but went to his ...
... simply the same matter, absolutely the same, simply exteriorised, that's all. And for the emanations, it is the same phenomenon, but instead of being on a material plane it is on the highest spiritual plane. And what happens here is a symbol of what happens up above. Well, doesn't it ever occur to you to say: "How is it that this child whose father and mother are so good, so honest, so generous ...
... divine in you put out to be dynamic in the play. But when we speak of the spiritual we are thinking of something that is concentrated in the Divine rather than in the external manifestation. The spiritual plane is something static behind and above the outward play; it supports the instruments of the nature, but is not itself included or involved in the external manifestation here. But in speaking ...
... and Epicurean, which were Page 403 dynamic not only for thought but for conduct of life and developed a discipline, an effort at inner perfection of the being; this reached a higher spiritual plane of knowledge in later Christian or Neo-pagan thought-structures where East and West met together. But later on the intellectualisation became complete and the connection of philosophy with life ...
... willed it since the beginning of all eternity (which has no beginning at all! ). Page 208 And for the cycle to be complete, one cannot stop on the way at any plane, not even the highest spiritual plane nor the plane closest to matter (like the occult plane in the vital, for example). One must descend right into matter, and this perfection in manifestation must be a material perfection, or otherwise ...
... intense beauty of emotion; a fine subtlety of true perception, an intimate language. The expression 'sweetness and light' can very well be applied to the psychic as the kernel of its nature. The spiritual plane, when it takes up these things, gives them a wider utterance, a greater splendour of light, a stronger sweetness, a breath of powerful audacity, strength and space." 1 The last lines ...
... points here. First and foremost, Savitri is an adventure in poetry. But the aim is not merely to write good poetry. The poetry has to be good by an ascension in poetic quality to the highest spiritual plane possible: this Page 131 plane has to be creative in terms of poetic values. Savitri should express poetically the ever-higher peak reached by Sri Aurobindo's progressive spiritual ...
... union with the Divine is the final aim. When one has some kind of constant Union, one can be called a Yogi, but the union has to be made complete. There are yogis who have only the Union on the spiritual plane, others who are united in mind and heart, others in the Vital also. In our Yoga our aim is to be united too in the physical consciousness and on the supramental plane. Sri Aurobindo, Letters ...
... that the spiritualised ethics, which insists on ahimsa, on non-injuring and non-killing. According to the argument of this answer, the battle, if it is to be fought at all, must be fought on the spiritual plane and by some kind of non-resistance or refusal of participation. It may also advocate participation in the battle by taking recourse to non-violence and to soul resistance. (Non-violence has been ...
... as the highest spiritual law and spiritual conduct. On the basis of this ethics it could be argued that violence is a sin and the battle, if it is to be fought out at all, must be fought on the spiritual plane only by soul-resistance. And if it does not succeed on the external plane, if injustice conquers, the spiritualised ethics Page 104 will argue that that would not matter since the individual ...
... There can be no question about the power to change, to develop, to awaken faculties that were not there before; this power exists already, but it can be raised to an acme by being lifted to the spiritual plane. The force put on the gentleman you speak of at least made it necessary for him to change if he remained here. He had no will in the vital to change and so did not remain here but went to his ...
... At present how far is my Purusha in direct touch with the Divine? At present it is the Purusha in the mind that you feel—when you become aware of the Purusha on the spiritual plane then there is more chance of its getting into direct touch with the Divine. P believes that the Purusha can remain withdrawn and allow the lower nature (the Prakriti) to satisfy ...
... Stoic and Epicurean, which were dynamic not only for thought but for conduct of life and developed a discipline, an effort at inner perfection of being. A little later, this reached a higher spiritual plane of knowledge in later Christian or Neo-pagan thought-structures where the East and the West met together. But later on, the intellectualisation became complete and the connection of Philosophy ...
... limited number of seers and sages and kept carefully secret from the mass of humanity — secrecy was always insisted on by the mystic. We may very well attribute this flowering of Intuition on the spiritual plane to a rapid reemergence of essential gains brought down from a previous cycle. If we analyse the spiritual history of India we shall find that after reaching this height there was a descent which ...
... life-plane, though life is its most important field for expression. This harmony is spiritual; some glimpse of it the poet had when he spoke of "the music of the 'spheres'." It belongs to a supreme spiritual plane, but its aim is to manifest itself here on our life-plane. Art is one medium through which it can express itself here in terms of material media. An artist can contact— in fact, the greatest artists ...
... and spiritual ideals that man begins to fee! that he is not merely an animal driven by the goad of hunger and thirst and a slave of desires, but that he has come to this earth from some higher spiritual plane,—at least, that there is something in him which is free from the inertia, inconscience, grossness and coarseness of earth nature and is akin to the pure Spirit. Aswapathy felt that he was "a colonist ...
... Sri Aurobindo 13 November 1936 It is the beginning of a very decisive experience and realisation — first, the Ascent above the mind (head) into the spiritual plane. It is here that one realises and is released into the vastness, stillness, silence, freedom, peace and joy of the Infinite and becomes aware of the Universal Self and the Divine. This realisation ...
... Naturally. While referring to the supramental planes lately, I did not mean the supermind, but simply the spiritual planes above the human mind. To separate mind, vital and physical from each other, is there no need of the higher spiritual planes? Spiritual and supramental are not the same thing. The spiritual planes from higher mind to overmind are accessible to the old sadhanas... Do you think that they all can be fundamentally separated without the help of the supra-mental planes, the planes above the human mind? There are many planes above man's mind — the supra-mental is not the only one, and on all of them the self can be realised, — for they are all spiritual planes. Mind, vital and physical are inextricably mixed together only on the surface co... in India. Your above answer regarding the spiritual planes and supramental planes urges me to inquire about the exact difference between spiritualisation and supramentalisation. Spiritualisation means the descent of the higher peace, force, light, knowledge, purity, Ananda etc. which belong to any of the higher planes from higher mind to Overmind, for in any of these the Self ...
... Aspects of the Mother The Mother with Letters on the Mother The Transcendental Mother and the Embodied Mother There are many Mothers in the cosmic and spiritual planes who help people in their search for the Divine. Above them, I have read, is the transcendental Mother and above her comes the supreme Mother. X and Y profess to have seen and spoken to the tr ...
... consciousness or, generally, to the consciousness of the upper hemisphere. It can be seen and felt as knowledge in all the spiritual planes, but the completely indivisible knowledge, the full dynamics of it can only be realised through the supramental consciousness itself on its own plane or by its descent here. (7) The description of a pure "I" is quite insufficient to describe the realisation of the... is clear as the first step in the matter. (2) I do not dispute at all the fact that one can realise the Self, the Brahman or the Ishwara without going into the overhead regions, the dynamic spiritual planes, or stationing oneself permanently above the body as happens in this Yoga. Even if it is done through the Sahasrara, well, the Sahasrara extends to the spiritualised mind and can be felt on the... without rising beyond the spiritualised mind into a higher Light above. I myself had my experience of Nirvana and silence in the Brahman, etc. long before there was any knowledge of the overhead spiritual planes; it came first simply by an absolute stillness and blotting out as it were of all mental, emotional and other inner activities—the body continued indeed to see, walk, speak and do its other business ...
... thinking "I have no ego". People speak of the "spiritual ego". The question is: "Is there really an ego on the higher spiritual planes?" Certainly not. There is absolutely no element of ego there. For they are all (from the Higher mind to Overmind) divine planes of consciousness. On the higher spiritual planes there is no ego, because the oneness of the Divine is felt, but... annihilation of ego at such an early stage of sadhana. Although there is no ego in the spiritual planes, yet by the spiritual experience the ego on the lower planes may get aggrandised through pride and wrong reception of the experience. Also one may by entering into the larger mental and vital planes aggrandise the ego. These things are always possible so long as the higher consciousness and... perceive there is not the inhabitant of the spiritual heights. But the thing is, man being a mental being, when he ascends he carries with him subtly or unconsciously the ego of the lower nature. And as his consciousness is naturally heightened and cosmicised in the spiritual planes, the ego too feels extended and enlarged! But there is no such thing as "spiritual ego". All the same a sadhak ...
... phenomenon. Was Leonardo aware of a semi-avatarhood or a pressure of spiritual planes? Never heard before of my declaring or anybody declaring such a thing. What Leonardo da Vinci held in himself was all the new age of Europe on its many sides. But there was no question of Avatarhood or consciousness of a descent or pressure of spiritual planes. Mysticism was no part of what he had to manifest. 15 July... [4 April] is the birthday of Pondicherry because you came here on this date. If one can place oneself in the year 2036 A.D. he may find that 4th April is celebrated as the birthday of the Earth's spiritual life. Perhaps the horoscope of the Earth may show this more accurately; but is there a horoscope of the Earth as there are horoscopes of some villages? Pondicherry was born long ago—but if X... wandered about India with my disciples till I disappeared in a river (on a ferry). Even if the prediction were a correct one according to the horoscope it need not fulfil itself, because by entering the spiritual life one opens to a new force which can change one's destiny. 22 August 1937 It is no doubt possible to draw the illnesses of others upon oneself and even to do it deliberately, the instance ...
... higher plane of consciousness, it does not necessarily follow that he will be a greater man of action or a greater creator. One may rise to spiritual planes of inspiration undreamed of by Shakespeare and yet not be as great a poetic creator as Shakespeare. "Greatness" is not the object of spiritual realisation any more than fame or success in the world—how are these things the standard of spiritual realisation... Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge The Avatar and the Vibhuti Letters on Yoga - I Chapter III Human Greatness Greatness Why should the Divine not care for the outer greatness? He cares for everything in the universe. All greatness is the Vibhuti of the Divine, says the Gita. Obviously outer ...
... without—”“eyes closed” and “eyes open”. Two of the signs of the psychic were there; “simplicity and genuine faith without any kind of pretension.” There is also the characteristic of Grace from the spiritual planes; the “heavy rainfall.” The psychic's capacity to receive it is shown by the lake being full. The spontaneous attunement of the psychic with the beauty of Nature is spotlighted by the remembrance... golden circle an opening is made to the overhead Sun of the planes beyond the mind, the planes which rise ultimately into the Supramental. In its own manner the psychic plane represents the Transcendent, for it is a projection directly from the Highest to stand behind the universal manifestation. And it is from this inmost fusion of the soul-plane with the supreme station of the Divine that a dish, giving... this plane. The automatic results of the movement of the beings here are symbolised by fruit found as if by magic in the hands when their palms are opened after the eyes have looked up. “Champaklal's own psychic being is seen in the form of that “charming young boy” who comes to guide and who acts as if he knew Champaklal and with whom Champaklal too feels familiar. Some traits of the plane are revealed ...
... came into Sri Aurobindo's life, and about some incidents from her childhood. The Mother was working there independently in France, and Sri Aurobindo here in India, both on the same occult and spiritual planes! We used to joke amongst ourselves: surrender, surrender, surrender, the most important requirement of this yoga, has been achieved only by two persons: Sri Aurobindo to the Mother, and ...
... the work he was destined to do, aware of the spiritual planes?" Sri Aurobindo replied: "Never heard before of my declaring or anybody declaring such a thing. What Leonardo da Vinci held in himself was all the new age of Europe on its many sides. But there was no question of Avatarhood or consciousness of a descent or pressure of spiritual planes. Mysticism was no part of what he had to manifest... Aurobindo and a disciple in 1937. The latter Was discussing the subject of past lives, and Sri Aurobindo in the course of his replies distinguished between arriving at conclusions by means of "sight" (spiritual vision) and coming to them by "inference". After writing that he was never certain that a poet-friend of the disciple and, for some time, a fellow-sadhak had been Shelley in a past life, Sri Aurobindo ...
... from above. SRI AUROBINDO: Peace and silence in the mind are either a descent from above or a welling up from within. But they do not necessarily come from Supermind. They can come from. the spiritual planes. NIRODBARAN: Since he finds silence something very difficult to get, he says it can't be had by any effort but by a descent. SRI AUROBINDO: That is so, but the descent is not from Supermind ...
... beauty has to be found. Sethna is not just a religious poet; he has the mystic mind which has often access to the spiritual planes. Sri Aurobindo has characterised the planes, but we are concerned with the overall beauty of Sethna's poems. Mystic or spiritual, great things come out through his pen and a few examples will speak of the presence of the Muse: A white shiver of... light which is destined to spread. His poetry seeks "a new intensity of vision and emotion, a mystic inwardness" that catches alive "the deepest rhythms of the spirit". It really becomes "the spiritual excitement of a rhythmic voyage of self-discovery". What is most interesting is Sethna has his individual style in spite of his being very close to Sri Aurobindo. His companion poet, Nirodbaran... Flies the chill thought of death across my dream.... A white bliss curving through our blinded deeps To give the darkness' mouth a shadowless smile.... Waves of spiritual secrecy broke white Along the heart's shores a rumour of deathless love Afloat like a vast moon upon the deep.... Fuelled with forests I come, an ape on fire, A brown ...
... all opens again. If you do not give up faith and confidence, there may be delay but there is no danger. It is again our ego which makes us think that on the higher spiritual planes there would be no need of aspiration. Even our sweet Mother prays day and night — we can feel it distinctly when she plays on the organ! Yes — All that is very true. It is a prayer... aspiration will bring restlessness and, once the physical consciousness gets convinced of the connection, it no longer wants to aspire. If I feel loneliness or anything not so spiritually healthy, I call out for the Mother and she responds at the level of my head (self) or heart (soul). Good. But what is this calling business? The Mother's presence ...
... supermind" [ p. 305 ]. But you should have seen that by "supramental planes" I did not mean supermind, but any of the spiritual planes above the mind. Is there no need of the higher spiritual planes for separating the mind, vital and physical from one another? Spiritual and supramental are not the same thing. The spiritual planes from higher mind to Overmind are accessible to the old sadhanas so... to look at and describe the whole from a certain spiritual-mental or spiritual-psychic view from below the supernals. This is quite natural so long as we live in the human centres. There are two systems, one concentric with the psychic at the centre; another vertical, an ascension and descent, like a flight of steps, a series of superimposed planes with the Supermind + Overmind as the crucial nodus... mind—the supramental is not the only one, and on all of them the self can be realised,—for they are all spiritual planes. Page 304 Mind, vital and physical are inextricably mixed together only in the surface consciousness—the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical are separate from each other. Those who seek the self by the old Yogas separate themselves from mind, life and body and realise ...
... getting remarkable guidance from his Asura. Sometimes the Asuras have an extraordinary foresight that comes true with perfect precision both on the vital and subtle-physical planes, just like that which is possible on the spiritual planes. Of course they are not always infallible. But Hitler committed only one mistake: when attacking Poland he thought that the Allies wouldn't intervene. (Smiling) Napoleon... 1940-contd Talks with Sri Aurobindo 15 JUNE 1940 PURANI: Haradhan is convinced that France will win. NIRODBARAN: Is he sending spiritual force? PURANI: Of course he is! SRI AUROBINDO: France might win after great suffering but she is likely to be overrun before that. NIRODBARAN: Already they are being chased by Germany. The Germans have bombed... The Spirit is not impotent but it may remain static and quiescent. It depends on the line one follows, whether one leans on the witness side or the dynamic side. On the other hand there are many spiritual people who have little knowledge but much power. PURANI: Olaf is angry with Nolini because Nolini did not tell him at first that he had to accept the Mother. SRI AUROBINDO: He did not come here ...
... workings of Mind, Life, Body are viewed from the calm and peace of the spiritual planes of the mental being and are filled with that calm and peace; they are not possessed by and subjected to the law of the all-mastering Spirit. All this is when the mental being takes its station in its own spiritual planes, in the mental planes of Sat, Chit, Ananda, and casts down their light and delight upon the... sufferings of others, but it does mean a spiritual supremacy and freedom which enables one to understand perfectly, put the right values on things and heal from above instead of struggling from below. It does not inhibit the divine compassion and helpfulness, but it does inhibit the human and animal sorrow and suffering. The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the being is that which is called... epiphany of the transcendent Sachchidananda. And these results, which obtained on the supramental plane itself or beyond, would be the highest perfection of the human being, we can attain to partially, in a very modified way, in a sort of mental figure by awakening into activity on the corresponding plane of the mental nature. We can get a luminous shadow of that perfect harmony and light. But this belongs ...
... and participation in the cosmic movement, and an influx from the spiritual planes of Light and Power and Peace and Bliss into the human vessel, are some of the outstanding experiences of this middle stage of transformation, which is called spiritual transformation. At the third stage there is a victorious ascent beyond the spiritual ranges of the mind, beyond even the universal formula, into the... consciousness does on the spiritual planes, where the perception is more or less native and abiding. A full and revealing emergence of "the perfect Existence, Knowledge and Beatitude,'' on all the levels of the individual being—each being comprises ¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, May 27, 1914. Page 122 in itself all the levels or planes of consciousness—depend for... a global opening in the entire nature and initiates a wealth of uplifting spiritual experiences which flood the being with light and bliss and raise its consciousness above mortality. "As a final result the whole conscious being is made perfectly apt for spiritual experience of every kind, turned towards spiritual truth of thought, feeling, sense, action, turned to the right responses, delivered ...
... Supermind. Of course, it is true that without actually ascending to these higher spiritual mental planes and permanently living there, if we can open ourselves from below to their knowledge and spiritual influences, we can somewhat spiritualise our normal waking being and consciousness. But the spiritual change effected in this way is Page 135 never profound or wide in... supermind, because the instrumentation in all other [lower] planes is inferior and there is therefore a disparity between the fullness of the static experience and the incompleteness of the dynamic power, knowledge, result of the inferior light and power of other planes. This is the reason why the consciousness of the other spiritual planes, even if it descends, can make no radical change in the ... higher luminous planes, even if permanently centred there, does not suffice for the spiritual transformation of our being and nature. The permanent ascent from the lower to the higher consciousness must be followed by the complementary process of a permanent descent of the higher into the lower . The transmutation of our present modes of being and activities into spiritual values leading ...
... when supported by the other.'' ¹ Incidentally we can also learn the distinction between Spiritual love and psychic love: "The love that belongs to the spiritual planes is of a different kind—the psychic has its own more personal love, bhakti, surrender. Love in the higher or spiritual mind is more universal and impersonal. The two must go together to make the highest divine love ...
... and nature without which no supramentalisation is possible. Let the whole dynamic nature led by the psychic make itself full of the dynamic spiritual light, peace, purity, knowledge, force; let it afterwards get experience of the intermediate spiritual planes and know, feel and act in their sense; then it will be possible to speak last of the supramental transformation. All that [ ideas such... beyond it there is no progression. If the redemption of the soul from the physical vesture be the object, then there is no need of supramentalisation. Spiritual Mukti and Nirvana are sufficient. If the object is to rise to supraphysical planes, then also there is no need of supramentalisation. One can enter into some heaven above by devotion to the Lord of that heaven. But that is no progression... with a strong pressure for completion, sometimes retarded by the things that rise from below Page 287 and have to be dealt with before farther progress can be made. The process is a (spiritual) evolutionary process concentrated into a brief period—it could be done otherwise (by what men would regard as a miraculous intervention) only if the human mind were more flexible and less attached ...
... self-aware and all-aware. But sill relations of consciousness, relations of mutual delight of existence, relations of self-power of being with self-power of being would not be excluded; these highest spiritual planes would not be a field of blank indeterminability, a vacancy of pure existence." 15 Supermind and Ignorance But all Yoga presupposes the present status of the individual in the... all, not the final truth of things. It may be contended that the supramental plane of consciousness is an intermediate step between mind, on the one hand, and the complete experience of Sachchidananda on the other. It may, therefore, be urged that in the greatest heights of the manifested Spirit beyond the supramental plane, existence would not at all be based on the determination of the One in multiplicity... in its passage upwards from the Mind to the Supermind, lays an exclusive emphasis on one side of spiritual experience, and how ultimately the position of integrality removes the necessity of exclusiveness: "It is indeed only when our human mentality lays an exclusive emphasis on one side of spiritual experience, affirms that to be the sole eternal truth and states it in the terms of our all-dividing ...
... the higher planes of the spiritual consciousness posited in Yogic psychology above the mind-level. Most of the spiritual poetry so far has drawn its inspiration either from the luminous subliminal regions or from the psychic. Except in very rare cases there hardly exists any poetry derived from the spiritual planes above the mind. Poetry drawing its inspiration from these planes has been termed... symbol of the spiritual silence which precedes the fullness of divine revelation: The darkness is a miracle of death Into mysterious God-life brimming high With dewy singlehood of earth and sky. Page 244 To understand Mr. Sethna's poetry we must go beyond mere intellectual judgment. We must receive its impact inwardly, by spiritual feeling... he picked out the attempt to cast off the more externalised forms of poetic expression and to seek for a pure and authentic intuitive language, to bring forth the living truths of the inmost spiritual being, to reveal its light and vision, not in the inadequate speech of the surface mind but in the inspired and revelatory accent of Spirit itself. This attempt has not always been successful ...
... love, devotion and surrender belong only to the psychic being? Have they nothing to do with the higher or spiritual planes? The love that belongs to the spiritual planes is of a different kind - the psychic has its own more personal love, bhakti, surrender. Love in the higher or spiritual mind is more universal and impersonal. The two must join together to make the highest divine love. ... During yesterday's sleep I found myself moving in a world where I had a fine experience. It was not a dream or vision, but something like entering a plane or a world during waking meditation. But I have been told that there are worlds and planes that Page 48 are dangerous to get into for an inexperienced sadhak. Everything is dangerous in the sadhana or can... the ego-centricity is greatly diminished and also if there is a strong bhakti for the Mother. A spiritual humility and sense of submission and dependence are necessary. Even when I make good progress, it seems to be limited to the development of the Self above. I thought that the spiritual realisation would help the psychic development, just as the psychic realisation helps the development ...
... Supermind, because the instrumentation in all other (lower) planes is inferior and there is therefore a disparity between the fullness of the static experience and the incompleteness of the dynamic power, knowledge, result of the inferior light and power of other planes. This is the reason why the consciousness of the other spiritual planes even if it descends can make no radical change in the eart... naturally led to seek its place or its origin in the Overmind plane. The Overmind is the plane of the highest worlds of the Gods. But Vaikuntha and Goloka are human conceptions of states of being that are beyond humanity. Goloka is evidently a world of Love, Beauty and Ananda full of spiritual radiances (the cow is the symbol of spiritual light) of which the souls there are the keepers or possessors... is also spiritual, but the old Yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence) absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-existence absolute and Page 133 eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the supramental plane. The supreme ...
... also a tendency to shut the doors even of those tendencies in religions and in spiritual planes which lie above religions, which, if consciously acknowledged and promoted, would heal the divisions of religions, bring about greater understanding among them, and, eventually enable us to cultivate the scientific body of spiritual knowledge. What we need today is a positive recognition of spirituality as distinct... that there exists a scientific body of spiritual knowledge, and that this needs to be promoted by the state. We may also note that this becomes all the more necessary when we find that the true truths that lie behind democracy and social ism which are underlined in the Indian Constitution can be integrated and expressed effectively only when the ultimate spiritual aims are recognised and promoted. ... funds should not be utilised for the promotion of any religion. In practice, very often, this rule is employed even where there is a question of the promotion, not of any religion, but of ethical and spiritual values. There is a tolerant view of secularism, which aims at equal respect for all religions. Here, again, it has become difficult to create an ethos where equal respect for all religions could be ...
... the overhead planes, Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind, Higher Mind. The light from the higher planes of consciousness just above the mind is blue. The light indicates an action of force (bluish probably indicates the spiritual-mind-force), the rest was a working to open the higher spiritual centre ( sahasradala ). Blue is the normal colour of the spiritual planes; moonlight indicates... indicates the spiritual mind and its light. Moonlight indicates spirituality—the blue light may be that of the higher or illumined mind. The plane with the blue light is the Higher Mind which is just above the ordinary human intelligence, the first of several planes of higher consciousness through which one has to pass in order to reach the Divine Truth. Something from your mind (thinking... observation of the colours might determine the significance; but this is not sure, as the colours on these lower planes have various meanings. The four lights were the lights of the Truth,—white the purity and power of the divine Truth, green its active energy for work, blue the spiritual consciousness of the divine Truth, the gold its knowledge. The silver temple is that of the spiritualised ...
... thought and knowledge and spiritual perception but spontaneously seeing the truth. Could one cross the higher planes without establishing peace and silence? If so, would one feel the vibrations? I do not see how it can be done without peace and silence, if it is the higher planes which are spoken of. Of course large mental and vital planes can be reached without it and... become aware of it only when I dm already pulled down. It is due to this defect Page 258 or weakness that I am not as yet able to take full advantage of my stay on the spiritual planes. That is a thing that happens in the earlier stages. It can be got rid of by perseverance, the length of the higher condition increasing to the requisite degrees. ... line of connection between the spiritual mind, through higher mind, illumined mind, intuition, overmind to the supramental. For the last two days, my consciousness seems to soar much higher than the Higher Mind. Not only the inner but even the outer being feels elevated. Today especially I experienced as if the consciousness had crossed the Intuition plane. I cannot be quite certain ...
... is the utmost change that man can hope for while still remaining man, for, "the overmind change is the final consummating movement of the dynamic spiritual transformation; it is the highest possible status dynamis of the spirit in the spiritual-mind plane." 15 Page 296 ... universality of the blue sky. The radical inner change, the profound spiritual transformation takes place when man the mental being aspires with his whole heart and soul to the 'higher' knowledge, and is seized and overwhelmed by it: The possession of the Infinite cannot come except by an ascent to those supramental planes, nor the knowledge of it except by an inert submission of Mind... seek this knowledge through the external life; for until its mentality is sufficiently developed, spiritual knowledge is not really possible, and in proportion as it is developed, the possibilities of spiritual knowledge become richer and fuller. 8 To cultivate the spiritual life is not to turn away from everyday life; it is not an escape from life but rather a steady confrontation ...
... terrestrial existence the fullness of the infinite spiritual consciousness; only then will he avail to raise his total being and even his whole manifested, embodied expressive nature into the spiritual kingdom. But this is difficult in the extreme; for the causal body opens itself readily to the consciousness and capacities of the spiritual planes and belongs in its nature to the higher hemisphere... the end his spiritual life predominates, destroys his earthward tendency and breaks its ties and limitations. Spiritualised, he places his real existence beyond in other worlds, in the heavens of the vital or mental plane; he begins to regard life on earth as a painful or troublesome incident or passage in which he can never arrive at any full enjoyment of his inner ideal self, his spiritual essence.... develops mind greatly on the vital plane and uses its dynamic energy for self-control as well as for self-satisfaction, it will still be with an Asuric energism ( tapasyā ) although of a higher type and directed to a more governed satisfaction of the rajasic ego. But for the vital plane also it is possible, even as on the physical, to rise to a certain spiritual greatness in its own kind. It is open ...
... ss of the Divine everywhere and in all other beings also; so it will not have the consciousness of a separate ego but of one centre among many of the Divine Multiplicity. On the higher spiritual planes there is no ego, because the oneness of the Divine is felt, but there may be the sense of one's true person or individual being—not ego, but a portion of the Divine. The Karana Purusha The... Self cosmic or individual is experienced long before rising to Supermind. If it were not so, spiritual experience of that high Page 66 kind would be impossible to mental man, liberation would be impossible; he would first have to become a supramental being. As for the Purusha it is there on all planes; there is a mental Purusha, manomaya , leader of the life and body, as the Upanishad puts... ve of himself on each plane of the consciousness. On the mental plane it is the true mental being, manomaya puruṣa , on the vital plane the true vital being, 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 ...
... speak of all the letters and messages etc. I have written since."² "I myself had my experience of Nirvana and silence in the Brahman, etc. long before there was any knowledge of the overhead spiritual planes; it came first simply by an absolute stillness and blotting out as it were of all mental, emotional and other inner activities – the body continued indeed to see, walk, speak and do its other... several accounts of his experience in his own words are reproduced. "I am glad you are getting converted to silence, and even Nirvana is not without its uses – in my case it was the first positive spiritual experience and it made possible all the rest of the Page 97 sadhana; but as to the positive way to get these things, I don't know if your mind is quite ready to proceed with... and Lele agreed. Sri Aurobindo gave a lecture at the Gaekwad Wada, Poona, on the thirteenth. Then he went to Bombay. At Girgaum (Bombay) he delivered a lecture on the fifteenth. In Bombay the spiritual experience that had begun at Baroda became more intense. The vacant condition of the mind turned into the experience of the silent Brahman Consciousness. The multifarious activities of the city of ...
... Therefore we have had to speak of different planes of our consciousness and of the spiritual planes of the mental being; for if these did not exist, the liberation of the embodied being would have been impossible here on earth. He would have had to wait and at most to prepare himself for seeking it in other worlds and in a different kind of physical or spiritual embodiment less obstinately sealed in its... In the ordinary Yoga of knowledge it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and the materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise... utility of these various planes to the supreme object of our liberation. It takes as its basis the three principles of our ordinary being, mind, life and matter, the triune spiritual principle of Sachchidananda and the link principle of vijñāna , supermind, the free or spiritual intelligence, and thus arranges all the large possible poises of our being in a tier of seven planes,—sometimes regarded as ...
... partial and limited Truth, etc. It is only in the supermind that the full Truth consciousness comes into being. There are many planes above man's mind—the supramental is not the only one, and on all of them the self can be realised,—for they are all spiritual planes. Mind, vital and physical are inextricably mixed together only in the surface consciousness—the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical... transform life here is not needed at all for the spiritual escape from life. It is not a hope but a certitude that the complete transformation of the nature will take place. Spiritualisation and Transformation Spiritualisation means the descent of the higher peace, force, light, knowledge, purity, Ananda etc. which belong to any of the higher planes from Higher Mind to Overmind, for in any of... transforming the body. Their aim was spiritual mukti and nothing else. Krishna taught Arjuna to do liberated works, but he never spoke of any physical transformation. I do not know that we can take this [ Yudhisthira's entry into the heavenly kingdom in his mortal body ] as a historical fact. Swarga is not somewhere in the Himalayas, it is another world in another plane of consciousness and substance ...
... above the head, the word "difficulty" exists no more for him. For the hostile or the lower forces cannot touch the higher planes which are the Mother's. From the higher mind upwards all is free from the action of the hostile forces. For they all belong to the spiritual consciousness though with varying degrees of light and power and completeness. I think the sadhaks should... Aurobindo doesn't put his comments on what I write? How am I to know that all I write is from the higher source without his written approval, for it could be a mixture of my own mind or of some non-spiritual planes?" All these suggestions are absolutely absurd. It is the ego rising up again and wanting to be patted on the back and told how clever it is and how much knowledge it is getting.... I did not know mentally what was meant by spiritual knowledge when it first began to descend — the actual relation between the knowledge and myself was, and still is, even after so many years, beyond my grasp. What the Mother seems to have done, not as a result of my tapasya but as an act of her Grace, is this: she has opened me to her higher spiritual knowledge, and has linked it through this opening ...
... divine inspiration is sought to be properly canalised and regularised in the followers of the Integral Yoga. And the inspiration and guidance received should ultimately be not of any of the lower spiritual planes,—there is a regular hierarchy of them—but of the very supramental Force, the highest vijñāna śakti. Let us take another example. Let us suppose that a sâdhaka is working in an office. It... curb or control over the movements of their lower nature, and there is no higher spiritual force doing in them the work of purification in its inscrutable but impeccable way. Even in the other yogas, ¹Sri Aurobindo. ²Conversations with the Mother. Page 300 until there is a direct spiritual intervention, the mental inhibitions play the most important role, and achieve... In the Integral Yoga, on the contrary, the first touches of the Mother's Force rouse up the repressed or slumbering: appetites of the unregenerate nature and compel them to be converted into their spiritual counterparts. It is to be noted here that when we speak of the elimination- or expulsion of desire, we mean, not an extinction or annihilation of the energy that informs and impels it, but the egoistic ...
... trend. For "in the ordinary Yoga...it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise... remains the sole possibility before the spiritual seeker. Unfortunately, the knowledge of the existence of these supernal planes of our being has been almost lost to the spiritual memory of the race with all the adverse consequences attendant upon it. In ancient lore, "in the Upanishad (usually the Taittiriya) there are some indications of these higher planes and their nature and the possibility... forgotten afterwards and people spoke only of the Buddhi as the highest thing with the Purusha or Self just above, but there was no clear idea of these planes." 1 Now, so long as these higher spiritual planes of the mental being and finally the plane of Supermind are not consciously possessed and made active and organised in the normal consciousness of the embodied being, so long as the spiritualised ...
... with an occasional illumined intuitive or overmental flash here and there. 119 Be faithful to the medium, if 118Literally, the rule of thugs, in Hindi. 119These are the spiritual planes above the level of mind or pure reason. They are arranged Page 82 you please. If you do not become perfectly and luminously logical and rational, how can you hope to... the Higher Mind is the plane where the mind has fallen silent or thoughts are seen to be occurring on the surface. In the Illumined Mind, thought is replaced by sight and light. In the Intuitive Mind, knowledge is no longer by thought or sight, but by complere identity with the object of knowledge. The Overmind is the plane just below the Supermind, which is the first plane where the One starts... an entire stress on the spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life. That is why He says all life is yoga: all human activity is included in a complete spiritual life. What ...
... psychic being. What comes from above is the Ananda of the higher consciousness. Page 336 The love that belongs to the spiritual planes is of a different kind—the psychic has its own more personal love, bhakti, surrender. Love in the higher or spiritual mind is more universal and impersonal. The two must join together to make the highest divine love. The psychic realisation is... completed with the spiritual also well under way already. The Intuitive or Overmind are more open to the truth of Divine Love and more capable of universalising love than the mind ordinarily is—love there is also more calm in its intensity, less ego-bound than in the mental parts. But the mind can also approach their quality of love, if the love in it grows psychic and spiritual. By becoming... of fervour. Etc. etc. But the true love for the Divine is in its fundamental nature not of this kind, but psychic and spiritual. The psychic element is the need of the inmost being for self-giving, love, adoration, union which can only be fully satisfied by the Divine. The spiritual element is the need of the being for contact, merging, union with its own highest and whole self and source of being and ...
... said Sri Aurobindo on another occasion. “Sometimes the Asuras have an extraordinary foresight that comes true with perfect precision both on the vital and subtle-vital planes, just like that which is possible on the spiritual planes. Of course they are not always infallible. But Hitler committed only one mistake: when attacking Poland he thought that the Allies would not intervene. Napoleon did not... soldiers, who had to wade through the water from the beach toward the vessels, would never have been able to embark. There was however another weather factor in play, this one preventing the German bomber planes from taking off because the airfields were covered with fog. “Fog came to the rescue of the British. Not only was Dunkirk itself enshrouded but all the Luftwaffe fields were blanketed by low clouds... The Luftwaffe might be carrying out, if the weather held, its most murderous attack yet against Britain. As it turned out, August 15 saw the biggest engagement of the Battle of Britain, with more planes in action than had ever been seen before. The Luftwaffe flew 1950 sorties, the RAF [Royal Air Force] nearly a thousand, as they joined battle over a front of five hundred miles. It was one of the decisive ...
... Vinci as its centre ]. What Leonardo da Vinci held in himself was all the new age of Europe on its many sides. But there was no question of Avatarhood or consciousness of a descent or pressure of spiritual planes. Mysticism was no part of what he had to manifest. Napoleon I don't think it can be said that Napoleon had little of ego. He was exceedingly ego-centric. He made himself a dictator from... done with the greatness of the Avatar. But there have since been men who did live in touch with the planes above mind—higher mind, illumined mind, Intuition. There is no question of asking whether they were "greater" than Rama; they might have been less "great", but they were able to live from a new plane of consciousness. And Krishna's opening the overmind certainly made it possible for the attempt at... Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge The Avatar and the Vibhuti Letters on Yoga - I Chapter II Specific Avatars and Vibhutis The Ten Avatars as a Parable of Evolution Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself ...
... What happens when one goes in is that one enters into the inner planes of consciousness, it may be the subconscient, it may be the mental, vital or subtle physical plane. From there one goes into the corresponding worlds or else one rises up into higher planes superconscious to us—to the ranges above our mind or to the spiritual mental plane in which one can unite with the Sachchidananda consciousness... while the external mind was constantly coming out of it. What you have, if you go into this indrawn condition, is not dreams but spiritual experiences or visions or experiences in other supraphysical planes of consciousness. Your burning aspiration was just such a spiritual experience. No, it was not sleep. You went inside into an inner consciousness; in this inner consciousness one is awake inside... condition of the consciousness. When this inward condition is not very deep one can be aware of various scenes, voices etc. which belong not to the physical but to some inner plane of consciousness—their value or truth depends on the plane to which one reaches. Those of the surface are of no importance and one has simply to pass through them till one gets deeper. (2) The fear, anger, depression etc. which ...
... 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 Page 58 hierarchised luminous planes of consciousness serving as links and bridges between the now normal waking mind of non-spiritual humanity and the native heights of our spiritual being. These planes are in the ascending... (iv) the Overmind; and finally (v) the Supermind or Gnosis, this last being the plane of absolute and everlasting Light, that transcends altogether the aparārdha or the lower hemisphere of existence. Here are some Savitri verses referring to these supernal planes: (1)"He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights" (76) (2)"A vision lightened on the viewless heights" (42) (3)"On... (176) (5)"A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes" (659) (B.2) Sight in the Illumined Mind : Beyond the plane of the Higher Mind of Truth-Thought lies the plane of the Illumined Mind of Truth-Sight, which works primarily by spiritual vision and not by thought: thought is here only a subordinate and secondary movement expressive of sight. Now some illustrative ...
... although it feels itself instrumental and not the primary actor. Although there is no ego in the spiritual planes, yet by the spiritual experience the ego on the lower planes may get aggrandised through pride and wrong reception of the experience. Also by entering into the larger mental and vital planes one may aggrandise the ego. These things are always possible so long as the higher consciousness... not to be spiritual but to be an occultist, for then you can follow the necessary methods and get the help of the occult powers. But the occult spiritual forces and masteries can be called down or come down without calling only if that is quite secondary to the true thing, the seeking for the Divine, and if it is part of the Divine plan in you. Occult powers can only be for the spiritual man an in... inexorable. Purification and Consecration What Krishnaprem writes (I have not read it yet) is perfectly true that purification of the heart is necessary before there can be the spiritual attainment. All ways of spiritual seeking are agreed on that. Purification and consecration are two great necessities of sadhana. It is not a fact that one must be pure in heart before one can have any Yogic experience ...
... through Atmajnana. But it is true that with Atmajnana the complete surrender becomes more possible. Surrender and the Brahmic Condition There can be [ devotion and surrender on the higher spiritual planes ], but it is not inevitable as in the psychic. In the higher mind one may be too conscious of identity with the "Brahman" to have devotion or surrender. The Brahmic condition brings a negative... Surrender The Divine can lead, he does not drive. There is an internal freedom permitted to every mental being called man to assent or not to assent to the Divine leading—how else can any real spiritual evolution be done? All the play in this world is based on a certain relative free will in the individual being. Even in the sadhana it remains and his consent is necessary at each step—even... ego, it must be at every step a free surrender. Each person has his own freedom of choice up to a certain point—unless he makes the full surrender—and as he uses the freedom, has to take the spiritual or other consequences. The help can only be offered, not imposed. Silence, absence of frank confession, means a desire in the vital to go its own way. When there is no longer concealment, when there ...
... On The Mother CHAPTER 50 Wings of Expansion I Of the Mother's invisible ministry for the earth and man from the occult and spiritual planes, we know nothing - or hardly anything - whatsoever. The playground classes were on a different footing: people could see her, hear her, meditate with her, receive her blessings and even feel the force of her... clarity and shining purpose to the Centre of Education - as, indeed, to the Ashram as a whole - was the dual spiritual power of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, their vision of future possibility, and their involvement in the destinies of their disciples individually and as an evolving spiritual community. IV The Ashram was a growing community, and by 1959 the inmates and the children numbered... December 1958, there 'was the unique feature of her weekly or bi-weekly classes in the Playground that were an education for young and old alike, and an education that was intellectual as well as spiritual. Although these Questions and Answers sessions had now to be discontinued for reasons of her health, still the memories were fresh, the transcripts of the earlier conversations of 1929' and 1931 were ...
... of the mind's existence? That depends on the experience. It is usually had on the spiritual mental plane. There may be no active thinking mind, but the stuff of consciousness is still mental, even though it may be mind spiritual and liberated. Of course there may be the sense of pure spiritual existence, but that comes less easily. Page 65 ... light. The physical itself was taken up. Will you please explain this phenomenon? There is nothing to explain. It was what you describe: At once the raising of the consciousness to a higher plane and the descent of that into the physical. Today's special working seems to be on the eyes. Something definitely is going on there. A strong pressure is felt working on them. ...
... important or what one can get from it by intuitive feeling, not the explanation or idea; it [ Thought the Paraclete ] is a vision or revelation of an ascent through spiritual planes, but gives no names and no photographic descriptions of the planes crossed. I leave it there. The "pale blue" or intuitivised aspect of the face is only at the start; when it "gleamed" it had already overpassed the Overmind... language are unpoetic or not sufficiently poetic, the rhythm harsh or flat? Or is it because it is too intellectual, dealing in ideas more than in vision and feelings? Or is it that the spiritual genre is illegitimate—spiritual subjects not proper for poetic treatment? But in that case much of Tagore's poetry would be improper, not to speak of much of Donne (now considered a great poet), Vaughan, Crashaw... and, as it seemed to me, with considerable directness, precision and force the thought and spiritual substance of the poem—he has rendered, Page 248 of course in more mental terms than mine, exactly what I wanted to say. What might be called the "mysticity" of the poem, the expression of spiritual vision in half-occult, half-revealing symbols is not successfully caught, but that is a thing ...
... most part by spiritual teachers in India because it belongs to the inferior planes and usually pushes the seeker on a path which Page 574 may lead him very far from the Divine. Especially, a contact with the forces and beings of the astral (or, as we term it, the vital) plane is attended with great dangers. The beings of this plane are often hostile to the true aim of spiritual life and establish... the idea of a greater consciousness very high up with a feeling of divinity, a sense of considerable light and spiritual authority—perhaps in one of those higher spiritual mental planes of which I speak in The Life Divine and the letters. The diamond light could well be native to these planes; it is usually white, but there it might well be blue: it is a light that dispels or drives away all impure... but in all that you have said about him and in the printed papers there is no trace of any spiritual realisation or experience. All that he seems to think about is occult powers and feats of thaumaturgy. Those who take their stand on occult powers divorced from spiritual experience are not Yogis of a high plane of achievement. There are Yogis who behave as if they had no control over themselves—the theory ...
... stop even when the spiritual-mind planes have been possessed. It cannot cease in its ascent before the mental has been replaced by the supramental nature and an embodied supramental being becomes the leader of the terrestrial existence. This then is the rational and philosophical foundation for the phenomenon of rebirth in earthly life, and this is supported by the spiritual Vision-Experience... for the soul an unending series of repeated rebirths upon earth. For, it may be supposed that the human personality, once capable of attaining to other planes beyond the physical, may not care to return from those supraphysical higher planes but pursue its existence there. In this way it would have finished with its terrestrial life-evolution. We now come to the theory advanced by the older... large spiritual life. At least, the opening out of the spirit in him, the knowledge of his real self and the leading of a genuine spiritual life as distinguished from a religio-ethical life, must be attained before he can go definitively and for ever elsewhere. But even that is not all. Still there is a beyond. For, as the imperfection of man is not the last word of Nature, his spiritual perfection ...
... have I implored Thee in vain, for that which speaks to Thee is Thyself in me...”¹ The Mother knew early in life that the divine Vibhutis, the divine Powers and Personalities of the spiritual-mental planes, even of the Overmind, would not be capable of conquering the resistance of Matter and dispelling the darkness of Inconscience. That was why she prayed: "...O Sweet Master, it is a Love more... the first objective in spiritual life, but the ultimate aim and the glorious consummation of human existence, the very meaning and purpose of human birth, is the manifestation of the Divine in man and the fulfilment of His Will in the world. The legendary Radha is the very personification of an absolute and integral love for the Divine. From the physical to the spiritual, the whole gamut of her... In the Mother's Light The Brazier of Love WHAT is the central truth and essence of the Mother's life and the secret of her spiritual achievement ? What is the key to the synthesis of her vast and complex personality, her irresistible magnetism and the unlimited sway she holds over the hearts of thousands of God-seekers ? What has created the divine beauty of ...
... graded series of spiritual planes and powers of consciousness, which can lead us through 'the domains of Other-Mind into the Beyond-Mind', we encounter a different kind of 'thought', different in potency as well as in character. But be it at once noted that even at its supreme elevation, thought will remain a secondary and derivative power at a certain remove from the corresponding spiritual knowledge. ... earthly being. An integral spiritual sadhana should have for its goal not merely the spiritual liberation of some isolated individuals from the shackles of phenomenal Ignorance, avidy ā , but the establishment of a divine life upon earth, ihaiva. But since Matter is the foundation of all evolutionary efflorescence of life here upon the terrestrial plane, our physical body assumes a supreme... 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 by no means be achieved nor even xxxi initiated on the plane of the material body. For, where ...
... which describe the spiritual planes. I can understand this hesitation; for these lines have not the vivid and forceful precision of the opening and the close and are less pressed home, they are general in description and therefore to one who has not the mystic experience must seem too large and vague. But they are not padding; a precise and exact description of these planes of experience would... from the flux of nature has been one of India's highest spiritual ideals. In many a sonnet Sri Aurobindo has quintes-senced the experience in words; but his own ideal is not merely the inner liberation, and in the sonnet called Self he has hit off unforgettably the fiasco to which it often leads: He said, "I am egoless, spiritual, free", Then swore because his dinner was not ready... intellectual criticism to be symbolic but there is more than that, is a frequent element in mystic vision; I may mention the powerful and vivid vision in which Ramakrishna went up into the higher planes and saw the mystic truth behind the birth of Vivekananda..." Now a final observation. Mr. Ezekiel generalises his case against Sri Aurobindo so as to cover his many volumes of poetry: "This ...
... of a greater consciousness very high up with a feeling of divinity, a sense of considerable light and spiritual authority – perhaps in one of those higher spiritual mental planes of which I speak in the Life Divine and the Letters. The diamond light could well be native to these planes; it is usually white, but there it might well be blue; it is a light that dispels or drives away all impure... value I have always put upon his insight into spiritual things, the brilliance and accuracy of his thought and vision and his expression of them – I think I described it once as pasyanti vak – and on as much as I knew of his spiritual experience and constant acquisition and forward movement and many-sided largeness. A closer perception of the spiritual person behind all that is perhaps the one... how to write it. Perhaps I could only repeat from my side what he has himself said about establishing a contact. But a spiritual contact cannot be easily defined in mental terms, they are usually insufficient to express it. If it is some impressions about himself or his spiritual person or his more outward personality that you are thinking of, there too I find them difficult to put into language; ...
... to weave their game of hide and seek, we have different planes of consciousness and existence. Thus we have, in ascending order, a material plane, 1 The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 415-16. (Italics ours) Page 147 a life-plane and the planes of mind. But even on the highest range of spiritual-mind planes, the absolute harmony of the union of Purusha-Prakriti... Prakriti are not overtly realised on the lower planes of existence, the lower planes of manifestation of the Spirit. The true intrinsic relation has been perverted there and a pragmatic division and separation with all their undesirable consequences have developed alongside. After all, what is a plane of consciousness, a plane of existence ? A plane is nothing else than 'a general settled poise... below, a self-revelation of the Spirit, an evolution in Nature. (Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation, p. 80) As the psychic change has to call in the spiritual to complete it, so the first spiritual change has to call in the supramental transformation to complete it.... This then must be the nature of the third and final transformation which finishes the passage of the soul ...
... various means with the denizens of another plane of existence. For there is a continuous scale of the planes of consciousness, beginning with the psychical and other belts attached to and dependent on the earth plane and proceeding through the true independent vital and psychical worlds to the worlds of the gods and the highest supramental and spiritual planes of existence. And these are in fact always... influences there and the capacity of communication with other planes and their powers and beings can also be used for a higher than any mental or mundane object, for the possession and mastering of our whole nature and the overpassing of the intermediate planes on the way to the supreme spiritual heights of being. But the most direct spiritual use of the psychic consciousness is to make it an instrument... the secret of the thing it experiences and can therefore be a starting-point and basis of all the rest of the supramental knowledge,—the supramental thought, spiritual intelligence and comprehension, conscious identity,—and on its highest plane or at its fullest intensity of action it opens into or contains and at once liberates these things. It is strong with a luminous power that carries in it the ...
... instruments, are named by Sri Aurobindo the subtle-physical, the vital and the mental planes. Beyond these are the rarely exploited planes where the inwardness necessary to all poetry plunges or rises to the directly mystical and spiritual consciousness. Since man is typically a mental being and Sri Aurobindo speaks of... broadly term "sense" and "heart" in distinction from "thought". The subtle-physical, the vital and the mental planes to which these terms point may be more clearly distinguished by the uses to which the "spiritual excitement" that all poetry starts from is put in the transmission. It may be used, says Sri Aurobindo, 5 ... truths which enlighten or which raise to a greater meaning the sensible appearances of the inner and outer life of Nature and man". The mystical and spiritual planes come into play "when the mind of man begins to see more intimately the forces behind life, the powers concealed by our subjective existence, and the poet ...
... ordinary intellect and reason there is pure, abstract reason (Kant’s reine Vernunft ), and then the mental means of receptivity to the higher and illumined mind, the intuition and the overmental-spiritual planes above our mind from where it sometimes receives inspirations, intuitions and truthful insights. The life forces (the vital) in us too have a consciousness, the ‘vital mind’, which they use... initial core of a spiritual community, called ‘Ashram’ for the lack of a better word, at first organized and then led by the Mother. The early life in the Ashram was very strict, this inner strictness being necessary for the laying of the foundations of the outward Work. As the number of disciples increased, the community expanded physically and the disciples progressed spiritually, the Mother could... tranquil, white’ figure in Japanese getas and wearing an Indian salwar-kamiz. How often has she not said with a smile that she was doing the sadhana ‘at a gallop’, like ‘a hurricane’ or ‘a jet plane,’ without ever halting at an experience. She was a Force, a Will that goes forward step by step and that cannot halt to tell its experiences, to take pleasure in what has been done. ‘I have not lost ...
... The Fundamental Realisations of the Integral Yoga The Fundamental Realisations of the Integral Yoga The Spiritual Transformation Letters on Yoga - III Chapter II Ascent to the Higher Planes Contact with the Above These are the ordinary normal experiences of the sadhana when there is an opening from above—the contact with the peace of the Brahman,... comes on the mind when it is released from itself—the Silence that is the foundation of spiritual experience. What you have felt (the former experiences were probably preparatory touches) is indeed the beginning of this foundation—a consciousness free, wide, empty at will, able to rise into the supraphysical planes, open to the descent of whatever the Mother will pour into it. Nothing needs to... break down the lid between the higher and lower planes in the consciousness and prepare the consciousness. The rising of the energies of the consciousness to the crown of Page 430 the head and beyond is a recognised movement of the sadhana. It is the forces of the lower Prakriti rising to connect themselves with the higher spiritual consciousness above. The hearing of bells is usually ...
... the Divine. It is contrary to the facts and the quite ordinary facts of the spiritual experience. 17 March 1936 I quite agree with you in not relishing the idea of another attack of this nature. I am myself, I suppose, more a hero by necessity than by choice—I do not love storms and battles—at least on the subtle plane. The sunlit way may be an illusion, though I do not think it is—for I have... Aspiration is first or usual means, that is all. 13 April 1937 I myself had my experience of Nirvana and silence in the Brahman, etc. long before there was any knowledge of the overhead spiritual planes; it came first simply by an absolute stillness and blotting out as it were of all mental, emotional and other inner activities—the body continued indeed to see, walk, speak and do its other business... you can move with a secure knowledge in the vast field of spiritual phenomena. That is the only way to test spiritual experience. I have myself tried the other method and found it absolutely incapable and inapplicable. On the other hand if you are not prepared to go through all that yourself—as few can do except those of extraordinary spiritual stature—you have to accept the leading of a Master, as in ...
... Paraclete which describe the spiritual planes. I can understand this hesitation; for these lines have not the vivid and forceful precision of the opening and the close and are less pressed home, they are general in description and therefore to one who has not the mystic experience may seem too large and vague. But they are not padding; a precise and exact description of these planes of experience would have... powerful and vivid vision in which Ramakrishna went up into the higher planes and saw the mystic truth behind the birth of Vivekananda. At least, the fact that these poems have appealed so strongly to your friend's mind may perhaps be taken by me as a sufficient proof that in this field my effort at interpretation of spiritual things has not been altogether a failure. But how then are we to account... challenged by others as the rest of my work. Some reviewers have described them as lacking altogether in spiritual feeling and void of spiritual experience; they are, Page 349 it seems, mere mental work, full of intellectually constructed images and therefore without the genuine value of spiritual or mystic poetry. Well, then, what is the upshot? What have I to decide as a result of my aesthetic ...
... self-aware and all-aware. But still relations of consciousness, relations of mutual delight of existence, relations of self-power of being with self-power of being would not be excluded; these highest spiritual planes would not be a field of blank indeterminability, a vacancy of pure existence. It might be said again that, even so, in Sachchidananda itself at least, above all worlds of manifestation, there... neither is the separate cognition of them entirely an illusion or a complete error of the Ignorance; this too has its validity for spiritual experience. For these primary aspects of the Absolute are fundamental spiritual determinates or indeterminates answering at this spiritual end or beginning to the general determinates or generic indeterminates of the material end or inconscient beginning of the descending... The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance The Life Divine Chapter I Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable The Unseen with whom there can be no pragmatic relations, unseizable, featureless, unthinkable, undesignable ...
... to us, to wit, a kind of irrational capacity of feeling things which may be surprisingly correct but also very unreliable. In Sri Aurobindo’s scheme of the world, intuition is one of the higher spiritual planes. When he wrote that the Mother knew by means of her intuition, he meant that she knew the things by a direct knowledge derived from the Unity-Consciousness where all is known in ‘the three times... Question: ‘In what sense is the Mother everywhere? Does she know all happenings in the physical plane?’ His answer: ‘Including what Lloyd George 93 had for breakfast today or what Roosevelt 94 said to his wife about the servants? Why should the Mother “know” in the human way all happenings in the physical plane? Her business in her embodiment is to know the workings of the universal forces and use them... each according to what she sees to be his true need or what is best for him in his spiritual progress. No one can be her judge or impose on her his own rule and standard; she alone can make rules, and she can depart from them too if she thinks it fit, but no one can demand that she shall do so … This is the spiritual discipline of which the one who represents or embodies the Divine Truth is the centre ...
... goddess of the supreme Truth who comes down and is bom to save; Aswapati, the Lord of the Horse, her human father, is the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal plane; Dyumatsena, Lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision, and through that loss its... intuition of it. In that sense the story is very rich. Note 2 (p. 530.) Sri Aurobindo describes the event in a somewhat different manner, with Aswapati as a Yogi in communion with the spiritual planes and forces that constantly exert their influence upon us, which govern and mould all our movements and actions. He has a sure intuition that a greater nobler destiny lies in wait for us though... Savitri herself was a highly proficient and skillful young woman, with the knowledge of both the worldly and the spiritual; she was a tapaswini of exceptional merit. This we ought to remember in understanding the text which is very terse and compact in its presentation. It is a Yogic-spiritual document indeed. It is a revelation. Therefore looking at the Savitri-tale as a revelation will perhaps ...
... objective of this progress is the greater light which belongs to a higher plane of spiritual cognizance." (p. 679) Here ends our essay on the sadhana of the Mind. There are, of course, two other stages: (i) Establishment of mental silence; and (ii) Ascent of consciousness beyond normal mind into the 'spiritual mind planes'; and, then, further on to Supramental Gnosis and beyond. But these sadhana... something divisible; (ii)miss the vision of the Truth in its entirety; but, instead, (iii)manipulate truth's numerous shadow-formations; and, finally, (iv)to construct wider and wider circles on the same plane, never being able to transcend it, and considering this movement alone as the progression in knowledge and power. Now, whenever and wherever Mind becomes operative, these basic features of its... strong and unconquerable; I deem it as hard to control as the wind." (VI. 34) But what are the very common normal difficulties faced by the sadhaka in his mind so far as the building up of his spiritual life is concerned? To cite only a few of them: (i) many types of doubts and misgivings are the habitual contributions of Mind, disconcerting the sadhaka at every step; (ii) Mind is very clever in ...
... sprung from the Divine consciousness, and addressed to the intelligence of Arjuna. No spiritual gospel has ever come from the physical mind, nor has it ever been addressed to the physical mind of man. Arjun was a highly developed Sattwa-rajasic man with great possibilities of opening to the higher spiritual planes beyond the action of the three gunas. Though at the very sight of the formidable array... of the mind. It has its own inscrutable but irresistible way of working. Those who think that the meeting of the East and West will be a mutual give and take, on the physical plane betray an ignorance of spiritual working. Discarding the two negations and taking over of what one lacks and giving of what one possesses as an individual achievement will be a sort of barter or exchange, if at all... appeal to one of my dearest friends who is a sadhaka and whose spiritual advancement is always uppermost in my mind. If I had Page 42 addressed a layman, I would have certainly written what you have been writing to me with copious quotations from Sri Aurobindo on the subject of the collective action on the material plane and the marriage of spirituality and science etc. But, as ...
... vast cosmic instrumentation." 50 Overmind and Consummation of Spiritual Transformation According to Sri Aurobindo, the overmind change is the Page 61 final consummating movement of the dynamic spiritual transformation; it is the highest possible status — dynamis of the Spirit in the spiritual-mind plane. The overmind carries the consciousness to the point of a vast illumined... their working, and this progression continues until some complete and mature action of them is possible. It is then that the turning of the spiritual towards the supramental transformation commences; for the heightening of the consciousness to higher and higher planes builds in us the gradation of the ascent to Supermind, that difficult and supreme passage." 48 This difficult passage consists of... of Nature. And the process of spiritual change of nature must go step by step, till the stair of the ascension is transcended and there is an emergence of the greatest wide-open spaces or a consciousness which is supremely and supramentally luminous and infinite. The psychic and spiritual experiences result in the processes of psychic transformation and spiritual transformation of nature. The ...
... 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 of consciousness serving as links and bridges between the now normal waking mind of non-spiritual humanity and the native heights of pure spiritual being. These planes are in their ascending order:... (iv) the Overmind; and finally (v) the Supermind or Gnosis, this last being the plane of absolute and everlasting Light, that transcends altogether the aparārdha or the lower hemisphere of existence. Here are some Savitri verses referring to these supernal planes: He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights. 10 A vision lightened on the viewless heights." On summit Mind... vision in the thought. 17 A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes. 18 Sight in the Illumined Mind Beyond the plane of the Higher Mind of Truth-thought lies the plane of the Illumined Mind of Truth-sight, which works primarily by spiritual vision and not by thought: thought is here only a subordinate and secondary movement expressive of sight. Now some illustrative ...
... 19:10:1994 The path is the spiritual. Yes, it is the spiritual path, and not the psychic. Can the supermind come down directly ? Unless the necessary instruments are ready it will not. Otherwise Page 30 these will get shattered. The spiritual planes must be able to receive it. It has come to the individual-cosmic plane, to the cosmic consciousness. ... to the Samadhi. I was sitting on the cement bench under the Reading Room window, and it was happening all the while. 10:10:1994 I will have to go through the spiritual path, and not the psychic. I am told so. Spiritual consciousness must open to the higher. 12:10:1994 Day before yesterday, in the afternoon, I was taking my usual nap. When I was about to wake up I saw a dream... expect me also to do sadhana. Without that I cannot progress. When people say that the Mother is doing all sadhana and that we have nothing to do, I say, it is to ignore our responsibility. Spiritual things don't happen that way. Almost for twenty years I was not doing anything. But it started again after my second heart-attack, four days after it. I was still in the intensive care unit ...
... which describe the spiritual planes. I can understand this hesitation; for these lines have not the vivid and forceful precision of the opening and the close and are less pressed home, they are general in description and therefore to one who has not the mystic experience may seem too large and vague. But they are not padding; a precise and exact description of these planes of experience would... we have a first firm foundation of the experience of a universal beauty, a universal love, a universal delight. These things can come on the mental and vital plane even before those planes are directly touched or influenced by the spiritual consciousness; but they are there a temporary experience and not permanent or they are limited in their field and do not touch the whole being. They are a glimpse... powerful and vivid vision in which Ramakrishna went up into the higher planes and saw the mystic truth behind the birth of Vivekananda. At least, the fact that these poems have appealed so strongly to your friend's mind may perhaps be taken by me as a sufficient proof that in this field my effort at interpretation of spiritual things has not been altogether a failure. But how then are we to ...
... supreme spiritual nature. It is possible without an actual ascent into these at present superconscient mental planes or without a constant or permanent living in Page 141 them, by openness to them, by reception of their knowledge and influences, to get rid to a certain extent of our constitutional and psychological ignorance; it is possible to be aware of ourselves as spiritual beings... more catholic, all-understanding, all-embracing, cosmic, infinite. The overmind change is the final consummating movement of the dynamic spiritual transformation; it is the highest possible status-dynamis of the Spirit in the spiritual-mind plane. It takes up all that is in the three steps below it and raises their charateristic workings to their highest and largest power, adding to them... our first, our capital ignorance. The Life Divine, p. 561 In the superconscience beyond our present level of awareness are included the higher planes of mental being as well as the native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being. The first indispensable step in an upward evolution would be to elevate our force of consciousness into those higher parts of Mind from which we already ...
... the closenesses and identities of a supra-intellectual light and Ananda.... The voice of poetry comes from a region above us, a plane of our being above and beyond our personal intelligence, a supermind which sees ' things in their innermost and largest truth by a spiritual identity and with a lustrous effulgency and rapture and its native language is a revelatory, inspired, intuitive word limpid or... movement, the aspiration from below and the response from above, and either movement implies the other too. Thought the Paraclete has been described as "a vision or revelation of an ascent through spiritual planes", but the ascent of consciousness is suggested by the imagery and the music rather than closely argued out in terms of logical reason: As some bright archangel in vision flies ... starts fires in us. Aphrodite causes a mad flutter in our hearts, Apollo kindles a sudden transfiguring light. The occult and the terrestrial planes intersect unexpectedly, the subliminal is a sea within and without us, there are invasions from the 'overhead' planes, there are minglings, matings, meltings, partings. In the foreground is played the shattering last act of the Trojan War. The women - Helen ...
... 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 of consciousness serving as links and bridges between the now normal waking mind of non-spiritual humanity and the native heights of pure spiritual being. These planes are in their ascending order:... (iv) the Overmind; and finally (v) the Supermind or Gnosis, this last being the plane of absolute and everlasting Light, that transcends altogether the aparardha or the lower hemisphere of existence. Here are some Savitri verses referring to these supernal planes: He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights. 10 A vision lightened on the viewless heights. 11 On summit... vision in the thought. 17 A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes. 18 Sight in the Illumined Mind Beyond the plane of the Higher Mind of Truth-thought lies the plane of the Illumined Mind of Truth-sight, which works primarily by spiritual vision and not by thought: thought is here only a subordinate and secondary movement expressive of sight. Now some illustrative ...
... normal recurrent circumstance which intervenes to help out the process of a difficult spiritual evolution in the physical existence. There is a relation which the human being in his evolution on earth develops with higher planes of existence, and that must have a predominant effect on his internatal dwelling in these planes; it must determine his direction after death and determine too the place, period... freer conditions proper to a subtler medium and in some kind of happy perfection of mind or life or a finer bodily existence. Beyond these subtle-physical planes of experience and the life-worlds there are also mental or spiritual-mental planes to which the soul seems to have an internatal access and into which it may pursue its internatal journey; but it is not likely to live consciously there if... interval,—the passage of the soul would be a spiritual circumstance in the uninterrupted series of a compulsory, mechanical, material procedure. The soul would have no freedom from Matter; it would be perpetually bound to its instrument, the body, and dependent on it for the continuity of its manifested existence. But we have found that there is a life on other planes after death and before the subsequent ...
... become more catholic, all-understanding, all-embracing, cosmic, infinite. The overmind change is the final consummating movement of the dynamic spiritual transformation; it is the highest possible status-dynamis of the Spirit in the spiritual-mind plane. It takes up all that is in the three steps below it and raises their characteristic workings to their highest and largest power, adding to them a... of the existence of the supra-physical things, of which it has no direct experience and to which it can find no clue. To enlighten the physical mind by the consciousness of the higher spiritual and supramental planes is one of the important objects of the integral Yoga, just as to enlighten it by the power of the higher vital and higher mental elements of the being is the greatest part of human s... In the Yogic psychology of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the word 'superconscient' is used to include the planes beyond our pre-sent level of awareness, namely, those of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overmind, Supermind, and the other heights of the pure spiritual being. A basic sense and knowledge of unity is the general characteristic of all the grades of the Superconscience ...
... become more catholic, all-understanding, all-embracing, cosmic, infinite. The overmind change is the final consummating movement of the dynamic spiritual transformation; it is the highest possible status-dynamis of the spirit in the spiritual-mind plane. It takes up all that is in the three steps below it and raises their characteristic workings to their highest and largest power, adding to them a... their working, and this progression continues until some complete and mature action of them is possible. It is then that the turning of the spiritual towards the supramental transformation commences; for the heightening of the consciousness to higher and higher planes builds in us the gradation of the ascent to supermind, that difficult and supreme passage. It is not to be supposed that the circumstances... universality into a consciousness be longing to its spiritual upper hemisphere. Besides he must have already become aware of what is now to him superconscient; he must be already a being conscious of the higher spiritual Light, Power, Knowledge, Ananda, penetrated by its descending influences, new-made by a spiritual change. It is possible for the spiritual opening to take place and its action to proceed ...
... held that ecstasy is a lower and transient passage, the peace of the Supreme is the supreme realisation, the consummate abiding experience. This may be true on the spiritual-mind plane: there the first ecstasy felt is indeed a spiritual rapture, but it can be and is very usually mingled with a supreme happiness of the vital parts taken up by the spirit; there is an exaltation, exultation, excitement... would be the evident principle, the inevitable result of the very character of the Truth-Consciousness and its dynamic realisation of the spiritual unity of all being. This realisation, the key to the perfection of life, difficult to arrive at on the mental plane, difficult even when realised to dynamise or organise, would be naturally dynamic, spontaneously self-organised in all gnostic creation and... The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution The Life Divine Chapter XXVII The Gnostic Being A perfect path of the Truth has come into being for our journey to the other shore beyond the darkness. Rig Veda. ( I. 46. 11.) ...
... slit and certain practices are to be followed, as a result of which a sweetness comes into the saliva from what is called the 'brahmarandhra', the secret opening at the top of the head to the spiritual planes above. This is called 'amrita rasa' or the nectar of immortality. At one time, Barin fell in with these Page 147 Sannyasis. One of them tempted him with many promises and powers. But... something is slowly ripening within. If someday you feel the need for a deeper spiritual life, then you will take to this Path. It was the same for those boys. My Sadhana was incomplete until the Mother's coming. She came and the Ashram grew around her, the Sadhana Page 218 became more intense; higher realms and planes were revealed to my vision. Do you understand? This was the Ashram's most... supra-physical planes, who may pass under the old names. It is rare for the being to return clothed in its own sheaths which it had cast off earlier. The phenomenon that occurs in automatic writing does not concern merely these subtle sheaths of human beings. In some cases its source or inspiration is directly from beings of various non-physical though usually not very elevated planes. Most often they ...
... merely opens a passageway and goes out. Sri Aurobindo had not gone beyond the mental plane when he experienced Nirvana: I myself had my experience of Nirvana and silence in the Brahman long before there was any knowledge of the overhead spiritual planes. 120 It is after ascending to higher, superconscious planes that he had experiences superior to Nirvana, where the illusionary, immobile and impersonal... Bombay, I began to have spiritual experiences, but these were not divorced from 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... revelation, a spiritual experience, belongs to a certain plane; it does not come from God's thunders or from nowhere; those who incarnate the particular Page 183 revelation have not conceived it from nothing: the overmind is their source. It is also the source of the higher artistic creations. But we must remember that, although it is the summit, it is still a mental plane. When consciousness ...
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