... suddenly or rapidly grown into spiritual realisation, because they had faith or because they were sincere-1 do not see why these facts which are facts of spiritual history and of quite ordinary spiritual experience should be discussed and denied and argued as if they were mere matters of speculation. Strength, if it is spiritual, is a power for spiritual realisation; a greater power is sincerity;... March 13, 1934 But why be overwhelmed by a wealth of any kind of experiences? What does it amount to after all? The quality of a sadhak does not depend on that; one great spiritual realisation direct and at the centre will often make a great sadhak or Yogi—a host of intermediate yogic experiences will not, that has been amply proved by a troop of instances, I refrain from giving... than psychic. What do you say to this? Well, yes, he mentalises, aestheticises, sentimentalises the things of the spirit—but I can't say that I have ever found the expression of a concrete spiritual realisation in his poetry— though ideas, emotions, ideal dreams in plenty. That is some- thing, but— Biren writes, "About Sri Aurobindo Tagore said that it has lately seemed to him that Sri Aurobindo-was ...
... to the spiritual evolution itself as preparatory movements disciplining, purifying or giving a suitable form to the nature; but they still belong to the mental evolution,—the beginning of a spiritual realisation, experience, change is not yet there. Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner... results achieved by it in the human individual. There are four main lines which Nature has followed in her attempt to open up the inner being,—religion, occultism, spiritual thought and an inner spiritual realisation and experience: the three first are approaches, the last is the decisive avenue of entry. All these four powers have worked by a simultaneous action, more or less connected, sometimes in a variable... a dry intellectual alien, leaned with all its weight on creed and dogma, pietistic emotion and fervour and moral conduct; it has Page 892 reduced to a minimum or dispensed with spiritual realisation and experience. Occultism has sometimes put forward a spiritual aim as its goal, and followed occult knowledge and experience as an approach to it, formulated some kind of mystic philosophy: ...
... first seer or sage, while the others must religiously crack the same nutshell all over again, each tremblingly careful not to give the lie to the "past" seers and sages. Page 411 Spiritual Realisation and the Supramental Transformation This Yoga aims at the conscious union with the Divine in the supermind and the transformation of the nature. The ordinary Yogas go straight from Mind into... opening of the ādhāra . Do not think now of those ultimate things (Overmind, Supermind), but get first these foundations in the liberated nature. By divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation—the realisation of Self, Bhagavan or Brahman on the mental-spiritual plane or else the overmental plane. That is a thing (at any rate the mental-spiritual) which thousands have done. So it is... and certainly therefore Page 413 I cannot object if anybody wants the supramental. But there are the conditions. He must want the Divine Will first and the soul's surrender and spiritual realisation (through works, bhakti, knowledge, self-perfection) on the way. The central sincerity is the first thing and sufficient for an aspiration to be entertained—a total sincerity is needed for ...
... sort of inner mental sense. The spiritual realisation is more concrete than that—one has the Knowledge by a kind of identity in one's very substance. A mental or vital sense of oneness has not the same essentiality or the same effect as a spiritual realisation of oneness—just as the mental perception of the Divine is not the same thing as the spiritual realisation. The consciousness of one plane... thought much of one kind of realisation and absorbed the idea deeply—then it is quite natural that the spiritual experience of it should be one of the first to come. Mental Realisation and Spiritual Realisation It [ mental realisation of the Divine ] is a certain kind of living cognition—of which there are two parts—the living perception in thought rising as far as intuition or revelation, the vivid... more than the mental—it is in the very substance of the being that the experience takes place. But if you have that [ peace, calm, silence, wideness ] when you concentrate, it is a true spiritual realisation—that which Page 11 accompanies or prepares the experience of the Atman. It is not merely a mental realisation. Spiritual Experience as Substantial Experience Your feeling [ ...
... planes of inspiration undreamed of by Shakespeare and yet not be as great a poetic creator as Shakespeare. "Greatness" is not the object of spiritual realisation any more than fame or success in the world—how are these things the standard of spiritual realisation? I find that people are greatly fortunate who can approach the Mother often. If they know how to approach her which hardly any do.... argument I had with K. He contended that our aspiring for the Supermind was not something sober—that we should aspire for the Divine realisation only. 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... born on the earth, 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 ...
... of Yoga were developed which used the thinking mind as a means of arriving at spiritual realisation, spiritualising this mind itself at the same time. Then followed an era of the development of philosophies and Yoga processes which more and more used the emotional and aesthetic being as the means of spiritual realisation and spiritualised the emotional level in man through the heart and feeling. This... of knowledge, another kind of will, another luminous nature of emotion and aesthesis, another constitution of the physical consciousness that must come in by the supramental change. Spiritual realisation can be had on any plane by contact with the Divine (who is everywhere) or by perception of the Self within, which is pure and untouched by the outer movements. The Supermind is something tr ...
... 148 Our Yoga is the integral Yoga. Its object is the harmony of a total spiritual realisation and experience, a supreme consummation of the spirit and the nature. 149 This Yoga is called the integral Yoga, first because its object is integral covering the whole field of spiritual realisation and experience. It takes existence at its centre and in all its aspects and turns it... live in and with the Divine, to be of one nature with the Divine, this should be the aim of our Yoga. 147 The integral Yoga is so called because it aims at a harmonised totality of spiritual realisation and experience. Its aim is integral experience of the Divine Reality, what the Gita describes in the words samagram mam , "the whole Me" of the Divine Being. Its method is an integral opening ...
... suddenly or rapidly grown into spiritual realisation, because they had faith or because they were sincere. I do not see why these facts which are facts of spiritual history and of quite ordinary spiritual experience should be discussed and denied and argued as if they were mere matters of speculation. Strength, if it is spiritual, is a power for spiritual realisation; a greater power is sincerity;... and indifference in the aspiration and endeavour. Page 171 Strength and Grace There is nothing unintelligible in what I say about strength and Grace. Strength has a value for spiritual realisation, but to say that it can be done by strength only and by no other means is a violent exaggeration. Grace is not an invention, it is a fact of spiritual experience. Many who would be considered ...
... supramental realisation, it is not usual to give it this Page 192 name; rather, the Divine is regarded as the Source, the living Sun of Light and Knowledge and Consciousness and spiritual realisation and all that one receives is felt as coming from there and the whole being remoulded by the Divine Hand. This is a greater and more intimate relation than that of the human Guru and disciple... other gurus) carrying in him many human imperfections, and yet, if you have the faith, the bhakti, the right spiritual stuff, contact the Divine through him, attain to spiritual experiences, to spiritual realisation, even before the guru himself. Mark the "if",—for that proviso is necessary; it isn't every disciple who can do that with every guru. From a humbug you can acquire nothing but humbuggery. The... not himself in his outer mind quite conscious of its action. If there is nothing at all spiritual in him he is not a guru—only a pseudo. Undoubtedly, there can be considerable differences of spiritual realisation between one guru and the other; but much depends on the inner relation between guru and shishya. One can go to a very great spiritual man and get nothing or only a little from him; one can go ...
... " There are four main lines which Nature has followed in her attempt to open up the inner being,—religion, occultism, spiritual thought and an inner spiritual realisation and experience: the three first are approaches, the last is the decisive avenue of entry. All these four powers have worked by a simultaneous action, more or less connected, sometimes in a variable... the philosophic mind as a dry intellectual alien, leaned with all its weight on creed and dogma, pietistic emotion and fervour and moral conduct; it has reduced to a minimum or dispensed with spiritual realisation and experience. Occultism has sometimes put forward a spiritual aim as its goal, and followed occult knowledge and experience as an approach to it, formulated some kind of mystic philosophy:... continually heighten, expand Page 343 and enrich that consciousness and in the building of a life and action that is in conformity with the truth of the spirit: this is the work of spiritual realisation and experience." The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 860-62 One point is very remarkable—I don't remember whether Sri Aurobindo speaks about it in what follows—but among the four ...
... developed which used the thinking mind as a means of arriving at spiritual realisation, spiritualising this mind itself at the same time. Then followed an era of the development of philosophies and yoga processes which more Page 94 and more used the emotional and aesthetic being as the means of spiritual realisation and spiritualised the emotional level in man through the heart and... it aims at the Page 96 integrality of the Divine in this world and not only beyond it and at a supramental realisation. But how does that justify a superior contempt for the spiritual realisation which is as much the aim of this yoga as of any other? (Letters on Yoga, p. 97.) * * * As for the depreciation of the old yogas as something quite easy, unimportant and worthless ...
... " (Translated by Sri Aurobindo). In this instance too the fundamental idea is not something very abstruse. It is commonsense that the theme is related to the experience of Truth, the spiritual realisation and psychological concept. Acharya Sayana was at sea to interpret these few slokas in the light of natural phenomena and sacrificial ceremonies, so much so that he provokes our laughter as well... can we hope to understand the esoteric truths of the Vedas. It is the Upanishads that can claim to be the first exposition of and commentary on the living ideas of the Vedas. The Upanishad is spiritual realisation, supraphysical experience, mystic perception and inner vision. The Katha Upanishad has clearly indicated: sarve veda yatpadamamananti...¹ ("The seat or goal that all the Vedas glorify and which... So at times we consider it equal or superior to ours. But we are unable to grasp her spiritual genius. Hence we do not hesitate to relegate it to the level of barbarism. We have hardly any spiritual realisation. What we understand is at best morality. We highly admire the art and literature of Greece. But in respect of Greek spirituality our knowledge is confined to Socrates. In the earlier period ...
... sharply classified and set off against each other. The spiritual realisation is of primary importance and in dispensable. I would consider it best to have the spiritual and psychic development first and have it with the same fullness before entering the occult regions. Those who enter the latter first may find their spiritual realisation much delayed—others fall into the mazy traps of the occult... It is possible that he has practised some kind of Tantric Yoga and obtained a few occult powers, but in all that you have said about him and in the printed papers there is no trace of any spiritual realisation or experience. All that he seems to think about is occult powers and feats of thaumaturgy. Those who take their stand on occult powers divorced from spiritual experience are not Yogis of a high... × Absurd because the greatness of a Yogi does not depend at all on how long he lives or his state of health, but on the height or the depth of his spiritual realisation and experience. ...
... company of the greatest givers of spiritual revelation. Perhaps he will be in a class by himself, the integrality of his philosophical vision corresponding to the all-embracing plentitude of his spiritual realisation. The tremendous compliment you have paid him as a philosopher in your Return to the Centre measures in the mystical sphere his attainment as a yogi. Even Teilhard was more than a philosopher:... this Yoga is 'new' because it aims at the integrality of the Divine in this world and not only beyond it and at a supramental realisation. But how does that justify a superior contempt for the spiritual realisation which is as much the aim of this Yoga as of any other?" 8 At the same time, however, an earlier letter (18.8.1935) has to be borne in mind apropos of a question about the past and the... the marked difference of force and force, there are gradations of disclosure and in some of them Pantheos can appear to be at a vanishing point: the gradations disappear only to an inner spiritual realisation and not even the most convinced pantheist will declare the Cosmic Spirit to be equally expressive everywhere, to have been just as manifest in a Hitler or Stalin as in a Jesus or Buddha. ...
... use of an avatar is there for a disciple ? Well, according to this striking and overwhelming theory, the Avatar may have a use for external world changes, but none for internal or spiritual realisation; for, on this principle you can catch anybody in the street or your cook or a butler in the house opposite and make him your guru and go splash into the supreme Brahman – of course leaving... gurus) carrying in him many human imperfections, and yet, if you have the faith, the bhakti, the right spiritual stuff, contact the Divine through him, attain to spiritual experiences, to spiritual realisation, even before the Guru himself. Page 73 Mark the “if – for that proviso is necessary; it is not every disciple who can do that with every guru. From a humbug you can acquire... himself in his outer mind quite conscious of its action. If there is nothing at all spiritual in him, he is not a guru – only a pseudo. Undoubtedly, there can be considerable differences of spiritual realisation between one guru and the other; but much depends on the inner relation between guru and shishya. One can go to a very great spiritual man and get nothing or only a little from him; one can ...
... Guru have no meaning if they do not stand for the Eternal; it is that that makes them what they are for the worshipper or the disciple. It is also a fact that nobody can give you any spiritual realisation which does not come from something in one's own true Self, it is always the Divine who reveals himself and the Divine is within you; so He who reveals must be felt in your own heart. Your... carried away by the Ananda, he holds and watches it and there is no mere excitement mixed with the flow of it through the mind, vital or body. Naturally the Ananda of samarpan [surrender] or spiritual realisation or divine love is something far greater, but the Ananda of creation has its place. Page 82 May 17,1936 Yesterday morning I was reading Krishnaprem's article in the Aryan... in him cannot fail to arrive if he follows patiently the, way towards the Divine. Frankly this is my view of the matter. I have never seen that anyone by changing place arrived at any spiritual realisation— it always comes by a change of mind and heart. I put before you what I can see. The rest is for you to consider. Page 95 May 30, 1936 I have surely never said that you ...
... even from the siddha Yogi you cannot always expect a perfect perfection; there were many who do not even care for the perfection of the outer nature, yet they have spiritual experience, even spiritual realisation and the unperfected outer nature cannot be held as a disproof of their realisation or experience- If you so regard it, you have to rule out of count the greater number of Yogis of the past and... did not care to achieve it had no spirituality or that their spirituality was of no value. Beautiful conduct—not politeness which is an outer thing, however valuable—but beauty founded upon a spiritual realisation of unity and harmony projected into life, is certainly part of the perfect perfection. But all that I regard as the ideal, the thing to be attained in the fullness of the siddhi. I do not expect... Harin and others, if we had no understanding and no sympathy with the difficulties of human nature? It is because I press always on faith and discourage doubt as a means of approach to the spiritual realisation ? What spiritual guide with a respect for truth can do otherwise? And if I encourage and support doubt the only result will be that doubt will last forever and no [outward?] realisation be ...
... spiritual contemplation; and even spiritual contemplation has to be matured in spiritual realisation. And considering that even when a few individuals live in spiritual realisation, the world continues to live in struggle and destruction, in strife and pain, we are obliged to conclude that even the individual spiritual realisation is not enough. We have to contemplate collective self-realisation. In any ...
... with his aloof indifference to or at the best a benevolent tolerance for the dynamic waking existence can never be our ideal. But what are after all the essential difficulties of spiritual realisation on the gross physical plane ? Why is the life of action and creation viewed with so much misgiving by most of the traditional Page 101 spiritual seekers? What makes our... the status on which one concentrates at the moment, one of these may appear to be the inertia of repose while the other the inertia of mechanical repetition of movement. An integral spiritual realisation affirms that the eternal status and the eternal dynamis are not only both real but they are also simultaneous. 'The status admits of action of dynamis and the action does not abrogate... instead of engaging in sterile intellectual debates, in this matter of the reality or otherwise of the dynamis of the Absolute, let us listen to Sri Aurobindo describing his own personal spiritual realisation : "The solution of the matter must rest not upon logic, but upon a growing, ever heightening, widening spiritual experience — an experience which must of course include or have passed ...
... his will and the understanding of his intelligence. He is already prepared to act as the divine instrument in this knowledge and with this self-surrender. But a desire for a deeper constant spiritual realisation has been awakened in his heart and will. This is a truth which is evident only to the supreme Soul in its own self-knowledge,—for, cries Arjuna, "thou alone, O Purushottama, knowest thyself... " But still there will remain the need of that deeper possession in the very self of our being out from its most intimate psychic centre, the soul's demand for that inexpressible permanent spiritual realisation of which the mental is only a preliminary or a shadow and without which there cannot be a complete union with the Eternal. Now the way to arrive at that realisation has been given to Arjuna ...
... free from undue passion and is prepared to concede that it is not always right and may err; but it is not safe to depend on it alone in matters which escape its jurisdiction, especially in spiritual realisation and in matters of yoga which belong to a different order of knowledge. Letters on Yoga, p. 1620 European metaphysical thought — even in those thinkers who try to prove or explain... l reality to the exclusion of all reality of Mind, Life or Matter except as an imposition on the Self or unsubstantial shadows cast by the Spirit might help to an independent and radical spiritual realisation but not to an integral and valid solution of the truth of cosmic and individual existence. An integral knowledge then must be a knowledge of the truth of all sides of existence both ...
... Gupta’s fever mixture or Christ’s turning of water into wine) – but here a spiritual force was at work. Page 147 I am told there is no record or evidence of V. having any spiritual realisation. If so his powers, if any, would be occult alone, probably on the vital plane. Such powers do not presuppose any spirituality, some who had them were very clearly unspiritual. Such men are... between occult science and a hypothetical and experimental physical science. If genuine, such an experimentation would be sufficiently interesting, but these things have nothing to do with spiritual realisation. There is a spiritual occultism, but that is a different matter. And this sort of thing is happening always – the mountebank Gurus hoodwinking credulous disciples who would believe ...
... the imaginative projection of certain strong mental beliefs and vital attitudes touched by an intuition of God and of a supernatural Beyond. There is no direct occult experience, no immediate spiritual realisation at the back of it. Something from the occult domain and the spiritual plane was sure to come on the breath of the intense and authentic inspiration that was Dante's, but upon it and around it... The start would be far beyond it. An adesh , a divine command, would be upon his mind in poetic work as in any other. And the command would bring about an expression of his multifarious spiritual realisation, his immediate experience of all the inner and upper worlds beyond our earth and pour all his knowledge forth in inevitable words propelled sheer from the mystical truth of things and never ...
... planes of inspiration undreamed of by Shakespeare and yet not be as great a poetic creator as Shakespeare. "Greatness" is not the object of spiritual realisation any more than fame or success in the world—how are these things the standard of spiritual realisation? Of course you can [ do Yoga without being great ]—there is no need of being great. On the contrary humility is the first necessity ...
... and spiritual sense a concrete realisation is that which makes the thing realised more real, dynamic, intimately present to the consciousness than any physical thing can be. Such a concrete spiritual realisation whether of the personal Page 376 Divine or of the impersonal Brahman or of the Self does not, except in rare cases, come at or anywhere near the beginning of a sadhana, in the first... imaginative rather than spiritual. Well, yes, he mentalises, aestheticises, sentimentalises the things of the spirit—but I can't say that I have ever found the expression of a concrete spiritual realisation in his poetry—though ideas, emotions, ideal dreamings in plenty. That is something, but— 23 March 1934 Tagore has been a wayfarer towards the same goal as ours in his own way—that is the ...
... standing back from all these activities of nature successively or together, it becomes possible to realise one's inner being as the silent impersonal self, the witness Purusha. This will lead to a spiritual realisation and liberation, but will not necessarily bring about a transformation; for the Purusha, satisfied to be free and himself, may leave the Nature, the Prakriti, to exhaust its accumulated impetus... form, the mind of a high wide self-existent thinking knowledge or an illumined or an intuitive or an overmental consciousness with new forces of thought or sight and a greater power of direct spiritual realisation which is more than thought or sight, a greater becoming in the spiritual substance of our present being; the heart and the sense become subtle, intense, large to embrace all existence, to see ...
... Yogi you cannot always expect Page 658 a perfect perfection; there are many who do not even care for the perfection of the outer nature, yet they have spiritual experience, even spiritual realisation and the unperfected outer nature cannot be held as a disproof of their realisation or experience. If you so regard it, you have to rule out of court the greater number of Yogis of the past and... not care to achieve it had no spirituality or that their spirituality was of no value. Beautiful conduct—not politeness which is an outer thing, however valuable,—but beauty founded upon a spiritual realisation of unity and harmony projected into life, is certainly part of the perfect perfection. But all that I regard as the ideal, the thing to be attained in the fullness of the siddhi. I do not expect ...
... sattwic and do not commit any kind of excesses or make serious mistakes, they live reasonably. It is only when one comes out of the ordinary life, when one wants to enter a life leading to a spiritual realisation, that the reason has to abdicate. It can help all the same so long as one is not the absolute master of the movements of his mind and vital. As long as these two things are not transformed,... impression that when he is born he begins to set his feet on a road which is going to lead him by a curve through his whole life? That's the image. So if you take the path which must lead you to a spiritual realisation, well, it means that all your actions are deliberately going to be directed to this goal. And so he says that there is a bit of the way which is under the control of reason and that reason, ...
... contact with the Supreme. 26 — The Mother * Do not confuse the psychic realisation with the spiritual realisation, because the psychic realisation will leave you within time and space, within the manifested universe. Whereas the effect of the spiritual realisation will be to project you outside all creation, outside time and space. 27 The Mother * What ...
... Entire self-giving: fully open, clear and pure. Page 101 Do not confuse the psychic realisation with the spiritual realisation, because the psychic realisation will leave you within time and space, within the manifested universe. Whereas the effect of the spiritual realisation will be to project you outside all creation, outside time and space. There is no joy more perfect than to give ...
... mayavada of Shankara is anticipated in some deliverances of the same scripture. Buddha and Shankara turned into mighty monoliths what were complementary columns in a many-chambered edifice of spiritual realisation. But each of these teachers was exceptionally Page 194 great and in the circumstances of his time his single-track message had a valuable work to do. Shankara had even a bhakta-side... figure of the equine is the white horse Dadhikravan which is said to march ever towards the Dawn: here is the purified and enlightened Life-force. Both cow and horse are integral portions of the spiritual realisation. Both the animals which lent themselves to spiritual symbolisation were woven closely into the old Aryan existence and when this existence took on a spiritual dimension it remained still something ...
... l ingenuities of metaphysicians who are not Yogis, falls short of what we may term the integral God-view and world-view. No more inspiring mouth-piece can be found for a particular type of spiritual realisation; but this realisation, necessary and grand as it is, could be overstressed, and Vivekananda did overstress it because of a certain division between his deeply dedicated heart and his powerful... cannot and does not have such a power and yet to believe that somehow the illusion of division and imperfection comes to be, even phenomenally, is to deny the Divine Its omnipotence. Besides, if spiritual realisation is to be at all real, it must be the soul of the individual that achieves and attains it, so that even when it unites with the Supreme it must still possess a sort of distinct reality. If there ...
... God whether in His impersonal aspect of Nirvana or in His personal aspect as Lord and Lover. Page 92 Our feeling, that Gandhi never had the mystical experience and the spiritual realisation, is borne out in full by a comparison of what mystics of various ages have left on record with what Gandhi put on paper about his own life. It is not possible to say that he may have kept silent... gracious life. Just as Gandhi was not primarily a patriot or a politician, he was also not fundamentally in the line of the illumined and ecstatic seers. It is these seers, these embodiments of spiritual realisation, who are the purest light of the world - and in that light has India of the ages striven most to live, and only by its gold of godhead will she be able to crown her long history and lead our ...
... only surface scrutiny. Ordinarily it is supposed that when we get to the higher knowledge, the knowledge that seeks to know the truth of existence from within, in its source and reality, by spiritual realisation, the world-knowledge becomes of no concern to us; but "in reality 9. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 686. Page 65 they are two sides of one seeking. All knowledge... s and its established operations; an opening up of the spiritual consciousness,... the building of a life and action that is in conformity with the truth of the spirit: this is the work of spiritual realisation and experience." 42 And in this all-round fulfilment of man's many-sided aspiration, Science and Spirituality can very well co-operate and offer each other their helping hands, any ...
... to the highest spiritual realisation of divine status. This discipline contains the nucleus of the later Indian Yoga, the fundamental idea of which was that of the journey from the unreal to the real, from darkness to light, from death to immortality. The Vedic Rishis speak of this as ritasya panthah, the path of the Truth. In one of the vivid descriptions of the spiritual realisation, Vamadeva records ...
... The same as cosmic consciousness? Does one come to it after the psychic and spiritual transformations? Is it something like seeing Brahman in everybody and everywhere or what? It is not spiritual realisation, I suppose, I mean realisation of Self? You see I am a nincompoop in this business. Please perorate a little. Eternal Jehovah! You don't even know what Brahman is! You will next be asking... off your shoulders, I may say that realisation of the Self is the beginning of Brahman realisation;—the Brahman consciousness—the Self in all and all in the Self etc. It is the basis of the spiritual realisation and therefore of the spiritual transformation; but one has to see it in all sorts of aspects and applications first and that I refuse to go into. If you want to know you have to read the Arya ...
... glory by sweeping aside and drowning and destroying all else; Will the old give place to the new and the unmanifest along these lines? What is this world that is to be the fruit of the new spiritual realisation? Where will it be? It would appear to be a supraphysical and transcendent realisation. Chardin has clearly suggested that the new earth will not be anything like a planet renovated into a "sidereal"... Or else is the new world to be conceived as something belonging to the supra-physical? But the supra-physical world too has its planes, and this new world may be the field of a spiritual realisation somewhere among these planes beyond life, mind and the above-mind. The Vedantins speak of the world of Brahman, they aim at realising the grand status of Brahman, brahma-loke mahiyate. But ...
... highest spiritual realisation of divine status. This discipline contains the nucleus of the later Indian Yoga, the fundamental idea of which was that of the journey from the unreal to the real, Page 84 from darkness to light, from death to immortality. This, Vedic Rishis speak of as ritasya pantha, the path of the Truth. In one of the vivid descriptions of the spiritual realisation, Vamadeva ...
... the Path, we have only to follow. The teaching, the realisation is handed down uninterruptedly through millenniums from Master to disciple. In other words, the idea is that the fundamental spiritual realisation Page 52 remains the same always and everywhere: the name and the form only vary according to the age and the surroundings. The one reality is called variously, says the Veda... the first dawn! The present dawn has followed the track of the infinite series that has gone by and is the first of the infinite series that is to come. So sings Rishi Kanwa. For the core of spiritual realisation is to possess the consciousness, attain the status of the Spirit. This Spirit may be called God by the theist or Nihil by the Negativist or Brahman (the One) by the Positivist (spiritual). But ...
... same as cosmic consciousness? Does one come to that after your psychic and spiritual transformation? Is it something like seeing Brahman in everybody and everywhere or what? It is not spiritual realisation, I suppose, I mean realisation of Self? You see I am a nincompoop in this business. Please perorate a little. Eternal Jehovah! you don't even know what Brahman is! You Page 667 ... off your shoulders, I may say that a realisation of the Self is the beginning of Brahman realisation;—the Brahman consciousness—the Self in all and all in the Self etc. It is the basis of the spiritual realisation and therefore of the spiritual transformation; but one has to see it in all sorts of aspects and applications first and that I refuse to go into. If you want to know you have to read the Arya ...
... sharply classified and set off against each other. The spiritual realisation is of primary importance and indispensable. I would consider it best to have the spiritual and psychic development first and have it with the same fullness before entering the occult regions. Those who enter the latter first may find their spiritual realisation much delayed—others fall into the mazy traps of the occult ...
... aspiration. We don't even have the divine realisation, and we want the supramental! I replied that it is Sri Aurobindo who wants the supermind for us. By divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation—the realisation of Self, Bhagavan 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... born on the earth, and certainly therefore I cannot object if anybody wants the supramental. But there 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. Any flaws in my argument? The central sincerity is the first thing and sufficient for an ...
... longer the same when you want to realise the integral yoga. Then you must not limit yourself in any way, even in the path of your consecration.... Only, these are two very different things. Spiritual realisation―as it was formerly understood, as it is still commonly understood―is union with the Supreme in some way or other, either within you or through some form or other; it is the fusion of your being... incomplete. And in fact, these are usually weak natures. But those who have strength, force and a kind of healthy equilibrium in themselves, feel an absolute need to realise materially their spiritual realisation; they are not satisfied with going away into the clouds or into worlds where forms no longer exist. They must have their physical consciousness and even their body participate in their inner ...
... not enough until the spiritual idea has passed into a complete spiritual realisation and not only affected individual intellect and psychic mind and imagination, but entered into the general sense and feeling of the race and taken hold upon all thought and life to reinterpret and remould them in their image. It is this spiritual realisation that the future poetry has to help forward by giving to it its ...
... that delight of which it is made. Aesthetically, the delight takes the appearance of Rasa and the enjoyment of this Rasa is the mind's and the vital's reaction to the perception of beauty. The spiritual realisation has a sight, a perception, a feeling which is not that of the mind and vital;—it passes beyond the aesthetic limit, sees the universal beauty, sees behind the object what the eye cannot see... mind's, other than that of a limited physical vision—what was not beautiful to the eye becomes beautiful, what was beautiful to the eye wears now a greater, marvellous and ineffable beauty. The spiritual realisation can bring the vision and the rapture of the All-Beautiful everywhere. 26 October 1935 The word "expression" [ in the first sentence of the preceding letter ] means only something that ...
... desire-plane. He can develop a higher mentality and, within the conditions of the vital being, concentrate upon some realisation of the Spirit or Self behind or beyond its forms and powers. In this spiritual realisation there would be a less strong necessity of quietism; for there would be a greater possibility of an active effectuation of the bliss and power of the Eternal, mightier and more self-satisfied... doubt, it would be a sufficient perfection for the pure mental being in its own character; but it would still fall far below the greater possibilities of the spiritual nature. For here too our spiritual realisation would be subject to the limitations of the mind which is in the nature of a reflected, diluted and diffused or a narrowly intensive light, not the vast and comprehensive self-existent luminosity ...
... in himself. The descent which Sri Aurobindo laboured to effect was of a new power which he distinguished as Supermind or Truth-Consciousness. From his own experience of the entire range of spiritual realisation in the world's past, he said that it was his special mission to reach beyond that range and invoke and embody the Supermind so as to serve as the radiating centre of it for whoever had the ... to the state of nature reached thus far. If nature is as Sri Aurobindo envisaged and experienced it, birth from a union of parents cannot rule out what would be natural to a new dimension of spiritual realisation in the body. Towards that dimension the whole effort of the Ashram established by Sri Aurobindo tends, with a host of wonderful inner experiences on the way and with the helping presence of ...
... therefore fundamentally flawed in its attitude towards Existence. Its approach to things has been mental through and through, it has been an exercise of the mind; the living, the praxis, the spiritual realisation of the knowledge it gained was for many centuries limited to prescriptions by a Church and to not much more than religious ethics. “Truth of philosophy”, noted Sri Aurobindo, “is of a merely... dedication. But it was ultimately the embodied double Avatar who had to do the job for which he/she had come, consisting in developing a new spiritual modus operandi in order to work out a new spiritual realisation: the supramental transformation of the body, of the material substance of the earth. One may get an idea of their struggle’s countless unforeseen challenges and of the heroism required of ...
... and H and others if we had no understanding and no sympathy with the difficulties of human nature? Is it because I press always for faith and discourage doubt as a means of approach to the spiritual realisation? But what spiritual guide with a respect for truth could do otherwise?" Then with regard to his diagnoses and prescriptions about pain he went on to argue with me once again for the hundredth... that those who have not achieved it or do not care to achieve it had no spirituality. Beautiful conduct — not politeness which is an outer thing, however Suable — but beauty, founded upon a spiritual realisation of ________________ * Cf. Laotse's famous epigram: The one who knows the Secret does not speak: The one who speaks does not the Secret know. Page 199 unity and harmony ...
... imaginative projection of certain strong mental beliefs and vital attitudes touched by an intuition of God and of a supernatural Beyond. There is no direct occult experience, no immediate spiritual realisation at the back of it. Something from the occult domain and the spiritual plane was sure to come on the breath of the intense and authentic inspiration that was Dante's, but upon it and around... The start would be far beyond it. An ādesh, a divine command, would be upon his mind in poetic work as in any other. And the command would bring about an expression of his multifarious spiritual realisation, his immediate experience of all the inner and upper worlds beyond our earth and pour all his knowledge forth in inevitable words propelled sheer from the mystical truth of things and never ...
... harmony of perfect equals - a balanced play of perfect matter, perfect life, perfect mind, brought about by a supreme dynamic principle. This principle is hinted in ancient Indian scriptures of spiritual realisation in various terms. The Vedas invoke it as Satyam Ritam Brihat - the True, the Right, the Vast. The Upanishads chant of it as the ever-blissful omniscient and omnipotent Lord locked in supe... of telepathy and precognition are pointers. But with the acceptance of these pointers its whole stance vis-a-vis the varieties of religious experience and the revelations of mystical and spiritual realisation must undergo a change. Bertrand Russell's statement that the declarations of mystics can be taken merely as expressive of psychological phenomena and not of aspects of ontological truth can ...
... findings and some of their representative documentary evidences are as follows: (A) The Waking State and the Highest Realisation It is claimed that the highest heights of spiritual realisation are not compatible with the waking state; they can be acquired only by means of the Yogic trance or Samadhi. In this connection the case of Sri Chaitanya is often cited. According to the... Compatible with the Highest State of Realisation It is often pointed out that for a really dynamic life with purposive action, a certain fall from the supreme state of spiritual realisation becomes inevitable. Simple actions meant for the maintenance of bodily life may be altogether innocuous, but other actions are sure to involve the embodied soul in some sort of bondage and ...
... rejection of the objects of enjoyment. But why so? Why this stern rejection? The reasons are many and are of different orders. There are first, reasons arising out of a very genuine spiritual realisation; there are at the same time metaphysical reasons, psychological reasons, pragmatic reasons, even reasons issuing forth from what Krishna terms in the Gita as 'kṣudram hṛdaya-daurbalyam',... not eradicated, how can a veritable spiritual consciousness be established? For are they not diametrically antithetical in nature? It follows, then, that a sadhaka who would aspire to have spiritual realisation worth the name must shun action as far as it is compatible with the bare maintenance of embodied life. These then are some of the principal reasons which have induced the spokespersons ...
... same as cosmic consciousness ? Does one come to it after the psychic and spiritual transformations? Is it something like seeing Brahman in everybody and everywhere or what? It is not spiritual realisation, I suppose, I mean realisation of Self ? You see I am a nincompoop in this business. Please perorate a little. [Sri Aurobindo:] Eternal Jehovah! You don't even know what Brahman is! You... your shoulders, I may say that realisation of the Self is the beginning of Brahman realisation - the Brahman consciousness -the Self in all and all in the Self, etc. It is the basis of the spiritual realisation and therefore of the spiritual transformation; but one has to see it in all sorts of aspects and applications first and that I refuse to go into. If you want to know, you have to read the ...
... which it is made. Aesthetically, the delight takes the appearance of Rasa and the enjoyment of this Rasa is the mind's and the vital s reaction to the perception of Beauty. The spiritual realisation has a sight, a perception, a feeling which is not that of the mind and vital; — it passes beyond the aesthetic limit, sees the universal beauty, sees behind the object what the eye cannot... other than that of a limited physical vision — what was not beautiful to the eye becomes beautiful, what was beautiful to the eye wears now a greater marvellous and ineffable beauty. The spiritual realisation can bring the vision and the rapture of the All — Beautiful everywhere." 26-10-35 Page 240 the essence. Love and Beauty are powers of Ananda as Light and ...
... of ceremonials and rites comprises spirituality; this too is far from the truth. The truth does not lie in any of these things. A spiritual aspirant may take their help if necessary, but the spiritual realisation is far above them and quite a different thing. One thing is ever associated with the name of Sri Ramakrishna – it is the synthesis of all religions. He has synthesised all religions within... dynamic personality Page 228 was to purify and transform the egoistic 'I' into the real ‘I’, and take part in the play of the Divine Mother in her creation. The future spiritual realisation will follow this line of development; all efforts will seek to make this great realisation still more manifest, widely established and universally practised. Sri Ramakrishna opened this imm ...
... the Path, we have only to follow. The teaching, the realisation is handed down uninterruptedly through millenniums from Master to disciple. In other words, the idea is that the fundamental spiritual realisation remains the 'same always and everywhere: the name and the form only . vary according to the age and the surroundings. The one reality is called variously, says the Veda. Who can say when was... the first dawn! The present dawn has followed the track of the infinite series that has gone by and is the first of the infinite series that is to come. So sings Rishi Kanwa. For the core of spiritual realisation is to possess the consciousness, attain the status of the Spirit. This Spirit may be called God by the theist or Nihil by the Negativist or Brahman (the One) by the Positivist (spiritual). But ...
... the Path, we have only to follow. The teaching, the realisation is handed down uninterruptedly through millenniums from Master to disciple. In other words, the idea is that the fundamental spiritual realisation remains the same always and everywhere: the name and the form only vary according to the age and the surroundings. The one reality is called variously, says the Veda. Who can say when was the... first dawn! The present dawn has followed the track of the infinite series that has gone by and is the first of the I infinite series that is to come. So sings Rishi Kanwa. For the core of spiritual realisation is to possess the consciousness, attain the status of the Spirit. This Spirit may be called God by the theist or Nihil by the Negativist or Brahman (the One) by the Positivist (spiritual). But ...
... the Path, we have only to follow. The teaching, the realisation is handed down uninterruptedly through millenniums from Master to disciple. In other words, the idea is that the fundamental spiritual realisation remains the same always and everywhere: the name and the form only vary according to the age and the surroundings. The one Reality is called variously, says the Veda. Who can say when was the... the first dawn! The present dawn has followed the track of the infinite series that has gone by and is the first of the infinite series that is to come. So sings Rishi Kanwa. For the core of spiritual realisation is to possess the consciousness, attain the status of the Spirit. This Spirit may be called God by the theist or Nihil by the Negativist or Brahman (the One) by the Positivist (spiritual). But ...
... no! He may be of what they call the Radhaswami School. SATYENDRA: But to start that sort of commune, one must have some spiritual realisation first, and hence it will take a long. time. SRI AUROBINDO: Not necessarily. Obviously if one has to wait for spiritual realisation, especially the highest or supramental realisation, it will take time. Spiritual experience is enough for the purpose and that ...
... these verses to them, and so it is said that the origin of the Vedic creation is supernatural, apauruseya. The undistorted and right utterance of these mantras carries in it the power of spiritual realisation. "In The Future Poetry I have said that the poetry of the future at its highest will be mantric, as the Vedas and the Upanishads were. For instance: "There the sun cannot shine and... the vital, but to experience it permanently in the physical consciousness, and feel it constantly in the body, is something that is possible only when one has reached a very high degree of spiritual realisation. Now what remained for me to do was to bring down the Supermind. And it is for that purpose that I had to withdraw and work from behind the veil. Do you follow me?" "Not really!" answered ...
... "the pouring of a new and greater self-vision of man and Nature and existence into the idea and the life". 25 The idea and the response and the experience had also to pass into an integral spiritual realisation, thereby imprinting themselves in the deeper consciousness of the race and acquiring a natural and general currency in everyday human thought and feeling. The signal for the start... meaning of the world, a calling of diviner potentialities and more spiritual values into the intention and structure of his life that is the call upon humanity... 26 It is this spiritual realisation that the future poetry has to help forward by giving to it its eye of sight, its shape of aesthetic beauty, its revealing tongue and it is this greatening of life that it has to make its substance ...
... old. A path at once seductive and perilous, occultism asked for Truth as well as courage, and purity most of all. Sri Aurobindo has listed religion, occultism, spiritual thought and inner spiritual realisation as the "four main lines which Nature has followed in her attempt to open up the inner being". 12 But, then, they have their mutual filiations, and also experiment with varieties of association... without herself being seen.32 But Mirra didn't attach any special importance to such occult adventures. She knew well enough that occultism was at best only a halfway house on the road to spiritual realisation, and there was no point in lingering there for an unconscionable length of time. As an aspirant to the full splendour of spiritual life, she was properly aware that she had to be on her guard ...
... disregarded the guidance of the Guru and preferred the untrained inspirations of the novice could hardly escape the stumbles or even the disasters which so often lie thick around the path to spiritual realisation. Page 519 I need not enumerate the other benefits which can be drawn from the training that sports can give or dwell on their use in the national life; what I have said is sufficient ...
... touch with the high, one, universal and transcendent Existence in us & without us in our progress towards a final unity. All religious worship, sincerely done, all emotional, intellectual and spiritual realisation of that which is higher than ourselves, all steadily practised increase of essential power, purity, love or knowledge, all sacrifice and self-transcending amounts to some form of Yoga. But Yoga ...
... the praise & invocation of the gods who preside over particular functionings in our nature & in world-nature; they are statements of experience packed full of psychological detail and minute spiritual realisation, which confirm the seer & help the seeker. They are truth of experience & have therefore no room Page 566 for speculation; they are ascertained truth & give therefore no room to ...
... thought and inner discipline have been full since the earliest Vedic times. However high and arduous this aim may be, it has always seemed to it possible and even in a way near and normal, once spiritual realisation has discovered its path. The positivist Western mind finds it difficult to give this conception the rank of a living and intelligible idea. The status of the siddha, bhāgavata, mukta appears ...
... the same root, is urged from a different experience and has no validity for the Indian experience. For this unity on which all is upborne, carries in itself the infinite space and calm of the spiritual realisation, and there is no need for other unfilled spaces or tracts of calm of a lesser more superficial kind. The eye is here only a way of access to the soul, it is to that that there is the appeal ...
... embodies in visible form what the Upanishads threw out into inspired thought and the Mahabharata and Ramayana portrayed by the word in life. This sculpture like the architecture springs from spiritual realisation, and what it creates and expresses at its greatest is the spirit in form, the soul in body, this or that living soul power Page 289 in the divine or the human, the universal and ...
... idea that the tendency of metaphysical abstraction is the one note of the Indian spirit which dominates or inspires all its cadences. Its real Page 12 key-note is the tendency of spiritual realisation, not cast at all into any white monotone, but many-faceted, many-coloured, as supple in its adaptability as it is intense in its highest pitches. The note of spirituality is dominant, initial ...
... means of knowledge, excluding none, and put them into their synthetic relation to the one Truth, the one supreme and universal reality. Eventually, its real value is to prepare a basis for spiritual realisation and the growing of the human being into his divine self and divine nature. Science itself becomes only a knowledge of the world which throws an added light on the spirit of the universe and ...
... n of the overmind cognition and its will to carry each aspect, each power, each possibility to its independent fullness. But the Supermind keeps always and in every status or condition the spiritual realisation of the Unity of all; the intimate presence of that unity is there even within the completest grasp of each thing, each state given its whole delight of itself, power and value: there is thus ...
... importance and is no flimsy foil to heaven. India today is awake to that deep instinct and its penchant is for synthesis, for many-sided unity. And the Dynamic Yoga which is the other side of spiritual realisation in India's past falls in with such a penchant. THE DOUBLE PRACTICALITY OF THE GITA This dynamic Yoga regards the world as a field of God's manifestation, not ...
... s that found and continually heighten, expand and enrich that consciousness and in the building of a life and action that is in conformity with the truth of the spirit: this is the work of spiritual realisation and experience." 3 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 ...
... by a narration of external events supplemented by a psychological commentary. To arrive at some vision of it one would have to catch an inkling of not only the vast mysteries of traditional spiritual realisation but also the dazzling immensities of the new earth-transforming light which he called the Supermind and which he endeavoured for forty years to bring down in toto for suffering humanity. As ...
... karna and Shishupala-Dantavaktra. My immature mind with its fertile imagination, often wondered whether the players who opposed the Mother on the tennis court would have a quicker spiritual realisation on that count. Even now, although a part of my mature intellect ridicules that idea, another part nods gravely and thinks that there might be something in that notion. Whether they made spiritual ...
... in the siddhi of nature's dissolution She joined back with the origin, love alone. Then the form behind the impersonal grew bright. 27 May 2002 siddhi: a settled spiritual realisation She joined back with the Origin: The Mother's experience of 1 October 1958 Agenda, Vol. 1, pp. 198, 202-03. Page 41 Canto Forty But perhaps she would have slipped ...
... then Knowledge that is Brahman, — so rising to the sensational and the idealistic realisations of the truth — and at last Bliss of Existence that is Brahman. There he pauses in the ultimate spiritual realisation, the highest formulation of knowledge that man can attain. The Conscient therefore and not the Inconscient was the Truth at which the ancient psychology arrived; and it distinguished ...
... the universe, viewed essentially as the evolution of consciousness. The Nature of Reality and Evolution of Consciousness Sri Aurobindo's experience confirms the perennial spiritual realisation of the seers of all times that behind the manifold, ever-changing and evanescent appearances of the universe there is an abiding Reality which has been conceived variously as God, Brahman ...
... existence. Something that is unknown and unreachable is brought closer to us. In it is the greatness of Jnaneshwari . We may restate it differently: the function of poetry should be to help spiritual realisation by which poetry too can realise the deeper sense of its creative functions. In it the means and aims get united as if an artistic urge found expression for the spirit’s delight in universal ...
... me, the body as well as the mind and life is a part of the Divine Whole, a form of the Spirit and therefore not to be disregarded or despised as something incurably, gross and incapable of spiritual realisation or of spiritual use. Matter itself is secretly a form of the Spirit, and has to reveal itself as that, can be made to wake to consciousness and evolve and realise the Spirit, the Divine within ...
... life or work or none that had any importance. But this is not the case here: we have undertaken a work which includes life and action and the physical world. In what I am trying to do, the spiritual realisation is the first necessity but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in man, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. The Ashram ...
... . Therefore the Mother sometimes quipped that coming into contact with her was contagious. “The power of spiritual contagion”, she said, was “the only efficacious one” to communicate one’s spiritual realisation. “The only thing that is truly effective is the possibility of transferring to others the state of consciousness in which one lives oneself. But one cannot improvise this power; one cannot imitate ...
... the spiritual evolution itself as preparatory movements disciplining, purifying or giving a suitable form to the nature; but they still belong to the mental evolution, – the beginning of a spiritual realisation, experience, change is not yet there. Spirituality is in its essence an awakening of the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an ...
... spiritual interchange. He told her that he had an extraordinary meditation which was entirely due to her, and she was aware of his state of consciousness and discovered in him a remarkable spiritual realisation and a considerable insight on the inner plane. It was the realisition of the Gita or part of it which he had built up in himself, peace, equanimity, the sense of the Divine within, and the ...
... not at all true that I don't care for the sadhaks and their sadhana. Why should the world conditions being bad make me cease to care! It would be rather a reason for insisting more on a quick spiritual realisation as the only way out of the impasse. You should not believe in what you hear from people; such constantly nasty and disturbing things are being said which are quite untrue. You are not so empty ...
... happened that a few months later a gurubhai was rude to a visitor. I quickly forgot my own similar misdemeanour and wrote to Gurudev condemning the delinquent out of hand. I asked whether spiritual realisation ought not to make people humble and courteous rather than rude and boorish. This time he reprimanded me politely, but firmly: "But when on earth were politeness and good society manners ...
... free from undue passion and is prepared to concede that it is not always right and may err; but it is not safe to depend on it alone in matters which escape its jurisdiction, especially in spiritual realisation and in matters of yoga which belong to a different order of knowledge. The extreme acuteness of your difficulties is due to the yoga having come down against the bed-rock of In ...
... idealistic." And if Mallarme had been a little more of a mystic he would have been enabled to hold against the so-called concreteness of the material results of Science the con-creteness of spiritual realisation. To the genuine mystic, God is a reality to be seen and touched and embraced with subtle senses which for all their subtlety put us in relation to some undeniable substance — to him there are ...
... archetypes of our whole being wait not merely to be reached but to be invoked for manifestation here below after having been attained. This plane is the Supermind as distinguished from the top of spiritual realisation up to now, which he has named the Overmind. The distinction between the Divine who is "over" and the Divine who is "super" brings me to your request to me to say "something about our ...
... up my mind to it. In answer to my reference to a "warning" she had given me she explained: "as for what I meant in my last letter it was simply that there were things which might delay your spiritual realisation and might be otherwise dangerous for you. This does not mean that the realisation will not come." (A general statement of the Mother's may be cited from Questions and Answers of 1957 (p. 165): ...
... passage - "Thy goal, thy road... the indwelling God" - seems a counterpart to the Page 135 earlier one. While the latter gives the feel of outer time and space as the field of spiritual realisation, the former points inward, the "road" of days and nights leading to a discovery of the Immortal within - "thy secret self", "the indwelling God." Book Seven, Canto Two provides you with ...
... reported was "quite accurate". Nor can this sadhak feel sufficiently grateful for the gracious statement of the Mother's to him on 19 May 1944: "...there were things which might act to delay your spiritual realisation and might be otherwise dangerous for you. This does not mean that the Page 226 realisation will not come." Even less than a decade before she left her body she could allay his ...
... fundamental reality to the exclusion of all reality of Mind, Life or Matter except as an imposition on the Self or unsubstantial shadows cast by the Spirit might help to an independent and radical spiritual realisation but not to an integral and valid solution of the truth of cosmic and individual existence. An integral knowledge then must be a knowledge of the truth of all sides of existence both separately ...
... ready for it might feel it through the veil of the language they use and himself draw near to the same experience. Or if, having reached the intellectual conclusion, they had passed on to the spiritual realisation, finding the way or following one already found, then in pursuing their thought, one might be preparing oneself for the same transition. But there is nothing of the kind in all this strenuous ...
... his failures but to go on aspiring and trust in the Divine Grace. He should not allow himself to be impeded by narrow caste ideas. Always in India the Brahmins have bowed down before a man of spiritual realisation, who becomes by that very fact of realisation above caste. He should open himself more to the help from here. Man is a mass of imperfections—it is only by the divine Grace that he reaches the ...
... It leads man first through his needs and desires; it guides him next through enlarged needs and desires modified and enlightened by a mental and moral ideal. It is preparing to lead him to a spiritual realisation that overrides these things and yet fulfils and reconciles them in all that is divinely true in their spirit and purpose. It transforms the needs and desires into a divine Will and Ananda. It ...
... may be the untoward consequence. This is not a Yoga in which Page 282 abnormality of any kind, even if it be an exalted abnormality, can be admitted as a way to self-fulfilment or spiritual realisation. Even when one enters into supernormal and suprarational experience, there should be no disturbance of the poise which must be kept firm from the summit of the consciousness to its base; the ...
... occupation of a very solid ground; for, although it is in itself no more than a mental formulation, the experience it formulates into a philosophy accompanies a most powerful and apparently final spiritual realisation. It comes upon us with a great force of awakening to reality when the thought is stilled, when the mind withdraws from its constructions, when we pass into a pure selfhood void of all sense ...
... in the outward nature, it may be a continuation of superficial ego-action witnessed but not accepted by the inner being, or a mental dynamism that cannot be perfectly expressive of the inner spiritual realisation; for there is no equipollence between action of mind and status of spirit. Even at the best where there is an intuitive guidance of Light from within, the nature of its expression in dynamism ...
... the lower Page 512 knowledge, the knowledge of the apparent world; secondly, the knowledge which seeks to know the truth of existence from within, in its source and reality, by spiritual realisation. Ordinarily, a sharp distinction is drawn between the two, and it is supposed that when we get to the higher knowledge, the God-knowledge, then the rest, the world-knowledge, becomes of no concern ...
... have to exclude Buddha and Christ whose mission was not at all to destroy evil-doers and deliver the good, but to bring to all men a new spiritual message and a new law of divine growth and spiritual realisation. On the other hand, if we give to the word dharma only its religious sense, in which it means a law of religious and spiritual life, we shall indeed get to the kernel of the matter, but we shall ...
... and then Knowledge that is Brahman,—so rising to the sensational and the idealistic realisations of the truth—and at last Bliss of Existence that is Brahman. There he pauses in the ultimate spiritual realisation, the highest formulation of knowledge that man can attain. The Conscient therefore and not the Inconscient was the Truth at which the ancient psychology arrived; and it distinguished three ...
... consciousness. The moonlit maidān is the spiritual consciousness at the doors of which you are standing as it were and feeling its peace and ease. The moon generally indicates spiritual realisation in the mind. Page 144 The moon indicates different things according to circumstances—most often spiritual consciousness in the mind. The light above the head is never ...
... with the Divine. Page 230 The egoism of the instrument can be as dangerous or more dangerous to spiritual progress than the egoism of the doer. The ego-sense is contrary to spiritual realisation, so how can any kind of ego be a thing to be encouraged? As for the magnified ego, it is one of the most perilous obstacles to release and perfection. There should be no big I, not even a small ...
... of oneness by psychic sympathy, but not any unification, for the psychic is the individual soul and must unify itself with the Divine before it can through the Divine unify with others. In spiritual realisation there are two quite opposite forms—one in which one withdraws from all outer things including all material beings in the world to merge in the Divine and one in which one feels the Self or the ...
... free from undue passion and is prepared to concede that it is not always right and may err; but it is not safe to depend on it alone in matters which escape its jurisdiction, especially in spiritual realisation and in matters of Yoga which belong to a different order of knowledge. The Divine may be difficult, but his difficulties can be overcome if one keeps at him. Page 634 Why ...
... above, from the psychic or from the higher consciousness. Knowledge, Experience and Realisation 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 ...
... life or work or none that had any importance. But this is not the case here. We have undertaken a work which includes life and action and the physical world. In what I am trying to do, the spiritual realisation is the first necessity, but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in man, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. The Asram ...
... to oppose the convictions of others, who are not following this way but another. Religions quarrel and collide with each other, but we are not creating a religion, we are following a path of spiritual realisation, into which those only need come who are drawn to it and have the call. 4 January 1932 Page 814 Write to X that it was his own mistake. He must not mix up the things of Yoga ...
... is a thing apart, not to be measured by any human standards. The Sun's rays are of use to somebody—you say all my acts and life and laborious opening of the Way I thought I had made for spiritual realisation, are of no use to anybody—since nobody is strong enough to follow the path, only the Avatar can do it. Poor lonely ineffective fellow of an Avatar! We respect him, adore him, lay ourselves ...
... yoga; he has founded an Asram in Pondicherry but its members are not Sannyasis, do not wear the ochre garb or practise complete asceticism but are sadhaks of a yoga of life based on spiritual realisation. This has always been Sri Aurobindo's idea and it was never otherwise. He saw Swami Brahmananda only once when he went on a boat trip to visit the Belur math; he had then about fifteen minutes' ...
... they could recognize a World-Teacher.... Mirra Richard was no less overwhelmed by this vision—this reality—of the new Man. [ Altered to: ] Mira Devi who had already gone far in spiritual realisation and occult vision and experience, was no less overwhelmed by this vision ... ...
... is no attachment to outward things for their own sake and all is only for the Mother and the life through the inner psychic being is centred in her that the best condition is created for the spiritual realisation. 11 November 1935 Page 307 Fear in these experiences is a thing one must get rid of; if there is any danger, a call to the Mother is sufficient, but in reality there is none—for ...
... e. He told her that he had an extraordinary meditation which was entirely due to her, and she was aware of his state of consciousness and discovered in Page 38 him a remarkable spiritual realisation and a considerable insight on the inner plane. It was the realisation of the Gita or part of it which he had built up in himself, peace, equanimity, the sense of the Divine within, and the ...
... I have said that this Yoga was "new" because it aims at a change in this world and not only beyond it and at a supramental realisation. But how does that justify a superior contempt for the spiritual realisation which is as much the aim of this Yoga as of any other? Page 302 What I fail to comprehend is how they spend their whole lives in the pursuit of self-realisation. Is it such a long ...
... Ignorance in the present world always seek people who can express their ignorance in the world. This is not difficult! There are many people ready to say ignorant things, that is, to deny all spiritual realisation, deny the capacity for progress, deny the possibility of realising another life than this existing one, deny that human nature can be changed, and so on; or if you like, ready to affirm that ...
... Only those who are conscious incarnations of the Divine naturally carry in themselves the possibility of the two perfections, but this is exceptional. People who had a spiritual life, a great spiritual realisation, were able at certain exceptional moments to have a capacity for outward realisation; this also was exceptional, but it was intermittent and never had the integrality, the totality, the perfection ...
... order, and it is something almost repugnant for one who is truly in relation with the higher forces. Page 262 To act in order to accomplish a work with the spontaneous powers of spiritual realisation, that is well understood. But one may say that everybody does that, because just the fact of thinking means that you are acting invisibly; and according to the power of your thought your action ...
... one transcends one's present mode of being and rises to a new, a higher, a wider mode of consciousness. yogi One who practises yoga; but especially, one who is already established in spiritual realisation, one who has attained the goal of yoga. Page-255 ...
... power is of a lower order, and it is something almost repugnant for one who is truly in relation with the higher forces. To act in order to accomplish a work with the spontaneous powers of spiritual realisation, that is well understood. But one may say that everybody does that, because just the fact of thinking means that you are acting invisibly; and according to the power of your thought your action ...
... peace that is strong and dynamic. This is what could be called a new aspect of the divine intervention in life, a new form of intervention of the divine forces in existence, a new aspect of spiritual realisation. Page 305 ...
... not at all true that I don't care for the sadhaks and their sadhana. Why should the world conditions being bad make me cease to care! It would be rather a reason for insisting more on a quick spiritual realisation as the only way out of the impasse. You should not believe in what you hear from people; so constantly nasty and disturbing things are being said which are quite untrue. 8 October 1940 ...
... it, and the experience you relate seems to me a valid promise that it will come. As for what I meant in my last letter it was simply that there were things which might act to delay your spiritual realisation and might be otherwise dangerous for you. This does not mean that the realisation will not come. 19 May 1944 You had the experience you describe when the force was acting chiefly ...
... understand, to form a 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 ...
... there are not many cases where the parents help you in your spiritual progress, because they are usually more interested in a worldly realisation. Parents who are primarily interested in spiritual realisation usually do not ask their children to come back to them. Blessings. 8 November 1969 Sweet Mother, Why should one take part in the sports' competitions and demonstrations? ...
... Words of the Mother - II Helping Others and the World Suffering inflicted on others is not a good base on which to build spiritual realisation. To advance alone on the path can be a form of egoism. One can liberate oneself alone only if the others refuse to follow. One must therefore first offer to lead them along. And if this burdens the advance and ...
... t silences rapture-stunned, where what would otherwise be abstract springs into concrete-ness because of the vitality of each accurate word, a vitality echoing the very act of a high spiritual realisation, so deeply and intimately does the whole line vibrate in our consciousness. It is not easy to grasp the essential nature of this rhythm. Page 43 Nothing short of constant ...
... is deeply significant. The new name is ¹. Sri Aurobindo on Himself, SABCL Vol. 26, p. 136. Page 195 of importance because it emerged out of spiritual realisation. It does not have its origin or ground merely in the veneration paid by disciples. As such, I feel that it should be kept up as far as possible - though we need not make a fetish of ...
... which we at once feel to be no whit less than Plato's or Spinoza's or Hegel's, but none of these giants was a full-fledged Yogi. Sri Aurobindo's intellect is an instrument used by a spiritual realisation: not one sentence anywhere is inspired by the intellect alone. If the philosopher's realisation is poor and fragmentary, the philosophy will seem narrow in spite of the intellect being ...
... a narration of external events supplemented by a psychological commentary. To arrive at some vision of it one would have to catch an inkling of not only the vast mysteries of traditional spiritual realisation but also the dazzling immensities of the new earth-transforming light which he called the Supermind and which he endeavoured for forty years to bring down in toto for suffering humanity ...
... an immature child (vālavat) or of a madman (unmattavat) or of a demon (piśācavat) or, in the extreme case, he may even be totally inert (jaḍavat). Evidently, this sort of spiritual realisation, luminous inside and disjointed outside , cannot be compatible with the goal of the Integral Yoga which seeks to objectivise the inner spirituality in a divine and dynamic world-action. For ...
... use of the universal Shakti for the purposes of our physical functionings. This limitation is bound to subsist, whatever may be the level or intensity of our inner illumination and spiritual realisation, unless and until the problem is tackled at its basal station, that is to say, to have the very physical system get transfigured. But precisely this will be one of the results of the ...
... that first, acquire that, and criticize no one, for all doctrines and creeds have some good in them. Show by your lives that religion does not mean words, or names, or sects, but that it means spiritual realisation. Only those can understand who have felt. Only those who have attained to spirituality can communicate it to others, can be great teachers of mankind. They alone are the powers of light.' ...
... is a thing apart, not to be measured by any human standards. The Sun's rays are of use to somebody—you say all my acts and life and laborious opening of the way I thought I had made for spiritual realisation, are of no use to anybody—since nobody is strong enough to follow the path, only the Avatar can do it. Poor lonely ineffective fellow of an Avatar! We respect him, adore him, lay ourselves ...
... Maharshi himself: "One day something opened in the heart and I began to hear 'I, I, I' and everywhere I started seeing the 'I'." DR. SATYENDRA: Different people say different things about spiritual realisation. How are we to know which is the highest? Our own choice is not necessarily the highest. THE MOTHER: Each goes to the limit of his own consciousness. I have met any number of people in Europe ...
... What do you mean by divine realisation? NIRODBARAN: I mean Peace, Bliss, Presence. SRI AUROBINDO: There is a divine realisation and there is a realisation of the Divine—that is to say, spiritual realisation. If one gains control over the vital nature by the influence of the Atman, the Self, that is a divine realisation. NIRODBARAN: Control by an influence, I suppose, comes and goes. It is not ...
... submitted, saying, "Vivekananda should know best." SATYENDRA: Even from those who didn't object, all didn't take active part in the service. Brahmananda,4 for example. We have heard that his spiritual realisation was higher than Vivekananda's. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, I think he was spiritually higher. I once met him when I went to see Belur Math. He asked me about some letter he had received from the ...
... the gross body and the subtle body as also of the centers or charkas of subtle body, the opening of which is essential for the fullness or perfection of the body, life and mind as also of spiritual realisation and manifestation. The recent discoveries of the powers that lie embedded in the organic cell of the body are amazing, and it has been found that the spiritual and supramental powers, when ...
... nothing funny about it - perfectly rational, coherent and clear. 25 (3) "Brahman asking Brahmam what Brahman is!" NB: Guru, what the deuce is "Brahman consciousness"? It is not spiritual realisation, I suppose, I mean realisation of Self? You see I am a nincompoop in this business. Please perorate a little. Sri Aurobindo: Eternal Jehovah! You don't even know Page 335 ...
... not to be measured by our human standards. Sri Aurobindo: The Sun's rays are of use to somebody -you say all my acts and life and laborious opening of the way I thought I had made for spiritual realisation, are of no use to anybody - since nobody is strong enough to follow the path, only the Avatar can do it. Poor lonely ineffective fellow of an Avatar! NB: We respect him, adore him, lay ...
... that had any importance. Page 63 But this is not the case here. We have undertaken a work which includes life and action and the physical world. In what I am trying to do, the spiritual realisation is the first necessity, but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in men, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. ... Discipline ...
... self-nature and world-nature, as far as possible, and then offer them to the Divine as a fit instrument for his divine manifestation upon earth. Our aspiration is not merely to enjoy the delight of spiritual realisation in our inner consciousness; what we aim at in our yoga is that our outer nature and being too should fully and integrally participate in the spiritual fulfilment. In the inimitable words of ...
... otherwise, who knows, you may stumble on the path and break your limbs. In the name of the Divine do not give up everything else. For the result may be that you will lose both the ends: a spiritual realisation worth the name will elude you while you will completely lose your life in the world. After all, you should know that to fulfil all the hard conditions of an Integral Yoga may perhaps be possible ...
... confluence, the Supreme. Of course, such is the case in the experience of the novice sadhaka. Later on, when the sadhana will become mature and the sadhaka's mental ideas give place to direct spiritual realisation, he will come to feel concretely that there is indeed one unique Reality functioning in the world, and that the three separate elements of our anal is above are not different and separate ...
... for a moment was veiled. A wide, strong, calm but dynamic vital capable of right emotion, right decision, and right execution by force and energy, is an invaluable aid to the psychic and spiritual realisation. The body by its nature is a docile and faithful instrument. But it is very often misused by the mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, and by the vital with its passions ...
... basic tenets of Sri Aurobindo's world-vision. In the normal conception of traditional ascetic spirituality, Matter and Spirit are antithetical; love of the earthly existence and a truly spiritual realisation are not compatible. To have one, one has to renounce the other. But in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga-philosophy, the Supreme One has at the same time a triple aspect, an aspect of transcendence, a second ...
... cases where parents help you in your spiritual progress, because they are generally more interested in a worldly realisation. Page 131 Parents who are chiefly interested in spiritual realisation do not usually ask their children to go back to visit them." (Ibid., p. 161) (3) Question: "Some children ask me what is the best way of spending their holidays here [in the Ashram] ...
... for a moment was veiled. A wide, strong, calm but dynamic vital capable of right emotion, right decision, and right execution by force and energy, is an invaluable aid to the psychic and spiritual realisation. (iii) The body by its nature is a docile and faithful instrument. But it is very often misused by the mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, and by the vital with its ...
... enchantment hewn from the moon's lucent quarries, but the eternal dream of a love that survives death." 2 Indian sculpture, particularly the more ancient sculptural art, springs from spiritual realisation, and what it creates and expresses at its greatest is the spirit in form, the soul in body, this or that living soul-power in the Divine or the human, the universal and the cosmic individualised ...
... I have said that this Yoga is "new" because it aims at a change in this world and not only beyond it and at a supra-mental realisation. But how does that justify a superior contempt for the spiritual realisation which is as much the aim of this Yoga as of any other? It becomes clear now that I had some fundamentally wrong ideas about the old Yogas and Yogins. They were actually not my ...
... Mother's touch coming from above and felt by the psychic and vital together. Day by day it is now becoming obvious that the Mother is bestowing upon her child a psychic and spiritual realisation simultaneously. It is an immense progress. Through my forehead something has definitely been coming from above. The descent is powerful as well as rapid. ...
... consciousness. Page 191 There is a considerable advantage in getting rid of one's limits, if not from the point of view of actual accomplishment, at least from the point of view of spiritual realisation. Page 192 ...
... evil is not simply embraced but dissolved and even transmuted into a supreme reality of which it is an aberration, a reflection or projection, a lower formulation. That is the mystery of a spiritual realisation to which Goethe aspired perhaps, but had not the necessary initiation to enter into. Page 139 ...
... tamasa gudham. It burrows a hole in the earth consciousness, enters into the basic inconscience, steals all the light and happiness from above and hides them in the underground darkness. No spiritual realisation can come and stay unless this nibbling enemy is tracked and brought to light. The Veda gives a similar image. The panis, the dark Asuras seize even the sun and store it away in their secret ...
... example how one can rise to a godly or divine nature from a human nature. God reveals this sadhana through his human life. Man knows himself as sinful, afflicted, weak and helpless. To him the spiritual realisation, the divine Life, the divine Consciousness may seem to be futile and hollow dreams, like the castle in the air. These are only luxurious idealisms which are not for all, at least for many. Only ...
... freedom in a thousand bonds of delight." — Gitanjali, 73. Page 371 a Yogic consciousness. Still his major perceptions, those that count, stand and are borne out by the highest spiritual realisation. Tagore is no inventor or innovator when he posits Spirit as Beauty, the spiritual consciousness as the ardent rhythm of ecstasy. This experience is the very core of Vaishnavism and for ...
... belonging to the normal consciousness. There is a considerable advantage in getting rid of one's limits, if not from the point of view of actual accomplishment, at least from the point of view of spiritual realisation. Page 430 ...
... knowledge or maya as now, they become instruments of real knowledge, receptacles or transmitters of the truth and reality behind and above. Indeed we say habitually, when speaking of spiritual realisation, that one sees the truth, one has to see the truth: to know the truth, to know the reality is taken to mean to see the truth, to see the reality, and what does this signify? It signifies ...
... man to the possession of the spirit, even so capacities on the vital plane, – mere self-control, patience and forbearance or endurance and perseverance do not create a claim to spiritual Page 70 realisation, let alone physical austerities. In conformity with the Upanishadic standard, one may not be an unworthy son or an unworthy disciple, one may be strong, courageous, patient, calm ...
... a view to collaborating and uniting with others in the realisation of a global truth. In the spiritual sphere also Sri Aurobindo gives us the same ideal and outlook. In the early days spiritual realisation was sought for personal salvation, a complete renunciation of the world, absolute freedom from this transient unhappy world ― anityam asukham lokam imam. The individual person leaves ...
... detachment and calm prayer and good-will: oftener perhaps to forget the departed is the best way to help him. A truly conscious help can be given only by one who has the requisite occult power and spiritual realisation — the Guru, for example. III Once in its place of rest the soul enjoys profound peace and delight and is in a kind of luminous sleep. There it assimilates all the experiences ...
... good which Thou approvest. Or, Shadowless is thy Light... The beauty of which is enhanced By my tears. These expressions are wonderful and sweet to the ear. But, the deep spiritual realisation or the highest truth which these words pretend to convey is but happy imagination and pleasant fancy. The true realisation of the spiritual consciousness is quite a different thing. Liberation ...
... enthusiasm and eagerness takes the path set by the knowledge and experience of the shastra, the guru comes in and with his vision and guidance lifts the sadhak's knowledge and sadhana towards spiritual realisation. And the fourth aid is Time. If Time is not ripe nothing can happen. Every realisation has a time-cycle, a period of the divine movement. The one who had raised the question of ...
... This sadhana and endeavour have been going on both at the inner and the outer levels of life, right from the Vedic times or even earlier. The Rishis used to call this "loksiddhi" or "spiritual realisation". The gods' heaven and the human earth will one day be like two sisters born of the same Mother, amartyah martyena sayonih. It is this goal of life that I have called Spiritual Height and ...
... The Human Divine: Collected Works, Vol. 5; Light of Lights. Page 40 Dreamer and revolutionary, linguist, scholar, critic, poet, philosopher and man of deep spiritual realisation, Nolini Kanta Gupta stands foremost among the men of this century who are destined to leave their mark on generations to come. Born on 13 January 1889 of a cultured and well-to-do family ...
... all high purposes, achievements and ideals of life not excluding the spiritual change: but it is an instrument that must be dropped when its work is done and though there may be and must be spiritual realisation while yet m the body, it can only come to its full fruition after the abandonment of the physical frame. More ordinarily in the spiritual tradition the body has been regarded as an obstacle ...
... with a view to collaborating and uniting with others in the realisation of a global truth. In the spiritual sphere also Sri Aurobindo gives us the same ideal and outlook. In the early days spiritual realisation was sought for personal salvation, a complete renunciation of the world, absolute freedom from this transient Page 33 unhappy world— anityam asukham lokam imam. The individual ...
... to the spiritual evolution itself as preparatory movements disciplining, purifying or giving a suitable form to the nature; but they still belong to, the mental evolution,-the beginning of a spiritual realisation, experience, change is not yet there. Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body. An ...
... body, but not over the whole physical nature; and even the best control acquired by Rajayoga is neither conquest nor conversion. The bitter truth has to be admitted that no amount of spiritual realisation has ever been able to overcome the inherent darkness and disabilities of the physical part of our human nature. Inertia, obscurity, disease, decrepitude and death, doubt, obstinacy in error ...
... Earth by the Mother in her Prayers and Meditation. These Prayers are no glistening gossamer of imaginative idealism, nor an imposing fabric of theological speculation, but undeniable facts of spiritual realisation,—truths seen, words heard, forms touched, at least as concretely as the objects of the outer senses, but all in a world or worlds of light, sealed to the sense-bound consciousness of men. It ...
... poise on it, so that a certain amount of self-mastery may be achieved by the individual soul, and its consciousness, released from the trammels of ignorance, may advance, unimpeded, towards spiritual realisation. This practice of self-discipline, unless it goes to extreme forms of renunciation and mortification, is common to all religions and Yogas. But asceticism usually defeats its own purpose ...
... feel to be no whit less than Plato's or Spinoza's or Hegel's, but none of these giants was a full-fledged Yogi. Page 418 Sri Aurobindo's intellect is an instrument used by a spiritual realisation: not one sentence anywhere is inspired by the intellect alone.* Spiritual activity is essentially a harmonising, unitive and blissfully creative experience; intellectual activity is ...
... eternal Witness". VIII It is not of course to be expected that what was experienced as the apotheosis of a mystic movement of consciousness should be the final fullness of her spiritual realisation. What she had won on 26 November was apparently the result of her own effort, her adventurous journey towards the Alone, the All. And now, in some of the subsequent meditations, Mirra calls ...
... me the body as well as the mind and life is a part of the Divine Whole, a form of the Spirit and therefore not to be disregarded or despised as something incurably gross and incapable of spiritual realisation or of spiritual use. 67 In another letter, written the very next day, he referred to Narayan Jyotishi, a Calcutta astrologer, who had made the prediction that Sri Aurobindo would ...
... aspiration with which the Integral Yoga starts is such an inclusive and embracing aspiration, which seeks to harmonise and unify all the aspects of the supreme Reality in the most comprehensive spiritual realisation. Sri Aurobindo does not countenance the escapist aspiration of the soul towards the blank peace or the silent void of the unconditioned Vast, as will be evident from the following quotation ...
... Brahman, or the sheer, unqualified Spirit. As in all other Yogas, it is the nature of the means that reflects the nature of the end. Jnânayoga, by making the buddhi the chief instrument of spiritual realisation, effects a split between the Brahman and the world, which is practically and essentially the same split that is made by Sânkhya, and regarding the world or phenomenal Nature as illusory and ...
... ways and methods are but approaches, preparations, subsidiary aids to purification and progress, but the way of Yoga is the royal way, the most rapidly effective and revolutionary means of spiritual realisation. If we study the lives of the greatest mystics. Eastern and Western, we shall see that the most momentous and decisive of their realisations came to them through Yoga, and not through the ...
... "Whatever form of me any devotee with faith desires to worship, I make that faith of his firm and undeviating." By the force of that faith in his cult and worship he gets his desire and the spiritual realisation for which he is at the moment fitted. By seeking all his good from the Divine, he shall come in the end to seek in the Divine all his good. By depending for his joys on the Divine, he shall ...
... symbols here are still obscure to our intelligence, but indications are given which show beyond doubt that they are representations of a psychical experience leading to different states of spiritual realisation and we can see that these are three, outward, mental and supramental, and as the result of the last a Page 337 supreme perfection, a complete and integral action of the whole being ...
... generalising on the basis of the facts of physical science which for some time did duty for philosophy in modern Europe. It has always been in its essential parts an intellectual approach to spiritual realisation. Though in later times it led too much away from life, yet that was not its original character whether in its early Vedantic intuitional forms or in those later developments of it, such as the ...
... a scripture of the Karmayoga, a Light leading us on the path of action, a Gospel of Works. Undoubtedly, the Gita is a Gospel of Works, but of works which culminate in knowledge, that is, in spiritual realisation and quietude, and of works motived by devotion, that is, a conscious surrender of one's whole self first into the hands and then into the being of the Supreme, and not at all of works as they ...
... high-uplifted above the lower instrumentation of Prakriti and controlling the works of the mind and the senses and body in the power of self-knowledge and the pure objectless self-delight of spiritual realisation, niyataṁ karma . 2 Buddhiyoga is fulfilled by karmayoga ; the Yoga of the self-liberating intelligent will finds its full meaning by the Yoga of desireless works. Thus the Gita founds ...
... the spiritual point of view, and even the intellectual, and who yet are apparently and in their outer life quite ordinary. There are others—I have known some who had an absolutely marvellous spiritual realisation, who lived constantly in the divine Presence and yet never had a vision in all their life! And they used to complain about it.... It is a question of temperament, destiny, and probably of the ...
... means than those of restriction and limitation. There is a considerable advantage in getting rid of one's limits, if not from the point of view of realisation in action, at least from that of spiritual realisation. Why do we forget things? Ah! I suppose there are several reasons. First, because one makes use of the memory to remember. Memory is a mental instrument and depends on the formation ...
... literature, he won't make you read badly written books. Now, if you want to read something which helps you from the spiritual point of view, that's another matter, you must ask someone who has a spiritual realisation to help you. You see, there are two very different lines; they can converge because everything can be made to converge; but as I said, there are two lines really very different. One is a ...
... Aurobindo began his practice of Yoga in 1905. At first gathering into it the essential elements of spiritual experience Page 9 that are gained by the paths of divine communion and spiritual realisation followed till now in India, he passed on in search of a more complete experience uniting and harmonising the two ends of existence, Spirit and Matter. Most ways of Yoga are paths to the Beyond ...
... sovereignty. Page 205 It is not the time to speak of these things—for we have kept politics out of our scope. What we have to do is not to trouble ourselves about it but to get the spiritual realisation. The rest will work itself out according to the Divine Decree. 26 January 1935 India and the Expected World War If England is involved in the war, she will naturally call on India ...
... the call in him cannot fail to arrive, if he follows patiently the way towards the Divine. Frankly this is my view of the matter. I have never seen that anyone by changing place arrived at spiritual realisation—it always comes by a change of mind and heart. I put before you what I can see. The rest is for you to consider. 29 May 1936 I have surely never said that you should not want the Divine ...
... his bow of Power, there are many levels of his dynamic Consciousness and each has its own light and force. He is not confined to his position in the heart or to the single cord of the psycho-spiritual realisation. He has also his supramental station above the heart-centre and mind-centres and can descend from there if He wants to do so. 3 March 1937 I am giving below the best brief account by ...
... for me the body as well as the mind and life is a part of the divine whole, a form of the Spirit and therefore not to be disregarded or despised as something incurably gross and incapable of spiritual realisation or of spiritual use. Matter itself is secretly a form of the Spirit and has to reveal itself as that, can be made to wake to consciousness and evolve and realise the Spirit, the Divine within ...
... Grace of Brahman. What a wooden head! What is the use of saying things if you deliberately misinterpret what I write? I said clearly that the pranayam brought me nothing of any kind of spiritual realisation. I had stopped it long before. The Brahman experience came when I was groping for some way, doing no sadhana at all, making no effort because I didn't know what effort to make, all having failed ...
... Yoga which aims at a supramental realisation, it is not usual to give it this name; rather, the Divine is regarded as the Source, the living Sun of Light and Knowledge and Consciousness and spiritual realisation and all that one receives is felt as coming from there and the whole being remoulded by the Divine Hand. This is a greater and more intimate relation than that of the human Guru and disciple ...
... we must dismiss the idea that the tendency of metaphysical abstraction is the one note of the Indian spirit which dominates or inspires all its cadences. Its real key-note is the tendency of spiritual realisation, not cast at all into any white monotone, but many-faceted, many-coloured, as supple in its adaptability as it is intense in its highest pitches. The note of spirituality is dominant, initial ...
... to the spiritual evolution itself as preparatory movements disciplining, purifying or giving a suitable form to the nature; but they still belong to the mental evolution,—the beginning of a spiritual realisation, experience, change is not yet there. Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner ...
... The Psychic Being and Transformation In spiritual experience there exists one sole Being, one sole Existence which embraces all beings and existing things in the universe, and which in spiritual realisation is experienced as the One Self of all things and creatures. But in our ordinary experience we perceive the world as in-habitated by a plurality of beings and things existing outside what we ...
... ready for it might feel it through the Veil of the language they use and himself draw near to the same experience. Or if, having reached the intellectual conclusion, they had passed on to the spiritual realisation, finding the way or following one already found, then in pursuing their thought, one might be preparing oneself for the same transition. But there is nothing of the kind in all this strenuous ...
... disregarded the guidance of the Guru and preferred the untrained inspirations of the novice could hardly escape the stumbles or even the disasters which so often lie thick around the path to spiritual realisation. I need not enumerate the other benefits which can be drawn from the training that sport can give or dwell on their use in the national life; what I have said is sufficient. At any rate, in ...
... other: and few are the cases where parents help you in your spiritual progress, because they are generally more interested in a worldly realisation. Parents who are chiefly interested in spiritual realisation do not usually ask their children to go back to visit them. Blessings. 8 November 1969 Page 160 The students who are not present for the beginning of the school-year on ...
... themselves, they recover them a thousandfold in the movement of the universalised individual towards the Transcendence. There is an ever enlarging experience which takes up the elements of spiritual realisation and in this uplifting and transforming process they become other and greater things than they were and more and more they take their place by sublimation, first in the spiritual-cosmic, then ...
... Power, there are many levels of his dynamic Consciousness and each has its own light and force. He is not confined to his position in the heart or to the single cord of the psycho-spiritual Page 499 realisation. He has also his supramental station above the heartcentre and mind-centres and can descend from there if He wants to do so. Swami Ramatirtha I think Ramatirtha's realisations ...
... Ananda,—he holds and watches it and there is no mere excitement mixed with the divine flow of it through the conscious instrument and the body. There is a greater Ananda of samarpaṇa , of spiritual realisation or divine love, but in the spiritual consciousness and life the Ananda of creation has its place. To observe whether it [ one's work ] is really well done or not and feel the Ananda of ...
... progress in the sadhana. But why be overwhelmed by any wealth of any kind of experiences? What does it amount to after all? The quality of a sadhak does not depend on that; one great spiritual realisation direct and at the centre will often make a great sadhak or Yogi, an army of intermediate Yogic experiences will not, that has been amply proved by a host of instances. You need not therefore ...
... it. The boat also is a usual symbol in the inner visions. The elephant is the spiritual strength that removes obstacles and the horse the force of tapasya that gallops to the summits of the spiritual realisation. The sun is the symbol of the higher Truth. The lotus is the symbol of the inner consciousness. The vision you saw was a symbol of the outward physical consciousness obscured by the ordinary ...
... all divisions and differences. Our spiritual evolution ascends therefore through the relative to the absolute, through the finite to the infinite, through all divisions to oneness. Man in his spiritual realisation begins to find and seize hold on the satisfying intensities of the absolute in the relative, feels the large and serene presence of the infinite in the finite, discovers the reconciling law ...
... all high purposes, achievements and ideals of life not excluding the spiritual change: but it is an instrument that must be dropped when its work is done and though there may be and must be spiritual realisation while yet in the body, it can only come to its full fruition after the abandonment of the physical frame. More ordinarily in the spiritual tradition the body has been regarded as an obstacle ...
... it. The boat also is a usual symbol in the inner visions. The elephant is the spiritual strength that removes obstacles and the horse the force of tapasya that gallops to the summits of the spiritual realisation. The sun is the symbol of the higher Truth. The lotus is the symbol of the inner consciousness. February 1937 I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the ...
... manifested consciousness than the mental human—it can pass from the mental to the spiritual and through degrees of the spiritual to the supramental state. Till then, till it has reached the spiritual realisation, there is no reason why it should cease from birth, it cannot in fact so cease. If having reached the spiritual state, it wills to pass out of the terrestrial manifestation, it may indeed make ...
... is no attachment to outward things for their own sake and all is only for the Mother and the life through the inner psychic being is centred in her that the best condition is created for the spiritual realisation. Your series of experiences are very interesting by the constant (though interspaced) development they illustrate. Here two new significant elements have been added to the previous substance ...
... part of your being sincerely and wholly to the Divine Power. In one form or another the resistance of the mind and the Prana seeking to be independent and fulfil ego under the plea of spiritual realisation is a frequent obstacle in the Yoga. The main difficulty in the sadhana consists in the movements of the lower nature, ideas of the mind, desires and attractions of the vital, habits of ...
... sadhana, the psychic transformation, the spiritual and the supramental. The first two have been done in their own way in other Yogas; the last is a new endeavour. A transformation sufficient for spiritual realisation is attainable by the two former; a transformation sufficient for the divinisation of human life is, in my view, not possible except by a supramental change. Transformation of the Sex-Energy: ...
... and Y and others, if we had no understanding and no sympathy with the difficulties of human nature? It is because I press always on faith and discourage doubt as a means of approach to the spiritual realisation. What spiritual guide with a respect for truth can do otherwise? And if I encourage and support doubt, the only result will be that doubt will last for ever and no assured realisation be po ...
... mental reaches above the human that intervene between the intellect and the Overmind. These can be very stimulating and satisfying up to a certain point and are good for those who want some spiritual realisation on these planes; but the supramental realisation is something much more difficult and exacting in its conditions and the most difficult of all is to bring it down on to the physical level. ...
... with the sadhaks like a tribunal of justice, no sadhana could be possible. I do not see how your reproach against us is justifiable. Our sole duty to the sadhaks is to take them towards their spiritual realisation—we cannot behave like the head of a family intervening in domestic quarrels, supporting one, putting our weight against the other! However often X may stumble we have to take him by the hand ...
... In ancient Indian spiritual thought there was a clearer perception of the difficulty; the practice of truth, virtue, right will and right doing was regarded as a necessity of the approach to spiritual realisation, but in the realisation itself the being arises to the greater consciousness of the Infinite and Eternal and shakes away from itself the burden of sin and virtue, for that belongs to the relativity ...
... action of Love or Knowledge to diminished and corrupted motions or make them accomplices of its own inferior or perverse workings. Life is indispensable to the completeness of the creative spiritual realisation, but life released, transformed, uplifted, not the ordinary mentalised human-animal life, nor the demoniac or Titanic, nor even the divine and the undivine mixed together. Whatever may be done ...
... instrumentation or formula of external being. The inner life has a supreme spiritual importance and the outer has a value only in so far as it is expressive of the inner status. However the man of spiritual realisation lives and acts and behaves, in all ways of his being and acting, it is said in the Gita, "he lives and moves in Me"; he dwells in the Divine, he has realised the spiritual existence. The spiritual ...
... existence the very status and dynamis of a perfection final and absolute. And it is a true perfection, such as nothing before it has yet been in the ascension of the spirit. For even the highest spiritual realisation on the plane of mentality has in it something top-heavy, one-sided and exclusive; even the widest mental spirituality is not wide enough and it is marred too by its imperfect power of self- ...
... stand together; that is One." Ṛtena ṛtam apihitaṁ dhruvaṁ ... daśa śatā saha tasthus, tad ekam . The spiritual intuition lays hold always upon the reality; it is the luminous harbinger of spiritual realisation or else its illuminative light; it sees that which the other powers of our being are labouring to explore; it gets at the firm truth of the abstract representations of the intellect and the ...
... creatures as his own self in many minds and bodies. The old forest-dwelling anchorites even are described continually as busily engaged in doing good to all creatures. This can only be done in the spiritual realisation, not by an effort, for effort is a diminution of freedom, but by a spiritual influence or by a spiritual mastery over the minds of men and the workings of Nature, which reflects the divine effective ...
... exploration of their details, a familiarity with their soul-scapes, their denizens, their creative potencies such as you come across nowhere else in the world's literature of religious, occult, spiritual realisation. Where except in Sri Aurobindo does one find precise and extended accounts not only of the in-worlds but also of the worlds above the mental level - the "overhead" planes which Sri Aurobindo ...
... above the brain: a Will not his own though mysteriously reflected in his volition is almost palpably master of his destiny and gives him peace and illumination and happy certainty of spiritual realisation, even in spite of himself! The imperious Grace from "overhead" is typically the Supermind's largesse. The converse of this integrating of sincere yet in some respects hopelessly weak souls ...
... the Infinite are themselves infinite in their own way, the Shankarite experience and perception is tremendous and splendid; yet, however grand, even however inevitable in the course of spiritual realisation, it is far indeed from being the supreme truth and terminus of Yoga. The nature of the essence which is the rationale of phenomenal existence is very illuminatingly indicated by Sri ...
... also from the world inside, our thoughts, emotions, sensations. It gives no reaction. How will it suffer humiliation or, for that matter, any psychological phase whatever? The other spiritual realisation on which true calm is based is the experience of the Psychic Being, the Soul in us, the Upanishad's antarātman and caitya purusa. The Psyche is not an undifferentiated and detached ...
... any kind unless the Divine be taken as somehow acting in us, would anything we freely do be bad or blamable?" The first answer is: there is a sense in which nothing is wrong, for spiritual realisation actually testifies that in a certain state of experience everything is perfect. Brahman is all and all is Brahman - but that sense is truly attained by an experience of the All-Brahman, ...
... and means to establish brotherhood in mankind should have taken place in India. But the full force of the omen would be lost if we failed to understand the stress India has always laid upon spiritual realisation, upon direct experience of the Divine. The motto of the International Congress of World Fellowship of Faiths was Omnia vincit amor, "Love conquers everything." Beautiful words - yet liable ...
... from Buddhism and you rob Buddha's own life of its central significance. Buddha did not come merely to state the equality of human beings: his chief mission was to inculcate and irradiate a spiritual realisation lifting us far beyond humanity and his very emphasis on human equality was born of his mystical perception of the limitless immutable Presence in which earth and life and Page 80 ...
... Page 149 and science of being spiritual and doing the Divine's work. The Mother too knows her work best and is better aware than we of the right way to embody and express the spiritual realisation and to lead others to it. Of course, doubts and questions are not unnatural, but in our search for the Spirit we must not erect our ordinary conceptions into absolute canons. Especially when ...
... are not beyond a spiritual poet's reach: it is their presence in Mask that makes it stand out from Chattopadhyaya's usual style. The usual style, when austere and not lavish, speaks thus of a spiritual realisation: ...the naked everlastingness Which nor by pleasure nor by pain is stirred, Being a hush that bears no human word Nor deed nor dream nor passion as a burden, Since ...
... is Yoga. When a man knows the Sthula, he knows it with his senses, that is, with the Manas, he knows the Sukshma with reason or the inspired intellect, he knows the Karana with the Jnanam or spiritual realisation. Therefore complete knowledge consists of three operations, first, objective Upalabdhi or experience, secondly, intellectual statement of your understanding of the thing, thirdly, subjective ...
... it corrects its views, the first thing it does is to reverse its values; coming into a region & level where life in the material world seems remote, unspiritual or apparently not capable of spiritual realisation, it immediately applies here its old expressions dream, mirage, lie, unreality or mere false idea and transfers from object to spirit its exclusive & intolerant use of the word-symbol reality ...
... have to exclude Buddha and Christ whose mission was not at all to destroy evil-doers and deliver the good, but to bring to all men a new spiritual message and a new law of divine growth and spiritual realisation. … Always we see in the history of the divine incarnations the double work, and inevitably, because the Avatar takes up the workings of God in human life, the way of the divine Will and Wisdom ...
... warned in a chapter in his Synthesis of Yoga that, ‘This is not a Yoga in which abnormality of any kind, even if it be an exalted abnormality, can be admitted as a way to self-fulfilment or spiritual realisation. Even when one enters into supernormal and suprarational experience, there should be no disturbance of the poise which must be kept firm from the summit of the consciousness to its base … A ...
... knowledge of the gradations of the manifestation, so obvious to an unprejudiced observer, has been the foundation of all profound thinking; more important, it has been the foundation of all spiritual realisation and knowledge. “Neither the laws nor the possibilities of physical Nature can be entirely known unless we know also the laws and possibilities of supraphysical Nature; therefore the development ...
... at all true that I don’t care for the sadhaks and their sadhana. Why should the world conditions being bad make me cease to care! It would be rather a reason for insisting more on a quick spiritual realisation as the only way out of the impasse. You should not believe in what you hear from people; so constantly nasty and disturbing things are being said which are quite untrue. You are not so empty ...
... Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects Human Beliefs And Means Of Synthesis Religion is not spirituality or spiritual realisation. It is a mental approach to spiritual life based upon moral and ethical and even certain aesthetic principles evolved by the human mind. It consists mostly of cre dal theology, dogma and rites and rituals of various ...
... differ according to the differing mental and intellectual per ception of their authors or founders. Spiritual truth is always one and the same though there are different rungs or levels of spiritual Realisation. Thus we have the Dwaita, Adwaita and Visisthadwaita philosophies each true in its own sphere and you can have realisation on any one or all three of these planes but ultimately as Vivekananda ...
... spirituality but even the very foundation of spiritual life has hardly been laid. This is an elementary lesson which all seekers of God should always bear in mind. Otherwise, all their efforts for spiritual realisation are likely to come to nought. An absolute supernatural darkness falls On man sometimes when he draws near to God : — Sri Aurobindo Page ...
... because of division, because the possessor possesses no more and the possessed also no longer possesses the possessor, the essential delight is changed into ignorance.... Everyone who has a spiritual realisation has this experience also that the very minute union is established with the divine origin, all suffering disappears." (The Mother, Bulletin, Vol. IX, No. 2, p. 59). 1 Swami Nikhilananda's ...
... me the body as well as the mind and life is a part of the divine whole, a form of the spirit and therefore not to be disregarded or despised as something incurably gross and incapable of spiritual realisation or of spiritual use. Matter itself is secretly a form of the Spirit and has to reveal itself as that, can be made to wake to consciousness and evolve and realise the Spirit, the Divine within ...
... 1961 White Roses 31 January 1961 From the point of view of spiritual realisation, the time has no concrete reality; all depends on the sincerity and intensity of the aspiration, on the steadiness of the effort. Some can do in a few weeks and even days what takes years for others. Moreover, as the mind and the vital, the chief factors of progress, arc not ...
... running out. I wrote to the Mother in this regard. She answered on 31st January 1961: Huta, My dear little child , First of all, it is never too late. From the point of view of spiritual realisation, the time has no concrete reality; all depends on the sincerity and intensity of the aspiration, on the steadiness of the effort. Some can do in a few weeks and even days, what takes years for ...
... Dear mother, accept my childlike prayer. For you I want consciousness, knowledge, artistic capacity, self-mastery in peace and perfect equality, and the happiness that is the result of spiritual realisation. Is this too grand and vast a programme? With your mother's blessings. 12 June 1934 Page 123 Mother, I want a discipline. This is quite excellent and I approve ...
... the Gita and the Tantra for his spiritual antecedents? He was himself more Westernised than any Indian of a comparable calibre - but he came to see, as soon as he plunged into the ocean of spiritual realisation, that nowhere except in India could there be the basis of a world-spirituality. No doubt, he has gone beyond all that traditional India has taught, but the hints and glints of his integral ...
... its equivalents which do not cut off the Beyond from the Here; it is not into a worldlessness that one enters when one is "fear-free", the term the Rigveda uses for the highest spiritual Page 111 realisation: one enters an ideal world high above, which has no divisiveness and fulfils our multiple earthly existence by providing the basic unity weaving everything together instead of setting ...
... the transformation of the nature. If that can be overcome, then old spiritual ideas will not form an obstacle. Letters on Yoga, pp. 10-11 By divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation — the realisation of Self, Bhagwan or Brahman on the mental-spiritual plane or else the overmental plane. That is a thing (at any rate the mental-spiritual) which thousands have done. So ...
... where the astrological predictions have proved to be correct up to a certain stage and the character and events took a different course when the subject turned to the spiritual life. Spiritual realisation means union with the Spirit; union with the Spirit implies union with the Will of the Spirit,—and for the spiritually realised being it is the Will of the Spirit that prevails. The same ...
... and the experience you relate seems to me a valid promise that it will come." "As for what I meant in my last letter it was simply that there were things which might act to delay your spiritual realisation and might be otherwise dangerous for you. This does not mean that the realisation will not come." (19-5-1944) * * * (I was rather depressed on hearing of Chandulal's death ...
... world by the practice of the Yoga of Self-Knowledge. Shankara had taken the Shruti, the Revelation of the ancient Rishis, as the basis for his formulations in the context of his own spiritual realisation, of the blank featureless actionless Absolute. He saw only that and discounted what is around as fleeting and false and mundane. Effectively, he threw away God from this world. He saw everything ...
... enchantment hewn from the moon's lucent quarries, but the eternal dream of a love that survives death. 2 Indian sculpture, particularly the more ancient sculptural art, springs from spiritual realisation, and what it creates and expresses at its greatest is the spirit in form, the soul in body, this or that living soul-power in the Divine or the human, the universal and the cosmic individualised ...
... realisation of the unity of all aspects and powers of existence—is a capacity inherent in consciousness in the Infinite.... But the Supermind keeps always and in every status or condition the spiritual realisation of the Unity of all." This explains also why perfection is experienced in any given aspect of the Infinite. In fact we may suppose that all sense of perfection of any plane of experience ...
... between the gross body and the subtle body as also of the centres or charkas of subtle body, the opening of which is essential for the fullness or perfection of the body, life and mind as also of spiritual realisation and manifestation. The recent discoveries of the powers that lie embedded in the organic cell of the body are amazing, and it has been found that the spiritual and supramental powers, when captured ...
... scripture of the Karma yoga, a Light leading us on the path of action, a Gospel of Works. Undoubtedly, the Gita is a Gospel of Works, but of works which culminate in knowledge, that is, in spiritual realisation and quietude, and of works motived by devotion, that is, a conscious surrender of one's whole self first into the hands and then into the being of the Supreme, and not at all of works as they ...
... conquest of the Spirit. In the integral systems of Yoga, body is looked upon as an instrument of the Spirit; in some cases, the body is used as an instrument or as a necessary basis until spiritual realisation is achieved. In the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, a greater goal of the human body has been envisaged. Here the human body is required to achieve not only high degrees of ...
... certain that no other strength or tapasya is needed for the successful building up and consummation of our spiritual life. Has not Sri Aurobindo assured us? - "Strength has a value for spiritual realisation, but to say that it can be done by strength only and by no other means is a violent exaggeration. Grace is not an invention, it is a fact of spiritual experience.... Strength, if it is spiritual ...
... his occultly dwelling psychic being steps out of its secrecy, becomes active in the fore front of the sadhaka' s consciousness and guides him directly from there on to the destination of spiritual realisation. In the nomenclature of sadhana, this is what is called 'psychic awakening' or 'the psychic being coming to the front'. Many are the propitious contributions made by this psychic awakening ...
... 1 The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 506. Page 78 Samadhi or Yogic Trance; Since mind-consciousness is normally found to be incompatible with the highest state of spiritual realisation, a veritable yoga or union must almost by definition connote the cessation of all mental functions (yogaścittavṛtti-nirodhaḥ 1 ) or even of the mind itself (manonāśo mahodaya ḥ 2 ). ...
... universality, nor his own life to be a full life except as it is one with the universal life." (The Human Cycle, p. 24) Thus, for the sadhaks of Sri Aurobindo's Path, although individual spiritual realisation remains always the first necessity, it cannot be deemed complete unless and until it is accompanied by an outer realisation also in life; "spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life ...
... praise of Grace! What a wooden head! What is the use of saying things if you deliberately misinterpret what I write? I said clearly that the pranayam brought me nothing of any kind of spiritual realisation. I had stopped it long before. The Brahman experience came when I was groping for a way, doing no sadhana at all, making no effort because I didn't know what effort to make, all having failed ...
... for me the body as well as the mind and life is a pail of the Divine Whole, a form of the Spirit and therefore not to be disregarded or despised as something incurably gross and incapable of spiritual realisation or of spiritual use. Matter itself is secretly a form of the Spirit and has to reveal itself as that, can be made to wake to consciousness and evolve and realise the Spirit, the Divine within ...
... He has a magnificent vitality which, whatever road he goes on, can carry him galloping towards the goal. Only he has not yet learned how to put it at the service of the inmost psychic for spiritual realisation. He has been trying to do everything with his mind. One can do that up to a certain point provided the vital can accept the mind control and the mind itself is wholly on the side of the central ...
... so long as one does not get into the intuitive overwind or supermind—then one does it with those. This is quite another matter—it has nothing to do with the main question which is about the spiritual realisation—through love or through knowledge. I have been concentrating on both the head and the heart centres. In meditation the being falls silent, but the head gets heavy and I feel some working ...
... know how to do it. Persevere and call for something new, then it will come. Can you not send me one or two of your mystic sonnets? Which sonnets? I have written the two sonnets of spiritual realisation 73 which were circulated. I don't remember any others; except poems of a more philosophical cast—these I did not circulate. December 27, 1936 I heard that X has a deep, very ...
... humility and sense of submission and dependence are necessary. Even when I make good progress, it seems to be limited to the development of the Self above. I thought that the spiritual realisation would help the psychic development, just as the psychic realisation helps the development of the Self. It does not necessarily happen like that. There are people who develop the psychic ...
... Or, Farther and farther The road goes on ringing with a thin, poignant, Lengthening note. Page 183 Dance and music almost run abreast. From the viewpoint of spiritual realisation we find that aspiration and invocation have the same origin. The spontaneous utterance of the heart is but the. mounting self-revelation and self-declaration of the aspiration. All that ...
... Ashram, is specially brought out to commemorate his eightieth birthday, 13 January 1969. Dreamer and revolutionary, linguist, scholar, critic, poet, philosopher and man of deep spiritual realisation, Nolini Kanta Gupta stands foremost among the men of this century who are destined to leave their mark on generations to come. Born in 1889 of a cultured and well-to-do family in Bengal, he ...
... illusory knowledge or maya as now, they become instruments of real knowledge, receptacles or transmitters of the truth and reality behind and above. Indeed we say habitually, when speaking of spiritual realisation, that one sees the truth, one has to see the truth: to know the truth, to know the reality is taken to mean to see the truth, to see the reality, and what does this signify? It signifies ...
... as it is possible for it, a channel, a vehicle and not a veil. All the main systems of Indian philosophy have this characteristic as their background. Each stands on a definite experience, a spiritual realisation, a direct contact with an aspect of truth and in and through that seeks to give a world-view, building up an intellectual system, marshalling rational conclusions that are natural to it or derive ...
... and feebler sources of inspiration and consciousness other than those that are purely spiritual. Firstly, little more was possible for them than to exercise an indirect influence; their spiritual realisation could bring into the life of the world only a reminiscence, an echo, just a touch and a ray from another world. Or, secondly, when they did take part in worldly affairs, their activity could ...
... to show the way, how to live and move and act. The special gift of the Chaldean line of discipline lay in another direction. It cultivated not so much the higher lines of spiritual realisation but was occupied with what may be called the mid regions, the occult world. This material universe is not moved by the physical, vital or mental forces that are apparent and demonstratable, ...
... not entitle a man to the possession of the spirit, even so capacities on the vital plane,—mere self-control, patience and forbearance or endurance and perseverance do not create a claim to spiritual realisation, let alone physical austerities. In conformity with the Upanishadic standard, one may not be an Page 17 unworthy son or an unworthy disciple, one may be strong, courageous, ...
... big and burly and "great" comrades. And yet it was such a one who surmounted ape-hood. Similarly, a great man, great in the human qualities need not necessarily be the most eligible for the spiritual realisation. Na medhaya na bahuna srutena. All this, however, is not to say that Arjuna was in his external human nature, built of an inferior stuff; indeed, even from the human and profane standpoint ...
... These are very important questions for me. There are as a matter of fact two very different questions. Their true answers are not of a mental order, but can be understood only through spiritual realisation. However, here's what I can say about it. About the first point, I shall say only that the existence of perfect beings, that is, of those "having nothing more to learn" as you say, is p ...
... part of the general attitude towards matter as contrasted and opposed to spirit. Matter was looked upon as something gross, inert, unconscious, unchangeable, an insuperable impediment to spiritual realisation. We have seen that, according to Sri Aurobindo, this Page 53 view does not represent the whole truth. The limitations the body are great and real, but they are not due ...
... inferior and feebler sources of inspiration and consciousness other than those that are purely spiritual. Firstly, little more was possible for them than to exercise an indirect influence; their spiritual realisation could bring into the life of the world only a reminiscence, an echo, just a touch and a ray from another world. Or, secondly, when they did take part in worldly affairs, their activity could ...
... is not zero but one, that is, the unit, the pure existence-Sat (or Sachchidananda as the Vedantists say. Science and mathematics tell us today of a truth or just point to a truth which a spiritual realisation reveals. It is, as I have already said, the mystery of transformation, or transubstantiation as the Christian faith figures it. This world, this material existence is to be transmuted-the ...
... big and burly and "great" comrades. And yet it was such a one who surmounted apehood. Similarly, a great man, great in the human qualities need not necessarily be the most eligible for the spiritual realisation. Na medhay a na bahuna srutena¹. All this, however, is not to say that Arjuna was in his external human nature, built of an inferior stuff; indeed, even from the human and profane standpoint ...
... detachment and calm prayer and goodwill: oftener perhaps to forget the departed is the best way to help him. A truly conscious help can be given only by one who has the requisite occult power and spiritual realisation – the Guru, for example. 3 Once in its place of rest the soul enjoys profound peace and delight and is in a kind of luminous sleep. There it assimilates all the experiences of its ...
... way, how to live and move and act. The special gift of the Chaldean line of discipline lay in Page 191 another direction. It cultivated not so much the higher lines of spiritual realisation but was occupied with what may be called the mid regions, the occult world. This material universe is not moved by the physical, vital or mental forces that are apparent and demonstrable, but ...
... as it is possible for it, a channel, a vehicle and not a veil. All the main systems of Indian philosophy have this characteristic as their background. Each stands on a definite experience, a spiritual realisation, a direct contact with an aspect of truth and in and -through that seeks to give a world-view, building "up an intellectual system, marshalling rational conclusions that are natural to it or ...
... 1 Nolini Kanta Gupta – a brief life-sketch DREAMER and revolutionary, linguist, scholar, critic, poet, philosopher and man of deep spiritual realisation, Nolini Kanta Gupta stands foremost among the men of this century who are destined to leave their mark on generations to come. Born on 13 January 1889 of a cultured and well-to-do family in ...
... that marks the nee plus ultra of his poetic achievement. And yet what can be more poetic in essence than philosophy, if by philosophy we mean, as it should mean, spiritual truth and spiritual realisation? What else can give the full breath, the integral force to poetic inspiration if it is not the problem of existence itself, of God, Soul and Immortality, things that touch, that are at the very ...
... of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight." -Gitanjali, Page 99 a Yogic consciousness. Still his major perceptions, those that count, stand and are borne out by the highest spiritual realisation. Tagore is no inventor or innovator when he posits Spirit as Beauty, the spiritual consciousness as the ardent rhythm of ecstasy. This experience is the very core of Vaishnavism and for which ...
... Rishis who are thousands of years old, I hear. DR. MANILAL: Not true? You wrote, a long time ago, a poem on Koothoomi in the Standard-Bearer. From it we have thought of a being with great spiritual realisation. SRI AUROBINDO: It was purely a play of the poetic imagination. DR. MANILAL: What do you think of Madame Blavatsky? SRI AUROBINDO: She was a remarkable woman. DR. MANILAL: Were you ...
... golden beard, etc. When Sri Aurobindo was lying down, Nirodbaran read to him a letter from Tagore to Sahana on mystic poetry. NIRODBARAN: Tagore says: "Mostly we see that those whose spiritual realisation is new cannot express that new experience in the simple and easy old ways. In their manner of expression there is something laboured." SRI AUROBINDO: That is not true. If there is any obscurity ...
... quality, not quantity in terms of size and numbers: that, of the two kinds of knowledge - that 'obtained by an approach from the outside through the intellect and that obtained from within by spiritual realisation - the proposed university should restore to the latter its rightful place and help the pupils to receive "integral" rather than piecemeal education: and, finally, that Sri Aurobindo and the ...
... in its own right. As Rishabhchand puts it: These Prayers are no glistening gossamer of imaginative idealism nor an Imposing fabric of theological speculation, but undeniable facts of spiritual realisation, - truths seen, words heard, forms touched, at least as concretely as the objects of our senses, but all in a world or worlds of light, sealed to the sense-bound consciousness of man. 6 ...
... requisites for generating the necessary momentum for reaching a particular goal: We have undertaken a work which includes life and action and the physical world. In what I am trying to do, the spiritual realisation is the first necessity, but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in men, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. The Ashram ...
... quality, not quantity in terms of size and numbers; that, of the two kinds of knowledge - that obtained by an approach from the outside through the intellect and that obtained from within by spiritual realisation - the proposed university should restore to the latter its rightful place and help the pupils to receive integral rather than piecemeal education; and, finally, that Sri Aurobindo and the ...
... AESTHESIS Sri Aurobindo pleads that " an evolutionary ascent o all the activities of mind and life is not impossible."¹ The importance of the planes of consciousness beyond Mind for spiritual realisation is well known in India, but their dynamic nature and their importance to the life of man is not known. In the phase of evolution that is now approaching the need for clarifying the functions ...
... It is, indeed, the very first decisive step in our Yoga ; but an exaggeration of this tendency to passivity may lead towards the traditional Nirvanic ideal and make one unfit for any dynamic spiritual realisation. That risk has to be avoided. 6.04.65 * * * Nirod C. Choudhury's Autobiography I have not read, but I have read a number of extracts from it in the reviews which have appeared ...
... Its multiple self-representation, and not ignored or spurned as phantasmal or false. This is, indeed, a high and profound experience, which may seem to most of us to be the very crown of all spiritual realisation—the experience of the Brahman everywhere, in all things and at all times, sarvam khalvidam brahma. It gives a knowledge which is essentially perfect and definitive, a knowledge which does ...
... Sri Aurobindo began his practice of Yoga in 1905. At first gathering into it the essential elements of spiritual experience that are gained by the paths of divine communion and spiritual realisation till now in India, he passed on in search of a more complete experience uniting and harmonising the two ends of existence, Spirit and Matter. Most ways of Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading ...
... Yoga of Sri Aurobindo CHAPTER VI The Mother in her Triple Poise SRI Râmakrishna expressed one of the cardinal truths of the integral spiritual realisation when he said that it is the Mother who holds the key to the abode of Brahman, and unless She delivered it as a Grace, none could see Brahman face to face. Sri Râmakrishna's own self-consecration ...
... minds) is not carried away by the Ananda he holds and watches it and there is no more excitement mixed with the flow of it through the mind, vital or body. Naturally the Ananda of samarpaṇ or spiritual realisation or divine love is something far greater, but the Ananda of creation has its place.” As the consciousness gets gradually awakened because of our stay here, all of us can to a certain extent ...
... also correspondingly should evolve; "an evolutionary ascent of all the activities of mind and life is not impossible" (Letters). The importance of the planes of consciousness beyond Mind for spiritual realisation is well known in India, but their dynamic nature and their importance to the life of man was not known. Now that Humanity is passing through a crucial stage in its evolution the need for clarifying ...
... external and true renunciation. There was an excessive otherworldly stress in the spiritual ideals of India for centuries, though renunciation of life as an indispensable condition for spiritual realisation was not accepted in the Vedic age. Nor was it accepted in the Upanishads. The conception of the Divine in the Gita is not that of a static being, it is dynamic. Gita may be said to be unique ...
... psychic stamp—unless it comes fully out from its rather secluded and overshadowed position and takes into its hands the direct government of the nature. It can then receive and express all spiritual realisations in its own way and manner. For the turn of the psychic is different from that of the overhead planes—it has less of greatness, power, wideness, more of a smaller sweetness, delicate beauty;... The Psychic and the Spiritual Is there a difference between the "spiritual" and the "psychic"? Are they different planes? Yes, the psychic plane belongs to the personal manifestation; the psychic is that which is divine in you put out to be dynamic in the play. But when we speak of the spiritual we are thinking of something that is concentrated in the... Without the psychic, Matter would never have awakened from its inconscience, it would never have aspired for the life of its origin, the spiritual life. Therefore, the psychic being in the human being is the manifestation of spiritual aspiration; but there is a spiritual life independent of the psychic. The Mother Questions and Answers (1950 - 1951): 1 March 1951 The psychic has two aspects—there ...
... instructed him how to reach complete silence of the mind and immobility of the whole consciousness. This Sri Aurobindo was able to achieve in three days with the result of lasting and massive spiritual realisations opening to him the larger ways of Yoga. Lele finally told him to put himself entirely into the hands of the Divine within and move only as he was moved and then he would need no instructions... became the whole foundation and principle of Sri Aurobindo's sadhana. From that time onward (the beginning of 1909) and through many years of intensive experience at Pondicherry he underwent no spiritual influence from outside. published 24 June 1945 Page 91 × On 17 June 1945 the Sunday Times of Madras ...
... psychic active and awake the right attitude comes naturally and whatever difficulty there was soon diminishes or even disappears. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - III: The Psychic and Spiritual Realisations It is not the soul that suffers; the self is calm and equal to all things and the only sorrow of the psychic being is the sorrow of the resistance of Nature to the Divine Will or the ...
... psychic stamp—unless it comes fully out from its rather secluded and overshadowed position and takes into its hands the direct government of the nature. It can then receive and express all spiritual realisations in its own way and manner. For the turn of the psychic is different from that of the overhead planes—it has less of greatness, power, wideness, more of a smaller sweetness, delicate beauty... and the spiritual illumination meet together, one has to go to poetry that tries to express a spiritual experience. You have yourself written things which can illustrate the difference. The lines The longing of ecstatic tears From infinite to infinite 1 will do very well as an instance of the pure illumination, for here what would otherwise be a description of a spiritual heart-... heart-experience, psychic therefore in its origin, is lifted up to a quite different spiritual level and expressed with the vision and language sufficiently characteristic of a spiritual-mental illumination. In another passage there is this illumination but it is captured and dominated by the inner heart and by the psychic love for the Divine incarnate. If Thou desirest my weak self to outgrow ...
... the whole nature into the mould of your inner realisation. What you realise you project outwards into your nature. I speak of three transformations—the psychic, the spiritual and the supramental. Many have had the psychic: there were the Christian saints who spoke of God's presence in their hearts. The spiritual transformation implies the realisation of the Self, the Infinite above, with the dynamic... saw me eating meat. He complained to Ramana Maharshi. Maharshi replied that it is a question of habit and, when the man had departed, Maharshi said to his followers, "What an imbecile!" In spiritual realisations there are any number of passages, cross ways and truths. And when I say that something is to be done or not done in Yoga, I mean in our Yoga. It does not apply to Yogas with other aims. In... oneself to the Divine, try to see God in others, acquire a psychic control and reject in oneself all vital and mental impulses. On this basis one must proceed towards realisation. The idea must pass into experience. Once the realisation is there, everything becomes easy. But even then, it is easy in the static aspect. When it comes to the dynamic expression it becomes difficult. Thus, when one finds ...
... individuality of the seeker. But, apart from that, even the domain of pure spiritual self-realisation and self-expression need not be a single white monotone, here can be a great diversity in the fundamental unity; the supreme Self is one, but the souls of the Self are many and, as is the soul's formation of nature, so will be its spiritual self-expression. A diversity in oneness is the Page 421 ... 5 November 1958 " 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 can assume an infinite variety of aspects and formations: in the spiritual evolution it is inevitable that there should be a many-sided passage... must recognise, is an illegitimate transference from the limited truth of the physical field to the much more complex and plastic field of life and mind and spirit.... " In the evolution of the spiritual man there must necessarily be many stages and in each stage a great variety of individual formations of the being, the consciousness, the life, the temperament, the ideas, the character. The nature ...
... vital and by the combination of the psychic and the spiritual realisations the ego can go. I don't know if you have understood anything. NIRODBARAN: Can both the realisations work together or must they be one after the other? SRI AUROBINDO: In some, it may be the psychic that leads in the beginning, in others the spiritual. If it is the spiritual opening, then after some time it has to stop to... says, "I want to eat sugar, not be sugar." The psychic of course opens the way to the realisation of the spiritual Self by which the ego can go. By the realisation of the Spirit, you feel one with the Divine and you see the One everywhere. The individual "I" is replaced by the Divine "I". The Spirit doesn't need the individual as the basis of action. Even so, it may be the abolition of the mental ego... Yesterday, did you mean, that by the psychic realisation one can't get rid of ego? I couldn't understand it. SRI AUROBINDO: One can get rid of egoism but not of ego, For the psychic depends on the individual nature for its action. The lower nature has its hold on the individual and the psychic works through the individual. The psychic realisation is the realisation of the individual soul which feels itself ...
... the true spiritual world. The twilight consciousness is, as it were, on the border-line; it belongs in its rhythm, gesture, gait and expression still to this shore-land rather than the other, howsoever may the artist aspire for the shore beyond. No doubt, I speak of the creations of artists in general. There are rare artists whose creation embodies genuine spiritual experience and realisation. But that... and realisations. If it be so, then is it not possible for science also to become a vehicle or expression of spiritual realisations? This may not have materialised up till now; generally or to a large degree perhaps an attempt of the kind was made in the line that is known as occultism, and which was called alchemy by the ancients, but the effort ended in a spurious system of rites and ceremonies. No... concerns the purely spiritual art. Ordinary works of art do not belong to that category and derive their inspiration from a different source. With regard to philosophy something similar Page 298 might be said. Most of the Indian philosophies, such as the philosophies of Shankara, Ramanuja, the sage Kapila and Patanjali are but intellectual expressions of different spiritual visions and ...
... to him again and again of spiritual motives and truths, assurance of a steady unconditional love for him at all moments and, throughout, a sustaining insight into his groping human nature on the one hand and on the other into his secret soul growing towards divinity within that nature's complex terms — it is thus that Sri Aurobindo with his towering spiritual realisations and with his promise of e... from not only the personal standpoint but also the literary and the spiritual. Next, our friendship has resulted in a special relation on my part to his book: I actually figure in some vivid pages of it that are a most generous appreciation of me. This leads me to the fourth capacity, a pointer to which is already in the word "spiritual": we have sat at the feet of the same guru, Sri Aurobindo, in whose... played upon him: I, with some lucky academic distinction, had looked forward to a little fame in the higher ranges of journalism. Finally, we had westernised minds which, though borne towards the spiritual life by an incalculable surge from beyond the normal self, carried a habit of controversy into even the quiet atmosphere of an Ashram of Yoga. His intellect was indeed keyed to a different note ...
... brunt of the colonial rulers' ire. "Endless were the mischiefs played by the policemen," Bharati was to write later, "unbearable to the political refugees—men like Mr. Aurobindo Chose, whose spiritual realisations were greatly hampered by the extraordinarily hard conditions brought upon them by the police activities. Imagine 200 policemen, constituting a fatly financed department by themselves, spending ...
... cannot prevent you from being my little X or stop my arms from surrounding and protecting you. 19 September 1939 Why do you want to break your silence? Silence is the door to all true spiritual realisations. And I am with you always. Draw on my force in the silence; it will never fail you. Our blessings. 23 December 1939 My dear little X, When the demon of jealousy whispers a... live from day to day our whole consciousness intent on the only luminous horizon: that of the divine Realisation. Our blessings are with you, as well as my love. 5 July 1940 My dear little X, Dryness is ordinarily the sign of too great a concern with oneself (whether material or spiritual) and a consequent narrowing of the consciousness, which is no longer sufficiently in communion with ...
... cittaśuddhi, and sees no further spiritual utility in it. When the purification is achieved, works are either rigorously clipped and curtailed, or made to flow only through philanthropic or altruistic channels. They feed and represent the sāttwic elements of the nature of the spiritual seeker, and only indirectly and rather dimly reflect his spiritual realisations. According to this conception, too... beauty of His spiritual Presence. He seeks union with Him in the multitudinous delight and labours of His universal movement as well as in the peace and tranquility of His supracosmic silence. He aspires to be His playmate in this mysterious and marvellous world-game, and an obedient and efficient collaborator in the working out of His Will and purpose in it. He seeks an integral realisation, an integral... and the spiritual necessity and efficacy of its works. In the Isho panishad it is definitely stated that those who follow exclusively after the Knowledge of the One (vidyā) enter into a greater darkness than those who pursue the life of Ignorance (avidā). For, an exclusive pursuit of the One means, in fact, a disregard or ignoring of the same One in the Many; and, therefore, the realisation of the ...
... have to make use too of distinct spiritual realisations which may at first seem contrary to each other, because as mental beings it is difficult or impossible for us to seize at once largely and completely what is beyond our mentality; but we err if we intellectualise them into sole truths,—as when we assert that the Impersonal must be the one ultimate realisation and the rest creation of Maya or declare... declare the Saguna, the Divine in its qualities, to be that and thrust away the impersonality from our spiritual experience. We have to see that both these realisations of the great spiritual seekers are equally valid in themselves, equally invalid against each other; they are one and the same Reality experienced on two sides which are both necessary for the full knowledge and experience of each other... irreconcilable opposition or separation of them in the all-view of the Absolute. This is the weakness not only of our scientific divisions and metaphysical distinctions, but of our exclusive spiritual realisations which are only exclusive because to arrive at them we have to start from our limiting and dividing mental consciousness. We have to make the metaphysical distinctions in order to help our ...
... he has made the legend the purveyor of his spiritual realisations. The realisations of Aswapati, his yogic self-release, compelling the descent of Savitri, the self-diffusing peace, the ocean of untrembling virgin fire whose duty it was to disrupt the past which blocked the immortal's road on earth and shape anew the fate of the world, are the realisations of Sri Aurobindo himself. Savitri ... Aurobindo's poetry is that he does not veil his mystic realisations, his spiritual insight in allegory, myth or symbol; but he speaks of them in direct language of living experience. If to us what he speaks is strange and unrecognisable it is because we who live on the sense level or the mind level refuse to open ourselves to those other realisations which can only dawn 5 Ibid., p. 563. 6... living unforgettable touches, a feast for the high sensuous imagination. Sri Aurobindo too uses a myth, but the myth here is made to yield up its truth-element and embody the poet's realisations. Though these realisations come to us as thought-forms in which the poet sees what he conveys to his listeners, transcendental pictures form themselves in our mind, till an overhead world in formed; Sri Krishnaprem ...
... The Fundamental Realisations of the Integral Yoga The Fundamental Realisations of the Integral Yoga Three Stages of Transformation: Psychic, Spiritual, Supramental Letters on Yoga - III Chapter I The Psychic and Spiritual Realisations The Fundamental Realisations The letter under this heading is Sri Aurobindo's reply to the question, "What are the... of the Divine. Foundations of the Sadhana What you are experiencing is the true foundation of the spiritual life and realisation. It has three elements—first, the love which is the heart of Bhakti; then the descent of peace and equanimity which is the first necessary basis for realisation of self and the higher knowledge—what comes with it is the descent of the force which will work out in you... out of cosmic mind, life out of cosmic life, body out of cosmic matter. For the soul there are three realisations—(1) the realisation of the psychic being and consciousness as the divine element in the evolution, (2) the realisation of the cosmic Self which is one in all, (3) the realisation of the supreme Divine from which both individual and cosmos have come and of the individual being (Jivatma) ...
... of ourselves and responsible for our art, poetry, philosophy, ideals, religious aspirations, efforts at knowledge and perfection. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - III: The Psychic and Spiritual Realisations ... t is below the body consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there. Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient to us and supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature, so the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature. Men are not ordinarily conscious of either of these planes... thinking animal—as also most of the art, poetry, philosophy, thirst for knowledge which relieve if they do not yet dispel the ignorance. The role of the superconscient has been to evolve slowly the spiritual man out of the mental half-animal. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Subconscient and the Inconscient Even in Europe the existence of something behind the surface is now very frequently ...
... necessarily to be overhead with the revelatory rhythm with which the Indian Rishis often uttered their realisations. As a rule, the world's Bibles ring the note of Donne or Crashaw or Herbert, Hopkins or Eliot or other fine English poets turned mystics. Most of the existing religious and spiritual literature is wanting in the accent which leads up to what the Rishis considered the culminating speech... In a great world bare and bright... Something of this tone also streams now and again into the sequence of more than fifty sonnets in which Sri Aurobindo has voiced a few of his spiritual realisations in a language either exquisitely simple or passionately rich but always with a Page 142 straightforwardness in keeping with the autobiographical motif which here more than... described as "a Philosophy" and in which all the varieties of spiritual speech we have tried to< discriminate attain their royal manifestation. For here we have not only the element of spiritual autobiography that, in a non-personal narrative shape, is found worked into that poem in detailed abundant vividness. We have also the element of spiritual philosophy found there in the form of general ideas set ...
... independence. Later, towards the end of December, met Vishnu Bhashkar Lele, another Yogi of Maharashtra, from whom Sri Aurobindo received spiritual help. Meditating according to Lele"s guidance Sri Aurobindo had realisation of silent Brahman and a complete stillness of mind. 1908 January I9: Made in Bombay the famous speech on 'The Present Situation' from the... Kanailal Datta. Sri Aurobindo unperturbed in the midst of commotion. Ashramvas (Ashram life) in jail. Reading the Gita and the Upanishad. Practising Yoga. Had decisive spiritual realisations of cosmic consciousness vision of Sri Krishna everywhere and in everything. Attained mastery over the functions of the body as a means to its perfection. Never afterwards suffered from any... Kashmir with the Gaekwad. Had a spiritual experience of the vacant Infinite on Shankaracharya Hill. Drew up a scheme under the title 'Bhavani Mandir' on the lines of which was started Bharati Vidyalaya at the Ganganath Ashram, Sri Aurobindo helping K. G. Deshpande in maintaining it. The scheme was for a nation- wide revolutionary preparation for independence through spiritually-equipped workers. Secretly ...
... to recover the ancient nobility of temper, the strong Aryan character and the high Aryan outlook, the perceptions which made earthly life beautiful and wonderful, and the magnificent spiritual experiences, realisations and aspirations which made us the deepest-hearted, deepest-thoughted and most delicately profound in life of all the peoples of the earth, is the task next in importance and urgency.... bitter and murderous struggle for existence, in the most skilful, discreet and successful fashion. We had to feel the full weight of that system and learn the literal meaning of this industrial realisation of Darwinism. It has been written large for us in ghastly letters of famine, chronic starvation and misery and a decreasing population. We have risen at last, entered into the battle and with the... the plastic skill and fineness of eye and hand which once gave our productions pre-eminence, distinction and mastery of the European markets, is also a thing accomplished. Most vital of all, the spiritual and intellectual divorce from the past which the present schools and universities have effected, has beggared the nation of the originality, high aspiration and forceful energy which can alone make ...
... fruitful results in the Yoga of "divine man-making" and earth-transformation. The Arya had been launched on 15 August 1914, partly because Sri Aurobindo had already won his way to certain spiritual realisations that could sustain a new world-view, and partly because the Richards had wanted him to share his visions of future possibility with thinking people all over the world. But Richard had to... poise and purpose of her being prevailed over the surface shadows and disturbances. On 30 September 1914, Mirra records an uplifting experience with Vedic as well as futurist intimations. "The realisation has appeared in all its amplitude," and Mirra can see that the Divine inhabits us from the depths to the surfaces in the divers aspects of Agni (Life, works), Indra (Mind, knowledge) and Soma(Soul... effecting the desired change: And in all these domains Agni assures us of the help of his purifying flame, destroying all obstacles, kindling the energies, stimulating the will, so that the realisation may be hastened. Indra is with us for the perfection of the illumination in our knowledge; and the divine Soma has transformed us in his infinite, sovereign, marvellous love, bringer of the supreme ...
... movements it goes beyond itself, beyond the mental idea to spiritual identity, but it finds it extremely difficult to go here beyond a few isolated and intense spiritual realisations or to draw or work out or organise the right practical consequences of these rare identities of knowledge. A greater power than the reason is needed for the spiritual comprehension and effectuation of this deepest knowledge... consciousness, delight's self-creations of the one Ananda, many truths and powers of the one Truth, there is the intact and integral display of its spiritual and supramental knowledge. And in the corresponding planes of our own being the Jiva shares in the spiritual and supramental nature and lives in its light and power and bliss. As we descend nearer to what we are in this world, the presence and action... but in the dynamical expression it must determine and individualise itself according to the nature of the self-expression which the transcendent and universal Spirit seeks in the Jiva. It is God-realisation and God-expression which is the object of our Yoga and more especially of its dynamic side, it is a divine self-expression in us of the Ishwara, but under the conditions of humanity and through the ...
... statement of them and their results and issues had to be found. The concluding sentence leaves absolutely no doubt that when Sri Aurobindo wrote of all the major spiritual realisations and the special supramental realisation he was not acting the speculative philosopher; he was only putting into philosophical terms the body of a direct and concrete experience that was his already in 1914 when... his Yoga and his spiritual philosophy are founded. The first... in January 1908... was the realisation of the silent spaceless and timeless Brahman gained after a complete and abiding stillness of the whole consciousness and attended at first by the overwhelming feeling and perception of the total unreality of the world, though this feeling disappeared after his second realisation which was that of... down to the very physical cells. As said in the letter for Huxley, God-realisation of the completest kind presented 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 ...
... and spiritual experiences, realisations etc. come truly from the Mother. But that truth we accept only on faith, as their source is not detectable by us in the beginning. But now I can clearly see and feel them coming from her, even as one sees the Ganges flowing down from the Himalayas. Page 283 It is very good indeed. It was what was lacking in the former realisation of... of self and of peace, now with this realisation you have the foundation of the dynamic as well as the static side of the Truth. I experience as if my mental and vital consciousness were merged in the Mother, while the (subtle) physical has begun to feel itself on the lap of the Mother. Yes. When X went to the Mother for Pranam and she put her hand on... bear with case her powerful and rapid working. That is very good. I am sorry I am unable to describe to you at present all that is happening in me (experiences, realisations etc.). You will do so hereafter when these things have ripened and can be expressed. On what a mute ocean do we float! Each day I find the water calmer than before ...
... which our human hands cannot darken and discolour. There is a sweet enchantment of psychic lyricism, a rich abundance of occult symbol-images, mystical elevations, experiential revelations, spiritual realisations, all filled with the spirit of delight. Thus we have The peacock scattering on the breeze his moons— superbly Kalidasean in its mood of lyricism, at the same time the inspired art of changing... sound perceptions which determine the quality of any spiritual, rather what Sri Aurobindo would call Overhead, poetry. Apart from these aspects of sound and rhythm, sometimes the mantra comes with a decisive command—which could be even ādeśa for a specific purpose—to change the humdrum of the terrestrial life, giving to it an altogether new spiritual direction. In it there is a sudden inflow of energy... inspiration arriving from different sources: we could say that the first and the last line here are spiritual, the second mystic, and the third occult—all fusing in the splendour of the spirit’s vibrant greatnesses. If there are "still regions" and "calm immensities" that come to our sudden view in a spiritual blaze, we also have the mystic and the occult geographical, rather cosmographical, wonders of the ...
... reflection of the higher experience I am not speaking here of the 'descent' in Yoga by which the higher realisation can come down into the inferior planes and enlighten or transform them. I mean that the Higher Mind is itself a spiritual plane and one who lives in it has naturally and normally the realisation of the Self, the unity and harmony everywhere, and a vision and activity of knowledge that proceeds... inner Mind has not that naturally and in its own right, yet can open to its influence more easily than the outer intelligence. All the same, between the reflected realisation in the mind and the automatic and authentic realisation in the spiritual mental planes there is a wide difference." Distinguishing the general mode and the typical turn of the Inner Mind's poetry from those of the Higher Mind's... psychic stamp—unless it comes fully out from its rather secluded and overshadowed position and takes into its hands the direct government of the nature. It can then receive and express all spiritual realisations in its own way and manner. For the turn of the psychic is different from that of the overhead planes—it has less of greatness, power, wideness, more of a smaller sweetness, delicate beauty ...
... psychic stamp—unless it comes fully out from its rather secluded and overshadowed position and takes into its hands the direct government of the nature. It can then receive and express all spiritual realisations in its own way and manner. For the tone of the psychic is different from that of the overhead planes,—it has less of greatness, power, wideness, more of a smaller sweetness, delicate beauty;... brought out more fully to serve the full occult, mystic, spiritual purpose. 5 February 1932 Page 100 Spiritual Poetry in India But what a change in India. Once religious or spiritual poetry held the first place (Tukaram, Mirabai, Tulsidas, Surdas, the Tamil Alwars and Shaiva poets, and a number of others)—and now spiritual poetry is not poetry, altogether অচল But luckily things are... admits that this rule makes a great difficulty because these "high light" words are few in the English language. This solution may do well enough for him, because the realisations which they represent are in him mental realisations or intuitions occurring on the summits of the consciousness, rare "high lights" over the low tones of the ordinary natural or occult experience (ordinary, of course, to ...
... own salvation and that of his disciples. How such a misunderstanding of a supreme dynamic person like him could have arisen is most surprising. Let us recall what his life had been, the major spiritual realisations he had attained in Page 4 the course of his. arduous political activities; let us recall what his Yoga stands for and the epoch-making books he has written during his Yogic career... the political horizon with a dazzling lustre and when everybody's eyes were filled with wonder and delight, the light hid itself in the shadows of the prison cell where he had one of the sovereign spiritual experiences of his life. When he came out of the prison, his tremendous sacrifice and wise guidance awakened the nation and it waited at his door with the offer of All-India leadership. Page 1... became more difficult. We had solely relied on his Force, but the result had not uplifted our hopes. We could go ahead with our costly tablets and precious injections, but without the support of his spiritual Force, what effect would they produce? Human as we are we can but think of our own resources: good or bad we fall back on them in our need. But how to administer such strong and powerful drugs to ...
... progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights of the nature and it must be wholly that in the final movement towards the spiritual change, realisation, transformation. It must be still more so when there is a transition across the dividing line between the Ignorance and the "Knowledge and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge... finally a complete possession of the truth-consciousness and all that it carries in it; it will bring with it the realisation of the Divine in self and the Divine in Nature. All that is sought by the God-seeker will be fulfilled in his spirit and in his life as he moves towards spiritual perfection. He will became aware of the: transcendent reality, possess in the self-experience the supreme existence... ideal we have placed before us, can only come about by a spiritual change of our being and a radical and fundamental change, an evolution or revolution of our nature. The embodied being upon earth would have to rise out of the domination over it of its veils ' of mind, life and body into the full consciousness and possession of its spiritual reality and its nature also would have to be lifted out of ...
... progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights of the nature, and it must be wholly that in the final movement towards the spiritual change, realisation, transformation. It must be still more so when there is a transition across the dividing line between the Ignorance and the Knowledge and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge... finally a complete possession of the truth-consciousness and all that it carries in it; it will bring with it the realisation of the Divine in self and the Divine in Nature. All that is sought by the God-seeker will be fulfilled in his spirit and in his life as he moves towards spiritual perfection. He will become aware of the transcendent reality, possess in the self-experience the supreme existence... the ideal we have placed before us, can only come about by a spiritual change of our being and a radical and fundamental change, an evolution or revolution of our nature. The embodied being upon earth would have to rise out of the domination over it of its veils of mind, life and body into the full consciousness and possession of its spiritual reality, and its nature also would have to be lifted out of ...
... magnum opus Savitri. Eventually it "became a poetic chronicle of his yoga." 25 We have similarly the record of his later yogic realisations in his poetic compositions of the 30s. But what stands out as the double autobiography, his and the Mother's spiritual realisations in the transformative Yoga of the earth-consciousness, is his supreme creation—in the Mother's phrase, supreme revelation— Savitri... is significant to note that Sri Aurobindo regarded Savitri as his main work. It does not mean that he took time off from his spiritual pre-possession simply for the purposes of a happy literary pursuit. Rather it was his constant companion in the task of realisation and establishment of the dynamic Truth in this creation. He worked upon it again and again until the kind of yogic perfection he... discover its richnesses of truth, light, beauty, joy, sweetness, harmony, strength, perfection. Even when one reads Savitri on a mental level it can open out for us prospects of lustrous spiritual realisations; it can lead us to "understand deeper things". 8 Though Savitri is a text-book of the Yoga of Physical Transformation and continually needs the author's "knowledge and experience for ...
... But modesty is essential; without modesty one cannot receive of the New Consciousness. And if one thinks that one has become someone important, someone with exceptional powers, someone with spiritual realisations — then it is over. You may be sure that the New Consciousness will not touch you. If you remain modest and receptive, then the Consciousness is everywhere so that you may absorb it. It is up... view, — and what counts for the spiritual life is the progress, the amplitude, the attitude and a sincerity and surrender in order to contain the new light. This is the base and the ideal. Whatever one achieves, whatever one tries, one must have faith. If you give yourself and if you have confidence in the Mother, that she alone can help you, lead you towards realisations, towards a complete transformation... unique occasion. I ask myself why people do not try. What is there more interesting than this? Men give their lives for terrestrial and material adventures and cannot throw themselves into this spiritual adventure which is so marvellous and glorious, when I have traced the whole path and have made the work so easy; I have removed all the obstacles so that one can advance freely. I invite you … it ...
... had sensed that Page 39 he had knowledge). Moreover, I think he always held this opinion because he used to say that Sri Aurobindo was a unique intellectual giant... without many spiritual realisations! (The same type of stupidity as Romain Rolland's.) Well, my relationship with Richard was on an occult plane, you see, and it's difficult to touch upon. What happened was far more exciting... attire'! I mean I really knew nothing about India; I had never seen Indians dressed in the Indian way. Well, I saw him. I experienced what were at once symbolic visions and spiritual FACTS: absolutely decisive spiritual experiences and facts of meeting and having a united perception of the Work to be accomplished. And in these visions I did something I had never done physically: I prostrated before... Theon and Madame Theon spoke of 'new heavens and a new earth' a phrase picked up by them from the Gospels. It contains also the ideal of which the Vedas speak. The question had been that of the realisation of this ideal, and this was being studied by various experiments in consciousness. A vision that Mother had in this context, and which was transcribed by her for publication in Theon's Cosmic Review ...
... es constitute Sri Aurobindo's monumental attempt to correlate past spiritual experiences and philosophical formulations - along with other intervening syntheses like the Tantra - with his own inner realisations and their intellectual formulation in the work simultaneously in progress. The Life Divine. While his own realisations gave him the central inspiration and ambience of certainty, nevertheless... new pathways, new surmises, new possibilities, winding new slopes of ascent, beckoning new summits of realisation. Every chapter of The Life Divine was headed by one or more - sometimes as many as six or more - epigraphs, culled from ancient Indian scripture or the classics of spiritual philosophy. The main authorities are the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita. In the revised definitive... sanctified by long usage. Sri Aurobindo had followed certain pathways at Baroda - at Alipur - at Chandernagore - and had chanced upon certain insights, and he had found his way to certain spiritual realisations. At Alipur he had grown intimate with the Gita and had explored the "Himalayas of the Soul" by entering into the spirit of the Upanishads. It was natural that, after his acquittal and release ...
... Aurobindo had meant. He had meant that at the Page 112 time he wrote that sentence he was first and foremost a Yogi who used poetry not for its own sake but to express his spiritual realisations more and more adequately in terms natural to poetry. He put himself at the service of the supreme truths compassed by his Yogic experience and not at the service of the merely poetic imagination... triumph. Can we refuse a transforming genius to Sri Aurobindo in the sphere of spiritually poetic utterance? You have granted him a prodigious sweep and scope in Savitri and seen him as "gifted with a mental, vital or perhaps super-energy... difficult to imagine or possible to explain otherwise than through a degree of spiritual enlightenment". Can the extremely plastic English language have any limits... Aurobindo which is more a piece of sentimental romantic eroticism than of a new super-spiritual vision of love. Besides, Yeats does it by the images he uses -the Bone on the shore (with all the implications of the oceanic vastness of life) and the intimacy of brief bodily love. I find Edwin Muir's love more spiritual also with its respect for Willa's human imperfection than any superlatives could have ...
... to recover the ancient nobility of temper, the strong Aryan character and the high Aryan outlook, the perceptions which made earthly life beautiful and wonderful, and the magnificent spiritual experiences, realisations and aspirations which made us the deepest-hearted, deepest-thoughted and most delicately profound in life of all the peoples of the earth, is the task next in importance and urgency.... as well? That could have been provided only by the course of his sadhana in Chandernagore. What, then, was the particular Yogic realisation there? At Baroda in January 1908, the Nirvanic or Shunya realisation; at Alipur in May-June 1909 and after, the realisation of the omnipresent Divine, of Vasudeva who is everywhere and in everybody and in everything, Vasudevah sarvamiti', what was the... feasible at a later and more favourable time. The spiritual and political pulls had been with him all along, from the time of the composition of Bhavani Mandir at least; but whereas, during the editorship of the Bande Mataram, the political pull was rather stronger than the spiritual, during the editorship of the Karmayogin and the Dharma, the spiritual pull was decidedly stronger, and this was c ...
... presence & into the being of the Eternal. Atman, Brahman, Ishwara, on this triune aspect here of the Transcendent depend all our spiritual realisations and as we take one or the other & in its realisation stop a little this side or proceed a little to that side, our realisations, our experiences & our creeds & systems will vary from each other; & we shall be Buddhists or Adwaitins or Mayavadins or Dualists... in breadth & flexibility of understanding. His was a spirit visited with some marvellous intuitions & 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... call an intervening & mediary truth of realisation which can never lose its validity. But when it seeks to govern human thought & life, to perpetuate itself as the sole truth of Vedanta, I feel that it is in conflict with the old Vedanta, stultifies the Upanishad & endangers or sterilises all our highest human activities without giving us the highest spiritual truth in its place. Even so I would have ...
... it comes to the spiritual themes Sri Aurobindo does not veil his mystic realisations. His insights in allegory, his use of myth or symbol, all have the language of living experience in poetry. No wonder that in his hand the legend of Savitri should win for us its deepest symbolic truth. "Through āropa or superposition he has made the legend the purveyor of his spiritual realisations." That is precisely... known that Savitri is the poetic record of spiritual experiences of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. In this connection we may recall what the Mother told Mona Sarkar: All this is his own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which he has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly... . The botanical name of this tree is Butea Frondosa, which is popularly known as the Flame of the Forest. But the spiritual significance of it is far deeper than we can discern even from its poetic nomenclature. The Mother sees palāsha as the Beginning of the Supramental Realisation. That Yama should be linked up with it, enjoying the drink of immortality under its rich branches in the happy company ...
... which cannot apply to a new poetry dealing with spiritual things. A new art of words written from a new consciousness demands a new technique. AE himself admits that this rule makes a great difficulty because these 'highlight' words are few in the English language. His solution may be well enough where the realisations they represent are mental realisations or intuitions occurring on the summits of the... Philosophy of Art". But when I reached Sri Aurobindo's Ashram I didn't feel like continuing with my research and plunged into his writings which had given a philosophical form to his spiritual experiences and realisations in a language which was both profound and precise, literary at the same time that it was expository — a combination of qualities found in a mere handful of philosophers. The author... them and they are moreover of the kind I. By saying "I am not primarily a poet" he means that first and foremost he is a Yogi who uses poetry not for its own sake but to express his spiritual realisations more and more adequately in terms natural to poetry. In a similar vein he has declared that he is not a philosopher in the current sense but one who has employed intellectual language to put ...
... inward concentration, and learned to open herself to the psychic and the spiritual, and at last she was permitted to make the "passage to India" and join the Ashram. Sri Aurobindo gave her the name 'Nishta' ("one-pointed, fixed and steady concentration, devotion and faith in the single aim - the Divine and the Divine Realisation"), and it fitted her perfectly. Of Sri Aurobindo she said: "Here is one... technological research through speculation, experimentation in a laboratory and pilot-projecting have often set in advance the clock of our material civilisation, Yogic endeavour through spiritual insights, realisations, and controlled experiments in an Ashram - or the world itself as an extended Ashram - might set the pace for humanity's evolutionary march. A thousand experiments may fail, yet the next... it is in the waking state that this realisation must come and endure in order to be a reality of the life. If experienced in trance it would be a superconscient state true for some part of the inner being, but not real to the whole consciousness. Experiences in trance have their utility for opening the being and preparing it, but it is only when the realisation is constant in the waking state that ...
... Alipore Bomb trial went on, Sri Aurobindo, defended by Chit-taranjan Das, spent a year in jail, during which he had crucial experiences and revelations; as he wrote later, "Now the inner spiritual life and realisation which had continually been increasing in magnitude and universality and assuming a larger place took him up entirely and his work became a part and result of it and besides far exceeded... to recover the ancient nobility of temper, the strong Aryan character and the high Aryan outlook, the perceptions which made earthly life beautiful and wonderful, and the magnificent spiritual experiences, realisations and aspirations which made us the deepest-hearted, deepest-thoughted and most delicately profound in life of all the peoples of the earth, is the task next in importance and urgency.... Spiritual power in the present creates material power in the future and for this reason we always find that if it is Page 25 material force which dominates the present, it is spiritual which moulds and takes possession of the future---- Since the spiritual life of India is the first necessity of the world's future, we fight not only for our own political and spiritual freedom ...
... instrument in God's hand for its moulding, at first, through politics, and later, through spirituality. He fought for the political freedom of India, but only as a step and means to the realisation of the spiritual mission of her soul - the regeneration of humanity, and its evolutionary ascent from the mind to the Supermind. His vision was never confined to the political and economic, the cultural... there was not one among them who had a global vision of all the potentialities, spiritual, moral, intellectual, aesthetic, cultural, political and economic, of the renaissance that was taking place in India. Each of them had his gaze fixed upon one or a few aspects and potentialities, and considered their realisation as the sole object of their endeavour, and perhaps the whole purpose of the national... We have allowed ourselves this digression and this long excursion into spiritual matters in order to understand the precise nature of the first decisive experience which Sri Aurobindo had with Lele - an initial but very powerful experience which became the granite base of his subsequent much wider and integrative realisations. XI "I have spoken to you about many things, about Swadeshi ...
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.