... aims and standards of action towards another and celestial or supracosmic state in which alone beyond the perplexed vanity and illusion of man's birth and life and death there can be a pure spiritual existence. The Gita rejects none of these things in their place,—for it insists on the performance of the social duty, the following of the dharma for the man who has to take his share in the common action... its own terms, much less into those of life and action. Therefore we have the intransigent absolutists of the spirit who reject the mental and condemn the material being and yearn after a pure spiritual existence happily purchased by the dissolution of all that we are in life and mind, a Nirvana. The rest of spiritual effort is for these fanatics of the Absolute a mental preparation or a compromise, a... declares that after all not here in the life of the body or in the collective life of mortal man but in some immortal Beyond lies the heaven or the Nirvana where alone is to be found the true spiritual existence. It is here that the Gita intervenes with a restatement of the truth of the Spirit, of the Self, of God and of the world and Nature. It extends and remoulds the truth evolved by a later thought ...
... man of spiritual realisation lives and acts and behaves, in all ways of his being and acting, it is said in the Gita, "he lives and moves in Me"; he dwells in the Divine, he has realised the spiritual existence. The spiritual man living in the sense of the spiritual self, in the realisation of the Divine within him and everywhere, would be living inwardly a divine life and its reflection would fall... or embodied mind or embodied life, or dependent on this world or that world or on this condition of being or that condition of being, that is not the reality of self, not the fullness of our spiritual existence. To live only as a self of body or be only by the body is to be an ephemeral creature, subject to death and desire and pain and suffering and decay and decadence. To transcend, to exceed con... status of the physical, vital, mental being with his satisfaction of interest, desire, pursuit of knowledge and right living before he could reach fitness for a truer self-realisation and a free spiritual existence. In recent times the whole stress has passed to the life of the race, to a search for the perfect society, and latterly to a concentration on the right organisation and scientific mechanisation ...
... supramental height, would find in a sort of echelon or a scale with overlapping degrees their assured basis, their intermediate steps of self-formation, their expression of realised capacity of spiritual existence on the way to the supreme Reality. But also the presence of the liberated and now sovereign supramental light and force at the head of evolutionary Nature might be expected to have its consequences... of the gnostic being supermind only could make; for the mind some abstract outlines of it are alone possible. The gnosis is the effective principle of the Spirit, a highest dynamis of the spiritual existence. The gnostic individual would be the consummation of the spiritual man; his whole way of being, thinking, living, acting would be governed by the power of a vast universal spirituality. All the... being would be the sense of the gnostic 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 ...
... of life—subject to a necessary evolution first of his lower physical, vital and mental nature—as a frame and means for that discovery and for man's ascent from the ignorant natural into the spiritual existence. This dominant idea India has never quite forgotten even under the stress and material exigencies and the externalities of political and social construction. But the difficulty of making the... extent; for the effort at governing political action by ethics is usually little more than a pretence. The coordination or true union of the collective outward life with Moksha, the liberated spiritual existence, has hardly even been conceived or Page 397 attempted, much less anywhere succeeded in the past history of the yet hardly adult human race. Accordingly, we find that the governance... is a rule that has not yet anywhere found its right conditions Page 400 for even beginning its effort, for it can only come when man's attempt to reach and abide by the law of the spiritual existence is no longer an exceptional aim for individuals or else degraded in its more general aspiration to the form of a popular religion, but is recognised and followed out as the imperative need of ...
... atmosphere, all the social surroundings were suffused with it; it breathed its power through the whole original form and hieratic character of the culture. Always was felt the near idea of the spiritual existence and its supremacy as the ideal, highest over all others; everywhere there was the pervading pressure of the notion of the universe as a manifestation of divine Powers and a movement full of the... ideal of Indian life, it is true to a certain degree and in a certain sense in its fact and practice. No step could be taken in the Indian's inner or outer life without his being reminded of a spiritual existence. Everywhere he felt the closeness or at least saw the sign of something beyond his natural life, beyond the moment in time, beyond his individual ego, something other than the needs and interests... 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 emotional religious seeking which is the ...
... dynamic and creative. The struggle of Mind to elevate life is the promise and condition of the conquest of life by that which is higher even than Mind. Page 25 That highest thing, the spiritual existence, is concerned with what is eternal but not therefore entirely aloof from the transient. For the spiritual man the mind's dream of perfect beauty is realised in an eternal love, beauty and delight... knows 2 and is the Lord. But if it is often difficult for the mental life to accommodate itself to the dully resistant material activity, how much more difficult must it seem for the spiritual existence to live on in a world that appears full not of the Truth but of every lie and illusion, not of Love and Beauty but of an encompassing discord and ugliness, not of the Law of Truth but of victorious... Science she seeks to make all mankind fit for the full development of the mental life, so by Yoga must she inevitably seek to make all mankind fit for the higher evolution, the second birth, the spiritual existence. And as the mental life uses and perfects the material, so will the spiritual use and perfect the material and the mental existence as the instruments of a divine self-expression. The ages when ...
... Existence in a world of Matter. This original Reality might be a cosmic spiritual Existence, a Pantheos, or it might have some other status; but in any case there would be, not a universal illusion or mere phenomenon, but a true universe. In the classical theory of Illusionism a sole and supreme Page 457 spiritual Existence is accepted as the one Reality: it is by its essentiality the Self... percept, the world, is an illusion created by an Illusion and unreal; the perceiving consciousness is itself an illusion and therefore unreal. But this deprives everything of significance, our spiritual existence and our salvation from Maya no less than our temporal existence and our immersion in Maya; all are of an equal unreality and unimportance. It is possible to take a less rigid standpoint and hold ...
... compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on Page 36 its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the... domain of the mental life, so Rajayoga, operating with the mind, aims at a supernormal perfection and enlargement of the capacities of the mental life and goes beyond it into the domain of the spiritual existence. But the weakness of the system lies in its excessive reliance on abnormal states of trance. This limitation leads first to a certain aloofness from the physical life which is our foundation ...
... integral ^ method. Nor would these have any raison d'être unless employed for an integral mental and physical life. Such a mental and physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. Thus we would arrive at a synthesis of the three degrees of Nature and of the three modes of human existence which she has evolved or is evolving. We... the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect Page 49 spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort. Such a consummation being no other than the kingdom of heaven within reproduced in the kingdom of heaven without, would ...
... our senses are in error and the Upanishad warns us against their false evidence. The material world is a transitory and changing whirl of motion on the surface of Brahman, the great ocean of spiritual existence, who alone is, in His depths, eternal, real and steadfast. It is He who as the Lord gives order, rule and abidingness to the infinite motion we call the Universe; and if we wish to be in touch... force of Maya should become phenomenally manifold. In reality, there is no division and the Self in me is the same as the Self in you and the same as the Self up yonder in the Sun. The unity of spiritual existence is the basis of all true religion and true morality. We know indeed that as God is not contained in His universe, but the universe is in Him, so also God is not contained within a man. When the ...
... the door of escape from the Ignorance. For this knowledge, made effective for man by the offering up of his works and all his consciousness to the Godhead in all, enables him to return to his spiritual existence and through it to the supracosmic Reality eternal and luminous above this mutable Nature. This truth is the secret of being which the Gita is now going to apply in its amplitude of result... has to grow into it, one has to become it,—that is the only way to verify it. It is only by an exceeding of the lower self that one can become the real divine self and live the truth of our spiritual existence. All the apparent truths one can oppose to it are appearances of the lower Nature. The release from the evil and the defect of the lower Nature, aśubham , can only come by accepting a higher ...
... and relative to be a satisfactory key to its own riddle. How, while absorbed and continually forced outward by the engrossing call of its active nature, is it to get back to its real self and spiritual existence? The ascetic renunciation and the way of the Gita are both agreed that it must first of all renounce this Page 528 absorption, must cast from it the external solicitation of outward... get out of the close bondage of the active nature and back to spiritual freedom is to cast away entirely all that belongs to the dynamics of the ignorance and to convert the soul into a pure spiritual existence. That is what is called becoming Brahman, brahma-bhūya . It is to put off the lower mental, vital, physical existence and to put on the pure spiritual being. This can best be done by the i ...
... Ancient belief made this concession with the happiest ease, saw a soul, a living godhead everywhere in the animate and in the inanimate and nothing was Page 312 to its view void of a spiritual existence. The logical abstracting intellect with its passion for clean sections intermediately swept away these large beliefs as an imaginative superstition or a primitive animism and, mastered by its... in so far as the universal too may be, as some would have it, an immense illusion or Page 315 a grand imposed device. On this line of thinking we arrive at the idea of some great spiritual existence of which universal and individual are two companion powers, pole and pole of its manifestation, indefinite circumference and multiple centre of the activised realities of its being. This is ...
... 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 that is called to this deep and vast change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development... The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort. ² __________________ ¹ Ibid., pp. 669-70. ² Ibid., Vol. 20, p. 44. Page 272 ...
... keep pace with the soul in its formation of self-expressive personality, its long unfolding of a secret spiritual divinity and the slow transformation of the mental into the divine mental or spiritual existence." 2 We have investigated the law of Death, a law not at all immutable, absolute or inexorable inhering in the very substance of life itself, but a law altogether relative and germane... secret spiritual divinity 1 2 The Life Divine, p. 215. 3 Ibid., p. 193. Page 412 and the slow transformation of the mental into the divine mental or spiritual existence." 1 Thus will be made possible, nay, inevitable, the consummation of a triple immortality — to which we referred in the beginning of our essay — "immortality of the nature completing ...
... of an immortal life opposed to the much falsehood and mortal existence. Fourthly, there is the idea of the discipline of an inward growth of man from the physical through the psychic to the spiritual existence. Finally, there is the idea and experience of the conquest of death, the secret of immortality. Throughout its long and uninterrupted history of the Vedic tradition, these ideas have remained... there has been a tendency in the Indian religion to provide suitable means for the individual and collective life to develop by graded steps and reach and experience truths of higher and spiritual existence. It was recognised that at the beginning not many could safely and successfully reach the heights, but the pioneering leaders did not accept the theory that many must necessarily remain ...
... physical, vital, mental being with satisfaction of interest, desire, pursuit of knowledge and right living - kama, artha and dharma - before he could reach fitness for the truer state of free spiritual existence (moksha). In contrast to this, Sri Aurobindo finds that in recent times the whole stress has fallen on the life of the race, to search for a perfect society, and the right organisation and... each of his own spiritual being and the discovery by all of their spiritual unity and a resultant life of unity. There can be no real perfection for us except by our inner self and truth of spiritual existence taking up all truth of the instrumental existence into itself and giving to it oneness, integration, harmony. As our only real freedom is the discovery and disengagement of the spiritual Reality ...
... the mental life. Rajayoga operating with the mind aims at a supernormal perfection and enlargement of the capacities of the mental life and goes beyond it into the domain of spiritual existence. The path of knowledge (Jnana Yoga) aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme self. The path of devotion aims at the enjoyment of the supreme love and Bliss and utilises... The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort. Such a consummation being no other than the kingdom of heaven within reproduced in the kingdom of heaven without, would ...
... Indian people has been the seeking of man for his true spiritual self; and it looked upon life as the frame and means for that discovery and for man's ascent from the ignorant natural into the spiritual existence. This was always subject to a necessary and inevitable gradual evolution, first of his lower physical, vital and mental nature. This dominant idea India has never quite forgotten even under the... extent; for the effort at governing political action by ethics is usually little more than pretence. The coordination or true union of the collective outward life with Moksha, the liberated spiritual existence, has hardly even been conceived or attempted, much less anywhere succeeded in the past history of the yet hardly adult human race. Accordingly, we find that the governance by the Dharma of India's ...
... to be effected by humanity. These results are envisaged to be employed for an integral mental and physical life, and the mental and physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. As a result, a synthesis is accomplished of the three degrees of Nature and of the three modes of human existence which Nature has evolved and is evolving... material life of humanity and also to divinize the great secular attempt of humanity of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by the integralization of a widely perfect spiritual existence. This would be the crown alike of the individual and common effort of humanity. Consummation of this process of divinizing material life of humanity means the kingdom of heaven within reproduced ...
... immortal life opposed to the much falsehood and mortal existence. Fourthly, there is the conception of the discipline of an inward growth of man from the physical through the psychic to the spiritual existence. Finally, there is the idea and experience of the conquest of death, the secret of immortality. These ideas have remained constant in the Vedic tradition throughout its long and uninterrupted... the Vedic times, there was a tendency in the Indian religion to provide means for the individual and collective life to develop by graded steps and reach and experience truths of higher and spiritual existence. It was recognised that at the beginning not many could safely and successfully reach the heights, but the pioneering leaders did not accept the theory that many must necessarily remain for ever ...
... 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 that is called to this deep and vast change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development... 'The divinising of the normal material life of man of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort.'25 An immense wealth of psychological knowledge pertaining to Integral Yoga is to be found in the thirteen Volumes ...
... darkness to Light, and from mortality to immortality; or, in other words, from Matter to Spirit. But his ascent is both a sublimation and an integration, so that when man reaches the glories of his spiritual existence, he does not necessarily die to his mental - and material life, but can bring those glories down into his earthly nature, and achieve a dynamic harmony of divine existence. Therefore, any philosophy... any other part of our nature; but to be attached to it is to remain tied only to the gross material principle of our being, and forfeit our birthright to the light and bliss and freedom of our spiritual existence. Detachment from the physical mind gives us a release from the grossness of the material consciousness; it gives wings to our inner consciousness to soar into the Spirit- skies. Referring to ...
... hidden compulsion on them to disclose it is the cause of evolution, on Inconscience to develop from itself its secret consciousness, on the apparent Non-Being to reveal in itself the occult spiritual existence, on the insensible neutrality of Matter to develop a various delight of being which must grow, setting itself free from its minor terms, its contrary dualities of Page 686 pain and... to reject that by which all these arrive at their utmost plenitude is to shut them out from their own highest consummation. An opposite exaggeration demanding only some colourless purity of spiritual existence nullifies the creative action of the spirit and excludes from us all that the Divine manifests in its being: it leaves room only for an evolution without sense or fulfilment,—for a cutting off ...
... off from Spirit, yet it seems with such a practical definiteness to be so cut off, it is so different, even so contrary in its law, the material life seems so much to be the negation of all spiritual existence that its rejection might well appear to be the one short cut out of the difficulty,—as undoubtedly it is; but a short cut or any cut is no solution. Still, there, in Matter undoubtedly lies the... this illusion Mind can only find itself; it can only travel between the three terms of the divided existence it has created: it cannot find there the unity of the Spirit or the truth of the spiritual existence. Now it is true that the principle of division in Matter can be only a creation of the divided Mind which has precipitated itself into material existence; for that material existence has no ...
... a positive side; the negative movement of freedom is a liberation from the principal bonds, the master-knots of the lower soul-nature, the positive side an opening or growth into the higher spiritual existence. But what are these master-knots—other and deeper twistings than the instrumental knots of Page 674 the mind, heart, psychic life-force? We find them pointed out for us and insisted... presence, sāyujya, sālokya, sāmīpya mukti . The way proposed for the integral Yoga is a lifting up and surrender of the whole being to him, by which not only do we become one with him in our spiritual existence, but dwell too in him and he in us, so that the whole nature is full of his presence and changed into the divine nature; we become one spirit and consciousness and life and substance with the ...
... Europe found India, the Asia of Asia, the heart of the world's spiritual life, in the last throes of an enormous experiment, the thought of a whole nation concentrated for centuries upon the pure spiritual existence to the exclusion of all real progress in the practical and mental life of the race. The entering stream of Eastern thought found in Europe the beginning of an era which rejected religion, philosophy... oneness and not only by an external association of interests; the resurgence of man out of the merely animal and economic life or the merely intellectual and aesthetic into the glories of the spiritual existence; the pouring of the power of the spirit into the physical mould and mental instrument so that man may develop his manhood into that true supermanhood which shall exceed our present state as much ...
... perfection implies a complete enjoyment and possession of the whole divine and spiritual nature; and it is complete lifting of the whole nature of man into its higher and highest power of divine and spiritual existence. Integrality becomes, in this context, the essential condition and content of what Sri Aurobindo calls the Supramental Yoga. If the aim of the yoga were to be only an escape from the world... pace with the soul in its formation of self-expressive personality, its long unfolding of a secret spiritual divinity and the slow transformation of the mental into the divine mental of our spiritual existence. The immortality of the mind, life and the body, which can be termed as a triple immortality, would fulfil on the physical plane the realisation of the essential immortality of the Spirit and ...
... also of the total perfection of the body. There are higher levels of the mind than any we now conceive and to these we must one day reach and rise beyond them to the heights of a greater, a spiritual existence. As we rise we have to open to them our lower members and fill these with those superior and supreme dynamisms of light and power; the body we have to make a more and more and even entirely conscious ...
... lose these former veils but they would no longer be veils or imperfect expressions but true manifestations; they would be changed into states of light, powers of spiritual life, vehicles of a spiritual existence. But this again could not be if mind, life and body were not taken up and transformed by a state of being and a force of being superior to them, a power of Supermind as much above our incomplete ...
... it ascends and takes foundation in the Self of all and in the status of self-joyous infinity which is the supreme manifestation of the Self. This is the transcendent immortality, this is the spiritual existence which the Upanishads declare to be the goal of man and by which we pass out of the mortal state into the heaven of the Spirit. What then happens to the gods and the cosmos and all that the ...
... immortal life opposed to the much falsehood or mixed truth and falsehood of mortal existence. There is the discipline of an inward growth of man from the physical through the psychic to the spiritual existence. There is the conquest of death, the secret of immortality, the perception of a realisable divinity of the human spirit. In an age to which in the insolence of our external knowledge we are ...
... humanity refined, harmonised in all its capacities, ennobled in all its members; but it placed before him too the theory and practice of a highest change, familiarised him with the conception of a spiritual existence and sowed in him a hunger for the divine and the infinite. The symbols of his religion were filled with suggestions which led towards it; at every step he was reminded of lives behind and in ...
... This is the supreme way because it is the highest secret and mystery and yet an inner movement progressively realisable by all. This is the deepest and most intimate truth of your real, your spiritual existence." Page 594 ...
... inseparable from each other and interpenetrative. The whole objective of Indian philosophy, its entire raison d'être , is the knowledge of the spirit, the experience of it and the right way to a spiritual existence; its single aim coincides with the highest significance of religion. Indian religion draws all its characteristic value from the spiritual philosophy which illumines its supreme aspiration and ...
... the Being of Bliss and pure Existence. In us, in the embodied individual, it stands behind all as the psychic Entity, the inner Self supporting the other formulations of our consciousness and spiritual existence. The Purusha, individual in us, is cosmic in the cosmos, transcendent in the transcendence: the identity with the Self is apparent, but it is the Self in its pure impersonal-personal status of ...
... instruments. A faint and faltering image of it entered our perception in the cosmos around us. Listen to a stanza from those chants of mystical seerhood, the Upanishads, describing the supreme spiritual Existence: "There the sun shines not and the moon has no splendour and the stars are blind; there these lightnings flash Page 2 anot nor any earthly fire. For all that is bright is but ...
... the utter fullness of God." 66 "Hidden self" - there we have the Hellenistic thought of Paul's time in a Paulinised form: the resurrection is seen as perfecting this secret mode of spiritual existence in one by giving it a body fit for it of power and glory and imperishability in place of its ordinary embodiment. A supernatural body Page 258 of Spirit (pneuma) substitutes ...
... to live even when their time has passed by, they strive in a special way to realise their goal. The first intuitive discernment that I can outlive my lifespan takes me to a higher stage of spiritual existence. One becomes specifically conscious about one's 17 Ibid,, p. 76. 18 Willi Hoffsummer, Kruz geschichten 3, Mathias Grunewald-Verlag, Mainz, (Germany) 3 rd ed., 1988, #218 ...
... integrated, beautiful and perfect cosmic poem ever composed .... It ranges symbolically from primordial cosmic void, through earth's darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of supramental spiritual existence and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence and metaphorical brilliance. Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the ...
... into soul images of what is true, right and beautiful and in the end the whole nature can be turned towards Page 89 the real aim of life, the supreme victory, the ascent into spiritual existence. The Life Divine, p. 225-27 It is the very nature of the soul or the psychic being to turn towards the divine Truth as the sunflower to the sun; it accepts and clings to all that ...
... and through them shines the Sun of Truth as much as in that truth smiles the Sun of Beauty. In it is aglow the Sun of aesthetic Delight that sustains the creative ardour in the multiplicity of spiritual existence. It is another kind of mantric songlike poem that has come to us in a new way to make our life richly meaningful and happy. To quote Sri Aurobindo: “…the poetic mind sees at once in a flood ...
... integrated, beautiful and perfect cosmic poem ever composed. It ranges symbolically from a primordial cosmic void, through earth’s darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of Supramental spiritual existence, and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence, and metaphorical brilliance. Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the ...
... it to create just the contrary order of things, a world in which the unity of spiritual being is the matrix and first condition of any formation or action, the Energy at work is a self-aware spiritual existence in movement, and all its names and forms are a self-conscious play of the spiritual unity. Or it might be an order in which the Spirit's innate power of conscious Force or Will would realise ...
... ty and infinity. All man's age-long effort, his action, society, art, ethics, science, religion, all the manifold activities by which he expresses and increases his mental, vital, physical, spiritual existence, are episodes in the vast drama of this endeavour of Nature and have behind their limited apparent aims no other true sense or foundation. For the individual to arrive at the divine universality ...
... The whole stress is on the unreality and insubstantiality of existence, whether of the pageant or of the spirits or of ourselves—there is no stress anywhere, no mention or hint of an eternal spiritual existence. Shakespeare's idea here as everywhere is the expression of a mood of the vital mind, it is not a reasoned philosophical conclusion. However if you like to argue that, logically, this or that ...
... indispensable. The presence of the spirit is there in every living Page 967 being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure spiritual existence and consciousness, of the delight of a divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner ...
... 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 called to this deep and vast inward change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it ...
... the supramental power; that can only be seen and grasped when we have reached the summits of mental being, entered into overmind and stand on the borders of an upper, a greater hemisphere of spiritual existence. There the ignorance, the inconscience, the original blank Nescience slowly awaking towards a half-knowledge, which are the basis of material Nature and which surround, penetrate and powerfully ...
... all within is the equal peace and bliss of that union, the one silent bliss that passes understanding, the peace that abides untouched by the solicitation of lower things in the depths of our spiritual existence. These three ways coincide in spite of their separate starting-points, first, by their inhibition of the normal reactions of the mind to the touches of outward things, bāhya-sparśān , secondly ...
... being is a complete enjoyment and possession of the whole divine and spiritual nature; and it is a complete Page 614 lifting of the whole nature of man into its power of a divine and spiritual existence. Integrality becomes then an essential condition of this Yoga. At the same time we have seen that each of the three ways at its height, if it is pursued with a certain largeness, can take ...
... then these can be cast into soul images of what is true, right and beautiful and in the end the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory, the ascent into spiritual existence. But it might seem then that by bringing this psychic entity, this true soul in us, into the front and giving it there the lead and rule we shall gain all the fulfilment of our natural being ...
... experience, Prakriti: but, even granting this, the coexistence is there and it is in the end coexistence in one Being. Space is the self-conceptive extension of that one Being; it is the one spiritual Existence displaying the field of movement of its Conscious-Force in its own self as Space. Because that Conscious-Force concentrates in manifold bodies, lives, minds and the soul presides over one of ...
... downward. Here too are many planes, the lowest Page 455 converging upon and melting into the worlds below, the highest at the heights of the mind-power into the worlds of a more spiritual existence. These highest worlds are therefore supramental; they belong to the principle of supermind, the free, spiritual or divine intelligence 3 or gnosis and to the triple spiritual principle ...
... evolution in the Ignorance. Thus identified with Sachchidananda in the universal self-existence as the spiritualised mental being, he may then ascend beyond to the supramental plane of the pure spiritual existence. It is the latter method the stages of which we may now attempt to trace for the seeker by the path of knowledge. When the sadhaka has followed the discipline of withdrawal from the various ...
... soul in its formation of self-expressive personality, Page 854 its long unfolding of a secret spiritual divinity and the slow transformation of the mental into the divine mental or spiritual existence. This consummation of a triple immortality,—immortality of the nature completing the essential immortality of the spirit and the psychic survival of death,—might be the crown of rebirth and a ...
... always dreamed, but of which his ordinary life gives him no assurance, the possibility of transcending himself and growing out of bodily life and mortality into the joy of immortal life and spiritual existence. It also confirms in him the sense that there are worlds or planes of existence other than that in which his lot is now cast, worlds in which this mortality and this subjection to evil and suffering ...
... divine will and knowledge in the physical life of man, seizing on its growths, all its being, action, pleasure, making it its food, अन्नं, and devouring and turning it into material for the spiritual existence. But this manifestation of the spirit in the physical life of man was made available by the Bhrigus to each human creature, विशे विशे,—we must presume, by the order of the sacrifice. This Agni ...
... thought and his seeing. To see nothing but the Divine, to be at every moment in union with him, to love him in all creatures and have the delight of him in all things is the whole condition of his spiritual existence. His God-vision does not divorce him from life, nor does he miss anything of the fullness of life; for God himself becomes the spontaneous Page 331 bringer to him of every good and ...
... for this manifold universal becoming in the cosmos the supreme Nature formulates itself as the Jiva. To put it otherwise, the eternal multiple soul of the Purushottama appears as individual spiritual existence in all the forms of the cosmos. All existences are instinct with the life of the one indivisible Spirit; all are supported in their personality, actions and forms by the eternal multiplicity ...
... only as it may be in some distant future, puts the question how this aspect and function of life, which is really an aspect and function of human activity in general, can be harmonised with the spiritual existence. The Gita is therefore addressed to a fighter, a man of action, one whose duty in life is that of war and protection, war as a part of government for the protection of those who are excused ...
... the Spirit and the victorious means by which through his own spiritual self-discipline and effort he can rise out of mortality into immortality and out of his limited mental into his infinite spiritual existence. And now speaking as the Spirit and Godhead in man and in all things he says to him, Page 556 "All this personal effort and self-discipline will not in the end be needed, all following ...
... been said about materialism by those who have preferred to look at life from above rather than below or who claim to live in the more luminous atmosphere of the idealistic mind or ether of the spiritual existence. Materialism has been credited with the creation of great evils, viewed even as the arch-image of a detestable transformation or the misleader guiding mankind to an appalling catastrophe. Those ...
... the complex unity of existence asserts its truth: in the end man's total intellectual and cultural growth suffers by social immobility,—by any restriction or poverty of his economic life; the spiritual existence of the race, if it attains to remote heights, weakens at last in its richness and continued sources of vivacity when it depends on a too standardised and regimented society; the inertia from ...
... 105 If it makes them happy! " There are higher levels of the mind than any we now conceive and to these we must one day reach and rise beyond them to the heights of a greater, a spiritual existence. As we rise we have to open to them our lower members and fill these with those superior and supreme dynamisms of light and power; the body we have to make a more and more and even entirely conscious ...
... constantly miss it. In one of the Upanishads a being of knowledge is stated to be the next step above the mental being; into that the soul has to rise and through it to attain the perfect bliss of spiritual existence. If that could be achieved as the next evolutionary step of Nature here, then she would be, fulfilled and we could conceive of the perfection of life even here, its attainment of a full spiritual ...
... constantly miss it. In one of the Upanishads a being of knowledge is stated to be the next step above the mental being; into that the soul has to rise and through it to attain the perfect bliss of spiritual existence. If that could be achieved as the next evolutionary step of Nature here, then she would be fulfilled and we could conceive of the perfection of life even here, its attainment of a full spiritual ...
... then these can be cast into soul images of what is true, right and beautiful and in the end the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory, the ascent into spiritual existence. *The word "psychic" in our ordinary parlance is more often used in reference to this desire-soul than to the true psychic. It is used still more loosely of psychological and other phenomena ...
... of our time, — who take their stand on the supposed substratum of Matter, — and indeed cannot be recognized, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, "until we have a science of mental life and spiritual existence as sound as our present science of physical life and the existence of Matter." 3 When that day arrives the man of science will wake to the discovery that "not only the elements of ...
... The individual is what he is and has the significance that he has not so much in virtue of his individuality, but rather as a member of a great human society, which directs his material and spiritual existence from the cradle to the grave. A man's value to the community depends primarily on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows. We ...
... also of the total perfection of the body. There are higher levels of the mind than any we now conceive and to these we must one day reach and rise beyond them to the heights of a greater, a spiritual existence. As we rise we have to open to them our lower members and fill these with those superior and supreme dynamisms of light and power; the body we have to make a more and more and even entirely ...
... positive and dynamic, "all man's age-long effort, his action, society, art, ethics, science, religion all the manifold activities by which he expresses and increases his mental, vital, physical, spiritual existence, are episodes in the vast drama of this endeavour... and have behind their limited apparent aims no other true sense or foundation". 9 Spirituality Reconciled to Science Such ...
... spring forth immortal from the remains of his corpse. 1 But metaphorical or analogical arguments cannot have much evidential value in support of the doctrine of persistence of one's 'spiritual existence' even beyond the grave. Hence man has sought to adduce some additional arguments to establish the fact that the physical death does not denote the total annulment of all conscious being. Leaving ...
... and bliss of that union, the one silent bliss that passes understanding, the peace that Page 255 abides untouched by the solicitation of lower things in the depths of our spiritual existence." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 686) While seriously pursuing the sadhana of equality the sadhaka may at times be troubled by two or three nagging questions: (i) Will the perfection of ...
... noble in all its endeavours; and above all, it placed before him the theory and practice of Yoga, the theory and practice of a higher change, and it familiarised him with the concept of a spiritual existence and encouraged in him hunger for the divine and infinite. The scope of the ancient system of education was comprehensive; it rejected no discipline of knowledge, no means of expression ...
... it ascends and takes foundation in the Self of all and in the status of self-joyous infinity which is the supreme manifestation of the Self. This is the transcendent immortality, this is the spiritual existence which the Upanishads declare to be the goal of man and by which we pass out of the mortal state into the heaven of the Spirit." (Ibid, p. 224) When we come to the Gita, it will be found ...
... 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. The soul that is called to this deep and vast change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously ...
... consciousness. Mental action is liberated from the confusions of the outer-consciousness, and it passes thence to the higher supramental planes in which the individual soul, Purusha, enters into its spiritual existence, distinct and independent of Prakriti, Nature. The ancient system of Raja Yoga aimed not only at the entire control of various states and activities proper to subjective consciousness but included ...
... "The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort. Such a consummation being no other than the kingdom of heaven within reproduced in the kingdom of heaven without, would ...
... expressions of divine Truth and Reality: To worship the Gods, to do one's duty by them, means to come into contact and to be united-in being, consciousness and activity-with the universal and spiritual existence, which is the supreme end and purpose of human life. The second – a more circumscribed field – is the society to which one belongs, the particular group of humanity in which he functions as a ...
... too, in answering questions follows largely intellectual and philosophical methods, although the aim of the Gita is not to arrive at a mere intellectual conviction but to unveil the secrets of spiritual existence and even to impart a Divine vision which not only silences mental questions but even quenches the thirst of the heart and physical senses. If you now ask the question whether the Gita contains ...
... its capacities, ennobled in all its members; but it placed before him too the theory and practice of Yoga, the theory and practice of a higher change, familiarized him with the concept of a spiritual existence and sowed in him a Page 32 hunger for the divine and the infinite. The pupil was not allowed to forget that he had within him a higher self beyond his little personal ego, and that ...
... supraterrestrial existence? The supramental consciousness is not a fixed 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 ...
... Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo,— a passage through which the soul is to escape into the silence of the Incommunicable; it is to be firmly held and permanently possessed as the middle term of its spiritual existence. Its self-realisation and divine realisation will be incomplete without its secure participation in the universality of Brahman, and it is this universality that justifies its continued co-operation ...
... stability of health and power. "The supramental consciousness is not a fixed 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 ...
... and of all life a Yoga. The West has made the growth of the intellectual, emotional, vital and material being of man its ideal, but it has left aside the greater possibilities of his spiritual existence. Its highest standards are ideals of progress, of liberty, equality Page 425 and fraternity, of reason and science, of efficiency of all kinds, of a better political, social ...
... stretching below it, behind it and above it; and this intuition impelled it to go behind and above the frontal appearances of things, and surprise the secrets of the supraphysical and the spiritual existence. It came in contact with truths, principles and realities which, be- cause they obtain in worlds of other dimensions than those accessible to our physical consciousness, are sealed to our ...
... 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 existence....And since Yoga is in its essence a Turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the more mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to ...
... wound round it Vasuqie, the Great Serpent, the snake of desire, for the rope of the churning and then they set to with a will, god & devil together, and churned the milky ocean, the ocean of spiritual existence, the ocean of imagination & aspiration, the ocean of all in man that is above the mere body and the mere life. They churned for century after century, for millennium upon millennium and yet ...
... lower half; again, in more abstract speech, we are in our lower phenomenal existence mind, life & matter. Vijnana is the link; standing in ideal knowledge we are aware, looking upward, of our spiritual existence, looking downward, we pour it out into the three vyahritis, Bhur, Bhuvah & Swar, mental, vital & material existence, the phenomenal symbols of our self-expression. Objectively vijnana becomes ...
... Ayasya by which the lost sun of Truth is recovered. That thought again is established in the seven rivers, the seven principles of being divine and human, the totality of which founds the perfect spiritual existence. The winning of these seven rivers of our being withheld by Vritra and these seven rays withheld by Vala, the possession of our complete divine consciousness delivered from all falsehood by the ...
... highest sattwic height of which they are capable and go yet farther beyond to a largeness in which all works become a free self-giving, an energy of the divine Tapas, a perpetual sacrament of the spiritual existence. But this is a general law and all these considerations have been the enunciation of quite general principles and refer indiscriminately to all actions and to all men alike. All can eventually ...
... passes beyond the three gunas and he too is prepared for becoming the Brahman." This "I" is the Purushottama who is the foundation of the silent Brahman and of immortality and imperishable spiritual existence and of the eternal dharma and Page 433 of an utter bliss of happiness. There is a status then which is greater than the peace of the Akshara as it watches unmoved the strife of the ...
... from the Mussulman standpoint. The Yogin who developed a new path of Yoga, the religious teacher who founded a new order, the thinker who built up a novel statement of the manysided truth of spiritual existence, found no serious obstacle to their practice or their propaganda. At most they had to meet the opposition of the priest and pundit instinctively adverse to any change; but this had only to be ...
... spirits. But why should there be any other worlds? I admit, cried the progressing intellect, only this material world to which our reason and senses bear witness. A vague bleak abstraction of spiritual existence without any living habitation, without any means of dynamic nearness was left to satisfy the wintry remnants of the old spiritual sense or the old fantastic illusion. A blank and tepid Theism ...
... Dharma, so that it might be made,—all vital, economic, aesthetic, hedonistic, intellectual and other needs being satisfied duly and according to the right law of the nature,—a preparation for the spiritual existence. Here too we have as an initial form the aphoristic method of the Vedic gṛhyasūtras , afterwards the diffuser, fuller method of the Dharma Shastras,—the first satisfied with brief indications ...
... emergence; and, when it emerges, it can hardly be doubted that its demand will be, as indeed it already is in the Mind itself when it undergoes the inner psychic influence, for a diviner, a more spiritual existence. In the nature of the earth-life where the Mind is an instrument of the Ignorance, this can only be effected by a change of consciousness, a transition from a foundation in Ignorance to a foundation ...
... emergence; and, when it emerges, it can hardly be doubted that its demand will be, as indeed it already is in the Mind itself when it undergoes the inner psychic influence, for a diviner, a more spiritual existence. 74 — Sri Aurobindo * ... till the self-giving is firmly psychic there will be disturbances, the interval of dark moments between bright ones. Page 65 It ...
... gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but evolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually supermind and the higher degrees of the spiritual existence. Evolution comes by the unceasing pressure of the supra-material planes on the material compelling it to deliver out of itself their principles and powers which might conceivably otherwise have ...
... then these can be cast into soul images of what is true, right and beautiful and in the end the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory, the ascent into spiritual existence. 103 Sri Aurobindo * Page 94 When the psychic is in the front, the sadhana becomes natural and easy and it is only a question of time and natural development. ...
... the mental as well in order to give the spiritual an easier domination, or else to make a compromise and leave the lower being to its pasture on condition of its doing frequent homage to the spiritual existence, admitting to a certain extent, greater or less, its influence and formally acknowledging it as the last state and the finality of the human being. This is the most that human society has ever ...
... Its sole legitimate sphere is to explain as best it can, in its own language and to the rational and intellectual parts of man, the truths, the experiences, the laws of our suprarational and spiritual existence. That has been the work of spiritual philosophy in the East and—much more crudely and imperfectly done—of theology in the West, a work of great importance at moments like the present when the ...
... the adjunct of man; in later times when the Prakriti has become subject in idea to the Purusha, the woman also depends entirely on the man, exists only for him and has hardly even a separate spiritual existence. In the Tantrik Shakta religion which puts the female principle highest, there is an attempt which could not get itself translated into social practice,—even as this Tantrik cult could never ...
... of self; all birth is a progressive self-finding, a means of self-realisation. To grow in knowledge, in power, in delight, love and oneness, towards the infinite light, capacity and bliss of spiritual existence, to universalise ourselves till we are one with all being, and to exceed constantly our present limited self till it opens fully to the transcendence in which the universal lives and to base ...
... supra-terrestrial existence? The supramental consciousness is not a fixed 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 ...
... consciousness and existence not limited by the narrow moulds of intellect, character and the past life-aims of humanity, the thirst for union with the Divine or for the pure bliss and beauty of spiritual existence not tied down to mental and vital values must be dismissed as a superfluous dream for which there is neither place nor necessity here. Yet these things have been not only dreamed of and hungered ...
... conditions in their respective bodies the Rishis arrived at a theory of psychical evolution contained within and dependent on the spiritual evolution already described. The basis of psychical as of spiritual existence is the pure Self called the Paramatman or Supreme Self when it manifests in the Cosmos and the Jivatman or individual Self when it manifests in man. The Self first manifests as Will or as the ...
... a Yoga. The West has made the growth of the intellectual, emotional, Page 509 vital and material being of man its ideal, but it has left aside the greater possibilities of his spiritual existence. Its highest standards are ideals of progress, of liberty, equality and fraternity, of reason and science, of efficiency of all kinds, of a better political, social and economical state, of the ...
... and transient movement men call love and becomes a pure and grand and deep uniting Ananda. Although it is a divine love for the supreme and universal Divine that must be the rule of our spiritual existence, this does not exclude altogether all forms of individual love or the ties that draw soul to soul in manifested existence. A psychic change is demanded, a divestiture of the masks of the Ignorance ...
... the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence. Page 157 ...
... emergence; and, when it emerges, it can hardly be doubted that its demand will be, as indeed it already is in the mind itself when it undergoes the inner psychic influence, for a diviner, a more spiritual existence. In the nature of the earth life where the mind is an instrument of the Ignorance, this can only be effected by a change of consciousness, a transition from a foundation in Ignorance to a foundation ...
... these also fall away and are replaced by a new impersonal-personal seeing, feeling, action. This disappearance of the ego does not bring with it the destruction of our true individuality, our spiritual existence, for that was always universal and one with the Transcendence; but there is a transformation which replaces the separative ego by the Purusha, a conscious face and figure of the universal being ...
... gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but evolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually supermind and the higher degrees of the spiritual existence. Evolution comes by the unceasing pressure of the supra-material planes on the material compelling it to deliver Page 272 out of itself their principles and powers which might conceivably ...
... enter into the elemental formation of other lives. The extent to which this law reigns in Nature has not yet been fully recognised and indeed cannot be until we have a science of mental life and spiritual existence as sound as our present science of physical life and the existence of Matter. Still we can Page 213 see broadly that not only the elements of our physical body, but those of our subtler ...
... When we live in unity with the Divine in ourselves and the spirit of the universe, these imperfections fall away from us and disappear in the calm and equal strength and delight of the inner spiritual existence. Always that is within us and transforms the outward touches before they reach it by a passage through a subliminal psychic soul in us which is the hidden instrument of its delight of being. ...
... of itself it will act with greater force, but still according to our imperfect nature and mainly by the drive and direction of the life-power in us and not according to the law of the highest spiritual existence. The ordinary power by which we govern the pranic energy is that of the embodied mind. But when we get clear above the physical mind, we can get too above the pranic force to the consciousness ...
... of which has for its utility to bridge over the gulf between the spiritual self and the objective phenomena of the world. We are satisfied with the blissful infinite impersonality of a pure spiritual existence; nothing else and nobody else any longer matters to us. What the physical senses show to us and what the mind perceives and conceives about them and so imperfectly and transiently delights in ...
... Divine, and then to be unified with the Infinite, taken into the Divine is its condition of perfect strength and mastery, and this is precisely the very nature of the spiritual life and the spiritual existence. The distinction made in the Gita between the Purusha and the Prakriti gives us the clue to the various attitudes which the Page 431 soul can adopt towards Nature in its movement ...
... itself between its pure spiritual status and its expression here. That is to say, midway between the material existence in which life and mind develop because of a hidden Spirit in it and the spiritual existence which contains the ideal realities of all that is gradually worked out here, there is a subtle psychological existence which reveals itself with its derivative light and power in the form and ...
... to the appearance of things. Yoga is a passage from ignorance to self-knowledge, from our apparent to our true being, from an outer phenomenal mental vital material life-existence to an inner spiritual existence and a spiritualised nature. By Yoga we pass from the phenomenal to the real Man, from the consciousness of our own apparent outer nature to the consciousness of our real self, Atman, an inner ...
... Mind, and all of men's so-called spiritual experiences are mental constructions (they use Page 305 other words, but I believe that's their idea). It is, at any rate, a denial of all spiritual existence in itself and of a Being or Force or Something superior which governs everything. As I said, I don't know what their position is today, what point they have reached, but I was in the presence ...
... referring to the constellations and saying that the fully realised human spirit will be greater than all the lights of Page 143 the firmament. I am speaking of an order of spiritual existence - the unfallen high powers of the supernatural world, call them Gods or angels or seraphs or what you will. Unlike the human soul which is like "a sun deflowered, a leprosy of light", these are ...
... himself affirms that in the years before his discovery of spiritism, “I was so thorough and confirmed a materialist that I could not at that time find a place in my mind for the conception of spiritual existence, or for any other agencies in the universe than matter and force. Facts, however, are stubborn things. … My desire for knowledge and love of truth forced me to continue the inquiry. The facts ...
... developed Mind, and all the so-called spiritual experiences of man are mental constructions—they use other words, but I believe that this is their idea. In any case, it is a negation of all spiritual existence in itself and a negation of a Being or of a Force or of Something higher which governs everything. I repeat, I do not know where they stand now, but I was faced with a conviction like that ...
... of divinity. We have pointers to the light of a Seer-Guest being "born victorious" in one who was so far a mental creature. As a result, "fullness", "infinity", the vastness (brhat) of the spiritual existence are realised. And by the help of this light the realised "freedoms, powers, illuminations and widenesses" are guarded. Also, the light comes from both Night and Day and moves "in front of the ...
... integrated, beautiful and perfect cosmic poem ever composed. It ranges symbolically from a primordial cosmic void, through earth's darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of supramental spiritual existence, and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence, and metaphysical brilliance. This epic is called Savitri, A Legend and ...
... integrated, beautiful and perfect cosmic poem ever composed. It ranges symbolically from a primordial cosmic void, through earth's darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of Supramental spiritual existence, and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence, and metaphorical brilliance. Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work ...
... judgement that Savitri is the most comprehensive cosmic poem ever composed. It ranges symbolically from a primordial cosmic void, through earth's darkness ad struggle, to the highest realm of spiritual existence, and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence and metaphorical brilliance. Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in ...
... integrated, beautiful and perfect cosmic poem ever composed. It ranges symbolically from a primordial cosmic void, through earth's darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of supramental spiritual existence, and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence, and metaphysical brilliance.” Where would then in such massiveness and magnificence ...
... and oneness. That is a rule that has not yet anywhere found its right conditions for even beginning its effort, for it can only come when man's attempt to reach and abide by the law of the spiritual existence is no longer an exceptional aim for individuals or else degraded in its more general aspiration to the form of a popular religion, but is recognised and followed out as the imperative need ...
... positive side; the negative movement of freedom is a liberation from the principal bonds, the master-knots of the lower soul-nature, the positive side an opening or growth into the higher spiritual existence. But what are these master-knots — other and deeper twistings than the instrumental knots of the mind, heart, psychic life-force? We find them pointed out for us and insisted on with great ...
... ascends and takes foundation in the Self of all and in the status of self-joyous infinity which is the supreme manifestation of the Self. This is the transcendental immortality, this is the spiritual existence which the Upanishads declare to be the goal of man, and one passes out of the mortal state into the spirit. As the Kena Upanishad states while summarizing this method: "Then in that which ...
... and noble in all its endeavours; and above all, it placed before him the theory and practice of Yoga, the theory and practice of a higher change, and it familiarised him with the concept of a spiritual existence and encouraged in him a hunger for the divine and infinite. __________________________ *As Sri Krishna points out in the Gita: "Whatsoever a great man does, the same is done by ...
... major need of our nature... If the secret psychic person can come forward into the front... the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory, the ascent into spiritual existence." 1 Mental Education In regard to mental education, the processes and methods can best be determined by under- standing of the mind. Mind is concerned largely with the activities ...
... 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 called to this deep and vast change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously ...
... ascends and takes foundation in the Self of all and in the status of self-joyous infinity which is the supreme manifestation of the self. This is the transcendent immortality; this is the spiritual existence which the Upanishads declare to be the goal of man by which we pass out of the mortal state into the heaven of the spirit. 50 Let us reiterate these two processes in different terms: ...
... 'The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort.' VI The treasure of knowledge that India possesses in its science of yoga is, it may be said, of direct ...
... intellectual and aesthetic pastimes. "This is the central question for us. Do we want humanity to gravitate to this lower level and become fixed in it.? Or else, do we want a higher and spiritual existence in which alone mental ideas and idealisms can be fulfilled? "In fact, this question has never been posed before humanity decisively. This is in fact a moment of great evolutionary significance ...
... The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort. VI The treasure of knowledge that India possesses in its science of yoga is, it may be said, of direct ...
... This is the supreme way because it is the highest secret and mystery and yet an inner movement progressively realisable by all. This is the deepest and most intimate truth of your real, your spiritual existence." — Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita. pp. 572-594. Page 102 Kireet Joshi (b. 1931) studied philosophy and law at the Bombay University. He was selected for the I. A. S. ...
... supramental perfection implies a complete enjoyment and possession of the whole divine and spiritual nature; and it is complete lifting of the whole nature of man into its power of a divine and spiritual existence. Integrality becomes, in this context, an essential condition of what Sri Aurobindo calls the Supramental Yoga. Six Elements of Perfection Perfection of Equality The supramental ...
... its capacities, ennobled in all its members; but it placed before him too the theory and practice of Yoga, the theory and practice of a higher change, familiarized him with the concept of a spiritual existence and sowed in him a hunger for the divine and the infinite. The pupil was not allowed to forget that he had within him a higher self beyond his little personal ego, and that numerous ways and ...
... the nature of that Reality? Some people speak of God, some people call it as' Absolute', and some people call it 'That'. Some people deny the existence of God and yet they believe in the spiritual existence of the soul, while others deny the existence of God but speak of supra-physical experience and realization of an Ultimate Zero or Non-Being. All who believe in God agree that Page 71 ...
... keep pace with the soul in its formation of self expressive personality, its long unfolding of a secret spiritual divinity and the slow transformation of the mental into the divine mental or spiritual existence. This consummation of a triple immortality, immortality of the nature completing the essential immortality of the Spirit and the psychic survival of death, might be the crown of rebirth and a ...
... oneness and not only by an external association of interests; the resurgence of man out of the merely animal and economic life or the merely intellectual and aesthetic into the glories of the spiritual existence; the pouring of the power of the spirit into the physical mould and mental instrument so that man may develop his manhood into that true supermanhood which shall exceed our present state as ...
... and Answers 1957-58, pp. 373-75) So, this is what we mean by "receiving a call" and an intending entrant into our Ashram life should feel in some measure the "need" for the higher spiritual existence and life the Mother is referring to. If he has got this, his other deficiencies may be remedied in time; but if he has not this, he will move here like a rudderless boat tossed about hither and ...
... integrated, beautiful and perfect cosmic poem ever composed.... It ranges symbolically from primordial cosmic void, through earth's darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of supra-mental spiritual existence and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence and metaphorical brilliance. Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the ...
... integrated, beautiful, and perfect cosmic poem ever composed. It ranges symbolically from a primordial cosmic void, through earth's darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of supramental spiritual existence, and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence, and metaphorical brilliance... Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in ...
... expressions of divine Truth and Reality. To worship the Gods, to do one's duty by them, means to come into contact and to be united—in being, consciousness and activity—with the universal and spiritual existence, which is the supreme end and purpose of human life. The second—a more circumscribed field—is the society to which one belongs, the particular group of humanity in which he functions as a limb ...
... mental plane. There may be no active thinking mind, but the stuff of consciousness is still mental, even though it may be mind spiritual and liberated. Of course there may be the sense of pure spiritual existence, but that comes less easily. Page 65 ...
... personal self. NIRODBARAN: And what is that feeling in the heart? SRI AUROBINDO: That is the return of the sense of existence felt in the psychic being—what may be called the individual spiritual existence. SATYENDRA: In exteriorisation a cessation of breath also occurs. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but here she loses the individual existence and is conscious only of nothingness SATYENDRA : Does ...
... integrated, beautiful and perfect cosmic poem ever composed.... It ranges symbolically from primordial cosmic void, through earth's darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of supramental spiritual existence and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence and metaphorical brilliance. Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the ...
... lose these former veils but they would no longer be veils or imperfect expressions but true manifestations; they would be changed into states of light, powers of spiritual life, vehicles of a spiritual existence. But this again could not be if mind, life and body were not taken up and transformed by a state of being and force of being superior to them, a power of Supermind as much above our incomplete ...
... consciousness, and we realise the infinity and eternity of our essential Self and Spirit. Knowledge delivers us from all bondage and suffering, and ushers us into the freedom and bliss of our spiritual existence. It illumines and widens our love for the Divine, and impeccably guides our action into the channels of a divine fulfilment. Without knowledge, love, however intense, would be narrow and fanatical ...
... round in which it moves without any definite issue, that can make up their minds to end this agnonised slavery and rise into the freedom and peace of their desireless, egoless, boundless spiritual existence. In the second chapter of the Gita there is a very graphically graduated description of how desire attacks a man and leads him to perdition. As soon as he thinks intently of an object, ...
... Light and Bliss of the Union enjoyed above. Her life has been a ceaseless sacrifice, a holocaust, an ungrudging renunciation of all that constitutes the happiness and solace of an exclusive spiritual existence in the material world. She has voluntarily travelled down far afield from the absorbed unitive life, which is held to be the apex of spiritual fulfilment, so that the uncharted subconscient and ...
... Hathayoga, which concerns itself with the body and its health and longevity, does so with the ulterior motive of the soul's release from the material bondage into the freedom and peace of the pure spiritual existence, and not for any spiritual conquest and perfection of the body itself. Even the great eight siddhis or supernatural powers are regarded as incidental to a certain line of spiritual advance, and ...
... great as or even greater than Plato or Aristotle? What is the highest glory and achievement of the human life by the side of the luminous infinity and eternity of his Page 147 spiritual existence? Does he not now contain all, possess all, enjoy all in his illimitable Self,—all that the world can give and more than all that? Is not an Aristotelian or Platonic eminence but a phosphorescent ...
... identify itself with the instruments and workings of Nature, with its becoming; it identifies itself with its true Self and being and recovers its immutable spiritual self-existence. It is then from this spiritual Page 252 self-existence, according to the Gita, that it can freely and as the master of its being, the Ishwara, support the action of its becoming. Looking only at the psychological... into the spiritual experience, by Yoga. For the living out of spiritual experience until we cease to be mind and become spirit, until, liberated from the imperfections of our present nature, we are able to live entirely in our true and divine being is what in the end we mean by Yoga. This upward transference of our centre of being and the consequent transformation of our whole existence and consciousness... mind falls into stillness and becomes the calm, universal witness; our ego dissolves itself into this impersonal existence. All things we see in this self which we have become in ourself; and we see this self in all; we become one being with all beings in the spiritual basis of their existence. By doing works in this selfless tranquillity and impersonality, our works cease to be ours, cease to bind or ...
... universe and all that is in it — not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself. 10 In the supreme timeless Existence, as far as we know it by reflection in spiritual experience, existence and consciousness are one. We are accustomed to identify consciousness with certain operations of mentality and sense and, where these are absent or quiescent... mystic "is not something abstract, it is like existence itself... something very concrete". 9 Based on such direct experience of consciousness as a concrete reality, here is an account of its nature in Sri Aurobindo's words. Consciousness, Reality and Existence Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence — it is the energy, the motion, the movement... absolute rule of scientific materialism in the 19th century. The way which had been Page 326 almost entirely barred, except by rebellion, now lies wide open to spiritual truths, spiritual ideas, spiritual experiences. That is the real revolution....The facts of Science do not compel anyone to take any particular philosophical direction. They are now neutral and can even be ...
... purely the self-awareness inherent in existence. There is no need of knowledge nor is there any operation of knowledge. Being is self-evident to itself: it does not need to look at itself in order to know itself or learn that it is. But if this is evidently true of pure existence, it is also true of the primal All-Existence; for just as spiritual Self-existence is intrinsically aware of its self, so... 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 knowledge. In the supreme timeless Existence, as far as we know it by reflection in spiritual experience, existence and consciousness are one. We are ... base of all spiritual knowledge is this consciousness of identity and by identity, which knows or is simply aware of all as itself. Translated into our way of consciousness this becomes the triple knowledge thus formulated in the Upanishad, "He who sees all existences in the Self", "He who sees the Self in all existences", "He in whom the Self has become all existences",—inclusion, indwelling ...
... a tremendous unity is revealed. Reinterpret intimately what this representation means in the terms of our own spiritual self-existence and cosmic being, and we have what these great builders saw in themselves and reared in stone. All objections, once we have got at this identity in spiritual experience, fall away and show themselves to be what Page 277 they really are, the utterance and... centre of life. It is then the most hieratic side of a hieratic art that remains to us. These sacred buildings are the signs, the architectural self-expression of an ancient spiritual and religious culture. Ignore the spiritual suggestion, the religious significance, the meaning of the symbols and indications, look only with the rational and secular aesthetic mind, and it is vain to expect that we shall... ion and fails to open itself to the great things here meant by a kindred close response to some touch of the cosmic consciousness, some revelation of the greater spiritual self, some suggestion of the Infinite. These things, the spiritual self, the cosmic spirit, the Infinite, are not rational, but suprarational, eternal presences, but to the intellect only words, and visible, sensible, Page 273 ...
... he appears first as a self who supports all these existences; bhūtabhrt, he bears them in his all-pervading self-existence. And, even, through this omnipresent self the supreme Self too, the Paramatman, can be said to bear the universe; he is its invisible spiritual foundation and the hidden spiritual cause of the becoming of all existences. He bears the universe as the secret spirit in us bears... universe. In the supracosmic existence all is eternal Being and all, if there too there is any multiplicity, are eternal beings, nor can the spatial idea of indwelling come in, since a supracosmic absolute being is not affected by the concepts of time and space which are created here by the Lord's Yogamaya. There a spiritual, not a spatial or temporal co-existence, a spiritual identity and coincidence... the spirit. "This divine Self contains all existences; all are situated in him, not materially in essence, but in that extended spiritual conception of self-being of which our too rigid notion of a material and etheric space is only a rendering in the terms of the physical mind and senses. In reality all even here is spiritual co-existence, identity and coincidence; but that is a fundamental ...
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