... degrees or graded stages of the evolution of the spiritual consciousness. A broad landmark can be noted here which concerns us at the present moment. The spiritual consciousness has been rising to higher and higher peaks and possessing them one after another. At the present moment we are at a crisis, at a crucial crossing. The spiritual consciousness attained till now and securely held in human possession... the time is come and the conditions are ready for the spiritual consciousness in humanity to arrive at the status above the Overmind, the Supermind, and make that a living reality and build in and through that its normal consciousness. A progressive revelation of higher and higher and more integral states of the spiritual consciousness in and through the realisations of mystics and sages and... The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 4 IV Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness Even the Vedic Rishis used to refer to the ancients, more ancient than they themselves. "The ancients", they said, "worshipped Agni, we too the moderns in our turn worship the same godhead". Or again, "Thus spoke our forefathers"; or, "So have we heard from those who have ...
... or something unreal or something inert and without consequence. If there is no such thing as spiritual consciousness, there can be no reality of Yoga, and if there is no Yoga force, spiritual force, Yoga Shakti, then also there can be no effectivity in Yoga. A Yoga consciousness or spiritual consciousness which has no power or force in it, may not be dead or unreal but it is evidently something inert... inert and without effect or consequence. Equally a man who sets out to be a Yogi or Guru and has no spiritual consciousness or no power in his spiritual consciousness—a Yoga force or spiritual force—is making a false claim and is either a charlatan or a self-deluded imbecile; still more is he so if having no spiritual force he claims to have made a path others can follow. If Yoga is a reality, if sp... which looks behind appearances and sees what is behind them. Moreover it would not be seemly for me to appear to be making a claim for myself and pleading for recognition or acceptance—for the spiritual consciousness does not claim in that way, it can state the truth about itself but not fight for a personal acceptance. A general and impersonal statement about spiritual force is another matter, but I doubt ...
... drive towards the establishment at all cost of the spiritual consciousness in the being, even to the rejection of Nature, on the other side a push towards the extension of spirituality to our parts of nature. But until the first is fully achieved, the second can only be imperfect and halting. It is the foundation of the pure spiritual consciousness that is the first object in the evolution of the spiritual... of thinking mind is not entirely hidden, while in thinking mind, when it develops, there appear at an early stage the rudimentary strivings and afterwards the more developed seekings of a spiritual consciousness. As plant life contains in itself the obscure possibility of the conscious animal, as the animal mind is astir with the movements of feeling and perception and the rudiments of conception that... envelops, Page 887 penetrates, enters into its object, discovers itself in the object, is aware in it of something that is not mind or life or body. There is, then, evidently a spiritual consciousness which is other than the mental, and it testifies to the existence of a spiritual being in us which is other than our surface mental personality. But at first this consciousness may confine ...
... degrees or graded stages of the evolution of the spiritual consciousness. A broad landmark can be noted here which concerns us at the present moment. The spiritual consciousness has been rising to higher and higher peaks and possessing them one after another. At the present moment we are at a crisis, at a crucial crossing. The spiritual consciousness attained till now and securely held in human possession... the time is come and the conditions are ready for the spiritual consciousness in humanity to arrive at the status above the Overmind to the Supermind, and make that a living reality and build in and through that its normal consciousness. A progressive revelation of higher .and higher and more integral states of the spiritual consciousness in and through the realisations of mystics and sages and... Evolution and the Earthly Destiny Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness EVEN the Vedic Rishis used to refer to the ancients, more ancient than they themselves. "The ancients", they said, "worshipped Agni, we too the moderns in our turn worship the same godhead". Or again, "Thus spoke our forefathers"; or, "So have we heard from those who have gone ...
... degrees or graded stages of the evolution of the spiritual consciousness. A broad landmark can be noted here which concerns us at the present moment. The spiritual consciousness has been rising to higher and higher peaks and possessing them one after another. At the present moment we are at a crisis, at a crucial crossing. The spiritual consciousness attained till now and securely held in human possession... Now the time is come and the conditions are ready for the spiritual consciousness in humanity to arrive at the status above the Overmind to the Supermind, and make that a living reality and build in and through that its normal consciousness. A progressive revelation of higher and higher and more integral states of the spiritual consciousness in and through the realisations of mystics and sages and... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness EVEN the Vedic Rishis used to refer to the ancients, more ancient than they themselves. "The ancients", they said, "worshipped Agni, we too the moderns in our turn worship the same godhead". Or again, "Thus spoke our forefathers"; or, "So have we heard from those ...
... degrees or graded stages of the evolution of the spiritual consciousness. A broad landmark can be noted here which concerns us at the present moment. The spiritual consciousness has been rising to higher and higher peaks and possessing them one after another. At the present moment we are at a crisis, at a crucial crossing. The spiritual consciousness attained till now and securely held in human possession... Now the time is come and the conditions are ready for the spiritual consciousness in humanity to arrive at the status above the Overmind, the Supermind, and make that a living reality and build in and through that its normal consciousness. A progressive revelation of higher and higher and more integral states of the spiritual consciousness in and through the realisations of mystics and sages and... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness EVEN the Vedic Rishis used to refer to the ancients, more ancient than they themselves. "The ancients", they said, "worshipped Agni, we too the moderns in our turn worship the same godhead". Or again, "Thus spoke our forefathers"; or, "So have we heard from those who ...
... the spiritual, the spiritual proper, gives in addition the logic of the Infinite. At least this is what distinguishes modern spiritual consciousness from the ancient, that is, Upanishadic spiritual consciousness. The Upanishad gives expression to the spiritual consciousness in its original and pristine purity and perfection, in its essential simplicity. It did not buttress itself with any logic. It... proper to the spiritual consciousness. We can have a Science of the Spirit as well as a Science of Matter. This is the Thought element or what corresponds to it, of which I was speaking, the philosophical factor, that which gives form to the formless or definition to that which is vague, a nearness and familiarity to that which is far and alien. The fullness of the spiritual consciousness means such a... altogether an impossibility, in a human language. The Sanskrit language was moulded and fashioned in the hands of the Rishis, that is to say, those who lived and moved and had their being in the spiritual consciousness. The Hebrew or even the Zend does not seem to have reached that peak, that absoluteness of the spiritual tone which seems inherent in the Indian tongue, although those too breathed and grew ...
... of the beast and is still not out of it, light out of darkness, a higher consciousness out of first a dead and then a struggling and troubled unconsciousness. A spiritual consciousness is emerging and it is through this spiritual consciousness that one can meet the Divine. Religions, full of mental and vital mixed, troubled and ignorant stuff, can only get glimpses of the Divine; positivist reason with... evolution there along two lines, one of ascent to the discovery of the self and spirit, the other of descent through the already evolved levels of mind, life and body so as to bring down the spiritual consciousness into these also and to fulfil thereby some secret intention in the creation of the material universe. Our Yoga is in its principle a taking up and summarising and completing of this process... the spirituality of the past was inclined to deny to it. In a way it has made the spiritualisation of it a necessity for spiritual seeking and so aided the descent movement of the evolving spiritual Consciousness in the earth-nature. More than that we cannot claim for it; its conscious effect has been rather to stifle and almost extinguish the spiritual element in humanity; it is only by the divine ...
... should not be taken as meaning anything more than that. Moon The moon signifies the light of spirituality or of the spiritual consciousness. The moonlight indicates the light of the spiritual consciousness. The moonlit maidān is the spiritual consciousness at the doors of which you are standing as it were and feeling its peace and ease. The moon generally indicates spiritual... to circumstances—most often spiritual consciousness in the mind. The light above the head is never an imagination in Yoga; if it is felt, it is because it is there. If it is the moon, it means the light of the spiritual consciousness in the mind. The moon as a symbol in vision signifies usually spirituality in the mind or, simply, the spiritual consciousness. It can also indicate the flow ...
... ceremonies or social or religious institutions. Thirdly, various states of spiritual consciousness tend to constitute four psychological traits of personality, which are commonly found universally among all who have gone beyond mental consciousness or who stand on the borderlines of the mental and spiritual consciousness. These psychological traits are connected with those powers of the Spirit... elements as also the conflict between the Reason and the Unreason are becoming acute, we need to turn to still higher levels of integration and admit still higher principles, — principles of spiritual consciousness, which are supramental in character, — vijndnamuya and anandamaya, — to use again the terms of Taittiriya Upanishad. And this underlines, by implication, the theme of spiritual education... heroism. Whereas the sage-hood is the culmination of the powers of knowledge, the state of spiritual heroism is a result of the development of the powers of Will. It is often argued that spiritual consciousness encourages withdrawal from action and it leads to world-negation and to the belief in meaninglessness of world and life. It is true that the states of silence and peace point to world-tr ...
... distinction between psychic consciousness and spiritual consciousness, as there is a distinction between spiritual consciousness and supramental consciousness. As the Mother pointed out: The psychic life is immortal life, endless time, limitless space, ever-progressive change, unbroken continuity in the universe of forms. The spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, means to live the infinite... nt between the material advancement on the one hand and inadequate spiritual progression. If, therefore, this crisis has to be met, development of psychic and spiritual consciousness should be fostered. Unfortunately, spiritual consciousness is often conceived as a denial of material life and concerns of collective life. In Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's view, however, there is no fundamental opposition... cannot be effected without effecting high level development of the body, life and mind, and that the perfection of the body, life and mind can be attained only when the powers of psychic and spiritual consciousness are bestowed upon the instruments of the body, life and mind. At an important stage of experimentation, the Mother gave the message that while India has or rather had spiritual knowledge ...
... sign can there be of an inner spiritual consciousness ? Disciple : But I suppose these two things : the inner spiritual consciousness of the Divine and the Aishwarya – the powers of God are not incompatible. Sri Aurobindo : Not at all. But there are lots of people who have powers – whatever their nature – but may not have any spiritual consciousness. For instance, Goué – the doctor... power. The question is what Power is manifested, from where does one bring it ? For instance, Napoleon had a certain power but that does not mean that he had a spiritual consciousness. So there may be power or powers but no spiritual Consciousness. The higher up one g06 one finds that the ordinary man is left far behind him- Men cannot reach him and so his power cannot work upon them. Page 262 ... doctor, has a certain power, and so have some occultists in Europe. But they are far from any spiritual consciousness. Generally the man who has some such power is very ordinary and turned downwards in his ordinary vital movements. ( After a long pause ) It is not essential that the Higher Gonsciousnessi must manifest itself in life, and in action upon large masses of men. It is not merely a question ...
... the spiritual, the spiritual proper, gives in addition the logic of the Infinite. At least this is what distinguishes modern spiritual consciousness from the ancient, that is, Upanishadic spiritual consciousness. The Upanishad gives expression to the spiritual consciousness in its original and pristine purity and perfection, in its essential simplicity. It did not buttress itself with any logic. It... proper to the spiritual consciousness. We can have a Science of the Spirit as well as a Science of Matter. This is the Thought element or what corresponds to it, of which I was speaking, the philosophical factor, that which gives form to the formless or definition to that which is vague, a nearness and familiarity to that which is far and alien. The fullness of the spiritual consciousness means such... altogether an impossibility, in a human language. The Sanskrit language was moulded and fashioned in the hands of the Rishis, that is to say, those who lived and moved and had their being in the spiritual consciousness. The Hebrew or even the Zend does not seem to have reached that peak, that absoluteness of the' spiritual tone which seems inherent in the Indian tongue, although those too breathed and ...
... There are above us, we have seen, successive states, levels or graded powers of being overtopping our normal mind, hidden in our own superconscient parts, higher ranges of Mind, degrees of spiritual consciousness and experience; without them there would be no links, no helpful intervening spaces to make the immense ascension possible. It is indeed from these higher sources that the secret spiritual... thinking mind itself and in the heart which is nearest to its own province: but this change is not often a total perfection even within limits and what it does achieve is rare and difficult. The spiritual consciousness using the mind is employing an inferior means and, even though it brings in a divine light into the mind, a divine purity, passion, ardour into the heart or imposes a spiritual law upon the... refined or mastered, do not receive their spiritual fulfilment or undergo a perfection and transformation. For that it is necessary to bring in a higher dynamic principle which is native to the spiritual consciousness and by which, therefore, it can act in its own law and completer natural light and power and impose them upon the members. Page 969 But even this intervention of a new dynamic principle ...
... something unreal or something inert and without consequence. If there is no such thing as spiritual consciousness, there can be no reality of Yoga, and if there is no Yoga-force, spiritual force. Yoga shakti, then also there can be no effectivity Page 362 in Yoga. A Yoga-consciousness or spiritual consciousness which has no power or force in it, may not be dead or unreal, but it is evidently... evidently something inert and without effect or con- sequence. Equally, a man who sets out to be a Yogi or Guru and has no spiritual consciousness or no power in his spiritual consciousness—a Yoga-force or spiritual force—is making a false claim and is either a charlatan or a self-deluded imbecile; still more is he so if having no spiritual force he claims to have made a path others can follow. If Yoga is... in which man has emerged out of the beast and is still not out of it, light out of darkness, a higher consciousness out of first a dead and then a struggling and troubled unconsciousness. A spiritual consciousness is emerging and it is through this spiritual Page 224 piousness that one can meet the Divine. Religions, full of mental and vital, mixed, troubled and ignorant stuff, can only ...
... beyond into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in itself, but only as an expression of a complex of certain qualities which are, for the time being, for the given individual necessary and useful in an upward journey. For the spiritual consciousness, what is commonly called vice has, too, behind it a complex of certain qualities... (Agni), has to be brought forward as the priest (purohita) of the human journey. And as the psychic being develops, there comes about a powerful opening of the doors of the domains of the spiritual consciousness, which culminate in the supramental, which is called in the Taittiriya Upanishad, vijnanamaya, which alone has been found capable of establishing the true integration of all the powers of... method is that of a gradual and increasing change of consciousness. In other words, spirituality is an exploration of consciousness through progressive change of consciousness. In the spiritual consciousness, and in the knowledge that it delivers, there is the fulfillment of the highest that morality and religion in their deepest core seek and succeed only when they cease to be limited within their ...
... or something unreal or something inert and without consequence. If there is no such thing as spiritual consciousness, there can be no reality of Yoga, and if there is no Yoga force, spiritual force, Yoga Shakti, then also there can be no effectivity in Yoga. A Yoga consciousness or spiritual consciousness which has no power or force in it, may not be dead or unreal but it is evidently something inert... inert and without effect or consequence. Equally a man who sets out to be a Yogi or Guru and has no spiritual consciousness or no power in his spiritual consciousness—a Yoga force or spiritual force—is making a false claim and is either a charlatan or a self-deluded imbecile; still more is he so if having no spiritual force he claims to have made a path others can follow. If Yoga is a reality, if sp... for instance) of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely in whatever "direction" or on whatever object one chooses. This is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. What I was speaking of was a willed use of any subtle force (it may be spiritual or mental or vital) to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves of unseen ...
... is legitimate in so far as it is true, sincere, beautiful and delightful, and even one may say that a spiritual consciousness without any aesthetic or emotional content is not entirely or at any rate not integrally spiritual. In the spiritual life the basis of the act is a spiritual consciousness perennial and renovating, moved to express itself always in new forms or able to renew the truth of a form... divine spark and flame descended here have rejoined themselves to their original fiery Ether. For there is there no longer a spiritual consciousness still imperfect and half lost to itself in the thick sheaths of human mind, life and body, but the full spiritual consciousness in its purity, freedom and intense wideness. There, as it is the eternal Knower that becomes the Knower in us and mover and user... the sacrifice is of the utmost importance; for this inmost being alone can bring with it the full power of the spirit in the act, the soul in the symbol. It alone can assure, even while the spiritual consciousness is incomplete, the perennial freshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol and prevent it from becoming a dead form or a corrupted and corrupting magic; it alone can preserve for the act ...
... must be found in that which exceeds it; it is the supreme Godhead who manifests both containing self and its contained phenomena by the power of his spiritual consciousness, yogamāyā. And it is only through union with him in our spiritual consciousness that we can arrive at our real relations with his being.... Page 164 "These statements are only in appearance inconsistent with... saw that everything had carried a hint or glint of the luminous terrestrial fulfilment he envisaged but also that the full sense of this fulfilment had never been caught because the plane of spiritual consciousness which he called Supermind had not been perfectly entered and explored. When I say "gazing back" I don't mean "mentally contemplating": he intuitively or experientially insighted the past r... faith is the belief in certain historical facts and physical transformations. This is why I find Sri Aurobindo so important. He and the Mother realised that it is not sufficient to change the spiritual consciousness; it is the physical base of consciousness which has to be changed. I have been reading Satprem's Adventure of Consciousness and find it fascinating in this respect. He explains (page 340) ...
... with the inevitable result that the Vision and the original Experience vanish in the process! This almost absolute incompatibility of our normal mentality with the highest ranges of spiritual consciousness is strikingly brought out in the following very interesting account of Sri Ramakrishna's repeated failures to remain physically awake on the summits of realisation, far be it to express what... love for us the Thakur was attempting the impossible!" 4 (Italics ours.) Indeed, mystics are universally agreed on the point that with the progressive deepening and heightening of spiritual consciousness the seeker after supernal knowledge honestly feels the total inaptitude of all verbal communication and thus falls mute and speechless. Sri Ramakrishna himself expresses this indubitable fact... How then, through the miraculous agency of what kind of mind-made speech, can the mystic expect to convey to the analytical dividing mental consciousness the true nature of the unitary spiritual consciousness in which he lives? (C)The Absolute, one of the essential goals of all serious and sincere spiritual pursuit, is in itself indefinable by mental reason, and has to be approached through ...
... between psychic consciousness and spiritual consciousness, as there is a distinction between spiritual consciousness and supramental consciousness. As the Mother pointed out: Page 146 ...the psychic life is immortal life, endless time, limitless space, ever-progressive change, unbroken continuity in the universe of forms. The spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, means to live... t on the one hand and inadequate spiritual progression, on the other. If, therefore, Page 145 this crisis has to be met, development of psychic and spiritual consciousness should be fostered. Unfortunately, spiritual consciousness is often conceived as a denial of material life and concerns of collective life. In Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's view, however, there is no fundamental opposition... cannot be effected without effecting high level development of the body, life and mind, and that the perfection of the body, life and mind can be attained only when the powers of psychic and spiritual consciousness are bestowed upon the instruments of the body, life and mind. At an important stage of experimentation, the Mother gave the message that while India has or rather had spiritual knowledge ...
... ceremonies or social or religious institutions. Thirdly, various states of spiritual consciousness tend to constitute four psychological traits of personality, which are commonly found universally among all who have gone beyond mental consciousness or who stand on the borderlines of the mental and spiritual consciousness. These psychological traits are connected with those powers of the Spirit, which... elements as also the conflict between the Reason and the Unreason are becoming acute, we need to turn to still higher levels of integration and admit still higher principles, — principles of spiritual consciousness, which are supramental in character, — vijnanamaya and anandamaya, — to use again the terms of Taittiriya Upanishad. And this underlines, by implication, the theme of spiritual education... spiritual heroism. Whereas the sagehood is the culmination of the powers of knowledge, the state of spiritual heroism is a result of the development of the powers of Will. It is often argued that spiritual consciousness encourages withdrawal from action and it leads to world-negation and to the belief in meaninglessness of world and life. It is true that the states of silence and peace point to world-tra ...
... rather be discovered or uncovered, it is a Truth that is self-revealed to a spiritual endeavour: for it is there veiled in our deeper and greater self; it is the very stuff of our own spiritual Page 659 consciousness, and it is by awaking to it even in our surface self that we have to possess it. There is an integral self-knowledge that we have to recover and, because the world-self also is our... world-knowledge. A knowledge that can be learned or constructed by the mind exists and has its value, but that is not what is meant when we speak of the Knowledge and the Ignorance. An integral spiritual consciousness carries in it a knowledge of all the terms of being; it links the highest to the lowest through all the mediating terms and achieves an indivisible whole. At the highest summit of things it... it stops short of the absolute Reality which is self-evident to Itself but to mind unknowable. This absolutism corresponds to a truth of thought and to a truth of supreme experience in the spiritual consciousness; but by itself it is not the whole of spiritual thought complete and comprehensive and it does not exhaust the possibilities of the supreme spiritual experience. The absolutist view of reality ...
... evolution kept tied to the moorings of the planes of lesser consciousness which do indeed prepare the soul by experience for the spiritual consciousness but are not themselves that. For perfection can only become truly spiritual when it is founded on the awakened spiritual consciousness and takes on its peculiar essence. We are told by Europeans that the lined and ravaged face of the Greek bust of Homer is... thing to be done, kartavyam karma. But spirituality stands on its own basis and does not depend on these things nor does it even include them so long as they are based on some other than the spiritual consciousness and not transformed on the inner spiritual basis. So also people speak of religious men as spiritual, but one may be a very religious man yet not spiritual. The popular idea confuses great... powerful occultist or do marvels of asceticism and yet be not spiritual at all—for in any true sense of the word, in its proper and native significance it means one who has attained to the spiritual consciousness, the realisation of the inner or higher Self, the contact or union with the Divine or that which is eternal or is striving after and approaching these things. Spiritual perfection can only ...
... purification acting on this physical mind to change it. The bridge you saw was the symbol of transition from the ordinary to the spiritual consciousness; the wide plain was a symbol of the large peace and silence which comes with the Page 370 spiritual consciousness when one rests in the Divine. The perfumes you felt were true perfumes but not of the physical world. This body of flesh and... fire of aspiration and tapasya, burning under the earth, that is to say, in the subconscient. It opens the earth, the physical consciousness to the Divine Light. Moonlight may symbolise the spiritual consciousness and the room your own personal being or individual physical consciousness. With these clues it will be easy for you to understand the significance of your experience. The fire you saw... spiritual emotion or Ananda. Your experience was a very beautiful one—the inner being realises by such experiences that which must be established in the waking state as the foundation of the spiritual consciousness and spiritual life. Psychic Yearning The yearning of the heart may be there but it should not disturb the peace. Page 376 I think it is better to stop it [ the yearning ...
... latest views on the burning problems of the day and there has been no change in my views in 27 years (which would surely be proof of a rather unprogressive mind). How do you get all that? My spiritual consciousness and knowledge at that time was as nothing to what it is now—how would the change leave my view of politics and life unmodified altogether? There has been no such thorough revision; I have left... its place and to its proper action under the control of the higher consciousness or else under the control of the Divine Power. Page 80 Afterwards all gets surcharged with the spiritual consciousness and there is an automatic right perception and right action of the different parts because they are controlled entirely from above and do not falsify or resist or confuse its dictates. 13... general sense. The translation is not meant to be literal but to render the thought in the line in its fullness. Adhyātmacetasā practically amounts to what in English we would describe as a spiritual consciousness. "throw our arms around" [ p. 78 ] It is a figure meaning to comprehend in our consciousness with love and Ananda. "the nature" [ p. 81, lines 29, 31, 33 ] Nature here means ...
... one of your letters to me you wrote: "A Yoga consciousness or spiritual consciousness which has no power or force in it, may not be dead or unreal but it is evidently something inert and without effect or consequence. Equally a man who sets out to be a Yogi or Guru and has no spiritual consciousness or no power in his spiritual consciousness—a Yoga force or spiritual force—is making a false claim and... Divine Force, for there is only one force acting in the world, but it acts according to the nature of the instrument. Yogic Force is different from others because it is a special power of the spiritual consciousness. I continued, "It may not be Sri Aurobindo's Force, but how can I exclude the possibility of a Divine Force behind? Because one is an atheist, it doesn't mean the Divine is undivine against ...
... sudden and sublime revelatory reach of the spiritual consciousness. English promises, therefore, to be the expressive body par excellence of our true soul. What adds to our conviction about this promise is the fact that the strangely suggestive potentialities of English have already been pressed into service of the spiritual consciousness by English writers themselves. Herbert's religious... Immortal Loveliness in its world-wandering - AE's crystalline contact with superhumanly populated twilights within and divinely inhabited dawns above - all these quickenings of the spiritual consciousness, together with the American Whitman's dynamic delight under the touch of a Cosmic Life and the miniature snapshotting of an infinite Mystery by the American Emily Dickinson, are already... helpful to the balanced splendour of divine unity and divine diversity that, together with the ascent of earth to heaven and the descent of heaven to earth, is the complete aim of the spiritual consciousness. When we go back to the Vedas, the early Upanishads and in later times the Bhagavad Gita, we discover a large synthesising movement careful of all aspects and forces of existence ...
... difference does it make? My bringing down of the supramental does not depend on the নিন্দাস্তুতি 108 or মানঅপমান 109 dealt out from there. And is care for these things part of the ordinary spiritual consciousness even? and if I am to be inferior in these matters to a spiritual man, R.M. for instance, how am Ito be not only supramental and superman but supramentalise others? Have you never thought of... Again social consciousness?—you may say. But say it again then, Sir! Of course, social consciousness—according to S.C. it is certainly rude not to go. What it may be from another S.C. (spiritual consciousness) is another matter. September 4, 1935 R's pleurisy is much better. The remaining signs are of no importance, only he must not expose himself to cold, neither smoke much nor take... psychic is the first of two transformations necessary—if you have the psychic transformation it facilitates immensely the other, i.e. the transformation of the ordinary human into the higher spiritual consciousness—otherwise one is likely to have either a slow and dull or exciting but perilous journey. You said yesterday that the Overmind is obliged to respect the freedom of the individual. Do you ...
... not cure. Both instances establish my case. Q.E.D. You said once that it is the spiritual consciousness that my being wants and that this need was becoming very prominent, but not the push yet. It seems now the need also has pushed back? For the moment. But if it is really the spiritual consciousness, how the dickens shall I get it by reading, say, Dickens, Lawrence or Nehru? Probably... Better finish injections first, then oil him. September 18, 1936 Sri Aurobindo, There you are, Sir, with your paradoxical, mysterious brevities! Dickens etc. won't give the spiritual consciousness and it is a waste of time; again, they can be done with nirbhar ! Then why should I do anything wasteful with nirbhar ? If you want to understand my supramental brevities, you must read... carefully. You have absolutely ignored my pregnant "Possibly". I never said that it must be a waste of time—but "possibly" yes or "possibly" not. Reading Dickens merely cannot give you the spiritual consciousness—that is obvious. It would be a miracle if it did. Reading the Oxford Dictionary might be more helpful in that direction. Unless of course a miracle took place; then even Dickens—But otherwise ...
... something ideal." 1 The dark doom to which humanity is hurtling headlong down under the impact of its external opulence and inner penury can be averted only if there dawns in man a greater spiritual consciousness adequate to meet and master the increasing potentialities of existence and harmonise them. "A greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power is needed to weld all into a greater unity of... else matters". 4 Now, the only and true function of a religion is, or should be, to prepare man's mind and life up to the point - and that in as catholic a manner as possible - where spiritual consciousness can directly take them up and illumine and govern their movements with the all-reconciling light of the spirit. But forgetting this central role and its essentially spiritual core, the religious... in the mind, life and body. (iii)This absolute Reality is in its nature indefinable; it is beyond the grasp of the ineffectual probe of separative mental consciousness; but there is a spiritual consciousness, a knowledge by identity, - attainable by a certain psycho-spiritual discipline otherwise called Yoga, - that can seize this Reality in its fundamental aspects and its manifold powers and forms ...
... into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in itself, but only as an expression of a complex of certain qualities, which are, for the time being, for the given individual, necessary and useful in an upward journey. For the spiritual consciousness, what is commonly called vice has, too, behind it a complex of certain... method is that of a gradual and increasing change of consciousness. In other words, spirituality is an exploration of consciousness through a progressive change of consciousness. In spiritual consciousness and the knowledge that it delivers, there is the fulfillment of the highest that morality and religion in their deepest core seek and succeed only when they cease to be limited within their... perfect Page 81 harmonisation of all the aspects of works; and through this striving it realises also the unity of works with the highest Knowledge and the deepest Love. For spiritual consciousness, that which is commonly called agnosticism, scepticism, atheism, positivism or free thinking has behind it a concern and a demand for a direct knowledge, which, when rightly understood, ...
... beyond into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in itself, but only as an expression of a complex of certain qualities, which are, for the time being, for the given individual, necessary and useful in an upward journey. For the spiritual consciousness, what is commonly called vice has, too, behind it a complex of certain qualities... that of a gradual and increasing change of consciousness. In other words, spirituality is an exploration of consciousness through a progressive change of consciousness. In spiritual consciousness, and in the knowledge that it delivers, there is the fulfilment of the highest that morality and religion in their deepest core seek and succeed only when they cease to be limited within... ss for the perfect harmonisation of all the aspects of works; and through this striving it realises also the unity of works with the highest Knowledge and the deepest Love. For spiritual consciousness, that which is commonly called agnosticism, scepticism, atheism, positivism or free thinking has behind it a concern and a demand for a direct knowledge, which, when rightly understood, ...
... that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge. For all must be done as a sacrifice, all activities must have the One Divine for their object and the heart... life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from that high motive. The Yogin's distinction from other men is this that he lives in a higher and vaster spiritual consciousness; all his work of knowledge or creation must then spring from there: it must not be made in the mind,—for it is a greater truth and vision than mental man's that he has to express or rather... in the holding together and right ordering or leading of this world of God's workings. The Gita teaches that the man of knowledge shall by his way of life give to those who have not yet the spiritual consciousness, the love and habit of all works and not only of actions recognised as pious, religious or ascetic in their character; he should not draw men away from the world-action by his example. For ...
... especially if it is the bhakti way, one gets easily swallowed up in the rapids (did not Chaitanya at last disappear in the waters ?) and goes no farther. The first thing is to break into the spiritual consciousness, any part of it, anyhow and any- where, afterwards one can explore the country to which exploration there can hardly be a limit; one is always going higher and higher, getting wider and... realisations in their inner consciousness perfect in their nature ? It does not look like it to me. I am unable to believe in absolute generalisations in this field, because the development of spiritual consciousness is an exceedingly vast and complex affair in which all sorts of things can happen and one might almost say that for each man it is different according to his nature and that the one thing that... be given admission to the spiritual Parnassus 36 —but not all poetry and all novels. All depends on the consciousness from which the thing is done. If it is done from the psychic or the spiritual consciousness and bears the stamp of its source, that is sufficient. Of course there are certain things that cannot be done from there, but neither poetry nor fiction as in that case. They can be lifted ...
... thinks, senses the Divine. For to the spiritual consciousness all manifest existence appears as a world of spirit and not a world of matter, not a world of life, not a world even of mind; these other things are to its view only God-thought, God-force, God-form. That is what the Gita means by living and acting in Vasudeva, mayi vartate . The spiritual consciousness is aware of the Godhead with that close... variation, admitting relations, admitting greater and lesser degrees of the action of the one power of existence. For Nature is God's power of various self-becoming, ātma-vibhūti . But this spiritual consciousness of world-existence will not see Nature in the world as the normal mind of man sees it in the ignorance or only as it is in the effects of the ignorance. All in this Nature that is of the ignorance... and the Gunas is the first real step towards divine perfection. By that transcendence the Jiva finds his own divine nature and his true existence. The liberated eye of knowledge in the spiritual consciousness does not in its outlook on the world see this struggling lower Nature alone. If we perceive only the apparent outward fact of our nature and others' nature, we are looking with the eye of the ...
... Realisations Letters on Yoga - III Chapter II Experiences on the Higher Planes The Higher or Spiritual Consciousness It [ the consciousness above the head ] is what we call the higher or spiritual consciousness—it contains or supports all the higher planes, the higher worlds. When one begins to feel this always above, it is a great step forward in the... go up there and from there see, discern and control all that is in the mind, vital and body. It is the meeting-place of the ascending and descending forces, as you see. Breaking into the Spiritual Consciousness Of course, Krishnaprem's view about the canalisation of Niagara is my standpoint also. 1 But for the human mind it is difficult to get across the border between mind and spirit without... especially if it is the bhakta way, one gets easily swallowed up in the rapids (did not Chaitanya at last disappear in the waters?) and goes no farther. The first thing is to break into the spiritual consciousness, any part of it, anyhow and anywhere, afterwards one can explore the country, to which exploration there can hardly be a limit, one is always going higher and higher, getting wider and wider; ...
... of the spiritual consciousness into a true and fit and perfectly responsive instrument of the Spirit. This new relation of the spirit and the body assumes—and makes possible—a free acceptance of the whole of material Nature in place of a rejection; the drawing back from her, the refusal of all identification or acceptance, which is the first normal necessity of the spiritual consciousness for its... life. All its movements would be a formulation of the truth of the spirit, but also of the joy of Page 1010 the spirit,—an affirmation of spiritual existence, an affirmation of spiritual consciousness, an affirmation of spiritual delight of being. But this would not be what self-affirmation tends to be in us in spite of the underlying unity, something ego-centric, separative, opposed or... it could be sufficient in itself with no need of anything to formulate or embody it: but the play of illumined vision, the play of a radiant thought, the play of all other movements of the spiritual consciousness would not be absent; there would be a free instrumentation of them for their own brilliant functioning, for a divine richness and diversity, for a manifold delight of self-manifestation, for ...
... attention away from them and refuse to give them any importance. 16 April 1935 Why doesn't the spiritual consciousness remain all the time? Because the ordinary consciousness drives it away. 19 April 1935 What must one do so that nothing drives away the spiritual consciousness? Remember it always and in all circumstances. 20 April 1935 Do you think that a pure love... love between human beings is possible? Page 91 I do not have much faith in pure love between human beings. 21 April 1935 What does "spiritual consciousness" mean? Generally speaking, it is the consciousness that is turned towards the Divine. 22 April 1935 I don't understand why men want help from other imperfect beings. They understand them better, because they... people are lying, even when they lie very well and imagine that they can deceive me. 15 July 1936 I aspire for Your Grace to come and lift me from the ordinary consciousness to the spiritual consciousness. For the Grace to help you, you must fulfil the conditions, and the very first condition is to reject all doubt, however slight. I repeat again: you would do well to read once more, carefully ...
... the Arya should be made real to you in conscious experience; and at the same time you should aspire that your mind may open to the calm wideness, strength, peace, life and ananda of the spiritual consciousness. 20 May 1927 To Date: 20.5.27 Chandulal, The first conditions of this Yoga are: (1) A complete sincerity and surrender in the being. The divine life and the transformation... could not be seen. I want to know what it is. Sometimes flames of sacred fire are seen in front. Yours, Vishnu Sri Aurobindo's reply : It is a symbol of the growth of the spiritual consciousness and its manifestations. The blue colour gives the indication. The flames are the flames of Agni, the inner aspiration towards the Divine. 22 November 1930 22nd November, 1930 ... (however brilliant in that plane itself) and therefore cannot live when brought into contact with the truth centre. Their death is no loss; it only leaves unstained the calm and intensity of the spiritual consciousness indicated by the blue colour. All visions have a significance of one kind or another. This power of vision is very important for the Yoga and should not be neglected although it is not the ...
... other language what had already been written nearly three thousand years ago? The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings, pp. 262-63 (b) Normal (Ordinary) and Higher (Spiritual) Consciousness ...briefly... there are two states of consciousness in either of which one can live. One is a higher consciousness which stands above the play of life and governs it; this is variously... and joy and anxiety and desire or to everything else that makes up the ordinary stuff of life. Mental quiet and happiness they can get, but it can never be permanent or secure. But the spiritual consciousness is all light, peace, power, bliss. If one can live entirely in it, there is no question; these things become naturally and securely his. But even if he can live partly in it or keep himself... constantly open to it, he receives enough of this spiritual light and peace and strength and happiness to carry him securely through all the shocks of life. What one gains by opening to this spiritual consciousness, depends on what one seeks from it; if it Page 209 is peace, one gets peace; if it is light or knowledge, one lives in a great light and receives a knowledge deeper and truer ...
... beyond into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in itself, but only as an expression of a complex of certain qualities, which are, for the time being, for the given individual, necessary and useful in an upward journey. For the spiritual consciousness, what is commonly called vice has, too, behind it a complex of certain qualities... its method is that of a gradual and increasing change of consciousness. In other words, spirituality is an exploration of consciousness through progressive change of consciousness. h.In spiritual consciousness, and in the knowledge that it delivers, there is the fulfillment of the highest that morality and religion in the their deepest core seek and succeed only when they cease to be limited within... sciousness for the perfect harmonisation of all the aspects of works; and through this striving it realises also the unity of works with the highest knowledge and the deepest Love. J. For spiritual consciousness, that which is commonly called agnosticism, scepticism, atheism, positivism or free thinking has behind it a concern and a demand for a direct knowledge, which, when rightly understood, recognised ...
... The acquisition of the highest spiritual consciousness, at least statically if not dynamically, is the goal of all spiritual endeavour. But, as we have noted before, the spiritual reaches of consciousness lie far behind and above our normal waking mentality. Now Page 77 the question is: is it possible to possess the spiritual consciousness while still remaining embedded in... watched and felt to be something intrinsically foreign and disparate. This is the solution of the 'Witness Consciousness'. (ii)To be satisfied with the indirect glories of the spiritual consciousness as reflected and refracted in the bosom of our normal mentality. This is what has been termed 'spiritual mental realisation'. (iii)To still and withdraw from the mental consciousness... existence embodying Sachchidananda in his fully manifested glories. But since the yogic trance or Samadhi is so often held up not only as a supreme means of access to the higher possible spiritual consciousness but "as the very condition and status of that highest consciousness itself, in which alone it can be completely possessed and enjoyed while we are in the body," 1 we must digress here for ...
... metaphysics or philosophy with a spiritual attitude the spiritual consciousness must be there. SRI AUROBINDO ( laughing ): Must it? Attitude is not enough. There must be an inner change too. Of course if one wrote from his personal experience and vision it would be different. But remaining withdrawn need not lift one into the spiritual consciousness: one may very well be in the mental consciousness.... contacts of the world but it doesn't mean that all his desires and hankerings have ceased. If you simply withdraw without throwing the seeds of attachment and don't replace the ordinary by the spiritual consciousness, the problem remains unsolved. If you permit the seeds to remain, they may keep quiescent for a time but as soon as circumstances present themselves they may come up. Withdrawal may lead to... ordinary consciousness by the spiritual. SRI AUROBINDO: What I said was that withdrawal is not enough. The seeds of the ordinary life have also to be thrown away and one has to get the spiritual consciousness; one has to get to the true spiritual dynamism which is the source of right action. EVENING SATYENDRA: There is a difference between the reflection of peace and the descent of peace, ...
... the fate of India. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all... Matter, there are other forces and powers that can act and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in the spiritual consciousness, though all do not care to possess or, possessing, to use it, and this power is greater than any other and more effective. It was this force which, as soon as he had attained to it, he... reconciliation I am seeking. ² 14-1-1932 In the beginning, before I discovered the secret of the Supermind, I myself tried to seek the reconciliation through an association of the spiritual consciousness with the vital, but my experience and all experience show that this leads to nothing definite and final, – it ends where it began, midway between the two poles of human nature. An association ...
... between a luminous Truth-consciousness not expressed or not yet expressed here and the Mind's ignorance. But nothing is more difficult than to bring home the greatness and uplifting power of the spiritual consciousness to the natural man forming the vast majority of the race; for his mind and senses are turned outward towards the external calls of life and its objects and never inwards to the Truth which... initiates but kept back from ordinary men broke their barriers, swept through the higher mind of the nation and fertilised the soil of Indian culture for a constant and ever increasing growth of spiritual consciousness and spiritual experience. This turn was not as yet universal; it was chiefly men of the higher classes, Kshatriyas and Brahmins trained in the Vedic system of education, no longer content with... India's vast religious cycle. It is the secret of the most powerful forms of Vaishnavism and Tantra and Yoga. The labour of ascent from our half-animal human nature into the fresh purity of the spiritual consciousness needed to be followed and supplemented by a descent of the light and force of the spirit into man's members and the attempt to transform human into divine nature. But it could not find its ...
... first necessity but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in man, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. The Ashram as it is now is not that ideal, for that all its members would have to live in a spiritual consciousness and not in the ordinary egoistic mind and mainly rajasic vital nature. But all the same the Ashram is a first... fact the Consciousness-Force of the Divine and its aspect of consciousness, secret in Matter, begins to emerge in Life, finds something more of itself in Mind and finds its true self in a Spiritual Consciousness and finally a Supramental Consciousness through which we become aware of the Reality, enter into it and unite ourselves with it. This is what we call evolution which is an evolution of ...
... radical transformation, leaving the vital as it is. In the beginning, before I discovered the secret of the supermind, I myself tried to seek the reconciliation through an association of the spiritual consciousness with the vital, but my experience and all experience show that this leads to nothing definite and final,—it ends where it began, midway between the two poles of human nature. An association... notions, not only abhim ā na, but egoistic unspiritual demand, hostile criticism, revolt, anger and other still more undesirable vital reactions (usually supposed to be foreign to the spiritual consciousness) have been put forward by some, admitted by many in practice, as a part of the Yoga! I do not see how such a method can lead to any good results in the spiritual life. But of this ____... judge, interpret or fathom by the standard of its fallible reason and limited mental half-knowledge? The simple fact is there that spirit and mind are not the same thing and that it is the spiritual consciousness into which the yogin has to enter (in all this I am not in the least speaking of the supermind) if he wants to be in permanent contact or union with the Divine. It is not then a freak of the ...
... were a secret favour to the people concerned and never .- as we might misconstrue them - an effusion of ordinary vindic-tiveness. To see them otherwise is to be dense to the way of a supreme spiritual consciousness. The Divine Light acts in two manners, (It lays bare to us our own depth, "the imprisoned Splendour", as Browning names it. It also reveals the darkness covering and constricting that beauty... as we haven't found a way to rise above the plane on which they have their rationale. In other words, we may have to wait for freedom from them until we can ascend to the highest level of spiritual consciousness. I don't believe that there is no possibility of freedom. An absolute impossibility would not fit within Sri Aurobindo's scheme. That is perhaps why he has nowhere a word on the alleged karma... out that Sri Aurobindo does have some words on utkata karma on p. 468 of Vol. 22 of the Centenary Edition. While admitting the difficult problem, he says: "Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions ...
... 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 mind—the golden is that of the divine Truth. Yellow is the colour of the light of the thinking... Divine grace and compassion. "Violet" is the colour of benevolence or compassion, but also more vividly of the Divine Grace—represented in the vision as flowing from the heights of the spiritual consciousness down on the earth. The golden cup is I suppose the Truth consciousness. Violet is indeed the colour or light of Divine Compassion, so also of Krishna's grace. Page 128 Golden... Red Light Red is the colour of the physical,—touched by the higher Light it becomes golden red. It seems to be an opening of various powers and the peace, light and wideness of the spiritual consciousness. The red Purusha may be the power of the true physical—red being the colour of the physical. It depends on the nature of the red. Red (when it does not mean the light of the physical ...
... III Chapter VIII The Animal World Cow The cow in the occult symbolism indicates Light or the consciousness—white indicates the purified or spiritual consciousness—the white Light. It is quite clear; it is the Vedic image. In the Veda the Cow is the Divine Light—the white Cow is the pure Consciousness in which there is the Light. The milk is the... physical will be changed into Power and Force of Progress Lion The Lion is the vital force. The lion means vital force, strength, courage—here full of the light, illumined by the spiritual consciousness. 1 The lion indicates force and courage, strength and power. The lower vital is not lionlike. Tiger It all depends on the attitude of the tiger. If fierce and hostile, it may... is the bird of victory. The golden Hansa is the soul living in the Truth, the golden peacock is the victory of the Truth. Duck The duck is the symbol of the soul—silvery colour = the spiritual consciousness—golden wings = the power of the Divine Truth. The duck is usually a symbol of the soul or inner being; perhaps it was the four beings—mental, psychic, vital and physical—that you saw ...
... value in the spiritual life—they rather interfere with the progress; for the mind and vital also should be wholly turned towards the Divine. Moreover, the purpose of sadhana is to enter into a spiritual consciousness and base everything on a new spiritual basis which can only be done when one has entered into complete unity with the Divine. Meanwhile one has to have a calm goodwill for all, but relations... discouraged; wait upon the purifying movement of Shiva. There is no taboo in the Yoga on any feeling that is true and pure, but all the feelings undergo the stress of a pressure from the spiritual consciousness and whatever there is that is mixed, impure, egoistic or the feeling itself if it is fundamentally self-regarding, either disappears or, if it remains, becomes an obstacle to the progress.... all who follow the same spiritual aim, but personal attachment is supposed to be overcome, as all attachments of the vital must be. Personal relations can exist if they are founded on the spiritual consciousness or help towards it, but nothing that holds one back or turns one away from Page 303 the Divine. I have not opposed any sadhak having a friendly relation with another. But if it ...
... in time—the important thing is that you are on the right way and advancing more quickly than you realise. Your experiences seem to be sound. The first is that of the higher (Yogic or spiritual) consciousness coming down into the body from above the head. It is felt often like a current flowing through the head into the whole body and the first thing it brings is a descent of peace. One result... physical consciousness, you feel the Peace enveloping you. Descent and Psychic Experiences The infinite calm you felt coming down was the calm of the Divine Consciousness—the higher or spiritual consciousness above the head, which descends as the higher parts of the being open to it. The experience of faith, love or aspiration come from the psychic being. It is when the psychic being is in front... in its wide universality. The experience once had repeated itself but always with the same momentariness. It is the permanence of this experience that is in this Yoga the foundation of the spiritual consciousness and the spiritual transformation—as distinguished from the psychic which proceeds from the inner heart. They are elementary experiences in the practice of Yoga and there is not much ...
... nature which founds itself on the body consciousness and feels nothing sure or solid except the body. In the new consciousness on the contrary what will be felt as sure and solid is the wide spiritual consciousness not limited by the body, in which the body is only a small circumstance hardly felt, an instrument only. The losing all consciousness must also be due to the consciousness going entirely inside... usually in that pervading way when there has been sufficient purification to make it possible. On the other side, it is itself the beginning of the laying of the foundations of the higher spiritual consciousness. You speak of a struggle ( yuddha ) beginning when the Force comes down, but such a result is not inevitable—it is not necessary that the progress should be through a struggle. That... doing external things with the physical mind and body—it shows that the physical consciousness is fast opening. What you feel is indeed the Grace coming down and bringing the higher divine or spiritual consciousness with it with all that is there. All that (peace, power, Ananda) will develop afterwards more clearly. It [ the descent of the higher consciousness into the most physical ] brings light ...
... Draft of a Letter to Maharani Chimnabai II To H.H the Maharani of Baroda It is true that I have by the practice of Yoga attained to the higher spiritual consciousness which comes by Yoga, and this carries with it a certain power. Especially there is the power to communicate to those who are ready or to help them towards that spiritual state which, in its... grief and joy and anxiety and desire or to everything else that makes up the ordinary stuff of life. Mental quiet and happiness they can get, but it can never be permanent or secure. But the spiritual consciousness is all light, peace, power and bliss. If one can live entirely in it, there is no question; these things become naturally and securely his. But even if he can live partly in it or keep himself... constantly open to it, he receives enough of this spiritual light and peace and strength and happiness to carry him securely through all the shocks of life. What one gains by opening to this spiritual consciousness, depends on what one seeks from it; if it is peace, Page 440 one gets peace; if it is light or knowledge, one lives in a great light and receives a knowledge deeper and truer than ...
... among the Vaishnavas, these difficulties invariably arise. The difficulty lies in the enormous place given to sex in the lower Nature. But there is no reason if one fixes oneself firmly in the spiritual consciousness why one should not speak and act between men and women without the least reference to sex. 2 December 1933 Can we not justify Buddha, Ramakrishna and others who advocated isolation from... be called true conquest. The idea you speak of is the Tantric idea and very dangerous. It must be so in the end, but it is difficult to do that until one is strong enough in the settled spiritual consciousness. The avoidance is sometimes the only way until the higher consciousness is settled in the vital and vital-physical. 22 October 1934 Someone said that if a yogi has his Shakti and if... motives or on the ordinary plane of human consciousness, you ought not to leave everything behind you for what may after all be only a mental attraction towards spiritual ideals and Yoga. The spiritual consciousness and spiritual life are exceedingly difficult to attain; it needs a deep and strong call and the turning of all the energies towards the one object to arrive at any kind of full success (siddhi) ...
... descent of the greater supramental consciousness into the cells of the body." 1 Yes, it is the. 'supramental consciousness' alone — understood not in the sense of any and every spiritual consciousness above the plane of Mind but in the specific sense in which Sri Aurobindo uses it — that possesses the Knowledge and Power to effectuate the transformation of our physical being. It is the... that can progressively divinise our inner existence and finally proceed to the divinisation of our body itself as a crowning achievement of the evolutionary elaboration of life. No other spiritual consciousness or power short of this Supermind, the divine Gnosis and the Truth-Consciousness (ṛta-cit) of Sachchidananda, possesses this power of integral transformation. And that is why a subjective... essential precondition for any attempt at physical transformation to be at all made feasible, is not as a general rule sufficient by itself. But why is it so ? Why have the states of spiritual consciousness attained so far in different climes and times failed to mould the physical existence in the image of divinity ? What are the basic difficulties that render this task of physical transformation ...
... been done and everybody is supramental. They don't make the distinction between action from a spiritual consciousness which is above mind but acts through human instruments, and the supramental action from the Truth-Consciousness. DR. MANILAL: There may be sadhaks here who act from the spiritual consciousness. SRI AUROBINDO: Who? Nirod? (Laughter) DR. MANILAL: Yes, Nirod and Anilbaran, etc.... transformation. Puta, being purified, you attain to My nature—the Divine nature—but such an attainment is not transformation. PURANI: When one is acting from the Divine nature, the Divine spiritual consciousness is the background. Is it not the transformed nature? SRI AUROBINDO: What is the Divine nature? Transformation does not mean the change of ordinary nature into it. At least that is not the ...
... descent of the greater supramental consciousness into the cells of the body." 5 (italic ours.) Yes, it is the 'supramental consciousness' - understood not in the sense of any and every spiritual consciousness above the plane of Mind but in the specific sense in which Sri Aurobindo uses it -that alone possesses the Knowledge and Power to effectuate the transformation of our physical being. It... that can progressively divinise our inner existence and finally proceed to the divinisation of our body itself as the summit achievement of the evolutionary elaboration of life. No other spiritual consciousness or power short of this Supermind, this divine Gnosis and the Truth-Consciousness ( ṛ ta-cii) of Sachchidananda possesses this power of integral transformation. And that is why a subjective... essential precondition for any attempt at physical transformation to be at all made feasible, cannot be as a general rule sufficient by itself. But why is it so? Why have the states of spiritual consciousness attained so far by men of spirit in different climes and times failed to mould the physical existence in the image of divinity? What are the basic difficulties that render this task of physical ...
... clay and night is obviously the upward luminous movement of the awakened spiritual consciousness covering the intermediate worlds (vital, mental, psychic) in its passage to the supreme Ananda (unknown ecstasy transparence wrought, the transparence being that well known to mystic experience of the pure spiritual consciousness and existence). In the light of the main idea the last four stanzas should... Doraiswamy or feel embarrassed when things are said against X? Natural, but mundane. If the praise and blame of ignorant people is to be our standard, then we may say good-bye to the spiritual consciousness. If the Mother and I had cared for praise or blame, we would have been crushed long ago. It is only recently that the Asram has got "prestige"—before it was the target for an almost universal ...
... ignorance gradually become consciousness and knowledge. Finally, in man there awakens the spiritual urge under the blows of suffering, and it is in the transformation of suffering that the spiritual consciousness finds its growth. Not merely to escape from suffering but to transform it is the real problem and the greater achievement. What the poet calls "an escape from suffering in the midst of suffering"... into delight. Death too ceases to be, it too finds its death; what remains is only immortality, an immortal life. Chardin has been speaking of the gradual unfolding and realisation of a spiritual consciousness. It is a constant one-pointed upward movement, the being and consciousness of earth gradually moving higher and higher as a collective entity through a new creation that is growing more and... downpour of rain. To establish here on this earth what has risen to the heights and exists there, is the supreme and integral achievement. The spiritualised body of man will not be simply a spiritual consciousness. It will be all-conscious no doubt, and yet its substance will still be matter. To prepare this new earth-matter will be the novel alchemy of the new age. Page 292 ...
... the world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his yoga is not only to realize the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world-activity into the scope of this Spiritual Consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that... body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic Power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness, – though all do not care to possess, or possessing, to use it, and this Power is greater than any other and more effective. It was this force which Sri Aurobindo used at first only in a ...
... it is, – spiritual, psychic or Supramental? Sri Aurobindo : It does not speak of transformation; it speaks of the necessity of action from a spiritual consciousness – according to it all action must proceed from a certain Spiritual consciousness. As the result of that action some change may come about in the nature which might amount to what may be called transformation. But in the Gita the... The kind of spiritism gives one the Knowledge of the future; and that attracts men. Sri Aurobindo : It is not necessary to know the future. It is better that I should have the spiritual consciousness than know the future. Disciple : Could one apply the method of science to this field ? Sri Aurobindo : The scientific method is fruitless as applied to these occult subjects ...
... the world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his yoga is not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the spirit and ____________________ 7 The Life Divine, P. 817 Page 9 give it a spiritual... in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic Power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in the spiritual consciousness, though all do not care to possess or, possessing, to use it, and this Power is greater than any other and more effective. It was this force which Sri Aurobindo used at first only in a limited ...
... must be found in that which exceeds it; it is the supreme Godhead who manifests both containing self and its contained phenomena by the power of his spiritual consciousness, yogamāyā . And it is only through union with him in our spiritual consciousness that we can arrive at our real relations with his being. Metaphysically stated, this is the intention of these verses of the Gita: but they rest... rest founded not upon any intellectual speculation, but on spiritual experience; they synthetise because they arise globally from certain truths of spiritual consciousness. When we attempt to put ourselves into conscious relations with whatever supreme or universal Being there exists concealed or manifest in the world, we arrive at a very various experience and one or other variant term of this experience ...
... no use in doing Yoga, if one lives just as others in the same way and with the same motives. The object of the Asram life is to prepare Page 591 a new way of living based on a spiritual consciousness—it is the preparation of a new foundation of life in which all works have to be done not for the self but for the Divine. 31 December 1934 Humanitarian work of this kind is outside the... the sole spiritual work of the Asram itself. To do otherwise would be to disperse energy on the ordinary levels instead of concentrating it on the building up of a personal and collective spiritual consciousness and life. 27 October 1938 It is not absolutely necessary to abandon the ordinary life in order to seek after the Light or to practise Yoga. This is usually done by those who want to make... institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit. There is no general rule as to the stage at which one may leave the ordinary life and enter here; in each case it depends on the personal need and impulsion ...
... in the fate of India. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was... Matter, there are other forces and powers that can act and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in the spiritual consciousness, though all do not care to possess or, possessing, to use it, and this power is greater than any other and more effective. It was this force which, as soon as he had attained to it, he used ...
... is the Spirit, the spiritual consciousness and the divine Presence which give to life all its value, that without this spiritual consciousness and divine Presence life has no value. The same holds true for the individual, whatever his material capacities and the material conditions in which he lives, his only worth is that of the divine Presence and the spiritual consciousness in him. And so from ...
... Spirit. As for the question about the ethical life and the need to realise God, it depends on what is meant by fulfilment of the Page 419 objects of life. If an entry into the spiritual consciousness is part of it, then mere morality will not give it to you. Politics as such has nothing to do with the spiritual life. If the spiritual man does anything for his country, it is in order... the deepest religious spirit, prepare the mind and heart to some extent but no more. But if worship is done as part of meditation or with a true aspiration to the spiritual reality and the spiritual consciousness and with the yearning for contact and union with the Divine, then it can be spiritually effective. If you have a sincere aspiration to the spiritual change in your heart and soul, then you... basis, it must be founded on a spiritual basis. This does not mean that the spiritual man must be immoral—as if there were no other law of conduct than the moral. The law of action of the spiritual consciousness is higher, not lower than the moral—it is founded on union with Page 422 the Divine and living in the Divine Consciousness and its action is founded on obedience to the Divine Will ...
... 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 a sign of an opening of the consciousness; it is mentioned in the Upanishads as one of such significant sounds and is well known to Yogis. (1)... ordinarily there. (2) Chest and head rising higher are sensations of the subtle body—it means that the mind and heart consciousness (thinking mental and emotional) are rising to meet the spiritual consciousness plane above the head. (3) The sound is a sign of the opening of the consciousness and of the working of the inner Force. Such subtle sounds are very frequently heard by those who practise... then by the physical consciousness or the sense of the body—the body becomes only an instrument, a small part of the consciousness which has to be perfected. One enters into a larger free spiritual consciousness in place of the present bound and limited physical consciousness. If this lifting up above the body can be repeated always until it can be maintained, it will be a great landmark in your progress ...
... obstacle to the spiritual perfection if there is attachment to it, although it is much nearer to the spiritual than a gross untransformed bodily appetite; in fact in order to become part of the spiritual consciousness the intellectual and aesthetic delight has also to change and become something higher. But all things that have a rasa cannot be kept. There is a rasa in hurting and killing others, the sadistic... Vaishnavas, these difficulties [ of sex ] invariably arise. The difficulty lies in the enormous place given to sex in the lower Nature. But there is no reason if one fixes oneself firmly in the spiritual consciousness why one should not speak and act between men and women without the least reference to sex. You can have right relations with women only when you can forget that they are women and meet... diversion to other powers, because the controlled sex-power becomes a Page 542 force for the life-energies, the powers of the mind and the more and more potent workings of the spiritual consciousness. Why impose one rule of Brahmacharya to an advanced age on all men or the age of 25 on all women? Everybody is not intended to be a Brahmachari. Men and women belong to every stage of ...
... to itself, as all absolutes are self-evident, but our mental affirmatives and negatives, whether taken separatively or together, cannot limit or define it. But at the same time there is a spiritual consciousness, a spiritual knowledge, a knowledge by identity which can seize the Reality in its fundamental aspects and its manifested powers and figures. All that is comes within this description and,... on this basis that the lower consciousness of mind, life and body cannot arrive at its full meaning until it is taken up, restated, transformed by the light and power and joy of the higher spiritual consciousness, while the higher too does not stand in its full right relation to the lower by mere rejection, but by this assumption and domination, this taking up of its unfulfilled values, this restatement... cannot grow into their fullness except by the opening up of the larger and greater consciousness to which mind only approaches. Such a larger and greater consciousness is the spiritual, for the spiritual consciousness is not only higher than the rest but more embracing. Universal as well as transcendent, it can take up mind and life into its light and give them the true and utmost realisation of all for ...
... the sudden and sublime revelatory reach of the spiritual consciousness. English promises, therefore, to be the expressive body par excellence of our true soul. What adds to our conviction about this promise is the fact that the strangely suggestive potentialities of English have already been pressed into service of the spiritual consciousness by English writers themselves. Herbert's religious... in its world-wandering -AE's crystalline contact with superhumanly populated twilights within and divinely inhabited dawns above - all these quickenings Page 52 of the spiritual consciousness are already present in English and have turned it to what may be called Indian uses. Doubtless, the uses are still somewhat elementary in comparison to what the Indian genius has achieved in ...
... think of the consciousness of the individual. But Being or Consciousness — two aspects of the One Reality — is all-embracing and includes the universe as well as the individual. Seen from a spiritual consciousness "both individual and universe are simultaneous and interrelated expressions of the same transcendent Being". 29 "Universe is a diffusion of the Divine All in infinite Space and Time, the... There are above us... successive states, levels or graded powers of being overtopping our normal mind, hidden in our own superconscient parts, higher ranges of Mind, degrees of spiritual consciousness and experience.... 41 Page 351 ...from the point of view of the ascent of consciousness from our mind upwards through a rising series of dynamic powers by which it... Higher Mind Higher mind is the first and lowest of the superconscient planes above the level of the ordinary mind. I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual consciousness where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although ...
... whatever has been achieved so far in the course of nature's evolution of the spiritual man in the human mental being cannot be regarded as the true evolution of consciousness; the evolution of spiritual consciousness may even be stigmatized as a sublimated crudity of ignorance deviating from the true human evolution. It may be contended that the right direction of human evolution should be solely an evolution... mysticism. It may even be argued that asceticism or other-worldly tendency can be looked upon, in the context of evolutionary experiments of Nature, as an experiment to examine how far the spiritual consciousness can transcend the world; and it can even be affirmed that the ascetic has succeeded in proving that he can transcend the limitations of the body-life-mind complex and can gain the capacity... mind can provide. As Sri Aurobindo points out, the spiritual evolution of Nature is still in process and incomplete; its main preoccupation has been to affirm and develop a basis of spiritual consciousness and knowledge and to create more and more a foundation or formation for the vision of that which is eternal in the truth of the spirit. Sri Aurobindo, therefore, points out: "It is only ...
... with the outer world. But we must remember that this is only one specialised form of a successful meditation. As we are sadhakas of the Integral Yoga and seek the establishment of spiritual consciousness even in the waking state, and since we aim at the divine transformation even of our external nature, the connotations of the terms 'meditation', contemplation' and 'Samadhi' or trance should... first achieving the divine consciousness? For, it is consciousness that determines the nature and quality of the life lived. Therefore, our first task must be to acquire a truly advanced spiritual consciousness. Then and then only can we hope to translate that consciousness into the activities of the obiter life. Otherwise, it will be like putting the cart before the horse, which will be not only... only absurd but wholly bereft of any fruitful result. It is because of this obvious folly shown by many sadhakas in pretending to lead a spiritual life backed only by a non-spiritual 'consciousness that the Mother once scolded the inmates of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in these words: "Many people who are here forget one thing. They want to begin by the end. They think that-they are ready ...
... or everything below the Supermind influenced more or less by the Ignorance? I gather that the planes from the Higher Mind to the Over-mind are also of the spiritual consciousness. The planes below are of the spiritual consciousness, but when there is a dynamic action from them, it is always a mixed action, not an action of pure knowledge but of knowledge subduing itself to the rule of... is also possible a higher manifestation in the Knowledge and not in the Ignorance." I don't understand how the soul can be in Ignorance after it has reached the spiritual state. Is not the spiritual consciousness and all beyond it All Knowledge? It is only the supramental that is All Knowledge. All below that from Overmind to Matter is Ignorance — an Ignorance growing at each level nearer ...
... There is no reason why the void should be a dull or unhappy condition. It is usually the habit of the mind and vital to associate happiness or interest only with activity, but the spiritual consciousness has no such limitations. If it is real emptiness, one can last in it for years together, - it is because the vital is restless and full of desires (not empty) that it is like... When there, I feel myself made up more of solid peace, silence, force, than of bones, flesh or skin. You are there the Self or Purusha, spiritual in consciousness and the spiritual consciousness is made of peace, force, silence and in its greater intensities of light and ananda also. Above the head I see a plane of infinite and eternal Peace. The Mother is the Queen... the fire is in the human heart, it is not confined to my being. It is experienced as a vast and limitless fire stretching out everywhere. It is so that all that belongs to the spiritual consciousness is Page 224 experienced. One's own self and consciousness is felt like that, something vast and limitless and stretched out everywhere, - so too the force and everything ...
... Page 125 the inescapable decision that he must change and shall change; and the change is to be for or towards the birth of a spiritual consciousness in earthly life. Indeed the war might be viewed as the birth-pangs of such a spiritual consciousness. Whether the labour would be sublimely fruitful here and now or end in barrenness is the question the Fates and the gods are asking of man—the... affirmed that nothing that concerned man was alien to them, all came within their domain. The spiritual man too can make the affirmation with the same or even a greater emphasis. Indeed the spiritual consciousness in the highest degree and greatest compass must heeds govern and fashion man in his entire being, in all his members and functions. The ideal, as we have said, has seldom been accepted; ...
... gets behind all opposing views and standpoints and tries to see what is the underlying truth that seeks to manifest in each, that one enters the gateway of the spiritual consciousness. Page 75 The spiritual consciousness is global, not in the sense that it is eclectic, that is to say, the sum-total of all the superficial views, but in the sense that it experiences the one dynamic... they are contrary or contradictory to what he perceives and concludes, then evidently Page 74 they are to be discarded and thrown away into the dustbin as rubbish. The spiritual consciousness dawns precisely with the rejection of this monomania, this obsession of one-track mentality. It means, in other words, nothing less than coming out of the shell of one's egoism. To be able ...
... spontaneous inner awakening—the inescapable decision that he must change and shall change; and the change is to be for or towards the birth of a spiritual consciousness in earthly life. Indeed the war might be viewed as the birth-pangs of such a spiritual consciousness. Whether the labour would be sublimely fruitful here and now or end in barrenness is the question the Fates and the gods are asking of man—the... affirmed that nothing that concerned man was alien to them, all came within their domain. The spiritual man too can make the affirmation with the same or even a greater emphasis. Indeed the spiritual consciousness in the highest degree and greatest compass must needs govern and fashion man in his entire being, in all his members and functions. The ideal, as we have said, has seldom been accepted; generally ...
... world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain I'" a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take ill life and all world-activity into the scope of this Spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that... body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness—though all do not care to possess, or possessing, to use it, and this Power is greater than any •other and more effective. It was this force which as soon as he had attained to it, he used ...
... all opposing views and standpoints and tries to see what is the underlying truth that Page 97 seeks to manifest in each that one enters the gateway of the spiritual consciousness. The spiritual consciousness is global, not in the sense that it is eclectic, that is to say, the sum-total of all the superficial views, but in the sense that it experiences the one dynamic truth that... confirm it. Otherwise, if they are contrary or contradictory to what he perceives and concludes, then evidently they are to be discarded and thrown away into the dustbin as rubbish. The spiritual consciousness dawns precisely with the rejection of this monomania, this obsession of one-track mentality. It means, in other words, nothing les than coming out of the shell of one's egoism. To be able thus ...
... inner awakening – the inescapable decision that he P1ust change and shall change; and the change is to be for or towards the birth of a spiritual consciousness in earthly life. Indeed the war might be viewed" as the birth-pangs of such a spiritual consciousness. Whether the labour would be sublimely fruitful here and how or end in barrenness is the question the Fates and the gods are asking of man... affirmed that nothing that concerned man was alien to them, all came within their domain. The spiritual man too can make the affirmation with the same or even a greater emphasis. Indeed the spiritual consciousness in the highest degree and greatest compass must needs govern and fashion man in his entire being, in all his members and functions. The ideal, as we have said, has seldom been accepted; generally ...
... the world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his yoga is not only to realize the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement he kept a close watch on all that was happening... body in matter there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above. There is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness but all do not care to possess, or possessing, to use it and this power is greater than any other and more effective. It was this force which Sri Aurobindo used at first only in a limited ...
... world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain I'" a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take ill life and all world-activity into the scope of this Spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was... body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness—though all do not care to possess, or possessing, to use it, and this Power is greater than any •other and more effective. It was this force which as soon as he had attained to it, he used ...
... be taken up and the possibilities already achieved or whatever perfection has already been attained included in a new and greater perfection but with the larger vision and inspiration of a spiritual consciousness and with new forms and powers. It must be the same with the perfection of the body. The taking up of life and Matter into what is essentially a spiritual seeking, instead of the rejection... the luminosity of its indwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its joy of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy. This would be the total perfection of the spiritualised body. All this might not come all at once, though such a sudden illumination might be possible ...
... being of God in Nature. The progressive growth of the finite consciousness of man towards this Self, towards God, towards the universal, the eternal, the infinite, in a word his growth into spiritual consciousness, by the development of his ordinary ignorant natural being into an illumined divine nature, this is for Indian thinking the significance of life and the aim of human existence. To this deeper... to satisfy more luminously or more inwardly the rational, aesthetic and ethical nature and lead them upward towards their own highest heights; one can begin to train mind and soul towards a spiritual consciousness and the opening of a spiritual existence. This ascending type of humanity claims for its use all that large and opulent middle region of philosophic, psycho-spiritual, ethical, aesthetic and ...
... is the attempt to live it out, it is the science and practice of this high endeavour, and it is the aspiration to break out in the end from this mind bound to life and matter into a greater spiritual consciousness that is the innermost sense of Indian culture. It is this that constitutes the much-talked-of Indian spirituality. It is evidently very remote from the dominant European idea; it is different... combination of knowledge and labour towards these ends. But all must be controlled, uplifted and widened to greater aims by the ideal of the Dharma. And if, as India believes, there is a higher spiritual consciousness towards which man can rise, that ascent must be kept throughout in view as the supreme goal of life. The system of Indian culture at once indulged and controlled man's nature; it fitted him ...
... spiritual portion of the vehicle of mind enables the individual mental being in man to identify himself with the pure spiritual consciousness beyond Mind. India's social system is built upon this conception; her philosophy formulates it; her religion is an aspiration to the spiritual consciousness and its fruits; her art and literature have the same upward look; her whole dharma or law of being is founded ...
... the spiritual transformation is something dynamic (not merely liberation of the Self or realisation of the One which can very well be attained without any descent). It is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness, dynamic as well as static, in every part of the being down to the subconscient. That cannot be done by the influence of the Self leaving the consciousness fundamentally as it is with only... process of bringing down the Divine Consciousness into all parts of the being from top to bottom in order to effect a radical change of consciousness from its present ordinary state into a spiritual consciousness. Page 147 × Eckhart Tolle, Pura Vida Retreat, Costa Rica, January 20-27, 2001. ...
... practical teachings on yoga rather than his philosophical writings to which I was paricularly drawn. However, his philosophical writings, which I felt to be charged with the vibrations of a spiritual consciousness and which gave me an intuitive feeling that they were based on spiritual experience, made an impression that was deeper than that of Theosophy and gave me a greater understanding than what... enjoying "woman and gold." 38 To bleat and run away like a goat is to behave like an ordinary man. Going away with the new tiger is like taking shelter with the guru, who awakens one's spiritual consciousness, and recognizing him alone as one's relative. To see one's face rightly is to know one's real Self. 39 Sri Ramakrishna narrated the story to point out the power of the guru's grace ...
... spiritual transformation is something dynamic (not merely liberation of the Self or realisation of the One which can very well be attained without any descent). It is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness, dynamic as well as static, in every part of the being down to the subconscient.... It means a bringing down of the Divine Consciousness static and dynamic into all these parts and the... spiritual being until it is Page 395 fully delivered into a self-aware action by the emergent gnostic principle. 12 An important dynamic in the evolution of spiritual consciousness stems from the strife which takes place as the forces of the higher planes of consciousness encounter the opposition and resistance of the energies of the lower levels of consciousness which ...
... the luminosity of its indwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its joy of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of Matter released into spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy." That was his view of the human body in a full and rich life guided by the spirit and surrendered to the Divine who answers when, it is so consecrated... (Apropos, a few days before I started for Jubbulpore he had written to me — in December, 1949, to be more precise — explaining much about what had been happening to her "because of her advanced spiritual consciousness" and had added that her samadhi was of the "savikalpa kind.") Page 251 Lastly, in a letter which I received in Jubbulpore he wrote: "Of course I will try to the end; for ...
... most of the time first a pandit and then a bhakta, but only occasionally the Divine himself) is perfectly rational and logical, if you follow my line and don't insist on a high specifically spiritual consciousness for the Avatar. I shall point out what I mean in my next. By sattwic man I do not mean a moral or an always self- controlled one, but a predominantly mental (as opposed to a vital or merely... part is always insincere in all. I do not see any use in dwelling on that: the only way, according to my view of it, is to lay stress on the inner being and develop in it the psychic and spiritual consciousness till that comes down in it which pushes out the darkness in the outer man also. I have never said that the vital is to have no part in the love of the Divine, only that it must purify' ...
... spirit — values to be dismissed simply with a sceptic shrug. Fortunately for us, however, believers are born and, once born, do grow in faith, responding progressively to mystical fervour and spiritual consciousness. It is for these that I write — or rather, all believers write — firmly persuaded that the sceptic must stay recalcitrant to the light of mystic wisdom for which great souls like Krishnaprem... feels a flow of light upon him and around him or a flow of light invading his centres or even his whole being and body, penetrating and illumining every cell and in that light there grows the spiritual consciousness and one becomes open to all or many of its workings and realisations. Appositely, I have a review of the book of Ramdas entitled 'Vision' before me in which he describes such an experience ...
... significance is felt side by side with the verbal, the former re-inforcing and filling out the latter. As we go poetically to higher and higher levels of spiritual consciousness — or rather, as higher and higher levels of spiritual consciousness get expressed in poetry — the musical significance keeps increasing and gets more and more important. The mantra , as the Rig Veda and the Upanishads understand ...
... into the inconscience of Matter, it must be because that was a possibility of its self-creation or manifestation. But a sole material universe and an evolution there out of inconscience into spiritual consciousness cannot be the one solitary and limited possibility of manifestation of the All-being. That could only be if Matter were the original power and form of manifested being and the spirit had no... of the Inconscience, must have an effect and a significance. Its first effect has been the liberation of life and mind out of Matter; its last effect has been to assist the emergence of a spiritual consciousness, a spiritual will and spiritual sense of existence in the terrestrial being so that he is no longer solely preoccupied with his outermost life or with that and mental pursuits and interests ...
... towards the Divine. Page 104 The Self or Spirit and the Psychic or Soul The Spirit is the consciousness above mind, the Atman or self, which is always in oneness with the Divine—a spiritual consciousness is one which is always in unity or at least in contact with the Divine. The psychic is a spark come from the Divine which is there in all things and as the individual evolves it grows in... All contact with the Divine through the essential substance of the consciousness is spiritual and it is that consciousness in the essential substance—what is called self—that is the spiritual consciousness. The soul or psychic being is a spark of the Divine that grows and evolves through successive lives and leads the rest towards the Divine. The spirit or self is the same always. The ...
... spirit, using them in a free self-knowledge, a free will and power of being, a free delight of being. This is the essential difference between the ordinary mortal mind in which we live and the spiritual consciousness of our divine and immortal being which is the highest result of Yoga. It is a radical conversion as great as and greater than the change which we suppose evolutionary Nature to have made in... hint of the splendour, the light, the glory and divinity of the spirit within him. A complete conversion of all the parts of his being into moulds and Page 783 instruments of the spiritual consciousness is demanded of him before he can make quite real, constant, present to himself this greater thing that he can be and entirely live in what is now to him at the best a luminous aspiration. He ...
... XIII The Supermind and the Yoga of Works An integral Yoga includes as a vital and indispensable element in its total and ultimate aim the conversion of the whole being into a higher spiritual consciousness and a larger divine existence. Our parts of will and action, our parts of knowledge, our thinking being, our emotional being, our being of life, all our self and nature must seek the Divine... more perfect goal of our being; for we shall remain content with an approximation and the supreme transformation will escape us. Even the achievement of a complete inner liberation and a high spiritual consciousness is not that supreme transformation; for we may have that achievement, a status perfect in itself, in essence, and still our dynamic parts may in their instrumentation belong to an enlightened ...
... protagonist of Kurukshetra, the words bear a much wider significance and are a universal rule for all who are ready to ascend above the ordinary mentality and to live and act in the highest spiritual consciousness. To break out of ego and personal mind and see everything in the wideness of the self and spirit, to know God and adore him in his integral truth and in all his aspects, to surrender all oneself... the manifold universal Shakti, the eternal delight of being stream into us and around us, concentrate in the soul and flow out on the surrounding world from each as from a centre of living spiritual consciousness whose circumference is lost in the infinite. More, the spiritual individual remains as a little universe of divine existence at once independent and inseparable from the whole infinite universe ...
... and crowning word is not merely the essence of what has been already said on the matter, not merely a concentrated description of the needed self-discipline, the Sadhana, and of that greater spiritual consciousness which is to be the result of all its effort and askesis; it sweeps out, as it were, yet farther, breaks down every limit and rule, canon and formula and opens into a wide and illimitable spiritual... knot of the riddle and therefore it accounts it an inferior method and holds its own for the better way. The two paths both lead us out of the lower ignorant normal nature of man to the pure spiritual consciousness and so far both must be held to be valid and even one in essence: but where one stops short and turns back, the other advances with a firm subtlety and high courage, opens a gate on unexplored ...
... Divine. It is of course through the psychic that she got into this contact, but in itself it is more an experience of the higher spiritual consciousness above mind than a psychic experience. The silvery narrow way upward is the path of the spiritual consciousness. Earth and Patala Patala simply means the subconscient below the Earth—the Earth being the conscious physical plane. ...
... of Peace, the descent of Force or Power, the descent of Light, the descent of Ananda, these are the four things that transform the nature. Light, Peace, Force, Ananda constitute the spiritual consciousness; if they are not among the major experiences, what are? Presence, Peace, Force, Light, Ananda, these are five things that most commonly come down. The being is not supposed to... ignorance, it at first seems swallowed up and absorbed in the darkness, but more and more of the descent changes the darkness into light, the ignorance and unconsciousness of the human mind into spiritual consciousness. Page 459 The Descent of Light The descent of the Light producing a concrete illumination of the consciousness is always one of the decisive experiences of the sadhana. ...
... the first necessity, but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in man, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. The Asram as it is now is not that ideal, for that all its members would have to live in a spiritual consciousness and not in the ordinary egoistic mind and mainly rajasic vital nature. But all the same, the Asram is a first form ...
... -occult experience) is drawn upwards above the Brahmarandhra to ranges above belonging to the spiritual consciousness proper and instead of merely receiving from there has to live there and from there change the lower consciousness altogether. For there is a dynamism proper to the spiritual consciousness whose nature is Light, Power, Ananda, Peace, Knowledge, infinite Wideness and that must be possessed ...
... consciousness which envelops, penetrates, enters into its object, discovers itself in the object, is aware in it of something that is not mind or life or body. There is, then, evidently a spiritual consciousness which is other than the mental, and it testifies to the existence of a spiritual being in us which is other than our surface mental personality. " The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 855... moment they could bring about a general catastrophe, a sort of total destruction which would prevent the progress of Nature. That presence, that spiritual light—which could almost be called a spiritual consciousness—is within each being and all things, and because of it, in spite of all discordance, all passion, all violence, there is a minimum of general harmony which allows Nature's work to be accomplished ...
... consciousness and its established operations; in the spiritual field all this religious, occult or philosophical knowledge and endeavour must, to bear fruition, end in an opening up of the spiritual consciousness, in experiences that found and continually heighten, expand Page 343 and enrich that consciousness and in the building of a life and action that is in conformity with the truth... if we want our realisation to be integral and to arrive at a total transformation of our being, we must be able to use the essence of what each of these methods can bring. The psychic or spiritual consciousness gives you the deep inner realisation, contact with the Divine, liberation from external fetters; but for this liberation to be effective, for it to have an action on the rest of the being, ...
... has been Page 21 understood in several ways. Basically, integrality would mean the total synthesis of all the parts of the being. In the fullness of integrality, the highest spiritual consciousness manifests itself fully on all the planes of the being, including the mental, the vital and the physical. However, there are subordinate meanings of integral aims, and these aims, even while... enters into the Supramental Consciousness fully, one cannot return from there into the bodily life. In the case of Socrates, we find that he advocated full life of the intellectual and spiritual consciousness in the mind, life and body. He also maintained that since the soul is planted in the body by the Divine Providence, the body should not be discarded. At the same time, he insisted that one ...
... taken up and the possibilities ' already achieved or whatever perfection has already been attained included-in a new and greater perfection but with the larger vision and inspiration of a spiritual consciousness and with new forms and powers. It must be the same with the perfection of the body. The taking up of life and Matter into what is essentially a spiritual seeking, instead of the rejection... the luminosity of its indwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its joy of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy. This would be the total perfection of the spiritualized body. All this might not come all at once, though such a sudden illumination might be possible ...
... significance of the vision: “ ‘Violet’ is the colour of the benevolence or compassion, but also more vividly of the Divine Grace—represented in the vision as flowing from the heights of the spiritual consciousness down on this earth. The golden cup is I suppose the Truth-Consciousness.” Once Nishikanto saw in a dream-vision that he was wandering in a dense green forest where he had lost his way; the... curls were rhythmically swaying like tender infant snakes around his neck.” [54] Nishikanto’s paintings had the traits of the mystic elements which grew along with the development of his spiritual consciousness. On the first of every month, Nishikanto used to offer a painting to the Mother. His paintings took a month for completion and even he did not know how the paintings would take shape at the ...
... knowledge-ignorance of the mind. They can glimpse the truth from afar and even point! Page 34 the way to reach it but for that another consciousness is needed and that is the spiritual .consciousness. When the mind and mental consciousness is completely exceeded, the spiritual or truth-consciousness begins. The spiritual is in effect the reversal of the mental consciousness, for, where... , the spiritual vision is Unitarian. It looks at the essential unity at the core, the oneness at the centre and diversity only at the surface of the manifestation of the One Spirit. Spiritual consciousness thus lies at the summit of and beyond mental consciousness which begins with the physical mind and ends with the purely mental or sattwic mind with the rajasic development in the middle. This ...
... the outermost parts of Prakriti. To be more specific, viewed from the Page 86 perspective of our spiritual goal — the goal of embodying and manifesting the highest spiritual consciousness here upon earth itself — the trance-solution for the actual imperfections of our world-existence suffers, among others, from the following deficiencies: (i)The supreme trance-state... validity so far as the goal of a wide-based terrestrial realisation is concerned. (ii)Even when attained, there is no return for the majority of seekers from this supreme height of spiritual consciousness. It is only the exceptionally gifted Iswarakotis or "divine souls" who succeed in coming back to the waking state. Cf. Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. VI, p. 499: "When ...
... come for us for a sincere soul-searching and an honest appraisal to see how far we in the Ashram have advanced towards the realisation of the double goal of Page 12 establishing spiritual consciousness in the constituent individuals and building up a collective spiritual life. Where does our Ashram stand in its present form and disposition with respect to that dual achievement? Surely... long time ago: "The Ashram as it is now is not that ideal." (The Mother, p. 229) But why not? Where is the lacuna? Sri Aurobindo answers: "For that all its members have to live in a spiritual consciousness and not [as it is now] in the ordinary egoistic mind and mainly rajasic vital nature." (Ibid., p. 229) In one of his important letters Sri Aurobindo made the position clear: "What ...
... will not act solely as negative obstacles but turn themselves instead into occasions of golden opportunities very much Page 3 conducive to the flowering of the sadhaka' s spiritual consciousness?' Here comes then the necessity of preliminary preparation in the life of sadhana and of the amassing, on the part of the sadhaka, of the basic requisites of the Path. We have already... a faith Page 12 that remains firm through all difficulties, delays and apparent failures." (Letters on Yoga, p. 630) (9) Absence of Greed and Desires Spiritual consciousness can almost be defined as a state of perfect egolessness. And where there is no ego with its inevitable sense of privation and wants of a million varieties, there cannot be any desires. And ...
... nor Astrology... points to a rigid and for ever immutable fate." (Letters on Yoga, p. 468) He further adds: "Here too [in the case of the 'utkat prarabdha karmas'] the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma." (Ibid.) It is thus manifestly clear that the chain of Karma can be disrupted, its so-claimed ineluctable consequences... happiness, or the avoidance of what is ordinarily considered as failures and sufferings. For, the object of all his deeds should be the union with the Divine and the establishment of a secure spiritual consciousness in himself. He will never seek any "punya" or "merit" for the sake of obtaining any earthly or heavenly reward; nor will he deliberately refrain from doing any "papa" or act of "demerit" simply ...
... standards and valid means of verification. The Yogic science confirms that the supra-physical Page 76 consciousness including the subliminal consciousness, psychic consciousness, spiritual consciousness and higher domains of super consciousness, — when rightly investigated, is confirmed again and again in the physical and objective field. Knowledge that is sought to be attained through... circumstances under which the call to Yoga comes to the seeker: "All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless Page 96 there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence ...
... domains are distinct from the domains of the psychic consciousness, spiritual consciousness and of supramental consciousness, — all of which are above the physical, subtle-physical, vital and mental domains of existence. In strict terms, the field which makes yoga distinctive is its field of psychic consciousness, spiritual consciousness and supramental consciousness. It is true, however, that yogic quest ...
... psychic consciousness facilitates also the upward turn of consciousness, and while the inward turn is a proper domain of the psychic consciousness, the upward turn is the proper domain of the spiritual consciousness. Hence, the entire process is largely Page 59 psycho-spiritual; it can be said that the psycho-spiritual transformation has to reach a very high level before the supramental tra... the Page 60 awakening and full development of psychic consciousness is indispensable; similarly, the ascension from the mind to the supermind, which constitutes the domain of spiritual consciousness is also indispensable; and both these processes and high levels of perfection in the psychic transformation and spiritual transformation are prerequisites for the rapid advancement towards ...
... institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit.' Here you may ask: what was the basis adopted for selecting the inmates how could one become a disciple? A difficult question to answer in a few... animal, and from the animal to man. But man, the mental being, is himself a transitional being, not the final end and summit of evolution. In the next step, man will develop a new and higher spiritual consciousness which Sri Aurobindo has called the Supramental consciousness. In The Life Divine he writes: 'As the impulse towards Mind ranges from the more sensitive reactions of Life in the metal and ...
... mental being in man to finally identify himself with the pure spiritual consciousness that Page 165 exists beyond Mind. This, according to the Indian concept, is the ultimate aim of life. It is on this basis that the whole of Indian life is built. Her religion is an aspiration to the spiritual consciousness and its fruits; her philosophy formulates it; her art and ...
... Socratic) touch, quickened and sharpened v by the intellectual and social stress of European Culture. India admitted no such moral absolute or mental categorical imperative. The urge of her spiritual consciousness was always to go beyond, beyond the dualities, beyond the trinities (the three gunas)— all mental or scriptural rules and regulations. For her there is only one absolute—the transcendent... netaram. 1 Credo quia impossibile is actually a phrase of Tertullian vide his De Came Christi, V— though often ascribed to St. Augustine Page 155 The Indian spiritual consciousness considers the secular distinction of good and evil as otiose: both are maya, there must neither be attachment to the Good, nor repulsion from Evil, the two, dwandwas, belong to the same category ...
... categorical imperative. The urge of her spiritual consciousness was always to go beyond, beyond the dualities, beyond the trinities (the three gu ṇ as) —all mental or scriptural rules and regulations. For her there is only one absolute—the transcendent, the Supreme Divine himself—the Brahman, nothing else, netaram. The Indian spiritual consciousness considers the secular distinction of good ...
... or abstraction on the part of the human mind. The fulfilment of the Spirit is in its expression through Matter; human life too reaches its highest term, its summum bonum, in embodying the spiritual consciousness here on earth and not dissolving itself in the Transcendence. That is the new Dispensation which answers to the deepest aspiration in man and towards which he has been travelling through the... Still his major perceptions, those that count, stand and are borne out by the highest spiritual realisation. Tagore is no inventor or innovator when he posits Spirit as Beauty, the spiritual consciousness as the ardent rhythm of ecstasy. This experience is the very core of Vaishnavism and for which Tagore is sometimes called a Neo-Vaishnava. The Vaishnava sees the world pulsating in glamorous ...
... am" is not there, one can do nothing. All action stops automatically if I do not see or feel that I am acting. But that is the nature of ordinary consciousness; in the spiritual consciousness things are otherwise. Spiritual consciousness means the consciousness in which this sense of "I am doing" or even "I am" has disappeared, got dissolved. Truly, the work is done not by me, by the sense of "I-ness" ...
... be present at all physically near the patient; his influence can act very well from any distance. It is quite natural and inevitable that it should be so. For the healing power is in the spiritual consciousness, the inalienable bliss of one's status in the Spirit. One becomes identified with each and every object – person or thing – in one's own self, in the true being and substance; and the light... entities; empathy, on the other hand, means the entering into the I very being and consciousness of another, becoming that other one; it is identification and identity. This again is what I spiritual consciousness alone can do. Sympathy leads to! philanthropy, empathy is the origin of true charity, the spiritual I compassion of a Buddha or a Christ. Philanthropy is human, I charity (caritas) is divine ...
... evolution there along two lines, one of ascent to the discovery of the Self and Spirit, the other of descent through the already evolved levels of mind, life and body so as to bring down the spiritual consciousness into these also and to fulfil thereby some secret intention in the creation of the material universe. Our yoga is in its principle a taking up and summarising and completing of this process... past was inclined to deny to it. In a way it has made the spiritualisation of it a necessity for spiritual seeking and so aided the descent movement of the evolving Page 95 spiritual consciousness in the earth-nature. More than that we cannot claim for it; its conscious effect has been rather to stifle and almost extinguish the spiritual element in humanity; it is only by the divine ...
... spiritual transformation is something dynamic (not merely liberation of the Self or realisation of the One which can very well be attained without any descent). It is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness dynamic as well as static in every part of the being down to the subconscient. That cannot be done by the influences of the Self leaving the consciousness fundamentally as it is with only... spiritual is the higher and transcendental. While the psychic life is the life immortal, endless time, limitless space, ever progressive change, unbroken continuity in the world of forms, the spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, means to live in the infinite and the eternal, to throw oneself outside all creation beyond time and space. When we go deeper behind the mental, we enter into the field ...
... even be present at all physically near the patient; his influence can act very well from any distance. It is quite natural and inevitable that it should be so. For the healing power is in the spiritual consciousness, the inalienable bliss of one's status in the Spirit. One becomes identified with each Page 39 and every object—person or thing—in one's own self, in the true being and substance:... t entities; empathy, on the other hand, means the entering into the very being and consciousness of another, becoming that other one; it is identification and identity. This again is what spiritual consciousness alone can do. Sympathy leads to philanthropy, empathy is the origin of true charity, the spiritual compassion of a Buddha or a Christ. Philanthropy is human, charity (caritas) is divine ...
... an instrument and a habitual convenience. The real and original sense is beyond the mind, which it uses as a medium, it is "a direct and original activity of the infinite power" of the spiritual consciousness. "The pure action of sense is a spiritual action and pure sense itself is a power of the Spirit." ¹ This pure and original sense is called sanjñāna. Sanjñāna makes us see, hear, touch,... but a power which passes to higher and higher levels of possibility until it reaches supreme consummations of spiritual existence fulfilling supermind as supermind fulfils the ranges of spiritual consciousness that are pushing towards it from the human or mental level. In this progression the body also may reach a more perfect form and a higher range of its expressive powers, become a more and ...
... existence, and that is why the ancient wisdom laid so much stress on salvation by knowledge,—not an intellectual cognizance of things, but a growing of man the mental being into a greater spiritual consciousness. The soul's salvation cannot come without the soul's perfection, without its growing into the divine nature; the impartial Godhead will not effect it for us by an act of caprice or an arbitrary... scope of the liberating Purusha. Evidently, in order to be liberated and perfect, we must get back from these things, away from the gunas and above them and return to the power of that free spiritual consciousness above Nature. But this would seem to imply a cessation of all doing, since all natural action is done by the gunas, by Nature through her modes. The soul cannot act by itself, it can only ...
... Yoga would not do at all. In the Gita I only explain the spiritual sense of the cāturvarṇya ; I do not put that forward as my own economic or social teaching. Our aim is to rise to a higher spiritual consciousness and to create from there—to drag in mental forms from the present or past society could only spoil or hamper the purity and freedom of the future spiritual working. 29 September 1938 ... bestowed on Duraiswami or feel a little "embarrassed" when things are said against X? If the praise and blame of ignorant people is to be our standard, then we may say good-bye to the spiritual consciousness. If the Page 694 Mother and I had cared for praise or blame, we would have been crushed long ago. It is only recently that the Asram has got "prestige"—before it was the target ...
... aspiration that the central truths of which he reads should be made real to him in conscious experience and his mind opened to the calm, wideness, strength, peace, light and Ananda of the spiritual consciousness. Let him write to you from time to time what experiences he gets or what are the difficulties that rise and prevent the experience. 1 30 November 1926 Sri Aurobindo is retired and... spirituality. My desire is to live in direct touch with the Asram. You can give him some kind of answer—for his stamp. Spirituality is a vague term,—there are many ways of approaching the spiritual consciousness and the Guru's choice of a disciple depends on whether his mind or his nature and inner capacity call him to the particular path or not etc. 7 January 1935 We have read your letter and ...
... Mother, CWM Vol. 14, p. 258 How can one meet one's ego in the spiritual consciousness? There is a spiritual ego even as there is a physical, vital and mental ego. There is a spiritual ego. There are people who have made a great effort to overcome all their egoism and all their limitations, and attained a spiritual consciousness; and there, they have all the vanity and the sense of their importance ...
... Is it possible to receive the Mother's help at a great distance—say Bombay or Calcutta—almost in the same way as here in the Asram? One can receive everywhere, and if there is a strong spiritual consciousness one can make great progress. But experience does not support the idea that it makes no difference or is almost the same. 18 August 1933 I want to be close to the Mother. If I was close... or a mere thought from her can set right anything wrong; then the physical contact also can help, but it is not indispensable. And as for understanding her, it is only by entering into the spiritual consciousness that one can understand her, or if not understand in the mind, at least feel and respond to what she is through an increasing oneness. 4 August 1935 To come physically to the Mother for ...
... is legitimate in so far as it is true, sincere, beautiful and delightful, and even one may say that a spiritual consciousness without any aesthetic or emotional content is not entirely or at any rate not integrally spiritual. In the spiritual life the basis of the act is a spiritual consciousness perennial and renovating, moved to express itself always in new forms or able to renew the truth of a form ...
... reveal in his Aphorism: if the mind tries to obtain the second power, it is unable to do so, since it is a power that belongs to the Spirit and arises in the human being together with the spiritual consciousness. Knowledge is something that the mind can obtain through much effort, although this is not the true knowledge, but only a mental aspect of knowledge; whereas Wisdom does not at all belong... mind, which is altogether incapable of obtaining it, because, in fact, it doesn't even know what it is. I repeat, Wisdom is essentially a power of the Spirit and it can arise only with the spiritual consciousness. It would have been interesting to ask what Sri Aurobindo Page 1 means when he speaks of "the truth seen in a distorted medium". First of all, what is this "distorted medium" ...
... Higher Planes There are above us… successive states, levels or graded powers of being overtopping our normal mind, hidden in our own superconscient parts, higher ranges of Mind, degrees of spiritual consciousness and experience; without them there would be no links, no helpful intervening spaces to make the immense ascension possible. It is indeed from these higher sources that the secret spiritual... summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis. Sri Aurobindo The Life Divine - II: The Ascent towards Supermind Higher Mind I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual [consciousness] where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although ...
... be taken up and the possibilities already achieved or whatever perfection has already been attained included in a new and greater perfection but with the larger vision and inspiration of a spiritual consciousness and with new forms and powers. It must be the same with the perfection of the body. The taking up of life and Matter into what is essentially a spiritual seeking, instead of the rejection... the luminosity of its indwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its joy of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy. This would be the total perfection of the spiritualised body. All this might not come all at once, though such a sudden . illumination might be ...
... radical transformation, leaving the vital as it is. In the beginning, before I discovered the secret of the supermind, I myself tried to seek the reconciliation through an association of the spiritual consciousness with the vital, but my experience and all experience shows that this leads to nothing definite and final,—it ends where it began, midway between the two poles of human nature. An association... upon him or around him or a flow of Light invading his centres or even his whole being and body, penetrating and illumining every cell and in that Light Page 489 there grows the spiritual consciousness and one becomes open to all or many of its workings and realisations. Appositely I have a review of a book of Ramdas (of the Vision ) before me in which is described such an experience got ...
... some kind of oneness with the Divine, not in the ordinary consciousness. Subordinate and Great Experiences One who lives in the spiritual consciousness is a spiritual man, just as one who lives in thinking mind is an intellectual man. The spiritual consciousness is that in which you realise the Divine, the Self, the cosmic oneness as the constant living contact with these things. I do not know ...
... possess, through the world also, the Eternal. The Gita cannot be described as exclusively a gospel of love. What it sets forth is a Yoga of knowledge, devotion and works based on a spiritual consciousness and realisation of oneness with the Divine and of the oneness of all beings in the Divine. Bhakti, devotion and love of God carrying with it unity with all beings and love for all beings is... allegory. The Gita is Yoga, spiritual truth applied to external life and action—but it may be any action and not necessarily an action resembling that of the Gita. The principle of the spiritual consciousness applied to action has to be kept; the particular example used by the Gita may be treated as a thing belonging to a past world. The Gita, the Divine Mother and the Purushottama The Gita ...
... liberated self and spirit can it achieve them. That full light is not intellect or reason, but a knowledge by inner unity and identity which is the native self-light of the fully developed spiritual consciousness and, preparing that, on the way to it, a knowledge by intimate inner contact with the truth of things and beings which is intuitive and born of a secret oneness. Life seeks for self-knowledge;... spiritual certitudes. Life seeks the fulfilment of its instincts of love and sympathy, its yearnings after accord and union; but these are crossed by opposing instincts and it is only the spiritual consciousness with its realised abiding oneness that can abolish these oppositions. Life seeks for full growth of being, but it can attain to it only when the limited being has found in itself its own inmost ...
... clay and night is obviously the upward luminous movement of the awakened spiritual consciousness covering the intermediate worlds (vital, mental, psychic) in its passage to the supreme Ananda (unknown ecstasy, transparence-wrought, the transparence being that well-known-to-mystics experience of the pure spiritual consciousness and existence). In the light of the main idea the last four stanzas should ...
... Sources of Poetry Letters on Poetry and Art Overhead Poetry Higher Mind and Poetic Intelligence I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual [consciousness] where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although... 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 and not a change of vision or a change of ...
... everywhere, in the slime and dust as much as in the human intelligence. But this is a speculative question which is quite alien to our practical purpose. For us it is the development of the spiritual consciousness in the human body that matters. In this development there are stages—the whole truth can not be known till all are passed and the final stage is there. The stage in which you are is one... is there already in Matter as everywhere else; it is only a surface apparent unconsciousness or involved consciousness which veils its presence. What we have to do is to awake Matter to the spiritual consciousness concealed in it. 5) What we aim at bringing down into the material world is the supramental consciousness, light and energy, because it is this alone that can truly transform it. If there ...
... form in the One; the tree is really that One. It is only by feeling all things as one spiritual substance that one can arrive at unity [ of matter, energy and mind ]—unity is in the spiritual consciousness. The material point is only one point among millions of millions—so that is not the base of unity. But once you get the unity in consciousness, you can feel through that the unity of mind substance... substance (mobile) and life force, the unity of material substance and energies. Being—consciousness of being—energy of consciousness—form of consciousness, all things are really that. The spiritual consciousness [ mentioned in the preceding letter ] is that which is in contact with Sachchidananda, that is, with the pure existence, consciousness and bliss of the Divine. Any contact with Sachchidananda ...
... psychic is the first of two transformations necessary—if you have the psychic transformation it facilitates immensely the other, i.e., the transformation of the ordinary human into the higher spiritual consciousness—otherwise one is likely to have either a slow and dull or exciting but perilous journey. I never said anything about a "transformation of the psychic"; I have always written about a... when the psychic opens, then it acts on the whole nature, mind, vital, physical, governing them from within, to transform themselves and become ready for the complete spiritual opening and spiritual consciousness. Devotion and a more and more complete inner consecration are the best way to open the psychic. It is very good. The ideas and feelings that came up from within you were those of the ...
... time to prevent their nature from following the old ways—even when they know or are told from within what to do or what not to do. It is only by persistent sadhana, by getting into the higher spiritual consciousness and spiritual nature that this difficulty Page 251 can be overcome; but even for the strongest and best sadhaks it takes a long time. All the ordinary vital movements are... always made that quite clear—that indulgence of desire is no more part of this Yoga than it is of Sannyasa. One must be able to use and handle physical things and physical life, but from the spiritual consciousness, not from the level of the vital ego. It is the old vital nature that feels its human worldly desires will not be satisfied and feels like this. All that has not to be indulged but ...
... do not create universal forces; they are themselves moved by them and move them. The Hostile Forces and the Spiritual Consciousness From the higher mind upwards, all is free from the action of the hostile forces. For they [ the higher planes ] all belong to the spiritual consciousness though with varying degrees of light and power and completeness. Page 768 ...
... him to be in its substance and energy and power no other than the One, the Eternal, the Infinite. And yet there is not only in him or before him this eternal self-aware Existence, this spiritual Consciousness, this infinity of self-illumined Force, this timeless and endless Beatitude. There is too, constant also to his experience, this universe in measurable Space and Time, some kind perhaps of... unified together. At the end there shines through it all the supreme integral Reality, unknowable to Mind which is part of the Ignorance, but knowable because self-aware in the light of a spiritual consciousness and a supramental knowledge. This revelation of a highest Truth or a highest Being, Consciousness, Power, Bliss and Love, impersonal and personal at once and so taking up both sides ...
... d ecstatic Beyond-Life alone, is the field of our Yoga. The transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life must be its central purpose. The means towards this supreme end is a self-giving of... not to choose action by reference to personal needs and standards, but in obedience to the dictates of the living highest Truth above us. Next, as soon as we are sufficiently founded in the spiritual consciousness, not to act any longer by our separate will or movement, but more and more to allow action to happen and develop under the impulsion and guidance of a divine Will that surpasses us. And last ...
... a dark knowledge by identity, such as we find already in the Inconscience, is the basis, but it does not reveal itself and its secret. The superior superconscient ranges are based upon the spiritual consciousness free and luminous, and it is there that we can trace the original power of knowledge and perceive the origin and difference of the two distinct orders, knowledge by identity and separative... is not a first active element of the absorbed intrinsic self-luminousness and self-evidence of the supreme consciousness. This regard belongs to or brings in another status of the supreme spiritual consciousness, a status in which knowledge as we know it begins; there is a state of consciousness and in it, intimate to it there is an act of knowing: the Spirit regards itself, it becomes the knower and ...
... the self; but, even so, to be in dynamis as well as in status is the integrality of existence: power of self is the sign of the divinity of self,—a powerless spirit is no spirit. But, as the spiritual consciousness is intrinsic and self-existent, so too this force of our spiritual being must be intrinsic, automatic in action, self existent and self-fulfilling. What instrumentality it uses, must be ... spite of mutual ignorance and discordant egoisms, conflict of minds, conflict of hearts, conflict of vital temperaments, conflict of interests, is a partial and insecure superstructure. The spiritual consciousness, the spiritual life reverses this principle of building; it bases its action in the collective life upon an inner experience and inclusion of others in our own being, an inner sense and reality ...
... which are mind and life-force. This explains the rise of living and thinking forms, half-obscure and half-enlightened, in the material universe as a preparatory step to the emergence of a spiritual consciousness which will display and fulfil all that life and mind hint at in matter. Page 3 The first objection to such a promising vision of our possibilities is that there is no evidence... The second objection is that the huge amount of waste in Nature, the plethora of blind and useless expenditure of energy we notice all around, gives the lie to the presence of a secret spiritual Consciousness. But the impartial philosopher must reply that what we consider waste may be precisely a necessary feature in Nature's plan, an unavoidable element in the logic of the aim to manifest her innermost ...
... modern. It was only after his return to Page 119 India that he plunged into a study of India's history and cultural institutions and awoke in himself the multi-dimensional spiritual consciousness of India. He embodied a fusion of the West and the East and expressed himself and his experiences in poetry and literary criticism, philosophy and socio-political thought. Nor has he been merely... take place on earth: it can take place only in the Beyond after the body has been given up. This attitude and position are due, according to Sri Aurobindo, to the fact that the highest spiritual Consciousness directly attained and set working in our nature so far is not the ultimate creative Power. The ultimate creative Power must hold the secret divine truth of all that is in our world, a truth ...
... or spiritual consciousness which has no power or force in it, may not be dead or unreal but it is, evidently, something inert and without effect or consequence... If Yoga is a reality, if spirituality is anything better than a delusion, there must be such a thing as Yoga force or spiritual force. 3 That is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. But ...
... The dark doom to which humanity is now apparently hurtling headlong down under the impact of its external opulence and inner penury can be averted only if there dawns in man a greater spiritual consciousness adequate to meet and master the increasing technological potentialities of existence and harmonise them. To quote Sri Aurobindo, "a greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power is needed... plane of the material body. For, where is the necessary lever of transformation or the potent agent to effectuate this momentous change? And is it not a fact that even the states of spiritual consciousness attained so far by the men of the spirit in different climes and times have failed to mould the physical existence of man in the image of divinity? But, what are the basic difficulties which ...
... because it's not true; some saints enter the vital world and get right into it!)... unless one is transformed, unless one has the true spiritual consciousness. On this condition alone are you perfectly safe. So where are the people with the spiritual consciousness? There are really very few of them, very few. And above all, in those who have this occult curiosity there are also all sorts of vital movements ...
... truth of their being." September 16, 1965 A member of UNESCO has asked a stupid question, something to this effect: "There was a time when India represented the spiritual consciousness" (or "taught the spiritual consciousness," I don't remember now), "but now that she is engaged in such a war, who will play this role?"... 2 So instead of replying to the question, because I might have told ...
... outbreak of life in it and later the outbreak of mind in a life which has no self-conscious thought and will, and lastly the seeming preparation of a more-than-mental, an ever-luminous spiritual, consciousness in a mind which is a seeking ignorance. It is the fact of earthly evolution that brings in Sri Aurobindo's third sense of "involution".¹ Evolution implies for Sri Aurobindo the gradual... Supra- mental Consciousness has flowed from both our Gurus to their disciples throughout the years I have been in the Ashram. In the Master-disciple relationship, the flow of the Master's spiritual consciousness to the disciple is the most potent factor in the sadhana. Even when the Master is no longer embodied, the call to the Master-consciousness to flow into one remains the central mode of the ...
... "summits of calm" and nothing else; it is a phrase like "He rose to high peaks of vision" or "He took his station on the highest summits of knowledge". The calm is the calm of the highest spiritual consciousness to which the soul has ascended, making those summits its own and looking down from their highest heights on all below: in spiritual experience, in the occult vision or feeling that accompanies... 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 and not a change of vision or a change ...
... towards the water it became deeper and deeper until it could not be seen. I want to know what it is. Sometimes flames of sacred fire are seen in front. It is a symbol of the growth of the spiritual consciousness and its manifestations. The blue colour gives the indication. The flames are the flames of Agni, the inner aspiration towards the Divine. 20 November 1930 Sri Aurobindo Yesterday... (however brilliant in that plane itself) and therefore cannot live when brought into contact with the truth centre. Their death is no loss; it only leaves unstained the calm and intensity of the spiritual consciousness indicated by the blue colour. All visions have a significance of one kind or another. This power of vision is very important for the Yoga and should not be neglected although it is not the ...
... Monism although it places in the One his eternal supreme Prakriti manifested in the form of the Java and lays most stress on dwelling in God rather than dissolution as the supreme state of spiritual consciousness; nor is it Sankhya although it explains the created world by the double principle of Purusha and Prakriti; nor is it Vaishnava Theism although it presents to us Krishna, who is the Avatara... but the largeness of a divine, immortal and spiritual Power. Our consciousness becomes no longer that of this limited and struggling mental and vital creature, but an infinite, divine and spiritual consciousness. Page 76 And our will and action too are no longer that of this bounded personality and its ego, but a divine and spiritual will and action, the will and power of the Universal ...
... apt to make a free and uncritical use of the principle of analogy, without stopping to ask whether their use of the principle is valid or not. In your anxiety to do justice to the claims of spiritual consciousness, you may make demands on the universe without considering whether the nature of reality is such that it can satisfy them. This neglect of metaphysical issues must seriously affect the stability... Descartes, as the reader will remember, though in a metaphysical rather than in a historical form. 14.It was the same motive which lent vitality to the Ontological Proof — the demand of the spiritual consciousness that the Supreme Value be real. 15. Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 435. 16.The presence of a residual element in experience, which cannot be co-ordinated, has been emphasised ...
... subtle and elusive form the inevitable play of ego, desire and the triple modes of the lower nature, aparā Prakriti. And so long as ego and desire are not eradicated, how can a veritable spiritual consciousness be established? For are they not diametrically antithetical in nature? It follows, then, that a sadhaka who would aspire to have spiritual realisation worth the name must shun action as far... secured, an outer renunciation becomes otiose; and if that is not acquired, no amount of external renunciation will help the sadhaka to take even a single step on the path of advancement of the spiritual consciousness. 'We have to renounce all in order to gain AW: that is the ultimate verdict of all the Yogis and mystics through all the ages. In this classic statement the second 'All' signifies ...
... been created, "not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit." (Letters on Yoga, p. 847) In other words, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram is not in its nature an association of other-worldly seekers, "men whose... Path, although individual spiritual realisation remains always the first necessity, it cannot be deemed complete unless and until it is accompanied by an outer realisation also in life; "spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without." (Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, Cent, ed., p. 229) And herein lay the justification, nay the necessity for the founding of a spiritual community of a ...
... the spiritual transformation is something dynamic (not merely liberation of the Self or realisation of the One which can very well be attained without any descent). It is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness dynamic as well as static in every part of the being down to the subconscient. That cannot be done by the influence of the Self leaving the consciousness fundamentally as it is with only p... spiritual is the higher and transcendental. While the psychic life is the life immortal, endless time, limitless space, ever progressive change, unbroken continuity in the world of forms, the spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, means to live in the infinite and the eternal, to throw oneself outside all creation beyond time and space. When we go deeper behind the mental we enter into the field ...
... should not overlook. Sri Aurobindo has stated that the very principle of his Yoga is 'not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning'. To say therefore that he had shunned the world is to misunderstand ...
... ordinary human mind. It is a common mistake. Even the word Supermind (which I invented) has been taken up by several people (writers in the P.B. and elsewhere) and applied generally to the spiritual consciousness. I see no reason to doubt that H saw things in vision (hundreds of people do) or had experiences. Some people seem to be quite misled in the matter of the higher planes. When... else has such an inclination there must be something of the ego lurking in it. That is partly true. It is only if the whole nature becomes dominated by the psychic and the higher spiritual consciousness that one can either reach the Supermind or bring it down. Page 272 ...
... in the fate of India. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. Consequently, even in his retirement, Sri Aurobindo kept a close ...
... can tell him whatever happens not to despair. I don't think thunder is of much use. Today I was very quiet in meditation and saw the full moon with cross stripes over it. Full moon=spiritual consciousness. Cross is the symbol of the triple Divine—transcendent cosmic, individual. December 12, 1934 Last night I had a dream that you had come out of your seclusion for once,; you were... ting, bread-kneading, cooking, etc., etc.? There is nothing new in that either. It has always been a rule of Karmayoga that one must be ready to do any work for the Divine or with the spiritual consciousness. Janakas, Arjunas might, but not Nirods or Rama Shyama! 19 Why not Rama Shyama? Plenty of Ramas and Shyamas have done that kind of karmayoga and done it easily enough. December ...
... is not there, one can do nothing. All action stops automatically if I do not see or feel that I am acting. But that is the nature of ordinary consciousness; in the spiritual consciousness things are otherwise. Spiritual consciousness means the consciousness in which this sense of "I am doing" or even "I am" has disappeared, got dissolved. Truly, the work is done not by me, by the sense of "I-ness" ...
... undergo another, more radical and crucial change; it will be taken up by a higher reality than mind and Page 8 suffused with a light and power belonging to that reality: a spiritual consciousness will emerge and with it spiritualised Matter, even as a mental consciousness emerged and mentalised (however inadequately) Matter, and yet anterior to that a vital consciousness emerged and... degree of spiritualisation also; for the degree of the Spirit that Nature manifests in an earthly body will also be the measure to which the body itself is spiritualised. A perfectly dynamic spiritual consciousness will have the power to perfectly spiritualise the body and life and mind. And this grade and power of the supreme Spirit Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind. We will try to understand ...
... will come when Matter will undergo another, more radical and crucial change; it will be taken up by a higher reality than mind and suffused with a light and power belonging to that reality: a spiritual consciousness will emerge and with it spiritualised Matter, even as a mental consciousness emerged and mentalised (however inadequately) Matter, and yet anterior to that a vital consciousness emerged and... spiritualisation also; for the degree of the Spirit that Nature manifests in an earthly body will also be the measure to which the body itself is spiritualised. A perfectly dynamic spiritual Page 28 consciousness will have the power to perfectly spiritualise the body and life and mind. And this grade and power of the supreme Spirit Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind. We will try to understand ...
... or abstraction on the part of the human mind. The fulfilment of the Spirit is in its expression through Matter; human life too reaches its highest term, its summum bonum, in embodying the spiritual consciousness here on earth and not dissolving itself in the Transcendence. That is the new Dispensation which answers to the deepest aspiration in man and towards which he has been travelling through the... ss. Still his major perceptions, those that count, stand and are borne out by the highest spiritual realisation. Tagore is no inventor or innovator when he posits Spirit as Beauty, the spiritual consciousness as the ardent rhythm of ecstasy. This experience is the very core of Vaishnavism and for which Tagore is sometimes called a Neo-Vaishnava. The Vaishnava sees the world pulsating in glamorous ...
... Socratic) touch, quickened and sharpened by the intellectual and social stress of European Culture. India admitted no such moral absolute or mental categorical imperative. The urge of her spiritual consciousness was always to go beyond, beyond the dualities, beyond the trinities (the three gunas ) - all mental or scriptural rules and regulations. For her there is only one absolute – the transcendent... netaram. ¹ Credo quia impossibile is actually a phrase of Tertullian vide his De Carne Christi, V – though often ascribed to St. Augustine Page 290 The Indian spiritual consciousness considers the secular distinction of good and evil as otiose: both are maya, there must neither be attachment to the Good, nor repulsion from Evil, the two, dwandwas , belong to the same ...
... average humanity. On the contrary in fact; for the very principle of his yoga, "was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning." In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was ...
... than you? What are you going to teach them? To be insincere, to perform hollow ceremonies instead of following a profound philosophy and a detachment from life which lead them to a more spiritual consciousness? Page 83 The clergyman was of course confused and even scandalised by this frontal attack, and unable to argue, and unwilling to acquiesce, he beat a hasty retreat. 21 ... earth-transformation from high above and deep within. 36 Page 87 If Sri Aurobindo was an embodiment of the East-West synthesis and contained within himself "the multi-dimensional spiritual consciousness of India", Mirra was the finest flower of European culture with deep spiritual filiations with India and the East as also with Africa, and she incarnated "a practical genius of a rare order ...
... explained later: It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness * When Bharati, Aiyar and Srinivasachariar met Sri Aurobindo in the evenings, there would be no sense of time, for talk was free. "In ...
... by past action and a new will and action can cancel it; only a very strong Karma is imperative and irreducible. Even that may possibly be cancelled if one can enter into the freedom of the spiritual consciousness. One instance at any rate Page 601 came to my knowledge in which the life had corresponded exactly with the pre-indications of the horoscope so long as the subject remained in the ...
... surrounding him like an illimitable sea and filling the world, suffusing all his feeling and sense and experience, making all his life truly and utterly divine. This and all else that the spiritual consciousness can bring to him the divine life will give him when it reaches its utmost completeness and perfection and the supramental truth-consciousness is fulfilled in all himself; but even before that ...
... Monism although it places in the One his eternal supreme Prakriti manifested in the form of the Jiva and lays most stress on dwelling in God rather than dissolution as the supreme state of spiritual consciousness; nor is it Sankhya although it explains the created world by the double principle of Purusha and Prakriti; nor is it Vaishnava Theism although it presents to us Krishna, who is the Avatara ...
... but the largeness of a divine, immortal and spiritual Power. Our consciousness becomes no longer that of this limited and struggling mental and vital creature, but an infinite, divine and spiritual consciousness. Page 574 And our will and action too are no longer that of this bounded personality and its ego, but a divine and spiritual will and action, the will and power of the Universal ...
... that man can solve at once his inner riddle of self and God and the outer problem of his active human existence. Made Godlike, God-becoming, he can enjoy the infinite breadth of a supreme spiritual consciousness that is reached through works no less than through love and knowledge. Immortal and free, he can continue his human action from that highest level and transmute it into a supreme and all-embracing ...
... of sex unless they realise that the search of sex, no matter how blind, is along a track of truth, and that this truth can be attained just as little by an inner divinity and immortality of spiritual consciousness concentrating on a Beyond as by self-enlargement through the sex-embrace and self-prolongation into the Page 68 future through the offspring of the sex-act. What is needed ...
... consciousness and its established operations; in the spiritual field all this religious, occult or philosophical knowledge and endeavour must, to bear fruition, end in an opening up of the spiritual consciousness, in experiences that found and continually heighten, expand and enrich that consciousness and in the building of a life and action that is in conformity with the truth of the spirit: this is ...
... clear. Even what are called works of no importance contribute to man's growth to perfection. When man works, he works by faith. Faith is the unilluminated will in man. What is will in the spiritual consciousness is faith in the lower heights of mind, life and body. Will is the materialising power of consciousness. When consciousness vibrates, it vibrates to action. Vibration is the will that achieves ...
... virtue difficult to achieve, and as a result of which one no longer attributes any value to personal pleasure or pain. But that is only the moral and psychological aspect of a state of purely spiritual consciousness. In fact, it is essentially a question of breaking a spell. We are hypnotized by our mental perception of things. Detachment, therefore, consists in extirpating this perception and all it implies ...
... out of its darkness to the Divine." We may say that some undreamt-of calamity would have afflicted the world if the vast poison had not been drawn away into the body of this one man whose spiritual consciousness, armed with divine Love, had made him a universalised individual incarnating the Transcendent's Will. And here we may refer again to the fact that the obstacles confronting Sri Aurobindo in ...
... man's being are foreign to his intelligence, for it is in the light of the Page 64 poetic intelligence that he works. "I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual consciousness where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although ...
... last point leaves the pre-Rigvedic religious history in the dark but does not necessarily exclude the faint glimmer of some ultimate habitat from the haze of a semi-mythical memory in the spiritual consciousness which was symbolically expressive. The direction in which the possible clues seem to point will be our answer to the question of the Dravido-Aryans' homeland farthest in time. The answer ...
... still farther separated and objectivised to the knower, by the self not through any intermediate process but by a direct inner seizing or a penetrating and enveloping luminous contact of the spiritual consciousness with its object. It is this luminous seizing and contact that is the spiritual vision, dṛṣṭi .... The sense can only give us the superficial image of things and it needs the aim of thought ...
... Mother. The covers change after being removed successively into covers of different colours in the order: yellow (activity of the mind plane), pink (psychic love), blue (higher-mind at work, spiritual consciousness of Divine Truth), white (the force of purity and the power of Divine Truth), gold (knowledge). Here, this means that as the mental consciousness grows higher and higher it finally meets ...
... the Supramental Light, is there above every participant from each country, who is riding a lion—the higher vital force of strength and courage and this force too is illumined by a higher spiritual consciousness. It is to be noted that while each country's flag and soil are individual to it and different from those of other countries, all the carriers of them have the same kind of animal to bear ...
... The Mother and the “Aspiration” Flowers 1979-07-05 New-born babies indicate the opening of the psychic in various individuals. The place is charged with spiritual consciousness (blue light) and the light of Truth (golden light). Even the Mother's presence is seen, giving blessings to all. In this vision, the importance of calm, steady aspiration is emphasized— ...
... Spirit that we may get some idea of the vast reality that is there behind this creation which otherwise looks to be a dim and shadowy world of ignorance. In fact ascending through the grades of spiritual consciousness, our sight also climbs to higher and higher worlds and in the process it acquires a certain universality; it can leap even into the transcendent. What was so far incomprehensible now comes ...
... "sapphire" is not restricted to heaven alone, but is placed in different contexts of sea and air, a soothing vision that embalms hurt spirits. It is also the hue of the higher planes of spiritual consciousness that open before Savitri: At first to her beneath the sapphire heavens 63 60 Ibid ., p. 390. 61 Ibid ., p. 429. 62 Ibid , p. 430. 63 Ibid ., p. 468. Page ...
... pātreṇa satyasyāpihitaṃ mukhaṃ) (Isha Upanishad, Verse 15). In order to seize the Truth in its unalloyed and unmitigated glory, we have to make a last supreme ascent in the climb of our spiritual consciousness and break through the shining shield or Overmind into the realm of the supramental Gnosis. But will our power of sight be able to follow the climb of our consciousness into the four-rung ...
... that use as leverage one or more of the three basic functions of the human psyche—-thinking, feeling, and willing—for the purposes of transforming ordinary consciousness into a higher or spiritual consciousness. From this point of view, spiritual disciplines may be broadly classified into three paths: the Path of Knowledge (Jnana Yoga), which uses thinking as the principal leverage; the Path of Devotion ...
... Spiritual Mind Above the Ordinary Mind Sri Aurobindo speaks of various levels of mental existence above the ordinary mind. In an ascending order these are: Higher Mind: A first plane of spiritual consciousness white one becomes constantly aware of the Self. Whereas the ordinary mind is a thought-mind, the Higher Mind is a "luminous thought-mind, a mind of Spirit-born conceptual knowledge." 47 ...
... facer the Consciousness-Force of the Divine and its aspect of consciousness, secret in Matter, begins to emerge in Life, finds something more of itself in Mind and finds its true self in a spiritual consciousness and finally a supramental Consciousness through which we become aware of the Reality, enter into it and unite ourselves with it. This is what we call evolution which is an evolution of Con ...
... 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. I was escorting somebody ...
... development into the divine nature of the being. Yoga is a generic name for any discipline by which one attempts to pass out of the limits of one's ordinary mental consciousness into a greater spiritual consciousness. 2. one of the six systems of orthodox Indian philosophy systematised by Patanjali. Page 419 ...
... for the destination, or the map for the territory. The most valuable aspect of Eckhart's teachings thus lies not in the concepts and ideas he employs but in the energetic charge of the spiritual consciousness from which his teachings emanate and with which his words are powerfully impregnated. For this reason, Chapter 2 of the book, which is a verbatim transcription of the author's interview with ...
... beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary ...
... fact the Consciousness-Force of the Divine and its aspect of consciousness, secret in Matter, begins to emerge in Life, finds something more of itself in Mind and finds its true self in a spiritual consciousness and finally a supra-mental Consciousness through which we become aware of the Reality, enter into it and unite ourselves with it. This is what we call evolution which is an evolution of ...
... and argument, but only as a result of experience, of faith or of that insight in the heart or the deeper intelligence which looks behind deeper appearances and sees what is behind them. The spiritual consciousness does not claim in that way, it can state the truth about itself but not fight for personal acceptance. A general and impersonal statement about the spiritual force is another matter, but I ...
... to itself, as all absolutes are self-evident, but our mental affirmatives and negatives, whether taken separatively or together, cannot limit or define it. But at the same time there is a spiritual consciousness, a spiritual knowledge, a knowledge by identity which can seize the Reality in its fundamental aspects and its manifested powers and figures. All that comes within this description and, if ...
... Matter, there are other forces and powers that can act and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in the spiritual consciousness, though all do not care to possess or, possessing, to use it, and this power is greater than any other and more effective. It was this force which, as soon as he had attained it, he used, at ...
... elements, there is also a soul, a “divine spark”, which is the cause and support of the triple-layered bodily existence. Above the rational consciousness there are, moreover, levels of the spiritual consciousness, which we will consider in detail in a subsequent chapter. It is from these levels that humanity gets the fine flower of its intuitions and inspirations; it is from there that it gets its first ...
... trillion of them – that were doing the Yoga. For a number of those cells were now transformed. Can one imagine what this means: cells of the body, tiny living organisms, that have acquired a spiritual consciousness? The Mother must have read the incomprehension in the mind of the persons she was talking to, for she said so often something like: “It is the experience of the body, you understand, physically ...
... consciousness is one,” writes Sri Aurobindo, “everywhere it follows the same general lines and tendencies of awakening and growth into spiritual being, for these are the imperatives of the spiritual consciousness. But also there are, based on those imperatives, numberless possibilities of variation of experience and expression: the centralization and harmonization of these possible, but also the intensive ...
... it than you? What are you going to teach them? To be insincere, to perform hollow ceremonies instead of following a profound philosophy and a detachment from life which lead them to a more spiritual consciousness? I don’t think it is a very good thing you are going to do.’ 49 The clergyman was not convinced. After a voyage of three weeks, the Richards left the Kaga Maru at Colombo on 27 March ...
... institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit. There is no general rule as to the stage at which one may leave the ordinary life and enter here; in each case it depends on the personal need and ...
... and to reinforce with their spiritual light the life-power of the body, more easily when one had faith but often even without conscious co-operation by the patient. They believed that the spiritual consciousness could achieve all kinds of undreamt-of results and that there were interconnections between physical events and spiritual movements. But they also had a poised scientific mind ever testing ...
... deeper than the world of sense and is realised by the spirit: what the Urn brings is a revelation of the supra-sensuous to the depths of the spirit: it communicates a spiritual reality to the spiritual consciousness through a representation of beautiful form in which the changes of time are transcended. After saying this in effect, Keats reconstructs a scene of religious ritual from the Urn's figures and ...
... self-manifestation. Even the way of the new Romanticism, by the characteristically modern intelligence behind it, is bound to differ on the whole from those of both these poetic phenomena. But the spiritual consciousness as such is not one plane among many: it is a plane which while being above all the rest can bring a greater Page 196 vitality of its own no less than mentality and also one ...
... they alone can make his mission a fruitful force on the largest scale. Further, may I ask what is wrong with giving Sri Aurobindo "a supernatural halo"? Was he not a master of the spiritual consciousness and therefore one who has risen above Nature though never disdainful of Nature and ever wanting to transform and fulfil Nature? Without a supernatural halo he would be no Yogi at all and would ...
... the Aryan invasion. Both were attracted to spiritual and mystical poetry. Significantly, it was the city of Bombay that was to provide for both a catalytic experience for their growth into spiritual consciousness. Both championed atheism with a degree of youthful enthusiasm and in both the turning to spirituality was equally powerful. While Sri Aurobindo had the Nirvanic experience in Bombay ...
... of our surface personality - the inner mind, the inner vital and the subtle physical; second, an inmost psychic being or soul behind these inner parts; third, 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 ...
... represented. Then on the 26th, in the passage-room where soup used to be prepared, the Mother stood before a basin of water and, holding her hands over it, appeared to pass into the water a spiritual consciousness and power descending into her. She declared that a most important and fundamental event had occurred but it was both very sacred and secret. She asked for some small glass bottles. When they ...
... with him, the human soul as an eternal portion of the ultimate Reality and as an evolutionary adventurer through a series of births - positing a meaningful succession of Avatars until the spiritual consciousness is founded in man, with the last Avatar unifying the world in an earthly Kingdom of God - and, from among the Avatars, turning to the historical Jesus as the chosen object of worship, ista ...
... institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit . Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: The Purpose of the Ashram ...
... of its own Power's making. If the world exists by the supreme Spirit, so also its ordering and relations must exist by the power of the Spirit; its law must be according to some law of the spiritual consciousness and existence. The Self, the Reality must be aware of and aware in the world-consciousness which exists in its being; a power of the Self, the Reality must be constantly determining or at least ...
... principle although in detail of application abundantly variable. At the outset, we can easily see that, since this is an evolution Page 730 out of a material Inconscience into spiritual consciousness, an evolutionary self-building of Spirit on a base of Matter, there must be in the process a development of a triple character. An evolution of forms of Matter more and more subtly and intricately ...
... mistranslation into the terms of the Ignorance. Our I is not that spiritual being which can look on the Divine Page 712 Existence and say, "That am I"; our mentality is not that spiritual consciousness; our will is not that force of consciousness; our pain and pleasure, even our highest joys and ecstasies are not that delight of being. On the surface we are still an ego figuring self, an ...
... discoverer that he is unique, for it is then that the seer in him either speaks the revelatory thought of his spirit or gives us strains greater than thought's, the imperishable substance of spiritual consciousness finding itself in sight and speech. At other times, especially when he fuses this Nature-strain with his thought and ethical motive, he writes sometimes poetry of the very greatest; at others ...
... most of the time, first a pandit and then a bhakta, but only occasionally the Divine himself) is perfectly rational and logical, if you follow my line and don't insist on a high specifically spiritual consciousness for the Avatar. I shall point out what I mean in my next. By sattwic man I do not mean a moral or an always self controlled one, but a predominantly mental (as opposed to a vital or merely ...
... again our will and action can often annul or modify even the past Karma, it is only certain strong effects, called utkaṭa karma , that are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions ...
... gives us the transcendental element in Savitri,—for the Divine Savitri is the word that rises from the transcendental stillness; the next two lines render that element into the poise of the spiritual consciousness; this last line brings the same thing down to the outward character and temperament in life. A union of strength and silence is insisted upon in this poem as one of the most prominent char ...
... action, and puts each in its place and to its proper action under the control of the higher consciousness or else under the control of the Divine Power. Afterwards all gets surcharged with the spiritual consciousness and there is an automatic right perception and right action of the different parts because they are controlled entirely from above and do not falsify or resist or confuse its dictates. Manas ...
... Mother. The spiritual value and result come afterwards when the consciousness in the vital opens upward. So with the mental work. It is a preparation. If you cannot yet do it with the true spiritual consciousness, it, the work as well as the mental occupation, must be done with the right mental or vital will in it. 14 May 1934 Page 723 Well, of course the first business of Yoga is not ...
... the lower nature of mind, life and matter. Prakriti is only the executive or working force—the Power be hind Prakriti is Shakti. It is the Chit-Shakti in manifestation: that is the spiritual consciousness. Page 44 All energies derive from the Chit-Shakti; but they differentiate from it as they descend. This much is true that Life is characteristically Force—the Physical is ...
... nothing disappointed or bitter in it; or it may lead to a large psychic charity which recognises the truth but makes all allowances and is ready to love and to help in spite of all. In the spiritual consciousness one is blind to nothing, but sees also that which is within behind these coverings, the divine element not yet released, and is neither deceived nor repelled and discouraged. That inner greater ...
... can be given admission into the spiritual Parnassus—but not all poetry and all novels. All depends on the consciousness from which the thing is done. If it is done from the psychic or the spiritual consciousness and bears the stamp of its source, that is sufficient. Of course there are certain things that cannot be done from there, but neither poetry nor fiction is in that case. They can be lifted ...
... capacity for Yoga. Equally, one who is under the domination of his passions, would find the Yoga difficult and, unless supported by a true inner call and a sincere and strong aspiration for the spiritual consciousness and union with the Divine, might very easily fall fatally and his effort come to nothing. There can be no doubt about the Divine Grace. It is perfectly true also that if a man is sincere ...
... Yoga the soul goes towards freedom. The bondage to the effects of Karma remains so long as one has not passed out of the ordinary human consciousness which is its field to the higher spiritual consciousness where all bonds are untied. As for peace one can gain it by an entire reliance on the Divine and surrender to the Divine Will. Page 520 In life all sorts of things offer themselves ...
... second infinite and inscrutably imperative, bound, if at all, only by itself and the Will in the Infinite. It is therefore only by going back from the surface physical mind to the psychic and spiritual consciousness that a vision and knowledge of the triple time, a transcendence of our limitation to the standpoint and view range of the moment, can be wholly possible. Meanwhile there are certain doors ...
... Chapter II Self-Consecration All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. The soul that is ...
... the terms of existence in a single integral view would see the whole in its spiritual essential reality and the phenomenon as a phenomenon or manifestation of that reality. If this greater spiritual consciousness saw in things only unreality and an entire disconnection with the truth of the spirit, it could not have—if it were itself a Truth-consciousness Page 490 —any reason for maintaining ...
... is there to fulfil the purpose of the universal Power. The Jiva, as has been seen, is the meeting-place of the play of the dual aspect of the Divine, Prakriti and Purusha, and in the higher spiritual consciousness he becomes simultaneously one with both these aspects, and there he takes up and combines all the divine relations created by their interaction. This it is that makes possible the dual attitude ...
... unity in which God and our own person disappear and there is none to adore or to be adored; only the delight of the experience of oneness and infinity remains. But in truth the miracles of spiritual consciousness are not to be subjected to so rigid a logic. When we first come to feel the presence of the infinite, as it is the finite personality in us which is touched by it, that may well answer to the ...
... Moreover this knowledge must bring a light that justifies the assertion with which the first part of the Gita closes. It must ground the supremacy of bhakti over all other motives and powers of spiritual consciousness and action; it must be a knowledge of the supreme Lord of all creatures to whom alone the soul can offer itself in the perfect self-surrender which is the highest height of all love and devotion ...
... Maya, without egoism, the great fault of attachment conquered, all desires stilled, the duality of joy and grief cast away, always to be fixed in wide equality, always to be firm in a pure spiritual consciousness, these are the steps of the way to that supreme Infinite. There we find the timeless being which is not illumined by sun or moon or fire, but is itself the light of the presence of the eternal ...
... from the lower human to the higher divine nature. It is a lifting of our whole being or at least of the whole mental being that wills, knows and feels beyond what we are into some highest spiritual consciousness, some satisfying fullest power of existence, some deepest widest delight of the spirit. And this may well be possible by a transcendence of our present natural life, it may well be possible ...
... phenomenon of the interaction of mind, life and body or we have here an independent term of our being and of all being, greater, anterior, ultimate, all matter containing and contained in a secret spiritual consciousness, spirit the first, last and eternal, the Alpha and the Omega, the OM. For experiential philosophy either Matter, Mind, Life or Spirit may be the Being, but none of these higher principles can ...
... translation is not meant Page 92 to be literal but to render the thought in the line in its fullness. Adhyātmacetasā practically amounts to what in English we would describe as a spiritual consciousness. "throw our arms around" ( p. 78 ) It is a figure meaning to comprehend in our consciousness with love and Ananda. "the nature" ( p. 81, lines 29, 31, 33 ) Nature here means the ...
... will to the inception of delivering forms of thought, art and social endeavour which arise from those perceptions and the raising of the intellectual mind to the intuitive supra-intellectual spiritual consciousness which can alone give the basis for a spiritualised life of the race and the realisation of its diviner potentialities. The meaning of spirituality is a new and greater inner life of man founded ...
... without entering into or opening to the cosmic consciousness—but one has to know the cosmic Prakriti as well as the cosmic Purusha. Spiritual, Cosmic and Ordinary Consciousness 1) The spiritual consciousness is that in which we enter into the awareness of Self, the Spirit, the Divine and are able to see in all things their essential reality and the play of forces and phenomena as proceeding from ...
... knowledge that they stopped there going round and round in it and making all sorts of blunders because the spiritual light was not there. One has not to stop there, but go on and beyond to the spiritual consciousness and the greater light, strength and poise it brings. The consciousness of these things [ such as the forces one feels coming from others ] is intended for knowledge—a psycho-occult knowledge ...
... is the descent of the force which will work out in you the whole sadhana; thirdly, the feeling of a guiding presence or power which is the basis of Karma—of work and action founded in the spiritual consciousness. You can reply to X that the three experiences he is having are the right ones—viz. the opening of the psychic through the heart, the descent of peace and the consciousness of his ...
... quieting and purification of the mind, vital and physical consciousness by their subjection to the psychic influence and guidance; (5) the opening up of all this lower consciousness to the higher spiritual consciousness above for its descent into a nature prepared to receive it with a complete receptivity and right attitude—for the psychic brings in everything right thought, right perception, right feeling ...
... not an initial stage. Each of these stages demands a great length of time and a high and long endeavour. To be sthitaprajña merely means to have one's thinking mind settled in the spiritual consciousness in the realisation of Self. That does not necessarily transform the other parts of the nature. The bringing down of the Force and Light of the higher consciousness, the opening of the psychic ...
... Yoga if the mind is restless. The first thing needed is quiet in the mind. Also, to merge the personal consciousness is not the first aim of the Yoga; the first aim is to open it to a higher spiritual consciousness and for this also a quiet mind is the first need. The first step is a quiet mind—silence is a farther step, but quietude must be there, and by a quiet mind I mean a mental consciousness ...
... knowledge and the true life activity may replace or transform the activities of the Ignorance. The activity of mind is necessary so long as a higher activity cannot be reached; but if the spiritual consciousness becomes active with its direct power of perception, the mind must become more and more content and give place to spiritual perception, psychic intimations and discrimination, intuitions, a ...
... attachment and other reactions), which is very necessary in order that peace may come. It is what we may call the quiet vital—and it is in the quiet mind and the quiet vital that the true spiritual consciousness can most easily come. Page 115 × The correspondent wrote, "When people say—even here—'After all ...
... the throat is the centre of this external mind). So long as that is there the external nature and action remain as they always were and there is no correspondence between it and the inner spiritual consciousness and experience. This cannot disappear by a single experience; a steady will to change is necessary. It means that the outer physical mind has a certain obscurity in it which impedes ...
... and stay longer and longer till it is stable. The sadhak on his side has to keep his consciousness as quiet and still as possible to receive it. The Peace, Power, Light, Ananda of the higher spiritual consciousness are there in all veiled above. A certain opening upwards is needed for it to descend—the quietude of the mind and a certain wide concentrated passivity to the descending Influence are the best ...
... misunderstood notions—not only abhimāna , but egoistic unspiritual demand, hostile criticism, revolt, anger and other still more undesirable vital reactions (usually supposed to be foreign to the spiritual consciousness) have been put forward by some, admitted by many in practice, as a part of the Yoga! I do not see how such a method can lead to any good results in the spiritual life. 12 January 1932 ...
... are matters of a profound and difficult Yoga. These terms ought not to be cheapened by being tacked on to these small superficial things. No doubt all activities can be carried on with a spiritual consciousness, but it is the Yogi alone who can do that. To invite people who have no spirituality in them and are no Yogis to get the psychic being in front and aspire to the supramental has no meaning ...
... ordinary sense (moksha), release from the world and life, is not an aim in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. Mukti here means liberation from ego and all its movements and elevation into a divine and spiritual consciousness. For this it may be necessary to come out of the ordinary life and its unsuitable atmosphere, surroundings and activities. But if the Sangha is well founded on a spiritual basis then there ...
... the base of all the centres and the channel through which the Force tends most easily to flow from one centre to another (Sahasradala = the centre where the human or mental and the higher or spiritual consciousness meet). 15 September 1935 If the term "pressure" is a wrong one to describe the Mother's recent dealings with me, 2 what is the sense in which it is used in The Mother—she "puts on ...
... l centre. 17 December 1936 One night I found a vast light, yellowish white, cool and peaceful, coming down from above. Is this the light of the higher mind consciousness or of some spiritual consciousness? It depends on the shade of the yellow. If it is golden white it comes from above the mind and the combination suggests the Maheshwari-Mahakali power. Higher Mind colour is pale blue. ...
... depends on circumstances, on the practical needs of the situation which can change rapidly. In such a body the work is not of a spiritual character. All kinds of work can be done with the spiritual consciousness behind, but unless one has advanced very far, one must in the front be guided by the necessities of the work itself and its characteristic nature. Since you have joined this party, its programme ...
... to each other but are one and inseparable. This supramental knowledge has not yet been attained, because the supermind itself has not been attained, but the reflection of it in intuitive spiritual consciousness is there and that was what was evidently realised in experience by your Guru and what he was expressing in mental terms in the quoted passage. It is possible to go towards this knowledge by ...
... own spiritual capacity. 3rd: He must make himself open and receptive to the Guru for even more than what the Guru teaches to the mind of the disciple, it is what he spiritually is, the spiritual consciousness, the knowledge, the light, the power, the Divinity in him that helps the disciple to grow by his receiving that into himself and its being used within himself for the growth of his consciousness ...
... the one important thing in the Yoga. The Diverse Nature and Significance of Visions Your visions are not mental images but significant symbols. The white dove is the higher divine or spiritual Consciousness above the mental surrounded by the golden lightnings of the Truth. The lamb is the psychic aspiring to the Truth. When one has a thought or feeling and creates a mental form of it, that is ...
... spiritual transformation is something dynamic (not merely liberation of the self, or realisation of the One which can very well be attained without any descent). It is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness dynamic as well as static in every part of the being down to the subconscient. That cannot be done by the influence of the Self leaving the consciousness fundamentally as it is with only p ...
... but from the illusory life as it is ordinarily lived in the world. Sri Aurobindo tells us that in order to reach the Truth and to have the power of realising this Truth you must join the spiritual consciousness to a progressive mental consciousness. And these few words certainly prove that such was the original conception of the Buddhist teaching. 6 December 1957 Just as the rain penetrates ...
... he is himself. And, if such is our dominant preoccupation, all those whom we thus meet on our way are the very ones to whom we can be most useful. For one who lives constantly in the spiritual consciousness, everything that happens to him takes on a special value and all is conducive to his progressive evolution. It will always be beneficial for him to observe his encounters, to investigate both ...
... Divine? Yes, all become the Divine; but not the totality of the Divine, for the Divine is everything. You can't take a piece of the Divine and say, "This is the Divine." And yet, in his spiritual consciousness each one has a perfect relation with the Divine, that is to say, each Page 29 one is the Divine as perfectly as he can be. But to reconstruct the Divine, all the Divine is necessary ...
... comes back like this ( a gesture of descent ). There! Sri Aurobindo writes here: "And yet there is not only in him [the seeker] or before him this eternal self-aware Existence, this spiritual Consciousness, this infinity of self-illumined Force, this timeless and endless Beatitude. There is too, constant also to his experience, this universe in measurable Space and Time, some kind perhaps of ...
... present moment, and the myriads and myriads of years there will be after this present moment, and what importance this little event has in relation to all that—there is no need to enter a spiritual consciousness or anything else, simply enter into relation with space and time, with all that is before, all that is after and all that is happening at the same time—if one is not an idiot, immediately he ...
... it than you? What are you going to teach them? To be insincere, to perform hollow ceremonies instead of following a profound philosophy and a detachment from life which lead them to a more spiritual consciousness?... I don't think it's a very good thing you are going to do." Then he felt so suffocated, the poor man; he said to me, "Eh, I fear I can't be convinced by your words!" "Oh!" I said, ...
... real genius—a musician or artist or writer of genius—who has fully mastered his instrument, who can use it to produce works that express the utmost human possibility, if you add to this a spiritual consciousness, the supramental force, then you will have something truly divine. Page 94 And this is precisely the key to the effort Sri Aurobindo wanted us to make. And your body, if you ...
... realises it in one's being, pain loses its justification and suffering disappears. It is an all-powerful remedy, not only in the deeper parts of the being, in the soul, in Page 42 the spiritual consciousness, but also in life and in the body. There is no illness, no disorder which can resist the discovery of this secret and the putting of it into practice, not only in the higher parts of the ...
... have just told you: at his highest stage, man begins to be altogether independent of Nature—"altogether" is an exaggeration: he can become altogether independent. A man who has realised the spiritual consciousness in himself, who has a direct relation with the divine Origin is literally independent of Nature, of the force of Nature. ( It begins to rain. ) Ah! That is to cool down our minds! ( Laughter ...
... higher peace, force, light, knowledge, purity, Ananda, etc. which belong to any of the higher planes" 10 of mind above the ordinary mind. Supramental transformation "is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness, dynamic as well as static, in every part of the being down to the subconscient"; 11 some of the ultimate results of the supramental transformation include "the release from subconscient ignorance ...
... altogether intolerable. It is usually paid for very dearly—outer success. (Mother's voice becomes extremely deep.) One must be very great, very pure, have a very high and very disinterested spiritual consciousness in order to be successful without being affected by it. Nothing is more difficult than being successful. This, indeed, is the true test of life ! When you do not succeed, quite naturally ...
... luminosity of its indwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its joy of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy. This would be the total perfection of the spiritualised body. Sri Aurobindo The One Thing Essential The one thing essential ...
... lowers the consciousness, encourages desires and excites the passions, runs counter to the true goal of music and ought to be avoided. It is not a question of name but of inspiration—and the spiritual consciousness alone can be the judge there. 22 July 1967 Page 240 ( Concerning a medieval love song ) The words are ridiculous and even in bad taste. Generally, when we studied a song ...
... return to the unmanifest. So one can say that the psychic life is immortal life, endless time, limitless space, ever-progressive change, unbroken continuity in the universe of forms. The spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, means to live the infinite and the eternal, to be projected beyond all creation, beyond time and space. To Page 35 become conscious of your psychic being and ...
... nations. The open spaces between the four pillars of the pavilion are covered by entwining creepers with alternating red and white lotuses. The red and the white lotuses represent the twin spiritual Consciousness guiding the terrestrial evolution. At the four corners of the pavilion stand four guarding lions symbolising spiritual Powers. It is hoped that the State of Pondicherry will materialise ...
... are like, it's dreadful! (long silence) There is a psychological viewpoint: there is something very interesting, which is that material needs diminish in proportion to the spiritual consciousness. Not (as Sri Aurobindo said) through asceticism, but rather because the attention, the concentration of the being shifts fields.... One can very well imagine Page 190 that only ...
... Spirit. As for the question about the ethical life Page 18 and the need to realise God, it depends on what is meant by fulfilment of the objects of life. If an entry into the spiritual consciousness is part of it, then mere morality will not give it to you. * There are two aspects of religion, true religion and religionism. True religion is spiritual religion, that which ...
... basis, it must be founded on a spiritual basis. This does not mean that the spiritual man must be immoral—as if there were no other law of conduct than the moral. The law of action of the spiritual consciousness is higher not lower than the moral,—it is founded on union with the Divine and living in the Divine Consciousness and its action is founded on obedience to the Divine Will." 2 September ...
... 16 July 1958 " Religion's real business is to prepare man's mind, life and bodily existence for the spiritual consciousness to take it up; it has to lead him to that point where the inner spiritual light begins fully to emerge. It is at this point that religion must learn to subordinate itself, not to insist on ...
... Vasudeva is all this— Vasudevah sarvamiti —then you have the universal delight. The flow of that delight precipitates and courses even through the body. When you are in such a state, full of the spiritual consciousness, you can lead a married life, a life in the world. In all your works you find the expression of God's delight. So far I have been transforming all the objects and perceptions of the mind and ...
... important is to get rid of that division. And they all have it in their minds—each and everyone of them! The division between living a spiritual life or living the ordinary life, having a spiritual consciousness or having an ordinary consciousness—there is only ONE consciousness! In most people it's three-quarters asleep and distorted; in many it's still quite distorted. But what's necessary is ...
... exultant smile name Satyavan... The Supreme accedes to her prayer and sends the two of them back to the travail of Time, making them his instru- Page 67 merits of the spiritual consciousness. She especially is marked out: O Sun-word, thou shalt raise the"earth-soul to Light.... Awakened from the mortal's ignorance Men shall be lit with the Eternal's ray.... ...
... things in man's being are foreign to his intelligence, for it is in the light of the poetic intelligence that he works." Page 1 "I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual consciousness where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although ...
... creative of the descending splendours? Is perfection possible if the mind's idea and experience be the last word on matter and no evaluation be made of the material in terms of a supreme spiritual Consciousness? My impression of you is of a man of great mental plasticity and breadth, a man capable of meeting the challenge of many unknown directions: there is no blind rigidity in you to check ...
... a higher artistic consciousness. With love and blessings The Mother has stated about the "New Birth": What is called 'New Birth' is the birth into the spiritual life, into the spiritual consciousness: it is to carry in oneself something of the Spirit which, through the individual soul, can begin to govern the life and be the master of one's existence. In the supramental world it is the ...
... whenever it was necessary, the Mother would not fail to explain to me the colours and forms, etc, in detail. This was the perfect harmony and happy interchange with our inner beings and the spiritual consciousness. I learned not only apparent things but the true inner things. ...
... advice you, is not to judge spiritual ii&ma. personalities and spirituality from your mental standpoint Spiritual is a higher consciousness than mental which is almost ignorant compared with spiritual consciousness which is the consciousness of truth. So., to judge Sri Krishna and Sri Rama from your ignorant and mental consciousness will not be of any meaning. It will be senseless, and land one in ...
... is like a wave in the ocean of existence. This is shown by the fact that neither his creativity nor his transcendence of the 'given' are realizations of his individually located will. His spiritual consciousness is something that happens to him rather than something produced by his specific will. Only his ego separates him from the rest. But even if his ego is rightly perceived his act of constant ...
... that without "something" deeply and lastingly settled in me, I can't do anything. I don't know what is that something or how to get it, so I lament. It is the wideness of the higher or spiritual consciousness with its vast peace, light, knowledge, force, Ananda. You say my mind obstructs, whereas I thought it is the vital hankering that hinders. Your mind obstructs with its perpetual "I ...
... PURANI: Lok na Pok! NIRODBARAN: Then we shalln't know all that you know? SRI AUROBINDO: Well, realise first what I have written. NIRODBARAN: Isn't it possible for those who live in a spiritual consciousness to know about the realisations of other Yogis? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. If one establishes a special contact, it is possible. PURANI: Vivekananda, in his writings, stresses the realisation ...
... heart—is it an experience of an ascent through the heart? SRI AUROBINDO: I don't remember well. In her case it wouldn't be through the mind. But all the same it is a major ascent into the spiritual consciousness. SATYENDRA: I had also the experience of ascent through the Muladhara Chakra before doing any Yoga. SRI AUROBINDO: That is the physical consciousness ascending. NIRODBARAN: It would ...
... About the "push" from outside that I experienced, I don't understand how it could rush in two opposite directions simultaneously - towards the deep psychic centre as well as towards the higher spiritual consciousness. I do not see what there is in it that cannot be understood. Why should not one thing go into two separate parts? There is no uncrossable wall between different parts. Peace or any ...
... recognised; indeed it is round that centre that society can best be reformed and remade. And this can only be done by a spiritual outlook. For, the true individual is founded in the spirit, the spiritual consciousness; so long as man is limited to his body, life and mind, and his functions are solely determined by his earthly nature, so long he must needs be taken as a mere element in the mass, the cosmic ...
... the poise and balance of the system may be maintained. It is precisely strong nuclei that are needed (even, perhaps, one strong nucleus is sufficient) where the single and integrated spiritual consciousness is an accomplished and established fact: that acts inevitably as a solvent drawing in and assimilating or transforming and re-creating as much, of the surroundings as its own degree and nature ...
... conscious mind and the external senses, Japanese art gives expression to experiences that one has through the subtler touches of the nerves and the sensibility, and Indian art proceeds through a spiritual consciousness and records experiences of the soul. The frontal view of reality lays its stress upon the display of the form of things, their contour, their aspect in mass and volume and dimension; ...
... personality. The second stage is the reorganisation and individualisation of the material sheath itself. The very cells of the body are impregnated with the radiant substance of the supreme spiritual consciousness; they live the life of the spiritual individual, the personal divine embodied in the individual. When the whole Page 289 process is gone through and the work clone, the ...
... out of it, upwards from the life of the world to the life of the Spirit. But the soul, the true spiritual being in the individual, is not and cannot be an isolated entity; the nature of the spiritual consciousness is first transcendence, no doubt, transcendence of the merely temporal and ephemeral, but it is also universalisation, that is to say, the cosmic realisation that has its classic expression ...
... associations, we are not yet ready for the conscious adventure of Yoga. For no yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. There are many ways by which the individual is awakened strongly to the necessity of a larger spiritual existence. As Sri Aurobindo points out: The soul ...
... where the heightened and intensified spiritual experiences are in the nature of things sought. This almost absolute incompatibility of our waking mentality with the highest ranges of spiritual consciousness is strikingly brought out in the following very interesting account of Sri Ramakrishna's repeated failures to remain physically awake on the summits of realisation. Swami Saradananda, one ...
... follow. Sri Aurobindo probed the problems of life to their utmost depths and was not .content to deal with them superficially from the standpoint of mere intellect or even of the ordinary spiritual consciousness which found a solution for all the malaise of earth life in a spiritual liberation of the soul alone while its instruments, the body, mind and life remained unchanged and tied to an ignorant ...
... luminosity of its indwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its joy of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy. This would be the total perfection of the spiritualised body." 2 But one further question arises here: The evolutionary process upon the earth ...
... Aurobindo's query was justifiable. For Dilip Kumar, a close friend of Nirodbaran, could not at first believe that Sri Aurobindo - with all the widening and heightening and deepening of his spiritual consciousness - could still retain his mood of humour. Hence was his sense of happy relief and rapture when he started receiving from his Guru his first letters laved with the balm of humour. He has given ...
... and feeling, a life expressing the spiritual Truth would find through them its own natural forms of becoming." (The Life Divine, pp. 1031-32) Thus, unity will be the basis of such a spiritual consciousness, Page 27 mutuality the natural result of its direct awareness of oneness in diversity, and harmony the inevitable manifestation of the working of its force: "Unity, mutuality and ...
... understand what this dual purpose meant in actual practice, we have to remember that one of the cardinal points of Sri Aurobindo's teaching is that there are more than one overhead planes of spiritual consciousness above the ordinarily functioning mental, and it is possible through yogic sadhana to bring these superconscient planes down to illumine and heighten our everyday life; and that, in the depths ...
... question is: Has our utility been over? Were we meant to play the role of a 'pilot project' alone? Cannot our Ashram prove itself worthy of embodying Sri Aurobindo's ideal of a new kind of spiritual consciousness and life? We say, why not? But a mere declaration or a pious wish will not bring us nearer to our goal. For that the Ashramites have to wake up in time and seek honestly to arrest a few negative ...
... words of Sri Aurobindo: "The very first necessity for spiritual perfection is a perfect equality." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 671) "Equality is the chief support of the true spiritual consciousness..." (Letters on Yoga, p. 661) Lord Krishna, the great proponent of spiritual synthesis, went so far as to define 'Yoga' as the 'attainment of equality', 'samatvam yoga ucyate' ...
... conscious of the psychological complexities and how the tangles of instincts, desires, emotions, will-force, powers of thought, and imagination and the powers of aesthetic, ethical and spiritual consciousness can be understood, disentangled and yet controlled, mastered and harmonised. This perhaps is the most important part of education for character development. Here we have to focus upon the ...
... consciousness? - you may say. But say it again then, Sir! Sri Aurobindo: Of course, social consciousness - according to S.C., it is certainly rude not to go. What it may be from another S.C. (spiritual consciousness), is another matter. 20 Page 331 (ii)NB: If one has a double attachment, would it not be an insincerity? Sri Aurobindo: It depends on the ideal. If it were a matter of ...
... the physical world. In what I am trying to do, the spiritual realisation is the first necessity, but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in men, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. ... Discipline is necessary for the overcoming of the ego and the mental preferences and the rajasic vital nature, as a help to it at any rate. ... While ...
... ecstatic Beyond — Life alone, is the field of our Yoga. The transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life must be its central purpose." (The Synthesis of Yoga, Cent Ed., p. 82) Now ...
... already indicated in one of our preceding chapters that fearlessness and an entire and uncalculating faith and confidence in the Divine's working are the very sine qua non of a genuine spiritual consciousness. But these virtues cannot be acquired if self-love is not banished from the sadhaka' s heart. On the other and, when one achieves a total conquest over this disabling element of self-love ...
... are absolute taboos to the sadhaka of the Integral Yoga. Indeed, any attachment whatsoever to anyone or anything in the world acts as a stumbling block to the building up of a veritable spiritual consciousness. And when we say "any attachment" this 'any' is very much rigorous in its comprehensiveness. There is no scope for any self-deception in this regard. For there is no such thing as a permissible ...
... Page 66 mukham). (Isha Upanishad, 15) In order to seize the truth in its unalloyed and unmitigated Glory, we have to make a last supreme ascent in the climb of our spiritual consciousness and break through the shining shield of Overmind into the realm of the supramental Gnosis. But will our power of sight be able to follow the climb of our consciousness into the four-rung zone ...
... become conscious of the psychological complexities and how the tangles of instincts, desires, emotions, will force, powers of thought and imagination and the powers of aesthetic, ethical and spiritual consciousness can be understood, disentangled and yet controlled, mastered and harmonised. This is perhaps the most important part of education for character development. Here we have to focus upon the processes ...
... that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge." (Ibid., pp. 132-33) Page 104 ...
... the luminosity of its indwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its joy of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy. This would be the total perfection of the spiritualised body". The message of the perfection of the body can be looked upon as an open invitation to ...
... Monism although it places in the One his eternal supreme Prakriti manifested in the form of the Jiva and lays a great stress on dwelling in God rather than dissolution as the supreme state of spiritual consciousness. It avoids every rigid determinism as would injure its universal comprehensiveness. 7 Page 28 Sri Aurobindo, in a brief summary statement, describes the ultimate Reality as ...
... Monism although it places in the One his eternal supreme Prakriti manifested in the form of the Jiva and lays most stress on dwelling in God rather than dissolution as the supreme state of spiritual consciousness; nor is it Sankhya although it explains the created world by the double principle Page 93 of Purusha and Prakriti; nor is it Vaishnava Theism although it presents to us Krishna ...
... soul-personality 63 spirit 15,29,30,36,37,65,66,81, 95, 96, 97, 98; liberation of 22 spirit-born conceptual knowledge 67; see also knowledge spiritual change 15 spiritual consciousness 29, 96 spiritual evolution 34; see also evolution spiritual liberation 22, 30; see also mukti, nirv ā na spiritual transformation 34; the process of 33 spiritualisation ...
... and it can be said that the spirituality of the Veda and the Upanishads was already synthetic and integral. An exclusive spirituality emphasises and remains confined only to one state of spiritual consciousness, — such as Page 69 that of eternal Silence or of eternal Joy, or of dynamic Power, to either divine Personality or to divine Impersonality. It emphasises only one method of approach ...
... growth and maintenance of the unity of people, lokasangraha. Finally, therefore, the ultimate message of the Gita is to rise to a Page 152 higher level of consciousness, to the spiritual consciousness where universal knowledge and universal will are identical; the consciousness of the individual should be so liberated from the deliverances of conflicting standards of actions or dharmas that ...
... Divine Force, for there is only one force acting in the world, but it acts according to the nature of the instrument. Yogic Force is different from others because it is a special power of the spiritual consciousness. Myself: It may not be Sri Aurobindo's Force, but how can I exclude the possibility of Divine Force behind? Because one is an atheist, it doesn't mean the Divine is undivine against him ...
... Mother. The spiritual value and result come afterwards when the consciousness in the vital opens upward. So with the mental work. It is a preparation. If you cannot yet do it with the true spiritual consciousness, it, the work as well as the mental occupation, must be done with the right mental or vital will in it. The Mother says in her "Prayers and Meditations" that experience is willed by 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 be satisfied with describing what happens in their sadhana, and have no demands ...
... "ordinary life and "spiritual" life is an outdated antiquity. All human beings have it in their minds, the division between leading a spiritual life and leading an ordinary life, having a spiritual consciousness and an ordinary consciousness - it is not true, there is only one consciousness. If an opposition is still needed, we can have the opposition between truth and falsehood. For in all things ...
... appear and then the animals; next mind, first in the animal, and then man appears. What is meant by the Divine Consciousness? By the Divine Consciousness we mean the spiritual consciousness to which the Divine alone exists, because all is the Divine and by which one passes beyond the ignorance and the lower nature into unity with the Divine and the Divine Nature. Here ...
... ss, or some immanence there, of the breath and light of a Superior World, India has developed and possesses, already prepared, a magnetic field, a Page 118 luminous zone of spiritual consciousness; and to enter into it the Indian has only to turn aside, to go round a corner, to take one step forward. However thick and hard the crust of the Ignorance may lie upon the Indian soul, once ...
... the poise and balance of the system may be maintained. It is precisely strong nuclei that are needed (even, perhaps, one strong nucleus is sufficient) where the single and integrated spiritual consciousness is an accomplished and established fact: that acts inevitably as a solvent drawing in and assimilating or transforming and re-creating as much of the surroundings as its own degree and nature ...
... continent of all, collectively and severally, and of which all are vari6us formations and expressions on various levels and degrees. This is the knowledge and experience given by the supreme spiritual consciousness. Page 240 ...
... growth of consciousness, its uplifting and expansion, freeing it from the limitations of the ignorant egoistic movements, pressing it forward to the domains of higher illuminations, towards spiritual consciousness and soul-knowledge, towards communion with the Divine, the cosmic and the transcendent Reality. That is the real work and labour. Bodily suffering is nothing: it is neither a sign nor a test ...
... s, outside it is compassion incarnate. 3. luminous beings = illumined senses. 4. sleepless = conscious, not unconscious, vigilant. dream = unreality,' from the spiritual consciousness. Page 265 XIV Oh! the boat plies between Ganga and Yamuna. The Sea-elephant lies there plunged, he ferries ...
... similar truth. The Divine takes a body for another—occult—reason also. It is this: Matter or terrestrial life cannot be changed—changed radically, that is to say, transformed— by the pure spiritual consciousness alone, lying above or within; also it is not sufficient to bring about only that much of change in terrestrial life which can be effected by the mere spiritual force acting in a general way ...
... In this global reconstitution of the earth life, Sri Aurobindo gives India a great role—a mighty destiny and a heavy responsibility. For he Considers India as the repository of the spiritual consciousness, the Guardian of Page 73 Truth, as the Veda says, and in the new age of world unification her national being will act as the spearhead breaking into the old-world formations ...
... similar truth. The Divine takes a body for another—occult—reason also. It is this: Matter or terrestrial life cannot be changed—changed radically, that is to say, transformed—by the pure spiritual consciousness alone, lying above or within; also it is not sufficient to bring about only that much of change in terrestrial life which can be effected by the mere spiritual force acting in a general way ...
... that dwells secreted in the hearth of the soul. They manifest as aspirations that flame up from the three fundamental levels of our being, the body, the life and the mind. For although the spiritual consciousness is the natural element of the soul and is gained in and through the soul, yet, in order that man may take possession of it and dwell in it consciously, in order that the soul's empire may be ...
... In this global reconstitution of the earth life, Sri Aurobindo gives India a great role – a mighty destiny and a heavy responsibility. For he considers India as the repository of the spiritual consciousness, the Guardian of Truth, as the Veda says, and in the new age of world unification her national being will act as the spearhead breaking into the old-world formations and signalling the shape ...
... where there is the utmost, the total utilisation of the whole energy. This supreme peak of consciousness that is absolute energy Sri Aurobindo names the Supermind. But on lesser levels too the spiritual consciousness is dynamic and effective – pragmatic in a way that the ordinary, limited, externally pragmatic consciousness cannot hope to be. Sometimes it is urged that in the worldly affairs we should ...
... Civilisation really means preparation of the instrument: the human instrument that is to express the Divine. The purpose of creation, we have often said, is the establishment of the highest spiritual consciousness in the embodied life on earth. The embodied life means man's body and life and mind; individually and socially these constitute the instrument through which the higher light is to manifest ...
... integrality, and of the supramental consciousness and power in its plenitude. The discoveries made by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in regard to these three realms of psychic consciousness, spiritual consciousness and supramental consciousness confirmed in many ways what was already discovered and applied in the past traditions of religion, occultism, philosophy and yoga, both specialized and synthetic ...
... Aurobindo states, "that will rule the existence with an entire knowledge and power and include in its rule the functioning and action of the body. The body will be turned by the power of the spiritual consciousness into a true and fit and perfectly responsive instrument of the Spirit." 58 But apart from the emergence of the divine life in the divine body and apart from the integral yoga being a ...
... physical-vital; all these distinctions are necessary because the aim of total transformation implies detailed working in every nook and corner of our nature so that the psychic consciousness, spiritual consciousness and the supramental consciousness can effectuate, gradually and systematically, by the power of contagion, their influence and their descent in all parts of the being right up to the inconscient ...
... recovery of that special kind of scientific spirit that was sustained by high intellectual and philosophical culture and by the aspiration and power of climbing the peaks of higher levels of spiritual consciousness; and by knocking off Sanskrit from the mainstream of education, we have been robbed of the power to recover our true cultural heritage and of our power of assimilation, creativity and synthesis ...
... governments are like, it's dreadful! (long silence) There is a psychological viewpoint: there is something very interesting, which is that material needs diminish in proportion to the spiritual consciousness. Not (as Sri Aurobindo said) through asceticism, but rather because the attention, the concentration of the being shifts fields.... One can very well imagine that only material things please ...
... taking into account the treasurers of the past and by liberating or developing new knowledge, even by hewing new paths we are called upon to find original solutions to build up a new centre of spiritual consciousness which can manifest that consciousness potently in all fields of activity, scientific, philosophical, cultural, social, economic, political. VII Significance of the Veda is not confined ...
... associations, we are not yet ready for the conscious adventure of Yoga. For, no yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. There are many ways by which the individual is awakened strongly to the necessity of a larger spiritual existence. As Sri Aurobindo points out: 'The soul ...
... me the meaning of humility, what we call Divine Humility. Page 501 As I was saying, this capacity for an entire rejection of the past has been one of the powers of her spiritual consciousness and realisation. It is not an easy thing for a human being to wash himself clean of all his past acquisitions, be it intellectual knowledge or the habits of the vital, not to speak of the body's ...
... and sweet to the ear. But, the deep spiritual realisation or the highest truth which these words pretend to convey is but happy imagination and pleasant fancy. The true realisation of the spiritual consciousness is quite a different thing. Liberation? Where will ye find liberation, Where does it abide? The Lord Himself has donned the bondage of creation, And is enchained with all ...
... and control of the functions and powers that work from behind the physical mind. From here there is the ascent to the fourth step while still keeping behind the veil, on to the gates of the spiritual consciousness, crossing beyond the Page 149 limits of our ordinary state. Already, as we reached the level of the life-force, the Rishi had something new to say: one who gained entry ...
... greater difficulty than before; it will need far greater Tapasya now. For as long as Mother was in her body, she made things easy for us. But it is no more so. For those who really want a spiritual consciousness, a spiritual mode of life, those who truly want to prepare themselves for greater ends, well, they have to take a serious look at things. For them it is a sadhana, a true endeavour, a conscious ...
... that centre that society can best be reformed and remade. And this can only be done by a spiritual Page 120 outlook. For, the true individual is founded in the spirit, the spiritual consciousness; so long as man is limited to his body, life and mind, and his functions are solely determined by his earthly nature, so long he must needs be taken as a mere element in the mass, the cosmic ...
... of the system may be maintained. Page 86 It is precisely strong nuclei that are needed ( even, perhaps, one strong nucleus is sufficient ) where the single and integrated spiritual consciousness is an accomplished and established fact: that acts inevitably as a solvent drawing in and assimilating or transforming and re-creating as much of the surroundings as its own degree and nature ...
... quantity but a power which passes to higher and higher levels of possibility until it reaches supreme consummations of spiritual existence fulfilling: supermind as supermind fulfils the ranges of spiritual consciousness that are pushing towards it from the human or mental level. In this progression the body also may reach a more perfect form and a higher range of its expressive powers, become a more and more ...
... uses life and body. It is an understanding faith in this conception of existence... and it is the aspiration to break out in the end from this mind bound to life and matter into a greater spiritual consciousness that is the innermost sense of Indian Culture. "19 "The Indian believes that the ultimate truths are truths of the Spirit and that truths of the Spirit ______________________________ ...
... one term of it, and universal mental consciousness has a double strain of knowledge and ignorance. When you speak of the Universal Consciousness it is not as if you were dealing with highest spiritual Consciousness: You are dealing with the universal consciousness of which mind is the dominating Page 203 instrument. But in that case, universal consciouness itself is not perfect. It has ...
... become a large spiritual institution giving Page 13 shelter to men and women and children of all ages and having its various establishments where to mould them into a new spiritual consciousness according to Sri Aurobindo's vision. When, after bringing down the Supramental Consciousness, he left his body in 1950, the Mother "continued to live in order to do his work which is : By serving ...
... idea which would not trouble the vast Cosmic Spirit whose consciousness and life are everywhere in the slime and dust as much as the human intelligence. For us it is the development of the spiritual consciousness in the human body that matters.'¹ (A) SOME ERRORS CORRECTED " St. Augustine was a man of God and a great saint, but great saints are not always, or often, great ...
... living. It was mainly subconscious in its operations. It was graceless and full of animal desire. It seemed to have forgotten its original glory and felicity. Unable to realise fully its spiritual consciousness; it began to live in a pigmy world of its own which seemed to be a dumb confine of life and matter. It was subject to dull sensations and animal instincts. To Aswapathy this lower aspect ...
... It is like a bridge for the human consciousness to pass from Nature to the Spirit. It should be primarily concerned with the preparation of "man’s mind, life and bodily existence for the spiritual consciousness to take it up; it has to lead him to that point where the inner spiritual light begins fully to emerge.”² If religion is to accomplish its real mission, it must start with a double movement ...
... it up the very next moment with a smile”¹ These words transport us from the stale and stuffy atmosphere of traditional asceticism into the serene freedom and amplitude of the true spiritual consciousness. No longer do we take our stand upon the vital or mental will injuring and impairing the manifoldness and elasticity of our nature, but upon the ¹ Words of the Mother. Page ...
... What I Have Learnt From The Mother Organisation On Spiritual Basis To organise on a spiritual basis you must be in constant contact with the Spiritual Consciousness. Do not forget that the quality of work one does depends on the quality of consciousness one lives. Generally people live in a very ordinary consciousness: the consciousness of mind, life ...
... would turn to and progress towards the Divine. Disciple : How is the ego removed? Sri Aurobindo : Ego is removed by the realization of the Spirit; that is, by attaining to the spiritual consciousness Above, which is independent of Nature, which is self-existent. That Spirit is One in all. Realization of that Page 102 removes the ego, because then one identifies himself ...
... gives us the transcendental element in Savitri, for the Divine Savitri is the word that rises from the transcendental stillness; the next two lines render that element into the poise of the spiritual consciousness; this last line brings the same thing down to the outward character and temperament in life." (ibid, pp. 766-7). 26. ibid., p. 21. Cf. Hamlet: To be, or not to be that is the ...
... goes through these three stages. So transformation cannot be attained by human effort alone. Man cannot say, "I will transform myself into the Divine." It is not possible. He must open to the spiritual consciousness, the Divine consciousness and allow it to transform him. The Divine consciousness will be able to transform because perfection is already present in it. It has not to attain perfection. Just ...
... take a form – like a stream for instance – of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely on whatever object one chooses. This is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. But there is also such a thing as a willed use of any subtle force – it may be spiritual, mental or vital – to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves ...
... quietude or Ananda, but leave the external nature and surface active movements unchanged, either thinking them of no importance or justifying them under the plea that there is the psychic or spiritual consciousness behind them. I asked you to look for the cause of the abatement of energy or zeal ( utsâha ), because it is evident that there must be some resistance somewhere, otherwise there would not ...
... if invaded by spiritual currents from all directions. According to K.S. Venkataraman the Mother later told Duraiswami Aiyar: "He [Nayana] is the one man who immediately entered into my spiritual Consciousness and stuck to it to the end." 6 In his second interview with the Mother on 19 August, which lasted over forty-five minutes, Ganapati Muni recognised in the Mother the goddess Sakambari ...
... nations. The open spaces between the four pillars of the pavilion are covered by entwining creepers with alternating red and white lotuses. The red and the white lotuses represent the twin spiritual Consciousness guiding the terrestrial evolution. At the four corners of the pavilion stand four guarding lions symbolising spiritual Powers. 20 The Mother hoped that taking its cue from this global ...
... lasting peace. He also saw that this tranquillity, was not merely a static condition, but a dynamic power which helped the toiling world by its silent working. He saw from the height of his spiritual consciousness a new self-creation "A transfiguration in the mystic depths, A happier cosmic working could begin Page 154 And fashion the world-shape in him anew, God found ...
... This was how she set an example of humility, what we call Divine Humility. "As I was saying, this capacity for an entire annulment of the past has been one of the special powers of her spiritual consciousness and sadhana. It is not an easy thing for a human being to strip himself naked of all his past acquisitions, whether they are intellectual knowledge or the traits and tendencies of the vital ...
... to choose action by reference to personal needs and standards, but in obedience to the dictates of the living highest Truth above us. Next, as soon as we are sufficiently founded in the spiritual consciousness, not to act any longer by our separate will or movement, but more and more to allow action to happen and develop under the impulsion and guidance of a divine Will that surpasses Page ...
... physical and mental. It is a dream which runs counter to the ideal of ancient culture, which was to raise the physical being of man, by progressive stages, towards the glories of the infinite spiritual consciousness, delivering him more and more from the ignorance and obscurity of his gross mind, and make him realise the unity and harmony of all in the eternal omnipresence of Spirit. The ancient endeavour ...
... revolutionary redemption—and that can only be Yoga. "All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner .being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and Page 12 followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual ...
... attained by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sâdhanâ."¹ As I have already said, the work of transformation, which is a radical and integral operation, is beyond the capacity of any spiritual consciousness, short of the supramental. A mere ascent to the Supermind will not transform our nature, the all-powerful Light-Force of the Supermind must come down and penetrate as far down as the subconscient ...
... than you? What are you going to teach them ? To be insincere ? To perform hollow ceremonies instead of following a profound philosophy and a detachment from life which lead them to a more spiritual consciousness? I don't think you are going to do a very good thing.' "Then he was so flabbergasted, the poor man, that he said to me, 'Eh, I am afraid I can't be convinced by your words!' "'Oh ...
... He does it and still less why He does it. To know something of the Divine, one has to rise above thought and enter into the psychic consciousness, the consciousness of the soul, or into the spiritual consciousness. Those who have had the experience have always said that the difficulties and sufferings of the path are not real, but a creation of human ignorance, and that as soon as one gets out of ...
... mutability of Nature. This action in the world is not inconsistent with living in Brahman, it is rather its inevitable condition and outward result because the Brahman in whom we find Nirvana, the spiritual consciousness in which we lose the separative ego-consciousness, is not only within us but within all these existences, exists not only above and apart from all these universal happenings, but pervades them ...
... Nature becomes aware of itself by an upward evolution of each instrument, but in the inverse order to that which we have stated, matter first, then sensation, then mind, next reason, last spiritual consciousness. Reason, which is at first only preoccupied with the workings of Nature, may then detect their ultimate character, may see them only as a play of the three gunas in which the soul is entangled ...
... feel that the powers you use are your own, you will not miss the Divine support" [ p. 26 ]. I am unable to follow the last line. Will my lord explain it to me? It means that in the full spiritual consciousness the sense of separate existence and my and mine disappear. All depends on the Divine and exists only by the Divine. The ordinary consciousness does not feel or miss this Divine support because ...
... The sunlight falls just behind the Mother's body. What does it signify? Rocks = the physical (most material) being. An opening in the material making room for the formation of the spiritual consciousness there. Stone image of Shiva = the realisation of the silent Self or Brahman there (peace, silence, wideness of the Infinite, purity of the witness Purusha). Out of this silence emerges ...
... work is small, silent, shut off from the outside world and its circum stances, of value only as a field for spiritual self-culture. If one is governed by the sole spiritual motive and has the spiritual consciousness, one can take joy and interest in this work. Or if, in spite of his human shortcomings, the worker is mainly bent on spiritual progress and self-perfection, then also he can take interest in ...
... from higher planes—probably supramental. But he has the root experience already in the descent of the Light in the state of blankness. The Light is the Divine Light from the plane of spiritual consciousness above. The supramental comes only at the end of a long sadhana. 1 February 1938 But who is he? New persons are, as far as possible, refused for November—unknown persons not recommended ...
... intolerable. It is usually paid for very dearly—outer success. ( Mother's voice becomes extremely deep. ) One must be very great, very pure, have a very high and very disinterested spiritual consciousness in order to be successful without being affected by it. Nothing is more difficult than being successful. This, indeed, is the true test of life ! When you do not succeed, quite naturally ...
... descent of Light and Power." 4 Does this show that the psychisation of the sadhaks is advancing? Yes, there has been some progress in that respect and all progress in the psychic or spiritual consciousness of the sadhaks makes the descent more easy. But the main cause is that the Overmind principle which is the immediate secret support of the present earth-nature with all its limitations is more ...
... always made that quite clear—that indulgence of desire is no more part of this Yoga than it is of Sannyasa. One must be able to use and handle physical things and physical life, but from the spiritual consciousness, not from the level of the vital ego. 27 November 1935 It is surprising that you should miss, that so many here should miss the point that to be so much troubled about a trifling want ...
... mistake. Even the word supermind (which I invented) has been taken up by several Page 142 people (writers in the Prabuddha Bharata and elsewhere) and applied generally to the spiritual consciousness. I see no reason to doubt that X saw things in vision (hundreds of people do) or had experiences. 7 July 1936 Supermind and Overmind Is it true that when you write "must", it is ...
... but they do not establish the general proposition as an absolute rule. A tendency such as X 's to desire or welcome or accept death as a release could have a force because of her advanced spiritual consciousness which it would not have in ordinary people. On the other side there can be an opposite use and result of the Yogic consciousness: illness can be repelled from one's own body or cured, even ...
... realisations in their inner consciousness perfect in their nature? It does not look like it to me. I am unable to believe in absolute generalisations in this field, because the development of spiritual consciousness is an exceedingly vast and complex affair in which all sorts of things can happen and one might almost say that for each man it is different according to his nature and that the one thing that ...
... moment they could bring about a general catastrophe, a sort of total destruction which would prevent the progress of Nature. That presence, that spiritual light—which could almost be called a spiritual consciousness—is within each being and all things, and because of it, in spite of all discordance, all passion, all violence, there is a minimum of general harmony which allows Nature's work to be accomplished ...
... to the unmanifest. So one can say that the psychic life is the life immortal, endless time, limitless space, ever progressive change, unbroken continuity in the world of forms. The spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, means to live the infinite and eternal, to throw oneself outside all creation, beyond time Page 127 and space. To become fully aware of your psychic being ...
... Lights on Yoga Glossary ādh ā ra (Adhar): Vessel, receptacle - the system of mind, life and body considered as a receptacle of the spiritual consciousness and force. advaita (Adwaita): Monism, monistic. advaita ved ā nta (Adwaita Vedanta): The monistic school of Vedanta. ājnā cakra: Will centre - see cakra. anāhata: See ...
... is the first of two transformations necessary — if you have the psychic transformation it facilitates immensely the other, i.e., the transformation of the ordinary human into the higher spiritual consciousness — otherwise one is likely to have either a slow and dull or exciting but perilous journey.... 115 * Everything is dangerous in the sadhana or can be, except the psychic change ...
... But again our will and action can often annul or modify even the past Karma, it is only certain strong effects, called utkaṭa karma, that are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions ...
... the consciousness, encourages desires and excites the passions, runs counter to the true goal of music and ought to be avoided. It is not a question of name but of inspiration and the spiritual consciousness alone can be the judge there. 22 July 1967 Page 118 POETRY Poetry is sensuality of the spirit. * For me true poetry is beyond all philosophy and beyond ...
... strictly human and egoistic is a spiritual tendency. This is a word used to season every dish." 11 The distinction between the inner or supraphysical consciousness and the higher or spiritual consciousness is one of the most valuable aspects of yogic psychology for promoting the self-understanding of the spiritual seeker. Self-understanding must lead to self-mastery. As the Mother, explaining ...
... of the Inconscience, must have an effect and a significance. Its first effect has been the liberation of life and mind out of Matter; its last effect has been to assist the emergence of a spiritual consciousness, a spiritual will and spiritual sense of existence in the terrestrial being so that he is no longer solely preoccupied with his outermost life or with that and mental pursuits and interests ...
... the sacrifice is of the utmost importance; for this inmost being alone can bring with it the full power of the spirit in the act, the soul in the symbol. It alone can assure, even while the spiritual consciousness is incomplete, the perennial freshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol and prevent it from being a dead form or a corrupted and corrupting magic; it alone can preserve for the act its ...
... d ecstatic Beyond—Life alone, is the field of our Yoga. The transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life must be its central purpose. " Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol ...
... superficial in his outlook, ignorant of his own self and the forces that drive and use him.... Only a spiritual change, an evolution of his being from the superficial mental towards the deeper spiritual consciousness, can make a real and effective difference. To discover the spiritual being in himself is the main business of the spiritual man and to help others towards the same evolution is his real service ...
... into a new world, Page 429 the spirit will become the master and govern Nature in a clear and visible way. What is called "new birth" is the birth into the spiritual life, the spiritual consciousness; it is to carry in oneself something of the spirit which, individually, through the soul, can begin to rule the life and be the master of existence. But in the supramental world, the spirit ...
... envelops, penetrates, enters into its object, discovers itself in the object, is Page 83 aware in it of something that is not mind or life or body. There is, then, evidently a spiritual consciousness which is other than the mental, and it testifies to the existence of a spiritual being in us which is other than our surface mental personality. But at first this consciousness may confine ...
... sciousness-Bliss). These superconscient gradations of consciousness are here briefly described in Sri Aurobindo's words. Higher Mind "I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual consciousness where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although ...
... institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit. Sri Aurobindo Cradle of the new world The Ashram has been founded and meant to be the cradle of the new world. The Mother Ardent ...
... most important is to eliminate these divisions. And every one of them, all of them have it in their minds: the division between leading a spiritual life and leading an ordinary life, having a spiritual consciousness and having an ordinary consciousness—there is only one consciousness. In most people it is three-quarters asleep and distorted; in many it is still completely distorted. But what is needed ...
... The Brahmo Samaj was set on foot in India by Rammohan Roy with the belief that this would be the one religion of India which would replace and unite the innumerable sects now dividing our spiritual consciousness. But in a short time this uniting religion was itself rent into three discordant sects, two of which show signs of internal fissure even within their narrow limits; and all these divisions ...
... wide universal peace, calm, equanimity, an equal feeling of all in the Divine. Equality is to remain unmoved within in all conditions. Equality is the chief support of the true spiritual consciousness and it is this from which the sadhak deviates when he allows a vital movement to carry him away in feeling or speech or action. Equality is not the same thing as forbearance,—though undoubtedly ...
... highest light one has or to equate the outer with the inner man, then this part is always insincere in all. The only way is to lay stress on the inner being and develop in it the psychic and spiritual consciousness till that comes down in it which pushes out the darkness from the outer man also. It is not sincerity to express only what the adverse forces suggest or what you feel when you are in ...
... different parts of the body, but no awakening of the Kundalini in this particular and powerful fashion. There is only a quiet uprising of the consciousness from the lower centres to join the spiritual consciousness above and a descent of the Divine Force from above which does its own work in the mind and body—the manner and stages varying in each sadhak. A perfect confidence in the Divine Mother and a ...
... one's will again the right inspiration and perception. Page 252 Thoughts of Sadhana during Work Thoughts of sadhana can go on very well along with work. To combine the inner spiritual consciousness and its growth with a consecrated outer activity is part of the Yoga. I don't think any attempt should be made [ to turn inwards or revert to thoughts of sadhana during work ]. If the ...
... life of the ego with the soul kept behind undeveloped or half developed. Page 15 But for the spiritual seeker the only development he seeks is the development of the psychic and spiritual consciousness and that too, only because it is necessary to reach and to serve the Divine, not for its own sake. Whatever mental, vital, physical development or use of faculties can be made part of the spiritual ...
... mere excitement mixed with the divine flow of it through the conscious instrument and the body. There is a greater Ananda of samarpaṇa , of spiritual realisation or divine love, but in the spiritual consciousness and life the Ananda of creation has its place. To observe whether it [ one's work ] is really well done or not and feel the Ananda of work done for the Mother [ is the right attitude ...
... two together. By work and bhakti one can develop a consciousness in which eventually a natural meditation and realisation become possible. The growth out of the ordinary mind into the spiritual consciousness can be effected either by meditation, dedicated work Page 209 or bhakti for the Divine. In our Yoga, which seeks not only a static peace or absorption but a dynamic spiritual action ...
... fact the Consciousness-Force of the Divine and its aspect of consciousness, secret in Matter, begins to emerge in Life, finds something more of itself in Mind and finds its true self in a spiritual consciousness and finally a supramental consciousness through which we become aware of the Reality, enter into it and unite ourselves with it. This is what we call evolution which is an evolution of con ...
... usually from the ordinary physical consciousness, especially when the vital is not actively supporting the sadhana. These things can only be cured by a persistent bringing down of the higher spiritual consciousness into all the parts of the being. These fluctuations always take place. By insistence and practice it becomes finally possible to keep the aspiration and the open consciousness above ...
... There is no reason why the void should be a dull or unhappy condition. It is usually the habit of the mind and vital to associate happiness or interest only with activity, but the spiritual consciousness has no such limitations. Voidness can come from anywhere, mind, vital or from above. Voidness may be of different kinds—a certain kind of spiritual voidness or the emptiness that ...
... beautiful maidān and the flow of white light and the coolness and peace. The staircase was a symbol of the ascent from this psychic and spiritual state into higher and higher levels of the spiritual consciousness where is the source of the light. The Mother's hand was the symbol of her presence and help which will draw you up and lead you to the top of the ladder. The separate images [ in a mystic ...
... Chapter XVII Religion as the Law of Life Since the infinite, the absolute and transcendent, the universal, the One is the secret summit of existence and to reach the spiritual consciousness and the Divine the ultimate goal and aim of our being and therefore of the whole development of the individual and the collectivity in all its parts and all its activities, reason cannot be ...
... quantity but a power which passes to higher and higher levels of possibility until it reaches supreme consummations of spiritual existence fulfilling supermind as supermind fulfils the ranges of spiritual consciousness that are pushing towards it from the human or mental level. In this progression the body also may reach a more perfect form and a higher range of its expressive powers, become a more and more ...
... Intuition and mind ] in possibility and once it is there can develop them in their due place or order. The planes below [ the Supermind, from the Overmind to the Higher Mind ] are of the spiritual consciousness but when there Page 158 is a dynamic action from them, it is always a mixed action, not an action of pure knowledge but of knowledge subduing itself to the rule of the Ignorance ...
... "summits of calm" and nothing else; it is a phrase like "He rose to high peaks of vision" or "He took his station on the highest summits of knowledge". The calm is the calm of the highest spiritual consciousness to which the soul has ascended, making those summits its own and looking down from their highest heights on all below: in spiritual Page 333 experience, in the occult vision or ...
... distinctions as if they separated the Divine into so many separate Divines which have nothing to do with each other. The Divine Consciousness By the Divine Consciousness we mean the spiritual consciousness to which the Divine alone exists, because all is the Divine and by which one passes beyond the Ignorance and the lower nature into unity with the Divine and the Divine Nature. Here in the ...
... judge, interpret or fathom by the standard of its fallible Reason and limited mental half-knowledge? The simple fact is there that spirit and mind are not the same thing and that it is the spiritual consciousness into which the Yogin has to enter (in all this I am not in the least speaking of the supermind) if he wants to be in permanent contact or union with the Divine. It is not then a freak of the ...
... quietude or Ananda, but leave the external nature and surface active movements unchanged, either thinking them of no importance or justifying them under the plea that there is the psychic or spiritual consciousness behind them. I asked you to look for the cause of the abatement of energy or zeal ( utsāha ), because it is evident that there must be some resistance somewhere, otherwise there would not ...
... the mind and heart prepared, one can deal with the vital without all that superfluous trouble. So long as the mind is not entirely transformed, that is, penetrated and changed by the spiritual consciousness, things from below can always run into it more or less and dim the vision of Page 9 the higher levels. If you can keep the vision always, even though dimmed, it is already a great ...
... least never accepted. Nothing done in the past or present can prevent the psychic from coming forward if there is the true will to get rid of these things and live in the psychic and spiritual consciousness. If there is the will to surrender in the central being, then the psychic can come forward. There is absolutely no reason why you should return when you have come with the intention ...
... outward reality. It is only the vital that is swept by these impulses; the vital must always be kept under the control of the intelligence, the psychic or when that becomes dynamic, the higher spiritual consciousness. An Experience on the Mental Plane The vision you had was of the mental plane and symbolic. It symbolised not so much your own position as the general difficulties which lie in the way ...
... of the psychic and its true movements to push out and displace the wrong ones. The gradual and steady replacement of the old ignorant consciousness and its movements by the true psychic and spiritual consciousness is the nature of the transformation that is to be accomplished in the Yoga. But that takes time, it cannot be done easily or at once. Therefore one should not mind or be discouraged if meanwhile ...
... mind the difficulties. Difficulties—and serious ones—there cannot fail to be in the path of Yoga, because it is not easy to change all at once the ignorant human consciousness and make it a spiritual consciousness open to the Divine. But with faith one need not Page 696 mind the difficulties; the Divine Force is there and will overcome them. Whatever is difficult can indeed be made ...
... arising to join the mental part to what is above Mind. Page 120 (2) The Divine Light from above is of various colours. White is the Divine Power of purity, blue the light of the spiritual consciousness, gold the hue of the supramental knowledge or of knowledge from the intermediate planes. (3) OM golden rising to the sky = the cosmic consciousness supramentalised and rising towards the ...
... Gita 1 (the boy Krishna is the Krishna of Brindavan),—Krishna bringing the spiritual knowledge, will, bhakti—and not love and bhakti alone. The eye indicates the vision of the higher spiritual consciousness and the blue expanse indicates that consciousness. The boy with the flute is Sri Krishna, the Lord descended into the world-play from the divine Ananda; his flute is the music of the ...
... to begin to become part of the Truth. A sea in tumult usually indicates a vital upheaval or a period of strain and stress and struggle. The blue ocean is often a symbol of the spiritual consciousness in higher Mind one and indivisible. Normally, the ocean of higher consciousness is above the head (mind) and all below is that of the lower consciousness. Your seeing of the two oceans ...
... Symbols Letters on Yoga - III Chapter X Constructions Building The building is the symbol of a new creation—the white indicating spiritual consciousness, the coloured lights the different powers. Workshop The workshop is probably a symbol of the activity of the ordinary nature which is so full of formations and activities of the ordinary kind ...
... children of the Mother and the Mother dwelling in oneself and in all. It is that towards which your sadhana will move, for these are the things which come with the growth of the psychic and spiritual consciousness. Then these troubled reactions to outward things will no longer come. It is indeed when the quietude comes down from above or comes Page 275 out from the psychic that the ...
... each other but are one and inseparable. This supramental knowledge has not yet been attained, because the supermind itself has not yet been attained, but the reflection of it in intuitive spiritual consciousness is there and that was what was evidently realised in experience by your Guru and what he was expressing in mental terms in the quoted passage. It is possible to go towards this knowledge by ...
... knowledge and is its dynamic consequence; it is knowledge that purifies, it is truth that liberates: evil is the fruit of a spiritual ignorance and it will disappear only by the growth of a spiritual consciousness and the light of spiritual knowledge. The division of our being from the being of others can only be healed by removing the divorce of our nature from the inner soul-reality, by abolishing ...
... for the fulfilment of our propensities; but these are all stations and refuges of the ego. However necessary for our ordinary motion of life, they have to be abandoned in the growth of the spiritual consciousness and replaced by divine counterparts: an Ananda, an impersonal and God-directed delight will cast out or supplant the unillumined vital satisfaction and pleasure, a joyful driving of the Divine ...
... blissful quiescence of the Spirit; that can always be done and it brings a great repose and freedom, but what Nature herself attends from us is that the whole of what we are should rise into the spiritual consciousness and become a manifest and manifold power of the spirit. An integral transformation is the integral aim of the Being in Nature; this is the inherent sense of her universal urge of self-transcendence ...
... reason are instruments of its desire of experience and self-enlargement. But when the highest reason and will develop, we can turn towards that which these outward things mean to the higher spiritual consciousness. The "I" can then be seen as a mental reflection of the Self, the Spirit, the Divine, the one existence transcendent, universal, individual in its multiplicity; the consciousness in which these ...
... infinite being which is self-existent, an equality of the eternal spirit, but it will mould into its own mould the mind, heart, will, life, physical being. It is an equality of the infinite spiritual consciousness which will contain and base the blissful flowing and satisfied waves of a Page 707 divine knowledge. It is an equality of the divine Tapas which will initiate a luminous action ...
... subtle mental, interlinking vital and grosser physical sheaths or bodies, then, but then only he will be able to draw down entirely into his terrestrial existence the fullness of the infinite spiritual consciousness; 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 ...
... the active principle of a spiritual perfection. Supermind, mind, life and body are the four instruments which the spirit uses for its manifestation in the workings of Nature. Supermind is spiritual consciousness acting as a self-luminous knowledge, will, sense, aesthesis, energy, self-creative and unveiling power of its own delight and being. Mind is the action of the same powers, but limited and only ...
... still farther separated and objectivised to the knower, by the self, not through any intermediate process, but by a direct inner seizing or a penetrating and enveloping luminous contact of the spiritual consciousness with its object. It is this luminous seizing and contact that is the spiritual vision, dṛṣṭi ,—" paśyati ", says the Upanishad continually of the spiritual knowledge, "he sees"; and of the ...
... latest views on the burning problems of the day and there has been no change in my views in 27 years (which would surely be proof of a rather unprogressive mind). How do you get all that? My spiritual consciousness and knowledge at that time was as Page 307 nothing to what it is now—how would the change leave my view of politics and life unmodified altogether?..." 21 April 1937 Sri Aurobindo ...
... most living and significant literature, as well as the illuminating publications of the Mother, what would convey his vision would be the constant presence of its very source - the new spiritual consciousness made dynamic for earth-use by him and the Mother and in process of establishment in their disciples. Thus the Centre of Education in its full development would be at the same time a great ...
... washing away of the fact that the force of unification cannot come by an assembled and outwardly constructed "universal religion" but only by plunging into the wide vibrating heart of the Indian spiritual consciousness which, behind all sectarian excrescences, holds in its multi-rhythmed rapture the secret of a spontaneous fundamental universality. To achieve lasting and natural unity of being we must not ...
... body. Light is also of various kinds and colours. This is testified by thousands of practitioners of Yoga, past and present. Light in the spiritual sense is not a mere metaphor, any more than spiritual consciousness or bliss is metaphorical. And if a human body is completely transformed, as wanted in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, one of the constant attributes of the transformed body will be a subtle luminousness ...
... 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 inspiration touching the mind at different levels, we should more correctly say ...
... RESEARCH ACADEMY 24 APRIL 1978 In everything connected with Sri Aurobindo, as this Academy most evidently is, we have to think of the new Truth of the spiritual consciousness, which he has brought to the world — the all-creative and all-transforming Supermind. The Supermind, by the very nature of its comprehensiveness, takes the whole of life into its scope ...
... separated these planes of Nature and of our physical being and analysed the synthesis of their contributions to the whole play that we shall discover how the evolution of vital, mental and spiritual consciousness became possible in inconscient Matter. Page 248 But there is more; for beyond these many couches of the physical existence are other supraphysical degrees, a many layered plane ...
... process of Yoga[.] 114 Yoga is the science, the process, the effort and action by which man attempts to pass out of the limits of his ordinary mental consciousness into a greater spiritual consciousness[.] 115 All yoga is in its essential [ ... ... ... ] heightening or deepening of our consciousness so that it may become capable of something beyond our ordinary consciousness and ...
... poetry". We shall leave the technical aspect aside. The poetry is of a type in which both the clear and the mysterious come on the breath of an incantation from a masterful height of realised spiritual consciousness. When the clear is achieved, then, unlike as in "the heritage of Symbolism," the work of the post-Mallarmé poets like Valéry, Rilke and the later Yeats, the shades and shimmers of the Beyond ...
... and there to be completely free from it and he succeeded in it. Nolini's achievements were cut short because of his failing health at the end, though he had attained a rare height in spiritual consciousness. Fortunately Amal's physical health is still sound and we expect from him not only spiritual progress but more many-sided intellectual accomplishments. Let our unbroken friendship ...
... s. They are essentially a force from beyond the human range, producing an effect directly on the more subtle substance of our being and can bring in a fine attunement of the reader to the spiritual consciousness from which these experiences of Champaklal are born. What do these visions indicate? The growth of the Psychic Being dominating the whole consciousness can develop visions, till it penetrates ...
... of the Divine. Sri Krishna is connected with its playing—Sri Krishna who, is the Avatar from the Overmind plane. Champaklal has often heard the Divine's call from there—the magnetism of the spiritual consciousness. What is beyond the spiritual is the Supramental. Sri Aurobindo is the Avatar from the Supermind. The tune of an unknown instrument which may be called a super-flute is Sri Aurobindo's means ...
... psychic is the first of two transformations necessary — if you have the psychic transformation it facilitates immensely the other, i.e., the transformation of the ordinary human into the higher spiritual consciousness.’ 54 ‘One first has to find one’s soul,’ said the Mother in 1955, ‘this is wholly indispensable, and you have to identify with it. Then you can go on towards the transformation … ...
... species of animal the dying person has set eyes on before his death. According to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother the growth of the soul, in its various evolutionary stages, is the development of a spiritual consciousness at all times directed, meaningful and irreversible. And so Sri Aurobindo wrote: ‘We have to ask whether the soul, having once arrived at humanity, can go back to the animal life and body, a ...
... other existences in the universe, — a real oneness and not merely "a pluralistic unity, the drawing together of similar units resulting in a collectivity or solidarity," 2 — we must enter spiritual consciousness. For when man identifies himself with the One inhabiting all bodies and manifesting Himself in everything, he sees oneness everywhere, ekatvamanupa ś yata ḥ , and becomes one with the ...
... and watch. Page 22 As it is, the spiritual state of consciousness is rare and difficult to reach. So far what has been achieved was individual. The generalisation of the spiritual consciousness among the whole humanity will not be possible even after the Supramental Power manifests in terrestrial life. There will always be a gradation, an hierarchy of the lrurnan consciousness at ...
... life in this earth and he found a clue to this mystery in the Vedic literature where he found the gospel of the Truth consciousness or Supermind as he termed it. This was "beyond the ordinary spiritual consciousness which meant the arrival at the stage of separation of Purusha or the Soul from Prakriti and was never tried even by the Vedic Rishis to bring down to earth. Like the Page 31 ...
... it must eliminate its elf order to rise to the Unitarian consciousness of the Spirit. where the ego sees things in division, district Page 11 tion and separation, the spiritual consciousness sees all as the One Self. This oneness is at the core of the creation and multiplicity and diversity of names and forms are only on the surface. Therefore the Yogi or the spiritual man is ...
... our lower being but the bringing down of the Power and Light of the supernal reaches in the very field of our normal being, consciousness and action. For "there is a dynamism proper to the spiritual consciousness whose nature is Light, Power, Ananda, Peace, Knowledge, infinite Wideness, and that must be possessed and descend into the whole being. Otherwise one can get mukti but not perfection ...
... conception by which It can be defined. 18 It is ineffable by mental thought and language; It is beyond the grasp of the ineffectual probe of separative mental consciousness. But there is a spiritual consciousness, a knowledge by identity which can seize this reality in its fundamental aspects and its manifold powers and forms and figures. This Absolute is then "the ineffable Reality overtopping ...
... they do not establish the general proposition as an absolute rule. A tendency such as Janak’s to desire or welcome or accept death as a release could have a force because of her advanced spiritual consciousness which it would not have in ordinary people. On the other side, there can be an opposite use and result of the yogic consciousness: illness can be repelled from one’s own body or cured, even ...
... them. As for you, I am happy that all this turmoil left you untouched. Indeed it must be so more and more and you must yourself look at all these things from the light and equanimity of a spiritual consciousness filled with the Divine Presence and Love. Our help and trust are always with you. 12 October 1934 ...
... restless- ness today the like of which I have not had since my last depression in November. (I haven't had any depression since if you will please note.) But I notice no progress in me towards spiritual consciousness and the old questionings come again, "What am J doing ? Why wasting my time—on what ?" My old vairagya seems a little agog and bent on giving me a little trouble. Though I don't relish ...
... comfort and hope. I recall what the Mother has said about "New Birth", in the Bulletin of February 1959, p. 81: What is called "New Birth" is the birth into the spiritual life, into the spiritual consciousness; it is to carry in oneself something of the Spirit which, through the individual soul, can begin to govern the life and be the master of one's existence. In the supramental world it is the ...
... Words of the Mother - I Coming to the Ashram You say that you feel you have returned to your old life and that you have fallen from that state of spiritual consciousness in which you remained for some time. And you ask whether it comes from the fact that Sri Aurobindo and myself have withdrawn our protection and our help because you had been unable to fulfil ...
... does it and still less why He does it. To know something of the Divine, one has to rise above thought and enter into the psychic consciousness, the consciousness of the soul, or into the spiritual consciousness. Those who have had the experience have always said that the difficulties and sufferings of the path are not real, but a creation of human ignorance, and that as soon as one gets out of ...
... Concerning a tantric ) Those people deny the reality of all physical needs. It's quite all right when you've come TO THE END, when you have totally mastered the body by means of the spiritual consciousness. But until then, I don't agree—I do not at all agree. It's the same as when X tells people, 'I am feeding you, so eat!' And he serves you ten times more than you can put in. If you tell ...
... heard light music that I found exceedingly lovely! Even some pieces of film music that were magnificent, and on the other hand some "classical" pieces, oh, how boring! So ... "... and the spiritual consciousness alone can judge there." Because at the School they play music every Saturday, and they've begun quarrelling about the kind of music that should be played; Page 222 then one ...
... Aurobindo has himself said that to him Savitri was not a poem to be written and done with: it was a ceaseless experiment of using poetic language again and again from an ever-ascending curve of spiritual consciousness - an adventure of seeing how far the speech of human poetry could go along the path of more and more lofty Yogic realisation. Across the years Savitri grew not in length alone: it increased ...
... It comes to amaranth each desert prayer. What is sought to be conjured up is a picture of Divine Grace. The Grace is twofold - beauty and benediction. It hails from a height of spiritual consciousness far beyond our reach, but, wearing the transfigured form of a face like ours, it brings to us with its joy and compassion a radiance rising out of the Mystery beyond and approaching us with ...
... of truth-know ledge but of truth-feeling, an inward turn spontaneously sensing what is God's Will rather than instantly visioning the plan and purpose of the Supreme as does the intuitive spiritual consciousness. Yes, the Rigveda has a multiple numerology. One of its most expressive numbers is "thousand", meaning "completeness". A 100 is explained by Sri Aurobindo as perhaps suggesting the 7 ...
... it with whatever means we possess. The Mother, who was put forward by Sri Aurobindo as the Shakti of his dynamic world-vision, exemplified at the same time the bringing forth of the highest spiritual consciousness and the most refined artistic taste which would help transfigure the extremely deficient Indian scene. Page 114 Out of all improvable places in India Pondicherry has become ...
... SRI AUROBINDO RESEARCH ACADEMY 24 APRIL 1978 In everything connected with Sri Aurobindo, as this Academy most evidently is, we have to think of the new Truth of the spiritual consciousness, which he has brought to the world - the all-creative and all-transforming Supermind. The Supermind, by the very nature of its comprehensiveness, takes the whole of life into its scope ...
... upsets the balance and health of body and mind. An escape from these two inferior qualities is therefore indispensable if the natural self is to be transformed and made an instrument of the spiritual consciousness. "Tamas unenlightened and rajas unconverted, no divine change or divine life is possible." 133 It may seem that the solution lies in cultivating exclusively the quality of Sattwa ...
... Romen's comparative study of Savitri and Milton's Paradise Lost is another outstanding work in this genre, noteworthy for its elucidation by contrast of the special qualities expressed by spiritual consciousness. V. K. Gokak's exposition of Savitri's diction begins in response to P. Lal's modernist incomprehensions of the poem's spiritual synonyms-vast, infinite, eternal, illimitable . ...
... humanity. Social and Political Thought, pp. 84-86 Since the infinite, the absolute and transcendent, the universal, the One is the secret summit of existence and to reach the spiritual consciousness and the Divine the ultimate goal and aim of our being and therefore of the whole development of the individual and the collectivity in all its parts and all its activities, reason cannot ...
... consciousness, encourages desires and excites the passions runs counter to the true goal of music and ought to be avoided. It is not a question of designation but of inspiration — and the spiritual consciousness alone can be the judge there. (22 July 1967) All right. 25 September 1967 ...
... but the largeness of a divine, immortal and spiritual Power. Our consciousness becomes no longer that of this limited and struggling mental and vital creature, but an infinite, divine and spiritual consciousness. And our will and action too are no longer that of this bounded personality and its ego, but a divine and spiritual will and action, the will and power of the Universal, the Supreme, the ...
... universal — for it is in conscious touch with the universal action. Letters on Yoga, p. 312 ...nothing is more difficult than to bring home the greatness and uplifting power of the spiritual consciousness to the natural man forming the vast majority of the race; for his mind and senses, are turned outward towards the external calls of life and its objects and never inwards to the Truth which ...
... is something dynamic (not merely liberation of the Self or realisation of the One which can very well be attained without any descent). It Page 169 is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness, dynamic as well as static, in every part of the being down to the subconscient. That cannot be done by the influence of the Self leaving the consciousness fundamentally as it is with only ...
... seer and the seen in Nirvana are negated and dissolved in the original Void. But in the Supramental Vision, the soul is recovered and made one with the world it sees in a tremendously real spiritual consciousness. The universe and the manifestation are the dynamic dreams of the Truth-Consciousness with a reality as concrete and more concrete than the wakeful reality. The solidity and substance of the ...
... own spiritual capacity. 3rd. He must make himself open and receptive to the Guru, for even more than what the guru teaches to the mind of the disciple, it is what he spiritually is, the spiritual consciousness, the knowledge, the light, the power, the Divinity in him that helps the disciple to grow by his receiving that into himself and its being used within himself for the growth of his consciousness ...
... the Arya should be made real to you in conscious experience; and at the same time you should aspire that your mind may open to the calm wideness, strength, peace, life and ananda of the spiritual consciousness. 1 December 1926 ...
... nt of this lower Maya, without egoism, the great fault of attachment conquered, jitasangadosha , all desires stilled, the duality of joy and grief cast away, always to be fixed in a pure spiritual consciousness, these are the steps of the way to that supreme Infinite. ( The Message of the Gita , p. 214, edited by Anilbaran Roy, based on Sri Aurobindo’s Essays on the Gita ) But, at a later ...
... look beyond it towards Light. April 5, 1933 There is no taboo in the Yoga on any feeling that is true and pure, but all the feelings undergo the stress of a pressure from the spiritual consciousness and whatever there is that is mixed, impure, egoistic or the feeling itself if it is fundamentally self-regarding, either disappears or, if it remains, becomes an obstacle to the progress ...
... present in the earlier system of communication, and they swept through the highest minds of the nation and fertilised the soil of Indian 'culture for a constant and ever-increasing growth of spiritual consciousness and spiritual experience. And even when this turn was still evident, chiefly among the Kshatriyas and Brahmins, we find too among those who attained to the knowledge men like Janashruti, ...
... circumstances under which the call to Yoga comes to the seeker: "All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. The soul that is ...
... and it can be said that the spirituality of the Veda and the Upanishads was already synthetic and integral. An exclusive spirituality emphasises and remains confined only to one state of spiritual consciousness, — such as that of eternal Silence or of eternal Joy, or of dynamic Power, to either divine Personality or to divine Impersonality. It emphasises only one method of approach, such as that of ...
... become conscious of the psychological complexities and how the tangles of instincts, desires, emotions, will-force, powers of thought and imagination and the powers of aesthetic, ethical and spiritual consciousness can be understood, disentangled and yet controlled, mastered and harmonized. This is perhaps the most important part of education for character development. Here we have to focus upon the processes ...
... one enters into psychic consciousness and one begins to dwell more and more consciously in that inmost consciousness. Higher consciousness is the proper domain of what is normally called spiritual consciousness, although named differently in different traditions. It is the domain of cosmic and transcendental consciousness, the knowledge and the power of which varies according to the various levels ...
... Seminars on Value Education deliberations may inter alia be made on the essential and eternal Values. 16.In the Seminars on Value Education emphasis should be laid on the significance of spiritual consciousness to be inculcated in students, teachers and parents; Inner growth is essential for real intergral education. B. Specific suggestions regarding Value Education Programme I Planning ...
... become conscious of the psychological complexities and how the tangles of instincts, desires, emotions, will-force, powers of thought, and imagination and the powers of aesthetic, ethical and spiritual consciousness can be understood, disentangled and yet controlled, mastered and harmonised. This perhaps is the most important part of education for character development. Here we have to focus upon the process ...
... here for his ultimate aim as would the ancestor Ape, if called upon to believe in himself as the future Man. And yet, when we study the law of evolution in the light of the operations of spiritual consciousness, and if we compare the Darwinian Ape and the human animal that we call Man more intimately, and when we discover the soul in man and the intentions of that soul as also the intention that seems ...
... quieting and purification of the mind, vital and physical consciousness by their subjection to the psychic influence and guidance; (5) the opening up of all this lower consciousness to the higher spiritual consciousness above for its descent into a nature prepared to receive it with a complete receptivity and right attitude — for Page 43 the psychic brings in everything right thought, right perception ...
... consciousness first a pandit and then a bhakta, but only occasionally the Divine himself) is per- fectly rational and logical, if you follow my line and don't insist on a high specifically spiritual consciousness for the Avatar. I Page 321 shall point out what I mean in my next. By sattwic man I do not mean a moral or an always self-con- trolled one, but a predominantly mental ...
... , in which physical, vital, intellectual, ethical, aesthetic powers are to be purified, sharpened and perfected under the overarching inspiration and progressive guidance of psychic and spiritual consciousness. But it is underlined that it must begin right from the beginning, and even earlier levels of education must be so restructured as to permit the development of the student on new lines. ...
... A huge structure is being built up with an increasing insistence on mechanisation, standardisation and dehumanisation, leaving practically no room for the growth of profounder, ethical and spiritual consciousness which alone can rightly and wisely guide human volition in taking decisions in the critical times that seem to lie ahead of us. While under the pressure of the technological development, the ...
... such a spiritualised society could come into existence, much serious work needs to be done, and human nature has to climb up from the infra-rational to the rational and from the rational to spiritual consciousness. It is true that humanity as a whole has already crossed several strata of consciousness and even rationality has been greatly generalised, even though it has not still been able to overpower ...
... consciousness into the cells of the body." (Letters on Yoga) Yes, it should be carefully noted, it is the 'supramental consciousness' — understood not in the sense of any and every spiritual consciousness above the plane of mind but in the specific sense in which Sri Aurobindo uses it — which alone possesses the required knowledge and power to effectuate the transformation of our physical ...
... s the way to be followed at any moment; (iv) quietening and purification of the mind and heart and the vital of the sadhaka; (v) opening of all the parts of the lower nature towards the spiritual consciousness reigning above; (vi) mixing of sweetness to the dry rigours of spiritual discipline; (vii) being able to recognise the undesirable impulses of the lower nature not as one 's own but alien ...
... Ashram but of others." (Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, Volume One, p. 348) Sri Aurobindo elsewhere opines that many of the members of the Ashram are not living in a spiritual consciousness but "in the ordinary egoistic mind and mainly rajasic vital nature". (The Mother, p. 229) Here are two pieces of written dialogue worth noting in this connection; the excerpts are from ...
... the new inmates. They attend the Page 79 periodic ceremonies, go through the "rituals", manifest some formal "devotion" and fervour but where is the burning zeal for developing spiritual consciousness and for the transformation of their nature? Rejection, aspiration and surrender are the three basic movements characterising our sadhana and, according to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, these ...
... incidental: this alone is the real raison d' ê tre of the Ashram founded by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. And to fulfil it the main concern of the inmates should be the development of a spiritual consciousness in themselves. With it will automatically develop in the Ashram mutuality of consciousness, spontaneous reign of harmony and the growth of a spiritually conscious community. To quote Sri Aurobindo: ...
... in the Ashram life of today? Are we not slowly veering round to the status of a religio-cultural community? Do many Ashramites still aspire after and make an effort for the acquisition of spiritual consciousness? And if yes, who guide and illumine the sadhaks in their spiritual endeavour? Can one contact the Presence of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo as a really living Reality here? Why are there at ...
... others to attempt to decipher a sadhaka' s dream is often a vain enterprise. The clue remains hidden in the sadhaka 's own consciousness. It is he and he alone who has to develop his intuitive-spiritual consciousness to unravel the mystery of the meaning. At this point, it will not be inappropriate if we sound a note of warning to the sadhakas: they should not seek to "psychoanalyse" Page 322 ...
... the fact that "the lower consciousness of mind, life and body cannot arrive at its full meaning until it is taken up, restated, transformed by the light and power and joy of the higher spiritual consciousness, while the higher too does not stand in its full right relation to the lower by mere rejection, but by this assumption and domination, this taking up of its unfulfilled values, this restatement ...
... 3 Letters on Yoga, p. 1473. that the time can be and should be now and not in a later age." 1 To know more about this supremely potent dynamic status of spiritual consciousness that Sri Aurobindo has termed as Supermind, the readers are referred to relevant pages of this book. Now, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have always declared that the earth-conditions ...
... than an increasing negation through which we move." 1 We have so far dwelt upon the disabilities that the mind-consciousness suffers from on its way of ascension to the summits of spiritual consciousness or rather superconsciousness. Now let us turn our gaze on the limitations that vitiate its attempt at complete possession of the active Brahman, when it seeks to return from the summit and ...
... proper media and instrumentation through which the divine Will and Wisdom can freely act and self-express. But between the Mind and the Spirit, are there other superior planes of spiritual consciousness — not merely static and introspective, but creative and dynamic — which man can possibly hope to ascend? And is it at all possible for man to devlop and organise these supernal planes in ...
... regarding its significance. "Violet" is the colour of benevolence or compassion, but also more vividly of the Divine Grace—represented in the vision as flowing from the heights of the spiritual consciousness down on this earth. The golden cup is I suppose the Truth consciousness. Almost all whom I know have come here solely for the Divine, while I have just glided in. I don't know that I was ...
... consciousness?—you may say. But say it again then, Sir! SRI AUROBINDO: Of course, social consciousness—according to S.C., it is certainly rude not to go. What it may be from another S.C. (spiritual consciousness), is another matter. MYSELF: Can you stretch your hand, Sir and help me out of this mud of the subconscient, Inconscient, universal nature or God knows what? SRI AUROBINDO: ...
... Matter, there are other forces and powers that can act and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in the spiritual consciousness, though all do not care to possess or, possessing, to use it, and this power is greater than any other and more effective.' He further clarifies that 'it was this force that he used ... at ...
... with the Ananda in you. June 19, 1934 You mean that these feasts are not good for me? Yes Is Ananda a major experience? Light, Peace, Force, Ananda constitute the spiritual consciousness; if they are not among the major experiences, what are? There is no doubt that there is a craving for relishing dishes and then it is not far to seek an excuse. Probably the cessation ...
... more intellectual, but there is not much power; for power comes only from the Psychic. I was rather surprised to hear that from him as I thought Power, Peace, vastness, etc., come from the spiritual consciousness from above... Power can be everywhere, on any plane. What descends from above is power of the higher Consciousness—but there is a Power of the vital, mental, physical planes also. Power ...
... experiences of Divine Love. Then he quotes Underhill to say "... it [human love] most certainly does offer upon lower levels a strangely exact parallel to the sequence of states in which man's spiritual consciousness unfolds itself and which form the consummation of mystic life." I don't agree—unless it is a sadhana of the vital plane which then naturally expresses the vital being = love-excitement ...
... of all religions in their deeper meaning and bring about a reconciliation of all religions. More it has to lead to the generalisation of Yoga, which is a practical way of attaining to the spiritual consciousness. In other words Yoga has to be generalised. This is the line of thought and action that the political leaders and more particularly the religious heads of these two communities should stress ...
... personality. The second stage is the reorganisation and individualisation of the material sheath itself. The very cells of the body are impregnated with the radiant substance of the supreme spiritual consciousness; they live the life of the spiritual individual, the personal divine embodied in the individual. When the whole Page 180 process is gone through and the work done, the individual ...
... This was how she taught me the meaning of humility, what we call Divine Humility. As I was saying, this capacity for an entire rejection of the past has been one of the powers of her spiritual consciousness and realisation. It is not an easy thing for a human being to wash himself clean of all his past acquisitions, be it intellectual knowledge or the habits of the vital, not to speak of the ...
... one side of the object in view, and to our anti-spiritual age this one-track mentality itself seems to be its greatest virtue. The global view which is the hallmark of a mind illumined by spiritual consciousness transcends this one-trackedness of the intellect. It gets behind all opposing views and standpoints and tries to see what is the underlying truth that seeks to manifest in each. Thus in Nolini ...
... instruments. They inevitably lead to the Bliss, they are the fuel that kindles, quickens and increases the Fire of Ecstasy that is to blaze up on the day of victory in the full and integral spiritual consciousness. The round of ordinary life is not vain or meaningless: its petty innocent-looking moments and events are the steps of the marching Divinity. Even the commonest life is the holy sacrificial ...
... , because Matter is essentially Spirit, because man is essentially God, therefore Matter can be resolved and transformed into Spirit and man too can become utterly divine. The urge of the spiritual consciousness that is the essence of matter even, the massed energy embedded or lying frozen in it, manifests itself in the forward drive of evolution that brings out gradually, step by step, the various ...
... of consciousness, its uplifting and expansion, freeing it from the limitations of the ignorant egoistic movement, pressing it forward to the domains of higher illuminations, towards spiritual consciousness and soul-knowledge, towards communion with the Divine, the cosmic and the transcendent Reality. That is the real work and labour. Bodily suffering is nothing: it is neither a sign nor ...
... understand the needs of the earthly life, a complete knowledge capable of organising those needs and using this force to meet them. Over and above this, if such people possess a higher spiritual consciousness, then they can use the force to build slowly upon earth something that will be able to manifest the Divine Power and the Divine Grace. It is then that this force of money, of wealth, this power ...
... that dwells secreted in the hearth of the soul. They manifest as aspirations that flame up from the three fundamental levels of our being, the body, the life and the mind. For although the spiritual consciousness is the natural element of the soul and is gained in and through the soul, yet, in Order that man may take possession of it and dwell in it consciously, in order that the soul's empire may be ...
... and control of the functions and powers that work from behind the physical mind. From here there is the ascent to the fourth step while still keeping behind the veil, on to the gates of the spiritual consciousness, crossing beyond the Page 35 limits of our ordinary state. Already, as we reached the level of the life-force, the Rishi had something new to say: one who gained entry into ...
... Page 15 spiritual archetypes, the divine names and forms of all individualisations of an evolving existence. The Upanishads speak of a solar and a lunar Path in the spiritual consciousness. Perhaps they have some reference to these two lines—one through the Mayic consciousness of the Overmind enters into the static Bliss, ecstatic Nihil, and the other mounts still farther to ...
... In this global reconstitution of the earth life, Sri Aurobindo gives India a great role—a mighty destiny and a heavy responsibility. For he considers India as the repository of the spiritual consciousness, the Guardian of Truth, as the Veda says, and in the new age of world unification her national being will act as the spearhead breaking into the old-world formations and signalling the shape ...
... the One; it develops the spiritual archetypes, the divine names and forms of all individualisations of an evolving existence. The Upanishads speak of a solar and a lunar Path in the Spiritual consciousness. Perhaps they have some reference to these two lines—one through the Mayic consciousness of the Overmind enters into the static Bliss, ecstatic Nihil, and the 1 The Supermind is ...
... e because Matter is essentially Spirit, because man is essentially God, therefore Matter can be resolved and transformed into Spirit and man too can become utterly divine. The urge of the spiritual consciousness that is the essence of matter even, the massed energy imbedded or lying frozen in it, manifests itself in the forward drive of evolution that brings out gradually, step by step, the various ...
... s and the inner truth becomes also more and more unbearable. The outer success has to be paid for very dearly. One must be very great, very pure, one must have a very high, very unselfish spiritual consciousness to be able to succeed and yet not be affected. There is nothing so difficult to bear than success. That is the true test in life. When you are not successful, you turn very naturally to yourself ...
... return to the unmanifest. So one can say that the psychic life is the life immortal, endless time, limitless space, ever-progressive change, broken continuity in the world of forms. The spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, means to live the infinite and eternal, to throw oneself outside all creation, beyond time and space. To become fully aware of your psychic being and to live a psychic ...
... birth. But there will be some difficulties in finding them, for you do not speak their language and they are often hard of access. This, however, is one of the solutions before you. This spiritual consciousness will give you mukti. Personally, my yoga would be finished if my goal were liberation. Mukti is only the first part. The second is to bring down the light into all the instruments, to make ...
... continent of all, collectively and severally, and of which all are various formations and expressions on various levels and degrees. This is the knowledge and experience given by the supreme spiritual consciousness. Page 320 ...
... e because Matter is essentially Spirit, because man is essentially God, therefore Matter can be resolved and transformed into Spirit and man too can become utterly divine. The urge of the spiritual consciousness that is the essence of matter even, the massed energy imbedded or lying frozen in it, manifests itself in the forward drive of evolution that brings out gradually, step by step, the various ...
... instruments. They inevitably lead to the Bliss, they are the fuel that kindles, quickens and increases the Fire of Ecstasy that is to blaze up on the day of victory in the full and integral spiritual consciousness. The round of ordinary life is not vain or meaningless: its petty innocent-looking moments and events are the Page 164 steps of the marching Divinity. Even the commonest ...
... spirit which meant a clearance of the many ignorances that shrouded it. It was also an urge of the spirit to encompass in its fold a larger and larger circle of humanity: it meant that the spiritual consciousness is no more an aristocratic or hermetic virtue, but a need in which the people, the large mass, have also their share, maybe in varying degrees. A new humanity broad-based to encompass the ...
... similar truth. The Divine takes a body for another – occult – reason also. It is this: Matter or terrestrial life cannot be changed – changed radically, that is to say, transformed – by the pure spiritual consciousness alone, lying above or within; also it is not sufficient to bring about only that much of change in terrestrial life which can be effected by the mere spiritual force acting in a general way ...
... of the One; it develops the spiritual archetypes, the divine names and forms of all individualisations of an evolving existence. The Upanishads speak of a solar and a lunar Path in the spiritual consciousness. Perhaps they have some reference to these two lines-one through the Mayic consciousness of the Overmind enters into the static Bliss, ecstatic Nihil, and the ¹ The Supennind is not merely ...
... followed about schools of Yoga and sound (Nada) . At the end someone said, "The swastika is an old sacred symbol and now has become Hitler's symbol." SRI AUROBINDO: It was a sign of the spiritual consciousness and now it is a danger signal. (Addressing Purani) Have you heard Jean Herbert's opinion of Hitler? PURANI: No. SRI AUROBINDO: Someone told him that the Mother has described Hitler ...
... transforming life's common movement, rejecting the ignorant turn it mostly takes and bringing out the divine truth which is secret within it. To achieve this, they want us always to be in the spiritual consciousness so that whatever life-activity is accepted becomes a part of Yoga and undergoes transformation. I have said that Sri Aurobindo's accident had upset all her previous programme: Pranam, interviews ...
... ess, or some immanence there, of the breath and light of a Superior World, India has developed and possesses, already prepared, a magnetic field, Page 157 a luminous zone of spiritual consciousness; and to enter into it the Indian has only to turn aside, to go round a corner, to take one step forward. However thick and hard the crust of the Ignorance may lie upon the Indian soul, once ...
... everything works out according to the Divine Will and fulfils the Divine Purpose. But that doesn't mean that the individual has no choice, no selection. SATYENDRA: These are truths of a higher spiritual consciousness where one knows what the Divine Will is and sees or perceives it acting everywhere through Nature. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, here in the Ignorance there are various forces and possibilities and ...
... Nous is the same as Supermind. Somebody from outside has asked if that is true. SRI AUROBINDO (after looking at a few pages): Inge takes Nous as Spirit. As far as I can make out, Nous is spiritual consciousness, not Supermind, but I will see about it again. ...
... and the mental powers, get hold of a higher mode of consciousness, make a direct contact with truth and beauty and reality. It was Buddha's credit to have forged this missing link in man's spiritual consciousness, to have brought into play the power of the rational intellect and used it in support of the spiritual experience. That is not to say that he was the very first person, the originator who initiated ...
... outflowing of the revelation of that which is beautiful, divine and pure and which seems to evoke in us the presence of this unvarying Ananda. These are the experiences of the planes of spiritual consciousness which reveal the splendours that are hidden in the higher worlds. But when one has this inner vision which opens the doors within our being and one begins to see the truth behind things, ...
... defect or a weakness in oneself, one pursues it with the same vigour and the resolution to reject it out of oneself once and for all. Page 73 Or else, to launch towards the spiritual consciousness, one overcomes the obstacles with the same é lan. One must take such a resolution which does not allow any of these tricks to repeat themselves a second time. One could knock against a wall ...
... excellence of our pre-marital, marital and extra-marital relationships.) Among the stories of the family’s womenfolk Amma recounted, one is unforgettable. This lady had attained a high spiritual consciousness even while fulfilling every obligation and duty enjoined upon a householder. One winter day, she was so ill that the doctor told her daughter she had not more than a few hours left. As was ...
... or twelve years. The last time I met him, in 1918 perhaps, he said that he was getting direct guidance and inspiration from you. NIRODBARAN: Was it as a result of the development of his spiritual consciousness or by your Force that he achieved so much? SRI AUROBINDO: It was his vital opening to the Force I gave him. NIRODBARAN: And spiritual? SRI AUROBINDO: Very mixed. NIRODBARAN: Then ...
... that consciousness, then one can slowly take up any activity without getting disturbed. SRI AUROBINDO: Quite so. NIRODBARAN: In the transitional stage till the mind is replaced by the spiritual consciousness, with what attitude should one do his work? SRI AUROBINDO: What work? NIRODBARAN: Say, philosophical or political. SRI AUROBINDO: It is not necessary to do political work. About the ...
... NIRODBARAN: You make a distinction between saints and spiritual men? SRI AUROBINDO: Certainly. Saints are limited by their psychic realisation. The spiritual men remain above in the higher spiritual consciousness. The saints are Bhaktas. SATYENDRA: It is not very clear to me, Sir. SRI AUROBINDO: Well, the psychic being means the Purusha in the heart, not in the spirit. I never feel like a saint ...
... doesn't speak of transformation. It is his own reading of the Gita. One can say that the Gita shows the way to something further or to our Yoga. What it speaks of is the need to act from a spiritual consciousness using the instruments of the human mind, vital, etc., but not of the transformation of these instruments. PURANI: Anilbaran admits this but he says that here and there in the Gita there ...
... luminosity of its in dwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its joy of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy. 338 The Veda has already expressed this: "Then shall thy humanity become as if the workings of the gods; it is as if the visible heaven of light were ...
... Pandit's words (spoken years later): The samādhi is the physical concentration of the consciousness that Sri Aurobindo embodied in his material body.... It is a living reservoir of spiritual consciousness and force, emanating its vibrations incessantly.... Whatever the seeking the sanction goes forth. 2 To sadhaks and admirers with the eyes and ears of faith, the Master seemed to say ...
... institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit. 20 Vairāgya or meditative retirement or moksa is not the sole or even the primary Page 580 aim; the sādhaks are ...
... letter to Dilip Kumar Roy, "The traditions of the past are very great in their own place — in the past. But that is no reason why we should go on repeating the past. In the evolution of a spiritual consciousness upon earth, a great past ought to be followed by a greater future." In his own life and in the life of the nation, what Sri Aurobindo wanted, what he set out to achieve, was a veritable ...
... of the truth but from the illusory life as it is ordinarily lived in the world. Thus is the Buddha's core-teaching linked up with the Aurobindonian affirmation of the need to join the spiritual consciousness to an evolving Page 641 mental consciousness leading to the establishment here of a new Heaven and a new Earth. Such, the Mother feels, "was the original conception of ...
... secret and realises it in one's being, pain loses its justification and suffering disappears. It is an allpowerful remedy, not only in the deeper parts of the being, in the soul, in the spiritual consciousness, but also in life and in the body. There is no illness, no disorder which can resist the discovery of this secret and the putting of it into practice, not only in the higher parts of the ...
... connotative richness and aesthetic appeal. "Always the symbol is legitimate," says Sri Aurobindo, "in so far as it is true, sincere, beautiful and delightful, and even one may say that a spiritual consciousness without any aesthetic or emotional content is not entirely or at any rate not integrally spiritual." 19 The Mother's symbol has certainly this "integrally spiritual" power, and helps a great ...
... the physical world. In what I am trying to do, the spiritual realisation is the first necessity, but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in men, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. The Ashram as it is now is not that ideal.... But, all the same, the Ashram is a first form which our effort has taken, a field in which the preparatory ...
... statement his personal problems, universalist elements also must get into the answer, all the more so because the response is really from the level of the Page 372 higher spiritual consciousness. This should explain why the excerpts from Aurobindo's letters put together in a book like Bases of Yoga have made it a minor Aurobindonian classic and popular guide to Yoga. There ...
... of honour and dishonour, gain and loss, success and failure, victory and defeat. Disease and decrepitude cannot affect us, and even death loses all its reality for us, for, our boundless spiritual consciousness knows no infirmity, no sleep, no cessation. Nature's dualities may still persist in our phenomenal parts, the habitual reactions may continue by their past momentum, calamities may come, ...
... the object of our soul's birth into the material world. In the Integral Yoga the sacrifice of knowledge (jñānayajña) mounts from experience to experience, from plane to plane of the spiritual consciousness, passing now through the thrilled love and light of the psychic being, now through the calm and silence of the Self, and now through the stupendous surge and heave of the universal dynamism ...
... not an Aristotelian or Platonic eminence but a phosphorescent bubble vis-à-vis his infinite self-existence and its unimaginable splendour? It is only when one looks down at ego from one's spiritual consciousness that it appears in its true colours—a petty tool and creation of the ignorant mind, arrogating to itself the powers and qualities it receives from the universal Nature and pluming itself ...
... mental life of man but will contain, even when it deals with these fields, the deeper and the higher strains from the regions of the intuitive, the inspirational, the revelatory and the spiritual consciousness. The modernist is attracted by the subliminal, the subconscient and the abnormal of the vital and the lower vital regions of human consciousness by a kind of false subjectivism. But the real ...
... consciousness, encourages desires and excites the passions runs counter to the true goal of music and ought to be avoided. It is not a question of designation but of inspiration—and the spiritual consciousness alone can be the judge there. 22 July 1967 ...
... psychic nature, but spiritual men are not. The saint, generally, proceeds from and lives in the heart-centre. The spiritual man might live in other higher centres – say, above the head, in the spiritual consciousness. Disciple : It is not quite clear to me – the distinction. Sri Aurobindo : The saints live in the psychic being, that is, in the Purusha in the heart but the spiritual ...
... how it could occur ? A. Virgin birth is not to be taken literally; it is a symbol. The conception of the world takes place beyond mind. Shakti—the Virgin—creates directly out of the spiritual consciousness, without resorting to any material medium. Even in spiritual life, even now, the Guru who is the guide Page 239 helps the disciple by giving him a second birth. And the second ...
... bhakti, spiritual emotion or Ananda. Your experience was a very beautiful one — the inner being realised by it that which must be established in the waking state as the foundation of the spiritual consciousness and spiritual life. (3.7.37) ...
... usually in that pervading way when there has been sufficient purification to make it possible. On the other side, it is itself the beginning of the laying of the foundations of the higher spiritual consciousness. I think you are right about the change coming in many. Still chequered by remnants and returns of the old nature, it is proceeding. ...
... the Spirit as well as in the body. The body has consciousness, it is God's form.... The flow of that delight precipitates and courses through this body. When you are in such a state, full of spiritual consciousness, you can lead a married life, a life in the world. In all your works you find the expression of God's delight.... No one is a god but in each man there is a god and to make Him manifest is ...
... thought is the direct fruit of the new appreciation of the actualities of their present political situation by the people; and the new ideal is the direct result of the revival of the old spiritual consciousness of the nation. Realism and spirituality: a strange concatenation! Yet the extreme Nationalist and Page 297 the avowed revolutionary saw nothing strange in the marriage ...
... establishment of the reign of the Spirit over mind and life and body. Freedom and unity - desirable things both and apparently incompatible - can be reconciled only in God or at the level of spiritual consciousness. And so Sri Aurobindo gathers his insights and intuitions into a final statement about the future man and the future human society. For individual and collective man alike there is one common ...
... Arabian Sea), India's air filled with a strange aroma. Swami Vivekananda of our own times put it so well. "India," he said, "shall rise only through a renewal and restoration of that highest spiritual consciousness which has made of India, at all times, the cradle of the nations and the cradle of the faith." Although rooted in a spiritual civilization, India did not divorce spirituality and materialism ...
... miserable condition. And it is only with this spiritual capacity of rising to a higher level and replacing the animal's unconsciousness by a spiritual super-consciousness that there comes into the being not only the capacity to see the goal of existence and to foresee Page 303 the culmination of the effort but also a clear-sighted trust in a higher spiritual power to which one can surrender one's... the physical modification will be a subordinate factor, a consequence. This transmutation of the consciousness will always remain possible to the human being when the flame of the soul, the psychic kindling, becomes potent in heart and mind and the Page 302 nature is ready. The spiritual aspiration is innate in man; for he is, unlike the animal, aware of imperfection and limitation and... "What is going to happen?" and at the same time, more or less, the inability to answer. That is why all spiritual disciplines begin with the necessity Page 304 of surrendering all responsibility and relying on a higher principle. Otherwise peace is impossible. And yet, consciousness has been given to man so that he can progress, can discover what he doesn't know, develop into what he ...
... on of the whole physical consciousness and divinizing of the law of the body. Finally, the sixth element is that of the perfect action and enjoyment of being on the supramental Gnostic basis. And this integrality of perfection would mark the status of the siddha or perfected soul who will live in union with the Purushottama in the fullness of spiritual being, consciousness and bliss of Sachchidananda... his universal and infinite energy, all knowledge and conscious experience as the out-flowing of that consciousness, and all in the terms of that one Ananda. His physical being will be one with all material Nature, his vital being with the life of the universe, his mind with the cosmic mind, his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine knowledge and will both in itself and as it pours itself through... nature and from all repugnance to the cosmic action of the Divine. This liberation gets its completeness when the spiritual gnosis can act with a supramental knowledge and reception of the action of Nature and a supramental luminous will in initiation. The gnosis discovers the spiritual sense in Nature, God in things, the soul of good in all things that have the contrary appearance; that soul is delivered ...
... possible truths or truths and realities that are discovered in spiritual experience or through special revelations. The very word religion connotes its emphasis on this process of relationship. In the process of establishing this relationship between man and God or between human consciousness and the highest possible state of being of consciousness, religions have tended to place or recognize four necessities... precisely because of its emphasis on praxis. It encouraged the pursuit of spiritual praxis, and did not consider intellectual or theological conceptions to be the one thing of central importance. It allowed the development of varieties of conceptions and varieties of forms and emphasized the attainment of spiritual consciousnesses by inner experience. As a result, we find in the Indian religion, varieties... praxis rather than belief. And he argues that spiritual practice is temporally, heuristically, psychologically and morally prior to theoretical or meta- physical understanding of religious questions. But even then, he points out that gates to spiritual experiences are many, and one is called upon to answer the question as to which of the various gates of spiritual experiences one should take. In presenting ...
... tend to be most impractical? Well, 'no' would say an Indian, if by mystic you mean spiritual. A spiritual master's consciousness is wide as the universe, so it is natural that he sees more widely than we ordinary people do. In point of fact, Sri Aurobindo, like his predecessor Sri Krishna, was intensely spiritual and intensely material. He had a very firm grasp of the material. Remember the way... British; Gandhi and Nehru being chief among them. The reason is not far to seek. To quote Dilip Kumar Roy, 1 "[Indians] have been successfully westernized and completely insulated from India's ancient spiritual influences by the modern European outlook on life, as had happened with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.... Pandit Jawaharlal finds Hindu culture so foreign, even bizarre, and fails to understand the diverse ...
... of the whole physical consciousness and a divinising of the law of the body. For behind the gross physical sheath of this materially visible and sensible frame there is subliminally supporting it and discoverable by a finer subtle consciousness a subtle body of the mental being and a spiritual or causal body of the gnostic and bliss soul in which all the perfection of a spiritual embodiment is to be... fullness of spiritual being, consciousness and bliss of Sachchidananda or eternal Brahman. Possessed at first by reflection in the mental experience, it will be possessed afterwards with a greater fullness and directness in the massed and luminous consciousness, cidghana , which comes by the gnosis. The Siddha or perfected soul will live in union with the Purushottama in this Brahmic consciousness, he will... liberated into its self-existent being, consciousness, power and bliss and the Nature itself liberated from the tangle of this lower action of the struggling gunas and the dualities into the high truth of the divine calm and the divine action, then spiritual perfection becomes possible. Purification and freedom are the indispensable antecedents of perfection. A spiritual self-perfection can only mean a growing ...
... enjoyment of union with the Divine in spiritual being, consciousness and delight must always be the first object of the Yoga; its free enjoyment of the cosmic unity of the Divine becomes a second object; but out of that a third appears, the effectuation of the meaning of the divine unity with all beings by a sympathy and participation in Page 613 the spiritual purpose of the Divine in humanity... in as an informal element. To arrive by the shortest way at the largest development of spiritual power and being and divinise by it a liberated nature in the whole range of human living is our inspiring motive. The principle in view is a self-surrender, a giving up of the human being into the being, consciousness, power, delight of the Divine, a union or communion at all the points of meeting in the... the character of the instrument it uses; thus the Hathayogic process is psycho-physical, the Rajayogic mental and psychic, the way of knowledge is spiritual and cognitive, the way of devotion spiritual, emotional and aesthetic, the way of works spiritual and dynamic by action. Each is guided Page 610 in the ways of its own characteristic power. But all power is in the end one, all power ...
... the Son are at bottom one: "I and my Father are one." What for? To take up the sins of man – that means man is a store-house of sin. By his own effort, by his spiritual practice to get rid of sin and to attain to the spiritual divine consciousness and life is not possible for him. Therefore, the supremely gracious God has come down in the human form to expiate the sin of man on his behalf and thus make... to a godly or divine nature from a human nature. God reveals this sadhana through his human life. Man knows himself as sinful, afflicted, weak and helpless. To him the spiritual realisation, the divine Life, the divine Consciousness may seem to be futile and hollow dreams, like the castle in the air. These are only luxurious idealisms which are not for all, at least for many. Only a few that are heroic... Christ and his body into that of the Messiah; he makes the body of Christ a part and parcel of his own. As lime clarifies turbid water, so by drinking the physical consciousness of Christ his follower purifies his own physical consciousness. To confess one's sins is to accept the Cross: Page 274 the tragic end of Christ signifies God's compassion for man, because the crucified Christ ...
... (B) 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... world, Calm they gaze down on the little human scene" (428) (B.5) Spiritual Sight : We have been discussing the nature of sight and vision in the superconscient Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Overmind levels of consciousness. Now all these sights are called "spiritual sights". Here a vague question may perhaps trouble the mind of some readers: Why are... four-rung "spiritual Mind" series. We now intend to describe in brief outline the nature of the sight in each of the four levels represented by (i) the Higher Mind, (ii) the Illumined Mind, (iii) the Intuitive Mind, and (iv) the Overmind. But before that let us enjoy the rasa of a significant passage from Savitri: "A vision came of higher realms than ours, A consciousness of brighter ...
... the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental, vital, physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual nature) consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what is called in this yoga the spiritual transformation. If one begins with this movement then the Power from above has in its descent... doing that the emergence of the true consciousness becomes possible. But rejection alone cannot succeed; it is by rejection and by inner experience and growth that it is done. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - III: Inner Experience and Outer Life You have asked what is the discipline to be followed in order to convert the mental seeking into a living spiritual experience. The first necessity is... concentration. It is important, however, to remember that the concentration of the consciousness in the head is only a preparation for its rising to the centre above; otherwise, one may get shut up in one's own mind and its experiences or at best attain only to a reflection of the Truth above instead of rising into the spiritual transcendence to live there. For some the mental concentration is easier, for ...
... and enjoyment of union with the Divine in spiritual being, consciousness and delight must always be the first object of the Yoga; its free enjoyment of the cosmic unity of the Divine becomes a second object; but out of that a third appears, the effectuation of the meaning of the divine unity with all being by a sympathy and participation in the spiritual purpose of the Divine in humanity. The individual... perfection which amounts to the elevation of the mental into the full spiritual and what Sri Aurobindo calls supramental nature. Therefore, the integral yoga of knowledge, love and works is extended into a Yoga of spiritual and supramental perfection. (b) Supermind is the key-word. For supermind is an integral consciousness; it is at once the self-awareness of the Infinite and Eternal and a... words, "To arrive by the shortest way at the largest development of spiritual power and being and divinise by it a liberated nature in the whole range of human living is our inspiring motive." 86 The central principle of the integral yoga is a self- surrender, a giving up of the human being into the being, consciousness, power, and delight of the Divine, a union or communion, at all the points ...
... and enjoyment of union with the Divine in spiritual being, consciousness and delight must always be the first object of the Yoga; its free enjoyment of the cosmic unity of the Divine becomes a second object; but out of that a third appears, the effectuation of the meaning of the divine unity with all beings by a sympathy and participation in the spiritual purpose of the Divine in Page 65 ... movement, Sri Aurobindo envisages illumination of the whole physical consciousness and a divinizing of the law of the body. The yogic literature, particularly relating to Hatha yoga and Tantra, speaks of physical siddhis acquired by some opening up of the law of the subtle or a calling down of something of the law of the spiritual body. Normally, the method consists of opening up of the Chakras by Hatha... universe, his mind with the cosmic mind, his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine knowledge and will both in itself and as it pours itself through these channels, his spirit with the one spirit in all beings. All the variety of cosmic existence will be changed to him in that unity and revealed in the secret of its spiritual significance. For in this spiritual bliss and being he will be one with That ...
... action. Here too our faith must be an assent that receives all spiritual experience, but with a wide openness and readiness for always more light and truth, an absence of limiting attachment and no such clinging to forms as would interfere with the forward movement of the Shakti towards the integrality of the spiritual being, consciousness, knowledge, power, action and the wholeness of the one and the... knowledge. In nothing in the lower nature from the reason to the vital will can the seeker of the Yoga put a complete and permanent faith, but only at last in the spiritual Page 772 truth, power, Ananda which become in the spiritual reason his sole guides and luminaries and masters of action. And yet faith is necessary throughout and at every step because it is a needed assent of the soul... often, especially with us, sons of an Page 774 age of intellectuality and scepticism and a materialistic denial of spiritual truth which has not yet lifted its painted clouds from the face of the sun of a greater reality and is still opposed to the light of spiritual intuition and inmost experience. There will very possibly be many of those trying obscurations of which even the Vedic Rishis ...
... outlook, egoistic consciousness of his ignorance, away from all that had finally failed him in the hour of his spiritual crisis. The very action which on that standing he had rejected, the terrible function, the appalling labour, he has now been brought to admit and accept on a new inner basis. A reconciling greater knowledge, a diviner consciousness, a high impersonal motive, a spiritual standard of oneness... 47! svabhāva-niyataṁ karma . In the lower ignorant consciousness of mind, life and body there are many dharmas, many rules, many standards and laws because there are many varying determinations and types Page 405 of the mental, vital and physical nature. The immortal Dharma is one; it is that of the highest spiritual divine consciousness and its powers, parā prakṛtiḥ . It is beyond the... something more to be said in order to bring out all the meaning of the great spiritual change. The twelfth chapter leads up to this remaining knowledge and the last six that follow develop it to a grand final conclusion. This thing that remains still to be said turns upon the difference between the current Vedantic view of spiritual liberation and the larger comprehensive freedom which the teaching of the ...
... psychic and above to higher mind and higher consciousness generally, then it begins to be spiritualised and its highest ranges merge into the spiritual mind-consciousness of which this higher mind can be a beginning. This merging is part of the spiritual transformation. For the mind there are many centres: (1) the sahasradala which centralises spiritual mind, higher mind, intuitive mind and acts... because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being. There is one centre below the navel (lower vital), another at the navel (central vital), another in the chest (emotional vital, heart centre), another in the throat (physical mind), another above the head (higher consciousness); besides these there is the centre in the forehead (mind, will, vision) and... mental being which is in contact at once with the Divine above and with the psychic behind the heart and is aware of the Truth and has the psychic and spiritual insight and view into things. Page 234 Above the head extends the higher consciousness centre, sahasradala padma. But usually there is partial working of the forehead centre also when the sahasradala opens. The ordinary mind is at ...
... 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: (i) the Higher Mind; (ii) the Illumined Mind; (iii) the Intuitive Mind; (iv) the Overmind;... eyes to unseen spiritual heights. 10 A vision lightened on the viewless heights." On summit Mind are radiant altitudes Exposed to the lustre of Infinity, Outskirts and dependencies of the house of Truth, Upraised estates of Mind and measureless. 12 Sight in the Higher Mind The Higher Mind is the first plane of spiritual mind-consciousness to which the first... on a suffering world, Calm they gaze down on the little human scene. 41 Spiritual Sight We have been discussing the nature of sight and vision in the superconscient Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Overmind levels of consciousness. Now all these sights are called 'Spiritual Sights'. Here a vague question may perhaps trouble the mind of some readers. Why are we ...
... up justified or justifiable beliefs regarding them. But this demand in respect of phenomena of consciousness that are supra-physical and spiritual is often regarded as untenable. v Consciousness is intrinsically supra-physical, and spirituality is the domain of higher and highest levels of consciousness and of supra-physical facts. Even though a supra-physical fact may impinge on the physical world... earth a new species, the very nature of which will have inherent powers of the supramental consciousness, just as the human species is imbued with spontaneous powers of the development of the mind and various ranges of mental consciousness. Spirituality and Knowledge Spirituality and direct spiritual experiences carry with them poetic quality, iii and they claim certainty of knowledge... collective life designed to sub-serve the revealed truth. But religion is still governed by mental consciousness; it often revolves in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices of set prescriptions and forms. Religion does promise eventual arrival at spiritual experience, but often, it is claimed that spiritual experience is beyond the normal limitations of humanity, even though the founders of religions ...
... a miserable condition. And it is only with this spiritual capacity of rising to a higher level and replacing the animal's unconsciousness by a spiritual super-consciousness that there comes into the being not only the capacity to see the goal of existence and to foresee the culmination of the effort but also a clear-sighted trust in a higher spiritual power to which one can surrender one's whole being... are related partly to the physical consciousness. An aspect of inertia is passivity, which often manifests as a weakness of the will. Sri Aurobindo speaks of this as follows: "It [the weakness of the will] is a first result of coming down into the physical consciousness or of the physical consciousness coming up prominently.... The physical consciousness is full of inertia - it wants not to... the physical consciousness, for the force of habit is derived from the inertia and mechanical responsiveness of physical consciousness. As Sri Aurobindo explains: "In the physical being the power of past impressions is very great, because it is by the process of repeated impressions that consciousness was made to manifest in matter - and also by the habitual reactions of consciousness to these i ...
... beginning of the true spiritual life. The soul is able now to make itself ready for a higher evolution of manifested consciousness than the mental human — it can pass from the mental to the spiritual and through degrees of the spiritual to the supramental state. Till then there is no reason why it should cease from birth, it cannot in fact do so. If having reached the spiritual state, it wills to pass... the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental, vital, physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual nature) consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what is called in this yoga the spiritual transformation. If one begins with this movement then the Power from above has in its descent... to be followed in order to convert the mental seeking into a living spiritual experience. The first necessity is the practice of concentration of your consciousness within yourself. The ordinary human mind has Page 25 an activity on the surface which veils the real Self. But there is another, a hidden consciousness within behind the surface one in which we can become aware of the real ...
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