... adequate verbal communication of their spiritual knowledge. Thus the Indian Page 138 mystic Dadu repeatedly avers that a veritable spiritual experience defies all formulation in the conceptual framework of our limited speech-mode, and since there is no commensurability between that and the normal experience of average humanity, spiritual knowledge must be by its very nature ineffable... essence of our being." 37 A genuine spiritual knowledge - and we cannot but insist on this point again and again - is not to be arrived at through a ratioci-native process of thinking or by a logomachy of the logical mind. For it is not a very subtle and opulent conceptual thought, whose other name is spiritual awareness. "The essence of spiritual knowledge is an intrinsic self-existent consciousness;... tiny probe of intellectual reason. For anyone having the genuine spiritual knowledge knows for certain that these conflicts of terms referred to above, although appearing so grotesque to the canons of mental logic, are yet accurately expressive of something that the mystics perceive in their spiritual awareness. In the spiritual knowledge of the Reality, there is no mutual cancellation of the statements ...
... perception of the true sense and large principles of existence, a tranquil continuity of inner spiritual knowledge and light, the Yoga of an unswerving devotion, love of God, the heart's deep and constant adoration of the universal and eternal Presence. The one object to which the mind of spiritual knowledge must be turned is the Eternal by fixity in whom the soul clouded here and swathed in the... discovered by the liberated sage who possesses also the truth of the spirit. One Brahman, one reality in Self and Nature is the object of all knowledge. The Gita then tells us what is the spiritual knowledge or rather it tells us what are the conditions of knowledge, the marks, the signs of the man whose soul is turned towards the inner wisdom. These signs are the recognised and traditional char... and stands free in the midst of the worlds of Nature. A divine knowledge and a perfect turning with adoration to this Divine is the secret of the great spiritual liberation. Freedom, love and spiritual knowledge raise us from mortal nature to immortal being. The Soul and Nature are only two aspects of the eternal Brahman, an apparent duality which founds the operations of his universal existence ...
... individual, all that is cosmic has to be austerely renounced by the seeker of the absolute Truth. The supreme quiescent Self or else the absolute Nihil is the sole Truth, the only object of spiritual knowledge. The state of knowledge, the consciousness other than this temporal that we must attain is Nirvana, an extinction of ego, a cessation of all mental, vital Page 287 and physical activities... conceive. It is a supreme negative experience, but beyond it is all the tremendous light of an infinite Consciousness, an illimitable Knowledge, an affirmative absolute Presence. The object of spiritual knowledge is the Supreme, the Divine, the Infinite and Absolute. This Supreme has its relations to our individual being and its relations to the universe and it transcends both the soul and the universe... world-knowledge. In relation to the individual the Supreme is our own true and highest self, that which ultimately we are in our essence, that of which we are in our manifested nature. A spiritual knowledge, moved to arrive at the true Self in us, must reject, as the traditional way of knowledge rejects, all misleading appearances. It must discover that the body is not our self, our foundation of ...
... of Vedic knowledge, the distinction by which the old Rigveda and Sama and Yajur are put aside as ritualistic writings, possessing a value only for ceremonial of sacrifice, and all search for spiritual knowledge is confined to the Vedanta, was unrecognised & even unknown to the writer of the Gita. To him the Vedas are writings full of spiritual truth; the language of the line Vedaish cha sarvair aham... definitely taken a subordinate place as karmakanda, books of ritual; and to the Upanishads alone, in spite of occasional appeals to the text of the earlier Scriptures, is reserved that aspect of spiritual knowledge & teaching which alone justifies the application to any human composition of the great name of Veda. But in spite of this great downfall the ancient tradition, the ancient sanctity survived... e culture, has turned the light of its Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology on the Veda. The result we all know. Not only all vestige of sanctity, but all pretension to any kind of spiritual knowledge or experience disappears from the Veda. The old Rishis are revealed to us as a race of ignorant and lusty barbarians who drank & enjoyed and fought, gathered riches & procreated children, sacrificed ...
... build faith and cohesion in the country it is much more powerful than any man-made power. 2 February 1954 There must be a group forming a strong body of cohesive will with the spiritual knowledge to save India and the world. It is India that can bring Truth in the world. By manifestation of the Divine Will and Power alone, India can preach her message to the world and not by imitating... February 1954 The future of India is very clear. India is the Guru of the world. The future structure of the world depends on India. India is the living soul. India is incarnating the spiritual knowledge in the world. The Government of India ought to recognise the significance of India in this sphere and plan their action accordingly. 4 February 1954 When India, emerging victorious... the future, or does it desperately stick to the past? 20 June 1967 ( Message for broadcast by All India Radio, Pondicherry, on its inauguration day ) O India, land of light and spiritual knowledge! Wake up to your true mission in the world, show the way to union and harmony. 23 September 1967 Page 367 India has become the symbolic representation of all the difficulties ...
... balance and a graded ladder connecting the material and spiritual poles of existence. In this scheme, the outer ritual and ceremonies reflected the sunshine of the highest and profundest spiritual knowledge, and thus they were not a mere artifice or a misleading or imprisoning super-structure. They provided, on the contrary, a meaningful gate of entry for the physical mind of man to undertake... man who might carry in himself the thought of light and the word of revelation. We meet here the typical figurers and personalities like Janaka, the great king who was also accomplished in spiritual knowledge and action. We meet also Ajatashatru with a rich and subtle mind, the great teacher Raikwa, who was in his outward profession a cart-driver, and Yajnavalkya, master of worldly possessions... develop extraordinary powers of memory, imagination and thought. The predominance of oral tradition necessitated the cultivation of the power of memory; the high content of philosophical and spiritual knowledge necessitated the cultivation of subtlety and complexity of thought; the natural setting of the Ashrams and Gurukulas in the open forest, where nature could be an intimate friend and companion ...
... in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one must open the silent mental consciousness upward to all that is above mind. After a time one feels the consciousness rising upward and in the end it rises beyond... cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. The Upanishads take up this crowning experience of the earlier seers and make it their starting-point for a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great harmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated knowers of the Eternal throughout a great and fruitful period of spiritual seeking... slowly, containing in itself all stages of the evolution from the material and the vital man to the mental man. A small minority has pushed beyond the barriers, opening the doors to occult and spiritual knowledge and preparing the ascent of the evolution beyond mental man into spiritual and supramental being. Sometimes this minority has exercised an enormous influence as in Vedic India, Egypt or, according ...
... hidden mysteries, even that which the great Goddess, the many-hued Mother, bears as her teat of knowledge. Rig Veda. (VII. 56. 2, 4.) Made certain of the meaning of the highest spiritual knowledge, purified in their being. Mundaka Upanishad. (III. 2. 6.) He strives by these means and has the knowledge: in him this spirit enters into its supreme status.... Satisfied in... strict discipline, by restriction to the few fit initiates. Another untoward result or peril of the diffusive movement and the consequent invasion has been the intellectual formalisation of spiritual knowledge into dogma and the materialisation of living practice into a dead mass of cult and ceremony and ritual, a mechanisation by which the spirit was bound to depart in course of time from the body... which he is achieving or has achieved in his inner being and knowledge. Any premature attempt at a large-scale collective spiritual life is exposed to vitiation by some incompleteness of the spiritual knowledge on its dynamic side, by the imperfections of the individual seekers and by the invasion of the ordinary mind and vital and physical consciousness taking hold of the truth and mechanising, obscuring ...
... higher knowledge, I understand, you mean spiritual knowledge about Almon, Brahman, etc. But can one deal with the problems of ordinary life with mastery by this spiritual knowledge? For instance, if I am asked to criticise Shaw or other literary figures, how am I to do it with this knowledge alone? One can. What has all that to do with spiritual knowledge? Criticism of Shaw is not a part of Brahmajnana... Ramakrishna's mind or Christ's mind was as powerful as that of Buddha? Buddha's mind as a mind was more powerful, but had he as much or as many-sided a spiritual knowledge as Ramakrishna? I leave out Christ, because his spiritual knowledge was from the heart only and intense but limited. Or can we ever imagine that a supramental X will have the same mental range and altitude as the supramental ...
... criticised in one of the Upanishads and in the Gita, but both look on the Veda as a Book of Knowledge. Even, the Sruti including both Veda and Upanishad was regarded as the supreme authority for spiritual knowledge and infallible. Is this all legend and moonshine, or a groundless and even nonsensical tradition? Or is it the fact that there is only a scanty element of higher ideas in some later hymns... precise; it results from it beyond doubt that even then while the Rig Veda was being written the Riks were regarded as having a secret sense which was not open to all. There was an occult and spiritual knowledge in the sacred hymns and by this knowledge alone, it is said, one can know the truth and rise to a higher existence. This belief was not a later tradition but held, probably, by all and evidently... ion. Yaska himself declares that there is a triple knowledge and therefore a triple meaning of the Vedic hymns, a sacrificial or ritualistic knowledge, a knowledge of the gods and finally a spiritual knowledge; but the last is the true sense and when one gets it the others drop or are cut away. It is this spiritual sense that saves and the rest is outward and subordinate. He says further that "the ...
... aware wholly and integrally of oneself and of all the truth of one's being is the necessary condition of true possession of existence. This self-awareness is what is meant by spiritual knowledge: the essence of spiritual knowledge is an intrinsic self-existent consciousness; all its action of knowledge, indeed all its action of any kind, must be that consciousness formulating itself. All other knowledge... even in the midst of our greatest mental mastery over self and things; but this limitation is not insuperable. It is the interest of occult knowledge that it shows us—and a dynamic force of spiritual knowledge brings us the same evidence—that this subjection of Mind to Matter, of the spirit to a lesser law of life is not what it at first appears to be, a fundamental condition of things, an inviolable... not the full power to overcome the discord and dislocations created by a clashing diversity of mind and life and by the attack of disrupting forces in universal Nature. What is lacking is a spiritual knowledge and spiritual power, a power over self, a power born of inner unification with others, a power over the surrounding or invading world-forces, a full-visioned and fully equipped power of effectuation ...
... accomplish. The first task is to recover the ancient spiritual knowledge in its fullness, in its amplitude — this is the first task. And this means of course, basically, the recovery of the Veda, Upanishads, the Gita, the Puranas and Tantras. This is, one might say, the basic stuff of what can be called the ancient spiritual knowledge of India. I underline the word "knowledge" because, usually... you can Page 43 enlarge upon the knowledge; you can even overpass; you can have a new revelation, a new knowledge. So Sri Aurobindo has deliberately used the word, "ancient Indian spiritual knowledge." This has to be recovered. It has to be recovered because it has greatly been lost. Mother once wrote down a message for me in which She said: "India has or rather had the knowledge of... the whole world to meet and attempt to create a spiritualised society. But these last two tasks will depend very largely upon the recovery — the first task — the recovery of the ancient spiritual knowledge. It is a very difficult terrain. It is so complex, and it is buried under such a plethora of interpretations, that it is extremely difficult to penetrate into it; it is like a jungle. I, for ...
... and its practice was kept ready and its means of attainment provided for the third and greatest type of human being, the third loftiest stage of the spiritual evolution. The complete light of spiritual knowledge when it emerges from veil and compromise and goes beyond all symbols and middle significances, the absolute and universal Page 222 divine love, the beauty of the All-beautiful, the... knowledge. The smallest and the greatest Page 224 things were examined with equal care and attention and each provided with its art and science. The name was given even to the highest spiritual knowledge whenever it was stated not in a mass of intuitive experience and revelatory knowledge as in the Upanishads, but for intellectual comprehension in system and order,—and in that sense the Gita... spiritual truth and philosophy,—and we may note that all Indian philosophy, even the logic of Nyaya and the atomic theory of the Vaisheshikas, has for its highest crowning note and eventual object spiritual knowledge and liberation,—but of the arts, the social, political and military, the physical and psychic sciences, and every instructor was in his degree respected as a guru or ācārya , a guide or preceptor ...
... mainspring of our life, the lever of our becoming, and that what we were, are and will be in eternity – the golden Light within, our glory and ecstasy of being. The second means of acquiring spiritual knowledge and experience is by gaining access to the spiritual levels above the mind: higher mind, illumined mind, intuition and overmind. 46 “In the East, especially in India, the metaphysical thinkers... The West is reawakening to the truth of the spirit and the spiritual possibilities of life, the East is reawakening to the truth of Life and tends towards a new application to it of its spiritual knowledge. 54 – Sri Aurobindo It is evident, at this decisive turn in the history of humanity, that the West desperately seeks to fill up the emptiness of its inner life since the erosion of... were “on this day either approaching fruition” or “on the way to their achievement”. The fourth of these dreams – we will encounter them in a subsequent chapter – was “the gift by India of her spiritual knowledge and her means for the spiritualisation of life to the whole race”: “The spiritual gift of India to the world has already begun. India’s spirituality is entering Europe and America in an ever ...
... must be demanded of the Divine Manifestation which seemed to me quite irrelevant to the reality. I put forward two propositions which appear to me indisputable unless we are to reverse all spiritual knowledge in favour of modern European ideas about things. First, the Divine Manifestation even when it manifests in mental and human ways has behind it a consciousness greater than the mind and... moon and cannot do their work. Moreover, all your experiences were not small. There v pre some like the stilling descent of a Power in the body— what you used to call numbness—which anyone with spiritual knowledge would have recognised as a first strong step towards the opening of the consciousness to the higher Peace and Light. But it was not in the line of your expectations and you gave it no special... prepare—but the knowledge comes only when one gets another higher than intellectual opening. Even in Mind itself there are things higher than the intellect, ranges of activity that exceed it. Spiritual knowledge is easier to these than to the reasoning intelligence. September 7, 1934 The faith is there, not in your mind, not in your vital, but in your psychic being. It was this faith ...
... it is experienced as the initiation and movement of the Ishwara, still takes different forms in different souls of men, aṁśaḥ sanātanaḥ , and a different turn in their nature. The light of spiritual knowledge, 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... For after giving out all the laws, the dharmas, and the deepest essence of its Yoga, after saying that beyond all the first secrets revealed to the mind of man by the transforming light of spiritual knowledge, guhyāt , this is a still deeper more secret truth, guhyataram , the Gita suddenly declares that there is yet a supreme word that it has to speak, paramaṁ vacaḥ , and a most secret truth... arise, be sure of this that I am leading thee to a complete divine life in the universal and an immortal existence in the transcendent Spirit." The secret thing, guhyam , that all deep spiritual knowledge reveals to us, mirrored in various teachings and justified in the soul's experience, is for the Gita the secret of the spiritual self hidden within us of which mind and external Nature are only ...
... can be said that what distinguishes Indian cultural history from any other cultural history, is its genius for spirituality and profusion of spiritual developments and great treasures of spiritual knowledge and experience. If we are to search for our cultural identity, we can say that the first task of India is to understand what may be called Indian spirituality, its synthetic tendency, its ... terms of Taittiriya Upanishad. And this underlines, by implication, the theme of spiritual education as the overarching domain of integral education. Fortunately, we have a good fund of spiritual knowledge in the roots of our cultural history, if only we make the effort to recover it. We have also been continuously developing spiritual experimentation and renewing it right up to the present day... truth that is inherent in rational and scientific education must be welcomed in the processes and methods of spiritual education. True spiritual education will aim at the harmonisation of spiritual knowledge, philosophical knowledge and scientific knowledge; in the ultimate analysis, all knowledge tends to be one or holistic, and liberating oneself from the rigidities of the dogmatic assumptions ...
... * * * In religious education, a special emphasis will be laid on the promotion of specific rituals and ceremonies and prescribed acts as the only means of approaching the domain of Spiritual Knowledge and experience. There will be also a special emphasis on providing those rational arguments which would favour the preferred belief or doctrine. * * * In spiritual education, a special... entities of the spiritual domain, and insist on their methodised verification and repeatability. * * * Finally, spiritual education would insist on developing and promoting research in spiritual knowledge by means of appropriate tests that would eliminate elements of subjectivity and exclusivism, in favour of objectivity and integrality. Page 140 * * * It is true that religions... ty, but we need to go farther so as to arrive at a clear precisions. * * * The central issue in regard to the proposal for spiritual education is that of the truth claim of spiritual knowledge. Is there, it is being asked, a domain of reality distinctly correspondent to spirituality? Can that domain be known? Can there be evidence of that domain, and can that stand scrutiny of critical ...
... the Vedas. He has declared that there is a triple knowledge and therefore a triple meaning of the Vedic hymns, a sacrificial or ritualistic knowledge, a know- ledge of the gods, and finally a spiritual knowledge. He has also said that the last one is the true sense and when one gets it the others drop or are cut away. According to him, 'the Rishis saw the Truth, the true law of things, directly by an... India was called for a more and more generalised intellectual, ethical and aesthetic evolution. This called for a new poise and a new balance. At this juncture, the Upanishads saved the ancient spiritual knowledge by immense effort, and the spiritual edifice created by the Upanishads guided, uplifted and penetrated into the wide and complex intellectual, aesthetic, ethical and social culture that came... entire human race could be under-taken. Tasks of Renascent India: While outlining these tasks, particularly, of the renascent India, Sri Aurobindo states: "The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical ...
... knowledge. It will be seen that these questions will oblige us to converge upon the profound psychological, ethical and spiritual knowledge which was so central to the ancient India's conception of education. Modern Knowledge; Physical, Supraphysical and Spiritual Knowledge: We realise that modern knowledge is expanding at a tremendous rate of progression; in course of this rapid movement... bound to move forward. And this will enhance the relevance of the heritage that we possess of the ancient Indian conception of knowledge and education. Page 398 Renewal of the old Spiritual Knowledge; Need for Developing New Knowledge: This is not to say that all that we need today and tomorrow was already contained in the ancient system; although loftiest and central discoveries of ...
... did not know mentally what was meant by spiritual knowledge when it first began to descend — the actual relation between the knowledge and myself was, and still is, even after so many years, beyond my grasp. What the Mother seems to have done, not as a result of my tapasya but as an act of her Grace, is this: she has opened me to her higher spiritual knowledge, and has linked it through this opening... ess) we need the soul's faith to sustain us and hold on to the Truth — but when we live in the knowledge, this faith is changed into knowledge. Of course I am speaking of direct spiritual knowledge. Mental knowledge cannot replace faith, so long as there is only mental knowledge, faith is still needed. If a sadhak waits a little and watches without giving room to anxiety ...
... declared that there is a triple knowledge and therefore a triple meaning of the Vedic hymns, a sacrificial Page 81 or ritualistic knowledge, knowledge of the gods and finally a spiritual knowledge. He has also said that the last is the true sense and when one gets it the others drop or are cut away. According to him, "the Rishis saw the Truth, the true law of things, directly by an inner... , India called for a more and more generalised intellectual, ethical and aesthetic evolution. This called for a new poise and new balance. At this juncture, the Upanishads saved the ancient spiritual knowledge by an immense effort, and the spiritual edifice created by the Upanishads guided, Uplifted and more and more penetrated into the wide and complex intellectual, aesthetic, ethical and social culture... participation by the entire human race could be undertaken. Page 105 While outlining these tasks, particularly, of the renascent India, Sri Aurobindo states: "The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical ...
... boyhood was not a mere love of the country of his birth, and a yearning for its freedom and greatness. It was worship of India, as we have already seen, as the living embodiment of the highest spiritual knowledge, and the repository of the sublimest spiritual achievements of the human race. He had no narrow partisan patriotism that attaches a person to his own country and makes him regard it as the... spirituality is amply attested even by his very early writings. In his The Ideal of the Karmayogin he says: "There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is the Sanatana Dharma, the eternal religion. Under the stress of alien impacts she has... India as a step and means to the freedom and fulfilment of her soul, to a spiritual reconstruction of her thought, life and society. That can be done only by Brahma-teja, the blazing power of spiritual knowledge. He perceived that the power was in himself, he felt that it was growing in him, and he knew that it would never fail him. His politics was a prelude to his greater and wider spiritual work ...
... automatically, without the need of any act, regard or operation of knowledge; for knowledge here is not an act, but a state pure, perpetual and inherent. At the Page 565 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... , an act of identity; there is no beginning of what we experience as separative knowledge. But when the subject draws a little back from itself as object, then certain tertiary powers of spiritual knowledge, of knowledge by identity, take their first origin, which are the sources of our own normal modes of knowledge. There is a spiritual intimate vision, a spiritual pervasive entry and penetration... into it that a direct intimate awareness can be added to the outer indirect awareness. It is only by our awakening to our inmost soul or superconscient self that there can be a beginning of the spiritual knowledge with identity as its basis, its constituent power, its intrinsic substance. Page 572 × manomayaḥ ...
... reflection do not deny, but rather affirm.” 2 It may therefore be said that Sri Aurobindo’s teaching is the most rational, for it expounds an integration or synthesis of all material and spiritual knowledge from the past and the present, and an open attitude to embrace and find a place for everything. Because all is That. In the practice of the Yoga one has to be one-pointed in one’s heart, but... self-evident fact of a spiritual evolution, an evolution of Consciousness, a progression of the soul’s manifestation in material existence.” 4 What was to Sri Aurobindo self-evident fact of spiritual knowledge, here brought to bear on the biological theory of evolution, may be equally well applied to other branches of science. Indeed, Sri Aurobindo’s writings are strewn with direct or indirect reflections... aforementioned conversation, Sri Aurobindo shows us in Savitri the main structure and the sense of the divine manifestation which we call the universe, mantrically formulated from the largest spiritual knowledge and perception ever possessed by an incarnated being. We find in the epic a description of the universe and its origin, the gradations or worlds of involution and evolution, the beings of those ...
... who imparts spiritual knowledge only to' those who are .capable of receiving it. There are not many who are really capable of receiving the light of spiritual knowledge. A certain mental and moral development in the right direction is necessary for a conscious spiritual evolution. Only when there is an unquenchable fire of aspiration for the Divine and a real thirst for spiritual knowledge, does the ...
... methods of inquiry and exploration as preconised by the mystics and the yogis: science and spirituality will always be at poles apart and as Sri Aurobindo's revelations arise out of his so-called spiritual knowledge, ipso facto their truth-validity is almost nil so far as the scientists are concerned. But is it really so? Must science be, by its very nature, unresponsive if not positively hostile... but spiritual illumination, and a single decisive spiritual experience may undo a whole edifice of reasonings and conclusions erected by the normal logical intelligence. Also, a genuine spiritual knowledge - and we cannot but insist on this point again and again - is not to be arrived at through a ratiocinative process of thinking or by a logomachy of the logical mind. Spiritual awareness should... in potency as well as in character. But be it at once noted that even at its supreme elevation, thought will remain a secondary and derivative power at a certain remove from the corresponding spiritual knowledge. But what about 'speech'? Has this, too, an ascending march analogous to that of 'thought'? And how far can it possibly go in its attempt at formulating the 'ineffable spiritual experience' ...
... God-knowledge. It will be seen that these questions will oblige us to converge upon the profound psychological, ethical and spiritual knowledge which was so central to the ancient Indian conception of education. Modern Knowledge; Physical, Supraphysical and Spiritual Knowledge We realise that modern knowledge is expanding at a tremendous rate of progression; in the course of this rapid movement... this movement is bound to move forward. And this will enhance the relevance of the heritage that we possess of the ancient Indian conception of knowledge and education. Renewal of the Old Spiritual Knowledge; Need for Developing New Knowledge This is not to say that all that we need today and tomorrow was already contained in the ancient Indian system; although loftiest and central discoveries ...
... bring about greater understanding among them, and, eventually enable us to cultivate the scientific body of spiritual knowledge. What we need today is a positive recognition of spirituality as distinct from religion; we need also to recognise that there exists a scientific body of spiritual knowledge, and that this needs to be promoted by the state. We may also note that this becomes all the more necessary... expressed effectively only when the ultimate spiritual aims are recognised and promoted. In sum, the urgent need of India is to evolve a clear concept on the basis of a recognised body of spiritual knowledge which embraces all domains of human life, physical, emotional, vital, dynamic, intellectual, ethical and aesthetic. Having said this, let us observe that secularism, if it is to sub serve ...
... it can be said that what distinguishes Indian cultural history from any other cultural history, is its genius for spirituality and profusion of spiritual developments and great treasures of spiritual knowledge and experience. If we are to search for our cultural identity, — and do we not see the upsurge for cultural identity everywhere in the world today, even when there is an unprecedented demand... terms of Taittiriya Upanishad. And this underlines, by implication, the theme of spiritual education as the overarching domain of integral education. Fortunately, we have a good fund of spiritual knowledge in the roots of our cultural history, if only we make the effort to recover it. We have also been continuously developing spiritual experimentation and renewing it right up to the present day... of truth that is inherent in rational and scientific education must be welcomed in the processes and methods of spiritual education. True spiritual education will aim at the harmonisation of spiritual knowledge, Page 337 philosophical knowledge and scientific knowledge; in the ultimate analysis, all knowledge tends to be one or holistic, and liberating oneself from the rigidities of the ...
... the spiritual truth and the spiritual knowledge are required to be communicated. Carr, therefore, considers the question of communicating spiritual truth claims in terms of traditions of enquiry, considering that in any field where truth claims are involved, one is required to face the test of experience not singly but as a body. In other words, spiritual knowledge cannot be communicated in terms... education. Here, he finds that one cannot arrive at the apprehension of the content of spirituality without some account of truth that spirituality refers to. He points out that, in regard to spiritual knowledge as cultural information, there are no facts but only highly contestable beliefs, reflections or opinions, and communication of such beliefs and reflections or opinions runs the risk of becoming ...
... knowledge by identity— as all true spiritual knowledge must needs be—it gives us a dynamic union with the Divine and with all existence. This integral knowledge arms us with the supreme Will and Force of the Divine, not only for our release from ignorance and suffering, but for the transformation of our whole nature into the divine Nature. All other spiritual knowledge, if practised with a sustained sincerity... XXIV KNOWLEDGE—THE LIGHT THAT FULFILS CATEGORIES OF KNOWLEDGE PART III ACCORDING to ancient Indian tradition there are three principal grades or categories of spiritual knowledge: ātmajñāna or knowledge of one's individual soul or self; brahmajñāna or knowledge of the universal and transcendent Self or Spirit, and bhagavatjñāna or knowledge of the Divine, the ...
... which we believe to be all-important, the dharma , the national religion which we also believe to be universal. There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is the sanatana dharma , the eternal religion. Under the stress of alien impacts she has... and the most believing of all, the most sceptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge,—that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects nothing ...
... the gross outward life or else an attempt to subject this rebellious life-stuff to the law of intellectual truth or ethical reason and will or aesthetic beauty or of all three together. But spiritual knowledge perceives that there is a greater thing in us; our inmost self, our real being is not the intellect, not the aesthetic, ethical or thinking mind, but the divinity within, the Spirit, and these... the vital and physical man by the power of an intellectualised ethics, aesthesis and reason, not the leading up of our lower members into the supreme light and power of the spirit. The ancient spiritual knowledge and the spiritual tendency it had created were saved in India from this collapse by the immense effort of the age of the Upanishads. The Vedantic seers renewed the Vedic truth by extricating ...
... factor a grounding in the Vedic formula of spiritual knowledge. In these earlier days this training was given in suitable surroundings far away from the life of cities and the teacher was one who had himself passed through the round of this circle of living and, very usually, even, one who had arrived at some remarkable realisation of spiritual knowledge. But subsequently education became more intellectual ...
... misunderstanding or an exaggeration of later phenomena and of conditions mostly belonging to the decline. The Brahmins, for example, had not a monopoly either of sacred learning or of the highest spiritual knowledge and opportunities. At first we see a kind of competition between the Brahmins and Page 409 the Kshatriyas for the spiritual lead and the latter for a long time held their own against... was denied in theory to the Shudras. As a matter of fact, however, a series of religious movements kept up even in the later days the essential element of the old freedom, brought the highest spiritual knowledge and opportunity to all doors and, as in the beginning we find the Vedic and Vedantic Rishis born from all classes, we find too up to the end the yogins, saints, spiritual thinkers, innovators ...
... consciousness. Page 12 The complexity of our brain is no impediment and does not preclude greater complexity. Beyond the investigations of material science and the explorations of spiritual knowledge, we must now learn to discern a new horizon attended by neither mantra nor equation. Equations and mantras have indeed their utility and even respond to an absolute necessity of our being... If it is logical to imagine that the first to be born among us will necessarily be those who in past times attained, or at this moment attain to, the plenitude of their being through the spiritual knowledge of the Transcendent, who have instilled, or are in the process of instilling, in themselves the permanent sense of this transcendence, it is also logical to imagine that it is this sense which ...
... being. To be aware wholly and integrally of oneself and of all the truth of one's being is the necessary condition of true possession of existence. This self-awareness is what is meant by spiritual knowledge....." 12 As pointed out previously, the enhancement of awareness of oneself is a striking parallel between several systems of modern psychology and psychotherapy on the Page 59 ... However, from what has just been quoted from Sri Aurobindo, it should be evident that the self-awareness spoken of and aimed at in yoga has a much more profound connotation, it being regarded as spiritual knowledge or knowledge of the essential truth of existence. For, from the viewpoint of yoga, Self and Existence are identical. In Sri Aurobindo's words: "Our supreme Self and the supreme Existence ...
... 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 seen by this knowledge in... our own being. The whole process of man’s highest intellectual knowledge is through this mental manipulation and discrimination to the point where the veil is broken and he can see; at the end spiritual knowledge comes in to help us to become what we see, to enter into the light in which there is no Ignorance.” 30 2. Mind is Substance, Thoughts are Entities “The mind is an instrument of formation ...
... base of the occult schemata of the world, e.g. the chakras, the chain of being, the astrological structure of the human being, and the sephiroth in the Kabbalah. Primordial Man The pure spiritual knowledge is the great treasure heedfully kept in India, and which she is now communicating to the world for its further evolution. Yet this knowledge, though often truncated, has also been a part of other... physical as well as of the spiritual elements of evolution was. When he wrote the Arya , from 1914 till 1921, and when later he revised some of its contents for publication in book form, his spiritual knowledge seemed often to disagree with the ever changing scientific findings and hypotheses, and therefore to be incongruous. Today, however, his evaluation of the life in plants and the mind in animals ...
... things necessarily involves a making of distinctions in the terms of the intellect. For, fundamentally, it is not an expression of ideas arrived at by speculative thinking. One has to arrive at spiritual knowledge through experience and a consciousness of things which arises directly out of that experience or else underlies or is involved in it. This kind of knowledge, then, is fundamentally a consciousness... the world since the days of the Upanishads—and of Plotinus and the Gnostics and Sufis—to the present time. It is hardly admissible then to put it aside as the thought of a tyro or beginner in spiritual knowledge making his first clumsy potshots at a solution of the crossword enigma of the universe. That description seems to show that he has missed the point of the passage altogether and that also makes ...
... slowly, containing in itself all stages of the evolution from the material and the vital man to the mental man. A small minority has pushed beyond the barriers, opening the doors to occult and spiritual knowledge and preparing the ascent of the evolution beyond mental man into spiritual and supramental being. Sometimes this minority has exercised an enormous influence as in Vedic India, Egypt or, according... apart in their secret schools or orders, not directly influencing a civilisation which was sunk in material ignorance or in chaos and darkness or in the hard external enlightenment which rejects spiritual knowledge. The cycles of evolution tend always upward, but they are cycles and do not ascend in a straight line. The process therefore gives the impression of a series of ascents and descents, but what ...
... may describe three results or powers of the method. First, we develop this power of equal acceptance in Page 715 the spirit and in the higher reason and will which respond to the spiritual knowledge. But also we find that though the nature can be induced to take this general attitude, there is yet a struggle between that higher reason and will and the lower mental being which clings to the... allow nothing to lay hold on him to the detriment of the free working of the Truth-Spirit. This equality of the intelligence is an essential condition for rising to the higher supramental and spiritual knowledge. The will in us, because it is the most generally forceful power of our being,—there is a will of knowledge, a will of life, a will of emotion, a will acting in every part of our nature,—takes ...
... through her works. Mankind has first to seek this knowledge through the external life; for until its mentality is sufficiently developed, spiritual knowledge is not really possible, and in proportion as it is developed, the possibilities of spiritual knowledge become richer and fuller. Science, art, philosophy, ethics, psychology, the knowledge of man and his past, action itself are means by which ...
... doubling of functions in the Veda. Now in the first place, how was the transition effected from the alleged purely materialistic Nature-worship of the Vedas to the extraordinary psychological and spiritual knowledge of the Upanishads unsurpassed in their subtlety and sublimity in ancient times? There are three possible explanations. First, this sudden spirituality may have been brought in from outside; it... suggestions. And if we go back to the earliest times we see that the Brahmanas give a mystically ritualistic interpretation of the Veda, the Upanishads treat the Riks as a book not of ritual, but of spiritual knowledge. There is therefore nothing fantastically new or revolutionary in an attempt to fix the psychological and spiritual purport of the Rig Veda. A last objection remains that the interpretation ...
... and concretised Page 80 in his talk, Vivekananda threw out into brilliance of many-sided thought and eloquent speech the essence of ancient Veda. The Veda was the beginning of our spiritual knowledge; the Veda will remain its end. These compositions of an unknown antiquity are as the many breasts of the eternal Mother of knowledge from which our succeeding ages have all been fed. Yet,... much more difficult and delicate and the formulas in which it is couched, are necessarily elusive and with difficulty intelligible. Therefore India, supremely sensitive to the importance of spiritual knowledge and experience, unequalled in its instinct for the right spiritual method, has organised the institution of the guruparampara as an essential instrument for the survival of Veda. The truth of ...
... Knowledge by thinking process would not be spiritual knowledge. True knowledge comes by spiritual realisation and experience. There are such realisations and experiences. I was speaking of your experiences of the higher consciousness, of your seeing the Mother in all things—these are what are called spiritual realisations, spiritual knowledge. Realisations are the essence of knowledge—thoughts ...
... revealing tradition by the Christ figure and Christ tradition is not possible. The two stand in two different worlds. There is nothing in the latter of the great and boundless and sovereign spiritual knowledge and power of realisation we find in the Gita, nothing of the emotional force, passion, beauty of the Gopi symbol and all that lies behind it, nothing of the many-sided manifestation of the Krishna... Divine. Free action is the action of the Divine in us and through us; no other action can be free. That seems to be accepted in II and III; but this perception, this conception is as old as spiritual knowledge itself—it is not peculiar to Catholicism. What again is meant by the purification and deification of the faculties by Grace? If it is an ethical purification, that goes a very small way and does ...
... an indifference to the sacredness of the Veda". True, a ritualistic cult based on the Veda, a ceremonial of religious Works as distinguished from what the Upanishads came to consider spiritual Knowledge, is an object of strong revulsion in the Upanishadic period. But does not Radhakrishnan 6 himself tell us that the Upanishads "adopt a double attitude towards Vedic authority"? Here surely... is a triple knowledge and therefore a triple meaning of the Vedic hymns, a sacrificial or ritualistic knowledge [ādhi-yajñika], a knowledge of the gods [ādhi-daivika] and finally a spiritual knowledge [ādhyātmika]; but the last is the true sense and when one gets it the others drop or are cut away. It is this spiritual sense that saves and the rest is outward and subordinate. He says ...
... and it contained rules and regulations of conducting ritualistic sacrifices. The Vedic system was thus reduced to karma kānda, and thus the Vedic content which consisted of a vast body of spiritual knowledge came to be disregarded and even obliterated. It was in opposition to this obliteration that a number of sages revolted, and by means of fresh spiritual practices rediscovered the system of knowledge... Indian culture, and, when examined through the psychological and spiritual interpretation, they appear to be storehouses of knowledge concerning various domains, and in any case, to the domain of spiritual knowledge. Even when the Vedic knowledge came to be lost under the heavy burden of ritualism, Upanishads have continuously been looked upon right from the early stages of their growth and development as ...
... much the dissolution of the present physical body as the prevention of the formation of further bodies in future (bhāvīdeha-nivṛtti), that is claimed to be brought about by the dawning of spiritual Knowledge. 4 So far as the present gross body is concerned, its continued existence and functioning even after the attainment of liberation is sought to be explained in terms of what is called pr... Mumukshu-Vyavahara-Prakaranam, 7.1). Page 57 accumulated (sañcita-karma), and those that are being gathered in the present embodied existence (sañcīyamāna-karma). Spiritual knowledge, so it is asserted, destroys altogether the second kind 1 and prevents the third 2 , thus rendering the assumption of a new body impossible. But the first type of karmas that have begun to ...
... From Man Human to Man Divine III Science and Spiritual Knowledge (An Unnecessary Antinomy and a Harmonious Reconciliation) "Earth is the Mother and Heaven the Father." (Rigveda) "All problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony." (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 4.) Why Reconciliation? ... certain touch of authenticity, we propose to introduce the words of Sri Aurobindo who is acknowledged by universal consent as one of the greatest mystics and thinkers. Science against Spiritual Knowledge: Charges and their Refutation I. Argument: Spiritual experiences are individual and have no general validity independent of the individual seeker's supposed testimony. Critique: ...
... higher; and this depends on how one approaches the study and investigation of a particular subject. The same subject offers us ordinary worldly knowledge if we study it in one way but leads us to spiritual knowledge if, instead, we investigate it in a different way. Thus SAICE does not exclude, on principle, any particular subject from its study Course; it only shows how to study it in order to lift it to... not need, for its purity, to destroy interest in all things except the Inexpressible or to cut at the roots of the Sciences, the Arts and Life. It may well be one of the effects of an integral spiritual knowledge and activity to lift them out of their limitations, substitute for our mind's ignorant, limited, tepid or trepidant pleasure in them a free, intense and uplifting urge of delight and supply a ...
... Aurobindo sees in the heart of the nationalist movement of India and in the attainment of freedom for India a great possibility of opening a new age in which India can, because of its treasures of spiritual knowledge, discover further secrets whereby Spirit and Matter can be synthesised, and the luminous knowledge of the spirit can illumine and transform the physical life of the earth. India has also the... need to be initiated and developed. Sri Aurobindo has spoken of three aims that free India should concentrate upon. In the first place, a great effort must be made for the recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depths and fullness. Sri Aurobindo considers this to be the most essential work. Secondly, an endeavour must be made for the flowing of this spirituality ...
... enriched and further developed. These methods, in due course, came to be known as Yogic methods, and the Veda can rightly be looked upon as the foundation of Yoga. However, as it often happens, spiritual knowledge and spiritual methods often get clouded Page 66 and deteriorated into external ritualism, and this seems to have happened in regard to the Vedic knowledge, as can be seen from the... Renaissance, has placed before us three tasks that India must undertake and fulfil. Let me conclude with the statement of these three tasks in Sri Aurobindo's own words: The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical ...
... exaggeration. The West is reawaking to the truth of the Spirit and the spiritual possibilities of life, the East is reawaking to the truth of Life and tends towards a new application to it of its spiritual knowledge.' In Sri Aurobindo's view, the antinomy created between the East and the West is an unreal one. He writes: 'Spirit being the fundamental truth of existence, life can be only its manifestation;... fact that the Arya appeared at a time when the First World War broke out cannot be dismissed as a mere coincidence. In the subtle world of thought the Arya represented a counterpoise of spiritual knowledge and harmony against the vibrations let loose by the senseless destruction of the war. With France and England fighting side by side as allies in Europe, relations between the Governments of ...
... there was a harmonious blending in the courses of studies in the spiritual knowledge, philosophical knowledge, and scientific knowledge. In the harmony of the blending, the scientific spirit did not conflict with the philosophic spirit and the philosophic spirit was recognised as a prelude to the training by which intuitive spiritual knowledge can be gained and mastered. Fourthly, physical education ...
... generation of unfailing goodwill and sincere collaboration. We may also add that if India has to be of service to the future of humanity, three tasks have to be accomplished: firstly, the old spiritual knowledge contained in the Veda and the Upanishads has to be recovered in all its splendour, depth, and fullness. For, it is in that knowledge that we have the key to the solution of the contemporary problems... problems of evolutionary crisis, which is at the root of the critical problems of social, political, economic and environmental complexities. The second task is to channelise its , ancient spiritual knowledge in new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical knowledge. The third task is to formulate a greater synthesis of a spiritualised society, a task which is most difficult and yet ...
... and informs it with that primal energy which is the most refined form of matter and nearest to spirit. It is oj as that creates a spiritual force or virya, by which a man attains to spiritual knowledge, spiritual love and faith, spiritual strength. It follows that the more we can by Brahmacharya increase the store of tapas, tejas, vidyut and ojas, the more we shall fill ourselves with utter... harmonies into a committee of three. Yet it is paralleled by the accomplishment in philosophy of Shankara in a short life of thirty-two years and dwarfed by the universal mastery of all possible spiritual knowledge and experience of Sri Ramakrishna in our own era. These instances are not so common as the others, because pure creative genius is not common; but in Europe they are, with a single modern exception ...
... works. Mankind has first to seek this knowledge through the external life; for until its mentality is sufficiently developed, spiritual knowledge is not really possible, and in proportion as it is developed, the possibilities of spiritual knowledge become richer and fuller. 8 To cultivate the spiritual life is not to turn away from everyday life; it is not an escape from ...
... identified with the original truth and the whole truth of self and existence. 47 If the way down is the road to the Ignorance and the Inconscience, the way up is the road to the spiritual Knowledge and the integral consciousness. The three crucial steps of self-achievement in this regard would be, firstly, the discovery of the psychic self or soul (behind the egoistic desire-self), secondly... no doubt certain resemblances with Sri Aurobindo's, but the differences are more importance still. "Know thyself is the beginning of Gurdjieff's system, as indeed it is the beginning of all spiritual knowledge. What is man? - a machine, a clock (so to say) with seven springs or minds functioning, these centres being the intellectual, the emotional, sex, the instinctive, the moving, the higher emotional ...
... great step towards the transformation of the body. And these people who, I could say, are materialists by profession, used no spiritual method in their education.... If they had added to this a spiritual knowledge and power, they could have achieved an almost miraculous result. 2 The visit of Acharya Vinoba Bhave and his party to the Ashram in July was no less memorable. He was impressed by the Ashram... served well during the childhood and boyhood of humanity, but the time has come when man must race beyond Reason in quest of supermanhood: If you want to attain true knowledge, that is, spiritual knowledge, which can be obtained only through identification, you must go beyond this reason and enter a domain higher than the mind where one is in direct contact with the Light either of the Overmind ...
... brain and informs it with that primal energy which is the most refined form of matter and nearest to spirit. It is ojas that creates a spiritual force or vīrya , by which a man attains to spiritual knowledge, spiritual love and faith, spiritual strength. It follows that the more we can by Brahmacharya increase the store of tapas, tejas, vidyut and ojas , the more we shall fill ourselves with utter... committee of three. Yet it is paralleled by the accomplishment Page 376 in philosophy of Shankara in a short life of thirty-two years and dwarfed by the universal mastery of all possible spiritual knowledge and experience of Sri Ramakrishna in our own era. These instances are not so common as the others, because pure creative genius is not common; but in Europe they are, with a single modern exception ...
... knowledge & right feeling, is asked to purify, first, the mental state of the Yogin; for a mind unpurified cannot hold the light from on high. Knowledge purifies, says the Gita, meaning the higher spiritual knowledge which comes by śruti, divine inspiration; there is nothing in the whole world so pure as knowledge: Saraswati who purifies, Pávaká Saraswatí. Vájebhir vájiní vatí. She is full of substantial... another context, by a different turn of the prefix, it may express kindly thoughts, friendly feelings, happy perceptions. In the last Rik the source of this great illumination is indicated. Spiritual knowledge is not natural to the mind; it is in us a higher faculty concealed & sleeping, not active to our consciousness. It is only when the inspiration of a divine enlightenment,—Saraswatí ketuná, in ...
... dependence on standards is transcended and the spontaneous law of the immortal self and spirit displaces the lower rule of the instruments and members. The sattwic mind and will change into that spiritual knowledge and dynamic power of identical existence in which the whole nature puts off its disguise and becomes a free self-expression of the godhead within it. The sattwic doer becomes the Jiva in contact... quality, any bondage of sin and virtue, self and others or any but a supreme spiritual self-determination. That is the culmination of works uplifted to the sole Divine Worker by a God-seeking and spiritual knowledge. But there is still an incidental question of great importance in the old Indian system of culture and, even apart from that antique view, of considerable general importance, on which we have ...
... A.G acts directly on the mental and on the vital being through the illumined mind; he represents the Purusha element whose strength is predominantly in illumined (intuitive, supramental or spiritual) knowledge and the power that acts in this knowledge, while the psychic being supports this action and helps to transform the physical and vital plane. Mirra acts directly on the psychic being and on the... the supramental being give her the necessary knowledge to act on the right lines and at the right moment. Her force representing the Shakti element is directly psychic, vital, physical and her spiritual knowledge is predominantly practical in its nature. It is, that is to say, a large and detailed knowledge and experience of the mental, vital and Page 329 physical forces at play and with the ...
... things necessarily involves a making of distinctions in the terms of the intellect. For, fundamentally, it is not an expression of ideas arrived at by speculative thinking. One has to arrive at spiritual knowledge through experience and a consciousness of things which arises directly out of that experience or else underlies or is involved in it. This kind of knowledge, then, is fundamentally a consciousness... can always rise; for they presented to him no long or obstinate difficulty. The only real difficulty which took decades of spiritual effort to carry out towards completeness was to apply the spiritual knowledge utterly to the world and to the surface psychological and outer life and to effect its transformation both on the higher levels of Nature and on the ordinary mental, vital and physical levels ...
... * The future of India is very clear. India is the Guru of the world. The future structure of the world depends on India. India is the living soul. India is incarnating the spiritual knowledge in the world. The Government of India ought to recognise the significance of India in this sphere and plan their action accordingly. * Page 56 (On 1 September... difficulties of modern mankind. India Will be the land of its resurrection - the resurrection to a higher and truer life. * Page 58 O India, land of light and spiritual knowledge! Wake up to your true mission in the world, show the way to union and harmony. 23 September 1967 * Divine Power alone can help India. If you can build faith and cohesion ...
... is the Energy of the cosmic manifestation of the Infinite in Space-Time. Krishna This is the Krishna of 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... that these figures [ of the Gods ] appear in sadhana. Ganesh is at once the god of wisdom and the remover of obstacles. Page 158 Ganesh (among other things) is the devata of spiritual Knowledge—so as you are getting this knowledge, you saw yourself in this form, identified with Ganesh. Kartikeya The peacock is the bird of victory and Kartikeya the leader of the divine forces. ...
... nothing can be a sufficient substitute for the spiritual change that can realise the true and integral good because through the spirit we come to the root of action and existence. In the spiritual knowledge of self there are three steps of its self-achievement which are at the same time three parts of the one knowledge. The first is the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought and emotion... 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 the veil between our becoming and our ...
... a time the divorce has been as complete as the one-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to end in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual knowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous... not need, for its purity, to destroy interest in all things except the Inexpressible or to cut at the roots of the Sciences, the Arts and Life. It may well be one of the effects of an integral spiritual knowledge and activity to lift them out of their limitations, substitute for our mind's ignorant, limited, tepid or trepidant pleasure in them a free, intense and uplifting urge of delight and supply a ...
... 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, if seen by this knowledge... cannot be something self-existent and acting in the Void, but can turn out and, when deeply scrutinised, seems likely to turn out to be the action of a secret Consciousness and Being: when the spiritual knowledge and experience emerge, this becomes a certitude,—it is seen that the creative Energy in Matter is a movement of the power of the Spirit. Matter itself cannot be the original and ultimate reality ...
... basis. The Purusha enters into cosmic manifestation for the variations of his infinite existence, for knowledge, action and Page 695 enjoyment; the gnosis brings the fullness of spiritual knowledge and it will found on that the divine action and cast the enjoyment of world and being into the law of the truth, the freedom and the perfection of the spirit. But neither action nor enjoyment... the terms of that Page 696 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 these channels, his spirit with the one spirit in all beings. All the variety of cosmic existence will ...
... is only one remove above the animal mind; it is a half-animal reason subservient to habit, to desire and the senses and is of no avail in the search whether for scientific or philosophical or spiritual knowledge. We have to go beyond it; its purification can only be effected either by dismissing or silencing it altogether or by transmuting it into the true understanding. By the understanding we mean... its apparent workings such as our senses represent them to be; the beginning of philosophy is the examination of the principles of things which the senses mistranslate to us; the beginning of spiritual knowledge is the refusal to accept the limitations of the sense-life or to take the visible and sensible as anything more than phenomenon of the Reality. Equally must the sense-mind be stilled and taught ...
... Elsewhere also Rajneesh fails to keep a hold on his own initial premise that one who argues as much as Sri Aurobindo and who says so much cannot be experienced in spirituality, cannot have true spiritual knowledge. He contrasts Sri Aurobindo with Ramana Maharshi about whom he informs us: "Aurobindo remained knowledgeable but Ramana really knew. Ramana does not know the language of reason; he has no system;... statements are all atomic and he has little language to say what he knows." Then, surprisingly, Rajneesh goes on to assert that merely because a man has a lot to say we cannot affirm that he lacks spiritual knowledge; "for Buddha too had much to say" and yet "experience-wise Buddha is like Ramana". Surely here Rajneesh refutes himself out of his own mouth? If Buddha, who said a great deal, could be equal ...
... pioneers of a new poetry in the history of the West. About the tendencies that suddenly developed in them out of Rousseauistic Romanticism, he 11 writes: "Insufficiently supported by any adequate spiritual knowledge, unable to find securely the right and native word of their own meaning, these greater tendencies faded away or were lost by the premature end of the poets who might, had they lived, have given... spiritual truths behind them." "This attempt," he explains, "could not come to perfect fruition, partly because there had not been the right intellectual preparation or a sufficient basis of spiritual knowledge and experience and only so much could be given as the solitary individual intuition of the poet could by a sovereign effort attain, partly because after the lapse into an age of reason the s ...
... which we believe to be all-important, the dharma , the national religion which we also believe to be universal. There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is the sanātana dharma , the eternal religion. Under the stress of alien impacts she has... and the most believing of all, the most sceptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge,—that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects nothing ...
... on her by Westernisation, still embodies a spiritual dimension which is virtually non-existent today in a world that simply disregards spiritual knowledge as irrelevant, or illusory, probably pathological, no part of the real world. This treasury of spiritual knowledge and practice is beyond doubt India's greatest resource. And it may be that our bankrupt materialism has brought us in the West to a point ...
... to the intellect but it is at the same time, as Aldous Huxley wrote to Dilip Kumar Roy, an extraordinarily fine piece of literature and, chiefly, a mass of spiritual knowledge couched in intellectual and literary terms. This spiritual knowledge is from what Sri Aurobindo has called the Overmind. The Overmind has a vast massive universal vision and looks at quite a multitude of things, appreciating ...
... skill in work. While there was an emphasis on the pursuit of truth, beauty and goodness, there was also, in accordance with the need of nature, a constant pressure to open up higher faculties of spiritual knowledge and action. Swadhyaya (self-study) was the cornerstone of the pupil's discipline and method of learning. The teacher had not any set method, but he employed every method that would be suitable... expected to develop extraordinary memory, Imagination and thought. The predominance of the oral tradition necessitated the cultivation of power of memory; the high content of philosophical and Spiritual knowledge necessitated cultivation of subtlety and complexity of thought; the setting of the Ashrams and Gurukulas in the open forests necessitated cultivation of intimate communion with Nature and the ...
... goodwill and sincere collaboration. Page 58 We may also add that if India has to be of service to the future of humanity, three tasks have to be accomplished: firstly, the old spiritual knowledge contained in the Veda and the Upanishads has to be recovered in all its splendour, depth, and fullness. For, it is in that knowledge that we have the key to the solution of the contemporary problems... problems of evolutionary crisis, which is at the root of the critical problems of social, political, economic and environmental complexities. The second task is to channelise its ancient spiritual knowledge in new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical knowledge. The third task is to formulate a greater synthesis of a spiritualised society, — a task which is most difficult and yet ...
... the Indian renaissance has proclaimed the message of dynamic spirituality. Whether it is Maharshi Dayananda Saraswati, Swami Vivekananda, or Swami Ramtirtha, they have laid stress on applying spiritual knowledge to the problems of the world; they have advocated the view that spirituality is not an escape but it is an affirmation of power and sovereignty, that spirituality is not a matter of running away... the fact that humanity has irreversibly become global and the advantages of its globality can be rightly promoted and its disadvantages can be rightly avoided only if we can apply the truth of spiritual knowledge to the difficult issues of unity and freedom. If this path is to be declared impracticable, we shall still need to make experiments on this path before we can scientifically declare it to ...
... enriched and further developed. These methods, in due course, came to be known as Yogic methods, and the Veda can rightly be looked upon as the foundation of Yoga. However, as it often happens, spiritual knowledge and spiritual methods often get clouded and deteriorated into external ritualism, and this seems to have happened in regard to the Vedic knowledge, as can be seen from the Brahmana literature... has placed before us three tasks that India must undertake and fulfil. Let me conclude with the statement of these three tasks in Sri Aurobindo's own words: The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical ...
... Upanishads also speak of immortality, and when we study these great books of profound masters of spiritual knowledge, we find that, starting from the crowning Page 66 experiences of liberation and perfection of the Vedic seers, they arrive at a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great harmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired ...
... Upanishads also speak of immortality, and as we study these great books of the profound masters of the spiritual knowledge, we find that, starting from the crowning experiences of liberation and perfection of the Vedic seers, they arrive at a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great harmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated ...
... exhausted. The question is as to what next can reason do. "The inability of Reason to answer this question constitutes the heart of our contemporary crisis. It has either to go upward towards spiritual knowledge or to remain stagnant. If it remains stagnant, it will continue to engender scepticism, which is injurious and ruinous for humanity. For going upwards, it has to have deeper knowledge or readiness... Because of my background, I feel that I should devote all my time to work on these two tasks. I need to undertake a long programme of research. I want to study and practise and realise our spiritual knowledge, our integral knowledge, what the Gita calls Jnana Vijnana, the knowledge both of essence and of manifestation. And then I want to write. I should like to demonstrate through my books that ...
... laws and possibilities, to master and use the powers or Nature-forces behind them or to protect ourselves from them. It is true, according to advanced seekers of occultism and of higher spiritual knowledge, that occultism has its own dangers, and just as several scientific discoveries can be misused or clumsily used by a humanity mentally and morally unready for the handling of the powers of these... process of our normal and abnormal mind and life functionings and activities. The dangers can be even more perilous if the exploration and application of spiritual domains is ignored or if the spiritual knowledge is pursued as only one form of the knowledge of the mind. In the history of the development of occultism, one witnesses in some parts of the world how occultism deviated into white and black ...
... develop extraordinary powers of memory, imagination and thought. The predominance of oral tradition necessitated the cultivation of the power of memory; the high content of philosophical and spiritual knowledge necessitated the cultivation of subtlety and complexity of thought; the natural setting oftheAshrams and Gurukulas in the open forest, where nature could be an intimate friend and companion,... pragmatic and intellectual but spiritual. For among all human endeavours, spiritual endeavour is the most difficult, beset with the greatest difficulties. In certain circumstances, the pursuit of spiritual knowledge requires vigilant direction and guidance. Spiritual search is like a search in a virgin forest, and the law of that search exacts from the seeker the highest price of self-sacrifice and consecration ...
... can fulfil her true destiny. For India to be secure and progress according to her natural Swadharma three steps have to be taken. The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work The flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art... synthesis of a spiritualised society Her success on these three lines will be the measure of her help to the future of humanity. In order to recover the old Indian spiritual knowledge India has to insist much more finally and integrally than she has as yet done on her spiritual turn, on the increasingly greater action of the spiritual motive in every sphere of our living. ...
... brings before us the infant human being—a symbol of infant humanity,—who is being suckled by this dark nurse so that when it grows it will pass—to the radiant realms,—radiant breasts of true spiritual knowledge. And also see how in the lines that follow, we find a true value given to the myths by the divine power that works for the growth of man. There is. also a contrast of the value of reason which... fare on which today we thrive." Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 10. There is here not only an explanation of why the divine power at work in the cosmos does not give the full blaze of spiritual knowledge to the infant soul of humanity, but there is also here a true appraisement of reason and its service to the growth of knowledge in man. If poetry is criticism of life, here we find indirectly ...
... recorded piece of the Mother's organ music which at once created an otherworldly feel. Then, the Mother's recorded message given for this special occasion, was played: "O India, land of light and spiritual knowledge! Wake up to your true mission in the world, show the way to union and harmony." After this, we, six participants, began our vedic chants: three mantras from the Rigveda set to music under the... programme was recorded by AIR and broadcast from the Pondicherry station. I remember Mr Dharmagyani's speech. One part of it had touched me very much, when he mentioned that the fountain of spiritual knowledge and education was the Ashram, that is why AIR Pondicherry would always seek assistance from the Page 189 Ashram and strive always for the Mother's blessings. When I went to see ...
... be the pioneers of a new kind of Science. Neither, I hope, shall I be inclined to reject or criticise adversely because Theosophy has a foreign origin. There is no law of Nature by which spiritual knowledge is confined to the East or must bear the stamp of an Indian manufacture before it can receive the imprimatur of the All-Wise. He has made man in his own image everywhere, in the image of the ...
... & realisations, but it would be to limit the capacities of the human soul to suppose that his intuitions exclude others equally great or that his realisations are the only or final word of spiritual knowledge. Shankara of the Commentaries on the Upanishad,—although the greatest commentaries on them that we have,—is not so great as Shankara of the Bhashya on the Vedanta Sutras. In the latter he is ...
... cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. The Upanishads take up this crowning experience of the earlier seers and make it their starting-point for a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great harmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated knowers of the Eternal throughout a great and fruitful period of spiritual seeking ...
... still in each of these lessened provinces there is a gain of minute or intensive searching and on the whole, if a loss of breadth on the heights, in recompense some extension of assimilable spiritual knowledge. And this rhythm of exchange between the spirit and the intelligence, the spirit illumining, the intelligence searching and arriving and helping the lower life to absorb the intuitions of the ...
... it in relation to modern knowledge and ideas. Out of this awakening vision and impulse the Indian renaissance is arising, and that must determine its future tendency. The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical ...
... syllable OM among words, the Gayatri among metres, the Sama-veda among the Vedas and the great Sama among the mantras. I am Time the head of all reckoning to those who reckon and measure. I am spiritual knowledge among the many philosophies, arts and sciences. I am all the powers of the human being and all the energies of the universe and its creatures. Those in whom My powers rise to the utmost heights ...
... It is the third of these four necessities of man's self-expansion, which is relevant to this article. Sri Aurobindo insists on the indispensability of the philosophical approach to spiritual knowledge in the integral spiritual endeavour. It is true that great mystics have sometimes dispensed with philosophy, "arrived instead through the heart's fervour or a mystic inward spiritualisation" ...
... you?" (13:5) 45 Paul's being a true mystic is undeniable. Sri Aurobindo 46 has written in a letter: "... St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much profound spiritual knowledge (profound rather than wide, I think)..." He 47 has also commented on a passage in the Epistles - not exactly identifiable by us - which refers "Perhaps to the supramental body or to some other ...
... of things, the final man. (Theodore Roethke, "The Far Fields") Now I shall quote a few lines from poets who have consciously tried to go beyond the mind to the realms of higher spiritual knowledge. The Dark has foundered and returns no more. (Arjava, "Light's Victory") 11. Ibid ., p. 354. Page 355 and this line about "stars" by the ...
... China and crossed the Himalayas and they could not follow. India has a special protection and they fell back, exhausted. Is this something to be feared? This evil can be conquered with enough spiritual knowledge. We may condemn Western commerce and industry for expanding globally, but it will have a very beneficial effect. There is at present so much darkness in the world. Now that you are in your ...
... formerly but in their essence, and carried to the fullest and highest significance. But Vedanta deals more with the principles and essentials of the divine knowledge and therefore much of its spiritual knowledge and experience has been taken bodily into the Arya. Tantra deals more with forms and processes and organised powers—all these could not be taken as they were, for the integral yoga needs ...
... into earth's cave-heart. Its morning rays illume our twilight's eyes. 32 The episode of the robbers stealing cows from the caves is analogous to the dark forces trying to rob the spiritual knowledge of the Rishis which they preserved in coded form in their Riks. This long chapter about the Vedas is condensed into a single line by Sri Aurobindo. However, the preceding and the following ...
... because, right thought consisting in correct notions about the self and the world, and right discrimination between the real and the unreal, are indispensable preliminaries for arriving at spiritual knowledge, which is supraintellectual. As Sri Aurobindo explains: It is true that intellectual deliberation and right discrimination are an important part of the Yoga of knowledge; but their object ...
... according to yogic psychology, is endowed not only with intelligence but also with will power. Just as mental intelligence, despite its extreme limitations, is a useful tool for growth towards spiritual knowledge, so the mental will, despite its extremely limited power, serves an indispensable function in dealing with the vital not only in ordinary life but also in spiritual life. As Sri Aurobindo states: ...
... knowledge through intellectual ideas, Sri Aurobindo writes to a disciple: ... fundamentally, it is not an expression of ideas arrived at by speculative thinking. One has to arrive at spiritual knowledge through experience and a consciousness of things which arises directly out of that experience or else underlies or is involved in it. This kind of knowledge, then, is fundamentally a consciousness ...
... great differences; the conclusion suggested is that this knowledge is not truth at all but a subjective mental formation. But this objection is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of spiritual knowledge. Spiritual truth is a truth of the spirit, not a truth of the intellect, not a mathematical theorem or a logical formula. It is a truth of the Infinite, one in an infinite diversity, and it ...
... consciousness) we need the soul's faith to sustain us and hold on to the Truth — but when we live in the knowledge, this faith is changed into knowledge. Of course I am speaking of direct spiritual knowledge. Mental knowledge cannot replace faith, so long as there is only mental knowledge, faith is still needed. Letters on Yoga, p. 576 The phrase ["blind faith"] has no real meaning ...
... himself and others. This he has found can only be done by a long and patient Sadhana. It is when he feels it completed in himself and his whole mind, life and body capable of transmitting the spiritual knowledge and power into a perfectly effective action that he will come out from his Sadhana and begin his action. At the same time he is training a number of people to be effective instruments of the ...
... spirit and a transmutation of the form.” ( The Human Cycle 958 ) “Sri Aurobindo once wrote to a disciple: ‘I think I can say that I have been testing day and night for years upon years’ his spiritual knowledge and experience ‘more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane’. The Record of Yoga bears this out in detail. It may be looked on as the laboratory notebook ...
... them. She taught them the complexity of things, from the smallest to the biggest, with the few that is visible and the much that remains hidden. She had such an enormous cultural, occult and spiritual knowledge, the Mother, and she spoke out of the conscious experience of so many lives. Those present were steeped into a purifying Force which caused all that was best in them to blossom; and she enclosed ...
... 3: Explorations of the Occult Occult knowledge without spiritual discipline is a dangerous instrument, for one who uses it as for others, if it falls into impure hands. Spiritual knowledge without occult science lacks precision and certainty in its objective results; it is all-powerful only in the subjective world. The two, when combined in inner or outer action, are irresistible ...
... manner of the original—exact correspondence of the words does not matter. The substance of A. E.'s poetry is always very good—he is one of the two or three whose poetry comes nearest to spiritual knowledge and experience. He has too a very fine and subtle perception of things—a little more vital é lan (of what he seems to have had abundance in his life but not so much in his poetry) and he would ...
... but the knowledge comes only when one gets another, higher than the intellectual, opening. Even in mind itself there are things higher than the intellect, ranges of activity that exceed it. Spiritual knowledge is easier to these than to the reasoning intelligence". I enclosed a copy of Gurudev's letter in my reply to Krishnaprem and wrote: "I am very grateful, Krishnaprem, for all that you ...
... attitude towards these things, that all work can be done if it is done according to the dharma and, if it is rightly done, it does not prevent the approach to the Divine or the access to spiritual knowledge and the spiritual life. There is, of course, also the ascetic ideal which is necessary for many and has its place in the spiritual order. I would myself say that no man can be spiritually ...
... Bulletin of Physical Education and dictated in the last months of his life. In educating the Ashram children, the Mother drew from her lifelong practical experience and still more from her spiritual knowledge and intuition. The basis of this education was her knowledge of the different aspects of the human being – the material, vital, mental, psychic and spiritual parts. This knowledge, gained from ...
... to Sri Aurobindo no long or obstinate difficulty. "The only real difficulty," the letter continues, "which took decades of spiritual effort to work out towards completeness was to apply the spiritual knowledge utterly to the world and to the surface psychological and outer life and to effect its transformation both on the higher levels of Nature and on the ordinary mental, vital and physical levels ...
... think of them in any other way when they are associated with "the conquest of the world of Swar", which is the Sun-world, and with "the hymn of illumination", the Mantra which is the Word of spiritual knowledge. Sri Aurobindo has pointed out several passages where the cow-symbolism is undeniable. Quoting from a hymn to Usha, the Dawn-Goddess, he writes: "She creates light for all the world and ...
... period of his life. No question was too trivial to ask and none was ignored by Sri Aurobindo when it concerned the practice of Yoga. Dr. Govindbhai is to be thanked for the rich treasure of spiritual knowledge and guidance he was able to draw from the Master. Every page of this correspondence is a boon to the aspirant. Whether it is the gradation of the inner worlds that is made explicit or the dangers ...
... intellectual recognition and a resigned or sage acceptance of things as they are because of some divine sense and purpose in them which is beyond us; the real sign is an elevation towards the spiritual knowledge and power which will transform the law Page 411 and phenomena and external forms of our life nearer to a true image of that divine sense and purpose. It is right and reasonable to ...
... these things. This attempt did not come to perfect fruition; it stopped short partly Page 64 because there had not been the right intellectual preparation or a sufficient basis of spiritual knowledge and experience; only so much could be given as the solitary individual intuition of the poet could attain by a difficult groping or a sudden sovereign effort. But partly also it failed because ...
... " must be demanded of the Divine Manifestation which seemed to me quite irrelevant to the reality. I put forward two propositions which appear to me indisputable unless we are to revise all spiritual knowledge in favour of modern European ideas about things. First, the Divine Manifestation even when it manifests in mental and human ways has behind it a consciousness greater than the mind and not ...
... obstacles by the force of Knowledge—Kartikeya represents victory over the hostile Powers. Of course the names given are human, but the Gods exist. Ganesh (among other things) is the devata of spiritual Knowledge—so as you are getting this knowledge, you saw yourself in this form, identified with Ganesh. Page 460 ...
... and that makes it very difficult to be sure about these things. This passage about the body, for instance—although St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much pro found spiritual knowledge (profound rather than wide, I think)—I would not swear to it that he is referring to the supramentalised body ( physical body ). Perhaps to the supramental body or to some other luminous body ...
... and direct, is at its best and his best can be miraculously perfect. A. E. The substance of A. E.'s poetry is always very good—he is one of the two or three whose poetry comes nearest to spiritual knowledge and experience. He has too a very fine and subtle perception of things—a little more vital élan (of which he seems to have had abundance in his life but not so much in his poetry) and he would ...
... of consciousness) we need the soul's faith to sustain us and hold on to the Truth—but when we live in the knowledge, this faith is changed into knowledge. Of course I am speaking of direct spiritual knowledge. Mental knowledge cannot replace faith; so long as there is only mental knowledge, faith is still needed. The phrase [ "blind faith" ] has no real meaning. I suppose they mean they will ...
... guided by a received written Shastra,—some Word from the past which embodies the experience of former Yogins,—it may be practised either by personal effort alone or with the aid of a Guru. The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed ...
... Knowledge no less than the works of Ignorance. It can be conceded that knowledge is a useful instrument of the Illusion of Maya, for escaping from herself, for destroying herself in the Mind; spiritual knowledge is indispensable: but the one true truth, the only abiding reality beyond all duality of knowledge and ignorance is the eternal relationless Absolute or the Self, the eternal pure Existence. ...
... until they can discover a greater guide, a Will, Tapas or divine Shakti which will take the place of desire and mental will and impulse, an Ananda or pure delight of the spirit and an illumined spiritual knowledge which will express themselves in the action of that Shakti. This complete detachment, impossible without an entire self-government, equality, calm, śama, samatā, śānti , is the surest step towards ...
... what to us seems to be a darkness of unintelligence, are yet really and in essence the same, as materialistic thought has always instinctively felt from the wrong or lower end of things and as spiritual knowledge working from the summit had long ago discovered. We may say, therefore, that it is a subconscious Mind or Intelligence which, manifesting Force as its driving-power, its executive Nature, its ...
... In the nature there is a more powerful and many-sided change, a spiritual building and self-creation, the appearance of a composite perfection of the saint, the selfless worker and the man of spiritual knowledge. But, for this change to arrive at its widest totality and pro found completeness, the consciousness has to shift its centre and its static and dynamic position from the surface to the inner ...
... the Spirit. That we turn always the few distinct truths and the symbols or the particular discipline of a religion into hard and fast dogmas, is a sign that as yet we are only infants in the spiritual knowledge and are yet far from the science of the Infinite. Yet behind every great religion, behind, that is to say, its exoteric side of faith, hope, symbols, scattered truths and limiting dogmas, ...
... viewpoint from the mental consciousness. It is incomplete because two things that are one have been left out, the Personal Manifestation and the name of the Mahashakti. The subsequent growth of spiritual knowledge has brought about a constant effort to add these missing elements. When the hidden secret has been discovered and made effective, the human consciousness will be exceeded, the superconscient ...
... barbarous polytheistic superstition, no material and primitive Nature-worship, no extraordinary intellectual compromise and vague henotheism. We are in the presence of an established system of spiritual knowledge and an ordered belief in which matter, mind and spirit are connected and coordinated by the common action of great divine powers. When we know according to what idea of cosmic principle Surya ...
... who have gained their Yoga not Page 13 by the ordinary careful and scientific methods but by their own strength and the special grace of God, from revealing themselves and their spiritual knowledge to mankind and in their intense love for humanity imparting something of their power to the world. Such were Buddha, Christ, Mahomed, Chaitanya, such have been Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. It ...
... Burning The fire indicates a dynamic action. The white fire is the fire of aspiration, the red fire is the fire of renunciation and tapasya, the blue fire is the fire of spirituality and spiritual knowledge which purifies and dispels the Ignorance. The fire is always the fire of purification—it is very red when it is acting on the vital; when the vital no longer covers the psychic, then the ...
... all its restorative value. These two accounts, the scientific and the occult-spiritual, are practically identical with each other. But the former is only a recent discovery of what the occult-spiritual knowledge knew long ago. People's ideas of sound sleep are absolutely erroneous. What they call sound sleep is merely a plunge of the outer consciousness into a complete subconscience. They call that ...
... on the Muthu logic, I simply pointed out that it was bad logic—that someone Page 408 quite ignorant and low in the social scale can manifest a great spirituality and even a great spiritual knowledge. I hope you are not bourgeois enough to deny that or to contend that the Divine or the spiritual can only manifest in somebody who has some money in his pockets or some University education in ...
... the world since the days of the Upanishads—and of Plotinus and the Gnostics and Sufis—to the present time. It is hardly admissible then to put it aside as the thought of a tyro or beginner in spiritual knowledge making his first clumsy potshots at a solution of the crossword enigma of the universe. That description seems to show that he has missed the point of the passage altogether and that also makes ...
... meaning more concretely from my own first experience of the Self, long before I knew even what Yoga was or that there was such a thing, at a time when I had no religious feeling, no wish for spiritual knowledge, no aspiration beyond the mind, only a contented agnosticism and the impulse towards poetry and politics. But it would be too long a story, so I do not tell it here. It is not indispensable ...
... instruction and guidance, but that is only a part of what he gives—for the man who gives only mental or what you call indirect knowledge is not a Guru but only a teacher, Acharya. As for spiritual knowledge, it consists of two elements, experience and a direct knowledge which is not mental but is of the nature of a light showing the deeper truth of things, a direct vision and perception of the Truth ...
... can always rise; for they presented to him no long or obstinate difficulty. The only real difficulty which took decades of spiritual effort to carry out towards completeness was to apply the spiritual knowledge utterly to the world and to the surface psychological and outer life and to effect its transformation both on the higher levels of Nature and on the ordinary mental, vital and physical levels ...
... moon and cannot do their work. Moreover, all your experiences were not small. There were some like the stilling descent of a Power in the body—what you used to call numbness—which anyone with spiritual knowledge would have recognised as a first strong step towards the opening of the consciousness to the higher Peace and Light. But it was not in the line of your expectations and you gave it no special ...
... spiritual method in their education; it was solely by material means and an enlightened Page 87 use of human will that they had achieved this result. If they had added to this a spiritual knowledge and power, they could have achieved an almost miraculous result.... Because of the false ideas prevalent in the world, we don't usually see the two things together, spiritual mastery and material ...
... enough to understand the needs of the earth, a knowledge complete enough to know how to organise all these needs and use this force by these means. If, besides this, these beings have a higher spiritual knowledge, then they can utilise this force to construct gradually upon the earth what will be capable of manifesting the divine Power, Force and Grace. And then this power of money, wealth, this financial ...
... unification of the separate existence of the peoples, preserving and securing their national life but drawing them together into an overriding and consummating oneness; the gift by India of her spiritual knowledge and her means for the spiritualisation of life to the whole, race; finally, a new step in the evolution which, by uplifting the consciousness to a higher level, would begin the solution of the ...
... to understand the needs of the earth, a knowledge complete enough to know how to organise all these needs and use this force by these means. If, besides this, these beings have a higher spiritual knowledge, then they can utilise this force to construct gradually upon the earth what will be capable of manifesting the divine Power, Force and Grace. Source Money Belongs to No One ...
... express a thought, but this thought is only one of the forms of thought which can express the idea, the idea behind, and this idea itself, if it is followed deeply, has behind it a principle of spiritual knowledge and power which can then spread and act on the manifestation. Page 382 When you have a thought you look for words, don't you, and then you try to arrange these words to express your ...
... truth) - she wanted to start an LSD club in Auroville. Because I wrote her... being as objective as possible, you see I wrote that it could only be used under the supervision of people who have a spiritual knowledge AND the capacity to control and help. So she turned that around and said, "Mother authorized it on the condition that it is under the control of people who know." There you are. People who ...
... spirituality, and free from craving, free from selfish claims, fight! Let the fever of thy soul pass from thee." There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is the sanatoria dharma.... The European sets great store by machinery. He seeks to ...
... head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one must open the silent mental consciousness upward to all that is above mind. After a time one feels the consciousness rising upward and in the end it rises beyond ...
... of the life and works of the world. × Ancient king of Mithila, famous for having attained spiritual knowledge while leading the life of the world. × Monks who have renounced the life and works of the world ...
... which he is achieving or has achieved in his inner being and knowledge. Any premature attempt at a large-scale collective spiritual life is exposed to vitiation by some incompleteness of the spiritual knowledge on its dynamic side, by the imperfections of the individual seekers and by the invasion of the ordinary mind and vital and physical consciousness taking hold of the truth and mechanising, obscuring ...
... 1966 This talk begins with Mother's comments on the following letter of Sri Aurobindo. "... although St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much profound spiritual knowledge (profound rather than wide, I think)—I would not swear to it that he is referring to the supramentalised body (physical body). Perhaps to the supramental body or to some other luminous body in ...
... long time—were the reincarnations of (I had never tried to find that out, it just came). I was almost calling them by their former names.... Yes, a special state, a state of knowledge—but not spiritual knowledge: a knowledge related to the material world. In such visions, water always represents the vital. When everything is harmonious with the water, it means the vital is harmonious. It was delightful ...
... with a way to use the present substance in imperishable forms, without recourse to anything from other realms. This is a great support for practical-minded people. From the standpoint of spiritual knowledge, decay, dissolution and disintegration unquestionably result from a wrong attitude. A wrong attitude? Yes, a wrong attitude. My own experience is going on in the tiniest details, details ...
... who have worked on themselves, who have mastered themselves, who are organized, who have an ego made of steel, it will be difficult for them. Unless they go beyond all this and have enough spiritual knowledge to be able to make the ego surrender ... in which case the realization will naturally be much greater—it will be more difficult to accomplish, but the result will be far more complete. When ...
... The Mother, Prayers and Meditations , 17 May 1914 . × "O India, land of light and spiritual knowledge! Wake up to your true mission in the world, show the way to union and harmony."—Message for the inauguration of All India Radio, Pondicherry, 23 September 1967. Words of the Mother - I , CWM ...
... study of hunting, a tracker, will find obvious signs and will be able to say not only what type of stag has passed, but also his size, age, sex, etc. Similarly there must be people who have a spiritual knowledge analogous to that of hunting, who can disclose that a person is in contact with the supramental, while ordinary people, who have not trained their mind, will not be able to perceive it. The ...
... of works and worldly life. × King of Mithila at the time of the Upanishads, famed for his spiritual knowledge and divine realization, even though he led a worldly life. × Sannyasin : a wandering monk ...
... Narada was a demigod, immortal like the gods, who had the power to appear on earth whenever he wished. Janaka, Mithila's king at the time of the Upanishads was famed for his spiritual knowledge and divine realization, even though he led a worldly life. This is how Sri Aurobindo refers to him: 106—"Sannyasa [renunciation of worldly life] has a formal garb and outer tokens; therefore ...
... After reading a hitherto unpublished letter of Sri Aurobindo's: "...Although St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much profound spiritual knowledge (profound rather than wide, I think)—I would not swear to it that he is referring 1 to the supramentalised body ( physical body ). Perhaps to the supramental body or to some other luminous ...
... parliament and the government to tell them that there is only one policy worth following, that of Sri Aurobindo. And he wants a message from me. Here it is: "O India, land of Light and spiritual knowledge, wake up to your true mission in the world. Show the way to union and harmony." I deliberately didn't use the word peace ; I said harmony . I don't want to say peace , because for them ...
... truth on its head)—she wanted to open an LSD club in Auroville. Because I wrote to her... being as objective as possible, I wrote it could be useful only under the control of people who have the spiritual knowledge AND the power to control and assist. So she turned it upside down and said, "Mother has given her permission on condition that there are people with knowledge who control..." So there. And the ...
... to tell you something. But I can still see the arrangement of figures. I spent a long time—a long time—arranging the figures. A long time. A truer, more universal application, and with the spiritual knowledge: the principle of the position and utilization of individuals on earth. And I don't know why, it particularly interested you. You were with me, with this arrangement of figures, and I showed ...
... Aurobindo meant when, as I wrote to you last time, he said that in his Ashram Krishna's work was being done - in the sense that it was being carried further. Here Krishna's unified triple path of spiritual Knowledge, Love and Action issues into the total life-consecration which Sri Aurobindo has designated "the Integral Yoga" and which, evoking the inmost soul whose spontaneous turn at all times is towards ...
... aroma, as it were, and the alphabetical arrangement of the extracts renders this presence accessible at a moment's notice for a word of wisdom, as warm as it is luminous, on any problem of spiritual knowledge or practice. Yes, a light, to make us both know and do, comes to us in these pages. The Mother, no doubt, does not philosophise in any intellectual fashion, but she often transmits ...
... left their homes and families in order to seek the Spirit. Within the narrow limits of family life, it was found impossible to pursue an existence which was favorable to the efflorescence of spiritual knowledge. Hence withdrawal of flight from family life was the prevailing rule. But under different auspices and special environment created for spiritual aspirants this Bight may not be necessary. What ...
... consciousness altogether independent of the bodily vehicle, as a spiritual entity possessed of a continuous soul-life perpetually developing and determining its own becoming. About this spiritual knowledge, not at all ideative but felt in the very depths of our true being, Sri Aurobindo says: "The soul needs no proof of its rebirth any more than it needs proof of its immortality. For ...
... success is there then in the progrmme of education and cultural reconstruction which I am suggesting? My answer is that today we are best placed for that, if only we can summon our scientific and spiritual knowledge for that purpose. The sense of individual responsibility is of prime importance today. Once we see that objective institutional and legal functions break down without a change in the minds and ...
... of his being. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: 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 these channels, his spirit with the one spirit in all beings. All the variety of cosmic existence will ...
... said eagerly: "Oh, haven't yet realised the Divine." She smiled and assured me: You will. Further she added: You see, there are two ways; the Occult Knowledge is rather easier than Spiritual Knowledge. I have learnt real spiritual things when I came here. But, of course, everything was within myself: though not physically. The Yoga of Transformation is very difficult. It takes 30 ...
... Him they deem the fourth: He is the Self, He is the object of Knowledge." 1 Such is then the fourfold division of the totality of our existence, and true knowledge, that is to say, spiritual knowledge about our self-being as well as about the world-being becomes available to us only when we succeed in establishing a conscious rapport with the subliminal and the now superconscient realms ...
... cannot do that. We have to approach someone who is not only highly advanced in the acquisition of suprahuman spiritual piety and love but is at the same time possessed of supramental spiritual knowledge. This Yogi should come to us not with his personal opinions or dogmatic assertions but with the assured evidence of his direct personal experiences. Luckily for us, there are in this ...
... the domain of duties, spirituality is fundamentally a search of the knowledge that liberates (sa vidydya vimuktaye). As it is declared, true knowledge is not intellectual knowledge but spiritual knowledge. Page 80 • Both the moral and the spiritual are to be distinguished from what is called "religious" Religion, has the following distinguishing features: 1. Specific religious ...
... So on my comment on the Muthu logic, I simply pointed out that it was bad logic - that someone ignorant and quite low in the social scale can manifest a great spirituality and even a great spiritual knowledge. I hope you are not bourgeois enough to deny that or to contend that the Divine or the spiritual can only manifest in somebody who has some money in his pockets or some University education in ...
... 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 but neglected Matter, the West has knowledge of Matter but has neglected the Spirit, — as a consequence of which both India and the West are suffering, the solution would be to develop integral ...
... unity the increasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic can be made perfect and fulfil themselves. It includes also the high and profound synthesis of the Upanishadic spiritual knowledge. It places the Bhagavadgita's synthesis of the triple path of love, knowledge and works as something central in its processes. It also acknowledges the synthesis of the Tantra and utilises the ...
... the domain of duties, spirituality is fundamentally a search of the knowledge that liberates (sa vidya ya vimuktaye). As it is declared, true knowledge is not intellectual knowledge but spiritual knowledge. Both the moral and the spiritual are to be distinguished from what is called "religious" when we speak of religious instruction. Religion, which can be called sampradaya has ...
... ourselves what specific things we should do, we may refer to a brief statement of Sri Aurobindo in which three important tasks have been identified. He has said: The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical ...
... Purusha (corresponding to supramental formations of Para Prakriti) and anandamaya Purusha (corresponding to the highest bliss forms of Para Prakriti). In the Bhagavad Gita, the entire fund of spiritual knowledge of the Veda and Upanishad is present. The Bhagavad Gita admits the overwhelming power of the Prakriti and its determinations of ignorance over the Purusha which has consented to the subjection ...
... 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 these channels, his spirit with the one spirit in all beings. All the variety of cosmic existence will ...
... aspect of the Vedas, and it is only in the Upanishads that we find a renewal of Vedic yoga, and the synthesis of the Vedic yoga became the starting-point for a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge. The Upanishads draw together in great harmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated knowers of the Eternal throughout the earlier great and fruitful period of ...
... reconfirmed in the Upanishads. And yet, as we move more and more towards the Upanishads, we find the crowning experiences of the Veda as the starting point for a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge. The Vedic yoga synthesizes the psychological workings of man, which have been named symbolically and Page 94 significantly as various cosmic gods, each having his specialized f ...
... fireworks. So in my comment on the Muthu logic, I simply pointed out that it was bad logic—that someone quite ignorant and low in the social scale can manifest a great spirituality and even a great spiritual knowledge. I hope you are not bourgeois enough to deny that or to contend that the Divine or the spiritual can only manifest in somebody who has some money in his pockets or some University education in ...
... unification of the separate existence of the peoples, preserving and securing their national life but drawing them together into an overriding and consummating oneness; the gift by India of her spiritual knowledge and her means for the spiritualisation of life to the whole race; finally, a new step in the evolution which, by uplifting the consciousness to a higher level, would begin the solution of the ...
... us with God. We want to turn our eyes from the art that depicts the lower propensities of our nature and like to gaze at the one that gives us a higher, nobler and purer inspiration. The spiritual knowledge is the supreme knowledge, and the rest is the ordinary knowledge. The spiritual life is alone the best and the only thing worth aspiring for. If this is the only truth then men will aspire for ...
... study of Applied Philosophy will need, therefore, to include the study of the relationship between the ethical and the spiritual and the resolution of ethical dilemmas in the light of higher spiritual knowledge. Page 219 VII The course in Applied Philosophy would underline the study of those uplifting forces which have provided to humanity the basic impetus to rise to higher and ...
... great and multi-sided doctrine and you can even give a philosophical form to it, but Veda itself is not a work of philosophy. Philosophical knowledge is a lower kind of knowledge as compared to spiritual knowledge. The Vedic Rishis belonged to the Age of Intuition and not to the Age of Reason, which came much later in Indian history. Even the Upanishads are intuitive in character, and not philosophical ...
... about 10,000 B.C (?) to 560 B.C This period is generally called the Vedic period. Modern scholars divide it into three sub-periods: (1) the age of the Mantras (inevitable expressions of spiritual knowledge and power); (2) the age of the Brahmanas (prose writings in justification of Vedic rituals and practices); and (3) the age of the Upanishads (prose and poetical writings containing intuitions ...
... of his being. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: '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 these channels, his spirit with the one spirit in all beings. All the variety of cosmic existence will ...
... Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 The Story of Jabala-Satyakama (I) I THINK I told you once of the story in the Upanishada bout a seeker of spiritual knowledge who had been given by his teacher as a first assignment the task of looking after his kine. This was meant to serve both as an initiation and a training; it was to be his work and also his test ...
... whatever may have been the past, is there any possibility for the most materialistic science of to-day – the ultramundane knowledge – to become directly and integrally united with the supreme spiritual Knowledge? If there is any possibility, then wherein does it lie? We have elsewhere said that it will be possible only when we shall learn to collect data for scientific discoveries and to search after ...
... Tribunal of Universal Justice. XXII "All life is a field for the practice of religion, and worldly life, too, is a 'part of it. Religion does not consist only in the cultivation of spiritual knowledge or the development of the heart's devotion. Doing of work, too, is religion. It is this great teaching that is a permanent leaven of all our literature -s religion. It is this great teaching ...
... been always from the earliest times a widely spread belief in the possibility and reality of the use of these powers by men with an advanced knowledge of these secret things or with a developed spiritual knowledge and experience and dynamic force and Page 159 even, in the Tantras, an organised system of their method and practice. The intervention of the Yogi in bringing about a desired birth ...
... perceive some light." In his life, he actually obeys the Inconscient which he has come to rule. His mind, his life and all his other natural instruments are not capable of attaining the highest spiritual knowledge and perfection because of their inherent defects. And, yet, in man's imperfect state there is a godhead struggling. And the real leader of the course of human evolution is God himself behind ...
... illnesses to this obscure action of the Subconscient. Most of the strange and stubborn symptoms of psychoneurosis can be safely attributed to it and successfully grappled with by one who has a spiritual knowledge —not the empirical, conjectural, hypothetical knowledge of the psychotherapist—of the subconscient working. But it must be remembered—psycho-analysis ignores this truth—that though the Inconscient ...
... or universal context. Aswapati sought an heir to his kingdom through tapasya, which extended over a period of eighteen years: thus the old legend. What does tapasya mean? Spiritual knowledge may be acquired from scriptures and from one's teachers; it comes also as the result of one's own turning inwards and seeking the light of the Infinite. Knowledge of the former kind can lead ...
... see that they "move in space and time still, but also through increasing knowledge of heaven." 169 Though expressed with other figures, such too is the Aurobindonian dialectic of growth in spiritual knowledge, which is very different from the blind alleys of modern Existentialism. As Guido de Ruggiero brilliantly argues, Positing an activity at the source of becoming not only gives it ...
... faculties without calling in the aid of these perverse spirits. What is needed is a change in the angle of vision towards spiritualism. Real spiritualism is not ideas about the Spirit or mentalised spiritual knowledge. Also men must lessen their curiosity in these subjects. Disciple : In explaining life or personality modern science tries to explain everything by the external, i.e., by heredity, ...
... epoch knocked at a door, explored a domain, arrived at a dead end: a series of perfectionings without any outcome. Then it breaks down and one begins again on another line. There has been the spiritual knowledge of India, the occult knowledge of Egypt, Greek knowledge and scientific knowledge... And our epoch is not more knowledgeable than the others, that is the illusion I It is not nearer to the goal; ...
... exercised by the Veda on the modem mind. It was in this context that Sri Aurobindo's fresh studies, guided by his own inner light, led him to forge a new key to unlock the Veda's hidden treasures of spiritual Knowledge: ...The Veda has a double aspect... the two, though closely related, must be kept apart. The Rishis arranged the substance of their thought in a system of parallelism by which the same ...
... the most believing of all, the most sceptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge, - that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects ...
... power South India was able to retain her freedom for a long time. Yearning for knowledge, progress of knowledge slowly declined; instead, erudition was more and more honoured and glorified; spiritual knowledge, development of yogic power and inner realisation were mostly replaced by tamasic religious worship and observance of rajasic ceremonies to gain worldly ends.... Such an extinction of the ...
... supramental being give her the necessary knowledge to act on the right lines and at the right moment. Her force representing the Shakti element is directly psychic, vital, physical and her spiritual knowledge is predominantly practical in its nature. 37 Since the beginning of 1926 at any rate, if not indeed even earlier, there had been thus an increasingly direct action of spiritual guidance ...
... must go on learning more and more "until one comes to the point where one sees that one knows nothing". 14 Religions generally make do with stratified knowledge, and when a great Master of spiritual knowledge leaves the scene, "what happens is that the knowledge he gave is changed into a religion", and a dogmatic religion is verily "a door shut upon all progress". The sadhaks in the Ashram were ...
... ultimate psychological truths: Page 591 Occult knowledge without spiritual discipline is a dangerous instrument, for one who uses it as for others, if it falls into impure hands. Spiritual knowledge without the occult science lacks precision and certainty in its objective results; it is all-powerful only in the subjective world. 14 Again, it is characteristic of a time of change that ...
... present and future need of mankind" made inevitable "some kind of world union". 25 This was of course linked up with Sri Aurobindo's vision of the future marked by a global spread of India's spiritual knowledge and an evolutionary leap that would lift human consciousness to a new level of puissance and comprehension. Naturally enough, the thrust in the Ashram had been all along on the latter, but ...
... it was on these four days that the quarterly issues of the Bulletin and the Advent (and some other Ashram journals too) came out, carrying their divers loads of philosophical comment and spiritual knowledge, news and photographs. They were, in short, festival days in the Ashram, and the festival spirit would begin a week before and overflow into the week following the Darshan. It was not surprising ...
... transmutation of Nature demand an uninterrupted Karmayoga, a free exercise of all the parts and elements of the human nature in a growing spirit of dedicated service and in the emergent light of spiritual knowledge. Not escape from Nature, but a sovereign possession and joyous utilisation and enjoyment of a divinised Nature, is the great objective of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo; and it is indispensable ...
... evolution of the human individual is concerned; and to be united with the psychic and live in it and from it is the only sun-lit path of progress for man. THE PSYCHIC GUIDANCE When spiritual knowledge develops, one begins to perceive that the proud idea of free-will which the human ego cherishes in its ignorance is nothing but a precious fiction. It is true that it is a practical and effective ...
... constitutes his essential ignorance, Adam's fall from Eden; and so long as he persists in this egoistic separation, there can be no recovery by him of his own infinite and immortal Self, his spiritual knowledge and freedom, and the truth and unity of universal existence. His mind may go on developing itself, but unless it extends its frontiers and consciously advances towards the Infinite, it will ...
... it means a revolution in Europe far more important than the Russian with all its idealism and its hopes for a new and beneficent change in politics and society. It means the union of Eastern spiritual knowledge and religious faith with Western pragmatic idealism and their fusion into the basis of a new culture and, we will not say a new universal religion,—for religion must vary with the variations ...
... confusion of ignorance and from all bondage of sin, suffering and evil, yo vetti asammūḍhaḥ sa martyeṣu sarva-pāpaiḥ pramucyate . The human soul that can dwell in the light of this supreme spiritual knowledge is lifted by it beyond the ideative or sensible formulations of the universe. It rises into the ineffable power of an all-exceeding, yet all-fulfilling identity, the same beyond and here. This ...
... particular states of the mentality, on a light of mind which can be only a more or less clear twilight. Its pleasure can only be a passing intensity or a qualified ease. Other is the infinite spiritual knowledge and the free self-existent delight of our spiritual being. But then there is the question, how does our infinite and imperishable spirit, even involved in Nature, come thus to confine itself ...
... intellectual concepts or this attitude to the world simply a way of thinking or a pragmatic dogma. For if his knowledge is conceptual only, it is a philosophy, an intellectual construction, not a spiritual knowledge and vision, not a spiritual state of consciousness. The spiritual seeing of God and world is not ideative only, not even mainly or primarily ideative. It is direct experience and as real, vivid ...
... knowledge, greater than the men of works; become then the Yogin, O Arjuna," the Yogin, one who seeks for and attains, by works and knowledge and askesis or by whatever other means, not even spiritual knowledge or power or anything else for their own sake, but the union with God alone; for in that all else is contained and in that lifted beyond itself to a divinest significance. But even among Yogins ...
... remarkable, rich and living of all religious systems. The nineteenth century has thrown on it its tremendous shock of negation and scepticism but has not been able to destroy its assured roots of spiritual knowledge. A little disturbed for a brief moment, surprised and temporarily shaken by this attack in a period of greatest depression of the nation's vital force, India revived almost at once and responded ...
... except for the sake of action or else for a fine satisfaction of the mind's play and vigour. But here the type proposed for admiration is the self-possessed sattwic man for whom calm thought, spiritual knowledge and the inner life are the things of the greatest importance and action is chiefly of consequence not for its own sake, not for its rewards and fruits, but for its effects on the growth of the ...
... they culminate. On the contrary we find that they have a deep enough significance once we can get inside their symbolic meaning. That appears in a psycho-physical passing upward into a psycho-spiritual knowledge for which we would now use more intellectual, less concrete and imaged terms, but which is still valid for those who practise Yoga and rediscover the secrets of our psycho-physical and psych ...
... Even Science itself is constantly arriving at conclusions which only repeat upon the physical plane and in its language truths which ancient India had already affirmed from the standpoint of spiritual knowledge in the tongue of the Veda and Vedanta. Every one of these advances leads directly or in its intrinsic meaning towards a nearer approach between the mind of East and West and to that extent to ...
... XVIII Indian Literature - 3 The veda is thus the spiritual and psychological seed of Indian culture and the Upanishads the expression of the truth of highest spiritual knowledge and experience that has always been the supreme idea of that culture and the ultimate objective to which it directed the life of the individual and the aspiration of the soul of the people: and ...
... shaper of the world in which he lives, can most too grow one with all in the Atman. That is the truth this developing existence teaches us, and it is one of the greatest secrets of the old Indian spiritual knowledge. Therefore to live in one's self, determining one's self-expression from one's own centre of being in accordance with one's own law of being, swadharma, is the first necessity. Not to be able ...
... which it throws out on life, the ideals which open up new horizons and which the intellect accepts and life labours to assimilate. Philosophy in India has been the intellectual canaliser of spiritual knowledge and experience, but the philosophical intellect has not as yet decidedly begun the work of new creation; it has been rather busy with the restatement of its past gains than with any new statement ...
... 456 demanded of the Divine Manifestation which seemed to me quite irrelevant to the reality. I put forward two propositions which appear to me indisputable unless we are to revise all spiritual knowledge in favour of modern European ideas about things. First, the Divine Manifestation even when it manifests in mental and human ways has behind it a consciousness greater than the mind and not ...
... use powers of this kind or in this way. If he wants a Yoga of miraculous siddhis he must go elsewhere. Page 540 The object of Yoga is a change of consciousness, and opening into spiritual knowledge and experience and union with the Divine. If any powers come along with this change, they are not to be used in a trivial manner. 9 June 1928 Write to your friend that we do not ask for ...
... 4. The Psychic Being and Sadhana The Psychic Being Three Steps of Self-Realisation and the Triple Transformation In the spiritual knowledge of self there are three steps of its self-achievement which are at the same time three parts of the one knowledge. The first is the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the ...
... Indian attitude towards these things, that all work can be done if it is done according to the dharma and, if it is rightly done, it does not prevent the approach to the Divine or the access to spiritual knowledge and the spiritual life. There is of course also the ascetic ideal which is necessary for many and has its place in the spiritual order. I would myself say that no man can be spiritually complete ...
... it but we minimise that as much as possible except in so far as it is useful for our purpose. We have to turn life from falsehood into spiritual truth, from a life of ignorance into a life of spiritual knowledge. But until we have succeeded in doing that for ourselves, it is better to keep apart from the life of Ignorance of the world—otherwise our little slowly growing light is likely to be submerged ...
... meaning more concretely from my own first experience of the Self, long before I knew even what Yoga was or that there was such a thing, at a time when I had no religious feeling, no wish for spiritual knowledge, no aspiration beyond the mind, only a contented agnosticism and the impulse towards poetry and politics. But it would be too long a story, so I do not tell it here. 29 October 1935 I ...
... it in relation to modern knowledge and ideas. Out of this awakening vision and impulse the Indian renaissance is arising, and that must determine its future tendency. The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the lowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical ...
... but two branches of a single stock. The legend of the Aryan invasion and settlement in the Punjab in Vedic times is, to me, a philological myth. 27 * The Veda was the beginning of our spiritual knowledge; the Veda will remain its end. These compositions of an unknown antiquity are as the many breasts of the eternal Mother of knowledge from which our succeeding ages have all been fed The recovery ...
... knowledge and ideas. Out of this awakening vision and impulse the Indian renaissance is arising, and that must determine its future tendency. The recovery of the old Page 50 spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical ...
... will rise or not to the height of her opportunity in the renaissance which is coming upon her, is the question of her destiny. -Sri Aurobindo The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical ...
... which must guide you and prevent you from going astray from the right path and entering more or less fantastic and unhealthy imaginations. But if you want to attain true knowledge, that is, spiritual knowledge, which can be obtained only through identification, you must go beyond this reason and enter a domain higher than the mind, where one is in direct contact with the Light either of the Overmind ...
... things as they are. So, by diametrically opposite roads they have come to the same result: the world as you see it is an illusion. Now what is the truth behind this? People who have sought spiritual knowledge tell you, "We have experienced it", but of course it is a purely subjective experience; there are as yet no grounds on which one can say absolutely that the experience is Page 239 ...
... perfection of self-development and integral action. Occult knowledge without spiritual discipline is a dangerous instrument, for the one who uses it as for others, if it falls into impure hands. Spiritual knowledge without occult science lacks precision and certainty in its objective Page 91 results; it is all-powerful only in the subjective world. The two, when combined in inner or outer action ...
... of the Divine. This class of experiences are the beginning of realisation and it is when they settle and become part of the consciousness that realisation is complete. One develops by spiritual knowledge and experience which Page 6 comes from above the mind or one develops by psychic perception and experience which comes from within—these are the two main things. But it is also necessary ...
... formerly, but in their essence and carried to the fullest and highest significance. But Vedanta deals more with the principles and essentials of the divine knowledge and therefore much of its spiritual knowledge and experience has been taken bodily into the Arya . Tantra deals more with forms and processes and organised powers—all these could not be taken as they were, for the integral Yoga needs to ...
... its material meanings. The poetry of A. E. is still more remarkable. What the others suggest or give us in more or less luminous glimpses, he casts into concentrated expression from a nearer spiritual knowledge,—as when he Page 203 strikes out in a brief verse the living spiritual perception of the universal and infinite source of love,— We bade adieu to love the old, We heard another ...
... work with which the intellect is familiar. It was in this sense that I said Dilip had not the mystic mind and vision. One can go far in the spiritual way, have plenty of spiritual experiences, spiritual knowledge, spiritual feelings, significant visions and dreams even without having this mystic mind and way of seeing things. So too one may write poetry from different planes or sources of inspiration ...
... Indian attitude towards these things, that all work can be done if it is done according to the dharma and, if it is rightly done, it does not prevent the approach to the Divine or the access to spiritual knowledge and the spiritual life. Page 249 There is of course also the ascetic ideal which is necessary for many and has its place in the spiritual order. I would myself say that no man can ...
... part in religious history. But in its endeavour to get rid of the superstition and ignorance which have attached themselves to religious forms and symbols, intellectual reason unenlightened by spiritual knowledge tends to deny and, so far as it can, to destroy the truth and the experience which was contained in them. Reformations which give too much to reason and are too negative and protestant, usually ...
... carried beyond themselves by the sudden emergence of some half-mystical Celtic turn of the national mind into supra-intellectual sources of inspiration. Insufficiently supported by any adequate spiritual knowledge, unable to find except rarely the right and native word of their own meaning, these greater tendencies faded away or were lost by the premature end of the poets who might, had they lived, have ...
... been always from the earliest times a widely spread belief in the possibility and reality of the use of these powers by men with an advanced knowledge of these secret things or with a developed spiritual knowledge and experience and dynamic force and even, in the Tantras, an organised system of their method and practice. The intervention of the Yogi in bringing about a desired birth of offspring is also ...
... receiving only inspirations and influences from the higher planes of Intuition and Overmind. He receives through the spiritualised higher and illumined mind the fundamental experiences on which spiritual knowledge is based; he can become even full of intuitive mind movements, illuminations, various kinds of powers and illumined light, liberation, Ananda. But to rise fully into the Intuition is rare, to ...
... intellect at least the bridge between them has still to be built. One can point out analogies but it can be maintained very well that Science cannot be used for yielding or buttressing results of spiritual knowledge. The other side can be maintained also and it is best that both should be stated—so this is not meant to discourage your thesis. The article [ on metaphysics and science ] reads as if ...
... has nothing outward to sacrifice, one has always oneself to give. Ahimsa, Destruction and Violence The doctrines of Ahimsa and non-violence and altruism are early steps on the road to spiritual knowledge—but once advanced on the road what is true behind them takes its place, as a thread in the complex weft of spiritual truth and feeling, not as a rigid ethical rule or all-swallowing dogma. The ...
... prepare—but the knowledge comes only when one gets another higher than intellectual opening. Even in Mind itself there are things higher than the intellect, ranges of activity that exceed it. Spiritual knowledge is easier to those than to the reasoning intelligence. The abnormal abounds in this physical world; the supernormal is there also. In these matters, apart from any question of faith, ...
... chief resistance still. Peace within and a cheerful confidence and gladness without is what is wanted—then this kind of nervous pressure and disorder would cease. It does not help for spiritual knowledge to be ignorant of the things of this world. Reading and Sadhana For one who wants to practise sadhana, sadhana must come first—reading and mental development can only be subordinate things ...
... our own being. The whole process of man's highest intellectual knowledge is through this mental manipulation and discrimination to the point where the veil is broken and he can see; at the end spiritual knowledge comes in to help us to become what we see, to enter into the Light in which there is no Ignorance. It is true that the first origin of the Ignorance is beyond us as mental beings because our ...
... stream from the eternal fountains, not a form cut to some temporary human pattern. His perfection will not be a sattwic purity, but a thing uplifted beyond the gunas of Nature, a perfection of spiritual knowledge, spiritual power, spiritual delight, unity and harmony of unity; the outward perfection of his works will be freely shaped as the self-expression of this inner spiritual transcendence and un ...
... capacity of becoming also the controller of the action whether by spiritual force alone or by that force figuring itself in mental and physical activities. There may be in our soul life a perfect spiritual knowledge and understanding Page 433 not only of all our internal activities but of all the unrolling of things, events, human, animal, natural activities around us, the world-vision of the ...
... self and its power and form and movement, and all the thought and the process of the thought in the supermind must also be of that character. All its fundamental ideation is a rendering of the spiritual knowledge that acts by identity with all being and of the supramental vision. It moves therefore primarily among the eternal, the essential and the universal truths of self and being and consciousness ...
... 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 Self conceiving the idea of creation, where we should expect "he thought", it says instead "he saw". It is to the spirit what the eyes are to the physical mind and one ...
... India's own alien masters?" For Sri Aurobindo to keep apart would have meant in a super-Keatsian sense Standing aloof in giant ignorance. It was precisely because he possessed a mighty spiritual knowledge of unseen things instead of being totally in the dark about what was below the surface that Sri Aurobindo, along with the Mother, declared that fundamentally this war was theirs and not merely ...
... given the world a monumental philosophy systematizing his spiritual experience, just as Plotinus and Shankara did, but to Page 176 miss the immensity and variety of his spiritual knowledge and fail altogether to feel that the author of such expositions as The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Secret of the Veda, Essays on the Gita, not to speak of the enormous illuminating ...
... some kind of representation of a twofold basic reality of being. Within each of us, spiritual experience reveals a twofoldness - Purusha and Prakriti, being and becoming, self and nature. In spiritual knowledge the creative world-principle is seen to be biune - Ishwara-Shakti - a two-in-one put forth from the Oneness in which manyness lies implicit. When the Ishwara-Shakti manifests in a special way ...
... matter where the Truth is deep-asleep. This uniqueness leads us to look upon Sri Aurobindo as, in the most literal sense, the Scientist of the Spirit - one who in the light of the highest spiritual Knowledge grapples with the plane of matter, the basic sphere of Science, and asserts that, until the heart of matter's mystery is spiritually entered and possessed, the Life Divine can never become ...
... exaggeration. The West is reawaking to the truth of the Spirit and the spiritual possibilities of life, the East is reawaking to the truth of Life and tends towards a new application to it of its spiritual knowledge. Our view is that the antinomy created between them is an unreal one. Spirit being the fundamental truth of existence, life can be only its manifestation; Spirit must Page 106 be ...
... (18). It is this "awakening vision and impulse" that Sri Aurobindo feels is the Indian renaissance. Such a renaissance would have three tasks to accomplish: The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and criti- ...
... scriptures that he had brought down. He went to a mountaintop for forty years and during his time there he practised Tapasya [spiritual discipline] and brought down great words of wisdom and spiritual knowledge. He began teaching and preaching in the courts of Persia and he and his teachings were highly revered and soon became widespread throughout the land. How old were you when you first discovered ...
... Tryaruna, lord of the triple dawn, is quite fitting. Master of a divine plane with three realms of light, he can be understood as getting reflected in the human mentality with three dawns of spiritual knowledge that lead to a surpassing of the human formula. About the figure "ten thousand" Sri Aurobindo says: 510 "Thousand symbolises absolute completeness, but there are ten subtle powers of the ...
... the essence of the meaning of the cycles and the cycles as such, but in a progressive way, for “the cycles of our evolution move towards a divine result.” 22 We thank to his erudition and spiritual knowledge the coherent, majestic picture of the cosmic manifestation in which fit the partially valid schemes of the religions and mythologies of the past. The Brahman is twofold: silent, completely ...
... significance in the computer age. All human beings in East and West have a divine soul, therefore knowledge and wisdom are potentially present everywhere. ‘There is no law of Nature by which spiritual knowledge is confined to the East or must bear the stamp of an Indian manufacture before it can receive the imprimatur of the All-Wise,’ 31 said Sri Aurobindo crisply. But also, as we have seen, every ...
... that I am there behind it and if he feels me it is the same with hers.’ 23 The Mother embarked on the work, as always, with the force of the full commitment of her immense occult and spiritual knowledge and her supernatural powers. As she herself sometimes said jokingly, she always worked ‘at a gallop’, ‘with the force of a cyclone’ or ‘at the speed of a jet plane’. ‘I have not wasted my time ...
... her during the Second World War. There the children could ask her any question that popped up in their head, and the Mother answered, drawing on her erudition, experience and vast occult and spiritual knowledge. She talked several times about high civilisations that had disappeared long ago. The progress of humanity moved in a kind of a spiral, she said, at times progressing, at times apparently regressing ...
... is only one of many elements in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s writings which have in the meantime come within the compass of science, and there will no doubt be more to come. For there is a spiritual knowledge which is independent of and more true than scientific materialism, bound by the limitations of the human mind. Spiritual insight is based on direct knowledge; mental activity remains inexorably ...
... development every “people” (nation or culture) should contribute the essential elements which constitute its unique character. As Sri Aurobindo saw it, India would have to share its highly developed spiritual knowledge, a treasure which it has guarded through the centuries. As the Lord of Falsehood wanted to bend the path of humanity back towards a “satanic age”, his intention was to use Hitler (and/or others) ...
... Had he not written to me in a letter (dated, 4.1.36) comparing Krishna and Christ: "The two stand in two different worlds. There is nothing in Christ of the great and boundless and sovereign spiritual knowledge and power of realisation we find in the Gita, nothing of the emotional force, passion, beauty of the Gopi symbol and all that lies behind it, nothing of the many-sided manifestation of the Krishna ...
... comprehensive understanding, then you can arrive at the integral knowledge. The materialistic view though true from the point of view of the external senses and objective knowledge is opposed by spiritual knowledge which is based on subjective experiences which are not verifiable by objective tests. Physical life suffers from the experience of dualities like heat and cold, hunger and thirst, pain and pleasure ...
... stride is taken that crosses the barrier. We see already that advance in its obscure beginnings." 39 But is not the very methodology of science antithetical to the Yogic way of acquiring spiritual knowledge? Let us discuss this issue in the next chapter. 39. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 13. Page 56 ...
... and small, inner and outer, in the life of a dedicated researcher. Sri Aurobindo once wrote to a disciple: “I think I can say that I have been testing day and night for years upon years” his spiritual knowledge and experience “more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane.” The Record bears this out in detail. It may be looked on as the laboratory notebook of ...
... part the Mother said: ‘The future of India is very clear. India is the Guru of the world. The future structure of the world depends on India. India is the living soul. India is incarnating the spiritual knowledge in the world.’ And she wrote: ‘In the whole creation the Earth has a place of distinction because unlike any other planet it is evolutionary with a psychic entity at its centre. In it, India ...
... India is quite apt: The future of India is very clear. India is the Guru of the world. The future structure of the world depends on India. India is the living soul. India is incarnating the spiritual knowledge in the world. The Government of India ought to recognise the significance of India in this sphere and plan their action accordingly . The Mother, Words of the Mother - I: India ...
... respectable polysyllables to cover our refusal or impose tests and conditions which stultify the inquiry. Scientists, who are mostly materialists, use the same procedures to refute occult and spiritual knowledge as ignorant imbeciles use to refute science. What is clear proof to a man of goodwill is imposture to one who refuses to learn. 17 September 1969 ...
... one must neither fear death nor desire it. The target at which we are aiming is immortality. And of all the habits, death is surely the most obstinate. From the viewpoint of spiritual knowledge, decrepitude and decay—disintegration—are quite simply and undoubtedly the result of a wrong attitude. Page 120 1) Why are men obliged to leave their bodies? Because they ...
... special study of deer hunting would know by the tracks that the deer had passed by—not only what particular type of deer, but its age, size, sex, etc. Similarly, there must be people with a spiritual knowledge analogous to that of hunters, who can detect, perceive, that a person is in touch with the Supermind, Page 96 while ordinary people know nothing about it and wouldn't notice. So he ...
... person for a whole life: you were the important psychic MOMENT in those existences. I stopped taking any interest in all that when I came here—it was part of the occult knowledge, not of spiritual knowledge. I stopped taking any interest in it. But now that everything is being gathered together, it comes like that, like a part of the work, because ... the cells, when I had those visions, participated ...
... × In Savitri , the King represents the human aspiration to discover the Earth's secret beyond all already explored spiritual knowledge. ...
... February 2, 1943. × Janaka : Mithila's king at the time of the Upanishads, celebrated for his spiritual knowledge and divine realization, though he led the ordinary worldly life. × Narada : a wandering sage ...
... supramental being give her the necessary knowledge to act on the right lines and at the right moment. Her force representing the Shakti element is directly psychic, vital, physical and her spiritual knowledge is predominantly practical in its nature. It is, that is to say, a large and detailed knowledge and experience of the mental, vital and physical forces at play and, with the knowledge, the ...
... need of!) Apart from all this, The Life Divine happens to be my favourite among the books of Sri Aurobindo, side by side with Savitri which is a poetic analogue to it in sheer spiritual knowledge. I have even declared that on finishing The Life Divine one can't help thanking that the author of this book must be the author of the universe! And it is my conviction that the first chapter ...
... with its own natural disposition and governing character, its innate swabhāva and swadharma. True nationalism for Sri Aurobindo was Sanatana Dharma itself, the eternal religion based on spiritual knowledge and experience. 13 He saw that in it alone grow the values that acquire merit in every respect, worldly and otherwise. To it he now committed himself completely. In a letter written to his ...
... into the Absolute. The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The Life Divine, p. 347 A spiritual knowledge, moved to arrive at the true Self in us, must reject, as the traditional way of knowledge rejects, all misleading appearances. It must discover that the body is not our self, our foundation ...
... Sri Aurobindo states: ...fundamentally, it [the statement of supra-intellectual things] is not an expression of ideas arrived at by speculative thinking. One has to arrive at spiritual knowledge through experience and a consciousness of things which arises directly out of that experience or else underlies or is involved in it. This kind of knowledge, then, is fundamentally a con ...
... the gross outward life or else an attempt to subject this rebellious life-stuff to the law of intellectual truth or ethical reason and will or aesthetic beauty or of all three together. But spiritual knowledge perceives that there is a greater thing in us; our inmost self, our real being is not the intellect, not the aesthetic, ethical or thinking mind, but the divinity within, the Spirit, and these ...
... revealing tradition by the Christ figure and Christ tradition is not possible. The two stand in two different worlds. There is nothing in the latter of the great and boundless and sovereign spiritual knowledge and power of realisation we find in the Gita, nothing of the emotional force, passion, beauty of the Gopi symbol and all that lies behind it, nothing of the many- sided manifestation of ...
... meaning more concretely from my own first experience of the self, long before I knew even what Yoga was or that there was such a thing, at a time when I had no religious feeling, no wish for spiritual knowledge, no aspiration beyond the mind, only a contented agnosticism and the impulse towards poetry and politics. But it would be too long a story, so I do not tell it here. Page 333 ...
... cradle with the songs of the unstruck and unheard sound, anahata nada . She is the mother for all his wants and she is the one who inspires him in every one of his creative activities. All spiritual knowledge comes to him in great plenty even as she bestows her benignity and kindness upon him. Therefore, implores Jnaneshwar, only she the all-potent and all-affluent Mother should command him to discourse ...
... This is the great doctrine, the esoteric Shastra taught by the Teacher on the battlefield of life to his fond friend and dear disciple; he has been gradually prepared to receive this occult-spiritual knowledge which alone can unravel the mystery of this existence. It is a sure means to overcome the travails of this earthly life, a path that leads the seeker-soul away from all conflicts and clashes ...
... into transcendent power and free immortal action, and tamas is transformed into unfathomable repose. Contribution of the Tantra An extremely important element in the fund of the spiritual knowledge accumulated in the past related to the theme of liberation and perfection consists of the aims and Page 79 methods of the Tantra. The Tantra aims at integration of the heightened ...
... provided we mean by public that public which has at its command those senses and faculties which are appropriate for the knowledge of the supra-physical. Yoga as Science and Validity of Spiritual Knowledge Indeed, if spiritual experiences were a matter of sporadic occurrence or of a sudden momentary flash, then, considering the variety of spiritual experiences and considering the conflicts ...
... ourselves what specific things we should do, we may refer to a brief statement of Sri Aurobindo in which three important tasks have been identified. He has said: "The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical ...
... schools and Tantra and the adherents of the theistic religions of the past and the present as also Buiddhism and Jainism and even the vast and catholic teachings of the Gita and the loftiest spiritual knowledge of the Veda and Upanishads, but also the new material that is flowing into the present day, including the potent though limited Page 110 revelations of modern knowledge and seeking ...
... the synthesis of the Vedic yoga was recovered by the Upanishads which took up the crowning experience of the Vedic seers and made it their starting point for a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge. The Upanishads harmonised all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated knowers of the Eternal throughout the great and fruitful period of spiritual seeking. During the ...
... future. As India has awakened once again, it is the unaccomplished tasks of the third stage that are to ho taken up and fulfilled. In this stage of reawakening, the recovery of the old spiritual knowledge is indispensable and a study of the Vedic and Puranic systems is an important aspect. An intensive programme of research will need to be centred on the way in which the spiritual wealth of the ...
... the domain of duties, spirituality is fundamentally a search of the knowledge that liberates (sa vidyaya vimuktaye). As it is declared, the true knowledge is not intellectual knowledge but spiritual knowledge. d.Both the moral and the spiritual are to be distinguished from what is called "religious" when we speak of religious instruction. Religion, which can be called sampradaya has the following ...
... Māndukya, Taittiriya, Chhāndogya Aitareya, and Brihadāranyaka. Shankarācharya has also referred to 5 other Upanishads in his Commentaries, and these 5 also have been given prominence as far as the spiritual knowledge of the ultimate reality is concerned. They are: Shwetāshvatara, Mahānārāyana, Maitrāyāni, Kaushitakī, and Nrisimhatāpinī. In the Muktopanishad, it is mentioned that the total number of ...
... perilous consequences. First of all, it eliminated the study of poetry, music and art, which constitutes perfect education of the soul; secondly, it eliminated the study of philosophy, dharma and spiritual knowledge—three elements, which are the supreme components of the Indian heritage; thirdly, while it introduced some elements of world history and world geography and modern science, it presented the dominant ...
... provided we mean by public that public which has at its command those senses and faculties which are appropriate for the knowledge of the supra-physical. Yoga as Science and Validity of Spiritual Knowledge Indeed, if spiritual experiences were a matter of sporadic occurrence or of a sudden momentary flash, — then, considering the variety of spiritual experiences and considering the ...
... future of India and the world to depend on its discovery and on its application, not to the renunciation of life, but to life and the world and among men... The Veda was the beginning of our spiritual knowledge; the Veda will remain its end. These compositions of an unknown antiquity are as the many breasts of eternal Mother of knowledge from which our succeeding ages have all Page 68 been ...
... having reached this summit it is again possible to come down and convert our lower instruments of knowledge and to fulfil them by uniting them with their corresponding higher terms. Thus the spiritual knowledge can be heightened into the supramental; the reason can be converted into a form of the self-luminous intuitional knowledge; and our physical senses too can be so converted as to the physical ...
... 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 but neglected Matter, the West has knowledge of Matter but has neglected the Spirit, — as a consequence of which both India and the West are suffering, and the solution would be to develop integral ...
... meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma. We do not belong to the past dawns but to the noons of the future. Page 611 The Indian Renaissance The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work. The flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical ...
... with peripheral modifications. -It eliminated the study of poetry music and art, which constitutes perfect education of the soul; -It eliminated the study of philosophy, dharma and spiritual knowledge—three elements, which are the supreme components of the Indian heritage; -While it introduced some elements of world history and world geography and modern science, it presented the dominant ...
... the nature there is a more powerful and many-sided change, a spiritual building and self- creation, the appearance of a composite perfection of the saint, the selfless worker and the man of spiritual knowledge." 41 Page 47 Psychic Being, Experience of Witness Purusha or static Consciousness, and Process of Psychic Transformation In order to arrive at the widest totality and ...
... to men. Upon further questioning, he informed Upaka that having conquered all evil passion, and forever having got rid of the remnants of personal being, he had willed by the light of his spiritual knowledge to dispense light to all, even as a lamp enlightens all in the house. Unable to bear any more, Upaka said curtly: "Venerable Gautama, your way lies yonder." And turning away, Upaka strode ...
... establish in his inner field what Sri Aurobindo has termed "a true vigilant blank" totally free from any Page 215 intruding thought or image or feeling. As a sequel a genuine spiritual knowledge will dawn in the sadhaka' s consciousness in a most vivid and luminous way as if somebody has written something in white chalk on a black board. (4) "Throwing away the incoming thoughts": ...
... and intellectual idealism of Europe. Asiatic peoples had begun to make bold and clear claims to equality and independence and they had behind them centuries of inner culture and discovery of spiritual knowledge which, if applied to life, could serve as effective means of the change of human nature. In Europe, the contest between Capital and Labour had entered into a crucial phase, and the Great First ...
... Nations Organization and its Agencies as also the growth of inter-culturalism or multi-culturalism. Anew spiritual age is dawning, and our children need to be prepared to receive and foster spiritual knowledge that transcends narrow barriers of exclusivism. A fifth council could be envisaged for research and applications related to gifted children. It is increasingly recognized that children ...
... Way that leads to the complete Siddhi of the Integral Yoga. The three following passages from Sri Aurobindo' s writings will make the position clear: Page 258 (1) "In the spiritual knowledge of self there are three steps of its self-achievement which are at the same time three parts of the one knowledge. "The first is the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought ...
... consequences. First of all, it eliminated the study of poetry, music and art, which constitutes perfect education of the soul; secondly, it eliminated the study of philosophy, dharma and spiritual knowledge three elements, which are the supreme components of the Indian heritage; thirdly, while it introduced some Page 59 elements of world history and world geography and modern science ...
... ego here with its spoiling antics. In other words, an aspiration is an upward elan of our consciousness towards all that is essentially good and pure and beautiful; it is a thirst for spiritual knowledge; it is a quiet and steady seeking for the Divine and divine life; it embodies an indomitable courage to fight against all that tries to prevent the sadhaka' s progress by exercising upon him ...
... Arya. By 1920, when Mother returned to Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo had already expounded in the pages of the Arya much of his studies which were not confined merely to philosophical and spiritual knowledge, but which extended also to fields of literature, psychology, and social and political thought. The all-embracing idea was, however, that of spiritual evolution, which subsumed within itself ...
... not of creed and dogmas, rites and rituals, that he speaks. As he was to explain further in the Karmayogin: 'There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be a guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is the sanatana dharma. the eternal religion.' In order to combat the gloom and despondency ...
... from all sides. Why do I feel myself beyond the need even of knowledge? It is the condition of the silent self in which there is no need of knowledge or action. Is spiritual knowledge an active thing in itself? Yes. Active in an imperturbable calm. At times, when I bring down knowledge the intensity, depth and height of the silence are diminished. ...
... root in the human consciousness in a way which would have been unthinkable fifty years ago, and the trend towards it is unmistakable. The fourth dream relates to the gift by India of her spiritual knowledge to the world and here also we can see evidence of the increasing interest in Indian spirituality and yoga and of a widespread movement in this direction. Sri Aurobindo's final dream was 'a ...
... people learn philosophy to teach others? Not always. Some learn in order that the mind may look in a complete and accurate way at things. But that is of course a mental, not a spiritual knowledge. What subjects do you propose for my reading and what should be done by me as a student? There is a great mass of necessary information about the world, one's body ...
... Than the staple or dry straw or Reason's tilth, Its heaped fodder of innumerable facts, Plebian fare on which today we thrive. 31 Knowledge of the divine life, spiritual knowledge, is best insinuated through myths and the key symbols that constitute them rather than through logic or philosophy. "Only a mythology", says Berdyaev, "which conceives of the divine celestial ...
... spiritual and secular. This distinction of the two words is made by the modern spirit, it did not belong to the ancient culture. The secular knowledge was also considered a necessary part of the spiritual knowledge, that which prepared for it and led towards it. The 'aparavidya' or the 'vedangas' were but limbs of the supreme knowledge 'para vidya' and 'veda'. A teacher has to be a yogi does not mean ...
... noon and evening, at once starts psychic vibrations of incommensurable potency. There are endless overtones and undertones from the Vedic and Upanishadic structures of myth and symbolism and spiritual knowledge. Then the story itself; the tremendous issue and its vast implications; the human and the cosmic backgrounds; and the struggle and the victory. In all this Savitri does convincingly project ...
... Parables from the Upanishads The Story of Jabala-Satyakama (I) I think I told you once of the story in the Upanishada bout a seeker of spiritual knowledge who had been given by his teacher as a first assignment the task of looking after his kine. This was meant to serve both as an initiation and a training; it was to be his work and also his ...
... spiritual and secular. This distinction of the two words is made by the modern spirit, it did not belong to the ancient culture. The secular knowledge was also considered a necessary part of the spiritual knowledge, that which prepared for it and led towards it. The 'apara vidaya' or the 'vedangas' were but limbs of the supreme knowledge 'para vidya' and 'veda'. A teacher has to be a yogi does not ...
... Mother with Pranab at her room on the second-floor - 4.1.60 Page 146 of earthly life. On the other hand, she also possessed the Eastern or rather Indian spiritual knowledge and insight. This enabled her to see life from the point of view of both spirit and matter. She took a balanced view, blending detailed knowledge, structure and mastery of the practical ...
... connected with the ancient Egyptian religion and occultism. The Egyptians seem to have developed the occult knowledge to a very great extent and it was a dynamic element with them. But as for spiritual knowledge, I don't think they had very much. A question was put about the mummies. Page 171 Sri Aurobindo : The Egyptians believed that there was a personality of the vital ...
... realise the same. Normally intellect acts as a lid, but it can also be a reflector or projector. One knows the Revealer for one becomes it. Knowledge by identity is the characteristic of spiritual knowledge. If one keeps oneself separate and seeks to apprehend the Divine as an object outside, the Divine escapes or is caught only by the trail it leaves, its echoes and shadows, its apparent qualities ...
... profession, used no spiritual method in their education; it was solely by material means and an enlightened use of human will that they had achieved this result. If they had added to this a spiritual knowledge and power, they could have achieved an almost miraculous result.... Because of the false ideas prevalent in the world, we don't usually see the two things together,. spiritual mastery and material ...
... spiritual and secular. This distinction of the two words is made by the modern spirit, it did not belong to the ancient culture. The secular knowledge was also considered a necessary part of the spiritual knowledge, that which prepared for it and led towards it. The 'apara vidya' or the 'vedangas' were but limbs of the supreme knowledge 'para vidya' and 'veda'. A teacher has to be a yogi does not mean ...
... questioned by his Divine Consort who is All-awareness, who is one and identical with him, he uttered five sacred scriptures with his five mouths, the scriptures which are the essence of the true spiritual knowledge. He introduced, established and spread them through the great preceptors, divine or human, through those who are perfect or realised Beings, for the supreme good of the world. This is what is ...
... ...' - Apr 2-3 Russian gymnasts visit the Ashram. Their mastery, she notes, was achieved 'solely by material means and an enlightened use of human will.... If they had added to this a spiritual knowledge and power, they could have achieved an almost miraculous result.' - Dec 1 Presentation of her drama The Ascent to the Truth. At the summit of that climb 'all possibility of personal effort ...
... and nothing has the power to touch. 33 When on 23 September the Pondicherry Station of All India Radio was opened, the Mother's soul-stirring message was - O India, land of light and spiritual knowledge! Wake up to your true mission in the world, show the way to union and harmony. 34 XI Throughout 1967, the Auroville movement was gathering momentum, and the imagination of a section ...
... evil days though apparently fallen, it was still Bharat's destiny to be the Guru of the World, and so the Mother articulated this prayer on 23 September 1967: O India, land of light and spiritual knowledge! Wake up to your true mission in the world. Show the way to union and harmony! 23 It would not be wide off the mark, then, to say that the Mother, in one aspect of her life, symbolised the ...
... in which the prophecy has to be worked out. 34 The Mother too had the spiritual experience on which "The Symbol Dawn" is structured. As she speaks drawing upon the vast reserves of her spiritual knowledge, passage after passage sheds its obscurity and ambiguity, and the native meaning stands revealed. "Sri Aurobindo," says the Mother, "is giving all the process of rebuilding the Consciousness ...
... In the message for the radio You substituted the word "union" for the word "unity." 1 May I know, Sweet Mother, why this change was made? 1 "O India, land of light and spiritual knowledge! Wake up to your true mission in the world, show the way to union and harmony." — Message for the inauguration of All India Radio, Pondicherry, 23 September 1967. Page 22 Because ...
... but a field of force with a limited validity at the middle mental rung in the stair of consciousness. The dualities are also relativities. Evil will cease when the Ignorance is replaced by spiritual Knowledge. In the second part of the second volume, Sri Aurobindo discusses how this could be achieved. The ascent from Ignorance to Knowledge will be long and slow, and there must be many gradations on ...
... reference to the recent medical theory of different phases of sleep culminating in about ten minutes of absolute rest and silence, and points out how it corroborates the Mother's own occult-spiritual knowledge and experience: According to the Mother's experience and knowledge one passes from waking through a succession of states of sleep consciousness which are in fact an entry and passage into ...
... talk, the Mother advises us, when we are in trouble, "to learn to go deep within" or "to step back into yourself". 27 In a later talk, scientific knowledge is differentiated from yogic (or spiritual) knowledge. Contrasting Shankara's rnāyāvāda with Sri Aurobindo's world-view, the Mother explains how the former had "a glimpse of the true consciousness", and hence declared the phenomenal world ...
... the nature there is a more powerful and many-sided change, a spiritual building and self- creation, the appearance of a composite perfection of the saint, the selfless worker and the man of spiritual -knowledge.'¹ In proportion as the sâdhaka learns to live in his depths .and offer all his nature to the direct influence of his emergent soul, there begins a series of transmuting experiences in ...
... there is an implicit denunciation of desire and an ardent advocacy of a complete dependence on God. We find, therefore, that, whatever its spell on deluded minds, under the spotlight of spiritual knowledge desire stands thoroughly unmasked as the prolific parent of most of life's evils. The progressive rationalistic mind of today, if it is searchingly honest, will readily admit this truth, but ...
... of the human spirit. But Swaraj is the necessary condition of her work and before she can do the work, she must fulfil the condition." Mother put it simply. "O India, Land of Light and spiritual knowledge, wake up to your true mission in the world. Show the way to harmony and unity." And Sri Aurobindo. "The world waits for the rising of India to receive the divine flood in its fullness." ...
... times. But even in later times when the four orders had grown into a fixed social hierarchy, when we had lost almost all our freedom, there remained the individual's freedom to pursue his or her spiritual knowledge. In India we find, said Sri Aurobindo, "up to the end the yogins, saints, spiritual thinkers, innovators and restorers, religious poets and singers, the fountain-heads of a living spirituality ...
... I imagine it would be difficult to avoid it. Page 113 Another thing, it seems to me that you identify faith very much with mental belief—but real faith is something spiritual, a knowledge of the soul. The assertions you quote in your letter are the hard assertions of a mental belief leading to a great vehement assertion of one's creed and god because they are one's own and must therefore... egoism. But there was nothing false or unsound in Vivekananda's spiritual experience. This was not mere egoism, but the sense of what he stood for and the attitude of the fighter who, as the representative of something very great, could not allow himself to be put down or belittled. This is not to deny the necessity of non-egoism and of spiritual humility, but to show that the question is not so easy as... y, that too is a little difficult to avoid when greater horizons open before the consciousness, unless one is already of a saintly and humble disposition. There are men like Nag Mahashoy in whom spiritual experience creates more and more humility, there are others like Vivekananda in whom it erects a giant sense of strength and superiority—European critics have taxed him with it rather severely; there ...
... 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 to the mind, which is altogether incapable of obtaining it, because, in fact... which in essence is true, and yet no longer so at all in the mental atmosphere—it is an ignorance. So, to summarise, I shall say that knowledge, as it can be grasped by the human mind, is necessarily knowledge in ignorance, one could almost say an ignorant knowledge. Wisdom is the vision of truth in its essence and of its application in the manifestation. 12 September 1958 ... JNANA (Knowledge): First period of commentaries (1958) JNANA (Knowledge): First period of commentaries (1958) On Thoughts and Aphorisms It is no use reading books of guidance if one is not determined to live what they teach. Blessings The Mother Aphorism - 1 It is no use reading books of ...
... that I said Dilip had not the mystic mind and vision. One can go far in the spiritual way, have plenty of spiritual visions and dreams even without having this mystic mind and way of seeing things. So too one may write poetry from different planes or sources of inspiration and expressing spiritual feelings, knowledge, experience and yet use the poetic intelligence as the thought medium which gives... gives them shape in speech; such poems are not of the mystic type. One may be mystic in this sense without being spiritual—one may also be spiritual without being mystic; or one may be both spiritual and mystic in one. Poems ditto. "I had not in view the Dark Well poems when I wrote about Harin. I was thinking of his ordinary way of writing. If I remember right , the Dark Well poems came... is still intellectual and not concrete in its approach to these things, although his imagination has learned to make itself their transcribing medium. That is the difficulty, the crux of imaged spiritual poetry; it needs not only the fit writer but the fit audience—and that has yet to be made. "Dilip wrote to me in recent times expressing great admiration for Arjava's poems and wanting to ...
... outward mind and life are not all his being; to be fulfilled and perfect he has to grow out of his physical and mental ignorance into spiritual self-knowledge. "Buddhism arrived at a later stage and seized on one side of these ancient teachings to make a sharp spiritual and intellectual opposition between the impermanence of life and the permanence of the Eternal which brought to a head and ... necessary deduction from the great Vedantic authorities, the Upanishads, Brahmasutras and Gita, and was always combated by other Vedantic philosophies and religions which drew from them and from spiritual experience very different conclusions. At the present time, in spite of a temporary exaltation of Shankara's philosophy, the most vital movements of Indian thought and religion are moving again towards... man personal God of the West. Indian religion cannot be described by any of the definitions known to the occidental intelligence. In its totality it has been a free and tolerant synthesis of all spiritual worship and experiences. Observing the one truth from all its many sides, it shut out none. It gave itself no specific name and bound itself by no limiting distinction. Allowing separative designations ...
... complete silence in the mental region and when the spiritual force with its light and power descends through the mind and makes it act directly without its following its usual method of analysis, deduction, reasoning. All these faculties which are usually considered the normal activities of the mind, must be stopped, and yet the spiritual Light, Knowledge and Power must be able to transform them into a... action can be produced directly by the spiritual force which takes hold of the mental consciousness without these processes of analysis, deduction, reasoning being necessary. In intuition things already happen somewhat in this way; but spiritual intervention is, as it were, a super-intuition, a direct expression of the vision, of the experience, of knowledge by identity. ( Silence ) There are... reasoned and systematised idea of the goal, the method, the principles of this highest development and activity of our nature and the truth of all that lies behind it. Spiritual realisation and experience, an intuitive and direct knowledge, a growth of inner consciousness, a growth of the soul and of an intimate soul-perception, soul- vision and a soul-sense, are indeed the proper means of this evolution: ...
... '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 be annulled, either through the automatic result of the dawning of spiritual self-knowledge (ātmajñāna) or by the invocation of the divine... action of that Grace will either scorch out all his past karmas to ineffectivity or will so arrange the circumstances of his life that these very karmas will produce great good for the sadhaka's spiritual progress. But the Mother has warned us at the same time that the aspirant should not nurture a false hope which may be formulated in this way: "Let me repent a little for my past misdeeds... physical body and come upon earth to lead another round of worldly existence. For him will cease the intractable "cycle of rebirths", "janma-cakra-nivṛtti". And that is supposed to be the ultimate spiritual goal placed before all sadhakas. And this is so because the traditionalists affirm that man's physical life upon earth cannot but constitute an uninterrupted series of karmas and each karma ...
... The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo CHAPTER XXII KNOWLEDGE—THE LIGHT THAT FULFILS PART I WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE IN yogic parlance and spiritual philosophy knowledge does not mean mental knowledge. Mental knowledge is a knowledge of objects taken as separate integers or aspects, and not viewed as indivisible parts of a universal whole... that the truth of a thing can be realised and its knowledge gained. In identity there is a union between the consciousness of the knower and that of the object of knowledge—for there is consciousness, evolved or involved, in every object—and the knower knows his object of knowledge in himself, the barriers of material Space melting away in the spiritual extension of his consciousness. "They see the Self... to, hears, knows."¹ In spiritual life the ultimate aim of knowledge is not mental understanding or enlightenment, but being and becoming. One can know the Brahman only by becoming the Brahman; or, to put it inversely, (which is the same thing), one becomes the Brahman by knowing the Brahman— brahmavid brahmaiva bhavati. Therefore, it can be said that knowledge begins only when we have passed ...
... when the Summum Bonum or the Highest Good is attained in the state of spiritual illumination. Indeed, even in the spiritual field, there are degrees and progression; but the essential knowledge is there at every stage, which prevents evil in Will. With reference to the spiritual man therefore we can say: Virtue is Knowledge. We have to remember that although Socrates initiated the rational movement... intuitive knowledge, which is an attribute of spiritual experience. Knowledge is, therefore, concluded to be intellectual apprehension of the right in a given particular situation. The Socratic doctrine thus interpreted is liable to obvious objection. First, the doctrine can be disproved by an appeal to actual facts. Actual facts tell us that any good action presupposes the knowledge on the part... the Socratic view of the unitary knowledge, the knowledge of the Good, which is not piecemeal or particular but a universal and unified vision of the Highest Reality. ' Moreover, we have to note the Socratic doctrine of Freedom, which comes close to the Hindu idea of Moksha or Liberation. Such liberation is obtained by freeing oneself from the bonds of spiritual blindness, which is the cause of ...
... various domains of life, — spiritual, religious, philosophical, ethical, aesthetic, scientific, technological, literary, economic, social, and political. Again, the Hindu emphasis on life developed the insistence whereby culture came to be shared by the whole nation in the common life. The entire aim of Hinduism was that the God-knowledge, soul-knowledge and world-knowledge should be spread increasingly... right and law (dharma) and spiritual liberation (moksha). Its second circle was the fourfold order of society, carefully graded and equipped with its fixed economic functions and its deeper cultural, ethical and spiritual significances. This order which came to be called varna vyavastha provided to the Brahmin the function and dharma of the pursuit of knowledge, to kshatariya the function... of self-preparation for development and experience. But the way in which this ancient religion developer provided a well-founded, well-explored, many-branching and always enlarging ways of knowledge and of spiritual or religious disciplines. However, the most distinctive element of Hinduism lies in the fact that through successive stages, it built up for larger and larger gradations of human consciousness ...
... outward mind and life are not all his being; to be fulfilled and perfect he has to grow out of his physical and mental ignorance into spiritual self-knowledge. Buddhism arrived at a later stage and seized on one side of these ancient teachings to make a sharp spiritual and intellectual opposition between the impermanence of life and the permanence of the Eternal which brought to a head and made a gospel... way of looking at the world. To deny the truth or the value of spirituality, of the sense of the eternal and infinite, the inner spiritual experience, the philosophic mind and spirit, the religious aim and feeling, the intuitive reason, the idea of universality and spiritual unity is one resource, and this is the real attitude of our critic which emerges constantly in his vehement philippic. But he cannot... of the eternal and the infinite, but live in its power and universalise, spiritualise and divinise himself by self-knowledge? What greater aim can be for the life of man than to grow by an inner and outer experience till he can live in God, realise his spirit, become divine in knowledge, in will and in the joy of his highest existence? And that is the whole sense of the striving of Indian culture. ...
... 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 colours even most of what is drawn... guise of dogma, for the "unspiritual" habit which mistakes groping for seeing and guessing for knowing,—in place, I presume, of the very spiritual habit which holds the physically sensible for the only knowable and takes the knowledge of the body for the knowledge of the soul and spirit. He waxes bitterly sarcastic over the idea that philosophic meditation and Yoga are the best way to ascertain the... have been shaped by philosophic thinkers and religious minds, not by any means all of them of Brahmin birth. The fact that a class has been developed whose business was to preserve the spiritual traditions, knowledge and sacred law of the race,—for this and not a mere priest trade was the proper occupation of the Brahmin,—and that this class could for thousands of years maintain in the greatest part ...
... substance of being presenting itself as an object no longer to physical, vital or mental sense, but to a light of a pure spiritual perceptive knowledge in which the subject becomes its own object, that is to say, in which the Timeless and Spaceless is aware of itself in a pure spiritually self-conceptive self-extension as the basis and primal material of all existence. Beyond this foundation is the dis... being who is hidden in the forms of the universe, but the infinite Being, Knowledge, Will which emerges out of Matter first as Life, then as Mind, with the rest of it still unrevealed, then the emergence of consciousness out of the apparently Inconscient must have another and completer term; the appearance of a supramental spiritual being who shall impose on his mental, vital, bodily workings a higher... and to fulfil its own impulse to embrace all knowledge, to become all light, to possess truth and be truth, to enforce love and joy and be love and joy; but always there is the deviation and error and grossness of the material life-instincts and the denial and obstruction of the material sense and the physical instruments. Error ever pursues its knowledge, darkness is inseparably the companion and ...
... is clear then that the work is not the sole thing that matters; the knowledge in which we do works makes an immense spiritual difference. There are three things, says the Gita, which go to constitute the mental impulsion to works, and they are the knowledge in our will, the object of knowledge and the knower; and into the knowledge there comes always the working of the three gunas. It is this element... highest top of knowledge this seeing becomes the knowledge of the one spirit in the world, one in all these many existences, of the one Master of all works, of the forces of cosmos as expressions of the Godhead and of the work itself as the operation of his supreme will and wisdom in man and his life and essential nature. The personal will has come to be entirely conscious, illumined, spiritually awake, and... personal demand, the ego factor behind it. It is to do works not dictated by desire but by the law of right living or by the essential nature, its knowledge, its ideal, its faith in itself and the Truth it sees, its śraddhā . Or else, on a higher spiritual plane, they are dictated by the will of the Master and done with the mind in Yoga, without any personal attachment either to the action or to the ...
... with the ordinary life is not a sufficient preparation for this Yoga. A positive inner call, a Page 27 strong will and a great steadiness are necessary for success in the spiritual life. Knowledge of the way is not enough—one must tread it, or if one cannot do that, allow oneself to be carried along it. The human vital and physical external nature resist to the very end, but if... become a field for the action of the Divine Knowledge, the Divine Power and the Divine Ananda. He can succeed in that only if he makes it the supreme object of his life and is prepared to subordinate everything else to this one aim. Otherwise all that can be done is only to make some preparation in this life—a first contact and some preliminary spiritual change in part of the nature. Capacity of... to Vedantic or Vaishnava or other Indian spiritual practices and this objection of incapacity or unsuitableness has never been made either from the side of the disciples or from the side of the Masters. I do not see, either, why there should be any such unbridgeable gulf; for there is no essential difference between spiritual life in the East and spiritual life in the West,—what difference there is ...
... out of each thing its spiritual Ananda, the secret of truth and beauty in it for which it was created; it is in the sense of that spiritual joy of vision, and not in any lower sensuous, intellectual or imaginative seeing, that Keats' phrase becomes true for the poet, beauty that is truth, truth that is beauty, and this all that we need to know as the law of our aesthetic knowledge. He is right too in... and on Latin intellectualism, and bringing in new needs and experiences which disturbed the mind and emotions without possessing the soul with peace or arriving at a harmony of spiritual emotion and spiritual self-knowledge. ... inrush from above which makes the rapture and the enthusiasm of illumination and inspiration. That source, when we know better the secrets of our being, turns out to be the spiritual self with its diviner consciousness and knowledge, happier fountains of power, inalienable delight of existence. The cultures that were able directly or indirectly to feel the joy of this self and spirit, got into the very ...
... supreme peace. He had left everything behind, sought shelter in the solitude of a deep forest, and dwelt there all alone. Eight years rolled by but nothing substantial he could gain. Spiritual peace and self-knowledge eluded his grasp altogether. He was very much worried. Accidentally, one day Brihaspati entered that forest and met his son Kacha in that confounded state. Kacha asked his father: "I... end I have given up even the stick and the rag the only permissible possessions of a Sannyasi. But to what end, father? I have failed to reach 'svapade viśrānti',, 'the absolute repose of spiritual self-knowledge'. Jell me what I should do now." The wise Brihaspati then addressed his son and told him: "My son, you claim to have made sarvasva-tyāga, 'the reunciation of all your possessions'... prompting the way of renunciation is based on the concrete experience spiritual seekers have when they follow a particular line of spiritual sadhana. For, it is not merely a philosophical hypothesis or the idle speculation of an imaginative heart but a very compelling and utterly convinc- Page 63 ing spiritual experience that, once the sadhaka, escaping from the prison of his ego-bound ...
... We must not imagine that the Vedic poets were crude and savage intellects incapable of the obvious figure, common to all languages, which makes the physical light a figure of the mental and spiritual, of knowledge, of an inner illumination. The Veda speaks expressly of "luminous sages", dyumanto viprāḥ and the word sūri , a seer, is associated with Surya, the sun, by etymology and must originally... the Maruts with their shining spears were born, seers who do the work by the knowledge." Clearly, then, in the conception of Agni Angiras there are two ideas, knowledge and action; the Page 165 luminous Agni and the luminous Maruts are by their light seers of the knowledge, ṛṣi, kavi ; and by the light of knowledge the forceful Maruts do the work because they are born or manifested in the... supramental knowledge ( śravas ), for it is that knowledge and not intellectuality which is meant by the word kavi . What then is this great force, Agni Angiras, saho mahat , but the flaming force of the divine consciousness with its two twin qualities of Light and Power working in perfect harmony,—even as the Maruts are described, kavayo vidmanā apasaḥ , seers working by the knowledge? We have had ...
... its fruits in future lives. These go by the name of "sa ñ cita karmas". Now, according to the traditional view, when a person becomes a siddha-yogi, and gains "ātma-jñāna" or spiritual "self-knowledge", all his stored karma-seeds (sañcita-karmas) get burnt up and become infructuous for all time to come. And as he becomes a Jivanmukta yogi, he is from then onward free from all desires... for its past good deeds or misdeeds. In actual fact, rebirth is the effective means for the spiritual progression of the soul. All his experiences, his happinesses and sorrows, successes and failures, good fortune and ill fortune, all without exception are inseparable elements of his comprehensive spiritually oriented adventure covering a succession of lives. The soul itself may at times choose... reactions of Nature are not in essence meant as reward or punishment; that is not their fundamental value, which is rather an inherent value of natural relations and, in so far as it affects the spiritual evolution, a value of the lessons of experience in the soul's cosmic training.... in all Nature's dealings with us there is a relation of things and there is a corresponding lesson of experience." ...
... said Dilip had not the mystic mind and vision. One can go far in the spiritual way, have plenty of spiritual visions and dreams even without having this mystic mind and way of seeing things. So too one may write poetry from different planes or Page 92 sources of inspiration and expressing spiritual feelings, knowledge, experience and yet use the poetic intelligence as the thought medium... medium which gives them shape in speech; such poems are not of the mystic type. One may be mystic in this sense without being spiritual—one may also be spiritual without being mystic; or one nay be both spiritual and mystic in one. Poems ditto. "I had not in view the Dark Well poems when I wrote about Harin. I was thinking of his ordinary way of writing. If I remember right, the Dark Well... them—it is still intellectual and not concrete in its approach to these things, although his imagination has learned to make itself their transcribing medium. That is the difficulty, the crux of imaged spiritual poetry; it needs not only the fit writer but the fit audience —and that has yet to be made. "Dilip wrote to me in recent times expressing great admiration for Arjava's poems and wanting to ...
... utility and significance, but it can also be used with a spiritual sense and light and intention in it and for a spiritual purpose. This can be done by a spiritual meaning and use in our psychical interchange with others, and it is largely by a psycho-spiritual interchange of this kind that a master in Yoga helps his disciple. The knowledge of our inner subliminal and psychic nature, of the powers... its consciousness. Page 864 The pure action of sense is a spiritual action and pure sense is itself a power of the spirit. The spiritual sense is capable of knowing in its own characteristic way, which is other than that of supramental thought or of the intelligence or spiritual comprehension, vijñāna , or knowledge by identity, all things whatsoever, things material and what is to us... of self, of principles and aspects, force, play and action, by a direct spiritual, supramental and intuitive thought knowledge, by the heart's spiritually and supramentally illumined feeling, love, delight, but also to have in a very literal significance the sense—sense-knowledge or sensation—of the spirit, the self, the Divine, the Infinite. The state described by the Upanishad in which one sees, ...
... have no objection to them in their own place. But I must remind you that in my Yoga alI vital movements must come under the control of the psychic and of the spiritual calm, knowledge and peace. If they conflict with the psychic or the spiritual control, they upset the balance and prevent the forming of the base of transformation. If unbalance is good for other paths, that is the business of those who... and certainly therefore I cannot object if anybody wants the supramental. But these are the conditions. He must want the Divine Will first and the soul's surrender and the spiritual realisation (through works, bhakti, knowledge, self-perfection) on the way. So there everybody is right. The central sincerity is the first thing and sufficient for an aspiration to be entertained,—a total sincerity... By Divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation—the realisation of Self, Bhagawan or Brahman on the mental-spiritual or else the overmental plane. That is a thing (at any rate the mental spiritual) which thousands have done. So it is obviously easier to do than the supramental. Also nobody can have the supramental realisation who has not had the spiritual. So far your opponent is right. ...
... ns of love and bhakti ] in their own place. But I must remind you that in my Yoga all vital movements must come under the control of the psychic and of the spiritual calm, knowledge and peace. If they conflict with the psychic or the spiritual control, they upset the balance and prevent the forming of the base of transformation. Page 466 If unbalance is good for other paths, that is the... Ananda is higher than the experiences of the spiritual mind, Ananda being according to the Upanishads the supreme plane of experience. But this is a logical conclusion which cannot be accepted wholly—one must pass through the supermind to arrive to the highest Ananda and in the supermind there is a unification and harmonisation of all the divine Powers (Knowledge, etc. as well as Love and Ananda). Different... The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths Other Spiritual Paths and the Integral Yoga Letters on Yoga - II Chapter VIII Bhakti Yoga and Vaishnavism The Vaishnava Theory and Sadhana They [ the Vaishnavas ] accept the world as a Lila, but the true Lila is elsewhere in the eternal Brindavan. All the religions ...
... Testament, "Acts of the Apostles", VII. 54-60) Let us now come to the classic instance of the famous martyr, Mansoor Al-Hallaj. This Sufi saint of the Middle Ages, after having attained spiritual self-knowledge, publicly declared, "Anal Haq, I am the Truth." Because of this so-called heresy, he was sentenced to death by the Calif of Baghdad. And was it a simple death? Not at all. His body was first... there's no longer any prison." (CWM, Vol. 5, p. 317) Page 37 That the fear and grief concerning physical death gets completely removed when one attains genuine self-knowledge through the practice of spiritual sadhana, tarati śokam ātmavit (Chhandogya Upanishad, VII. 1.3), is due to the concrete fact that one no longer feels his physical body to be his true "I". One realises beyond any... (iii) To be entirely convinced without the slightest reservation that the fear of death is absolutely inimical to the progress on the spiritual path; and to indulge in it in any way is tantamount to the harbouring of a deadly enemy in the citadel of one's spiritual self-defence. This conviction, if made genuine and strong, will electrify the sadhaka in his fight against the fear of death as soon as ...
... spirituality and its seekers must be judged, if they are to be judged with knowledge. It is only by so understanding it that one can understand it truly, either in its past or in its future or put in their place the spiritual men of the past and the present or relate the different ideals, stages, etc. thrown up in the spiritual evolution of the human being," But as he knew to his cost what human... full of pride and ego? I imagine it would be difficult to avert it. "Another thing: it seems to me that you identify faith very much with mental belief, but real faith is something spiritual, a knowledge of the soul. What you quote in your letters are the hard assertions of mental belief leading to a vehement vindication of one's mental creed and goal because they are one's own and must therefore... does not bind all spiritual life and endeavour. The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule; it is a vast field of evolution, an immense kingdom potentially larger than the other kingdoms below it with a hundred provinces, a thousand types, stages, forms, paths, variations of the spiritual ideal, degrees of spiritual advancement. It is ...
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