... But as long as it lasts it is perfectly pure. And that must be the constant state of a supramentalised life. The mentalised spiritual will should no longer intervene; because one may very well have a spiritual will, one can live constantly expressing the spiritual will—that is what happens to all those who feel that they are guided by the Divine within—but that comes through a mental transcription... their will. And this gave a great suppleness to all these things and to the forms of individuals; because one was conscious of this will, which is not a mental will but a will of the Self, or a spiritual will, one might say, a will of the soul, if one gives that meaning to the word soul. But this is something which can be experienced here when one acts with an absolute spontaneity, that is to say, when... with the vital centres and makes them act—without passing through the thought, but with full consciousness. The consciousness does not work in the usual order, it goes directly from the centre of spiritual will to Matter. As long as one can keep this absolute immobility of the mind, the inspiration is absolutely pure, it comes pure. If one can catch it and keep it while speaking, what comes through ...
... buddhi of all that makes it subject to the sense-mind and, that once done, purify it from its own limitations and convert its inferior mental intelligence and will into the greater action of a spiritual will and knowledge. The movement of the buddhi to exceed the limits of the sense-mind is an effort already half accomplished in the human evolution; it is part of the common operation of Nature in... seeker of the Silence has to cast it away from him; the seeker of the integral Divinity has to pass beyond it, to replace and transform this thinking mind intent on Life by a greater effectuating spiritual Will, the Truth-Will of the spirit. The third and noblest stage of the intellectual will and reason is an intelligence which seeks for some universal reality or for a still higher self-existent Truth ...
... the first discovery or birth of this Flame among men. For the spirit is there concealed in man, guhâ hita as it is said in Veda and Upanishad, in the inner cave of our being; and his will is a spiritual will, hidden there in the spirit, present indeed in all our outward [being] and action,—for all being and action are of the spirit, but still its real nature, its native action is concealed, altered... idea, then, comes out with a convincing luminosity. It is the powers of the revelatory knowledge, the powers of the seer-wisdom, represented by the Bhrigus, who make this great discovery of the spiritual will-force and make it available to every human creature. Apnavana means he who acts or he who attains and acquires. It is the seer-wisdom that scales and attains in the light of the revelation which ...
... lasts, it's perfectly pure. And in a supramentalized life this has to be the CONSTANT state. Mentalized will should no longer intervene; because you may well have a spiritual will, your life may be the constant expression of spiritual will (it's what happens to all who feel themselves guided by the Divine within), but it still comes through a mental transcription. Well, as long as it's that way, it's... will). And this gave all things and every person's shape a great suppleness, because there was an awareness of this will—which is not a mental will but a will of the Self, what could be called a spiritual will or a soul-will (to give the word soul that particular meaning). I have that experience right here when there's an absolute spontaneity in action, I mean when the action—for instance, an utterance... contact with the vital centers and activates them without going through the mind—yet in full consciousness. The consciousness doesn't function in the usual sequence, it functions from the center of spiritual will straight to matter. Page 39 And so long as you can keep that absolute immobility in the mind, the inspiration is absolutely pure—it comes pure. When you can catch and hold onto this ...
... spirit and at the spirit in Nature. What moves the world is not really the modes of Prakriti,—these are only the lower aspect, the mechanism of our normal nature. The real motive power is a divine spiritual Will which uses at present these inferior conditions, but is itself not limited, not dominated, not mechanised, as is the human will, by the gunas. No doubt, since these modes are so universal in their... the source of its mastery and its Ananda; overcome by no sorrow, sin or pain, it has the joy and purity of its being and the joy and purity of its power. The soul that lives in God acts by this spiritual will and not by the normal will of the unliberated mind: its kinesis takes place by this spiritual force and not by the rajasic mode of Nature, precisely because it no longer lives in the lower movement... self-existence, spontaneous self-knowledge, intimate universal identity, deepest self-interchange, not of acquisition, assimilation, adjustment and laboured equivalence That light is full of a luminous spiritual will and there is no gulf or disparateness between its knowledge and its action. That delight is not our paler mental happiness, sukham , a profound concentrated intense self-existent bliss extended ...
... of attaining that high end and since we find that reason also is an insufficient light and power, there must be a superior range of being with its own proper powers,—liberated soul-faculties, a spiritual will and knowledge higher than the reason and intelligent will,—by which alone an entire conscious self-fulfilment can become possible to the human being. We must remember that our aim of self-fulfilment... intensities of the absolute in the relative, feels the large and serene presence of the infinite in the finite, discovers the reconciling law of a perfect unity in all divisions and differences. The spiritual will in his outer as in his inner life and formulation must be to effect a great reconciliation between the secret and eternal reality and the finite appearances of a world which seeks to express and ...
... and the Shakti. The faith in the Shakti, as long as we are not aware of and filled with her presence, must necessarily be preceded or at least accompanied by a firm and virile faith in our own spiritual will and energy and our power to move successfully towards unity and freedom and perfection. Man is given faith in himself, his ideas and his powers that he may work and create and rise to greater things... treasures of the Spirit and of all perfections and siddhis. She is Maheshwari, goddess of the supreme knowledge, and brings to us her vision for all kinds and widenesses of truth, her rectitude of the spiritual will, the calm and passion of her supramental largeness, her felicity of illumination: she is Mahakali, goddess of the supreme strength, and with her are all mights and spiritual force and severest ...
... deformation. We have then to get beyond this stage even. For the perfect action and experience is not to be determined by any kind of mental or vital preference, but by the revealing and inspiring spiritual will which is the Shakti in her direct and real initiation. When I say that as I am appointed, I work, I still bring in a limiting personal element and mental reaction. But it is the Master who will... g and in the end an equal universal love. None of these things need prevent various relations or different formulations of the inner attitude according to the need of life as determined by the spiritual will, or firm furtherings of this idea, view, action against that other for the same need and purpose by the same determination, or a strong outward or inward resistance, opposition and action against ...
... vital creature, but an infinite, divine and spiritual consciousness. Page 574 And our will and action too are no longer that of this bounded personality and its ego, but a divine and spiritual will and action, the will and power of the Universal, the Supreme, the All-Self and Spirit acting freely through the human figure. "This is the great change and transfiguration," runs the message ...
... decline all was not loss; there were needed developments, there were spiritual and other gains of the greatest importance for the future. If the high spiritualised mind and stupendous force of spiritual will, tapasyā , that characterised ancient India were less in evidence, there were new gains of spiritual emotion and sensitiveness to spiritual impulse on the lower planes of consciousness, that had ...
... Supreme as the Conscious-Soul steps in and applies the needed correctives: Her dangerous moods and arbitrary force She surrendered to the service of the soul And the control of a spiritual will. A greater despot tamed her despotism. 10 All the travels of Aswapati on the world-stair draw a good deal from Tannic lore which in turn has its beginning in the hymns of the Vedas ...
... Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice 24 the divine Agni helps us to discard our mortal state. The Truth-Consciousness symbolised by "gold" and the pure element "fire" as Tapas, spiritual will, promise to bring down celestial grace and to destroy the dross in man's subconscient nature. The term "sun-gold" recurs prominently, probably because Sri Aurobindo wants to draw attention ...
... by the sadhak. The ideal condition is that of a calm, clear, strong vital free from the reactions of the vital ego and responding with true and high feelings only that are acceptable to the spiritual will and the psychic being. 6.6.1935 Sri Aurobindo ...
... treasures of the Spirit and of all perfections and siddhis. She is Maheshwari, goddess of the supreme knowledge, and brings to us her vision for all kinds and widenesses of truth, her rectitude of the spiritual will, the calm and passion of her supramental largeness, her felicity of illumination; she is Mahakali, goddess of the supreme strength, and with her are all mights and spiritual force and severest ...
... must have an effect and a significance. Its first effect has been the liberation of life and mind out of Matter; its last effect has been to assist the emergence of a spiritual consciousness, a spiritual will and spiritual sense of existence in the terrestrial being so that he is no longer solely preoccupied with his outermost life or with that and mental pursuits and interests, but has learned to look ...
... Types of Faith Mental faith combats doubt and helps to open to the true knowledge; vital faith prevents the attacks of the hostile forces or defeats them and helps to open to the true spiritual will and action; physical faith keeps one firm through all physical obscurity, inertia or suffering and helps to open to the foundation of the true consciousness; psychic faith opens to the direct touch ...
... are the leading powers of being or have any dominance. The admission of such a change can only be brought about by a full emergence of the soul and inner being, the dominance of the psychic and spiritual will and a long working of their light and power on the parts of the being, a psychic and spiritual remoulding of the whole nature. A unification of the entire being by a breaking down of the wall ...
... illumined, direct and spontaneous truth-will. There is not and cannot be in the will of the self-knowing spirit any contradiction, division or difference between its will and its knowledge. The spiritual will is the Tapas or enlightened force of the conscious being of the spirit effecting infallibly what is there within it, and it is this infallible operation of things acting according to their own ...
... moved to manifest its being in infinite ways, a Will or Power not ignorant but at one with its own self-knowledge and its knowledge of all that it is put out to express. And of this Power a secret spiritual will and soul-faith in us, the dominant hidden force of our nature, is the individual instrument, more nearly in communication with the Supreme, a surer guide and enlightener, could we once get at it ...
... full and dynamic, but brings at once into the harder way of works in the world the divinely passionate element of joy and love which is often absent in its beginning when it is only the austere spiritual will that follows in a struggling uplifting tension Page 251 the steep ascent, and the heart is still asleep or bound to silence. If the spirit of divine love can enter, the hardness of ...
... above has a wide sweep: it covers all the departments and is one harmonious whole. If walls are set up in the field of work, dividing and breaking it up, the work can never be according to the spiritual Will. So bear this in mind: no collaboration, no right working. 1 December 1957 There is no question at all of "position"―nor of prestige. X has a lot of knowledge and experience of the ...
... yet begun the real yajna. It is because your mind is struggling with your vital, the unwilling animal, and asking it to allow itself to be immolated that there is the pain and struggle. If the spiritual will (or psychic) were more in the front then you would not be lamenting over the loss of the ghee and butter and curds thrown into the Fire or trying to have a last lick at it before casting it. The ...
... desires are altogether blind and ignorant. But the same desire, when viewed from above, presents an appearance far more deep and true. It then reveals itself to be just the deformation of a spiritual Will. That is to say, what exists as the divine Will-Power, the Seer-Will, Kavi-kratu, in the height! and depths of our consciousness undergoes a 'beauty-turned-into-beast' metamorphosis under ...
... are the leading powers of being or have any dominance. The admission of such a change can only be brought about by a full emergence of the soul and inner being, the dominance of the psychic and spiritual will and a long working of their light and power on the parts of the being, a psychic and spiritual remoulding of the whole nature. A unification of the entire being by a breaking down of the ...
... the vital mind of the animal to the thinking mind still imperfect in our human intelligence. The central will implicit in life must be no longer the vital will in the life and the body, but the spiritual will of which we have now only rare and dim intimations and glimpses. For now it comes to us hardly disclosed, weakened, disguised in the mental Idea; but it is in its own nature supramental and it ...
... The ideal condition is that of a calm, clear, strong vital free from the reactions of the vital ego and responding with true and Page 129 high feelings only that are acceptable to the spiritual will and the psychic being. Vital Suggestions It would not be at all right to yield to these suggestions which are obviously those of a force that wants to make use of the unease and disappointment ...
... complete mastery. Will and aspiration are needed to bring down the aid of the Divine Force and to keep the being on its side in its dealings with the lower powers. The Divine Force fulfilling the spiritual will and the heart's psychic aspiration can alone bring about the conquest. There is only one way if you cannot exert your will—it is to call the Force; even to call only with the mind or the ...
... and with the universal not only in essence of consciousness and spiritual truth of being, but in expressive act too of consciousness and being, when it enjoys an initiating and relating truth of spiritual will and knowledge and the soul's overflowing delight in God and existence, when it is admitted to the spirit's fullness of assent to self and its creative liberty, its strain of an eternal joy in ...
... full and dynamic, but brings at once into the harder way of works in the world the divinely passionate element of joy and love which is often absent in its beginning when it is only the austere spiritual Will that follows in a struggling uplifting tension the steep ascent, and the heart is still asleep or bound to silence. If the spirit of divine love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the ...
... significance: the way of the Spirit in its power is justified, no longer a foolish and empty dream, an eternal delirium, great mechanical toil or termless futility, but the sum of works of a large spiritual Will and Wisdom: the human soul and the cosmic spirit look into each other's eyes with a noble and divine meaning. The questions which surround our existence elucidate themselves at once with a certain ...
... perfection. And this was the experience of all the cells. The experience lasted more than an hour: the two conditions. That's exactly what made a sharp division in the whole spiritual thought or spiritual will of mankind. The point doesn't seem to have been understood. Some, like Buddha and that whole line, have declared that the world is incorrigible, that the only thing to do is to get out of it, and ...
... struggling mental and vital creature, but an infinite, divine and spiritual consciousness. And our will and action too are no longer that of this bounded personality and its ego, but a divine and spiritual will and action, the will and power of the Universal, the Supreme, the All-Self and Spirit acting freely through the human figure. Essays on the Gita, pp. 554-56 In the spiritual truth ...
... that are the soul of the Mantra will not be the same: the needed significant resonance, the required suggestive plungingness and spreadingness will not be present arty more. The inexpressibly spiritual will be missed. I should explain here that the Mantra which Milton attains by the austerely sublime is not a monopoly of poetic austerity. It can manifest in a style whose temper is one of vibrant ...
... compassion of the spirit that lie above the mind can pour into activities of conception; emotion and action can impart to them stability of increasing calm, silence and peace even while dynamism of the spiritual will manifests more and more puissantly. The distinction between the mind and the Spirit lies in the fact that while the mind, even at its highest levels, is over-weighed with multiplicity as its object ...
... vital creature, but an infinite, divine and spiritual consciousness. Page 76 And our will and action too are no longer that of this bounded personality and its ego, but a divine and spiritual will and action, the will and power of the Universal, the Supreme, the All-Self and Spirit acting freely through the human figure. 'This is the great change and transfiguration," runs the message ...
... and the higher being. As a result, the outer nature, and not only the inner nature alone, arrives at conversion of the consciousness, and increasing transformation of nature, both psychic and spiritual, will become effected. It is true that at a certain stage, particularly, when one can stand back from the activities of Prakriti, it becomes possible to realize one's inner being as a silent impersonal ...
... upon the development of the human body, there has come about in recent times a growing perception that the human body is not a tomb but a temple of the Spirit and that there is discernible in us a spiritual will which wants to manifest itself fully in the physical life. It is also being increasingly perceived that the physical body can, with the aid of spiritual capacities, attain to greater peaks of ...
... inert and mute, in a deep slumber without life, there comes a vibration emanating from the Supreme Will and matter trembles, shudders and awakens in an ecstasy. It is a mystic influence, a spiritual Will which has gone out from me and has penetrated even into the subconscient, into the inert inconscience, to act and to awaken the divinity which is hidden in this dark, obscure and black Inconscience ...
... effort. Should one not use a straining effort in order to become free from a clouded state? If one cannot do without straining. But it is not so effective as the true spiritual will in which there is no straining. When I sit down to meditation many thoughts seem to attack me. If I go about and work or simply walk, I feel a little more conscious than in the ...
... ignorance on earth. Nature with her tantalising magic-ways, the "Circean wonderland" of caprice and perversity, the garish "bizarre kingdom" of man, all submit to the control of Aswapati's "spiritual will". 32 There is verily an occult world that rules and sustains the phenomenal world of the senses. The movements in the occult world are revealed when we pore within, penetrate ...
... (1913-20). When Premier again (1922-24 and 1926-29), he foresaw and sought to prevent the rebirth of German militarism. It is now known that in 1912 and 1913 Sri Aurobindo had put the force of his spiritual will, Aishwarya, to support Poincaré in his election. (See also Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research, December 1986, p.124 and April 1987, pp. 89,90) Page 132 solid base came to ...
... distinction between activities relating to the spiritual and dispositions relating to the spiritual. The four basic categories that these three distinctions yield in regard to the phrase 'spiritual education' are: 1) education based on spiritual principles; 2) education of the human spirit; 3) education in a spiritual activity; and 4) education in a spiritual disposition. It may be observed that these... initiation into religious and spiritual practices. But considering that there are rival religious and spiritual practices, and since the proper aim of a religious or spiritual education must be that of facilitating a critical understanding of the great religious and spiritual traditions, and further, considering that spiritual education is not identical with religious education, one has to acknowledge... are experiences, which are, spiritual but which can be attained by purely psychological and methodical processes, which are known in India as yogic methods. Hence, larger conceptions of spiritual education can be formulated. Again, spiritual education implies a vaster background of psychology of spiritual experience on a sound basis of which the pedagogy of spiritual education can be built. We ...
... is to be done, and when the work is done, nothing is found forgotten. To arrive at the state of spiritual servant-hood is the highest glory of spiritual effort and spiritual education. It will be seen that in attaining various states of spiritual consciousness and various traits or aspects of spiritual personality, various psychological processes, and their scientific handling of materials of Knowledge... emotion must be fully welcomed in the programmes of spiritual education. All ethics is fundamentally a process of self-control, and spiritual education will admit all processes of self-control, which are related to self-knowledge and to the development of sage-hood, spiritual heroism, sainthood and spiritual servant-hood. The programme of spiritual education will also encourage the philosophical study... why the spiritual sage easily becomes a poet, and the spiritual saint easily becomes a poet-singer and a musician and every spiritual seeker becomes an artist of life and expresses his art of Page 338 life in various other arts through which harmonious forms of joy and beauty can be expressed. In an ideal system of education, art will be used for spiritual education and spiritual education ...
... to be done, and when the work is done, nothing is found forgotten. To arrive at the state of spiritual servant-hood is the highest glory of spiritual effort and spiritual education. It will be seen that in attaining various states of spiritual consciousness and various traits or aspects of spiritual personality, various psychological processes, and their scientific handling of materials of... emotion, must be fully welcomed in the programmes of spiritual education. All ethics is fundamentally a process of self-control, and spiritual education will admit all processes of self-control, which are related to self-knowledge and to the development of sage-hood, spiritual heroism, sainthood and spiritual servant-hood. The programme of spiritual education will also encourage the philosophical study... reason why the spiritual sage easily becomes a poet, and the spiritual saint easily becomes a poet-singer and a musician, and every spiritual seeker becomes an artist of life and expresses his art of life in various other arts through which harmonious forms of joy and beauty can be expressed. In an ideal system of education, art will be used for spiritual education and spiritual education will ...
... the spiritual direction, the revelation of a spiritual meaning in them, the imprint of a spiritual refinement, the beginning of a spiritual character. It is in this attempt that the errors of religion come in, for they are caused by the very nature of the matter with which it is dealing,—that inferior stuff invades the very forms that are meant to serve as intermediaries between the spiritual and the... The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution The Life Divine Chapter XXIV The Evolution of the Spiritual Man Even as men come to Me, so I accept them. It is my path that men follow from all sides.... Whatever form the worshipper chooses... has been any evolution of the spiritual in us, it is only as a part of the mental evolution, a special operation of man's mentality; the spiritual element is not a distinct or separate entity and cannot have an independent emergence or a supramental future. The mental being can develop a spiritual interest or preoccupation and may evolve perhaps in consequence a spiritual as well as an intellectual mentality ...
... outlook, ignorant of his own self and the forces that drive and use him.... Only a spiritual change, an evolution of his being from the superficial mental towards the deeper spiritual consciousness, can make a real and effective difference. To discover the spiritual being in himself is the main business of the spiritual man and to help others towards the same evolution is his real service to the race;... consequence and there has been no life-transformation, it is because man in the mass has always deflected the spiritual impulsion, recanted from the spiritual ideal or held it only as a form and rejected the inward change. Spirituality cannot be called upon to deal with life by a non-spiritual method Page 412 or attempt to cure its ills by the panaceas, the political, social or other mechanical... possible." The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 883-85 Sweet Mother, how can someone who hasn't much spiritual capacity best help in this work? I don't know whether one can say that anyone has much or little spiritual capacity. It is not like that. To live the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness is needed. This cannot be compared in any way with the different faculties or ...
... can be no basis of spiritual life. ' Naturally, when one begins spiritual life under the aegis of a Guru or competent spiritual teacher, many of these qualities will be lacking in the seeker but by practice one comes to acquire them and slowly and gradually enter into spiritual life. The one most imperative need on the part of the seeker is sincerity without which spiritual life is impossible... Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects Continence In Spiritual Life Spiritual seekers all over the world know that spiritual life is based upon certain moral rules and principles. These are truthfulness, non-injury to others, non-stealing, continence etc. called Yama in Raja Yoga. The others are Niyama which consists of cleanliness, contentment... . So those who aspire for spiritual life must be above all very sincere. In spite of his failings in other respects, if he is sincere, he must arrive at the goal one day be it in this or some other life. The spiritual quest is such that once it is begun it will continue throughout our lives till the goal, that is, Yoga (Union) with the Divine is achieved. It may take 'more or less time but patience ...
... character, the law—dharma—of that plane. One can have the religious or spiritual experience on each of these planes, representing various degrees of growth and evolution according to the plane to which it is attached. It is therefore that the Tantra refers to three gradations of spiritual seekers and accordingly three types or lines of spiritual discipline: the animal ( pasu bhava), the heroic (vira bhava)... us today, one can determine more or less definitely the altitudes to which the various spiritual realisations of the past rose and one can see also the degrees or graded stages of the evolution of the spiritual consciousness. A broad landmark can be noted here which concerns us at the present moment. The spiritual consciousness has been rising to higher and higher peaks and possessing them one after... of the Spiritual Consciousness EVEN the Vedic Rishis used to refer to the ancients, more ancient than they themselves. "The ancients", they said, "worshipped Agni, we too the moderns in our turn worship the same godhead". Or again, "Thus spoke our forefathers"; or, "So have we heard from those who have gone before us" and so on. Indeed, the tradition in the domain of spiritual discipline ...
... the law – dharma – of that plane. One can have the religious or spiritual experience on each of these planes, representing various degrees of growth and evolution according to the plane to which it is attached. It is therefore that the Tantra refers to three gradations of spiritual seekers and accordingly three types or lines of spiritual discipline: the animal (pasu bhava), the heroic (vira bhava)... us today, one can determine more or less definitely the altitudes to which the various spiritual realisations of the past rose and one can see also the degrees or graded stages of the evolution of the spiritual consciousness. A broad landmark can be noted here which concerns us at the present moment. The spiritual consciousness has been rising to higher and higher peaks and possessing them one after... Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness EVEN the Vedic Rishis used to refer to the ancients, more ancient than they themselves. "The ancients", they said, "worshipped Agni, we too the moderns in our turn worship the same godhead". Or again, "Thus spoke our forefathers"; or, "So have we heard from those who have gone before us" and so on. Indeed, the tradition in the domain of spiritual discipline ...
... allow it to happen. DALAL: Is not spiritual practice necessary for leading a spiritual life? Doesn't spiritual practice involve time? [Eckhart has said that time is the greatest obstacle in spiritual life.] ECKHART: It may be necessary for you to have a spiritual practice, but it is not absolutely necessary for everyone to go through spiritual practice in order to have a transformation... persons having a transformation without any spiritual practice. Ramana Maharshi had liberation after a brief profound experience at the age of 16 or 17, and there was no prior spiritual practice. One might say that, in such cases, there must have been spiritual practice in previous lifetimes. That is possible. But the fact remains that, for some, spiritual practice may consist only in the suffering... consciously engaged in any spiritual practice. It is true that such cases of a sudden and definitive liberation are rare. In most cases, liberation involves a process of going through spiritual practice. But even in such cases the final step comes when one lets go of everything, including their spiritual practice. Liberation is not likely to happen as a direct result of spiritual practice; it is not like ...
... the law - dharma – of that plane. One can have the religious or spiritual experience on each of these planes, representing various degrees of grow and evolution according to the plane to which it is attached. 1 It is therefore that the Tantra refers to three gradations of spiritual seekers and accordingly three types or lines of spiritual discipline: the animal (pa ś u bh ā va) the heroic (V ī ra bh... us today one can determine more or less definitely the altitudes to which the various spiritual realisations of the past rose and one can see also the degrees or graded stages of the evolution of the spiritual consciousness. A broad landmark can be noted here which concerns us at the present moment. The spiritual consciousness has been rising to higher and higher peaks and possessing them one after... of the Spiritual Consciousness EVEN the Vedic Rishis used to refer to the ancients, more ancient than they themselves. "The ancients", they said, "worshipped Agni, we too the moderns in our turn worship the same godhead". Or again, "Thus spoke our forefathers"; or, "So have we heard from those who have gone before us" and so on. Indeed, the tradition in the domain of spiritual discipline ...
... who lives in the spiritual consciousness is a spiritual man, just as one who lives in thinking mind is an intellectual man. The spiritual consciousness is that in which you realise the Divine, the Self, the cosmic oneness as the constant living contact with these things. I do not know what you mean by abnormal experiences. There are many abnormal experiences that are not spiritual. There are two kinds... by a 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... the truth. The spiritual experience is 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 ...
... without effect or consequence. Equally a man who sets out to be a Yogi or Guru and has no spiritual consciousness or no power in his spiritual consciousness—a Yoga force or spiritual force—is making a false claim and is either a charlatan or a self-deluded imbecile; still more is he so if having no spiritual force he claims to have made a path others can follow. If Yoga is a reality, if spirituality... there must be such a thing as Yoga force or spiritual force. It is evident that if spiritual force exists, it must be able to produce spiritual results—therefore there is no irrationality in Page 179 the claim of those sadhaks who say that they feel the force of the Guru or the force of the Divine working in them and leading towards spiritual fulfilment and experience. Whether it is so... something dead or something unreal or something inert and without consequence. If there is no such thing as spiritual consciousness, there can be no reality of Yoga, and if there is no Yoga force, spiritual force, Yoga Shakti, then also there can be no effectivity in Yoga. A Yoga consciousness or spiritual consciousness which has no power or force in it, may not be dead or unreal but it is evidently something ...
... based on some other than the spiritual consciousness and not transformed on the inner spiritual basis. So also people speak of religious men as spiritual, but one may be a very religious man yet not spiritual. The popular idea confuses great feats of occult power, ascetic feats, miracles, astonishing performances like those of your Jewel Sannyasi as the works of a spiritual achievement and the signs of... powers and feats have all been taken as spirituality and the spiritual evolution kept tied to the moorings of the planes of lesser consciousness which do indeed prepare the soul by experience for the spiritual consciousness but are not themselves that. For perfection can only become truly spiritual when it is founded on the awakened spiritual consciousness and takes on its peculiar essence. We are told... do marvels of asceticism and yet be not spiritual at all—for in any true sense of the word, in its proper and native significance it means one who has attained to the spiritual consciousness, the realisation of the inner or higher Self, the contact or union with the Divine or that which is eternal or is striving after and approaching these things. Spiritual perfection can only come by a life based ...
... . Religion has admitted an occult element in its ritual, ceremony, sacraments; it has leaned upon spiritual thinking, deriving from it sometimes a creed or theology, sometimes its supporting spiritual philosophy,—the former, ordinarily, is the occidental method, the latter the oriental: but spiritual experience is the final aim and achievement of religion, its sky and summit. But also religion has... 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: but more often it has confined itself to occult knowledge and practice without any spiritual vistas; it has turned to thaumaturgy or mere magic... by a spiritual philosophy, whether intellectual in its method or intuitive. But all knowledge and endeavour can reach its fruition only if it is turned into experience and has become a part of the consciousness and its established operations; in the spiritual field all this religious, occult or philosophical knowledge and endeavour must, to bear fruition, end in an opening up of the spiritual consciousness ...
... 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... in the external manifestation. The spiritual plane is something static behind and above the outward play; it supports the instruments of the nature, but is not itself included or involved in the external manifestation here. But in speaking of these things one must be careful not to be imprisoned by the words we use. When I speak of the psychic or the spiritual, I mean things that are very deep and ...
... and conscious of a mission in life. 3) At 13 years of age She had, for almost a whole year, repeated every day, a most wonderful spiritual experience—an experience of a high spiritual status rendering help to men, women and children, bringing to them through spiritual contact hope, joy, health and general well-being. 4) During the early years of this century She practised occultism—the science... Polish teacher in Algeria. 5) Around 1912 She led in Paris a group of spiritual seekers and revealed to them profound spiritual insights as to the growth and fulfilment of individual and social living. She had at this time a clear and a conscious perception of the aim of an integral transformation of life and the spiritual processes involved in it. 6) At the same time She had a persistent longing... true spiritual basis. And in this too a promising good start has been made. 11) The Ashram life and its promotion has been the basic work all along and there are thousands today who rejoice over the inspiring contact they have had from the Mother. The educational work was taken in hand in 1943 and Auroville was inaugurated in 1968. 12) All the three undertakings being basically spiritual, are ...
... evidence. * * * Thirdly, spiritual education will provide to students, appropriate to their age and ability, acquaintance, thought and experience of the objects of the spiritual domain, namely, soul. God and their respective energies and powers. * * * It may be added that all those who advocate spiritual education, normally, consider spiritual entities and their energies and powers... occurrence or of a sudden momentary flash, then, considering the variety of spiritual experiences and considering the conflicts in regard to the truth-claims of various spiritual experiences, one would have hesitated to assign much value to the realm of spiritual experiences. But the dismissal of the claims of spiritual experiences on the ground that they are occasional or extremely rare or riddled with... Notes Relating to Spiritual Education There are three respects in which spiritual education will differ from religious education, and as a consequence, will render it free from the objection that it is inadmissible or controversial as far its relevance to common schools is concerned. * * * First of all, spiritual education will build itself on strong foundations ...
... merely a spiritual adviser to Shivaji, concerned chiefly with the inner salvation and development of his disciple, and only secondarily with the gross material activities, the things of Caesar. The two domains are not separate at least in this case: the spiritual here directly and dynamically affects the physical. The spiritual guide is the dynamo – the matrix – of the power, the power spiritual; he wields... identity. The spiritual force is not and need not be impotent or out of place in Caesar's domain. Rather it is the spiritual man who alone can possess the secret of mastering the forces that work out mundane things, perfectly and faultlessly. But then, it may be asked, how is it that in the history of the world we find men of action, great dynamic personalities to be mostly not spiritual but rather... Napoleon, Chandragupta, Akbar, even Shivaji, were not spiritual personalities; their actions were of the world and of worldly nature. And the force they wielded cannot be described as spiritual, and yet how effective it was, what mighty changes it brought about in the affairs of men! And do we not actually see in the lives of saints and true spiritual souls that the force of the spirit, if force it can ...
... dharma—of that plane. One can have the religious or spiritual experience on each of these planes, representing various degrees of growth and evolution according to the plane to which it is attached. It is therefore that the Tantra refers to three gradations of spiritual seekers and accordingly three types or lines of Page 54 spiritual discipline: the animal (pashu bhava,) the heroic... us today, one can determine more or less definitely the altitudes to which the various spiritual realisations of the past rose and one can see also the degrees or graded stages of the evolution of the spiritual consciousness. A broad landmark can be noted here which concerns us at the present moment. The spiritual consciousness has been rising to higher and higher peaks and possessing them one after... of the Spiritual Consciousness Even the Vedic Rishis used to refer to the ancients, more ancient than they themselves. "The ancients", they said, "worshipped Agni, we too the moderns in our turn worship the same godhead". Or again, "Thus spoke our forefathers"; or, "So have we heard from those who have gone before us" and so on. Indeed, the tradition in the domain of spiritual discipline ...
... individual and society a necessary passage to deeper religious and spiritual truth: one has sometimes to deny God in order to find him; the finding is inevitable at the end of all earnest scepticism and denial." The spiritual aim will reject asceticism and seek to fulfil itself in fullness and transformation of life "The spiritual aim will seek to fulfil itself... in a fullness of life and... regeneration of mankind becomes more Page 44 and more feeble. Therefore while many new spiritual waves with their strong special motives and disciplines must necessarily be the forerunners of a spiritual age, yet their claims must be subordinated in the general mind of the race and of its spiritual leaders to the recognition that all motives and disciplines are valid and yet none entirely valid... spirit within and all the preliminary means it will use will have that for its aim. In the end it will employ chiefly if not solely the spiritual compulsion which even the spiritual individual can exercise on those around him, - and how much more should a spiritual society be able to do it, - that which awakens within us in spite of all inner resistance and outer denial the compulsions of the Light ...
... Spiritual Forces of Help and Succour The Hidden Forces of Life Existence of Spiritual Force Even in ordinary non-spiritual things the action of invisible or of subjective forces was open to doubt and discussion in which there could be no material certitude—while the spiritual force is invisible in itself and also invisible in its action. So it is idle... without effect or consequence. Equally a man who sets out to be a Yogi or Guru and has no spiritual consciousness or no power in his spiritual consciousness—a Yoga force or spiritual force—is making a false claim and is either a charlatan or a self-deluded imbecile; still more is he so if having no spiritual force he claims to have made a path others can follow. If Yoga is a reality, if spirituality... delusion, there must be such a thing as Yoga force or spiritual force. It is evident that if spiritual force exists, it must be able to produce spiritual results—therefore there is no irrationality in the claim of those sadhaks who say that they feel the force of the Guru or the force of the Divine working in them and leading towards spiritual fulfilment and experience. Whether it is so or not in ...
... words or sounds having a spiritual significance and power. moksa (Moksha): Spiritual liberation from the sense ofpersonal being; release from cosmic existence. mūlādhāra: See cakra. nābhipadma: See cakra. nirvana (Nirvana): Spiritual extinction of the separate individual self. om: The primal sound representing the supreme spiritual reality. Parame ś vara... in Nature. tantra: A path of spiritual discipline based upon the principle of Consciousness-Power (conceived as the Mother) as the supreme Reality. tap as: Energy of Consciousness - the principle of spiritual power and force in the higher or divine Nature. tapasy ā (Tapasya): Spiritual effort by concentration of the energies in a spiritual discipline or process. tāmasika... mind, life and body considered as a receptacle of the spiritual consciousness and force. advaita (Adwaita): Monism, monistic. advaita ved ā nta (Adwaita Vedanta): The monistic school of Vedanta. ājnā cakra: Will centre - see cakra. anāhata: See cakra. ānanda (Ananda): Bliss, delight - the divine or spiritual bliss. antarātman (Antaratman): Inner self, soul ...
... the mind. The spiritual men, on the other hand, have exceeded the limits of mind and have by the highest human effort reached the spiritual status. This is a very difficult and arduous task and those who have thus reached the spiritual status are called the spiritual men. So we see the rarity of this type of men amongst us. If we have sattwic or religious men by thousands, spiritual men can be counted... for that another consciousness is needed and that is the spiritual .consciousness. When the mind and mental consciousness is completely exceeded, the spiritual or truth-consciousness begins. The spiritual is in effect the reversal of the mental consciousness, for, where the mind sees things in division, distinction and separation, the spiritual vision is Unitarian. It looks at the essential unity at... the better of human life is to be brought about, it must be done by men taking to the spiritual path. There is no other way. Mind and mental humanity have long been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Hence the imperative necessity of the spiritual change. And this can only be brought about by spiritual men by their single and combined efforts. Page 36 ...
... aim of religion, that is the sense of spiritual salvation, that is the living Truth that fulfils and releases. This dynamic following after the highest spiritual truth and the highest spiritual aim are the uniting bond of Indian religion and, behind all its thousand forms, its one common essence. If there were nothing else to be said in favour of the spiritual genius of the Indian people or the claim... fervid devotion but also their profound spiritual thinking have found so speedy an echo and formed a popular religious literature? This strong permeation or close nearness of the spiritual turn, this readiness of the mind of a whole nation to turn to the highest realities is the sign and fruit of an age-long, a real and a still living and supremely spiritual culture. The endless variety of Indian... Indian and European culture springs from the spiritual aim of Indian civilisation. It is the turn which this aim imposes on all the rich and luxuriant variety of its forms and rhythms that gives to it its unique character. For even what it has in common with other cultures gets from that turn a stamp of striking originality and solitary greatness. A spiritual aspiration was the governing force of this ...
... Supermind. Of course, it is true that without actually ascending to these higher spiritual mental planes and permanently living there, if we can open ourselves from below to their knowledge and spiritual influences, we can somewhat spiritualise our normal waking being and consciousness. But the spiritual change effected in this way is Page 135 never profound or wide in... action. For "there is a dynamism proper to the spiritual consciousness whose nature is Light, Power, Ananda, Peace, Knowledge, infinite Wideness, and that must be possessed and descend into the whole being. Otherwise one can get mukti but not perfection or transformation (except a relative psycho-spiritual change)." 2 The descent of the spiritual potencies and forces of the higher planes... absorbed superconscience. For in the latter case, on the return to the waking consciousness from these temporary sojourns, only an indeterminate spiritual impression may abide but not much of dynamic effect. In order to have the dynamis of the higher spiritual grades of being active and organised in our waking life, we must first effectuate "a conscious heightening and widening into immense ranges ...
... aspirant to the spiritual life, but one doesn't have a spiritual life. Sweet Mother, I would like to have the explanation of a sentence. Sri Aurobindo has said somewhere, "Materially you are nothing, spiritually you are everything." That means that it is the Spirit, the spiritual consciousness and the divine Presence which give to life all its value, that without this spiritual consciousness... Sweet Mother, where does our true spiritual life begin? The true spiritual life begins when one is in communion with the Divine in the psychic, when one is conscious of the divine Presence in the psychic and in constant communion with the psychic. Then the spiritual life begins, not before. The true spiritual life. When one is united with one's psychic being and conscious... time, there is still the question of those who are not consciously open to the new Force. Then how will they be influenced? Will it be by the spiritual force but not by the supramental? What, what, what? What difference do you make between the spiritual force and the supramental? No. But you said that those who have done nothing or have not given themselves, how can they hope to be influenced ...
... justice, the utility of such ties in spiritual life is absolutely nil. So long as there is any" attachment to individuals as members of family— an attachment which flows from particular relationship, such as husband and wife, father and son, brother and sister etc, the prospect of any spiritual liberation and up lift ment of consciousness is a far cry. In spiritual life we have to outgrow all our... Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects Spiritual Life and Family Alignments All attachments is a hindrance to spiritual seeking. Family ties constitute one of the greatest, strongest and most persistent attachments of all. Needless to say that whatever be the necessity of such attachment to keep up the stability and solidarity of family life... wrong just because we belong Page 92 to some family. Such an attitude will be fatal to spiritual life which insists on Truth and nothing but truth and rejection of falsehood and error, and all hasty and summary judgments. This was the compelling reason why all spiritual aspirants left their homes and families in order to seek the Spirit. Within the narrow limits of family life ...
... although individual spiritual realisation remains always the first necessity, it cannot be deemed complete unless and until it is accompanied by an outer realisation also in life; "spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without." (Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, Cent, ed., p. 229) And herein lay the justification, nay the necessity for the founding of a spiritual community of a different... One Self in all and evolve a higher consciousness than the mental, a spiritual and supramental consciousness which will transform and divinise human nature." (Ibid.) Referring specifically to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry we can thus say in words adapted from Sri Aurobindo that this is a community of spiritual seekers and all those who join the organisation and live there have for... we aim at something more; in our Yoga we seek to bring about a radical change in earthly manifestation which will make possible, nay inevitable, the emergence of spiritually perfect collectivities whose constituents will be spiritually perfect individuals. For, Sri Aurobindo tells us, the Eternal affirms Himself equally in the single form and in the group-existence; the individual and the ...
... the total view of spiritual history of humankind, it can be said that the spiritual man has not stood back altogether from the life of humanity. On the contrary, the sense of unity with all beings, the stress of a universal love and compassion, the will to spend the energies for the good of all creatures, are central to the dynamic out-flowering of the spirit.12 Spiritual leaders, seers, prophets... passions of the needs of the body; and these are the basic causes of pain and suffering, and they cannot be remedied except by spiritual methods. To discover the spiritual being in oneself and to help others towards the same evolution is the real service that the spiritual leader can render to the race; outward help can indeed succor and elevate, but that is not enough; humanity needs a more radical... therefore, provided basic facts of the urge in the mental man towards evolution of the spiritual man and contended that this evolution is marked by a long process of progression in four fields which are directly relevant to the evolution of spirituality: religion, occultism, philosophy and methodized spiritual effort or yoga. He has also pointed out that the very law of the human type manifests the ...
... grow steadily in religious and spiritual experience. Towards this end, every human nature, every characteristic turn of its action was given a place in the system; each was suitably surrounded with the spiritual idea and a religious influence, each provided with steps by which it might rise towards its own spiritual possibility and significance. The highest spiritual meaning was set on the summits... after and discover the eternal, to be in union with God, that is the common idea and aim of religion, that is the sense of spiritual salvation, that is the living truth that fulfils and releases. This dynamic following after the highest spiritual truth and the highest spiritual aim is the uniting bond of Hinduism, and, behind all its thousand arms, it is one common essence. It must be emphasised... minded; (ii) the second was more developed and capable of a much stronger and deeper psycho-spiritual experience; and (iii) the third was that of the ripest and most developed of all, ready for the spiritual heights, fit to receive or to climb towards the loftiest ultimate truth of spiritual reality. It was to meet the need of the first stage or level that Hinduism created that mass of ...
... had to find its own greater truth in the spiritual idea and its finer cultural field in a more delicate and complex and subtle psychic sight and experience. It is this that has been prepared by recent and contemporary poets. The expression of this profounder idea and experience is again not enough until the spiritual idea has passed into a complete spiritual realisation and not only affected individual... things, not only with another and a more complete vision, but in the very inmost language of the self-experience of the soul and the sight of the spiritual mind. The attempt to speak in poetry the inmost things of the spirit or to use a psychical and spiritual seeing other than that of the more outward imagination and intelligence has indeed been made before, but for the most part and except in rare moments... elevation of all that has yet been reached stands or rather wings and floats in a high intermediate region the poetry of Tagore, not in the complete spiritual light, but amid an air shot with its seekings and glimpses, a sight and cadence found in a psycho-spiritual heaven of subtle and delicate soul experience transmuting the earth tones by the touch of its radiance. The wide success and appeal of his poetry ...
... God. The spiritual practice of Sri Ramakrishna laid great stress on Yogic trance. It signifies that the outer mind should be withdrawn from all sense-attraction, not going out in all directions but focussed on the pure spiritual truth, like an arrow shot into its target. What absurd ideas do we not cherish in the name of spirituality? Firstly, according to the common notion a spiritual figure,... 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 immortalising fount of true spirituality and Vivekananda spread it abroad to create a living spiritual atmosphere. The spiritual leader of the future will fix for... a direct intuition. A spiritual man may not express his realisations through a new doctrine or relate it to some already existing doctrines, but that will not in any way diminish his spirituality. Again many people hold that the observance 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 ...
... Mind and the Spiritual Life There are similarities as well as differences in the perspectives of Eckhart and Sri Aurobindo regarding the role of mind in the spiritual life. To Eckhart, mind, from the spiritual viewpoint, is the absence of consciousness. To be identified with mind is to be unconscious; it is to be not present. The one aim of the spiritual life is to liberate oneself... various spiritual disciplines, mind has generally been used to serve two chief functions in the spiritual life. First, mind is utilized to acquire a mental understanding of the human makeup and of the processes and principles by which one's ordinary nature can be transformed so as to manifest a higher level of consciousness. The reader may recall the four aids on the spiritual path mentioned... and spiritual experience and gives no room for the descent of the true illuminating knowledge or else deforms it as soon as it touches or even before it fully touches the human mental plane. 31 Eckhart attaches little importance to mental knowledge in spiritual teaching, whereas Sri Aurobindo regards an intellectual preparation as a possible "first step in a powerful Yoga" in spiritual life ...
... to speak to the children of spiritual things often has the opposite result, and that these words lose all their value." Page 100 Mother commented at this point: " 'Spiritual things'—what does he mean by 'spiritual things'?... Spiritual things.... They [the students] are taught history or spiritual things, they are taught science or spiritual things. That is the stupidity... infinite richness with spiritually ecstatic delight, should be the right object behind the study of various subjects. Thus it is not the subject as such but the spirit and the attitude behind its study that changes the quality of everything. There are not two different types of subjects, secular and spiritual; there are only two different types of knowledge, secular and spiritual, lower and higher; and... teachers were to concentrate solely on the subjects they are teaching, for you are taking care of the spiritual life?" The Mother's Rejoinder: "There is no 'spiritual life'! It is still the old idea, still the old idea of the sage, the sannyasin, the... who represents spiritual life, while all the others represent ordinary life —and it is not true, it is not true, it is not ...
... him to grow steadily in religious and spiritual experience. Every part of human nature, every characteristic turn of its action was given a place in the system; each was suitably surrounded with the spiritual idea and a religious influence, each provided with steps by which it might rise towards its own spiritual possibility and significance. The highest spiritual meaning of life was set on the summits... being into the spiritual unity or the spiritual ecstasy, these divinest things were the heritage of the human being ready for divinity and their way and call were the supreme significances of Indian religion and Yoga. He reached by them the fruits of his perfect spiritual evolution, an identity with the Self and Spirit, a dwelling in or with God, the divine law of his being, a spiritual universality... nature and lead them upward towards their own highest heights; one can begin to train mind and soul towards a spiritual consciousness and the opening of a spiritual existence. This ascending type of humanity claims for its use all that large and opulent middle region of philosophic, psycho-spiritual, ethical, aesthetic and emotional religious seeking which is the larger and more significant portion of the ...
... thought-mind with a direct inner vision and inspiration, brings a spiritual sight into the heart and a spiritual light and energy into its feeling and emotion, imparts to the life-force a spiritual urge, a truth inspiration that dynamises the action and exalts the life-movements; it infuses into the sense a direct and total power of spiritual sensation so that our vital and physical being can contact and... This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide e... of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Visions of Champaklal Visions - Experience, Transformation, Realisation Spiritual experience means the contact with the Divine in oneself.... Directly you have spiritual experience, which takes place always in the inner consciousness, it is translated into your external consciousness and defined there in one way or another ...
... are not sufficient. A spiritual symbol is only a meaningless ticket, unless the thing symbolised is realised in the spirit. A spiritual convention may lose or expel its spirit and become a falsehood. A spiritual type may be a temporary mould into which spiritual living may flow, but it is also a limitation and may become a prison in which it fossilises and perishes. A spiritual idea is a power, but... the whole life into spiritual living yields up its place to a set system of belief and ethics touched by spiritual emotion; but finally even that saving element is dominated by the outward machinery, the sheltering structure becomes a tomb. The Church takes the place of the spirit and a formal subscription to its creed, rituals and order is the thing universally demanded; spiritual living is only practised... present universal regeneration of mankind becomes more and more feeble. Therefore while many new spiritual waves with their strong special motives and disciplines must necessarily be the forerunners of a spiritual age, yet their claims must be subordinated in the general mind of the race and of its spiritual leaders to the recognition that all motives and disciplines are valid and yet none entirely valid ...
... superficial knowledge. To have made the discovery of our deepest being and hidden spiritual nature is the first necessity and to have erected the living of an inmost spiritual life into the aim of existence is the characteristic sign of a spiritual culture. This endeavour takes in certain religions the form of a spiritual exclusiveness which revolts from the outward existence rather than seeks to transform... psychic and spiritual life for the initiates could no longer suffice as the basis of our spiritual progress. The human race in its cycle of civilisation needed a large-lined advance; it called for a more and more generalised intellectual, ethical and aesthetic evolution to help it to grow into the light. This turn had to come in India as in other lands. But the danger was that the greater spiritual truth... them into stuff of the spiritual life. And every excess of emphasis on the splendour and richness and power and pleasures of life had its recoil and was balanced by a corresponding potent stress on spiritual asceticism as the higher way. The two trends, on one side an extreme of the richness of life experience, on the other an extreme and pure rigorous intensity of the spiritual life, accompanied each ...
... similar line is Dante's: E'n la sua volontate e nostra pace. (In His will is our peace.) Spiritual poetry can and often does free itself from the philosophical content and directly convey the significance of the spiritual matter in a spiritual manner and through a spiritual rhythm: ... the sole timeless Word That carries eternity in its lonely sound, The Idea sel... (Sri Aurobindo, Savitri , II.l.) This passage is, at one and the same time, a description of spiritual poetry and its illustration. The Idea that spiritual poetry expresses is "self-luminous". In fact we can distinguish two elements in spiritual poetry: Thought and Vision. In spiritual poetry there is always a Thought that is beyond our present thinking, but as the poetic soul focuses its... poetic inspiration comes from higher and higher sources. How are we to distinguish between the poetry of spiritual thought and that of spiritual vision? When there is a vision the truth becomes visible and concrete. "The poetry of spiritual vision," Sri Aurobindo says, "as distinct from that of spiritual thought abounds in images, unavoidably because that is the straight way to avoid abstractness; but these ...
... self-realization, 1, 20, 21 silence, 17, 24, 25, 98, 99 space, 17 spiritual evolution, 5 spiritual path, 42-44 spiritual practice, 65, 66 Page 171 aim of, 144-147 methods, 112-121 zeal in, 107 spiritual teachings, paradoxes in, 20, 21 spiritual transformation, 146, 147 Sri Aurobindo's viewpoints, see also teachings;... integral transformation, 23 power of Guru's grace, 27, 28 relevance in the spiritual life, 7, 8 self-realization, 21 silence, 24, 25 spiritual path, 43, 44 time, 25, 26 true self, 79 witness consciousness state, 67-76 Sri Ramakrishna, 27, 28 on spiritual path, 42, 43 stillness, 100, 101 śuddhi, 120 surrender, concept of, 52, 55,... 58, 64, 65, 117 pain-body, 18, 19 paradoxes in spiritual teachings, 20 perspective on desire, 45-48 presence of mind, 33-35 reversal of consciousness, 30 scientific observation, 35, 36 self-realization, 52 silence, 25 simplicity of enlightenment, 25, 26, 30,31 spiritual path/practice, 42-44, 65,66 surrender, 52, 55, 63 ...
... perfection. The higher perfection is spiritual and super-human. The lower perfection is human perfection carried to its maximum limits, and this may be quite independent of all spiritual life, all spiritual aspiration. One can be a genius without having any spiritual aspiration. One can have all the most extraordinary moral qualities without having any spiritual life. And even, usually, those who have... integral.... This is quite rare. The great spiritual leaders have very rarely been great realisers in the physical world. It has happened, but it is very rare. 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... tangible, perceptible to all, always feel that spiritual life is something hazy, something almost mediocre from the material point of view. I have met many people—"many", well, quite a number Page 93 —who wanted to demonstrate that spiritual powers gave a great capacity for outer realisation and who tried, in certain exceptional spiritual states or conditions, to paint or to compose music ...
... the ensign of a spiritual ideal and of a life that must be its expression and the growing body of its reality. Our endeavour shall be to prepare the paths and to accomplish the beginning of a great and high change which we believe to be and aim at making the future of the race and the future of India. Our ideal is a new birth of humanity into the spirit; our life must be a spiritually inspired effort... faith in its science and machinery and it is being destroyed by its science and crushed under its mechanical burden. It has not understood that a spiritual change is necessary for the accomplishment of its ideals. The East has the secret of that spiritual change, but it has too long turned its eyes away from the earth. The time has now come to heal the division and to unite life and the spirit. This... a spiritual life that shall take up all human activities and avail to transfigure the world for the great age that is coming. India, she that has carried in herself from of old the secret, can alone lead the way in this great transformation of which the present sandhyā of the old yuga is the forerunner. This must be her mission and service to humanity,—as she discovered the inner spiritual life ...
... The first form the Mind of Light takes seems an added last rung of the luminous ladder of Spiritual Mind. It appears to stand below Higher Mind in quality of Light. But it is superior to all degrees of Spiritual Mind, even Overmind, if its quality of Light is compared to the quality the grades of Spiritual Mind have achieved in the physical-mental in their descended forms. It is in terms of descent... can be made between the state that is this Mind and the grades of Spiritual Mind. In such terms this Mind outshines them all from the very beginning, for it is the Supermind's own manifestation. 5)That manifestation develops a second and greater form, which is a completely descended Spiritual Mind — an entire embodiment by Spiritual Mind of itself, which under its own power it could not achieve.... like what Spiritual Mind is in its overhead status, but with two differences. It is a mental Gnosis embodied. And it is a mental Gnosis which Supermind has assumed or put forth without a crucial poise-change as in Spiritual Mind. 6)The third form of the Mind of Light goes farther than such mental Gnosis. It embodies the Supramental Gnosis free from any frontal appearance of Spiritual Mind. Not ...
... the more dynamic invaders from the west. Now the balance has to be righted in the light of the new spiritual ideals recovered from our past' and that is how the spiritual idea propagated by Vivekananda had such a worldwide appeal. But because it stressed more of an individual than collective spiritual ideal through social and humanitarian services, it failed to bring about a change of our social economic... collective life emerged out of the neo-spiritual ideals of Ramkrishria and Vivekananda and that' there was a downward trend of consciousness in the masses which cared more for material prosperity for themselves than a spiritual goal which would lift them out of all sorrows and sufferings of this transitory life on earth. He therefore delved deep into the spiritual traditions of the past based on the... 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 ...
... 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 it is obviously easier... perfection and indispensable to spiritual freedom. We shall find that it then Page 167 implies always two things, a rejection and an assumption, a negative and a positive side; the negative movement of freedom is a liberation from the principal bonds, the master-knots of the lower soul-nature, the positive side an opening or growth into the higher spiritual existence. But what are these... must take at one time or another. Letters on Yoga, pp. 98-99 What I mean by the spiritual transformation is something dynamic (not merely liberation of the Self or realisation of the One which can very well be attained without any descent). It Page 169 is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness, dynamic as well as static, in every part of the being down to the subconscient ...
... still dynamic amongst the ancient Greeks, but for moral and aesthetic rather than spiritual ends. Later on, it became yet more purely intellectual and academic; it became intellectual speculation only without any practical ways and means for the attainment of the Truth by spiritual experiment, spiritual discovery, a spiritual transformation. If there were not this difference, there Would be no reason for... after Truth would be the only possible attitude for any Wide and plastic intelligence. But any conclusion so arrived at would be only speculative; it could have no spiritual value; it would not give the decisive experience or the spiritual certitude for which the soul is seeking. If the intellect is our highest possible instrument and there is no other means of arriving at supra-physical Truth, then... first place, they have not given mental thinking the supreme rank as an instrument in the discovery of Truth, but only a secondary status. The first rank has always been given to spiritual intuition and illumination and spiritual experience; an intellectual conclusion that contradicts this Supreme authority is held invalid. Secondly, each philosophy has armed itself with a practical way of reaching to ...
... prompting the way of renunciation is based on the concrete experience spiritual seekers have when they follow a particular line of spiritual sadhana. For, it is not merely a philosophical hypothesis or the idle speculation of an imaginative heart but a very compelling and utterly convinc- Page 63 ing spiritual experience that, once the sadhaka, escaping from the prison of his ego-bound... don't like it", will not serve the purpose. We have to offer spiritual justification for our attitude. And for that we have to explain our characteristic philosophical positions vis-à-vis the world, Nature and human life. Spiritual Perception of the Integral Yoga: The Yoga-Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo starts from the basic spiritual position that there is an absolute Existence-Consciousness-Bliss... not the way of sadhana we follow nor the nature of the Goal we envisage for our spiritual endeavour. Our lifestyle is altogether different. We do not change our secular names like the Sannyasins nor do we dye our clothes in saffron or in any other distinctive colours to signify that we have been following a life of spiritual sadhana. We engage in the normal activities of life and we do not shun the com- ...
... question was: Where was this sense of identity? This identity lay in its cultural and spiritual culture. For, it was this cultural and spiritual sense, present from the very earliest times of Indian history that made India a distinct and unique nation. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: 'For in India, the spiritual and cultural unity was made complete at a very early time and it became the very... a preliminary field or aid to the deeper spiritual aim. In other words, this approach led to a tendency to create whatever it had to create first on the inner plane and afterwards in its other and outer aspects.'2 The first task was therefore to rediscover this spiritual identity. The second task was to convert this fundamental spiritual and cultural unity into a political unity... lines will be the measure of her help to the future of humanity. In order to recover the old Indian spiritual knowledge India has to insist much more finally and integrally than she has as yet done on her spiritual turn, on the increasingly greater action of the spiritual motive in every sphere of our living. A passage from Sri Aurobindo sums up the whole position: ...
... divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation—the realisation of Self, Bhagavan or Brahman on the mental-spiritual plane or else the overmental plane. That is a thing (at any rate the mental-spiritual) which thousands have done. So it is obviously easier to do than the supramental. Also nobody can have the supramental realisation who has not had the spiritual. It is true that neither can... Secondly, the supramental transformation is not the same as the spiritual-mental. It is a change of mind, life and body which the mental or overmental-spiritual cannot achieve. All whom you mention were spirituals, but in different ways. Krishna's mind, for instance, was overmentalised, Ramakrishna's intuitive, Chaitanya's spiritual-psychic, Buddha's illumined higher mental. I don't know about B.... The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths Other Spiritual Paths and the Integral Yoga Letters on Yoga - II Chapter I The Newness of the Integral Yoga Old and New Truth Well, I don't suppose the new race can be created by or according to logic or that any race has been. But why should the idea of the creation ...
... supported itself in the West not by philosophy but by a credal theology; sometimes a spiritual philosophy emerges by sheer force of individual genius, but it has not been as in the East a necessary adjunct to every considerable line of spiritual experience and endeavour. It is true that a philosophic development of spiritual thought is not entirely indispensable; for the truths of spirit can be reached more... " Our thinking mind is concerned mainly with the statement of general spiritual truth, the logic of its absolute and the logic of its relativities, how they stand to each other or lead to each other, and what are the mental consequences of the spiritual theorem of existence.... " The means by which this need [of intellectual understanding] can be satisfied... satisfied and with which our nature of mind has provided us is philosophy, and in this field it must be a spiritual philosophy. Such systems have arisen in numbers in the East; for almost always, wherever there has been a considerable spiritual development, there has arisen from it a philosophy justifying it to the intellect. The method was at first an intuitive seeing and an intuitive expression, as in the ...
... resting place in a world of spiritual evolution out of the Ignorance. This is a world of evolution in Matter. If everything were supra mental from the beginning, there would be no place for evolution. The evolution I speak of is not the evolution of the Darwinian theory. Spiritual and Supramental Spiritual and supramental are not the same thing. The spiritual planes from higher mind... Evolutionary Process and the Supermind The Supramental Evolution Letters on Yoga - I Chapter II Spiritual Evolution and the Supramental Human History and Spiritual Evolution There have been times when the seeking for spiritual attainment was, at least in certain civilisations, more intense and widespread than now or rather than it has been in the world in... attribute this flowering of intuition on the spiritual plane to a rapid reemergence of the essential gains brought down from a previous cycle. If we analyse the spiritual history of India we shall find that after reaching this height there was a descent which attempted to take up each lower degree of the already evolved consciousness and link it to the spiritual at the summit. The Vedic age was followed ...
... the character of the instrument it uses; thus the Hathayogic process is psycho-physical, the Rajayogic mental and psychic, the way of knowledge is spiritual and cognitive, the way of devotion spiritual, emotional and aesthetic, the way of works spiritual and dynamic by action. Each is guided Page 610 in the ways of its own characteristic power. But all power is in the end one, all power... it becomes manifest soul-power and reveals the essential unity. Therefore the Hathayogic process has too its pure psychic and spiritual result, the Rajayogic arrives by psychic means at a spiritual consummation. The triple way may appear to be altogether mental and spiritual in its way of seeking and its objectives, but it can be attended by results more characteristic of the other paths, which offer... contains hidden the vital, mental, psychic, spiritual energy and in the end it must release these forms of the one Shakti, the vital energy conceals and liberates into action all the other forms, the mental supporting itself on the life and body and their powers and functionings contains undeveloped or only partially developed the psychic and the spiritual power of the being. But when by Yoga any of ...
... a sudden and profound spiritual experience that radically transformed him and entirely changed the course of his life. Following this transformative experience, he devoted a few years to the study of spiritual texts and spending time with spiritual teachers in order to understand and integrate his spiritual experience. Then, for about ten years, he engaged himself in spiritual counseling and teaching... Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo Note on Eckhart Tolle Eckhart Tolle, recognized as one of the foremost contemporary spiritual teachers, was born in 1948 in Germany where he spent the first thirteen years of his life. He graduated from the University of London, after which he was a research scholar and supervisor in physics at Cambridge University. Until... teaching, working with individuals and groups of spiritual seekers in Europe and North America. His epoch-making book, The Power of Now (1997), represents the essence of this work. He has since conducted numerous seminars and retreats throughout the world and has written three more books: Practicing the Power of Now (1997), Stillness Speaks (2003), and A New Earth (2005). He now lives ...
... situation is so confusing that there is a great need to clarify the entire domain of moral and spiritual values which would also throw considerable light on what we should mean by psychic and spiritual education. A question is often raised as to whether there is any valid distinction between moral and spiritual values. In answer, it must be said that much depends upon what we intend to include in our... Aurobindo, Vol. 19, Centenary Edition, page 857 Page 26 living process and spiritual or true education is a process of kindling inner light. Again, spiritual values are central values and they must therefore govern and guide all the values and aspects of education. In various domains of education, spiritual consciousness can be aided by promoting certain specific values. In the domain of... life; therefore, unless spiritual values are the very atmosphere and life-breath of the educational environment, they cannot be truly and effectively brought home to the students. The pursuit of the spiritual values is, in fact, the pursuit and cultivation of the truths and powers of two over-ruling aspects of personality, namely, what we have called the psychic and the spiritual. Page 27 ...
... experience would be called psychological (surface or occult). "Spiritual" has nothing to do with the Absolute, except that the experience of the Absolute is spiritual. All contacts with self, the higher consciousness, the Divine above are spiritual. There are others that could not be so sharply classified and set off against each other. The spiritual realisation is of primary importance and in dispensable... the body is not a spiritual aim but belongs to the province of occultism. It is not a part of the aim of Yoga. Also fasting is not permissible in the Asram, as its practice is more often harmful than helpful to the spiritual endeavour. This aim suggested to you seems to be part of a seeking for occult powers; such a seeking is looked on with disfavour for the most part by spiritual teachers in India... 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 and do not come out in this life. Some no doubt can carry on both together, the occult and the spiritual, and make them help each other; ...
... lead to the sheer contact of the spiritual reality. As stated earlier, spirituality has also acknowledged philosophy or spiritual philosophy as a starting-point, and spiritual philosophy has, in its turn, Page 23 acknowledged as its source, spiritual experience and realization or built its structures as an approach to it. On the other hand, pure spiritual-quest has often dispensed with ... religion and spiritual experience. Occultism, if admitted, provides a vaster field of experience, but at the best, occultism points to a field of spiritual experience which lies beyond its proper domains of enquiry. Religion tends to claim the knowledge of spiritual realities; it pronounces its judgments based on intuitions and revelations that are proper to spirituality and spiritual experience. But... definite scope, occultism excludes those domains which are psychic and spiritual, — since the psychic reality belongs to the domain that is profounder than the mind, and the spiritual is higher than the mind. Occultism may thus be described as the science of the subliminal, which is distinguishable from the psychic and the spiritual. In terms of Indian psychology, the subliminal domains of knowledge like ...
... divine Tapas, a perpetual sacrament of the spiritual existence. But this is a general law and all these considerations have been the enunciation of quite general principles and refer indiscriminately to all actions and to all men alike. All can eventually arrive by spiritual evolution to this strong discipline, this large perfection, this highest spiritual state. But while the general rule of mind and... that even the Shudra or Chandala can by turning his life Godwards climb straight to spiritual liberty and perfection. The fundamental truth is not this outward thing, but a force of our inner being in movement, the truth of the fourfold active power of the spiritual nature. Each Jiva possesses in his spiritual nature these four sides, is a soul of knowledge, a soul of strength and of power, a soul... sattwic mind and will change into that spiritual knowledge and dynamic power of identical existence in which the whole nature puts off its disguise and becomes a free self-expression of the godhead within it. The sattwic doer becomes the Jiva in contact with his source, united with the Purushottama; he is no longer the personal doer of the act, but a spiritual channel of the works of the transcendent ...
... all we need of spiritual truth for the spiritual life is to be found in the Gita. It would be to encourage the superstition of the book to take too literally that utterance. The truth of the spirit is infinite and cannot be circumscribed in that manner. Still it Page 562 may be said that most of the main clues are there and that after all the later developments of spiritual experience and... Ahinsa as part of the highest spiritual-ethical ideal and recognises the ascetic renunciation as a way of spiritual salvation. And yet it goes boldly beyond all these conflicting positions; greatly daring, it justifies all life to the spirit as a significant manifestation of the one Divine Being and asserts the compatibility of a complete human action and a complete spiritual life lived in union with the... thought is better understood than its secret of spiritual practice. What is it then that gives this vitality to the thought and the truth of the Gita? The central interest of the Gita's philosophy and Yoga is its attempt, the idea with which it sets out, continues and closes, to reconcile and even effect a kind of unity between the inner spiritual truth in its most absolute and integral realisation ...
... of self-purification. The spiritual vision of the God-lovers was clear enough to perceive that the causes of deviation and fall are within and not without, and that an inner conquest by detachment and equality and not an outer abstention and renunciation is the surest means of spiritual perfection. The Gita, a great synthesis of the living spiritual traditions of the past, denounces in... If you describe someone as a spiritual man or a spiritual woman, people at once think of one who does not eat or sits all day without moving, one who lives in a hut in great poverty, one who has given away all he had and keeps nothing for himself. This is the picture that immediately rises in the minds of ninety-nine people out of a hundred, when you speak of a spiritual man, the one proof of spirituality... discover its inmost truth and live in it. Asceticism in this sober form can be, in many individual cases, an unimpeachable, perhaps indispensable, preliminary to spiritual discipline, and those who decry or deride it are either innocent of spiritual life or addicted to an unthinking self-indulgence. However much it may be buttressed with dialectical subtlety and ingenious sophistry, indulgence of one's ...
... Hindus and naturally spiritual in our temperament, because the work which we have to do for humanity is a work which no other nation can accomplish, the spiritualisation of the race; so the men whom we worship are those who have helped the spiritual progress of mankind. Without being sceptical no spiritual progress is possible, for blind adoration is only the first stage in the spiritual development of the... the soul. We are wont to be spiritually sceptical, to hesitate to acknowledge to ourselves anything we have not actually experienced by the process of silent communion with God, so that the great sages of antiquity were as sceptical as any modern rationalist. They did away with all preconceived notions drawn from the religion of the Vedas, plunged into the void of absolute scepticism and tried to find... consummation Sri Page 977 Ramakrishna came to begin and all the development of the previous two thousand years and more since Buddha appeared has been a preparation for the harmonization of spiritual teaching and experience by the avatar of Dakshineshwar. The long ages of discipline which India underwent, are now drawing to an end. A great light is dawning on the East, a light whose first ...
... of the discipline of spiritual practices, even though most of them are tied to Christianity, a few to other religions, and a few that are independent of any religion. If we maintain that every religion has a spiritual core which is its most important component, and if yoga is primarily concerned with spirituality and with .methodical and conscious effort directed towards spiritual development and realisation... yoga, therefore, we need to enter into the realm of yogic experiences. Yoga is primarily and distinctly concerned with spiritual experience, and although in its integrality, it embraces all domains of knowledge, physical and supra-physical, its means are distinctively spiritual. Distinguishing features of what we call spirituality are toe following: (a) Awakening to the inner reality of... marks a radical point of departure from ordinary life to a truly spiritual life. An important example of this experience of conversion, which William James has given, is that of Saint David Brainerd. The description of this experience is appended at Appendix II (p. 113). Conversion is a movement as a result of which spiritual life becomes central to the seeker. But this centrality may be only ...
... Light The Mind WHAT is the proper place and function of the mind in spiritual life ? Is it a help or a hindrance ? Can spiritual illumination come by mere intellectual development ? How should one deal with the mind in order to make it aid and subserve one's spiritual end? The mind is the pride, power and highest possession of man until he rises into the skies of... initial fervour of our heart for spiritual progress is overlaid with a plethora of intellectual activity which revels in the analysis, synthesis, criticism and exposition of spiritual truths of which our mind knows little or nothing by realisation, but everything by imagination, inference and reasoning, or, at second-hand, from books; and many a promising spiritual career is wrecked by this overmastering... you describe someone as a spiritual man or a spiritual woman, people at once think of one who does not eat or sits all day without moving, one who lives in a hut in great poverty, one who has given away all he had and keeps nothing for himself. This is the picture that immediately arises in the minds of ninety-nine people out of a hundred when you speak of a spiritual man; the one proof of s ...
... music are not Yoga, not in themselves things spiritual any more than philosophy either is a thing spiritual or science. There lurks here another curious incapacity of the modern intellect—its inability to distinguish between mind and spirit, its readiness to mistake mental, moral and aesthetic idealisms for spirituality and their inferior degrees for spiritual values. It is mere truth that the mental ... Intellectual Truth and Spiritual Experience Intellectual truths? Do you think that the intellectual truth of the Divine is its real truth? In that case there is no need of Yoga. Philosophy is enough. Philosophy knows nothing about peace and silence or the inner and outer vital. These things are discovered only by Yoga. Yoga is not a thing of ideas but of inner spiritual experience. Merely... to any set of religious or spiritual ideas does not bring with it any realisation. Yoga means a change of consciousness; a mere mental activity will not bring a change of consciousness, it can only bring a change of mind. And if your mind is sufficiently mobile, it will go on changing from one thing to another till the end without arriving at any sure way or any spiritual harbour. The mind can think ...
... disciple make the best use of his Guru, the spiritual guide, for his spiritual advancement and the Divine Light or Knowledge. I could not answer your letter of the 12th at once for want of time. Your question is put in a general form and I can only answer that there are three conditions for a disciple profiting fully from his relation to a spiritual guide. 1st. He must accept him entirely and... s given by the Guru and follow them firmly and with full faith and perseverance to the best of his own spiritual capacity. 3rd. He must make himself open and receptive to the Guru, for even more than what the guru teaches to the mind of the disciple, it is what he spiritually is, the spiritual consciousness, the knowledge, the light, the power, the Divinity in him that helps the disciple to grow ...
... The moon signifies the light of spirituality or of the spiritual consciousness. The moonlight indicates the light of the spiritual consciousness. The moonlit maidān is the spiritual consciousness at the doors of which you are standing as it were and feeling its peace and ease. The moon generally indicates spiritual realisation in the mind. Page 144 The moon... often spiritual consciousness in the mind. The light above the head is never an imagination in Yoga; if it is felt, it is because it is there. If it is the moon, it means the light of the spiritual consciousness in the mind. The moon as a symbol in vision signifies usually spirituality in the mind or, simply, the spiritual consciousness. It can also indicate the flow of spiritual Ananda... Ananda (nectar is in the moon according to the old tradition). The moon indicates spirituality, sometimes also spiritual Ananda. It [ spiritual mind, symbolised by the moon ] is Mind in contact with truths of the spirit and reflecting them. The Sun is the light of the Truth, the Moon only reflects the light of the Truth—that is the difference. Golden light means the light of the higher ...
... step has, therefore, to be taken in the direction of the higher spiritual ranges of the mind and beyond. "A higher spiritual transformation must intervene on the psychic or psycho-spiritual change; the psychic movement inward to the inner being, the Self or Divinity within us, must be completed by an opening upward to a .supreme spiritual status or a higher existence."² The opening within has to be... the approach of the heart, creates a spiritual or psychic condition of the surface being and nature in which there is a larger and more complex openness to the psychic light within us and to the spiritual Self or the Ishwara, to the Reality now felt above and enveloping and penetrating us. In the nature there is a more powerful and many-sided change, a spiritual building and self- creation, the appearance... Aurobindo. Page 432 turned wholly into the consciousness of the spiritual being. This is the second of the three transformations, uniting the manifested existence with what is above it, it is the middle step of the three, the decisive transition of the spiritually evolving nature."¹ But even the spiritual transformation with its immense achievements—the universalisation of the human ...
... Integral Yoga, Evolution and the Next Species Part Five Objections against Spiritual Theory of Evolution: Answers Against this spiritual theory of evolution, many objections can be raised. Metaphysical objection against Evolutionary Teleology It may be contended that if there is an ultimate Reality, which is infinite, perfect and absolute... building can, it may be concluded, be erected upon these shifting quick- sands. In reply, it may be urged that the theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with the scientific theory of form- evolution and physical life-evolution. According to the theory of spiritual evolution, there are three stages in the process of becoming. An involution of the spirit in the inconscience is the beginning... only have for its secret of significance the revelation of Being in a perfect Becoming. The theory of spiritual evolution may accept the scientific account of physical evolution as a support or an element, but the support is not indispensable. What is common between the theory of spiritual evolution and scientific theory is the account of certain outward aspects of evolution, namely, that there ...
... music are not Yoga, not in themselves things spiritual any more than philosophy is a thing spiritual or Science. There lurks here another curious incapacity of the modern intellect --its inability to distinguish between mind and spirit, its readiness to mistake mental, moral and aesthetic idealisms for spirituality and their inferior degrees for spiritual values. It is mere truth that the mental intuitions... e peckings of certain well-intentioned scientific minds on the surface or apparent surface of the spiritual Reality behind things and I need not elaborate it. More important is the prognostic of a greater danger coming in the new attack by the adversary, the sceptics, against the validity of spiritual and supraphysical experience, their new strategy of destruction by admitting and explaining it in... of religion take up an unsound position, easily capturable, when they affirm only the subjective validity of spiritual experience, the opponents also seem to me to be giving away, Without knowing it, the gates of thematerialistic stronghold by their consent at all to admit and examine spiritual and supraphysical experience. Their entrenchment in the physical field, their refusal to admit or even examine ...
... let us make a recapitulation of the points discussed in the book. First, India has been culturally and spiritually a nation from the most ancient times; the Vedic Rishis made it one their fundamental tasks to create this spiritual unity. However, despite the cultural and spiritual unity, political unity was not attained for a sufficiently durable time despite many heroic attempts. We have analyzed... acts. The solution would be, first to recognise that the real truth of religion is in the spiritual experiences of which it is an outer formulation. To transcend therefore the outer form, and insist on the spiritual experience and in addition to recognise that there can be infinite and valid varieties of spiritual experiences is the important step in the solution. It is not by insisting on religion that... a powerful religion, the one militant and aggressive, the other spiritually tolerant indeed and flexible, but obstinately faithful in its discipline to its own principle and standing on the defense behind a barrier of social forms. There were two conceivable Page 185 solutions, the rise of a greater spiritual principle and formation, which could reconcile the two or a political ...
... Some Comparisons Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo The Aim of Spiritual Practice One view found both in Eckhart's teaching and Sri Aurobindo's yoga—a view that is a radical departure from that of Hinduism and Buddhism—pertains to the aim of life and the object of spiritual practice. All the various schools of Hinduism aim at liberation (Mukti or Moksha) from the... the world is thus viewed in Hinduism as the ultimate culmination of yoga. In Buddhism, too, the aim of spiritual practice is to bring about an extinction (Nirvana) of the illusory self in order to get oneself free from suffering (Dukha). Thus, in both Hinduism and Buddhism, the object of spiritual practice is individual liberation. In Eckhart's teaching, as in Buddhism, the egoic self is regarded as... illusory form as a temporary manifestation of Being, the Reality concealed by the illusory form. Spiritual practice liberates one from the illusion of the egoic self and from suffering that results from identification with the illusory form. But, in Eckhart's view, the Page 144 true aim of spiritual practice is to make the form Transparent so that Being may manifest through the form and become ...
... still dynamic amongst the ancient Greeks, but for moral and aesthetic rather than spiritual ends. Later on, it became yet more purely intellectual and academic; it became intellectual speculation only without any practical ways and means for the attainment of the Truth by spiritual experiment, spiritual discovery, a spiritual transformation. If there were not this difference, there would be no reason for... Science. What has Whitham or Science to do with spiritual truth or spiritual experience? I can only suppose that he condemns all intrusion of anything like meta physical thought into the spiritual field—a position excessive but not altogether untenable—and even perhaps proposes to bring the scientific method and the scientific mentality into spiritual experience as the sole true way of arriving at or... certain way—the supra-intellectual consciousness which is the essential power of spiritual experience? This however is by the way—when one tries to explain spiritual experience to the intellect itself, then it is a different matter. The interpenetration of the planes is indeed for me a capital and fundamental part of spiritual experience without which Yoga as I practise it and its aim could not exist ...
... emulated by the rest who had a spiritual seeking. Thus at the top level of Indian humanity, the very best were cut off from the world and the result was failure of vital and material life which was considered fit only for the ignorant masses. This state of affairs continued to be prevalent up to the advent of Ramkrishna and Vivekananda. Vivekananda wanted to broadcast the spiritual message of the Gita and... life from time immemorial. In fact, after the Vedic age and during the period of the Upanishads when the Vedic ritualistic practices fell into disuse and the Jnana kanda came into prominence in our spiritual seeking, the sole objective was to get rid of the subjection of the embodied soul to Prakriti or executive nature. This was behind the whole of Shankara's philosophy of Adwaitavad. He emphasised... hazards of life and its uncertainties and difficulties, it was necessary to dissolve the ego-complex and then only we could enter into the Divine Life and enjoy the bliss of life while it lasted. This spiritual ideal became so wide-spread and deep-rooted in the mind of Indian people that life and matter were neglected in an exclusive Page 30 pursuit of the Spirit and the moment one realised ...
... The Mother Sri Krishna's Gita is well-known to the spiritual seekers all over the world from time immemorial and has been acclaimed by the elite as one of the best spiritual guide whose value remains unimpaired to this day because of the eternal verities it contains. Sri Aurobindo's Mother is not so well-known to the present-day spiritual seekers as his more renowned Magnum Opus, the Life Divine... those of an earlier age when withdrawal from life after spiritual illumination was considered the goal of life a£*er the destined fall of the body. In the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo there has to be a total and radical transformation of the material world to warrant the full manifestation of the Divine in matter and that requires a higher spiritual effort and performance than the mere separation of the... of mental beings, so now there will be established here a gnostic consciousness and power which will shape a race of gnostic spiritual beings and take up into itself all of earth nature that is ready for this new transformation." Since this was what he foresaw in his spiritual vision, he dedicated all his life to bring the supramental change in himself and in the Mother, his divine collaborator in this ...
... Vedic hymns which centred on the psychic and spiritual discipline disappeared, although some of its truths reappeared in various new forms. These forms, as we see them in the Puranic and Tantric religion and yoga, were less lofty than the Vedic nucleus of spiritual experience, but they were wider, richer, complex and more suitable to the psycho-spiritual inner life. Page 24 The Purano-Tantric... towards highest spiritual truth. This effort required new instruments, new atmosphere and new fields of religious and spiritual experience. While the Vedic godheads were to the most of their worshippers divine powers who presided over the workings of the outward life of the physical cosmos, the Puranic Trinity had even for the multitude a predominant psycho-religious and spiritual significance. But... conception of some greater spiritual Reality. But the deeper and esoteric meaning of the Veda was reserved for the initiates, for those who were ready to ______________________________ ² See also Rigveda 1.164; Ibid, 1.164.46; Ibid, X.71. Page 11 understand and practise the inner sense. It was the inner meaning, and the highest psychic and spiritual truth concealed by the outer ...
... bind all spiritual life and endeavour. The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule; it is a vast field of evolution, an immense kingdom potentially larger Page 656 than the other kingdoms below it with a hundred provinces, a thousand types, stages, forms, paths, variations of the spiritual ideal, degrees of spiritual achievement... society manners considered as a part or a test of spiritual experience or true Yogic siddhi? It is no more a test than the capacity of dancing well or dressing nicely. Just as there are many very good and kind men who are boorish and rude in their manners, so there may be very spiritual men (I mean those who Page 655 have deep spiritual experiences) who have no grasp over physical life... reached perfection or anywhere near it, be a proof that spiritual experience is null or worthless? You write as if the moment one had any kind of spiritual experience or realisation, one must at once become a perfect person without defects or weaknesses. That is to make a demand which it is impossible to satisfy and it is to ignore the fact that spiritual life is a growth and not a sudden and inexplicable ...
... rejection as a mistake or an illusion, and, secondly, the character of this manifestation as a spiritual evolution with Yoga as a means for Page 373 the transformation of mind, life and body into the instruments of a spiritual and supramental perfection. The universe is not only a material but a spiritual fact, life not only a play of forces or a mental experience, but a field for the evolution... field has been prepared by a certain amount of psycho-spiritual-occult experience) is drawn upwards above the Brahmarandhra to ranges above belonging to the spiritual consciousness proper and instead of merely receiving from there has to live there and from there change the lower consciousness altogether. For there is a dynamism proper to the spiritual consciousness whose nature is Light, Power, Ananda... The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths A Yoga of Transformation Letters on Yoga - II Chapter I Distinctive Features of the Integral Yoga The Meaning of Purna Yoga Purna Yoga means (1) that instead of approaching the Divine through the mind alone (Jnana) or the heart alone (Bhakti) or through will and ...
... by the practice of Yoga attained to the higher spiritual consciousness which comes by Yoga, and this carries with it a certain power. Especially there is the power to communicate to those who are ready or to help them towards that spiritual state which, in its perfection is a condition of unalterable inner calm, strength and felicity. But this spiritual peace and joy is something quite different from... they can get, but it can never be permanent or secure. But the spiritual consciousness is all light, peace, power and bliss. If one can live entirely in it, there is no question; these things become naturally and securely his. But even if he can live partly in it or keep himself constantly open to it, he receives enough of this spiritual light and peace and strength and happiness to carry him securely... shocks of life. What one gains by opening to this spiritual consciousness, depends on what one seeks from it; if it is peace, Page 440 one gets peace; if it is light or knowledge, one lives in a great light and receives a knowledge deeper and truer than any the normal mind of man can acquire; if it [is] strength or power, one gets a spiritual strength for the inner life or Yogic power to govern ...
... opposite result, and that these words lose all their value." "Spiritual things"—what does he mean by spiritual things? Obviously, if the teachers recite them like a story... Spiritual things... They are taught history or spiritual things, they are taught science or spiritual things. That is the stupidity. In history, the Spirit is there; in science, the Spirit is there—the Truth is everywhere... if the teachers were to concentrate solely on the subjects they are teaching, for you are taking care of the spiritual life?" I shall give him this reply: There is no "spiritual life"! It is still the old idea, still the old idea of the sage, the sannyasin, the... who represents spiritual life, while all the others represent ordinary life—and it is not true, it is not true, it is not true at all... between 'ordinary life' and 'spiritual life' is an outdated antiquity." Did you read his question? Read it again to me. "We discussed the future. It seemed to me that nearly all the teachers were eager to do something so that the children could become more conscious of why they are here. At that point I said that in my opinion, to speak to the children of spiritual things often has the opposite ...
... direct knowledge. The Capacity of the Guru One can have a guru inferior in spiritual capacity (to oneself or to 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;... 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 to a man of less spiritual capacity and get all he has to... are the same" is a spiritual truth, but you cannot convert it indiscriminately into action; you cannot deal with all persons in the same way because they are the one Brahman: if one did, the result pragmatically would be an awful mess. It is a rigid mental logic that makes the difficulty but in spiritual matters mental logic easily blunders; intuition, faith, a plastic spiritual reason are here the ...
... should be its moulds. To be spiritual only is not enough; that prepares a number of souls for heaven, but leaves the earth very much where it was. Neither is a compromise the way of salvation. " The world knows three kinds of revolution. The material has strong results, the moral and intellectual are infinitely larger in their scope and richer in their fruits, but the spiritual are the great sowings... correspondence, a faultless work would be done; but the mind and body of mankind cannot hold perfectly a strong spiritual inrush: most is spilt, much of the rest is corrupted. Many intellectual and physical upturnings of our soil are needed to work out a little result from a large spiritual sowing. " Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and... been able to spiritualise mankind. For that there is needed not cult and creed, but a sustained and all-comprehending effort at spiritual self-evolution. " The changes we see in the world today are intellectual, moral, physical in their ideal and intention: the spiritual revolution waits for its hour and throws up meanwhile its waves here and there. Until it comes the sense of the others cannot be ...
... The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths Other Spiritual Paths and the Integral Yoga Letters on Yoga - II Chapter X Christianity and Theosophy Christianity The gospel of suffering, the obsessing sense of sin and the dramatic vital turn which goes with these things are certainly the most prominent defects... to me to have never clarified its intelligence by the spiritual light in the higher reaches of the mind; it is lacking in a spiritual philosophy and never really went beyond theology—in spite of one or two large thinkers who were the exception rather than the rule. One has to pass beyond even the higher mind, but not to have developed the spiritual light in it leaves the instrument defective and, instead... n of the spiritual personality, but so do Vaishnavism and Shaivism and other "Asiatic" ideals. The writer's ignorance of the many-sidedness of Asiatic wisdom deprives his depreciation of it of all value. The phrases which struck you as resembling superficially at least our ideal of transformation are of a general character and could be adopted without hesitation by almost any spiritual discipline ...
... mind; it awaits a release into higher, spiritual levels of consciousness of which there are many gradations, ranging from Higher Mind through Illumined Mind, Intuition and Overmind up to Supermind. The present-day trends towards spiritual growth are the sign that the human race is preparing for the next evolutionary leap — the emergence of the spiritual and supramental being. The structural-h... true spiritual Individual. Unlike the ego which feels itself to be separate from the rest of the universe, the true spiritual individual is one with the cosmic and transcendent Reality. Page 398 ...what do we mean by the individual? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego... but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being... fulfil the evolutionary intent, spiritual growth needs to be a double movement of ascent and descent; the individual consciousness must ascend to progressively higher levels of consciousness and then must bring down the dynamism of the higher levels into the mental, vital and physical consciousness so as to transform these lower levels. The aim of the spiritual disciplines of the past generally ...
... dharma , his Page 682 spiritual, moral and practical duties, and his dharma depended on his swabhava , his temperament and inborn nature. A Brahmin was a Brahmin not by mere birth, but because he discharged the duty of preserving the spiritual and intellectual elevation of the race, and he had to cultivate the spiritual temperament and acquire the spiritual training which could alone qualify... ngly material and the division of classes was material in its principles and material in its objects, but our civilisation has always been preponderatingly spiritual and moral, and caste division in India had a spiritual object and a spiritual and moral basis. The division of classes in Europe had its root in a distribution of powers and rights and developed and still develops through a struggle of... caste divisions, and in the light of the conclusions of modern knowledge who shall say erroneously? But it entered into it as a subordinate element. For Hindu civilisation being spiritual based its institutions on spiritual and moral foundations and subordinated the material elements and material considerations. Caste therefore was not only an institution which ought to be immune from the cheap second-hand ...
... validity or otherwise of spiritual experiences with the tiny probe of intellectual reason. For anyone having the genuine spiritual knowledge knows for certain that these conflicts of terms referred to above, although appearing so grotesque to the canons of mental logic, are yet accurately expressive of something that the mystics perceive in their spiritual awareness. In the spiritual knowledge of the Reality... an adequate verbal communication of their spiritual knowledge. Thus the Indian Page 138 mystic Dadu repeatedly avers that a veritable spiritual experience defies all formulation in the conceptual framework of our limited speech-mode, and since there is no commensurability between that and the normal experience of average humanity, spiritual knowledge must be by its very nature ineffable... essence of our being." 37 A genuine spiritual knowledge - and we cannot but insist on this point again and again - is not to be arrived at through a ratioci-native process of thinking or by a logomachy of the logical mind. For it is not a very subtle and opulent conceptual thought, whose other name is spiritual awareness. "The essence of spiritual knowledge is an intrinsic self-existent con ...
... 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 man living in the sense of the spiritual self, in the... The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution The Life Divine Chapter XXVIII The Divine Life O seeing Flame, thou carriest man of the crooked ways into the abiding truth and the knowledge. Rig Veda. (I. 31. 6.) I purify... dynamism. If then life has to become a manifestation of the Spirit, it is the manifestation of a spiritual being in us and the divine life of a perfected consciousness in a supramental or gnostic power of spiritual being that must be the secret burden and intention of evolutionary Nature. All spiritual life is in its principle a growth into divine living. It is difficult to fix the frontier where ...
... praxis rather than belief. And he argues that spiritual practice is temporally, heuristically, psychologically and morally prior to theoretical or meta- physical understanding of religious questions. But even then, he points out that gates to spiritual experiences are many, and one is called upon to answer the question as to which of the various gates of spiritual experiences one should take. In presenting... developing and living side by side under a general consensus that spiritual realizations and spiritual praxis is the one thing needful. To open to the inner Spirit, to live in the Infinite, to seek after and discover the Eternity or the Eternal, to be in union with God, — that is the common idea and aim of religion, that is the sense of spiritual salvation, that is the living Truth that fulfills and releases... the experience of the highest spiritual reality as Non-Being. Differences of credal belief carne to be perceived by the Indian religion as nothing ore than various ways of seeing the one Self and Godhead page - 65 in all. What came to unite the plurality of religions was the emphasis on the dynamic praxis of the highest spiritual truth and the highest spiritual aim. Yet the Problem of ...
... is a constant religious and spiritual sense and an implicit or explicit assent to the spiritual truth. In the field of art, there was insistence upon life and its creativity, but still its highest achievement was always in the field of the interpretation of the religio-philosophical mind. The whole tone of art during that period was coloured by a suggestion of the spiritual and the infinite. The... Vedic hymns which centred on the psychic and spiritual discipline disappeared, although some of its truths reappeared in various new forms. These forms as we see them in the Puranic and Tantric religion and yoga were less luminous than the Vedic nucleus of spiritual experience, but they were more wide and rich and complex and more suitable to the psycho-spiritual inner life. The Purano-Tantric 17 ... highest spiritual truth. This effort required new Page 95 instruments, new atmosphere and new fields of religious and spiritual experience. While the Vedic godheads were to the mass of their worshippers divine powers who presided over the workings of the outward life of the physical cosmos, the Puranic Trinity had even for the multitude a predominant psycho-religious and spiritual significance ...
... 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 ... Some Answers and Explanations Our Many Selves Difference between “Spiritual” and “Psychic” What is the difference between “spiritual” and “psychic”? It is not the same thing. The psychic is the being organised by the divine Presence and it belongs to the earth—I am not speaking of the universe, only of the earth; it is only upon earth that you will... different way. The universe contains all the domains higher than the physical: there is a global physical comprising the mental, the vital, etc., and all the domains above the mental are domains of a spiritual order, domains which are, for us, domains of the spirit, and it is this “spirit” which little by little, progressively, materialises itself to arrive at Matter as we conceive it. The beings of the ...
... and the utterance of the past generation of spiritual teachers and thinkers they are or were identical. The distinction between these two has been clearly brought out by Sri Aurobindo among the modern spiritual thinkers and writers. According to him, religion is only one of the three approaches to spirituality, the other two being occultism and spiritual philosophy. Each of these three may lead... religious institutions such as a monastery, or math or a mashed. There is no demand on him for a radical change of consciousness or of his inner and outer life as in the case of a spiritual seeker. Spirituality or spiritual life demands utmost concentration of consciousness on the part of the seeker. His is a one-pointed orientation of life towards the Spirit, the object being the utter elimination of... there are myriads and myriads of religious institutions in all the organised and denominational religions of the world, Hindu, Muslim, Christian and others, spiritual institutions on such organised scale are not many. For, at the head of a spiritual institution there must be a self-realised man, the Guru or the Teacher who is very rare and difficult to find. A Ramakrishna-Vivekananda or a Sri Aurobindo ...
... The Mother describes on 12.7.1972: One must not confuse a religious teaching with spiritual teaching. Religious teaching belongs to the past and halts progress. Spiritual teaching is the teaching of the future; it enlightens the consciousness and prepares it for future realisation . Spiritual teaching is above religions and strives for a total Truth. It teaches us to enter into direct... religion: Why do men cling to a religion? Religions are based on creeds which are spiritual experiences brought down to a level where they become more easy to grasp, but at the cost of their integral purity and truth . The time of religions is over . We have entered the age of universal spirituality, of spiritual experience in its initial purity . The Mother, Words of the Mother - III: Religion... Religion Sri Aurobindo has explained about the religions: The Ashram has nothing to do with Hindu religion or culture or any religion or nationality. The Truth of the Divine which is the spiritual reality behind all religions and the descent of the supramental which is not known to any religion are the sole things which will be the foundation of the work of the future . Sri Aurobindo, ...
... them always for the completeness of its spiritual satisfaction. Always the symbol is legitimate in so far as it is true, sincere, beautiful and delightful, and even one may say that a spiritual consciousness without any aesthetic or emotional content is not entirely or at any rate not integrally spiritual. In the spiritual life the basis of the act is a spiritual consciousness perennial and renovating... does the worship offered to the goddess Durga and to Kali have any spiritual value? That depends on who offers the worship. It is not that which is of importance for the spiritual value. For the integrality and the complete truth of the Yoga it is important not to limit one's aspiration to one form or another. But from the spiritual point of view, whatever the object of worship, if the movement... perfect in your self-giving and absolutely sincere, you are sure to attain the spiritual goal. But the result is no 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 ...
... cast itself into the Eternal. There is yet another, the Tantric, 1 which though less subtle and spiritually profound, is even more bold and forceful than the synthesis of the Gita,—for it seizes even upon the obstacles to the spiritual life and compels them to become the means for a richer spiritual conquest and enables us to embrace the whole Page 9 of Life in our divine scope as the... sacrifice and self-giving as to widen and deepen these and cast over them a more spiritual aspect and the light of a profounder and more far-reaching Truth. Equally the idea of action according to the Shastra, the fourfold order of society, the allusion to the relative position of the four orders or the comparative spiritual disabilities of Shudras and women seem at first sight local and temporal, and... narrow so much at least of the teaching, deprive it of its universality and spiritual depth and limit its validity for mankind at large. But if we look behind to the spirit and sense and not at the local name and temporal institution, we see that here too the sense is deep and true and the spirit philosophical, spiritual and universal. By Shastra we perceive that the Gita means the law imposed on ...
... Yoga The Path and the Goal Letters on Yoga - II Chapter I Seeking the Divine The True Object of Spiritual Seeking To find the Divine is indeed the first reason for seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the rest is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to manifest Him,—that is, first of all... its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other way. Page 6 That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated... unready. But of course that is not the spiritual life, it is only a sort of elementary religious approach. For the spiritual life to give and not to demand is the rule. The sadhak however can ask for the Divine Force to aid him in keeping his health or recovering it if he does that as part of his sadhana so that his body may be able and fit for the spiritual life and a capable instrument for the Divine ...
... out of the bonds of the earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond. The religious life may be the first approach to the spiritual, but very often it is only a turning about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue. The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant... and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters. Morality is a part of the ordinary life; it is an attempt to govern the outward conduct by certain mental rules or to form the character by these rules in the image of a certain mental ideal. The spiritual life goes beyond the mind; it enters into the... to realise God, it depends on what is meant by fulfilment of the objects of life. If an entry into the spiritual consciousness is part of it, then mere morality will not give it to you. * There are two aspects of religion, true religion and religionism. True religion is spiritual religion, that which seeks to live in the spirit, in what is beyond the intellect, beyond the aesthetic ...
... dynamic amongst the ancient Greeks, but for moral and aesthetic rather than spiritual ends. Later on, it became yet more purely intellectual and academic; it became intellectual speculation only without any practical ways and means for the attainment of the Truth by spiritual experiment, spiritual discovery, a spiritual transformation. If there were not this difference, there would be no reason... existence. In the spiritual domain which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To... always done; for they have tried to establish generalisations drawn from spiritual experience by the light of metaphysical reasoning, but on the basis of that experience and with the evidence of the spiritual seekers as a supreme proof ranking higher than intellectual speculation or experience. In that way the freedom of spiritual and mystic experience is preserved, the reasoning intellect comes in ...
... mystic gives us, we can say, the magic of the Infinite; what I term the spiritual, the spiritual proper, gives in addition the logic of the Infinite. At least this is what distinguishes modern spiritual consciousness from the ancient, that is, Upanishadic spiritual consciousness. The Upanishad gives expression to the spiritual consciousness in its original and pristine purity and perfection, in its... form it meeteth, so there is one Spirit within all creatures but it shapeth itself to form and form; it is likewise outside these.³ This is spiritual matter and spiritual manner that can never be improved upon. This is spiritual poetry in its quintessence. I am referring naturally here to the original and not to the translation which can never do full justice, even at its very best... hands of the Rishis, that is to say, those who lived and moved and had their being in the spiritual consciousness. The Hebrew or even the Zend does not seem to have reached that peak, that absoluteness of the spiritual tone which seems inherent in the Indian tongue, although those too breathed and grew in a spiritual atmosphere. The later languages, however, Greek or Latin or their modern descendants, ...
... the distinction between mystic poetry, spiritual poetry, philosophic poetry and religious poetry. This is a distinction very much needed today, since a failure to perceive it has led to a lot of confusion among the critics of Indian writing in English. For one thing, some of them tend to lump together as spiritual poetry all outpourings in verse on any "spiritual" theme or topic. Thus, Swami Vivekananda... Vivekananda, Swami Ramatirtha, Swami Shivanand, J. Krishnamurthy, Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo, are all categorised as "spiritual" poets by virtue of the themes of their poetic compositions. The epithet "spiritual" in the term "spiritual poetry", as Nolinida uses it, does not refer to the theme of the composition but to the plane of inspiration from which the poem has been derived, and to the quality... angle or from a few closely related angles. The mental standpoint aspects only one side of the object in view, and to our anti-spiritual age this one-track mentality itself seems to be its greatest virtue. The global view which is the hallmark of a mind illumined by spiritual consciousness transcends this one-trackedness of the intellect. It gets behind all opposing views and standpoints and tries to ...
... body of the mental being and a spiritual or causal body of the gnostic and bliss soul in which all the perfection of a spiritual embodiment is to be found, a yet unmanifested divine law of the body. Most of the physical siddhis acquired by certain Yogins are brought about by some opening up of the law of the subtle or a calling down of something of the law of the spiritual body. The ordinary method is... universe, his mind with the cosmic mind, his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine knowledge and will both in itself and as it pours itself through these channels, his spirit with the one spirit in all beings. All the variety of cosmic existence will be changed to him in that unity and revealed in the secret of its spiritual significance. For in this spiritual bliss and being he will be one with That... the tangle of this lower action of the struggling gunas and the dualities into the high truth of the divine calm and the divine action, then spiritual perfection becomes possible. Purification and freedom are the indispensable antecedents of perfection. A spiritual self-perfection can only mean a growing into oneness with the nature of divine being, and therefore according to our conception of divine ...
... practice which most people associate with spiritual pursuit is that of meditation. This is specially true of the West where, particularly due to the influence of Zen Buddhism, spiritual practice is regarded as almost synonymous with the practice of meditation. Referring to this attitude in a critical vein, the Mother remarks, "...when they think of the spiritual life, they immediately think of meditation... for their application. Many people, even among spiritual aspirants, fail to understand the distinction between the spiritual life and a life governed by morality or religion. The basic attitudes and the limbs of daily sadhana dealt with in the first two chapters of this book throw ample light on what is meant by leading a spiritual life from the viewpoint of Integral Yoga. Regarding... The presentation of the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother has been enriched by copious references to other spiritual teachers and works, both Eastern and Western, including the perennial lore of such sources as the Gita and the Upanishads. Unlike most other spiritual paths and disciplines, Integral Yoga does not prescribe any set of concrete practices such as aāsana, ...
... 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... 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 Page 83 will do very well as an instance of the pure illumination, for here what would otherwise be a description of a spiritual hea... imaged description is one thing and spiritual concreteness is another. "Two birds, companions, seated on one tree, but one eats the fruit, the other eats not but watches his fellow"—that has an illumining spiritual clarity and concreteness to one who has had the experience, but mentally and intellectually it might mean anything or nothing. Poetry uttered with the spiritual clarity may be compared to sun ...
... Matter so that there would be a total spiritual transformation of material life, here itself, ih eva, in this earthly Earth. There is no need to renounce Matter in order to embrace the Spirit. Indeed, all life is an evolving expression of the Spirit, and therefore, a truly spiritual culture embraces all life and transforms it into spiritual terms. A spiritual manifestation in the physical life would... point of reference is not the outward form of a given belief and practice but the spirit behind and the justifying spiritual experience. Indian scriptures and records abound with the statements and descriptions of varieties of spiritual experience. But there are three central spiritual experiences in terms of which all these varieties can be readily understood. The first is that of the individual... vision based upon spiritual experience and channelised into a metaphysical system by means of intellectual processes of reasoning. Even when intellectual speculations have been free both in regard to the premises and conclusions, still the conclusions have never been accepted as authentic unless they have been found verifiable in spiritual experience or confirmed by the records of spiritual experience, ...
... between spiritual and moral and even claims that the moral is the only true spiritual element in our nature be of any use to us; for ethics is a mental control, and the limited erring mind is not and cannot be the free and ever-luminous spirit. It is equally impossible to accept the gospel that makes life the one aim, takes its elements fundamentally as they are and only calls in a half-spiritual or p... pseudo-spiritual light to flush and embellish it. Inadequate too is the very frequent attempt at a misalliance between the vital and the spiritual, a mystic experience within with an aestheticised intellectual and sensuous Paganism or exalted hedonism outside leaning upon it and satisfying itself in the glow of a spiritual sanction; for this too is a precarious and never successful compromise and it... that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience—or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us that is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the constructions, repre ...
... place, venerable though not often effective, for the priest or the learned theologian who can be trusted to provide him with a safe and ordinary spiritual pabulum. But to the man who would assert for himself the liberty of spiritual experience and the spiritual life, he assigns, if he admits him at all, not the vestment of the priest but the robe of the Sannyasin. Outside society let him exercise his... asserts the spiritual reality in a spotless isolation. This withdrawal renders an invaluable service to the material life itself by forcing it to regard and even to bow down to something that is the direct negation of its own petty ideals, sordid cares and egoistic self-content. But the work in the world of so supreme a power as spiritual force cannot be thus limited. The spiritual life also can... is the promise and condition of the conquest of life by that which is higher even than Mind. Page 25 That highest thing, the spiritual existence, is concerned with what is eternal but not therefore entirely aloof from the transient. For the spiritual man the mind's dream of perfect beauty is realised in an eternal love, beauty and delight that has no dependence and is equal behind all objective ...
... movements, the psychic and the spiritual, is complete without the other. If the spiritual ascent and descent are not made, the spiritual transformation of the nature cannot happen; if the full psychic opening and connection is not made, the transformation cannot be complete. There is no incompatibility between the two movements; some begin the psychic first, others the spiritual first, some carry on both... struggle. When there is an opening in the spiritual mind but not a sufficient psychic change, there is or can be this kind of vehement force-action and resistance; when the psychic opens, then it acts on the whole nature, mind, vital, physical, governing them from within, to transform themselves and become ready for the complete spiritual opening and spiritual consciousness. Devotion and a more and more... etc., faith, consecration, surrender. The spiritual change is the established descent of the peace, light, knowledge, power, bliss from above, the awareness of the self and the Divine and of a higher cosmic consciousness and the change of the whole consciousness to that. Between psychisation and spiritualisation there is a difference. The spiritual is the change that descends from above, the ...
... speech, the diamond eye" (681) Spiritual Sigh t: (1) "It needs the power of a spiritual gaze" (49) Page 64 (2) "... forced The carved thought-shrouded doors to swing apart, Unlocked the avenues of spiritual sight" (683) (3)"Unsealed was Nature's great spiritual eye" (382) (4)"His sight, spiritual in embodying orbs, Could pierce through... (B) Sight in the Spiritual Mind Planes : To recapitulate: once we cross the confines of the normal mind of man, we meet on our ascending climb a series of Page 58 hierarchised luminous planes of consciousness serving as links and bridges between the now normal waking mind of non-spiritual humanity and the native heights of our spiritual being. These planes are... eyes to unseen spiritual heights" (76) (2)"A vision lightened on the viewless heights" (42) (3)"On summit Mind are radiant altitudes Exposed to the luster of Infinity, Outskirts and dependencies of the house of Truth, Upraised estates of Mind and measureless." (659) (B.l) Sight in the Higher Mind : The Higher Mind is the first plane of spiritual mind-consciousness ...
... mystic gives us, we can say, the magic of the Infinite; what I term the spiritual, the spiritual proper, gives in addition the logic of the Infinite. At least this is what distinguishes modern spiritual consciousness from the ancient, that is, Upanishadic spiritual consciousness. The Upanishad gives expression to the spiritual consciousness in its original and pristine purity and perfection, in its... it meeteth, so there is one Spirit within all creatures but it shapeth itself to form and form; it is likewise outside these. 3 This is spiritual matter and spiritual manner that can never be improved upon. This is spiritual poetry in its quintessence. I am referring naturally here to the original and not to the translation which can never do full justice, even at its very best... of the Rishis, that is to say, those who lived and moved and had their being in the spiritual consciousness. The Hebrew or even the Zend does not seem to have reached that peak, that absoluteness of the' spiritual tone which seems inherent in the Indian tongue, although those too breathed and grew in a spiritual atmosphere. The later languages, however, Greek or Latin or their modern descendants ...
... of the race,—in all countries where men think, there is now in various forms that idea and that hope,—and our aim has been to search for the spiritual, religious and other truth which can enlighten and guide the race in this movement and endeavour. The spiritual experience and the general truths on which such an attempt could be based, were already present to us, otherwise we should have had no right... a fixed status; the East too is beginning to return from this exaggeration. The West is reawaking to the truth of the Spirit and the spiritual possibilities of life, the East is reawaking to the truth of Life and tends towards a new application to it of its spiritual knowledge. Our view is that the antinomy created between them is an unreal one. Spirit being the fundamental truth of existence, life... manifest the spiritual life in the human existence is the opportunity given by the successions of rebirth. We accept the truth of evolution, not so much in the physical form given to it by the West Page 107 as in its philosophical truth, the involution of life and mind and spirit here in matter and their progressive manifestation. At the summit of this evolution is the spiritual life, the ...
... The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution The Life Divine Chapter XXV The Triple Transformation A conscious being is in the centre of the self, who rules past and future; he is like a fire without smoke.... That, one must disengage with... the approach of the heart, creates a spiritual or psychic condition of the surface being and nature in which there is a larger and more complex openness to the psychic light within us and to the spiritual Self or the Ishwara, to the Reality now felt above and enveloping and penetrating us. In the nature there is a more powerful and many-sided change, a spiritual building and self-creation, the appearance... harmonised, modulated in the psychic key, put in spiritual order. This process may be rapid or tardy according to the amount of obscurity and resistance still left in the nature, but it goes on unfalteringly so long as it is not complete. As a final result the whole conscious being is made perfectly apt for spiritual experience of every kind, turned towards spiritual truth of thought, feeling, sense, action ...
... a literary or poetical masterpiece of the ordinary kind, but a large flood of spiritual revelation of this direct and profound character, is a significant fact, evidence of a unique mentality and unusual turn of spirit. The Upanishads are at once profound religious scriptures,—for they are a record of the deepest spiritual experiences,—documents of revelatory and intuitive philosophy of an inexhaustible... themselves within in the spiritual hearing seem to build up the soul and set it satisfied and complete on the heights of self-knowledge. This character of the Upanishads needs to be insisted upon with a strong emphasis, because it is ignored by foreign translators who seek to bring out the intellectual sense without feeling the life of thought vision and the ecstasy of spiritual experience which made... Upanishads to deepest spiritual truths, these passages cannot be dismissed as childish aberrations of the intelligence void of sense or of any discoverable bearing on the higher thought in which they culminate. On the contrary we find that they have a deep enough significance once we can get inside their symbolic meaning. That appears in a psycho-physical passing upward into a psycho-spiritual knowledge for ...
... psychological and spiritual experience, but have to deal with intellectual statements of spiritual and often of supracosmic truth. Metaphysical statement has always this peril and uncertainty about it that it is an attempt to define to our minds what is really infinite, an attempt which has to be made, but can never be quite satisfactory, quite final or ultimate. The highest spiritual truth can be lived... not only in all as the One, but in each as the Jiva, the individual spiritual presence; it manifests also as the essence of all quality of Nature. These are therefore the concealed spiritual powers behind all phenomena. This highest quality is not the working of the three gunas, which is phenomenon of quality and not its spiritual essence. It is rather the inherent, one, yet variable inner power of... phenomenon, which could not be at all except for this spiritual force and this power of being; it comes from that and it exists in that and by that solely. If we dwell in the phenomenal nature only and see things only by the notions it impresses on us, we shall not get at the real truth of our active existence. The real truth is this spiritual power, this divine force of being, this essential quality ...
... for its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other way. That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here... and cast itself into the Eternal. There is yet another, the Tantric¹ which though less subtle and spiritually profound, is even more bold and forceful than the synthesis of the Gita, for it seizes even upon the obstacles to the spiritual life and compels them to become the means for a richer spiritual conquest and enables us to embrace the whole of Life in our divine scope as the Lila² of the Divine;... attribute this flowering of Intuition on the spiritual plane to a rapid reemergence of essential gains brought down from a previous cycle. If we analyse the spiritual history of India we shall find that after reaching this height there was a descent which attempted to take up each lower degree of the already evolved consciousness and link it to the spiritual at the summit. The Vedic age was followed ...
... experience viewed from opposite angles. Divergences, on the other hand, are due to differences in the nature of the spiritual realizations on which they are based. For example, the Buddhist view that the Reality is Non-Being or Non-Existence or Nothingness (Asat) is based on a different spiritual experience from the one that is founded on the Vedantic view of the ultimate reality as Being, Existence, or... individual soul are illusions, Maya, is based on a spiritual experience that is fundamentally different from the equally valid experience on which is based another Hindu' view that regards the world as a divine play, Lila. Here, the eternal Supreme Being plays hide-and-seek with the eternal individual soul. In Eckhart's teaching, as in all spiritual teachings, there are certain paradoxes. There is also... in doing yoga, all spiritual seeking is at heart a yearning of one's true self to discover itself through liberation from the bondage of the egoic self. The author must also apologize to Eckhart for presenting his teachings from a certain "perspective." As Eckhart has repeatedly said, a perspective is a mental position and is therefore quite inadequate to understand spiritual truths that transcend ...
... " It is true that the spiritual tendency has been to look more beyond life than towards life. It is true also that the spiritual change has been individual and not collective; its result has been successful in the man, but unsuccessful or only indirectly operative in the human mass. The spiritual evolution of Nature is still in process and incomplete,—one might... basis of spiritual conciousness and knowledge and to create more and more a foundation or formation for the vision of that which is eternal in the truth of the spirit. It is only when Nature has fully confirmed this intensive evolution and formation through the individual that anything radical of an expanding or dynamically diffusive character can be expected or any attempt at collective spiritual life... conformity with the truth of the spirit which he is achieving or has achieved in his inner being and knowledge. Any premature attempt at a large-scale collective spiritual life is exposed to vitiation by some incompleteness of the spiritual knowledge on its dynamic side, by the imperfections of the individual seekers and by the invasion of the ordinary mind and vital and physical consciousness taking ...
... here from a spiritual and psychic vision, the emphasis of the physical is secondary and always deliberately lightened so as to give an overwhelmingly spiritual and psychic impression and everything is suppressed which does not serve this purpose or would distract the mind from the purity of this intention. This painting expresses the soul through life, but life is only a means of the spiritual self-expression... less predominantly artistic than that of Japan, it is because it has put first the spiritual need and made all other things subservient to and a means for the spiritual growth of the people. Its civilisation, standing in the first rank in the three great arts as in all things of the mind, has proved that the spiritual urge is not, as has been vainly supposed, sterilising to the other activities, but... s of Buddhist manuscripts of a much later time and in spite of the change of form and manner is still spiritually the same in the Rajput paintings. This unity and continuity enable us to distinguish and arrive at a clear understanding of what is the essential aim, inner turn and motive, spiritual method which differentiate Indian painting first from occidental work and then from the nearer and more ...
... seek this knowledge through the external life; for until its mentality is sufficiently developed, spiritual knowledge is not really possible, and in proportion as it is developed, the possibilities of spiritual knowledge become richer and fuller. 8 To cultivate the spiritual life is not to turn away from everyday life; it is not an escape from life but rather a steady confrontation... supreme Grace from above that answers. 10 Ascent, descent, integration; aspiration, response, realisation: such are the classic terms of the Aurobindonian dialectic of spiritual evolution. Once spiritually awakened, mental man strives to exceed himself, and as he explores the ascending possibilities, he reaches stage after stage of the overhead—or above mind—consciousness: Higher Mind... picturesque description of these spiritual resting-houses between Mind and Supermind. The advance, the progress, really implies an increasing capacity for comprehension, the emergence of a new power of direct vision, the play of puissant truth-consciousness and truth-effectuation: As the Higher Mind brings a greater consciousness into the being through the spiritual idea and its power of truth ...
... and a different turn in their nature. The light of spiritual knowledge, the manifold universal Shakti, the eternal delight of being stream into us and around us, concentrate in the soul and flow out on the surrounding world from each as from a centre of living spiritual consciousness whose circumference is lost in the infinite. More, the spiritual individual remains as a little universe of divine existence... release in the spirit. The crux of the spiritual problem, the character of this transition of which it is so difficult for the normal mind of man to get a true apprehension, turns altogether upon the capital distinction between the ignorant life of the ego in the lower nature and the large and luminous existence of the liberated Jiva in his own true spiritual nature. The renunciation of the first must... our endeavour. There is a mightier fuller more positive spiritual experience in which the circle of our egoistic personality and the round of the mind's limitations vanish in the unwalled infinity of a greatest self and spirit and yet life and its works not only remain still acceptable and possible but reach up and out to their widest spiritual completeness and assume a grand ascending significance ...
... The Solution : Fulfilment of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity : Spiritual Enlightenment alone can illumine the actual Nature of Man "The solution lies not in the reason but in the soul of man, in its spiritual tendencies. It is a spiritual, an inner Page 26 freedom that can alone create a perfect human order. It is a spiritual, a greater than the rational enlightenment that can alone illumine... Russian ideal of communism Anarchistic? Is that ideal not likely to be realised? What are the defects of Anarchism ? Will Anarchism be surpassed? What is the true solution? - Spiritual or Spiritualised Anarchism? - Or a radical spiritual change and transformation? The pressure of the Modern State and the Reaction of Anarchism "Already the pressure of the State organisation on the life of the... what human life might be in its reasonable perfection; but, man being what he is, we are compelled in the end to aim higher and go farther." Page 25 Spiritual Anarchism : Defects of its present formulation "A spiritual or spiritualised anarchism might appear to come nearer to the real solution or at least touch something of it from afar. As it expresses itself at the present day ...
... his chance secure. The spiritual bond is the third and the highest and is for him who feels the true call for spiritual life and has to find his Shakti or complementary soul who will be at once his partner and guide in his sadhana. If you have spiritual life as an ideal in view, you must not seek either an ordinary Woman or a mere psychic one but a woman of that spiritual type who is also psychic... psychic and something more. This spiritual bond between man and woman is still more difficult to find and only one percent of the marriages in the world, if at all, result in such a union. When found, a spiritual companion doubles your life and power and increases your speed of progress tenfold. It is really the Purusha and Prakriti fulfilling themselves in their world and raising themselves to the Divine... Divine plane by their united power. A wrong choice in the type of one who seeks spiritual greatness is worse than in the psychic bond, the fall is swifter and the result may be fatal. Where there is spiritual union, the psychic is sure to be, but where there is psychic, the higher may not be; only in some cases the higher can be evolved out of it. But out of the lowest the highest cannot certainly .come ...
... freedom and noble life without which no spiritual emancipation is possible; for it is not among an enslaved, degraded and perishing people that the Rishis and great spirits can long continue to be born. And 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 but for the spiritual emancipation of the human race. With... the material power in its hands, the democracy has all the spiritual power, the power and force of martyrdom, of unflinching courage, of self-immolation for an idea. Spiritual power in the present creates material power in the future and for this reason we always find that if it is material force which dominates the present, it is spiritual which moulds and takes possession of the future. The despot ...
... evidently a spiritual consciousness which is other than the mental, and it testifies to the existence of a spiritual being in us which is other than our surface mental personality. " The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 855 Sweet Mother, is there a spiritual being in everybody? That depends on what we call "being". If for "being" we substitute "presence", yes, there is a spiritual presence... would be so great that at any moment they could bring about a general catastrophe, a sort of total destruction which would prevent the progress of Nature. That presence, that spiritual light—which could almost be called a spiritual consciousness—is within each being and all things, and because of it, in spite of all discordance, all passion, all violence, there is a minimum of general harmony which allows... this independent and all-powerful being is in everybody, but the realisation is the result of long efforts which sometimes extend over many lives. In everyone, even at the very beginning, this spiritual presence, this inner light is there.... In fact, it is everywhere. I have seen it many a time in certain animals. It is like a shining point which is the basis of a certain control and protection ...
... grahasthan; if the call to a spiritual life comes, whether one keeps to them or not depends partly upon the way of Yoga one follows, partly on one's own spiritual necessity. There are many who pursue inwardly the spiritual life and keep the family duties, not as social duties but as a field for the practice of karmayoga, others abandon everything to follow the spiritual call or line and they are justified... which are part of the ordinary vital nature in human life are of no value in the spiritual life—they rather interfere with the progress; for the mind and vital also should be wholly turned towards the Divine. Moreover, the purpose of sadhana is to enter into a spiritual consciousness and base everything on a new spiritual basis which can only be done when one has entered into complete unity with the... the spiritual seeker. The ideal of the Yoga is that all should be centred in and around the Divine and the life of the sadhaks must be founded Page 288 on that firm foundation, their personal relations also should have the Divine for their centre. Moreover, all relations should pass from the vital to the spiritual basis with the vital only as a form and instrument of the spiritual;—this ...
... height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain I'" a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take ill life and all world-activity into the scope of this Spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the spirit and give it a spiritual meaning... with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action; for it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that besides the ordinary forces and activities of the mind and life and body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual cons... independent expression of his views on the subjects, events or the persons discussed. Very often what he said was in answer to the spiritual need of the individual or of the collective atmosphere. It was like a spiritual remedy meant to produce certain spiritual results, not a philosophical or metaphysical pronouncement on questions, events or movements. The net result of some talks very often ...
... place". Can a state of this kind where a radical conversion has occurred be one of Spiritual Mind? Of course, Spiritual Mind can be a state of knowledge from the beginning, but here is a case of ignorance radically ceasing for the first time - an entirely different case. And what we have to decide is whether Spiritual Mind at even its highest can bring about such a state. For, if it can, it can... than that of embodied Spiritual Mind? We should expect this state to be not only devoid of ignorance in a radical way: we should expect it also to be superior in every respect to what Spiritual Mind could do by embodiment. Why, then, inferiority on any score at all? Inferiority on any score can come only if somehow, previous to the creation of the Mind of Light, Spiritual Mind has not descended... as call it down. But neither the substantial commerce with Spiritual Mind nor the dealings with the supramental Gnosis will everywhere be present. While in a number of human beings they will both be present, in others Spiritual Mind alone will be more or less freely contacted and in still others no free contact with even Spiritual Mind and so none with Supermind either will be there. From ...
... the vague and imprecise way in which the term "spiritual" is used not only in popular literature but also in serious writings, the Mother remarks: "... philosophical, yogic and other systems use the word 'spiritual' in a very vague and loose way. Whatever is not physical is spiritual! In comparison with the physical world all other worlds are spiritual! All thought, all effort which does not tend... material life is a spiritual effort. Every tendency which is not strictly human and egoistic is a spiritual tendency. This is a word used to season every dish." 11 The distinction between the inner or supraphysical consciousness and the higher or spiritual consciousness is one of the most valuable aspects of yogic psychology for promoting the self-understanding of the spiritual seeker. Sel... A crucial distinction that one needs to make on the spiritual path is the difference between the psychical and the spiritual. Due to an inadequate knowledge of yogic psychology, psychical phenomena and experiences—which pertain to the inner or subliminal consciousness, a realm of darkness as well as light—are often confused with spiritual experiences, which pertain to the higher consciousness ...
... scouting of the truths of spiritual philosophy and religion,—there is nothing to prevent us from proceeding firmly upon whatever certitudes of spiritual experience have become to us the soil of our inner growth or the pillars on our road to self-knowledge. These are soul realities. But the exact frame we shall give to that knowledge, will best be built by farther spiritual experience aided by new enlarged... idea can only stand if we credit a creative biological evolution and its instrument of physical heredity with the whole causation of all our mental and spiritual being; but in that case we have no real soul or spirit, our soul personality or spiritual becoming is a fruit of our life and body. Now the question of rebirth turns almost entirely upon the one fundamental question of the past of the individual... heredity; but not that they are entirely due to this force, not that there is no soul, no spiritual entity which accepts and makes use of this instrumentation, but is not its created result or helplessly subject to it in its becoming. Still more are the higher parts of our mind marked with a certain stamp of spiritual independence. They are not altogether helpless formations of evolutionary heredity. But ...
... will be constantly called for at every step of the spiritual journey, and, when firmly acquired, these will arm and fortify the sadhaka's character and act for him as so many armours and weapons in his relentless spiritual battle against the forces of established darkness. We propose to discuss, although in brief, a few of these essential spiritual virtues in this very first chapter of this book... endangered but completely destroyed the spiritual life of many a sadhaka. It is what we may call a deplorable state of 'self-oblivion', of forgetfulness of one's goal. It is not that the sadhaka theoretically loses sight of the spiritual goal. He quite remembers the precise nature of this goal which he set before himself when he first entered the spiritual path. He continues to have a clear in... journey, he first provides himself with all the requisites of the path; otherwise he may get into trouble any time in course of his voyage. The same thing applies in the case of a spiritual traveller. When he sets out on his spiritual pilgrimage whose ultimate goal is to be united with the Divine Consciousness and to turn oneself into a fit instrument for the Divine's manifestation, he too must have to gather ...
... NIRODBARAN: You once compared mystic poetry to moon light and spiritual poetry to sunlight. SRI AUROBINDO: No, I meant occult poetry to be like moonlight. There are two kinds of mystic poetry: occult-mystic and spiritual-mystic. That poem of mine, "Trance", with its moon and star, or my "Bird of Fire" is occult-mystic, while the sonnets are spiritual-mystic. For instance in the sonnet "Nirvana", I have put... NIRODBARAN: Dilip told me that once Tagore in an agony of pain tried hard to concentrate and ultimately he separated himself from his pain and got relief. Isn't that a spiritual experience? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, that is a spiritual experience. NIRODBARAN: I remember also to have read in his autobiography, Jivan Smriti, that one day he felt a sudden outburst of joy and all Nature seemed to be full... 1938 This talk took place before the others had come up, when Nirodbaran was all alone with Sri Aurobindo. Nirodbaran read out some of Tagore's last poems, which were supposed to express spiritual experiences. NIRODBARAN: Is there anything here? ; SRI AUROBINDO (smiling) : Nothing much, except that he speaks of some light in the first poem. NIRODBARAN: In the rest he speaks of losing ...
... to the supreme spiritual heights of being. But the most direct spiritual use of the psychic consciousness is to make it an instrument of contact, communication and union with the Divine. A world of psycho-spiritual symbols is readily opened up, illuminating and potent and living forms and instruments, which can be made a revelation of spiritual significances, a support for our spiritual growth and the... have and often have no more than a mental utility and significance, but it can also be used with a spiritual sense and light and intention in it and for a spiritual purpose. This can be done by a spiritual meaning and use in our psychical interchange with others, and it is largely by a psycho-spiritual interchange of this kind that a master in Yoga helps his disciple. The knowledge of our inner subliminal... infinite power of its consciousness. Page 864 The pure action of sense is a spiritual action and pure sense is itself a power of the spirit. The spiritual sense is capable of knowing in its own characteristic way, which is other than that of supramental thought or of the intelligence or spiritual comprehension, vijñāna , or knowledge by identity, all things whatsoever, things material ...
... be imposed upon others. 13 May 1970 You must not confuse a religious teaching with a spiritual one. Religious teaching belongs to the past and halts progress. Spiritual teaching is the teaching of the future—it illumines the consciousness and prepares it for future realisation. Spiritual teaching is above religions and strives towards a global Truth. It teaches us to enter into... Why do men cling to a religion? Religions are based on creeds which are spiritual experiences brought down to a level where they become more easy to grasp, but at the cost of their integral purity and truth. The time of religions is over. We have entered the age of universal spirituality, of spiritual experience in its initial purity. ( About an article entitled "Religion in... Religion God gives Himself to His whole creation; no one religion holds the monopoly of His Grace. Instead of excluding each other, religions ought to complete each other. The spiritual spirit is not contrary to a religious feeling of adoration, devotion and consecration. But what is wrong in the religions is the fixity of the mind clinging to one formula as an exclusive truth. One ...
... formulate and develop a new kind of collective spiritual life in the prepared spiritual atmosphere of the Ashram. All other achievements are secondary and incidental: this alone is the real raison d' ê tre of the Ashram founded by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. And to fulfil it the main concern of the inmates should be the development of a spiritual consciousness in themselves. With it will automatically... incomplete spiritual aspiration can change in its recalcitrant mass or permanently dominate." (The Life Divine, p. 1061) (2)"Either the endeavour fails by its own imperfection or it is invaded by the imperfection of the outside world and sinks from the shining height of its aspiration to something mixed and inferior on the ordinary human level." (Ibid.) A collective spiritual life -... automatically develop in the Ashram mutuality of consciousness, spontaneous reign of harmony and the growth of a spiritually conscious community. To quote Sri Aurobindo: "Beyond the mental and moral being in us is a greater divine being that is spiritual and supramental... There alone the unification of the transformed vital and physical and the illumined mental man becomes possible in that supramental ...
... supermind) to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral Yoga. People are now taking them up and using them in senses which have nothing to do with the significance which I put into them. Purification of the nature by the "influence" of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change—the word besides has... The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths A Yoga of Transformation Letters on Yoga - II Chapter IV Transformation in the Integral Yoga The Meaning of Transformation By transformation I do not mean some change of the nature—I do not mean for instance sainthood or ethical perfection or Yogic siddhis (like... and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose. What I mean by the spiritual transformation is something dynamic (not merely liberation of the self, or realisation of the One which can very well be attained without any descent). It is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness dynamic as well as static in every part of the being down to the subconscient. That cannot ...
... embodied minds; there is a spiritual being, a spiritual principle, a spiritual plane of Nature. Into that we have to heighten our force of consciousness, to widen by that still more largely, even universally and infinitely, our range of being and our field of action, to take up by that our lower life and use it for greater ends and on a larger plan, in the light of the spiritual truth of existence. Our... The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution The Life Divine Chapter XIX Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge Seven steps has the ground of the Ignorance, seven steps has the ground of the Knowledge. Mahopanishad... Page 754 mind, from the mind into the spirit. It is this that must be the method of our growth from a mental into a spiritual and supramental manifestation, out of a still half-animal humanity into a divine being and a divine living. There must be achieved a new spiritual height, wideness, depth, subtlety, intensity of our consciousness, of its substance, its force, its sensibility, an elevation ...
... for pravritti, the Para Prakriti becomes the multiple spiritual personality, the Jiva. But the intrinsic activity of this supreme Page 278 Nature is always a spiritual, a divine working. It is force of the supreme divine Nature, it is the conscious will of the being of the Supreme that throws itself out in various essential and spiritual power of quality in the Jiva: that essential power is... is the swabhava of the Jiva. All act and becoming which proceed directly from this spiritual force are a divine becoming and a pure and spiritual action. Therefore it follows that in action the effort of the human individual must be to get back to his true spiritual personality and to make all his works flow from the power of its supernal Shakti, to develop action through the soul and the inmost intrinsic... may put it, there is the Supreme, there is the impersonal spirit, and there is the multiple soul, timeless foundation of our spiritual personality, the true and eternal individual, mamaivāṁśaḥ sanātanaḥ . All these three are divine, all three are the Divine. The supreme spiritual nature of being, the Para Prakriti free from any limitation by the conditioning Ignorance, is the nature of the Purushottama ...
... utility for the spiritual life. To believe anything and everything is certainly not demanded of the spiritual seeker; such a promiscuous and imbecile credulity would be not only unintellectual, but in the last degree unspiritual. At every moment of the spiritual life until one has got fully into that higher Light, one has to be on one's guard and to be able to distinguish spiritual truth from pseu... sudden inrush of spiritual experience. But if afterwards it begins questioning, doubting, theorising, surmising what this might be and whether it is true or not, what else can the spiritual Power do but retire and wait for the bubbles of the mind to cease? I would ask one simple question of those who would make Page 340 the intellectual mind the standard and judge of spiritual experience.... difficulty lies in the normal human consciousness to which spiritual experience comes as something abnormal and is in fact supernormal. This weak limited normality finds it difficult at first even to get any touch of that greater and intenser supernormal or it gets it diluted into its own duller stuff of mental or vital experience, and, when the spiritual does come in its own overwhelming power, very often ...
... essential to perfection and indispensable to spiritual freedom. We shall find that it then implies always two things, a rejection and an assumption, a negative and a positive side; the negative movement of freedom is a liberation from the principal bonds, the master-knots of the lower soul-nature, the positive side an opening or growth into the higher spiritual existence. But what are these master-knots—other... of egoistic idea and preference, then the knowledge of the spiritual truth of oneness can find a firm foundation. Till then, the ego takes all sorts of subtle forms and we imagine ourselves to be free from it, when we are really acting as its instruments and all we have attained is a certain intellectual poise which is not the true spiritual liberation. Moreover, to throw away the active sense of ego... universal existence, his oneness with the timeless Divine and his oneness with all other beings and that is the essential sense of a spiritual liberation from the ego. But the moment the soul leans towards the mental limitation, there is a certain sense of spiritual separativeness which has its joys, but may at any moment lapse into the entire ego-sense, ignorance, oblivion of oneness. To get rid of ...
... aid to the deeper spiritual aim. In other words, this approach led to a tendency to create whatever it had to first on the inner plane and afterwards in its other and outer aspects. The early mind of India understood the essential character of this problem. The Vedic Rishis and their successors made it their chief work to found a spiritual basis of Indian life and to effect spiritual and cultural unity... the peninsula. What were the methods adopted by the ancients to bring about this spiritual and cultural unity? Observing the religious and spiritual tendency of the Indian people, the ancient seers adopted a combination of different psychological and practical methods to bring about spiritual and cultural unity. As a first step, they created sacred religious places and distributed... after the conquest by the British. However, the psychological sense of unity was there from the most ancient times. India had a fundamental cultural and spiritual unity rather than a political and economical unity. For in India the spiritual and cultural unity was made complete at a very early time and it became the very basis of life of all this great surge of humanity between the Himalayas ...
... levels until the increasing manifestation of the sattwic or spiritual portion of the vehicle of mind enables the individual mental being in man to identify himself with the pure spiritual consciousness beyond Mind. India's social system is built upon this conception; her philosophy formulates it; her religion is an aspiration to the spiritual consciousness and its fruits; her art and literature have... its material side, but has borne also its cultural and spiritual aspect. Both materially and spiritually Europe has thrown herself repeatedly upon Asia, Asia too upon Europe, to conquer, assimilate and dominate. There has been a constant alternation, a flowing backward and forward of these two seas of power. All Asia has always had the spiritual tendency in more or less intensity, Page 57 ... whole dharma or law of being is founded upon it. Progress she admits, but this spiritual progress, not the Page 56 externally self-unfolding process of an always more and more prosperous and efficient material civilisation. It is her founding of life upon this exalted conception and her urge towards the spiritual and the eternal that constitute the distinct value of her civilisation. And it ...
... upward turn is the proper domain of the spiritual consciousness. Hence, the entire process is largely Page 59 psycho-spiritual; it can be said that the psycho-spiritual transformation has to reach a very high level before the supramental transformation begins to advance. A description of the three processes of the psychic transformation, spiritual transformation and supramental transformation... -07_Part Five.htm Part Five Process of Spiritual Transformation : Role of the superconscient Levels of Mind But even then there are still limitations of an inferior instrumentation; as a result, the highest spiritual transformation must intervene on the psychic or psycho-spiritual change. There is thus the necessity of an upward journey above our mind and... to varieties of spiritual experience, but when the spiritual power and light descend into the operations of the body, life and mind for their transformation, the endeavour would succeed better and more rapidly if it is preceded by a good deal of development of psychic experiences and psychic transformation of the body, life and mind. In any case, psychic transformation and spiritual transformation have ...
... a time raises the being to a higher spiritual plane and then lowers it back into the inferior levels. These alternations must be regarded as the natural vicissitudes of a process of transformation from the normal to the spiritual being. The transformation, the perfection cannot for the integral Yoga be complete until the link between the mental and the spiritual action is formed and a higher knowledge... all the powers of all the planes must be seen and known as self-formulations of the one spiritual Shakti, infinite in being, consciousness and Ananda. It is not the invariable rule that this power should first manifest itself on the lower levels in the lower forms of energy and then reveal its higher spiritual nature. And if it does so come, first in its mental, vital or physical universalism, we must... become conscious of God or of the Shakti, the difficulties of our relation Page 765 with them arise from the ego consciousness which we bring into the spiritual relation. The ego in us makes claims on the Divine other than the spiritual claim, and these claims are in a sense legitimate, but so long as and in proportion as they take the egoistic form, they are open to much grossness and great ...
... That depends on the schools of thought, the periods, the countries.... In a general way, the moon is associated with spiritual force, spiritual progress, spiritual aspiration. The waxing moon used to be considered as the symbol of spiritual aspiration for transformation, and spiritual plenitude was symbolised by the full moon. Moonlight has always been considered to be very favourable to visions, to... another. Experience proves that this notation which is called in astrology a horoscope is not something absolute and that this destiny is not inevitable, for by taking up yoga and developing spiritually, one escapes from the absolute law of these horoscopes. This would be a kind of notation on the material plane of the relations between universal and individual life, and these relations can be altered ...
... Self, the universal love and other realisations which lead to the cosmic consciousness. But all that is a result of the opening to the spiritual above and it comes by an infiltration or reflection of the spiritual light and truth in mind, life and body. The spiritual transformation proper begins or becomes possible when one rises above the mind and lives there governing all from above. Even in the psychic... something above the mind, vital and body of the human being. It is wholly spiritual. To attain may mean only to be able to go into it at will or to remain in it with a part of one's consciousness, while the rest goes on in the old way. Psychic transformation is when the whole being is remoulded into the nature of the psychic; spiritual transformation is when the whole being is spiritualised; supramental... opening of the psychic being or soul by which it comes forward and governs the mind, life and body turning all to the Divine; (3) the opening of the whole lower being to the spiritual truth—this last may be called the psycho-spiritual part of the change. It is quite possible for the psychic transformation to take one beyond the individual into the cosmic. Even the occult opening establishes a connection ...
... qualities you speak of are helpful in the approach to the spiritual path, while the defects you enumerate are each a serious stumbling-block in the way. Sincerity especially is indispensable to the spiritual endeavour, and crookedness a constant obstacle. The sattwic nature has always been held to be the most apt and ready for the spiritual life, while the rajasic nature is encumbered by its desires... can burn through both towards the heights of the Spirit. Humility before the Divine is also a sine qua non of the spiritual life, and spiritual pride, arrogance, or vanity and self-assurance press always downward. But confidence in the Divine and a faith in one's spiritual destiny (i.e. since my heart and Page 42 soul seek for the Divine, I cannot fail one day to reach Him) are much... the relapse lasts, held back by it from inner progress. But for all that the conversion of great sinners into great saints, of men of little or no virtue into spiritual seekers and God-lovers has frequently happened in religious and spiritual history—as in Europe St. Augustine, in India Chaitanya's Jagai and Madhai, Bilwamangal and many others. The house of the Divine is not closed to any who knock ...
... and, if it is rightly done, it does not prevent the approach to the Divine or the access to spiritual knowledge and the spiritual life. There is, of course, also the ascetic ideal which is necessary for many and has its place in the spiritual order. I would myself say that no man can be spiritually complete if he cannot live ascetically or follow a life as bare as the barest anchorite’s... living as indispensable to spiritual perfection or as identical with it. There is the way of spiritual self-mastery and the way of spiritual self-giving and surrender to the Divine, abandoning ego and desire even in the midst of action or of any kind of work or all kinds of work demanded from us by the Divine. If it were not so, there would not have been great spiritual men like Janaka or Vidura... so regarded in ancient spiritual India. If I did, I would not be able to receive money from Ambalal or from those of our disciples who in Bombay trade with East Africa; nor could we then encourage them to go on with their work but would have to tell them to throw it up and attend to their spiritual progress alone. How are we to reconcile Ambalal’s seeking after spiritual light and his mill? Ought ...
... not negligible, but the spiritual life does not stop with them or even basically consist of them. It consists essentially in increasing union with the Divine and increasing expression of the Divine as a result of that union. In whatever we do we must seek to serve God. If you give a dying man some water and save his life, you do a fine thing, but it is not in itself a spiritual act unless you remember... ultimately feed one's ego by subtle means and end up in spiritual pride. One may also come to grief, for when one strives to rise Page 147 beyond the routine of human existence one gets into touch with strange beings and forces and unless one has a deep purity and sincerity they may make use of one in ways that are far from spiritual and they may even derange one's mind. That is why,... Superior who has an ability to govern and organise, but no special spiritual radiancy. How is she to help one's soul? Of course one may turn to the occult Christ and worship him and call down his help. But how much is one's own capacity for doing this? Most of us are very ordinary people even when we turn Godward, we are not spiritual geniuses. We cannot for long keep up worship or mystical communion ...
... consent to sink themselves in the spiritual emotion of the seeing of truth and the abiding spiritual experience. The mental and vital interest, pleasure, pain of thought, life, action is not the source of poetic delight and beauty and can be turned into that deeper thing only when they have sunk into the soul and been transmuted in the soul's radiant memory into spiritual experience,—that perhaps was what... the spiritual Page 255 through the aesthetic sense is the constant sense of Indian art, as it is also the inspiring motive of a great part of the later religion and poetry. Japan and China, more especially perhaps southern China, for the north has been weighted by a tendency to a more external and formal idea of measure and harmony, had in a different way this fusion of the spiritual and... ecstasy with which the spirit of existence Page 258 regards itself and its creations. This deeper spiritual feeling, this Ananda is the fountain of poetic delight and beauty. It springs from a supreme essence of experience, a supreme aesthesis which is in its own nature spiritual, impersonal, independent of the personal reactions and passions of the mind, and that is why the poet is able ...
... the self is the spiritual substance. Page 400 Universal Mind is not "the stuff and body" of the Father-Mother. At most it is like life and matter, one form of expressive substance, a sheath or covering. It is rather the spiritual substance that could be imaged as the stuff and body of the Divine. 3 I presume that by your "essence" you mean the self or spiritual substance of things... "essence" cannot be the Mother uniting the Divine Father to the human sons. It is through the spiritual substance that the unity with the Father and Mother is felt, because out of her spiritual substance the Mother has manifested her children. But the Divine and the Mother are surely something more than a spiritual substance. Page 401 [2] Mira has shown me your letter. You seem to yield... universal mental like the universal vital and physical is one form of the expressive substance of the Divine, but behind is another and a spiritual substance which is the true essence. If you want an image, it would be nearer the truth to say that this spiritual substance is the very stuff and body of the Divine and mind, life and matter are lesser sheaths, coverings or outer folds. To describe ...
... very sharply divided in their collective personality, and Page 4 their spiritual unity in the Christian religion or even their cultural unity in a common European civilization was never so real and complete as the ancient spiritual and cultural unity of India. The spiritual unity centred on Christendom was not the centre of their life, nor even its basis or firm ground of... deeper spiritual aim. In other words, this approach led to a tendency to create whatever it had to create first on the inner plane and afterwards in its other and outer aspects. The early mind of India understood the essential character of this problem. The Vedic Rishis and their successors made it their chief work to found a spiritual basis of Indian life and to effect the spiritual and cultural... the peninsula. What were the methods adopted by the ancients to bring about this spiritual and cultural unity? Observing the religious and spiritual tendency of the Indian people, the ancient seers adopted a combination of different psychological and practical methods to bring about spiritual and cultural unity. As a first step, they created sacred religious places and distributed ...
... applause, etc. The spiritual life and one's own inner psychic and spiritual change should be the first preoccupation of a sadhak—poetry or painting is something quite subordinate and even then it should be done not to be a great poet or artist but as a help to the inner sadhana. It is time that everyone got away from the vital view of things to the psychic and spiritual on which alone can stand... known even great Yogis suffer from just a touch of it! If one can see mentally the humour of it, it will fall off in the end. Literature To be a literary man is not a spiritual aim; but to use literature as a means of spiritual expression is another matter. Even to make expression a vehicle of a superior power helps to open the consciousness. The harmonising rests on that principle. A "literary... novels. What we felt was that this kind of total absorption and possession by it was not good for your spiritual condition and that it put a lesser thing in front, even occupying the whole front of the consciousness for most of the time instead of putting it in its proper place in a sound spiritual harmony. You can try [ writing a novel ], if you like. The difficulty is that the subject matter ...
... Sri Aurobindo's keen sense of the need for a new principle and power of spiritual life to solve the many- sided problem of man's imperfect nature. To grasp what Sri Aurobindo stands for, we must first seize the significance of the phrase "spiritual life". Historical India has had no uncertainty about it. "Spiritual" does not mean merely "cultural" or, as is mostly the case today, merely... intention of giving any sanction to a new edition of the old fiasco."¹ These ringing challenging words come from the greatest spiritual figure of modern India: Sri Aurobindo. They were meant to refuse acceptance of what he called "a partial and transient spiritual opening within with no true and radical change in the law of the external nature."² Although originally applied to a particular... on to spiritual experience. The systematic detailed exposition of them is his contribution to philosophy. And the direct application of them to the problems of individual and collective living in his Ashram at Pondicherry is his contribution to practical world-work. These three contributions render Sri Aurobindo the most important influence for humanity's future, the spiritual India of ...
... difference has been that Asia has served predominantly (not exclusively) as a field for man's spiritual experience and progression, Europe has been rather a workshop for his mental and vital activities. As the cycle progressed, the Eastern continent has more and more converted itself into a storehouse of spiritual energy sometimes active and reaching forward to new development, sometimes conservative and... moral, artistic and spiritual cultures of the East. The new features of this mutual interpenetration are, first, that the two attacks have synchronised and, secondly, that they have encountered in each case the extreme exaggeration of their Page 142 opposites. Intellectual and materialistic Europe found India, the Asia of Asia, the heart of the world's spiritual life, in the last throes... harmony; to restate the ancient and eternal spiritual truth of the Self so that it shall re-embrace, permeate, dominate, transfigure the mental and physical life; Page 145 to develop the most profound and vital methods of psychological self-discipline and self-development so that the mental and psychical life of man may express the spiritual life through the utmost possible expansion of ...
... of God; for divine Power must be free in its workings, spiritual in its origin, spiritual in its greatness. The soul bound and egoistic in Nature, mental, vital, physical only, cannot be a portion of the Divine and itself a divine being; for such a divine being must be itself of Page 307 the very nature of the Divine, free, spiritual, self-developing, self-existent, superior to mind, life... more perfect spiritual detachment which comes by a vision of the Supreme who is more than Nature and greater than mind and reason. But even this detachment is only the initial secret of freedom and of the clear vision of knowledge, it is not the whole clue to the divine mystery,—for by itself it would leave Nature unexplained and the natural active part of being isolated from the spiritual and quietistic... mutable nature. But look beyond the light itself to its source; then shalt thou know the supreme Soul in which is recovered the spiritual truth of personality and Nature. See then the one self in all beings that thou mayst see me in all beings; see all beings in one spiritual self and reality, because that is the way to see all beings in me; know one Brahman in all that thou mayst see God who is the ...
... infinities of spiritual being are the more significant things, give us greater and subtler reaches of the self-disclosing. Secrecy The physical evolution is only an outward sign, the more and more complex and subtle development of a supporting structure, the growing exterior metre mould of form which is devised to sustain in matter the rising intonations of the spiritual harmony. The spiritual significance... at in the end, if we once admit as the key of the whole movement, the reality of this whole mounting creation a spiritual evolution. The word evolution carries with it in its intrinsic sense, in the idea at its root the necessity of a previous involution. We must, if a hidden spiritual being is the secret of all the action of Nature, give its full power to that latent value of the idea. We are bound... the top of the spiritual evolution by a soul in Nature which awakens to the significance of its own being in the liberation of the highest truth: it comes to know that its births were the births, the assumptions of form of an eternal Spirit, to know itself as that and not a creature of Nature and rises to the possession of the revealed, full and highest power of its own real and spiritual nature. That ...
... And there is no other way than that of 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 c... well, it is high time we worked for it; what must surely change is certain political attitudes and habits man has. It will be evident that the issue is spiritual; the issue is that of spiritual contemplation; the issue is of spiritual action. III Let us dwell on this point in a different context. The aim of universal solidarity has come up in the forefront of human idealism today;... and it is that to which the religion of humanity also must arrive before it can fulfil itself in the life of the race. 4 Page 496 V We have spoken of the spiritual issue and of the spiritual solution, but the question is as to what we should mean by the term "spirituality". We have already distinguished spirituality from religion and pointed out that spirituality is not ...
... of spiritual integrality and vastness. Romen's comparative study of Savitri and Milton's Paradise Lost is another outstanding work in this genre, noteworthy for its elucidation by contrast of the special qualities expressed by spiritual consciousness. V. K. Gokak's exposition of Savitri's diction begins in response to P. Lal's modernist incomprehensions of the poem's spiritual s... stands out by the singularity of its content. Most other articles revolve around one or both of two concerns: the spiritual content of Savitri and its literary contribution. Not that these are mutually exclusive, its mantric aesthesis an inseparable part of its spiritual "message", and several writers (Purani, Dilip Roy, Srinivasa Iyengar, Deshpande, Jyotipriya, Sisirkumar Ghosh) have been... contributes to its overarching spiritual sense. A few articles focus on the content of specific movements in the poem: Nolini's Upanishadic sensibility and Madhav Pandit's exhaustive approach offering mystic insights into the first canto; while Madhusudan Reddy outlines masterfully the sequences of Savitri's own Yoga and Rohit Mehta draws out the passionate spiritual drama and rich significance of ...
... were crises of this character; they were not great spiritual events, but intellectual and practical changes, one in religious, the other in social and political ideas, forms and motives, and the modification of the general consciousness brought about was a mental and dynamic, but not a spiritual modification. But when the crisis has a spiritual seed or intention, then a complete or a partial manifestation... right account of the phenomenon of Avatarhood. It does not cover its spiritual sense, and if this outward utility were all, we should 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... value lie in their persistence as a spiritual form, presence, influence in the inner consciousness of the race and the life of the human soul. Avatarhood is a fact of divine life and consciousness which may realise itself in an outward action, but must persist, when that action is over and has done its work, in a spiritual influence; or may realise itself in a spiritual influence and teaching, but must ...
... to Vedantic or Vaishnava or other Indian spiritual practices and this objection of incapacity or unsuitableness has never been made either from the side of the disciples or from the side of the Masters. I do not see, either, why there should be any such unbridgeable gulf; for there is no essential difference between spiritual life in the East and spiritual life in the West,—what difference there is... will find that the obstinate spiritual difficulty disappears in the end like a mirage. It belongs to the maya and, where the inner call is sincere, cannot hold even the outer consciousness always: its apparent solidity will dissolve. Turning towards the Divine An idealistic notion or a religious belief or emotion is something quite different from getting spiritual light. An idealistic notion might... might turn you towards getting spiritual light, but it is not the light itself. Page 29 It is true however that "the spirit bloweth where it listeth", and that one can get some initial impulse or touch of mental realisation of spiritual things from almost any circumstance, as Bilwamangal got it from the words of his courtesan mistress. Obviously it happens because something is ready somewhere ...
... height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain I'" a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take ill life and all world-activity into the scope of this Spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the spirit and give it a spiritual meaning... with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action; for it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that besides the ordinary forces and activities of the mind and life and body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual conscio... the independent expression of his views on the subjects, events or the persons discussed. Very often what he said was in answer to the spiritual need of the individual or of the collective atmosphere. It was like a spiritual remedy meant to produce certain spiritual results, not a philosophical or metaphysical pronouncement on questions, events or movements. The net result of some talks very often was ...
... generalize to some extent an incomplete spiritual tendency; but it does not transform the race, it cannot create a new principle of the human existence. A total spiritual direction given to the whole life and the whole nature can alone lift humanity beyond itself. Another possible conception akin to the religious solution is the guidance of society by men of spiritual attainment, the brotherhood or unity... ; it has a solidarity with it because that too is the self, the same spirit. As he moves towards spiritual freedom, he moves also towards spiritual oneness. The spiritually realized, the liberated man is preoccupied, says the Gita, with the good of all beings; Buddha discovering the way of Nirvana must turn back to open that way to those who are still under the delusion of their constructive instead... solution than the spiritual cannot but grow and become more imperative under the urgency of critical circumstance. To that call in the being there must always be some answer in the Divine Reality and in Nature. . . . But a spirituality which draws back from life to envelop it without being dominated by it does not labour under this disability. The spiritual man who can guide ...
... understanding of the individual and communal self and its life and a growing reliance on the spiritual light and the spiritual means for the final solution of its problems are the only way to a true social perfection. The free rule, that is to say, the predominant lead, control and influence of the developed spiritual man—not the half-spiritualised priest, saint or prophet or the raw religionist—is our hope... which is still infrarational as well as infra-spiritual and, even when it undergoes the influence of these precursors, responds only obscurely to their inspirations and without any clearly intelligent or awakened spiritual reception of what they impart or impose. It still turns everything into infrarational form and disfiguring tradition and lives spiritually by ill-understood ceremonial and disguising... leading ideas, aims and intuitions. Finally, if our analysis and forecast are correct, the human evolution must move through a subjective towards a suprarational or spiritual age in which he will develop progressively a greater spiritual, supra-intellectual and intuitive, perhaps in the end a more than intuitive, a gnostic consciousness. He will be able to perceive a higher divine end, a divine sanction ...
... out of a larger spiritual attitude. This was among all the undertakings of the Mother, the most painstaking, most detailed and stretched over the longest period of time. This work slowly extended much beyond the Ashram, covering spiritual seekers all over the world who sought to grow under her care. All these undertakings have shown Mother's varied aspects, those of a spiritual master, an educationist... culture of man. But her main field of work was the Ashram, where spiritual seekers lived, devoting all their energy in a conscious manner to the realization of the larger consciousness of the soul, the spirit, the supermind. But here the aim was not a personal peace and bliss, but a recreation of contemporary life as such on a spiritual basis. That meant carrying on all the normal activities of life... y "The Mother", also sung as "Ma Mira", came to India in 1914, met Sri Aurobindo and vividly felt that India was the home of Her soul and that Her work lay here with Sri Aurobindo for the spiritual regeneration of man. Since then She felt a deep identification with the country, her great past, her present basic atmosphere and her unique capability in regard to the future of man. She sought that ...
... Family Life and Spiritual Life Sunderlal, There are many kinds of truth and in the Shastra you will find all kinds, some seeming in conflict with others. Service to parents is part of family and social duty. It has nothing to do in itself with yoga. Yoga is truth not of family or society, but of spiritual life, and in spiritual life the seeking for the Divine takes ... Ashram; it would be too hard a blow if you also left them now. As you have remained with them so long, you might remain a little longer. Even while in the family, you can prepare yourself for the spiritual life, by remembering the Divine in all you do and by doing it as a sacrifice for the sake of the Divine. 17 February 1932 Sri Aurobindo ...
... Japan with its great feudal order under the spiritual Page 375 and secular headship of the Mikado and afterwards the double headship of the Mikado and the Shogun evolved one of the most vigorous and self-conscious nation-units the world has seen. China with its great learned class uniting in one the Brahmin and Kshatriya functions of spiritual and secular knowledge and executive rule and... the sacerdotal class to the military and administrative or else their equality or even their fusion under a common spiritual and secular head. In mediaeval India, on the contrary, it turned towards the social dominance of the sacerdotal class and the substitution of a common spiritual for a common political consciousness as the basis of the national feeling. No lasting secular centre was evolved, no... the close alliance between Pope and King and the theoretical admission of the former's complete spiritual authority, it was really the temporal head who decided the ecclesiastical policy and commanded the Page 376 terrors of the Inquisition. In Italy, the immediate presence of the spiritual head of Catholicism in Rome was a great moral obstacle to the development of a politically united ...
... the intellectual side, does not depart from this constant need of the Indian temperament. It works out from spiritual experience through the exact and laborious inspection and introspection of the intellect and works backward and in again from the intellectual perceptions to new gains of spiritual experience. There is indeed a tendency of fragmentation and exclusiveness; the great integral truth of the... ideas, forms, images, appealing to the imagination, emotions, ethical and aesthetic sense of the people, that had to be partly an expression of the higher spiritual truth and partly a bridge of transition between the normal religious and the spiritual mentality. The need was met by the Tantras and Puranas. The Puranas are the religious poetry peculiar to this period: for although the form probably existed... sometimes in terms proper to the physical universe has, as in the Veda, a spiritual and psychological meaning and basis. It is easy to see how in the increasing ignorance of later times the more technical parts of the Puranic symbology inevitably lent themselves to much superstition and to crude physical ideas about spiritual and psychic things. But that danger attends all attempts to bring them to ...
... says of the symbols. To the physical mind only the words and facts and acts of a man matter; to the inner mind it is the spiritual happenings in him that matter. Even the teachings of Christ and Buddha are spiritually true not as mere mental teachings but as the expression of spiritual states or happenings in them which by their life on earth they made possible (or at Page 479 any rate more... merely symbols of deep spiritual realities ] depends on what value one attaches to spiritual experience and to mystic and occult experience, that is to say, to the data of other planes of consciousness than the physical, as also on the nature of the relations between the cosmic consciousness and the individual and collective consciousness of man. From the point of view of spiritual and occult Truth, what... Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge The Avatar and the Vibhuti Letters on Yoga - I Chapter I The Meaning and Purpose of Avatarhood The Avatar or Incarnation Surely for the earth consciousness it is so [ the very fact that the Divine manifests himself is the greatest of all splendours ]. Consider ...
... perfection regards man as a divine spiritual being involved in mind, life and body; it aims therefore at a liberation and a perfection of his divine nature. It seeks to make an inner living in the perfectly developed spiritual being his constant intrinsic living and the spiritualised action of mind, life and body only its outward human expression. In order that this spiritual being may not be something vague... true object of life, to prepare himself for it and to get rid of all in him that belongs to a lower working, of all that stands in the way of his opening to the spiritual truth and its power, so as to possess by this liberation his spiritual being and turn all his natural movements into free means of its self-expression. It is by this turn that the self-conscious Yoga aware of its aim begins: there... we are still only in the obscure and yet unillumined preparatory Yoga of Nature; we are still in pursuit of only an ordinary human perfection. A spiritual desire of the Divine and of the divine perfection, of a unity with him in all our being and a spiritual perfection in all our nature, is the effective sign of this change, the precursory power of a great integral conversion of our being and living ...
... telling the children about spiritual things often had the opposite result and that those words lost all their value ..." "Spiritual things," what does he mean by spiritual things? If the teachers churn it all out like a story, of course... Besides, often that's what they do. "Spiritual things"!... They teach History OR spiritual things, they teach Science OR spiritual things. That's what is... exclusively on the subjects they teach, for you are there to look after spiritual life?" For? "For you are there to look after spiritual life." I am going to answer him, "There's no such thing as 'spiritual life'!" It's still the old idea. Still the old idea of the sage, the yogi, the sannyasi, the ... who represents spiritual life, while all others represent ordinary life—but it's not true... go. But above all, what is most important is to get rid of that division. And they all have it in their minds—each and everyone of them! The division between living a spiritual life or living the ordinary life, having a spiritual consciousness or having an ordinary consciousness—there is only ONE consciousness! In most people it's three-quarters asleep and distorted; in many it's still quite distorted ...
... soul force, that is to say in an inner moral force as the one thing necessary behind all true action, so A.G. believes in a higher spiritual force as the one thing necessary — the one thing that must be at the basis of India's freedom and greatness. It is this spiritual force which he is seeking to call down, embody and perfect in himself and others. This he has found can only be done by a long and... capable of transmitting the spiritual knowledge and power into a perfectly effective action that he will come out from his Sadhana and begin his action. At the same time he is training a number of people to be effective instruments of the same power and centres and supports of his action. When he goes out into British India he intends to create a large centre for this spiritual training where his ideal... the world in general and specially for India. This work will embrace and will mean the spiritualising of all activities none being excluded. A.G. believes that a free India returned to her great spiritual ideal but on new and larger lines is destined to be the means of uplifting the world and initiating a new age of the general evolution and it is to- wards this ideal that all his work is to be directed ...
... into the spiritual plane. It is here that one realises and is released into the vastness, stillness, silence, freedom, peace and joy of the Infinite and becomes aware of the Universal Self and the Divine. This realisation is the foundation (when it is fixed and one lives constantly above the body in the wideness of the infinite Being) of the spiritual state and the beginning of the spiritual transformation... transformation of the nature. What you have been having up to now is the psychic change; when the psychic and spiritual join together, then the transformation can be complete. For this Descent is necessary and that is the second thing you are feeling, — the Descent of the higher, spiritual, or divine consciousness and energy into the whole system down to the bottom of the spine where is the Muladhara or centre ...
... had such transformation. All spiritual men are not saints. Of course one can be both spiritual and saintly. NIRODBARAN: You make a distinction between saints and spiritual men? SRI AUROBINDO: Certainly. Saints are limited by their psychic realisation. The spiritual men remain above in the higher spiritual consciousness. The saints are Bhaktas. SATYENDRA: It is not very clear to me, Sir. SRI... 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 is not difficult to have. I told Motilal... can also take any spiritual turn and not necessarily that towards transformation. NIRODBARAN: What sort of transformation? Transformation of the psychic being itself or of the lower nature in general? SATYENDRA: Of the psychic being itself. SRI AUROBINDO: Many Yogis have had that. All saints had the psychic transformation: they have the pure Bhakta nature. But many spiritual men have not had ...
... The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 3 III The Spiritual Outlook The spiritual outlook is a global view, unlike the mental which is very often the view from a single angle or in rare cases, at the most, from a few angles. The ordinary man, even the most cultured and enlightened, has always a definite standpoint from which he surveys and judges; indeed without... behind, gets behind all opposing views and standpoints and tries to see what is the underlying truth that seeks to manifest in each, that one enters the gateway of the spiritual consciousness. Page 75 The spiritual consciousness is global, not in the sense that it is eclectic, that is to say, the sum-total of all the superficial views, but in the sense that it experiences the one... if they are contrary or contradictory to what he perceives and concludes, then evidently Page 74 they are to be discarded and thrown away into the dustbin as rubbish. The spiritual consciousness dawns precisely with the rejection of this monomania, this obsession of one-track mentality. It means, in other words, nothing less than coming out of the shell of one's egoism. To be ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Spiritual Outlook THE spiritual outlook is a global view, unlike the mental which is very often the view from a single angle or in rare cases, at the most, from a few angles. The ordinary man, even the most cultured and enlightened, has always a definite standpoint from which he surveys and judges; indeed... behind all opposing views and standpoints and tries to see what is the underlying truth that Page 97 seeks to manifest in each that one enters the gateway of the spiritual consciousness. The spiritual consciousness is global, not in the sense that it is eclectic, that is to say, the sum-total of all the superficial views, but in the sense that it experiences the one dynamic truth... support or confirm it. Otherwise, if they are contrary or contradictory to what he perceives and concludes, then evidently they are to be discarded and thrown away into the dustbin as rubbish. The spiritual consciousness dawns precisely with the rejection of this monomania, this obsession of one-track mentality. It means, in other words, nothing les than coming out of the shell of one's egoism. To be ...
... whole movement it is indispensable. If the supreme truth is a spiritual Reality, then the intellect of man needs to know what is the nature of that original Truth and the principle of its relations to the rest of existence, to ourselves and the universe. The intellect is not capable by itself of bringing us into touch with the concrete spiritual reality, but it can help by a mental formulation of the truth... in the outer world this is practically impossible. That is why those who wished to enjoy their spiritual experience without intervention from the mind used to remain in states of trance and to carefully avoid coming down to the level of action. But if one wants to transform life, if one wants the spiritual experience to have an effect on the mind, the vital and the body, on the daily activities, it... of complete silence in the mental region and when the spiritual force with its light and power descends through the mind and makes it act directly without its following its usual method of analysis, deduction, reasoning. All these faculties which are usually considered the normal activities of the mind, must be stopped, and yet the spiritual Light, Knowledge and Power must be able to transform them ...
... miserable condition. And it is only with this spiritual capacity of rising to a higher level and replacing the animal's unconsciousness by a spiritual super-consciousness that there comes into the being not only the capacity to see the goal of existence and to foresee Page 303 the culmination of the effort but also a clear-sighted trust in a higher spiritual power to which one can surrender one's... that once done, the rest of humanity will sink back from a spiritual aspiration no longer necessary for Nature's purpose and remain quiescent in its normal status. It can equally be reasoned that the human gradation must be preserved if there is really an ascent of the soul by reincarnation through the evolutionary degrees towards the spiritual summit; for otherwise the most necessary of all the intermediate... consciousness will always remain possible to the human being when the flame of the soul, the psychic kindling, becomes potent in heart and mind and the Page 302 nature is ready. The spiritual aspiration is innate in man; for he is, unlike the animal, aware of imperfection and limitation and feels that there is something to be attained beyond what he now is: this urge towards self-exceeding ...
... ed mind, but much more has he mentalised the spiritual and to mentalise the spiritual is to falsify and obscure it or at the very least to dilute its truth, to imprison its force, to limit and alter its potentialities. He has perhaps to a much less extent spiritualised his life, but much more has he vitalised the spiritual and to vitalise the spiritual is to degrade it. He has never yet spiritualised... truth, some spiritual and supramental power that can take up these imperatives also no less than the mind's imperatives and harmonise all in a grand and integral transformation. But the difficulty is again that if he is not open to the world of free intelligence, he is still less open to the deeper and vaster spiritual and supramental levels. There can indeed be great descents of spiritual light, purity... sed the body, at most he has minimised the physical by a spiritual refusal and abstinence or brought down some mental and vital powers mistaken for spiritual into his physical force and physical frame. More has not been done in the human past so far as we can discover, or if anything greater was done it was a transitory gain from the superconscient and has returned again into our superconscience. ...
... have gone even a little beyond reason. In other words, Shankara had no spiritual experience at all of the suprarational." Will any Indian agree to this conclusion? Does even Rajneesh suggest Page 206 it? Not at all. He has no censure to pass on Shankara the outstanding system-maker. Nowhere does he dub him a spiritual ignoramus, as he consistently should. But what can we expect when s... reminds us that all spiritual development is "individual-centred", and asks: "If I am determined to stay ignorant, can the Divine descend in me?" What he suggests is that Sri Aurobindo tried to ram the Divine down people's throats, whether they wanted the Divine or not. Obviously, such an absurdity could never have been perpetrated by Sri Aurobindo or, for that matter, by any spiritual guru. Again and... HIS YOGA The Reader's Letter I am enclosing extracts, translated by me into English, from a Hindi book by an author of some repute in circles appearing to be of spiritual seekers — Rajneesh. I came across it recently and found serious misconceptions about Sri Aurobindo and his work. Would you care to set right such blatant misrepresentations of what the Master was ...
... many people do it... but still... there have been some and there still are. This is what men usually take for the spiritual life. When they meet a man of this type, they say, "Oh! He is a great spiritual being." He may be a great saint, he may be a great sage but he is not a spiritual being. And yet it is already very good and very difficult to realise this. And there comes a time in the inner... perfect and most remarkable—to the true spiritual life without having realised this ideal of moral perfection for a certain period of time, however brief it may be. Many people try to take a short-cut and want to assert their inner freedom before having overcome all the weaknesses of the outer nature; they are in great danger of deluding themselves. The true spiritual life, complete freedom, is something... capable of being spontaneously all that humanity has conceived to be the highest, the most beautiful, the most perfect, the most disinterested, the most comprehensive, the best, before opening one's spiritual wings and looking at all that from above as something which still belongs to the individual self, in order to enter into true spirituality, that which has no limits, which lives in an integral way ...
... The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution The Life Divine Chapter XXVII The Gnostic Being A perfect path of the Truth has come into being for our journey to the other shore beyond the darkness. Rig Veda. ( I. 46. 11.) ... gnostic life. All its movements would be a formulation of the truth of the spirit, but also of the joy of Page 1010 the spirit,—an affirmation of spiritual existence, an affirmation of spiritual consciousness, an affirmation of spiritual delight of being. But this would not be what self-affirmation tends to be in us in spite of the underlying unity, something ego-centric, separative, opposed... be identified with the body, to separate oneself from the body-consciousness, is a recognised and necessary step whether towards spiritual liberation or towards spiritual perfection and mastery over Nature. But, this redemption once effected, the descent of the spiritual light and force can invade and take up the body also and there can be a new liberated and sovereign acceptance of material Nature ...
... ignorant mentality, the necessity to attain first and foremost, by a rejection of all these impediments to spiritual being, to a spiritual status. The other, the dynamic side of the spiritual urge has not been absent,—the aspiration to a spiritual mastery and mutation of Nature, to a spiritual perfection of the being, a divinisation of the mind, the heart and the very body: there has even been the dream... The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution The Life Divine Chapter XXIII Man and the Evolution The one Godhead secret in all beings, all-pervading, the inner Self of all, presiding over all action, witness, conscious knower and absolute... terrestrial order, still a spiritual evolution of the individual being is not an inevitable consequence of any of these admissions or even of all of them together. It is possible to take another view of the spiritual significance and the inner process of terrestrial existence. If each thing created is a form of the manifest Divine Existence, each is divine in itself by the spiritual presence within it, whatever ...
... disciplines. From a psychological viewpoint, methods of spiritual practice may be seen as approaches that use as leverage one or more of the three basic functions of the human psyche—-thinking, feeling, and willing—for the purposes of transforming ordinary consciousness into a higher or spiritual consciousness. From this point of view, spiritual disciplines may be broadly classified into three paths:... Teachings of Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo - Some Comparisons Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo Method of Spiritual Practice As stated a little earlier, Eckhart does not consider the term "practice" to be quite appropriate in spiritual life because practice implies personal effort of some sort, whereas enlightenment is not something Page 112 that can... most spiritual disciplines. However, in both Eckhart's teaching and Sri Aurobindo's yoga, there are certain processes or general methods of practice. The difference between the two teachings is that, in Eckhart's teaching, the processes are more or less only implicit, whereas in Sri Aurobindo's yoga one finds an explicit and elaborate formulation of the general methods in various spiritual disciplines ...
... humanity is slowly, almost imperceptively, moving towards a conquest of the supraphysical and spiritual truths of existence and a new social order of unity and harmony. What is indispensable, in order to accelerate this evolutionary advance and lead if victoriously to its goal, is the spread-of a synthetic, spiritual culture, which aims at reconciling Spirit and Matter, Light and Life, and Heaven and Earth... of the Integra! surrender required will, it is hoped, be found useful. A full chapter has been devoted to the chief obstacle of the spiritual life, the Ego and the desires. Another chapter deals with the soul or fhe psychic being, which is the mainspring of ail spiritual endeavour. Then I have described the two natures, the higher and the lower, and gone into a detailed analysis of the different parts... America are turning to Sri Aurobindo as the only hope and refuge in the dismal bankruptcy of the modem rationalistic, scientific and technocratic culture, and discovering in his teachings the synthetic spiritual vision, the all-reconciling comprehensive outlook, the happy fusion of the ideals of the East and the West, and, above all, the authentic, divine dynamism, capable of transforming human nature and ...
... broadened, made spiritually supple, can receive without being blinded or dazzled by a Truth beyond it. The poetic intelligence is not at all part of that clarified spiritual seeing and thinking — it is only a high activity of the mind and its vision moving on the wings of imagination, but still akin to the intellect proper, though exalted above it. The Higher Mind is a spiritual plane,—this does... that he works." Page 1 "I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual consciousness where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although highly spiritual in its essential substance; and its instrumentation is through an elevated thought-power... largeness of rhythm and sweep of language in Milton which has a certain distant kinship to the manner natural to a higher supra-intellectual vision, and something from the substance of the planes of spiritual seeing can come into this poetry whose medium is the poetic intelligence and uplift it. "Milton is a classical poet and most classical poetry is fundamentally a poetry of the pure poetic ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 THE FOURTH SUKTA The gradual progression of the spiritual discipline takes place by virtue of the bliss-power in the pure mind. It is with that power that a spiritual seeker overcomes all the obstacles and the downward pull of ignorance symbolised by Vritra and creates beautiful forms full of knowledge in the... that help the aspirant - the vigour behind his spiritual endeavour and power of action - will be able to make us the possessors of the highest good and perfect bliss. In the three successive riks of the third group the forces by which all obstacles in our journey are removed have been described. Vritra is only a name for the obstacles in one's spiritual practice. Vritra means the coverer (derived from... That is why we often hear an aspirant of the Vedas calling his friends to assemble in spiritual practice and bring down the divine force with a collective effort. The collective life flourished in those days with the help of companions and helpers in sadhana. The gods too were companions and helpers in the spiritual endeavour. Hence they were addressed as friends. Page 107 ...
... of domestic life and is now at the end of it. He thinks the time has now come to him to take to spiritual life and enter into vanaprastha. He had married and had two wives. So one day he called the first wife, Katyayani, and said to her: "Katyayani, I am now leaving this life and entering the spiritual life. You have given me comfort and happiness. I am thankful to you for that. Whatever I have,... free inner individual, choosing its destiny but 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... Yajnavalkya when he had become a full-fledged rishi, a guru with an Ashram and disciples. Today I will tell you something of the earlier Yajnavalkya, the beginning of his rishihood, the start of his spiritual life. You know the structure of the old Indian society, it consisted of four castes, varnas, and four stages, asramas. I shall speak of the asramas now. Each individual person had to follow ...
... and own highest capacity, and the spiritual Page 185 faculties of hearing and seeing must climb at last to the expression of things spiritual and eternal and their power and working in temporal things and must find in that interpretation their own richest account, largest and most satisfied action, purest acme of native capacity. An ideal and spiritual poetry revealing the spirit in itself... to the explicitly spiritual or even the suggestively spiritual and can take up the substance and style proper to any plane - the Graeco-Roman Intelligence's, the Elizabethan Life-force's, the many-dimensioned modern mind's - and, uplifting them, charge them with unfathomable value and vibration so as to put them well-nigh on a par with what that speech carries. Just as the spiritual theme in itself does... Classical and Romantic 11 A resume and a look forward - the nature of poetry and its spiritual consummation -a defence of mysticism - the paramount significance of Romanticism's poetry of the Spirit - spiritual poetry and two styles: Classical and Romantic In rounding off our survey we may cite a passage by Havelock Ellis on three famous ...
... the close bondage of the active nature and back to spiritual freedom is to cast away entirely all that belongs to the dynamics of the ignorance and to convert the soul into a pure spiritual existence. That is what is called becoming Brahman, brahma-bhūya . It is to put off the lower mental, vital, physical existence and to put on the pure spiritual being. This can best be done by the intelligence and... a concentrated description of the needed self-discipline, the Sadhana, and of that greater spiritual consciousness which is to be the result of all its effort and askesis; it sweeps out, as it were, yet farther, breaks down every limit and rule, canon and formula and opens into a wide and illimitable spiritual truth with an infinite potentiality of significance. And that is a sign of the profundity... madbhāva . And to get to that greatest spiritual perfection we have indeed to be immobile in the self, silent in all our members, but also to act in the power, Shakti, Prakriti, the true and high force of the Spirit. And if we ask how a simultaneity of what seem to be two opposites is possible, the answer is that that is the very nature of a complete spiritual being; always it has this double poise ...
... the guidance is determined by spiritual reasons which are of a flexible character and look only at what in each case are the spiritual conditions, benefits, possibilities. There is no other consideration, no rule. Music, painting, poetry and many other activities which are of the mind and vital can be used as part of spiritual development or of the work and for a spiritual purpose—"it depends on the spirit... expression,—provided it is the right expression of the right thing,—or suppose that silence and true expression are contradictory? The truest expression comes out of an absolute inner silence. The spiritual silence is not a mere emptiness; nor is it indispensable to abstain from all activity in order to find it. 26 April 1931 For the moment I am answering only to your question about the music.... dangerous when you emphasise minor facts and set aside or belittle the meaning of the main ones. In this case the main facts are (1) that the Mother has loved music all her life and found it a key to spiritual experience, (2) that she has given all encouragement to your music in special and to the music of others also. She has also made clear the relation of Art and Beauty with Yoga. It is therefore rather ...
... own spiritual temper and genius, and though the thought of Nietzsche, of Bergson and of James has recently touched more vitally just a few minds here and there, their drift is much too externally pragmatic and vitalistic to be genuinely assimilable by the Indian spirit. But, principally, a real Indian philosophy can only be evolved out of spiritual experience and as the fruit of the spiritual seeking... practically dynamic Page 24 spiritual mentality. The Arya Samaj in the Punjab founded itself on a fresh interpretation of the truth of the Veda and an attempt to apply old Vedic principles of life to modern conditions. The movement associated with the great names of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda has been a very wide synthesis of past religious motives and spiritual experience topped by a reaffirmation... they may constitute only the preparatory self-finding of the Indian spiritual mind recovering its past and turning towards its future. India is the meeting-place of the religions and among these Hinduism alone is by itself a vast and complex thing, not so much a religion as a great diversified and yet subtly unified mass of spiritual thought, realisation and aspiration. What will finally come out of ...
... they who are worldly must remain worldly, they have no business, no right to meddle with spirituality, and they who are spiritual should, on the other hand, remain strictly spiritual, should have nothing to do with worldliness. Because of this complete divorce between the spiritual and the worldly, the world remains worldly even today, continues to be the empire of unspirituality and obscurity, of... A New Society PART I THE WORLD WAR The World War ITS INNER BEARINGS This is a war to which even spiritual seekers can hardly remain indifferent with impunity. There are spiritual paths, however, that ask to render unto God what is God's and unto Satan what belongs to Satan; in other words, spirituality is kept apart from what is called... embodiment of the Spirit. Not that spiritual men have not served and worked for the welfare of the world; but their work could not be wholly effective, it was mixed, maimed, temporary in effect. This could not be otherwise, for their activity proceeded from inferior and feebler sources of inspiration and consciousness other than those that are purely spiritual. Firstly, little more was possible for ...
... divinisation of our total existence including the outermost parts of Prakriti. To be more specific, viewed from the Page 86 perspective of our spiritual goal — the goal of embodying and manifesting the highest spiritual consciousness here upon earth itself — the trance-solution for the actual imperfections of our world-existence suffers, among others, from the following deficiencies:... complete spiritualisation of the totality of our existence. (v)The Yogic trance helps us to fix the spiritual experiences in our inner consciousness alone; it cannot automatically lead to the spiritualisation of the outer waking consciousness. So for us who aim at a total spiritual And supramental change, even, and in particular, of the outer parts of our Nature, Samadhi as an instrumentation... ours) Page 89 the Superconscient and not to bring back its dynamic riches to the waking outer existence with a view to effectuate a spiritual transformation there. Hence, as soon as the Yogin goes above the level of the spiritual mind, he does not seek to retain any continuity of awareness there; instead, he passes into the "mystic sleep" of Samadhi, a state of superconsciousness ...
... peculiar way of approaching the truth and the limits even of the spiritual experience which sets out from the approach through the intellect, to see that it need not be the whole integrality of the highest and widest spiritual experience. Spiritual intuition is always a more luminous guide than the discriminating reason, and spiritual intuition addresses itself to us not only through the reason, but... intuitions); there the ten hundred rays of light 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... therefore in order to enter into relations with it we are impelled to set up these human fictions and these personal symbols so as to make it nearer to us. But we have to judge by spiritual experience, and in a total spiritual experience we shall find that these things are not fictions and symbols, but truths of divine being in their essence, however imperfect may have been our representations of them ...
... English with mantric potency. To talk of the literary intellectual and the spiritual traditions which gave Indian nationhood a character is also consequently to acknowledge the significance of the English language in our scheme of things. As a scholar of English I am naturally enthusiastic about this. To talk of spiritual traditions in our country in relation to our conception of nationhood generates... of has this Yeatsian radical innocence. It has, besides, the following features: (a) It believes in the continuity of a society and in its traditions, particularly spiritual traditions. (b) Its focus on spiritual matters stems from its acceptance of a Transcendental Reality which, nevertheless, pervades and permeates life and the world. (c) It accepts the fundamental proposition... culture, conservative intellectual-ism, the spiritual traditions of our land and our conception of Page 321 the Indian nation. I shall therefore embark on this personal narrative by quickly surveying some important landmarks in the nineteenth century and twentieth century to show how modernity in India was implicated in our spiritual traditions. I am, of course, referring to the ...
... its contained phenomena by the power of his spiritual consciousness, yogamāyā . And it is only through union with him in our spiritual consciousness that we can arrive at our real relations with his being. Metaphysically stated, this is the intention of these verses of the Gita: but they rest founded not upon any intellectual speculation, but on spiritual experience; they synthetise because they... spatial idea of indwelling come in, since a supracosmic absolute being is not affected by the concepts of time and space which are created here by the Lord's Yogamaya. There a spiritual, not a spatial or temporal coexistence, a spiritual identity and coincidence must be the foundation. But on the other hand in the cosmic manifestation there is an extension of universe in space and time by the supreme unmanifest... bears them in his all-pervading self existence. And, even, through this omnipresent self the supreme Self too, the Paramatman, can be said to bear the universe; he is its invisible spiritual foundation and the hidden spiritual cause of the becoming of all existences. He bears the universe as the secret spirit in us bears our thoughts, works, movements. He seems to pervade and to contain mind, life and ...
... necessity for spiritual perfection is a perfect equality. Perfection in the sense in which we use it in Yoga, means a growth out of a lower undivine into a higher divine nature. In terms of knowledge it is a putting on the being of the higher self and a casting away of the darker broken lower self or a transforming of our imperfect state into the rounded luminous fullness of our real and spiritual personality... we can only get a limited perfection. But the ideal of Yoga takes up this aim of Swarajya and Samrajya and puts it on the larger spiritual basis. There it gets its full power, opens to the diviner degrees of the spirit; for it is by oneness with the Infinite, by a spiritual power acting upon finite things, that some highest integral perfection of our being and nature finds its own native foundation.... The function of the Prana is enjoyment, but the real enjoyment of existence is an inward spiritual Ananda, not partial and troubled like that of our vital, emotional or mental pleasure, degraded as they are now by the predominance of the physical mind, but universal, profound, a massed concentration of spiritual bliss possessed in a calm ecstasy of self and all existence. Possession is its function ...
... the Eternal who is Self of the self and the Master of all Nature and all action, and not only the Master, but the origin and the spiritual support and scene of these workings of his own energy in Cosmos, and not only the origin and spiritual container, but the spiritual inhabitant in all forces, in all things and in all beings, and not only the inhabitant but, by the developments of this eternal energy... higher divine and spiritual nature of its own true being in which this soul is for ever a conscious portion of the Eternal and Divine, blissful, free, superior to its mask of becoming, immortal, imperishable, a power of the Godhead. To rise by this higher nature to the Eternal through divine knowledge, love and works founded on a spiritual universality is the key of the complete spiritual liberation. This... to the Highest, how does this way practically affect the great object of spiritual life, the rising from the lower into the higher nature, from mortal into immortal being? All life, all works are a transaction between the soul and Nature. What is the original character of that transaction? what does it become at its spiritual culminating point? to what perfection does it lead the soul that gets free ...
... made spiritually supple, can receive without being blinded or dazzled by a Truth beyond it." 27 Illumined Mind "... a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth... Aurobindo's words. Higher Mind "I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual consciousness where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although highly spiritual in its essential substance; and its instrumentation is through an elevated thought-power... higher levels of consciousness above the ordinary mind from which the higher consciousness comes down into the lower planes of the being. "The role of the superconscient has been to evolve slowly the spiritual man out of the mental half-animal." 26 The superconscient includes the higher planes of mind—Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and Overmind—as well as what is beyond mind, namely, Supermind ...
... this sense that I said Dilip had not the mystic mind and vision. One can go far in the spiritual way, have plenty of spiritual visions and dreams even without having this mystic mind and way of seeing things. So too one may write poetry from different planes or sources of inspiration and expressing spiritual feelings, knowledge, experience and yet use the poetic intelligence as the thought medium... medium which gives them shape in speech; such poems are not of the mystic type. One may be mystic in this sense without being spiritual—one may also be spiritual without being mystic; or one may be both spiritual and mystic in one. Poems ditto. "I had not in view the Dark Well poems when I wrote about Harin. I was thinking of his ordinary way of writing. If I remember right , the Dark Well... is still intellectual and not concrete in its approach to these things, although his imagination has learned to make itself their transcribing medium. That is the difficulty, the crux of imaged spiritual poetry; it needs not only the fit writer but the fit audience—and that has yet to be made. "Dilip wrote to me in recent times expressing great admiration for Arjava's poems and wanting to ...
... 36 A Spiritual Adventure "I regard the spiritual history of India" wrote Sri Aurobindo in a letter (18 August 1935), "as a constant development of a divine purpose, not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated. Even the Upanishad and the Gita were not final though everything may be there in seed. In this development the recent spiritual history of India... was "putting forward a thing to be achieved that has not yet been achieved, not yet clearly visualised, even though it is one natural but still secret outcome of all the past spiritual endeavour." He was proposing a spiritual evolutionary process—aeons compressed into decades. Sri Aurobindo did not expect much from the materialist: "From materialism least of all, however philanthropic or patriotic... (26 March 1910), Sri Aurobindo had given three names—Rama-krishna Paramahansa, Swami Vivekananda, and Bijoy Goswami —as examples. They had then indicated to him "the lines from which the future spiritual development had most directly to proceed, not staying but passing on." Among them, as we had occasion to see, it was in the life of Ramakrishna Paramahansa 1 that the message of Hinduism was ...
... division between "ordinary life and "spiritual" life is an outdated antiquity. All human beings have it in their minds, the division between leading a spiritual life and leading an ordinary life, having a spiritual consciousness and an ordinary consciousness - it is not true, there is only one consciousness. If an opposition is still needed, we can have the opposition between truth and falsehood. For in... acts. The solution would be, first to recognize that the real truth of religion is in the spiritual experiences of which it is an outer formulation. To transcend therefore the outer form, and insist on the spiritual experience and in addition to recognize that there can be infinite and valid varieties of spiritual experiences is the important step in the solution. It is not by insisting on religion that... profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done if all these God-visions could embrace and cast themselves into each other; but intellectual dogma and cult-egoism stand in the way. All religions have saved a number of souls, but none yet has been able to spiritualise mankind. For that there is needed not cult and creed, but a sustained and all comprehending effort at spiritual sel ...
... there any difference between the "spiritual" and the "psychic"? Are they two different planes? This subject has given rise to great confusion in human thought. I believe philosophical, yogic and other systems use the word "spiritual" in a very vague and loose way. Whatever is not physical is spiritual! In comparison with the physical world all other worlds are spiritual! All thought, all effort which... which does not tend towards the material life is a spiritual effort. Every tendency which is not strictly human and egoistic is a spiritual tendency. This is a word used to season every dish. I just read this in Illustration: "The spiritual activity par excellence is reading and writing. The centre of spiritual life is the National Library." It is a cheap spirituality! Page 226 Mother... Mother first read the passage on the difference between the "psychic" and the "spiritual", then continued: "So long as you have to draw your understanding from forms of words, you are likely to fall into much confusion about the true sense; but if in a silence of your mind you can rise into the world from which ideas descend to take form, at once the real understanding comes.... "But here in ...
... This is the spiritual health. The first condition is to have a sincere wish to be guided by the soul. Not to have pretensions, not to show what one is not, no self-deception, no hypocrisy; and an effort to overcome one's meanness and small limits are no doubt the essential conditions. To repeat the Divine's Name outside and be full of crookedness inside will destroy the spiritual health. ... What I Have Learnt From The Mother Spiritual Health What is health? The harmonious function of all the organs of the body is the explanation of a good health. A human personality consists of mind, vital and body with a soul or psychic being behind. Generally, the mind is full of fanciful ideas and incoherent thoughts. The vital has its own impulses. The... and body must be organized around the psychic to be guided and governed by the Presence, this is the goal we have set before us. The more the soul is the master of the being, the more one is spiritually healthy. (This note was prepared when Dada discussed on the subject on 14th August, 2001) Page 18 ...
... older interpretation laid stress upon a spiritual and religious, which meant therefore in the end an other-worldly discipline; the newer interpretation seeks to dynamise the more or less quietistic spirituality which held the ground in India of later ages, to set a premium upon action, upon duty that is to be done in our workaday life, though with a spiritual intent and motive. This neo-spirituality... immediate incentive to our spiritual revival and revaluation and its impress has not been thoroughly obliterated even in the best of our modern exponents. The bias of the vital urge and of the moral imperative is apparent enough in the modernist conception of a dynamic spirituality. Fundamentally the dynamism is made to reside in the élan of the ethical man, – the spiritual element, as a consciousness... groups of which one may be termed the orthodox school and the other the modem school. The orthodox school as represented, for example, by Shankara or Sridhara, viewed the Gita in the light of the spiritual discipline more or less current in those ages, when the purpose of life was held out to be emancipation from life, whether through desireless work or knowledge or devotion or even a combination ...
... 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... heart words intimate, And all Thy formless glory turn to love And mould Thy love into a human face. 2 " "There is...the psychic source of inspiration which can give a beautiful spiritual poetry. The psychic has two aspects—there is the soul principle itself which contains all soul possibilities and there is the psychic personality which represents whatever soul-power is developed ...
... grihastha; if the call to a spiritual life comes, whether one keeps to them or not depends partly upon the way of Yoga one follows, partly on one's own spiritual necessity. There are many who pursue inwardly the spiritual life and keep the family duties, not as social duties but as a field for the practice of karmayoga, others abandon everything to follow the spiritual call alone and they are justified... And what is the reason for the popular opposition to materialism? Materialism is of course incompatible with the spiritual aim. The spiritual control of matter is a different thing, it has nothing to do with materialism. I would like to know if in the higher spiritual or Divine Life the sexual or vital play is to be altogether banned. If you expect to indulge it in the Divine Life, you... The spiritual consciousness and spiritual life are exceedingly difficult to attain; it needs a deep and strong call and the turning of all the energies towards the one object to arrive at any kind of full success (siddhi). Even those who have cut off all other ties, find it difficult not to live in a double consciousness, one inward and turned towards the spiritual change and the other which is still ...
... won't be worth-while but if someone offers it we can accept. SATYENDRA: Among Parsis there are no spiritual men. But the Parsis seem to be quite catholic: wherever they find anybody spiritual, they accept him, whether he is ajnani or a Bhakta. It is strange they themselves have nobody markedly spiritual. PURANI: Haven't they got Meher Baba? SATYENDRA: Oh yes, one example. SRI AUROBINDO: But... be based on spiritual experience. I have dealt with that in The Life Divine . SATYENDRA: The very fact that we have an Ashram means that we have to keep aloof from the world for a time. Else we could as well establish ourselves in the world. SRI AUROBINDO ( smiling ): "Ashram" is only a conventional term. As I said, we can't start a new creation except on the basis of spiritual experience. The... But this one example is considered the Saviour of the world! Zoroastrians claim to have had seers and magi among them. They ought to have some spiritual figures. NIRODBARAN: Have you read of J. L. Banerji's death during the Congress election? SRI AUROBINDO: I thought he had been long dead and I took this Banerji for a different person. Or has he risen from the dead to fight the election? At one ...
... order. The peoples of Europe are nations very sharply divided from each other in their collective personality, and their spiritual unity in the Christian religion or even their cultural unity in a common European civilisation, never so real and complete as the ancient spiritual and cultural unity of India, was also not the very centre of their life, not its basis or firm ground of existence, not its... a very early time the spiritual and cultural unity was made complete and became the very stuff of the life of all this great surge of humanity between the Himalayas and the two seas. The peoples of ancient India were never so much distinct nations sharply divided from each other by a separate political Page 428 and economic life as sub-peoples of a great spiritual and cultural nation itself... whole basis of the Indian mind is its spiritual and inward turn, its propensity to seek the things of the spirit and the inner being first and foremost and to look at all else as secondary, dependent, to be handled and determined in the light of the higher knowledge and as an expression, a preliminary, field or aid or at least a pendent to the deeper spiritual aim,—a tendency therefore to create whatever ...
... height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his yoga is not only to realize the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world-activity into the scope of this Spiritual Consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In... with a spiritual Force and silent spiritual action; for it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that, besides the ordinary forces and activities of the mind and life and body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic Power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness... the independent expression of his views on the subjects, events or the persons discussed. Very often what he said was in answer to the spiritual need of the individual or of the collective atmosphere. It was like a spiritual remedy meant to produce certain spiritual results, not a philosophical or metaphysical pronouncement on questions, events or movements. The net result of some talks very often was ...
... but in a spiritual culture they become too in their aim a revelation of greater things concealed in man and Nature and of the deepest spiritual and universal beauty. Politics, society, economy are in the first form of human life simply an arrangement by which men collectively can live, produce, satisfy their desires, enjoy, progress in bodily, vital and mental efficiency; but the spiritual aim makes... India into a new body of energy, a new form of its innate and ancient spirit, prajñā purāṇī , must insist much more finally and integrally than it has as yet done on its spiritual turn, on the greater and greater action of the spiritual motive in every sphere of our living. But here we are still liable to be met by the remnants of a misunderstanding or a refusal to understand,—it is something of both... than of old. Spirituality is not necessarily exclusive; it can be and in its fullness must be all-inclusive. But still there is a great difference between the spiritual and the purely material and mental view of existence. The spiritual view holds that the mind, life, body are man's means and not his aims and even that they are not his last and highest means; it sees them as his outer instrumental ...
... No firm metaphysical building, it may be concluded, can be erected upon these shifting quick- sands. But the theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with the scientific theory of form-evolution and physical life-evolution. According to the theory of spiritual evolution, there are three stages in the process of becoming. An involution of the spirit in the inconscience is the beginning... self-becoming by self-exceeding? A spiritual evolution, it is affirmed, an evolution of consciousness in Matter, in a constant developing self- formulation till the form, even the physical body, can reveal the highest supramental knowledge and power and harmony is the key-note, the central significant motive of terrestrial existence. The theory of spiritual evolution may accept the scientific... evolution of Mind in living Matter, and in this last stage an animal evolution followed by a human evolution. In particular, the essential point in the theory of spiritual evolution is the fact of the evolution of consciousness, a progression of spiritual manifestation in material existence. But even if all this is accepted, it may still be doubted that Man would evolve so unimaginably as to develop into ...
... yourself to any of these things. I regard the spiritual history of mankind and especially of India as a constant development of a divine purpose, not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated. Even the Upanishads and the Gita were not final though everything may be there in seed. In this development the recent spiritual history of India is a very important stage and... statement drives at. Preference for a different approach to the Truth or the desire of inner spiritual self-expression are not the motives of the recommendation of change to which objection is made by the Mahatma here; the object proposed is an enhancement of social status and consideration which is no more a spiritual motive than conversion for the sake of money or marriage. If a man has no religion in himself... and the names I mentioned [ Ramakrishna and Vivekananda ] had a special prominence in my thought at the time—they seemed to me to indicate the lines from which the future spiritual development had most directly to proceed, not staying but passing on. I do not know that I would put my meaning exactly in the language you suggest. I may say that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion new or ...
... used no spiritual method in their education; it was solely by material means and an enlightened Page 87 use of human will that they had achieved this result. If they had added to this a spiritual knowledge and power, they could have achieved an almost miraculous result.... Because of the false ideas prevalent in the world, we don't usually see the two things together, spiritual mastery... able antagonism between material and spiritual life. And it is something so deep-rooted in human consciousness that it is very difficult to eradicate it, even in those who think they have understood Sri Aurobindo's teaching! And many people said, when for altogether different reasons I began to hold meditations again, "Ah! At last! We are returning to spiritual life...." This was indeed what prevented... have finished reading it, I shall be able to tell you why we have started the meditations again—but certainly not "to return to spiritual life"! And it is so deep-rooted. Oh! Even those who outwardly Page 88 profess to understand—when they think of the spiritual life, they immediately think of meditation. There we are. Now, we shall have one all the same, but for another reason! ( ...
... might proceed, the main principles, the broad ways of spiritual progress. I have not written or prepared anything new of the kind. All intimate guidance must necessarily in so inner and delicate a thing as the spiritual life [ ] 3 be personal, suited to the recipient and the instruction given can only be effective if it is the channel for a spiritual contact and a guiding or helpful influence. In that... Letters of Historical Interest Letters of Historical Interest Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To Mr. and Mrs. Sharman [c. January 1926] Dear Mr and Mṛṣ Sharman, I received a little while ago your Christmas card and greetings and it reminded me of a letter written long ago which I had hoped personally... plane. I take the opportunity of your card to do what I then failed to do, even after so long a lapse of time. I understand from your letter that there are around you a number of seekers after the spiritual life who have received some help from my works. I should be glad to hear more of this group and of what they and you are now doing. Perhaps it would now be possible to open a regular correspondence; ...
... supraphysical is the parent of the physical, the invisible the shaper of the visible, the subtle at once the womb and core of the gross. It went beyond the mere supraphysical to the spiritual, and beyond even the spiritual to the Ineffable and Inconceivable, in its giant hunger for the ultimate truth of existence. This scrupulous, super-scientific exploration of the hidden, boundless expanses of the... It is true that some forms of spiritual culture were prevalent in the West in the times of Pythagoras and Plato, and that Plotinus and some of the Gnostics and Stoics were regular Yogis, as also some of the Neo-Platonists and Essences. Among the mediaeval mystics of Europe and the Manicheans of Persia, there was a systematic culture of some forms of spiritual self-discipline. But nowhere, as... the spiritual and the physical being".¹ It houses powers and energies which, once properly quickened and marshalled, can achieve the release of the human mind' and the soul from the cramping hold of Matter. The very body, which is the cause of man's bondage to ignorance and suffering and all sorts of obscuration, can be made, if rightly tackled and trained, a powerful means of spiritual progress ...
... Pondicherry. Six years later, when the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was founded, Sri Aurobindo entrusted its material and spiritual charge to her, for he considered her not a disciple but his spiritual equal and collaborator. Under her guidance the Ashram grew into a large, many-faceted spiritual community. She also established a school, the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, in 1952, and an i... Mother The Mother was born Mirra Alfassa on February 21, 1878, in Paris. A student at the Academie Julian, she became an accomplished artist. Gifted from an early age with a capacity for spiritual and occult experience, she went to Tlemcen, Algeria, in 1906 and 1907 to study occultism with the adept Max Theon and his wife. Between 1911 and 1913 she gave a number of talks to various groups ...
... She meditated with him and they were able inwardly to meet each other with a brief but living 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 Page 38 him a remarkable spiritual realisation and a considerable insight on the inner plane. It was the realisation of the Gita... interested myself and the Mother greatly; it was so evidently the same man, even if the external facts were not there to identify the husband of Krishnaprem's Guru with the spiritual-worldly Chakrabarti of Paris. Not a complete spiritual hero, no doubt, but a remarkable sadhak all the same. 1 April 1932 ... life and surroundings he had as the milieu given him and not in the least wishing to change it. It was his theory that this was the teaching of the Gita—to feel Krishna within, to have the inner spiritual life and realisation,—the rest was the Lila and could be left as it was unless or until the Divine himself in the automatic movement of his play chose to change it. This explains the double character ...
... revelation that he brings to us which undoubtedly is the most valuable aspect of his work. A spiritual creation must be seen in the spiritual context and not in any secular or exotic or analytical mode. Which does not imply that these cannot be present there, but they occupy a secondary position. Should that spiritual context be not our approach in studying works like Jnaneshwari ? Linguistic considerations... metaphysics or spiritual philosophy or a tract of yogic practices though all these abound in it in their functional richnesses. After all it has a far greater appeal to our inner being than his deeply philosophical Amritanubhava . If we were to see Jnaneshwari merely as a literary creation we would miss much of its aesthetic delight which flows from its spiritual inspiration and spiritual word. We... be enduring. In it all the diverse as well as profound demands of the seekers and learners of spiritual lore are fulfilled. In whatsoever a way one may look at it, whatever is the call, it has the merit of answering it. The sky has no bounds and unplumbable are the depths of the sea; so are the spiritual philosophy and poetry in this creation of Jnaneshwar, bottomless and without limit, agadha-ananta ...
... if it is rightly done, it does not prevent the approach to the Divine or the access to spiritual knowledge and the spiritual life. Page 249 There is of course also the ascetic ideal which is necessary for many and has its place in the spiritual order. I would myself say that no man can be spiritually complete if he cannot live ascetically or follow a life as bare as the barest anchorite's... living as indispensable to spiritual perfection or as identical with it. There is the way of spiritual self-mastery and the way of spiritual self-giving and surrender to the Divine, abandoning ego and desire even in the midst of action or of any kind of work or all kinds of work demanded from us by the Divine. If it were not so, there would not have been great spiritual men like Janaka or Vidura in... regarded in ancient spiritual India. If I did, I would not be able to receive money Page 248 from X or from those of our disciples who in Bombay trade with East Africa; nor could we then encourage them to go on with their work but would have to tell them to throw it up and attend to their spiritual progress alone. How are we to reconcile X 's seeking after spiritual light and his mill ...
... oneness, that putting on of the divine nature, sādharmya , it declares to be the very essence of spiritual freedom and the whole significance of immortality. This supreme importance assigned to sādharmya is a capital point in the teaching of the Gita. To be immortal was never held in the ancient spiritual teaching to consist merely in a personal survival of the death of the body: all beings are immortal... eternal being of the Purushottama. 1 But to arrive here at this greater spiritual immortality the embodied soul must cease to live according to the law of the lower nature; it must Page 422 put on the law of the Divine's supreme way of existence which is in fact the real law of its own eternal essence. In the spiritual evolution of its becoming, no less than in its secret original being,... conditions, to identify itself with a life, mind and body that are oblivious of their inner spiritual reality and of the innate Godhead. To get back to self-knowledge and to the knowledge of the real as distinct from the apparent relations of the soul with Nature, to know God and ourselves and the world with a spiritual and no longer with a physical or externalised experience, through the deepest truth of ...
... you, both the spiritual and the outward, has not been a connection casually formed or to be casually terminated, but is deep-rooted, at least on my side, and cannot change. Even if you left me for good, I could not possibly disinterest myself in you or abandon my hopes for your life and spiritual future. I do not accept your renunciation of Yoga and the effort towards the spiritual life and I still... is of less spiritual importance and is not essential, but it has still a considerable value. It does not seem to me that there can be any reasonable doubt that Krishna the man was not a legend or a poetic invention but actually existed upon earth and played a part in the Indian past. Two facts emerge clearly, that he was regarded as an important spiritual figure, one whose spiritual illumination... of the spirit. The spiritual light no doubt comes to a certain extent and to a few to a considerable extent in the earlier stages, though that is not the case with all – for some have to wait till they can clear out the obstructing stuff in the mind, vital and physical consciousness, and until then they get only a touch now and then. But even at the best, this earlier spiritual light is never complete ...
... and further developed. These methods, in due course, came to be known as Yogic methods, and the Veda can rightly be looked upon as the foundation of Yoga. However, as it often happens, spiritual knowledge and spiritual methods often get clouded and deteriorated into external ritualism, and this seems to have happened in regard to the Vedic knowledge, as can be seen from the Brahmana literature. Normally... emblem of free India. Let us first note the fact that the loftiest spiritual experiences are found recorded in the Vedic Samhitas, and it can be said that the spirituality of the Veda and the Upanishads was already synthetic and integral. An exclusive spirituality emphasises and remains confined only to one state of spiritual consciousness, — such as that of eternal Silence or of eternal Joy, or... the Veda and in the Upanishads like the Isha, or Kena or Katha or Taittiriya. The fullness of spiritual life is perceived in the great pronouncement of the Vedic and the Upanishadic Rishis: तेन त्यक्तेन भुञ्जीथाः (by having renounced thou shouldst enjoy) is one of the formulas of the integral spiritual life; and there are several others in the Ishopanishad itself, such as those relating to the Reality ...
... The acquisition of the highest spiritual consciousness, at least statically if not dynamically, is the goal of all spiritual endeavour. But, as we have noted before, the spiritual reaches of consciousness lie far behind and above our normal waking mentality. Now Page 77 the question is: is it possible to possess the spiritual consciousness while still remaining embedded... separation, a dissociation of consciousness and to be spiritual within or above while the outer consciousness and its ignorant movements are indifferently watched and felt to be something intrinsically foreign and disparate. This is the solution of the 'Witness Consciousness'. (ii)To be satisfied with the indirect glories of the spiritual consciousness as reflected and refracted in the... has been termed 'spiritual mental realisation'. (iii)To still and withdraw from the mental consciousness and retire to the supra-mental reaches. This is what can be called the 'trance-solution.' (iv)To transform the nature of the normal waking consciousness, to divinise it as we would say, by bringing down there the fullest wealth and splendour of the spiritual heights, so that ...
... they who are worldly must remain worldly, they have no business, no right to meddle with spirituality, and they who are spiritual should, on the other hand, remain strictly spiritual, should have nothing to do with worldliness. Because of this complete divorce between the spiritual and the worldly, the world remains worldly even today, continues to be the empire of un spirituality and obscurity, ... Reminiscences I THE WORLD WAR (1939-1945)* ITS INNER BEARINGS This is a war to which even spiritual seekers can hardly remain indifferent with impunity. There are spiritual paths, however, that ask to render unto God what is God's and unto Satan what belongs to Satan; in other words, spirituality is kept apart from what is called... embodiment of the Spirit. Not that spiritual men have not served and worked for the welfare of the world; but their work could not be wholly effective, it was mixed, maimed, temporary in effect. This could not be otherwise, for their activity proceeded from inferior and feebler sources of inspiration and consciousness other than those that are purely spiritual. Firstly, little more was possible ...
... they who are worldly must remain worldly, they have no business, no right to meddle with spirituality, and they who are spiritual should, on the other hand, remain strictly spiritual, should have nothing to do with worldliness. Because of this complete divorce between the spiritual and the worldly, the world remains worldly even today, continues to be the empire of unspirituality and obscurity, of suffering... Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The World War ITS INNER BEARINGS THIS is a war to which even spiritual seekers can hardly remain indifferent with impunity. There are spiritual paths, however, that ask to render unto God what is God's and unto Satan what belongs to Satan; in other words, spirituality is kept apart from what is called... the Spirit. Not that spiritual men have not served and worked for the welfare of the world; but their work could not be wholly effective, it was mixed, maimed, temporary in effect. This could not be otherwise, for their activity proceeded from inferior and feebler sources of inspiration and consciousness other than those that are purely spiritual. Firstly, little more was possible for ...
... Bhakta-nature. But all spiritual men are not saints, of course, both can go together, sometimes. Disciple : Is there a distinction between saints and spiritual persons? Sri Aurobindo : Of course, there is; saints are limited by their psychic nature, but spiritual men are not. The saint, generally, proceeds from and lives in the heart-centre. The spiritual man might live in other... belong to Dayal Bag. Disciple : But to start such a Sangha one must have spiritual realization and may take a long time to start. Sri Aurobindo : Not necessarily. Ordinarily if one is to wait for spiritual realization it will take time. But all may not have the highest or supramental realization. Spiritual experience is enough for the people and that is not difficult to have. I told M... the spiritual consciousness. Disciple : It is not quite clear to me – the distinction. Sri Aurobindo : The saints live in the psychic being, that is, in the Purusha in the heart but the spiritual man might live above the head. I never felt like a saint myself – though Maurice Magre calls me ‘a philosopher and a saint.’ Krishna, for instance, was not a saint. A spiritual man may ...
... will never be in a state of mind to appreciate any truly spiritual figure — spiritual as ancient India conceived that term and not as a part of modern India and most of the West Page 86 wash it down to the level of high metaphysics or disciplined ethics. Neither Radhakrishnan nor Gandhi can be called, in the real sense, spiritual. Now to your criticisms of my reply. Apart from what... present. Light in the spiritual sense is not a mere metaphor, any more than spiritual consciousness or bliss is metaphorical. And if a human body is completely transformed, as wanted in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, one of the constant attributes of the transformed body will be a subtle luminousness visible even Page 88 to the sceptic, the agnostic and the atheist. Spiritual phenomena are concrete... a certain purely intellectual bias and seem to have made no effort to come into contact, in a direct and concrete manner, with spiritual or occult realities. You don't even appear to understand that the major Upanishads are not mere poetry but factual statements of spiritual and occult realisations and experiences — they are poetic in form because the measured intensity of poetry is the natural medium ...
... words, the spiritual being, is quite a free and independent entity and can act as it wills ignoring and ignorant of the body and its circumstances. Whether one is poor or rich, successful or frustrated, happy or unhappy, one can always listen and follow the call of the Spirit. It may be that for most men the physical life is of first and primary importance and they look upon the spiritual life,... pravrajet – the day you feel unattached, that very day go out of the world and away. To the spiritual seeker the higher values are the first things that come first: to the ordinary man it is otherwise, lower values come first and claim topmost priority. To the experience of the spiritual seeker one should give greater value, for he has the experience of both the values, while the ordinary... in a circle. The spiritual East with its obsessing experience of the Infinite and Eternal and Permanent, the Transcendent, found it unnecessary to attach that importance to the impermanent and finite which would give it a meaning and purpose and direction. Therefore we see in India those who advocate this new view are considered Europeanised and not following the authentic spiritual tradition of India ...
... the elements of humanity was the method of the human evolution, the appearance in the human being of a spiritual type resembling mental-animal humanity but already with the stamp of the spiritual aspiration on it would be the obvious method of Nature for the evolutionary production of the spiritual and supramental being." The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 841-42 One thing seems obvious... literature; even in his spiritual endeavour, less surprisingly lofty and less massive in power of spirituality than that of the ancients, there has been this increasing subtlety, plasticity, sounding of depths, extension of seeking. There have been falls from a high type Page 295 of culture, a sharp temporary descent into a certain obscurantism, cessations of the spiritual urge, plunges into... that at the same time a new, higher, more powerful spiritual force has also descended on earth to bring it a new life. This makes the struggle more acute, more violent, more visible, but it seems also more definitive, and that is why we can hope to reach an early solution. Page 297 There was a time, not so long ago, when the spiritual aspiration of man was turned towards a silent, inactive ...
... parts, higher ranges of Mind, degrees of spiritual consciousness and experience; without them there would be no links, no helpful intervening spaces to make the immense ascension possible. It is indeed from these higher sources that the secret spiritual Power acts upon the being and by its pressure brings about the psychic transformation or the spiritual change; but in the early stages of our growth... Mind intensified, broadened, made spiritually supple, can receive without being blinded or dazzled by a Truth beyond it. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Poetry and Art: Higher Mind and Poetic Intelligence Illumined Mind … greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight... towards Supermind Higher Mind I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual [consciousness] where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although highly spiritual in its essential substance; and its instrumentation is through an elevated thought-power ...
... The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths A Yoga of Transformation Letters on Yoga - II Chapter III A Realistic Adwaita The World Not an Illusion I do not agree with the view that the world is an illusion, mithyā . The Brahman is here as well as in the supracosmic Absolute. The thing to be overcome is... complete liberation possible; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal portion of the Divine but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative sense... consciousness, it must be a spiritual and not only a physical fact. In that case, it is the individual who evolves and grows into a more and more developed and perfect consciousness and obviously that cannot be done in the course of a brief single human life. If there is the evolution of a conscious individual, then there must be rebirth. Rebirth is a logical necessity and a spiritual fact of which we can ...
... The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths Other Spiritual Paths and the Integral Yoga Letters on Yoga - II Chapter V The Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita The Teaching of the Gita This world is as the Gita describes it, anityam asukham , so long as we live in the present world-consciousness; it is only by turning... that does not matter. It makes no difference, even if you are right, to the spiritual excellence of the Gita. I care nothing whether Sanjaya and Krishna and Arjuna of the Mahabharat were myths or real persons. The only thing that is important is that the sadhana of the Gita is a real thing and can be lived and that if spiritually lived, its so-called inconsistencies are no inconsistencies but many well-related... vision seen by Arjuna included. The rest is a matter of opinion and, as I say, of no spiritual importance. The Gita was not meant by the writer to be an allegory—you can say, if you like, that now we should dismiss the ancient war element by interpreting it as if it were an allegory. The Gita is Yoga, spiritual truth applied to external life and action—but it may be any action and not necessarily ...
... by the spiritual consciousness, the problem remains unsolved. If you permit the seeds to remain, they may keep quiescent for a time but as soon as circumstances present themselves they may come up. Withdrawal may lead to a neutral state but that is not our Yoga. We want spiritual dynamism, as the source of action. NIRODBARAN: If one writes about metaphysics or philosophy with a spiritual attitude... follow the first part of your answer about the replacement of the ordinary consciousness by the spiritual. SRI AUROBINDO: What I said was that withdrawal is not enough. The seeds of the ordinary life have also to be thrown away and one has to get the spiritual consciousness; one has to get to the true spiritual dynamism which is the source of right action. EVENING SATYENDRA: There is a difference... attitude the spiritual consciousness must be there. SRI AUROBINDO ( laughing ): Must it? Attitude is not enough. There must be an inner change too. Of course if one wrote from his personal experience and vision it would be different. But remaining withdrawn need not lift one into the spiritual consciousness: one may very well be in the mental consciousness. Philosophical writings are of the mental plane ...
... religions of Bhakti. Indian mind is always compelled by its master impulse to reduce all its experience of life to the corresponding spiritual term and factor and the result was a transfiguring of even these most external things into a basis for new spiritual experience. The emotional, the sensuous, even the sensual motions of the being, Page 153 before they could draw the soul... aesthetic and erotic symbol developing and in the Bhagavat it is given its full power and prepared to manifest its entire spiritual and philosophic as well as its psychic sense and to remould into its own lines by a shifting of the center of synthesis from knowledge to spiritual love and delight the earlier significance of Vedanta. The perfect outcome of this evolution is to be found in the philosophy... nothing else, but this is quite negatived by the use of the same figures by the devout poets of the religion of Chaitanya. All the spiritual experience that lay behind the symbol was embodied in that inspired prophet and incarnation of the ecstasy of divine love and its spiritual philosophy put into clear form in his teaching. His followers continued the poetic tradition of the earlier singers and though ...
... unescapable urge of the soul, the undying fire in the secret heart. Yudhishthira may have attained a high status of sattvic nature; but the highest spiritual status, the Gita says, lies beyond the three Gunas. He is the fittest person for this spiritual life who has abandoned all dharmas – principles of conduct, modes of living – and taken refuge in the Lord alone, made the Lord's will the sole and... hero, to be sure – we must remember also the other condition that a spiritual aspirant is to fulfil, nayamatma balahinena labhyah a ²– but that did not immune him to the normal reactions of a normal man; on the contrary, the reactions were especially strong and violent, necessary indeed to bring out the whole implication of a spiritual crisis. Arjuna's doubts and depression, misgivings and questionings... given unconditionally and without reserve that can best purify the dross of the inferior nature and render one worthy of the Divine Grace. Such was Arjuna's capacity; herein lay his strength, his spiritual superiority. It was because he could be so intimate with the Divine as to call him his friend and companion and playmate and speak to him in familiar and homely terms – even though he felt contrition ...
... page. Plato, of course, I read. But it was only when I went above the mind that I could understand philosophy and write philosophy. Ideas and thoughts began to flow in, visions and spiritual experience. Insight and spiritual perception, a sort of revelation built my philosophy. It was not by any process of mental reasoning or argument that I wrote the Arya . NIRODBARAN: Then you didn't try by the... philosophy I read the Upanishads and the Gita, etc. They are, of course, mainly results of spiritual experience. People think I must be immensely learned and know all about Hegel, Kant and the others. The fact is that I haven't even read them; and people don't know I have written everything from experience and spiritual perception. Modern philosophers wrap their ideas up in extraordinary phraseology and... seated in that consciousness, then one can slowly take up any activity without getting disturbed. SRI AUROBINDO: Quite so. NIRODBARAN: In the transitional stage till the mind is replaced by the spiritual consciousness, with what attitude should one do his work? SRI AUROBINDO: What work? NIRODBARAN: Say, philosophical or political. SRI AUROBINDO: It is not necessary to do political work. About ...
... truth's as far as it is possible in your worldly surroundings. What I would like to advice you, is not to judge spiritual ii&ma. personalities and spirituality from your mental standpoint Spiritual is a higher consciousness than mental which is almost ignorant compared with spiritual consciousness which is the consciousness of truth. So., to judge Sri Krishna and Sri Rama from your ignorant... write from their intellect, and he writes from direct experience. Please note that it takes a very long time to eliminate the Ego. This is spiritually a radical change from ignorance to knowledge, to Truth-consciousness, from the mental to the spiritual to supramental status, through the opening of the Psychic-Being in us as, "Chaitya-Purasha"-, one can simply try to remember the Divine always... Sri Rama and Sri Krishna are regarded as Avatars. I do not know about other Avatars mentioned by poet Joy dev, because they are not essential for our Yoga which is to transform the mental into the spiritual and supramental consciousness for which Sri Aurobindo came. He is also an Avatar like Sri Ram-Krishna. The Avatars help in the progress in the evolution of consciousness—that is, why there is ...
... g and an honest appraisal to see how far we in the Ashram have advanced towards the realisation of the double goal of Page 12 establishing spiritual consciousness in the constituent individuals and building up a collective spiritual life. Where does our Ashram stand in its present form and disposition with respect to that dual achievement? Surely, as it is, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram... its arrested flowering and the not too glorious a role of being a mere pilot project? Can it not hope and aspire to embody in time the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's goal of spiritually perfect individuals dwelling in a spiritually consummate community? It is no use denying the fact that garbled and exaggerated Page 13 reports of some isolated unpleasant happenings in our Ashram have... said a long time ago: "The Ashram as it is now is not that ideal." (The Mother, p. 229) But why not? Where is the lacuna? Sri Aurobindo answers: "For that all its members have to live in a spiritual consciousness and not [as it is now] in the ordinary egoistic mind and mainly rajasic vital nature." (Ibid., p. 229) In one of his important letters Sri Aurobindo made the position clear: ...
... my body's sleep, by several teachers some of whom I met afterwards on the physical plane. Later on....the spiritual and psychic relation with one of these beings became more and more clear and pregnant...." The Mother called Him Krishna and made even a sketch of Him. In 1914, her spiritual quest brought her to Pondicherry where she met Sri Aurobindo. She at once recognised him as the Krishna of... Divine Mother. Since then, the Ashram began to expand rapidly and by 1950, it had become a large spiritual institution giving Page 13 shelter to men and women and children of all ages and having its various establishments where to mould them into a new spiritual consciousness according to Sri Aurobindo's vision. When, after bringing down the Supramental Consciousness... Spiritual bouquets to a friend The Mother The Mother was born in a wealthy family in Paris as Mira Alfasa on 21 February, 1878. Introspective by nature, she was in many ways an extraordinary child. She used to feel the descent of a great brilliant light while sitting silently in a chair at the age of four. At about the age of twelve, she ...
... formulate all that he has yet achieved in that direction and to give to each human being a mould of spiritual discipline, a way of seeking, touching, nearing the Divine Truth, a way which is proper to the potentialities of his nature. The Life Divine, pp. 863-64 ...faith in the spiritual sense is not a mental belief which can waver and change. It can wear that form in the mind, but that... doubts and yet that faith may be there within and, if so, it will keep even the doubt-racked mind in the way so that it goes on in spite of itself towards its destined goal. Faith is a spiritual certitude of the spiritual, the divine, the soul's ideal, something that clings to that even when it is not fulfilled in life, even when the immediate facts or the persistent circumstances seem to deny it.... times, perhaps often, especially with us, sons of an age of intellectuality and scepticism and a materialistic denial of spiritual truth which has not yet lifted its painted clouds from the face of the sun of a greater reality and is still opposed to the light of spiritual intuition and inmost experience. There will very possibly be many of those trying obscurations of which even the Vedic Rishis ...
... up the nature and the life, the power of the One acting through the spiritual individual; it is not an aggrandisement of the personal force, not the last crowning fulfilment of the separative mental and vital ego. Self-fulfilment is a result of the Yoga, but its aim is not the greatness of the individual. The sole aim is a spiritual perfection, a finding of the true self and a union with the Divine... easily mistake for spiritual revelations, inspirations, intuitions. An opening upward into the greater ranges of the higher mental being can bring down much light and force creating Page 283 an intense activity of the intuitivised mind and life-power or an ascent into these ranges can bring a true but still incomplete light easily exposed to mixture, a light which is spiritual in its source... source though it does not always remain spiritual in its active character when it comes down into the lower nature. But none of these things is the supramental light, the supramental power; that can only be seen and grasped when we have reached the summits of mental being, entered into overmind and stand on the borders of an upper, a greater hemisphere of spiritual existence. There the ignorance, the in ...
... of domestic life and is now at the end of it. He thinks the time has now come to him to take to spiritual life and enter into vānaprastha. He had married and had two wives. So one day he called the first wife, Katyayani, and said to her: "Katyayani, I am now leaving this life and entering the spiritual life. You have given me comfort and happiness. I am thankful to you for that. Whatever I have, my... free inner individual, choosing its destiny but 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 unhappy world ― anityam... Yajnavalkya when he had become a full-fledged rishi, a guru with an Ashram and disciples. Today I will tell you something of the earlier Yajnavalkya, the beginning of his rishihood, the start of his spiritual life. You know the structure of the old Indian society, it consisted of four castes, varnas, and four stages, āśramas. I shall speak of the āśramas now. Each individual person had to follow a definite ...
... partial or, it may be, some complete spiritual experience. It is that spiritual experience, it is the method, it is the attainment of this realisation that we call Yoga. Page 361 But the Reality is an Absolute or an Infinite; our consciousness, even our spiritualised consciousness is that of a finite being. It is inevitable therefore that our spiritual experience should be not that of a concrete... nature[.] 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... is in a triple spiritual endeavour. It is a realisation of the Divine, of all the Divine by our whole being and through all the parts of our being. It includes a discovery and harmonisation, a unification of our total consciousness subliminal as well as supraliminal, the now superconscient and subconscient as well as the now conscient and its surrender to the Divine for a spiritual instrumentation ...
... greater spiritual consciousness adequate to meet and master the increasing potentialities of existence and harmonise them. "A greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power is needed to weld all into a greater unity of whole-life." 2 It is in the fitness of things that in India a conscious attempt is being made to harmonise modern science and technology with the age-old spiritual tradition... have historically clashed with the spirit and findings of Science. For what characterises a truly spiritual life is a direct 1.Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 1054. 2. Ibid., p. 1055. 3. Questions and Answers, Cent. Vol. 3, p. 33. Page 59 contact with the spiritual Reality, a union with the Divine and a living in the Divine Consciousness. Spirituality represents... realised goal. The spiritual life, as distinguished from a religious life, "proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change ...
... as such a rude shock to some sensitive spiritual seekers that they do not flinch even from giving up their bodies as an irremediable malady. The apparently accidental dissolution of the bodies of Sri Chaitanya of Bengal, of the famous Pawahari Baba of Gazipur and of the Maharashtrian saint Tukaram may have its occult compelling factor in some such spiritual malaise. 4 We thus encounter... The Destiny of the Body Part Two THE SPIRITUAL DESTINY OF THE WAKING STATE Chapter I The Bane of Oscillation Obviously if one has not the Brahmisthiti in the waking state, there is no completeness in the realisation. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 109) How is it, O Great One... that our Prakriti part including in particular the waking physical consciousness must * Tat kenaitanmahābhāga yanmoho jhāñlnorapi ? Page 55 have to undergo the necessary spiritual transfiguration and be made capable of bodying forth in full the Chit-Tapas of the dynamic Sachchidananda. But is this high goal feasible and at all realisable in practice ? Even if we set ...
... new spiritual principle. Mahatma Gandhi's life expresses his own ideas of the true truth and the true knowledge. These ideas are not mine.* The principle of life which I seek to establish is spiritual. Morality is a question of man's mind and vital, it belongs to a lower plane of consciousness. A spiritual life therefore cannot be founded on a moral basis, it must be founded on a spiritual basis... one-chorded as all that—it has many lines and each line produces a need of his life. The spiritual or mystic line is one of them and man tries to satisfy it in various ways, by superstitions of all kinds, by ignorant religionist, by spiritism, demonism and what not, in his more enlightened parts by spiritual philosophy, the higher occultism and the rest, at his highest by the union with the All... sense of the earth evolution. 107 August 8, 1935 From the spiritual point of view such temporary phenomena as the turn of the educated Hindus towards materialism are of little importance. There have always been periods when the mind of nations, continents or cultures turned towards materialism and away from all spiritual belief.... These waves come because of a certain necessity in human ...
... the spiritual direction, the revelation of a spiritual meaning in them, the imprint of a spiritual refinement, the beginning of a spiritual character. It is in this attempt that the errors of religion come in, for they are caused by the very nature of the matter with which it is dealing,—that inferior stuff invades the very forms that are meant to serve as intermediaries between the spiritual and the... 16 July 1958 " Religion's real business is to prepare man's mind, life and bodily existence for the spiritual consciousness to take it up; it has to lead him to that point where the inner spiritual light begins fully to emerge. It is at this point that religion must learn to subordinate itself, not to insist on its outer characters, but give full scope ...
... and the spiritual life? The Puritans had cast aside poetry and music like poison. In the Talmud (the scripture of the Jews) there is the total prohibition to draw the picture of anybody, be he a man or a God. Plato in his Republic refused to award a locus to the poet. Even in the world of to-day, behind the externals we are after Idealism that awakens the higher emotions, the spiritual perception... perception, and inspires the spiritual life in poetry, music, painting and sculpture. We want to do away with mundane art and have the art that helps to acquaint us with God. We want to turn our eyes from the art that depicts the lower propensities of our nature and like to gaze at the one that gives us a higher, nobler and purer inspiration. The spiritual knowledge is the supreme knowledge, and the rest... rest is the ordinary knowledge. The spiritual life is alone the best and the only thing worth aspiring for. If this is the only truth then men will aspire for nothing except that which is helpful to the spiritual life. Men will keep aloof from whatever is an obstacle to it. Every branch of the ordinary knowledge should be made into a step towards the supreme knowledge. If there is any glory or beauty ...
... from satisfactory, and when we come to the domain of moral and spiritual values, the situation is confusing and it seems, a deeper exploration is required before we give to ourselves some definite idea as to what they mean and what place they can be given in our systems of education. The situation in regard to moral and spiritual values is complicated by the fact that there are today several... that each individual should be left to do what he likes in regard to his moral and spiritual tendencies. As against this, it is being increasingly felt that no education can be complete or even worthwhile if it does not provide to the individual not only the knowledge of the history of moral, religious and spiritual ideas which are a great part of the human heritage but also a non-dogmatic but d... one's own free and direct experience. It is thus clear that education in moral and spiritual values is quite distinct from 'religious instruction'. What is required is instruction and training in the entire realm of values physical, emotional, intellectual, imaginative, aesthetic, moral and spiritual, which can be pursued by any individual irrespective of whether he accepts any religion or ...
... What we are concerned with here and now is something perhaps less great, less spiritual, but more urgent and more practical. The problem is not to run away with one's soul, but to maintain its earthly tenement, to keep body and soul together: one has to live first, .live materially before one can hope to live spiritually." Well, the view expressed in these words is not a new revelation. It has... It is not the prosperous and the more happily placed in life who find it more easy to turn to the higher life, it is not the wealthiest who has the greatest opportunity to pursue a spiritual idea. On the contrary, spiritual leaders have thought and experienced otherwise. Apart from the well-recognised fact that only in distress does the normal man think of God and non-worldly things, the real matter... serve him, even so, one can be full of the divine consciousness from the crown of the head to the tip of his toe-nail. In fact, a poor or a prosperous life is in no direct or even indirect ratio to a spiritual life. All the miseries and immediate needs of a physical life do not and cannot detain or delay one from following the path of the ideal; nor can all your riches be a burden to your soul and overwhelm ...
... Hence he is called the priest. The priest is he who knows the proper time for the performance of the seasonal sacrifices. The energy born of spiritual practice too has the spontaneous tendency to determine the spiritual course of the practicant. The Fire of spiritual discipline burns up all the dross contained in the receptacle of the aspirant making him more capable and bringing down into him the divine... progression, to evolution of life, is guarded by Fire, the light and heat that signify the power born of spiritual discipline. It is this energy that enables the practicant to go forward on his way of sacrifice. The aspirant offers as an oblation every limb of his being into this energy of spiritual practice which in its turn carries the self offering of the aspirant to his divinity, and continues to... activity here on earth through some suitable subtle ¹ Gita, III.11. Page 97 embodiment. The seat of Fire, his field of action, is the earth, the gross sheath. The Energy of spiritual discipline first possesses the practicant in his body, the body-con- sciousness; and gradually with the help of the other gods this Fire-god leads him to the vital region and then to the sphere of ...
... conclude that Yoga was regarded in ancient India as the very heart of spirituality. The other spiritual 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... their realisations came to them through Yoga, and not through the mere pursuit of any set methods or routine practices. This does not mean that spiritual exercises and practices are useless; they have their indispensable place and utility in spiritual life, and without them no stable progress can ever be assured, but in order to be able to produce any substantial change in Page 1 ... birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner .being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and Page 12 followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence....And since Yoga is in its essence a Turning away from the ordinary material and ...
... universe, his mind with the cosmic mind, his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine knowledge and will both in itself and as it pours itself through these channels, his spirit with the one spirit in all beings. All the variety of cosmic existence will be changed to him in that unity and revealed in the secret of its spiritual significance. For in this spiritual bliss and being he will be one with That... nature and from all repugnance to the cosmic action of the Divine. This liberation gets its completeness when the spiritual gnosis can act with a supramental knowledge and reception of the action of Nature and a supramental luminous will in initiation. The gnosis discovers the spiritual sense in Nature, God in things, the soul of good in all things that have the contrary appearance; that soul is delivered... supramental transformation from their limitations and rendered into their supernal equivalence of the Divine Page 84 supramental nature. As Sri Aurobindo points out: "Tamas in the spiritual being becomes a divine calm, which is not an inertia and incapacity of action, but a perfect power, sakti, holding in itself all its capacity and capable of controlling and subjecting to the law ...
... expressions of spiritual knowledge and power); (2) the age of the Brahmanas (prose writings in justification of Vedic rituals and practices); and (3) the age of the Upanishads (prose and poetical writings containing intuitions of spiritual explorers). Page 83 The Vedic age is also called the age of Intuition, and it is a source of the continuous stream of various spiritual, religious, ph... new breath and sowed the seeds not only of a new spiritual awakening but also of social and political awakening. The great Indian fighters of India's freedom who struggled against the British were not only men and women of high spiritual attainments, but also of immense social and political dynamism. The new nationalist spirit was at once spiritual and social in character, and the great mantra of Indian... of Indian history are the Vedas, but the period, when they were composed, has been a matter of controversy and speculation. The Vedas themselves speak of the 'forefathers' who had achieved great spiritual conquests. The Vedas thus refer to a pre-Vedic period, during which, it is certain, the ancient forefathers of the Indian peoples had explored the secrets of the universe and produced momentous results ...
... law and most prominent aim of religion rather than any spiritual growth of the individual and the race. And a great sign too of this failure is when the individual is obliged to flee from society in order to find room for his spiritual growth; when, finding human life given over to the unregenerated mind, life and body and the place of spiritual freedom occupied by the bonds of form, by Church and Shastra... rescue, for some hope or new ideal, and arrive by a circle Page 226 through an age of rationalism at a fresh effort towards the restatement of spiritual truth and a new attempt to spiritualise human life. The true and full spiritual aim in society will regard man not as a mind, a life and a body, but as a soul incarnated for a divine fulfilment upon earth, not only in heavens beyond,... The Human Cycle The Human Cycle The Human Cycle Chapter XXI The Spiritual Aim and Life A society founded upon spirituality will differ in two essential points from the normal human society which begins from and ends with the lower nature. The normal human society starts from the gregarious instinct modified by a diversity and possible antagonism of interests ...
... create such a spiritual atmosphere that nothing can touch it, and it no longer depends at all on circumstances or on whom you live with or on the conditions you live in, because you are enclosed in your own spiritual atmosphere. And that is how one obtains it: by turning Page 356 one's attention solely to the spiritual life, by reading only what can help in the spiritual life, by doing... of desires. It is built of desires. Sweet Mother, here it is written: "A spiritual atmosphere is more important than outer conditions; if one can get that and also create one's own spiritual air to breathe in and live in it, that is the true condition of progress." How can one get that and also create one's true spiritual atmosphere? Get what? This—it is by... precisely by inner discipline; you... best happens to you. This may not be in conformity with what you would like, your preference or desire, because these things are blind: it is the best from the spiritual point of view, the best for your progress, your development, your spiritual growth, your true life. It is always that. And you must keep this faith, because faith is the expression of a trust in the Divine and the full self-giving you ...
... spirit within and all the preliminary means it will use will have that for its aim. In the end it will employ chiefly if not solely the spiritual compulsion which even the spiritual individual can exercise on those around him,—and how much more should a spiritual society be able to do it,—that which awakens within us in spite of all inner resistance and outer denial the compulsion of the Light, the... The Human Cycle The Human Cycle The Human Cycle Chapter XXIII Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age A change of this kind, the change from the mental and vital to the spiritual order of life, must necessarily be accomplished in the individual and in a great number of individuals before it can lay any effective hold upon the community. The Spirit... self-expression of the Spirit. Then only will a spiritual age of mankind be possible. To attempt any adequate discussion of what that would mean, and in an inadequate discussion there is no fruit, is beyond our present scope; for we should have to examine a knowledge which is rare and nowhere more than initial. It is enough to say that a spiritual human society would start from and try to realise ...
... to nothing outside it; as there, so here, the fact that there are spiritual experiences and that whatever is experienced is really experienced is indubitable; and whatever higher knowledge there may be and whatever corrections it may make in the knowledge by spiritual experience, it cannot abolish the facthood or truth of spiritual experience except by ignoring them; but then such ignoring knowledge... of existence and even to the highest and supreme experience of the Infinite. Thus the movement of knowledge must rise higher into the field of spiritual experience to see if it gets there what it seeks. And indeed once again we find in the spiritual field the same kind of, though intenser and wider, certainty of the facthood and of the truth of the experience as we got in the field of sense-perception... fulfilled in any single spiritual experience; where we find the identity of the subject and the object the differentiation between the two is absent, and vice versa. And this leads to variation in knowledge and claims which conflict with each other. There are three fundamental experiences in terms of which we can translate roughly all the multitudinous varieties of spiritual experience. The first ...
... you can move with a secure knowledge in the vast field of spiritual phenomena. That is the only way to test spiritual experience. I have myself tried the other method and found it absolutely incapable and inapplicable. On the other hand if you are not prepared to go through all that yourself—as few can do except those of extraordinary spiritual stature—you have to accept the leading of a Master, as in... who grew up in the heyday of absolute rule of scientific materialism in the 19th century. The way which had been almost entirely barred except by rebellion now lies wide open to spiritual truths, spiritual ideas, spiritual experiences. That is the real revolution. Mentalism is only a halfway house but mentalism and vitalism are now perfectly possible as hypotheses based on the facts of existence, ... what is beyond Mind, but present-day science cannot do that. From the spiritual point of view such temporary phenomena as the turn of educated Hindus towards materialism are of little importance. There have always been periods when the mind of nations, continents, cultures turned towards materialism and away from all spiritual belief. Such periods came in ancient Europe in the first century A.D., ...
... would deal with any spiritual influence by her treatment of Christianity and its inner rule which she never really accepted as the law of her life. It was admitted but only as an ideal and emotional influence and used only to chasten and give some spiritual colouring to the vital vigour of the Teuton and the intellectual clarity and sensuous refinement of the Latins. Any new spiritual development she might... phenomenon in general literature. More and more the seekers of new truth are finding their spiritual home in India or owe to her much of their inspiration or at least acknowledge her light and undergo her influence. If this turn continues to accentuate its drive, and there is little chance of a reversion, the spiritual and intellectual gulf between East and West if not filled up, will at least be bridged... problem is not so easy, not so harmoniously simple. For, even if we could assume that in a united world-culture there would be no spiritual need and no vital utility for strong distinctive variations, we are still very far from any such oneness. The subjective and spiritual turn of the more advanced modern thought is still confined to a minority and has only very superficially coloured the general i ...
... poetry is the most spiritual or mystical? To be most spiritual, poetry must draw much more than its thought-substance from a lofty source. The thought-substance of all sterling religious literature has its origin in the altitudes of the Spirit, but one usually deals in abstractions or in some emotional reconstruction of spiritual idea. The thought, of course, has to grasp the spiritual truth — but an... meaning — and so great a difference in the spiritual quality of the line! The purely poetic power was not less before; what is added now, however light it may be, is the mantric touch. The way the mantric touch gets in leads me to consider another question: Does intense spiritual inspiration sustained from poem to poem prove an intense spiritual life throbbing in the poet day to day? ... within, a certain type of intensity, has to become technical skill if we are to have artistic value. Thus understanding artistic value we may state that in a spiritual poem, as in any other kind of poem, sincerity is worthless without it. If spiritual sincerity in a poem is to depend for its worth on anything else, what purpose can be served by selecting a form of art for its expression? Why not just blurt ...
... of the spirit which is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. If by spiritual self-discipline and self-surrender to the divine Power, we eliminate the ego and identify ourselves with the Divine, then we also become omniscient and omnipotent. This is not an impossible ideal ; this identification has been achieved by all spiritual Masters who have appeared on the human scene from time to Page... the Nazis. When they were victoriously progressing in their march to world-domination, he used his spiritual powers to stop their victories and turn them into defeat and disaster. This is the inner history of how the world was saved from domination by the Asuras. Likewise the Mother used her spiritual powers in making the Chinese withdraw from the Indian plains in the 1962 war. To the ordinary... raised ourselves above the limited horizon of our half-enlightened mental intelligence, the truth of spiritual living with its unity, peace and harmony, its knowledge, power, love and bliss will look like an impossible ideal, or, if possible, meant only for a few and not for humanity in general. But spiritual truth like all other truths is a fact of life and has been more or less generalised in human lives ...
... of supernormal spiritual experience: the withdrawal from all participation in the world-existence and the immergence or extinction into the Unmanifest is not the only spiritual destiny decreed for the human soul. A supreme divine return from the verge of Nirvana into the world-play is equally possible and this with the undiminished splendours and potencies of all the spiritual wealth amassed at... Power of Consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active. (Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 109) The overhead ascension is not indispensable for the usual spiritual purposes, — but it is indispensable for the purposes of this Yoga. For its aim is to become aware of and... look deep and high and far, we discover the splendours of a graded series of planes and powers of consciousness — an intervening spiritual mind-range — serving as links and bridges between the now normal waking mind and 'the native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being.' It is in these 'radiant altitudes' of the Spirit that "we find the secret we are seeking, the means of the ...
... attributed to the spiritual status is a human Page 362 way of viewing the experience: that is the impression left on the normal mind consciousness when the Purusha soars out of it, upwards from the life of the world to the life of the Spirit. But the soul, the true spiritual being in the individual, is not and cannot be an isolated entity; the nature of the spiritual consciousness is first... aloof and apart from his apparent and assumed personality and has no dealings with such personalities. God has no up ā dhi, phenomenal qualification, neither has the soul of man. Therefore in his spiritual aspiration, man has to divest himself of all the outer growths that cover and bury his soul: with the clear unmixed vision of his pure soul he has to look straight into the face of the Divine Transcendent... into vogue Page 361 (inspired or encouraged by the Christian or the Buddhist way of Realisation) have emphasised this outlook. But it has also been counterbalanced by another way of spiritual growth and fulfilment: we may call it the modern way, for it has been a pronounced characteristic of the modern consciousness. We referred in our previous essay to the Existentialist who has attracted ...
... Epochal Synthesis PART I AGES ago, when the natural unity of the spiritual vision and culture of the Vedas and the Upanishads began to give way before the developing complexity and individualistic self-affirmation of the parts of the being of man, each of which sought its own separate spiritual satisfaction and characteristic fulfilment to the neglect : and exclusion of the others... into the fullness and perfection of the Divine. All the important strands of spiritual culture, current at the time or regarded as essential, were woven together into that comprehensive synthesis, which aimed at raising man into the light and freedom of the dynamic divine consciousness. Nowhere, at no period of the spiritual history of mankind, has there ever been such a vast and powerful attempt at... all mundane action,—these were some of the most outstanding reconciliations effected by the Gita at a crucial stage of the spiritual culture of India. And this synthesis was achieved, not by any religious or philosophical eclecticism, but by an embracing and unifying spiritual vision, and it stands unparalleled in its comprehensive- ness in the annals of ancient mystical achievements. Indian ...
... too external outlook upon things still cling Page 585 about his new spiritual discovery. He tells us that the kingdom of God on earth is "not a metaphor, not a mere spiritual state, not a dream, not an uncertain project,... it is the close and inevitable destiny of mankind." This classing of the inner spiritual state, the kingdom of God within us, with a metaphor, a dream, an uncertain project... present state into a more perfect living. He professes his faith in the God within, the invisible King, who is the immortal part of us, in a coming kingdom of God upon earth which shall not only be a spiritual state in the individual, but the open brotherhood of a divine rule among men, and in self-identification with God, service of him, absolute surrender to him as the whole rule of life for the enlightened... generation, it means a revolution in Europe far more important than the Russian with all its idealism and its hopes for a new and beneficent change in politics and society. It means the union of Eastern spiritual knowledge and religious faith with Western pragmatic idealism and their fusion into the basis of a new culture and, we will not say a new universal religion,—for religion must vary with the variations ...
... you, you create such a spiritual atmosphere that nothing can touch it, and it no longer depends at all on circumstances or on whom you live with or on the conditions you live in, because you are enclosed in your own spiritual atmosphere. And that is how one obtains it: by turning one's attention solely to the spiritual life, by reading only what can help in the spiritual life, by doing only what... Source The Atmosphere You Create Sweet Mother, here it is written: "A spiritual atmosphere is more important than outer conditions; if one can get that and also create one's own spiritual air to breathe in and live in it, that is the true condition of progress." How can one get that and also create one's true spiritual atmosphere? ... it is by... precisely by inner discipline; you can create... what leads you to the spiritual life, and so on. Then you create your own atmosphere. But naturally, if you open all the doors, listen to what people tell you, follow the advice of this one and the inspirations of that one, and are full of desires for outside things, you cannot create a spiritual atmosphere for yourself. You will have an ordinary atmosphere like everybody else. Source ...
... greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide... the being through the spiritual idea and its power of truth, so the Illumined Mind brings in a still greater consciousness through a Truth-sight and Truth-light and its seeing and seizing power. It can effect a more powerful and dynamic integration; it illumines the thought-mind with a direct inner vision and inspiration, brings a spiritual sight into the heart and a spiritual light and energy into... possibility of one or more or numerous dynamic spiritual formulations to their utmost or combine or harmonise several possibilities together; but this would be a creation or a number of creations in the original terrestrial creation, each complete in its separate existence. The evolved spiritual individual would be there, there might evolve also a spiritual community or communities in the same world ...
... universal love and peace and purity which grow in the inner being as a result of spiritual progress. This is the ideal most widely accepted in all progressive forms of spiritual culture—God within and His service without, or the freedom of the soul within and its healing and delivering touch without. This ideal of spiritual service (as it is called,) of the cult of consecrated and compassionate action... Light will find either no expression at all, or only a mutilated and warped one. Many brilliant spiritual adventures have been shipwrecked on the shoals of material life and paid the penalty of its disdainful neglect. Let us take a concrete example to illustrate the point : There was a lady of admirable spiritual perception and capacity. She was steadily advancing in Yoga when, all of a sudden, she had... had an attack of brain-fag, as a result of which she partially lost her reason. Her spiritual life suffered a tragic set-back, and none of her previous spiritual gains could stay the decay that had set in. Life, gone out of gear, became a purveyor not of light, but of darkness. The fact quoted above demonstrates the importance of the material mould, the indispensability of action, a proper care of ...
... the strength, spiritual freedom in political servitude is a sheer impossibility. When India was free, thousands of men set their feet in the stairs of heaven, but as the night deepened and the sun of liberty withdrew its rays, the spiritual force inborn in every Indian heart became weaker and weaker until now it burns so faintly that aliens have taken upon themselves the role of spiritual teachers, and... this people,—not mere political freedom Page 874 but a freedom vast and entire, freedom of the individual, freedom of the community, freedom of the nation; spiritual freedom, social freedom, political freedom. Spiritual freedom the ancient Rishis had already declared to us; social freedom was part of the message of Buddha, Chaitanya, Nanak and Kabir and the saints of Maharashtra; political... self-devotion. When man is thus degraded, it is idle to think that society can be free. So too spiritual freedom can never be the lot of many in a land of slaves. A few may follow the path of the Yogin and rise above their surroundings, but the mass of men cannot ever take the first step towards spiritual salvation. We do not believe that the path of salvation lies in selfishness. If the mass of men ...
... higher law and the spiritual illumination. On the other hand, the impatience which condemns or despairs of life or discourages its growth because it is at present undivine and is not in harmony with the spiritual life, is an equal ignorance, andhaṁ tamaḥ . The world-shunning monk, the mere ascetic may indeed well find by this turn his own individual and peculiar salvation, the spiritual recompense of his... life to envelop it without being dominated by it does not labour under this disability. The spiritual man who can guide human life towards its perfection is typified in the ancient Indian idea of the Rishi, one who has lived fully the life of man and found the word of the supra-intellectual, supramental, spiritual truth. He has risen above these lower limitations and can view all things from above, but... Chapter XVII Religion as the Law of Life Since the infinite, the absolute and transcendent, the universal, the One is the secret summit of existence and to reach the spiritual consciousness and the Divine the ultimate goal and aim of our being and therefore of the whole development of the individual and the collectivity in all its parts and all its activities, reason cannot ...
... must first acquire fitness, develop the right and adequate capacity before one should think of spiritual initiation. The question, however, can be raised— the moderns do raise it and naturally in the present age of science and universal education —why should not all men equally have the right to spiritual sadhana? If spirituality is the highest truth for man, his greatest good, his supreme ideal... One cannot, at will, develop into a poet by sheer effort or culture. He alone can be a poet who is to the manner born. The same is true also of the spiritual life. But in this case, there is something more to take into account. If you enter the spiritual path, often, whether you will or not, you come in touch with hidden powers, supra-sensible forces, beings of other worlds and you do not know how to... of the procedure; for what on earth, he would question, has spiritual sadhana to do with cow-grazing? In defence we need not go into any esoteric significance, but simply suggest that this was perhaps a test for obedience and endurance. These two are fundamental and indispensable conditions in sadhana; without them there is no spiritual practice, one cannot advance a step. It is absolutely necessary ...
... forms he is always the Infinite. Nature, Prakriti, is in her essence his spiritual power, self-power, ātmaśakti ; this spiritual self-power develops infinite primal qualities of becoming in the inwardness of things and turns them into an external surface of form and action. For in her essential, secret and divine order the spiritual truth of each and all comes first, a thing of her deep identities; their... perfection and immortality and some highest joy and power and peace. There is a strong and wide endeavour towards a comprehensive spiritual view of God and man and universal existence. Not indeed that everything without any exception is seized in these eighteen chapters, no spiritual problem left for solution; but still so large a scheme is laid out that we have only to fill in, to develop, to modify, to... supracosmic eternity without denying either of them or taking anything from the reality of either. It harmonises the pantheistic, the theistic and the highest transcendental terms of our spiritual conception and spiritual experience. The Divine is the unborn Eternal who has no origin; there is and can be nothing before him from which he proceeds, because he is one and timeless and absolute. "Neither the ...
... should be its moulds. To be spiritual only is not enough; that prepares a number of souls for heaven, but leaves the earth very much where it was. Neither is a compromise the way of salvation. The world knows three kinds of revolution. The material has strong results, the moral and intellectual are infinitely larger in their scope and richer in their fruits, but the spiritual are the great sowings. ... correspondence, a faultless work would be done; but the mind and body of mankind cannot hold perfectly a strong spiritual inrush: most is spilt, much of the rest is corrupted. Many intellectual and physical upturnings of our soil are needed to work out a little result from a large spiritual sowing. Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height... profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done if all these God-visions could embrace and cast themselves into each other; but intellectual dogma and cult egoism stand in the way. All religions have saved a number of souls, but none yet has been able to spiritualise mankind. For that there is needed not cult and creed, but a sustained and all-comprehending effort at spiritual self-evolution ...
... mixed up in the spiritual seeking, it may lead to a fall in the Yoga and the growth of an exaggerated egoism or megalomania—of this there are several symptoms in the utterances of his father during the crisis. In fact one cannot or ought not to plunge into the experiences of this sadhana without a fairly long period of preparation and purification (unless one has already a great spiritual strength and... this 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... exist, but in the personal nature where it is the ruler. It is the sign of the will to complete surrender to the total Divine, samagraṁ mām, mānuṣīṁ tanum āśritam . Of course it must be a genuine spiritual surrender for all this to be true. Page 396 If absolute surrender to the Guru leaves one helpless like a puppet in the hands of forces—what good is it? I think what is harmful is to surrender ...
... The peculiarity of the Gita among the great religious books of the world is that it does not stand apart as a work by itself, the fruit of the spiritual life of a creative personality like Christ, Mahomed or Buddha or of an epoch of pure spiritual searching like the Veda and Upanishads, but is given as an episode in an epic history of nations and their wars and men and their deeds and arises out... aspects and can be governed well enough by the ordinary everyday standards of thought and action. There are indeed three things in the Gita which are spiritually significant, almost symbolic, typical of the profoundest relations and problems of the spiritual life and of human existence at its roots; they are the divine personality of the Teacher, his characteristic relations with his disciple and the occasion... of Avatarhood, we see that whether for the fundamental teaching of the Gita, our present subject, or for spiritual life generally the external aspect has only a secondary importance. Such controversies as the one that has raged in Europe over the historicity of Christ, would seem to a spiritually-minded Indian largely a waste of time; he would concede to it a considerable historical, but hardly any ...
... World It is not to be denied, no spiritual experience will deny that this is an unideal and unsatisfactory world, strongly marked with the stamp of inadequacy, suffering, evil. Indeed this perception is in a way the starting-point of the spiritual urge - except for the few to whom the greater experience comes spontaneously Without being forced... association with the Will behind the world, in a discovery of the spiritual Page 61 gate to perfection which will be at the same time an opening for the entire descent of the Divine Light, Knowledge, Power, Beatitude. All spiritual experience afirms that there is a Permanent above the transience... what is the sense, the fundamental principle, the logical issue of that progression? Everything seems to point to such a progression as a fact - to a spiritual and not merely a physical evolution. Here, too, there is a justifying line of spiritual experience in which we discover that the Inconscient from which all starts is apparent only, for in it there is an involved Consciousness with endless ...
... necessary to all artistic appreciation there is a spiritual insight or culture needed if we are to enter into the whole meaning of Indian artistic creation, otherwise we get only at the surface external things or at the most at things only just below the surface. It is an intuitive and spiritual art and must be seen with the intuitive and spiritual eye. This is the distinctive character of Indian... difficult really, that is to say, spiritually to understand the arts of Europe, as the ordinary European mind to enter into the spirit of Indian painting and sculpture. I have seen a comparison made between a feminine Indian figure and a Greek Aphrodite which illustrates the difficulty in an extreme form. The critic tells me that the Indian figure is full of a strong spiritual sense—here of the very breath... and we may prefer it with a good conscience, if the spiritual, the higher intuitive vision is what we most demand from art. This however Page 262 need not interfere with an appreciation of both kinds in their own order. But in viewing much of other European work of the very greatest repute, I am myself aware of a failure of spiritual sympathy. I look for instance on some of the most famed ...
... true when the knowledge sought after was not only pragmatic and intellectual but spiritual. For among all human endeavours, spiritual endeavour is the most difficult, beset with the greatest difficulties. In certain circumstances, the pursuit of spiritual knowledge requires vigilant direction and guidance. Spiritual search is like a search in a virgin forest, and the law of that search exacts from... the seeker the highest price of self-sacrifice and consecration. The guide and teacher on the spiritual path, therefore, deserves the highest reverence. The intricacies and hazards of the spiritual endeavour are known to the teacher, and it is often unwise to reveal them to the seeker in advance. Spiritual discoveries and realizations imply major psychological surgery. These operations the pupil cannot... taking to himself, without attachment, worldly possessions and spiritual riches and casting at last all his wealth behind to wander forth as a houseless ascetic. And there is Krishna, son of Devaki, who heard a single word of the Rishi Ghora and knew at once the eternal. 2 We have the Ashrams, the courts of kings who were also spiritual discoverers and thinkers, the great sacrificial assemblies where ...
... undeveloped self to whatever is greater than it. As he develops, he moves towards a spiritual freedom, but this freedom is not something entirely separate from all existence. As he moves towards the spiritual freedom, he moves also towards spiritual oneness. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: Page 119 The spiritually realised, the liberated man is preoccupied, says the Gita, with the good of all... of his own spiritual being and the discovery by all of their spiritual unity and a resultant life of unity. There can be no real perfection for us except by our inner self and truth of spiritual existence taking up all truth of the instrumental existence into itself and giving to it oneness, integration, harmony. As our only real freedom is the discovery and disengagement of the spiritual Reality within... According to Sri Aurobindo, it is not intellectual anarchism but a spiritual or spiritualised anarchism that will bring us nearer to the solution or at least touch something of it from afar. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: It is a spiritual, an inner freedom that can alone create a perfect human order. It is a spiritual, a greater than the rational enlightenment that can alone illumine ...
... inner soul and its power of absolute spiritual calm, wideness, joy and peace. This is the sense of that spiritual liberation and perfection of which Indian 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... ads of his civilisation, the great lights of his culture. Spiritual freedom, spiritual perfection were not figured as a far-off intangible ideal, but presented as the highest human aim towards which all must grow in the end, and were made near and possible to his endeavour from a first practicable basis of life and the Dharma. The spiritual idea governed, enlightened and gathered towards itself all... seized on this great dynamic hope, to have kept it a living and practicable thing and to have searched out all the possible paths to this spiritual way of perfect existence. Indian thought has made this great thing the common highest aim and universal spiritual destiny of the soul that is in every human creature. The value of the Indian conception for life must depend on the relations and gradations ...
... behind it? If, as spiritual experience shows us, the unity of the Divine is there at the very base and if as both ancient and modern knowledge declare, there has been a spiritual evolution from down upwards,—though the modern speaks only of an evolution of the body with the consciousness Page 262 depending on it and the ancient, as in the Tantras, only of a spiritual evolution of the soul... Problem of Suffering and Evil The Riddle of This World It is not to be denied, no spiritual experience will deny that this is an unideal and unsatisfactory world, strongly marked with the stamp of inadequacy, suffering, evil. Indeed this perception is in a way almost the starting-point of the spiritual urge—except for the few to whom the greater experience comes spontaneously without being forced... but in the urge towards a victory here, in a consenting association with the Will behind the world, in a discovery of the spiritual gate to perfection which will be at the same time an opening for the entire descent of the Divine Light, Knowledge, Power, Beatitude. All spiritual experience affirms that there is a Permanent above the transience of this manifested world we live in and this limited ...
... the evolved spiritually awakened saint: how is this progression started, how achieved? "Spiritual evolution as distinct from revolution", says Hugh I' Anson Fausset, "consists of this gradual dying to the old life of the divided senses and gradual growing of the new life of wholeness within the decaying body of the old. It is a growth, often imperceptible, in the knowledge of spiritual reality, at... What does tapasya mean? Spiritual knowledge may be acquired from scriptures and from one's teachers; it comes also as the result of one's own turning inwards and seeking the light of the Infinite. Knowledge of the former kind can lead to the latter, and experienced knowledge can lead to the former. Aswapati turns from the first phase of his spiritual awakening to the Book of the Secret... stage of which the material world loses something of its delusive appearance Page 431 as the veils of partial sense are withdrawn until at last its true spiritual form is perceived." 130 Spiritual growth is also growth in freedom, and freedom is power; the lower life is the life of the slave, the highest life is the life of the saint, and just as all art is said to aspire ...
... time to change radically his nature and get the concrete decisive experience of the Divine would have to be considered as one of the rare gallopers of the spiritual Way. Nobody has ever said that the spiritual change was an easy thing; all spiritual seekers will say that it is difficult but supremely worth doing. If one's desire for the Divine has become the master desire, then surely one can give one's... beginning of the fundamental and decisive realisation which carries the consciousness out of the limited mental into the true spiritual vision and experience in which all is one and all is the Divine. It is this constant and living experience that is the true foundation of spiritual life. There can be no doubt about its truth and value, for it is evidently something living and dynamic and goes beyond a... the descent of stillness in the body, as signs of the Yogi in you. But these ideas spring from an ignorance of the spiritual realm and its phenomena and only show the incapacity of the outer intellectual reason to play the role you want it to play, that of a supreme judge of spiritual truth and inner experience—a quite natural incapacity because it does not know even the A.B.C. of these things and ...
... that we associate with the Guru. In the one we see the unborn disciple, aja , entering into spiritual life and in the other the already realised soul, pakva , living in the white radiance of the Benign. What does the Guru do? He accepts the responsibility of the Shishya in every respect, spiritually and materially. All his past Karmas are dissolved, all his predispositions or samskaras are... certain tradition but because of a definite fact of spiritual truth that is there behind it. However, it is not the same thing as the Supreme coming down and becoming a Guru. In other words, what Jnaneshwar is describing is the Guru-Shishya relationship and not, for instance, the Mother-Child or Father-Son relationship. If the one is austere and spiritually luminous, the other is warm with love, is endearingly... he practises devotion in the ninefold manner; the Jnani is ever absorbed in contemplation of the omnipresent Reality, while the Rishi does Tapas on the Truth-existent and takes a new birth in its spiritual fire; the Yogi gathers himself into the Divine Being, the Giver of Siddhis, Siddheshwar, and remains in its perfection. The One in the mode of the Many establishes as many contacts in the creative ...
... Verifiability of Spiritual Experiences One very helpful idea, which has been suggested, is that, in order to determine as to, in which among various religions lies the right way, is not to compare doctrines but to compare spiritual experiences which lie at the roots of religions. In the history of Indian religion, the effort to compare the nature and contents of underlying spiritual experiences has... however, religions which, although founded on spiritual experiences consisting of visions, voices, intuitions, revelations or inspirations of the founders or some rare individuals, explicitly or implicitly state that verification of such experiences is not feasible, and that the only way by which one can enter into the truths and contents of the spiritual experiences is to take recourse to verbal or... therefore they all deserve to be equally respected. According to another view, all religions give the same message of universal brotherhood, of peace and harmony, and of the superiority of moral and spiritual praxis over verbal or intellectual formulations in which their doctrines have been set or declared. In works such as Bhagwan Das' "Essential unity of religions", 41 detailed comparisons among ...
... explained, was the reason why "in the past the body has been regarded by spiritual seekers rather as an obstacle, as something to be overcome and discarded than as an instrument of spiritual perfection and a field of the spiritual change." For instance, Sri Ramakrishna's attitude with regard to the body was that it was a misuse of spiritual force to utilize it for preserving the body or taking care of it or... is impossible to measure the pioneering work done by them. For, no one before Mother and Sri Aurobindo had even thought of it. The preceding spiritual Masters —like Buddha, Shankara, Ramakrishna —had no idea of transforming the body, "their aim was spiritual mukti and nothing else." Sri Aurobindo did not find a ready-made integral method, he had to develop it. "If I had [found it], I should not have... canter over paths already blazed out, laid down, perfectly mapped, macadamised, made secure and public. Our Yoga is not a retreading of old walks, but a spiritual adventure." Mother said (3 April 1967), "I must tell you once more that for us spiritual life does not mean contempt for Matter but its divinization. We do not want to reject the body but to transform it...." And Sri Aurobindo has given ...
... not part of the essence or of the undivided whole-consciousness either of the Divine or of our own spiritual being. I know what is your difficulty about the Cosmic Divine. It was not present to my mind because I look at these things from the point of view of facts as they are both to our spiritual and our Page 9 outward experience—whereas the point of view on which you lay stress is... something that warrants this hope to arrive at something better. For the spiritual experience there is—and this something behind is to it as undeniable a fact as the very apparent character of this world in its surface aspect as a world of Ignorance, tribulation, suffering, disharmony, disorder, obscure Inconscience. To spiritual experience it is not a speculation but a fact that there is a Godhead immanent... our consciousness also. It is also a part of spiritual experience that there is something Beyond in which this Divinity—or whatever other name you may give to it—is above the contradiction offered to it by this world of disorder and ignorance; that is the meaning of the Transcendence. Whatever wide differences there may be between different ways of spiritual experience or whatever names may be put on ...
... valuable in humanity's past. So, in India, if religion has changed immensely its form and temperament, the religious spirit has been really eternal, the principle of spiritual discipline is the same as in the earliest times, the fundamental spiritual truths have been preserved and even enriched in their contents and the very forms can all be traced back through their mutations to the seed of the Veda. On the... especially by India, the hoary guardian of the Asiatic idea and its profound spiritual secrets. For the most vital issue of the age is whether the future progress of humanity is to be governed by the modern economic and materialistic mind of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided, uplifted and enlightened by spiritual culture and knowledge. The West never really succeeded in spiritualising itself... Page 137 to slumber too much in dead forms, has always been open to profound awakenings and preserves its spiritual capacity intact, even when it is actually inert and uncreative. Therefore the hope of the world lies in the re-arousing in the East of the old spiritual practicality and large and profound vision and power of organisation under the insistent contact of the West and in the ...
... Page 35 stress upon a spiritual and religious, which meant therefore in the end an other-worldly discipline; the newer interpretation seeks to dynamise the more or less quietistic spirituality which held the ground in India of later ages, to set a premium upon action, upon duty that is to be done in our work-a-day life, though with a spiritual intent and motive. This neo-s... immediate incentive to our spiritual revival and revaluation and its impress has not been thoroughly obliterated even in the best of our modern exponents. The bias of the vital urge and of the moral imperative is apparent enough in the modernist conception of a dynamic spirituality. Fundamentally the dynamism is made to reside in the elan of the ethical man,—the spiritual element, as a consciousness... groups of which one may be termed the orthodox school and the other the modern school. The orthodox school as represented, for example, by Shankara or Sridhara, viewed the Gita in the light of the spiritual discipline more or less current in those ages, when the purpose of life was held out to be emancipation from life, whether through desireless work or knowledge or devotion or even a combination ...
... opportunity given them, a turning of the back upon the spiritual destiny. Their difficulties are often in appearance greater than the struggle of those who remain outside because the demand and pressure are greater; but so also is their opportunity greater and the power and influence for development poured upon them and that too which they can spiritually become and will become if they are faithful to the... contact can exist at a distance and that the Divine is not limited by place but is everywhere. It is not necessary for everybody to be at Pondicherry or physically near the Mother in order to lead the spiritual life or to practise the yoga, especially in its earlier stages. But that is only one side of the truth, there is another. Otherwise the logical conclusion might be that there was no necessity for... it well developed, well built up in the consciousness or prominent in the front; in most it is veiled, often ineffective or only an influence, not conscious enough or strong enough to support the spiritual life. It is for this reason that it is necessary for those drawn towards this truth to come here in order that they may receive the touch which will bring about or prepare the awakening of the psychic ...
... Stars indicate beginnings or promise of Light. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III: Sun, Moon, Star, Fire Moon: In a general way, the moon is associated with spiritual force, spiritual progress, spiritual aspiration. The Mother, Questions and Answers (1957 - 1958): 26 February 1958 ... Silence and crimson Fire thou frontest eyes in a timeless Face. Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: The Bird of Fire ============= The moon indicates spirituality, sometimes also spiritual Ananda. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III: Sun, Moon, Star, Fire A golden moon means a power of spirituality full of light of higher Truth. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III: ...
... The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution The Life Divine Chapter XVI The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence When all the desires that cling to the heart are loosed away from it, then the mortal becomes... itself, as all absolutes are self-evident, but our mental affirmatives and negatives, whether taken separatively or together, cannot limit or define it. But at the same time there is a spiritual consciousness, a spiritual knowledge, a knowledge by identity which can seize the Reality in its fundamental aspects and its manifested powers and figures. All that is comes within this description and, if seen... alone gives a full spiritual significance to the universe and justifies the soul in manifestation; an explanation of things that deprives cosmic and individual existence of all significance cannot be the whole explanation or the solution it proposes the sole true issue. The next affirmation which we put forward is that the fundamental reality of the Absolute is to our spiritual perception a Divine ...
... the Mother Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II Politics and Spiritual Help Sri Aurobindo says that it is impossible for him to take up political action and enter the political field which would involve a sacrifice of his spiritual work. His spiritual help is given to the country and individually to all those who aspire for it. He is ready to continue ...
... image or luminous silhouette. That is what a fully successful spiritual or occult poetry has to do, to make the occult and the spiritual real to the vision of the consciousness, the feeling. The occult is most often materialised as by Scott and Shakespeare or else pictured in mists, the spiritual mentalised, as in many attempts at spiritual poetry—a reflection in the mind is not enough. For success... me: Still eyes look coldly upon me, Cold voices whisper and say— "He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia, They have stolen his wits away." I am speaking—a spiritual state not hinted at or abstractly put as the metaphysical poets most often do it but presented with a tangible accuracy which one who has lived in the silent wideness of his spiritualised mind ...
... philosophic thought, each line of spiritual experience to its farthest point, and chose to look from that farthest point at all existence, so as to see what truth or power such a view could give it. It tried to know the whole of divine nature and to see too as high as it could beyond nature and into whatever there might be of supradivine. When it formulated a spiritual atheism, it followed that to its... assert a divinity in the people and could cry to the monarch at the height of his power, "O king, what art thou but the head servant of the demos?" Its idea of the golden age was a free spiritual anarchism. Its spiritual extremism could not prevent it from fathoming through a long era the life of the senses and its enjoyments, and there too it sought the utmost richness of sensuous detail and the depths... 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, constant, always recurrent; it is the support of all the rest. The Page 41 first age of India's greatness was a spiritual age when she sought ...
... appearance in the human being of a spiritual type resembling mental-animal humanity but already with the stamp of the spiritual aspiration on it would be the obvious method of Nature for the evolutionary production of the spiritual and supramental being.” 62 Towards the end of his life he discovered or communicated the knowledge for the first time: that “a spiritual type resembling mental-animal humanity”... perfection far beyond the physical: the supramental transformation of the body. “In the past the body has been regarded by spiritual seekers rather as an obstacle, as something to be overcome and discarded than as an instrument of spiritual perfection and a field of spiritual change … Even in its fullest strength and force and greatest glory of beauty, it is still a flower of the material inconscience;... …” 40 Illumined Mind: Illumined Mind is “a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide e ...
... writing any spiritual value? No present value spiritually—it may have a mental value. It is the same with the work—it has a value of moral training, discipline, obedience, acceptance of work for the Mother. The spiritual value and result come afterwards when the consciousness in the vital opens upward. So with the mental work. It is a preparation. If you cannot yet do it with the true spiritual consciousness... vision of which the Word is the body. In all ages spiritual seekers have expressed their aspirations or their experiences in poetry or inspired language and it has helped themselves and Page 714 others. Therefore there is nothing absurd in my assigning to such poetry a spiritual or psychic value and effectiveness to poetry of a psychic or spiritual character. 24 December 1934 I have always... man is not a spiritual aim; but to use literature as a means of spiritual expression is another matter. Even to Page 722 make expression a vehicle of a superior power helps to open the consciousness. The harmonising rests on that principle. 19 September 1936 Literature like everything else can be made an instrumentation for the Divine Life. It can be made of some spiritual importance ...
... perfection. Even what are known as Yogic Siddhis or mere spiritual experiences or realisations such as those of Mukti or Nīrvāna do not amount to 'transformation'. As Sri Aurobindo explains it in one of his letters: 'Transformation' is a word that I have brought in myself (like 'supermind') to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral Yoga.... Purification of the nature... psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change the word besides has many senses and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose. What I mean by the spiritual transformation is something dynamic (not merely liberation of the Self or realisation of the One which can very well be attained without any descent). It is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness dynamic as well... or Mukti. Spiritual liberation is an important step in the integral Yoga towards transformation, but it is not its consummation. Spiritual liberation means the liberation of the Spirit from Nature, whereas transformation of Nature means the liberation of Nature itself from its own limitations. In the state of spiritual liberation, the spirit is realised as above and unaffected by Nature, and thus the ...
... self-light. It is the spiritual vision that makes literature inspirational and enduring, imperishable and timeless. It is the spiritual vision that makes literature an expression of vibrant truth and beauty as well as a living mosaic of perennial joy and power. Classical literature is a lasting transcription of the supraphysical and spiritual, and has the power to awaken an ... sublimated and intensely spiritual yearning of an age, the Page 246 large interpretative idea and the power of its will and life are richly revealed in its literature. Moreover, such literature can profoundly influence and mould the vision and work of a succeeding age because of its subtle and immortal import. Even a little of its spiritual intensity can initiate... psychic and spiritual insights of creative minds, it all depends on the extent of receptivity and sensitivity of the authors to the manifesting Spirit. Whereas European languages are prone to embody the more questing and active intellect of our times, under conditions of literary and consciousness osmosis there is bound to be a happy and welcome integration of material and spiritual mentalities ...
... bodies of highly developed spiritual persons, even extending to the emission of an enveloping aura and there has been recorded an initial phenomenon of this kind in the life of so great a spiritual personality as Ramakrishna. But these things have been either conceptual only or rare and occasional and for the most part the body has not been regarded as possessed of spiritual possibility or capable of... 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, incapable... been found especially harmful by the spiritual aspirant and weighed considerably in favour of an ascetic rejection of the body. Sex and sexuality and all that springs from sex and testifies to its existence had to be banned and discarded from the spiritual life, and this, though difficult, is not at all impossible and can be made a cardinal condition for the spiritual seeker. This is natural and unescapable ...
... the mental being, the Maruts, the mental faculties, have no separate existence. 1. The seat of pure mind is a chariot. The chariot signifies movement and it is the emblem of the spiritual progress. The spiritual adventure of the purified mind gradually rises up. The movement of the purified mind is at- once free and vast. Division and littleness are not to be found there. It is fully illumined... illumined by the light of knowledge. The purified mind is replete with thought-powers, in other words, the Maruts. And it is the Maruts who help the mind in its march towards the Goal. 2. Spiritual progress takes place by the conjoint force of two powers. They are nothing but the twin horses that carry farther the power of Indra. Of the two horses one is the symbol of knowledge, the other is that of power... power of the aspirant increase, the more awakes in him the divine mental being in all its virtues. And the pure thought-powers or the Maruts turn the flow of knowledge and power towards an inner spiritual discipline. Page 109 3. It is the power of pure-thoughts that manifests the light of knowledge in the darkness of Ignorance. With the gradual development of such thoughts the true ...
... secondly, spiritual transformation, and thirdly, supramental transformation. This entire process is based on the discovery of the psychic being, of the spiritual being in its multisidedness and integrality, and of the supramental consciousness and power in its plenitude. The discoveries made by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in regard to these three realms of psychic consciousness, spiritual consciousness... and enjoyment of union with the Divine in spiritual being, consciousness and delight must always be the first object of the yoga; its free enjoyment of the cosmic unity of the Divine becomes a second object; but out of that a third appears, the effectuation of the meaning of the divine unity with all beings by a sympathy and participation in the spiritual purpose of the Divine in humanity. The individual... generalization of yoga in humanity and this aim envisages three preparatory movements. There is, first, the movement towards spiritual fulfilment of the urge to individual perfection and an inner completeness of being; secondly, there has to develop the perfection of the spiritual and pragmatic relation of the individual with all around him; and thirdly there has to be a movement towards a new world, ...
... more thought-power) 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... the mad prophet would say? In them it is the human significance, the human manner that touches and moves Page 53 us – the spiritual significance remains esoteric, is suggested, is a matter of deduction. Sri Aurobindo has dealt with spiritual experiences in a different way. He has not clothed them in human symbols and allegories, in images and figures of the mere earthly and secular... consciousness, make a direct contact with truth and beauty and reality. It was Buddha's credit to have forged this missing link in man's spiritual consciousness, to have brought into play the power of the rational intellect and used it in support of the spiritual experience. That is not to say that he was the very first person, the originator who initiated the movement; but at least this seems to be ...
... a global opening in the entire nature and initiates a wealth of uplifting spiritual experiences which flood the being with light and bliss and raise its consciousness above mortality. "As a final result the whole conscious being is made perfectly apt for spiritual experience of every kind, turned towards spiritual truth of thought, feeling, sense, action, turned to the right responses, delivered... and participation in the cosmic movement, and an influx from the spiritual planes of Light and Power and Peace and Bliss into the human vessel, are some of the outstanding experiences of this middle stage of transformation, which is called spiritual transformation. At the third stage there is a victorious ascent beyond the spiritual ranges of the mind, beyond even the universal formula, into the... ceaseless sacrifice, a holocaust, an ungrudging renunciation of all that constitutes the happiness and solace of an exclusive spiritual existence in the material world. She has voluntarily travelled down far afield from the absorbed unitive life, which is held to be the apex of spiritual fulfilment, so that the uncharted subconscient and inconscient bases of human life may also be included in the union, and ...
... visible foundation of her spiritual and religious being, the others a large creative interpretation of her greatest period of life, of the ideas that informed and the ideals that governed it and the figures in which she saw man and Nature and God and the powers of the universe. The Veda gave us the first types and figures of these things as seen and formed by an imaged spiritual intuition and psychological... rendering still farther stripped it of its spiritual interest and its poetic greatness and beauty. But this was not what it was to the Vedic Rishis themselves or to the great seers and thinkers who came after them and developed out of their pregnant and luminous intuitions their own wonderful structures of thought and speech built upon an unexampled spiritual revelation and experience. The Veda was... imagery for the poetic expression of spiritual experience which reappears constantly in later Indian writing, the figures of the Tantras and Puranas, the figures of the Vaishnava poets,—one might add even a certain element in the modern poetry of Tagore,—and has its kindred movements in certain Chinese poets and in the images of the Sufis. The poet has to express a spiritual and psychical knowledge and experience ...
... egoism. But there was nothing false or unsound in Vivekananda's spiritual experience. This was not mere egoism, but the sense of what he stood for and the attitude of the fighter who, as the representative of something very great, could not allow himself to be put down or belittled. This is not to deny the necessity of non-egoism and of spiritual humility, but to show that the question is not so easy as... y, that too is a little difficult to avoid when greater horizons open before the consciousness, unless one is already of a saintly and humble disposition. There are men like Nag Mahashoy in whom spiritual experience creates more and more humility, there are others like Vivekananda in whom it erects a giant sense of strength and superiority—European critics have taxed him with it rather severely; there... as it appears at first sight. For if I have to express my spiritual experiences, I must do it with truth—I must record them, their bhāva , the thoughts, feelings, extensions of consciousness which accompany them. What can I do with the experience in which one feels the whole world in oneself or the force of the Divine flowing in one's being and nature or the certitude of one's faith against all doubts ...
... To Spiritual Connection and Openness ###April 25, 1932 Yes, the connection is always there in the self and the psychic; but if there are obstacles in the mind, vital and physical, then, the connection cannot be manifest or, if at all manifest, it is mixed with elements which make it imperfect and unstable. The true connection is the psychic and spiritual relation; the relation... relation in the other parts must be kept up on this psychic and spiritual connection and then it can be permanent. Sri Aurobindo ###April 25, 1932 a) Openness and, whenever needed, passivity, but to the highest consciousness, not to anything else that comes. b) Therefore there must be a certain quiet vigilance ever in the passivity. Otherwise there may be either wrong movements or inertia ...
... away): Dilip says that for music to be spiritual it must be conscious. SRI AUROBINDO: That is all right. NIRODBARAN: But can't one be unconsciously spiritual while singing? Can't one write spiritual poetry without knowing it? SRI AUROBINDO: I don't see how one can. If one writes spiritual poetry, one will be conscious of it. Cesar Franck had a spiritual influence in his music. When Mother asked... say Dilip's music is spiritual and Bhishmadev's is aesthetic. SATYENDRA: That is because Dilip sings Bhajans and religious songs. PURANI: What I have found in Dilip's music is that the atmosphere created is due to something other than the music—his personality, maybe. NIRODBARAN: Can pure music be spiritual? SRI AUROBINDO: Of course. SATYENDRA: So far as the spiritual atmosphere is concerned... concerned, it doesn't require a great musician to bring it. A spiritual person singing some devotional songs can create it. SRI AUROBINDO: That is why I don't grant the contention of the modernist poets that in order to appreciate modern poetry you must read the poems aloud, because a clever elocutionist can make much out of bad and commonplace poetry. A poem which has no rhythm will sound very beautiful ...
... mystic. We can then hold that a Yogi, a spiritual aspirant or even a mere aspirant – on the whole they mean the same. According to Brémond, a poet is he who has either fallen from the status of a mystic or has deviated from the path of inner discipline. He is of the opinion that the fount of a poet's inspiration, insight and feeling is either a spiritual experience or an experience inclined towards... blue and fell In the muddy grey river of Hell Unpierced by Heaven's seeing.) In our country also Rabindranath Tagore's name needs no mention. A spiritual aspiration pervades his poetic inspiration. It is evident that this spiritual aspiration is the source of his poetic creation. But let us listen to Madhusudan, the so-called iconoclast: Where is the world of the Brahman? Where... reckon on things of the material world. I have already said that the theme of the poet may not be spiritual; even then he derives from a subtle consciousness all his poetic inspiration. The author of Sahitya Darpan (The Mirror of Literature) tells us something profound and significant as regards the spiritual nature or form in poetic creation. The delight of poetry can be grasped neither by impure, lifeless ...
... The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths Other Spiritual Paths and the Integral Yoga Letters on Yoga - II Chapter II The Veda and the Upanishads The Vedic Rishis It is not I only who have done what the Vedic Rishis did not do. Chaitanya and others developed an intensity of Bhakti which is absent in the... the Veda and many other instances can be given. Why should the past be the limit of spiritual experience? I can't say whether any of them [ the Vedic Rishis ] attained the supramental plane, but the ascent to it was their object. Swar is evidently the illumined regions of Mind, between the supramental and the human intelligence formed by the rays of the Sun. According to the Upanishads those... niṇyā vacāṁsi nivacanāni kavaye —secret words that carry their significance only to the seer. They were equipped with an apparent meaning exoteric and religious for the people, esoteric, occult and spiritual for the initiates. That the people should not find out the real Truth was their intention; they wanted them only to know the outward truths for which they were fit. This picture of Vedic society ...
... following recommendatory words of Sri Aurobindo: "The very first necessity for spiritual perfection is a perfect equality." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 671) "Equality is the chief support of the true spiritual consciousness..." (Letters on Yoga, p. 661) Lord Krishna, the great proponent of spiritual synthesis, went so far as to define 'Yoga' as the 'attainment of equality', 'samatvam... discerning mind , to the Self, - not the philosopher's intelligent self, but the divine sage's spiritual self which is beyond the three Gunas, All must be consummated by a divine birth into the higher spiritual nature." (Essays on the Gita, p. 189) Yes, "a divine birth into the higher spiritual nature" is indeed the apposite solution. But that cannot be achieved soon. The sadhaka has to start... perfected, enlarged to its widest capacity, deepened to its spiritual rapture..." (Ibid., p. 677) "All indeed has to be changed, not ugliness accepted but divine beauty, not imperfection taken as our resting-place but perfection striven after, the supreme good made the universal aim and not evil. But what we do has to be done with a spiritual under-standing and knowledge, and it is a divine good ...
... and further developed. These methods, in due course, came to be known as Yogic methods, and the Veda can rightly be looked upon as the foundation of Yoga. However, as it often happens, spiritual knowledge and spiritual methods often get clouded Page 66 and deteriorated into external ritualism, and this seems to have happened in regard to the Vedic knowledge, as can be seen from the Brahmana... emblem of free India Let us first note the/act that the loftiest spiritual experiences are found recorded in the Vedic Samhitas, and it can be said that the spirituality of the Veda and the Upanishads was already synthetic and integral. An exclusive spirituality emphasises and remains confined only to one state of spiritual consciousness, — such as Page 69 that of eternal Silence... in the Veda and in the Upanishads like the Isha, or Kena or Katha or Taittiriya. The fullness of spiritual life is perceived in the great pronouncement of the Vedic and the Upanishadic Rishis: तेन त्यकतेन भुञ्जीथाः (by having renounced thou shouldst enjoy) is one of the formulas of the integral spiritual life; and there are several others in the Ishopanished itself, such as those relating to the Reality ...
... Part I — Recollections and Diary Notes Champaklal Speaks Others’ Spiritual Influences It was always a principle with Mother to discourage sadhaks from opening themselves to spiritual influences other than those of their Gurus. As you know, Sri Aurobindo has explained why it should be so. Once a well-known saint had come to our Ashram to see Mother.... “Mother, I am going to attend this function.” Mother: “What, Champaklal! You also are going there? Champaklal, take care.” C: “Mother, I am like a stone. I do not go to take or to get anything spiritual; I go only to see.” Mother: “All right, go. Interesting.” ...
... does not open the door to these forces — but that is without affliction, tears of bhakti, spiritual emotion or Ananda. Your experience was a very beautiful one — the inner being realised by it that which must be established in the waking state as the foundation of the spiritual consciousness and spiritual life. (3.7.37) ...
... who withdraw into convents, or the sannyasins here, those who abandon life to find spiritual life, who make a division between the two and say: "It is either one or the other." We say, "That is not true." It is in life and by living life entirely that one can live the spiritual life, that one must live the spiritual life. The higher consciousness has to be brought here. From the purely material... faith of knowledge. 1972 * One must not confuse a religious teaching with a spiritual teaching. Religious teaching belongs to the past and halts progress. Spiritual teaching is the teaching of the future; it enlightens the consciousness and prepares it for future realisation. Spiritual teaching is above religions and strives for a total Truth. It teaches us to enter into direct... direct contact with the Divine. 12.7.1972 * Here we do not have religion. We replace religion by the spiritual life, which is truer, deeper and higher at the same time, that is to say, closer to the Divine. For the Divine is in everything, but we are not conscious of it. This is the immense progress that man must make. 19.3.1973 Page 41 Unity, Harmony, Collaboration ...
... be very comfortable for the disciples, but there would be no room for spiritual aim and endeavour. Spiritual aims and methods are not easy or natural (e.g. as quarreling, sex indulgence, greed, indolence, acquiescence in all imperfections are easy and natural) and if people become disciples, they are supposed to follow spiritual aims and endeavours however hard and above ordinary nature and not the... close grips instead of a pleasant nodding acquaintance with the basic instincts of the earthly vital nature. I have had myself the experience of this rising to a height, during a certain stage of the spiritual development, of things that before hardly existed and seemed quite absent in the pure Yogic life. These things rise up like that because they are fighting for their existence - they are not really... many of us, the sadhaks of the Ashram, take a very lenient attitude towards our weaknesses. We adopt any one of three facile attitudes which are all equally inimical to the building up of a healthy spiritual life. The attitudes may be formulated in this way: 1."I don't care to eradicate my weaknesses. If at all, I shall attend to this task much later in my life, surely not so soon." 2."Oh ...
... sufficient qualification for him to be admitted into a spiritual group-life like our Ashram? Will that not introduce many an unprepared ā dh ā ra into the community and thus lead to a progressive derailment from its basic orientation? It is true we can't be too choosy about the new entrants. It is not that only sattwic people with a spiritual inclination will seek admission to our Ashram; along... Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny Criteria of Admission: A Suggestion If we would like to maintain the spiritual character of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, care should be taken to see that there is no lowering of the standard of admissibility for the new entrants. The issue is: If someone comes and says that he is ready -... opt to join the institution. And that is necessary too in a way. For, Sri Aurobindo has clarified: "It is necessary or rather inevitable that in an Ashram which is a 'laboratory' ... for a spiritual and supramental yoga, humanity should be variously represented. For the problem of transformation has to deal with all sorts of elements favourable and unfavourable. The same man indeed carries in ...
... Mahasadhika, carrying on that Sadhana herself. So how can the sadhaka say that he is alone on' the upward march of his spiritual itinerary? But the fact is that this deeper truth is not revealed to the sadhaka's consciousness in the early part of his sadhana. And in spiritual matters it is not the mental speculative knowledge which can be of much help. What is essential is to have the direct... The Practice of the Integral Yoga X Personal Effort and the divine Grace While walking on the thorny path of spiritual Sadhana the sadhaka should never forget even for a moment that he is not alone in his arduous journey. But if not alone, who gives him companions hip on the Path? Is it any human comrade who is referred to here? No, certainly... ātmadīpo bhava" - "Be a light unto thyself, Ananda" ? But this is only one side of the coin. The other side is that we are really never alone on the Path. And this is the deeper side of the spiritual truth. For me Divine's Eye is always fixed upon the sadhaka; the Mother Consciousness is always accompanying him at every step of his advancement. Not only that; in reality the Divine Mother is ...
... (Observing the Mother's Palm) For You, Mother, this bump is so prominently marked (Jupiter at the base of the forefinger); it is the spiritual centre. And look how the heart-line enters the spiritual domain. Yes, because the heart-line is under the spiritual influence. And these three lines above — which join the heart- line? In the books, they would have said this in... the heart-line which is under the spiritual influence. This is the spiritual influence which governs the mind, the vital and the physical, with the heart-line completely under its influence. Page 102 The Mother showing a mudra. Page 103 And Your success-line, Mother, touches the mystic cross, and goes up to the spiritual centre. It is so big! Yes... People know nothing and they are always talking nonsense. You should not listen to them. I tell you that it is very good. This energy which is within you, if you can turn it towards the spiritual goal, what would you not accomplish! No, it is very good. But, tell me, Mother, what is there that is special. That is my concern, it is not meant for increasing your Page ...
... There are many things that are spiritual that are not the essence of the higher consciousness. All that tends towards the transformation and helps to prepare it is spiritual. Psychic sorrow is a spiritual movement, but sorrow is not part of the essential character of the higher consciousness. Resignation, the ego's submission to the divine will, is a spiritual movement, but the higher consciousness... open the door to these forces—but that weeping is without affliction, tears of bhakti, spiritual emotion or Ananda. Your experience was a very beautiful one—the inner being realises by such experiences that which must be established in the waking state as the foundation of the spiritual consciousness and spiritual life. Psychic Yearning The yearning of the heart may be there but it should not... "strange" ideas. I still maintain that your views on the lack of all intensity in the psychic things or in the spiritual or their inferiority to vital pleasure are strange, because they contradict all psychic and spiritual experience except that of the mere vairagis and make the choice of the spiritual life itself (Nirvana seekers excepted) quite inexplicable. Your arguments are not convincing. What have ...
... consciousness. "When we begin living the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness takes place which for us is the proof that we have entered the spiritual life; well, yet another one occurs when we enter the supramental world. "And in fact each time a new world opens up, there will perhaps be a new reversal of this kind. "It's as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver, whereas the ... like saying that Sri Aurobindo did not have the key to the door he opened! His yoga is integral because, instead of confining the quest to the spiritual heights, he has told us repeatedly that our body too must participate and we must bring the Spiritual Truth down into our body and our life. The path of ascent and all the other paths, the other planes of consciousness, are part of an integral de... have made a purely devotional and "mystical" thing out of it. As for "the spiritual," that includes all the planes of consciousness above the ordinary mind. It is the path of ascent. And that is where I repeatedly and emphatically, and from experience, say that those great Experiences, which have to be turned into spiritual summits, are part of the mental bubble (including the overmind): they are the ...
... adequate capacity before one should think of spiritual initiation. The question, however, can be raised – the moderns do ¹ Mundaka , Ill. 2. 4 ² Swetaswatara , VI. 22 ³ Katka , I. 2. 23 Page 68 raise it and naturally in the present age of science and universal education-why should not all men equally have the right to spiritual sadhana? If spirituality is the highest... One cannot, at will, develop into a poet by sheer effort or culture. He alone can be a poet who is to the manner born. The same is true also of the spiritual life. But in this case, there is something more to take into account. If you enter the spiritual path, often, whether you will or not, you come in touch with hidden powers, supra-sensible forces, beings of other worlds and you do not know how to... of the procedure; for what on earth, he would question, has spiritual sadhana to do with cow-grazing? In defence we need not go into any esoteric significance, but simply suggest that this was perhaps a test for obedience and endurance. These two are fundamental and indispensable conditions in sadhana; without them there is no spiritual practice, one cannot advance a step. It is absolutely necessary ...
... forbidden any other different interpretation. He has clearly admitted that a spiritual interpretation is quite possible. Not only that; at good many places he has appended alternative spiritual interpretations. Even at places where any other interpretation did not appear at all plausible, he has resorted solely to the spiritual interpretation¹. Be that as it may, Sayana was committed to the ceremonial... only mysteries of spiritual yogic discipline. We fail to understand that the water-worship of Thales and the fire-worship of Heraclitus were not merely different aspects of Nature-worship. We do not like to believe that these terms "water" and "fire" can ever be the symbols of spiritual truths. We study the philosophies of Pythagoras and Plato. But we do not delve into the spiritual culture or esoteric... for the expression of subtle truths. In modern times we have managed to banish this practice from the spiritual field, but have not as yet completely succeeded in the realm of poetry. The Vedas have a spiritual mystery of their own. We do not say that it is we who have discovered that spiritual mystery for the first time. As regards this we have already referred to Sayana and the Nirukta. Even in ...
... become aware of a Self, a spiritual substance of our being, an existence exceeding even the soul-individuality, spreading itself into universality, surpassing all dependence on any natural form or action, extending itself upward into a transcendence of which the limits are not visible. It is these liberations of the spiritual part in us which are the decisive steps of the spiritual evolution in Nature.... evidently a spiritual consciousness which is other than the mental, and it testifies to the existence of a spiritual being in us which is other than our surface mental personality. But at first this consciousness may confine itself to a status of being separate from the action of our ignorant surface nature, observing it, limiting itself to knowledge, to a seeing of things with a spiritual sense and... not mental but spiritual and can be recognised as having a certain divine character, — the inspiration of a greater Self or the command of the Ruler of all being, the Ishwara. Or the nature may obey the psychic entity's intimations, move in an inner light, follow an inner guidance. This is already a considerable evolution and amounts to a beginning at least of a psychic and spiritual transformation ...
... discovers what it was and passes on into the subtle truth of things. It is a borderland where all the worlds meet, mental, vital, subtle physical, pseudo-spiritual—but there is no order or firm foothold—a passage between the physical and the true spiritual realms. The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening... one is thinking and acting as an instrument and under the inspiration of the Divine. Ideas are put forward very aggressively that can be valid to the mind, but are not spiritually valid; yet they are stated as if they were spiritual absolutes. For instance, equality, which in that sense—for Yogic Samata is a quite different thing—is a mere mental principle, the claim to a sacred independence, the refusal... Divine etc., etc. All these ideas are positions that can be taken by the mind and the vital and turned into principles which they try to enforce on the religious or even the spiritual life, but they are not and cannot be spiritual in their nature. There also begin to come in Page 301 suggestions from the vital planes, a pullulation of imaginations romantic, fanciful or ingenious, hidden ...
... as language should be when it attempts the revelation of spiritual reality. It can be simple but with a direct stroke and not with an easy-going fluency, or it can be rich but with a density of semi-occult semi-physical vision and not with a loose decorativeness of intellectual or emotional stuff" coupled with pleasing images. The spiritual style simple is in "outbreak of the Godhead in man". Just... fact of Spiritual Being. Again, inasmuch as the Consciousness of Supermind is a cosmic vision which is all-comprehensive, all-pervading, all-inhabiting and upholds by its immutable unity the variation of its self-deployment it exceeds the successions of time and the divisions of space: it is in that respect timeless and spaceless. Yet this is not a pure unitarian Consciousness, in which Spiritual Being... 2 Ibid., pp. 424-25. Page 300 all mind, life and matter in the light of a supramental Truth and the pulse of a spiritual Bliss will be to us our internal fulfilment of the Divine in a complete cosmic consciousness." 1 Our approach through spiritual philosophy to Sri Aurobindo's poetic vision is now complete. As "Overhead poetry" is at work here, the canons of the ordinary poetic ...
... of a new creative spiritual force. Intrinsically, therefore, there is no lack of sense in speaking of the same consciousness divided into two for purposes of the play. Whether Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are such a consciousness must be left to spiritual experience or intuitivised intellectual insight. One thing is clear: their joint endeavour is to bring about a radical spiritual change of the world's... challenges both imagination and conception, surely supra-physical or spiritual phenomena cannot be brought before the tribunal of the ordinary outward-going mind. Their nature, processes and laws, their possibilities, actualities and necessities are different from what is familiar to normal human experience. Either there is no spiritual reality and then we need not bother about Sri Aurobindo at all, or... that the biological division or a species into two sexes is some kind of representation of a twofold basic reality of being. Within each of us, spiritual experience reveals a twofoldness - Purusha and Prakriti, being and becoming, self and nature. In spiritual knowledge the creative world-principle is seen to be biune - Ishwara-Shakti - a two-in-one put forth from the Oneness in which manyness lies implicit ...
... Another dream, the spiritual gift of India to the world has already begun. India's spirituality is entering Europe and America in an ever increasing measure. That movement will grow; amid the disasters of the time more and more eyes are turning towards her with hope and there is even an increasing resort not only to her teachings, but to her psychic and spiritual practice. The final... too world-shunning asceticism which drew away the best minds who were thus lost to society instead of standing like the ancient Rishis as its spiritual support and its illuminating life-givers. But the root of the matter was the dwindling of the spiritual impulse in its generality and broadness, the decline of intellectual activity and freedom, the waning of great ideals, the loss of the gust of... era, the beginning of a new age. But we can also make it by our life and acts as a free nation an important date in a new age opening for the whole world, for the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity. August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident ...
... Teacher who imparts spiritual knowledge only to' those who are .capable of receiving it. There are not many who are really capable of receiving the light of spiritual knowledge. A certain mental and moral development in the right direction is necessary for a conscious spiritual evolution. Only when there is an unquenchable fire of aspiration for the Divine and a real thirst for spiritual knowledge, does... seeker inevitably meet the right Guru and undergoes the baptism of fire under his influence. And once the awakening touch is received, there is no rest for the soul till it reaches the goal of all spiritual seeking, viz., union with the Divine either in one life or in a few lives of continuous self-progression. Several years back from now, I had my first encounter with a real yogi whose miraculous... the atmosphere of peace that his very presence radiated. We soon became intimate and went together for long walks along the bank of the Jamuna which flowed sluggishly by. He narrated to me various spiritual experiences. I was not satisfied with the narrations and frankly told him that I could believe in the Divine only when some concrete instances of power were demonstrated to me. He only smiled at my ...
... and widely embracing harmonisation of our gains is both an intellectual and a spiritual necessity of the future. But just as the past syntheses have taken those which preceded them for their starting-point, so also must that of the future, to be on firm ground, proceed from what the great bodies of realised spiritual thought and experience in the past have given. Among them the Gita takes a most... barriers of all denials, including denials of materialism as also denials of asceticism and world-negating philosophies and spiritual disciplines. We are in a need of a new epistemology, a new philosophy of a denial of denials and a new synthesis of yoga in which spiritual disciplines of the past can all be reconciled and in which a path is opened up for an actual and living synthesis of Spirit and... to adhere to one of the theistic religions of the past or to entrench ourselves within the four corners of the teaching of the Gita. That would be to limit ourselves and to attempt to create our spiritual life out of the being, knowledge and nature of others, of the men of the past, instead of building it out of our own being and potentialities. We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons ...
... the mental being; into that the soul has to rise and through it to attain the perfect bliss of spiritual existence. If that could be achieved as the next evolutionary step of Nature here, then she would be fulfilled and we could conceive of the perfection of life even here, its attainment of a full spiritual living even in this body or it may be in a perfected body. We could even speak of a divine life... even outwardly we move. There has been a tendency in some minds to dwell on the spirituality or mysticism of the East and the materialism of the West; but the West has had no less than the East its spiritual seekings and, though not in such profusion, its saints and sages and mystics, the East has had its materialistic tendencies, its material splendours, its similar or identical dealings with life and... have powerfully influenced each other and at the present day are under an increasing compulsion of Nature and Fate to do so more than ever before. There is a common hope, a common destiny, both spiritual and material, for which both are needed as co-workers. It is no longer towards division and difference that we should turn our minds, but on unity, union, even oneness necessary for the pursuit and ...
... to be somewhat pale and abstract, or else insipidly intellectual-algebraic. Spiritual Word, and spiritual Symbol, carries the Power and Personality it is. Of this symbolic poetry let us take some examples from the Aurobindonian anthology to notice its inner-mental, overhead intellectual, occult, spiritual or else mystic facets in some brief manner possible in this context. If the present... birds to illustrate the luminous definiteness of symbols in mystic-spiritual poetry: "The concreteness of intellectual imaged description is one thing and spiritual concreteness is another. Two birds, companions, seated on one tree, but one eats the fruit, the other eats not but watches his fellow - that has an illumining spiritual quality and concreteness to one who has had the experience, but... mixed with mind or pure. The inner mind is not necessarily intuitive, though it can easily become so. The mystic mind is turned towards the occult and spiritual, but the inner mind can act without direct reference to the occult and spiritual, it can act in the same field and in the same material as the ordinary mind, only with a larger and deeper power, range and light and in greater unison ...
... powers either of physical or of spiritual darkness; in others that they cannot at all be powers of physical darkness, but may well be either human enemies of the god-seekers and sacrificers or else enemies of the spiritual Light; in yet others that they cannot be either human enemies or enemies of the physical Light, but are certainly the enemies of the spiritual Light, the Truth and the Thought... nor Shankara nor Ramakrishna had any idea of transforming the body. Their aim was spiritual mukti and nothing else. Krishna taught Arjuna to be liberated in works, but he never spoke of any physical transformation... "³ The same practice by Sri Aurobindo we find in relation to another spiritual Figure who stood very high in his eyes: "I would have been surprised to hear that... that I regard (in agreement with an 'advanced' Sadhak) Ramakrishna as a spiritual pygmy if I had not become past astonishment in these matters.... Is it necessary for me to say that I have never thought and cannot have said anything of the kind, since I have at least some faint sense of spiritual values? The passage you have quoted is my considered estimate of Sri Ramakrishna." 4 ...
... by Sri Aurobindo 1979-12-26 The flute is the symbol of the spiritual call or call of the Divine. Sri Krishna is connected with its playing—Sri Krishna who, is the Avatar from the Overmind plane. Champaklal has often heard the Divine's call from there—the magnetism of the spiritual consciousness. What is beyond the spiritual is the Supramental. Sri Aurobindo is the Avatar from the Supermind ...
... mixed with to something that until now remained outside their ken: the spiritual experience – the direct, personal, individual encounter with God. The Eastern Way – India To find what the West is lacking, the spiritual experience, we have to turn to the East, more especially to India, “the heart of Asia”, whose spiritual attainments have spread across the whole of Eastern Asia in the form of... according to a religious or ethical formula are not spiritual achievement and experience. These things are of considerable value to mind and life; they are of value 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... in their symbolical, spiritual sense, which remains valid underneath the developments in the last decades.) To this mutual self-discovery and self-illumination by the fusion of the old Eastern and the new Western knowledge the thought of the world is already turning. 2 – Sri Aurobindo The safety of Europe has to be sought in the recognition of the spiritual aim of human existence ...
... impostors in the world, and dangerous at that; it takes the spiritual instinct, the instinct of true spiritual purity, not to be deceived by them. Page 116 Many religions and sects are founded on revelations and miracles, and every bit of it comes from vital beings. It's one of the greatest problems in human life; I don't mean spiritual life, but the life of people who deal with the beyond... beyond. There are skies (not heavens) in the vital world that are truly paradises. Naturally the real divine element is lacking, but only spiritual purity and the true spiritual sense can show you the difference. All who remain within the vital or mental worlds are completely deluded. They see marvelous things, miracles in profusion (that's where you find the most miracles!). By neglecting to explain... Light can't be deceived. Because... it's indefinable, something the spiritual sense alone can feel: perfect security, perfect peace, perfect purity (although I hesitate to use the word "purity," which has taken on such an idiotic meaning); what I mean is the absence of all admixture. Page 117 To those with the spiritual sense, the most dazzling vital lights always seem to have something ...
... profound spiritual suggestion and an outward physical harmony of nobility and grace. A later work achieved a brief miracle of vital suggestion and sensuous physical grace with a certain power of expressing the spirit of beauty in the mould of the senses; but this once done, there was no more to see or create. For the curious turn which impels at the present day the modern mind to return to spiritual vision... of beauty, calm and restrained embodiments of idea, action or emotion in the idealised beauty of the human figure. The gods of Indian sculpture are cosmic beings, embodiments of some great spiritual power, spiritual idea and action, inmost psychic significance, the human form a vehicle of this soul meaning, its outward means of self-expression; everything in the figure, every opportunity it gives, the... Page 291 its achievement,—but much more by the concentrated divine passion of the spiritual overcoming of time and existence which the artist has succeeded in putting into eye and brow and mouth and every feature and has subtly supported by the contained suggestion, not emotional, but spiritual, of every part of the body of the godhead and the rhythm of his meaning which he has poured through ...
... have to say in answer is meant solely for those who sincerely want to lead a spiritual life; our words and recommendations have no validity nor any relevance in the case of others. Page 157 Conditions for recognising the Divine's Will First condition — The Divine and the spiritual life should occupy the place of prime importance in the sadhaka' s life. Everything... essential distinction between work and work so far as the necessity of their being offered to the Divine is concerned. For one who wants to grow in spiritual perfection, there are no great actions and small actions, none that are spiritually unimportant. Sixth condition — A sadhaka following the Path of the Yoga of Transformation should know that, much more than offering his actions... the direct and full awareness of it; for, he has not yet reached the advanced state of a concrete spiritual experience of the Presence of either the Divine or the psychic being. That experience will surely come with the further advancement of his sadhana. But at this early stage of his spiritual life, the sadhaka can at best expect to receive just a sign of the divine Will and that too expressed ...
... will find in the Divinity its spiritual significance. These things will not be to his mind intellectual concepts or this attitude to the world simply a way of thinking or a pragmatic dogma. For if his knowledge is conceptual only, it is a philosophy, an intellectual construction, not a spiritual knowledge and vision, not a spiritual state of consciousness. The spiritual seeing of God and world is not... feels, thinks, senses the Divine. For to the spiritual consciousness all manifest existence appears as a world of spirit and not a world of matter, not a world of life, not a world even of mind; these other things are to its view only God-thought, God-force, God-form. That is what the Gita means by living and acting in Vasudeva, mayi vartate . The spiritual consciousness is aware of the Godhead with... the Godhead manifest in the human soul and to the inner human vision, is our liberation from limited ego and our elevation to the higher nature of a divine humanity. For dwelling in this greater spiritual nature and not in the mortal weft, the tangled complexity of the three gunas, man, one with God by knowledge, love and will and the giving up of his whole being into the Godhead, is able indeed to ...
... Yoga The Spiritual Transformation Letters on Yoga - III Chapter I Ascent and Descent The Meaning of Spiritual Transformation What I mean by the spiritual transformation is something dynamic (not merely liberation of the self, or realisation of the One which can very well be attained without any descent). It is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness... into the spiritual plane. It is here that one releases and is released into the vastness, fullness, solace, freedom, peace and joy of the Infinite and becomes aware of the universal Self and the Divine. Its realisation is the foundation (when it is fixed and when one rises constantly above the body in the wideness of the infinite Being) of the spiritual state and the beginning of the spiritual transformation... veil and mixture and effect the full spiritual transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental-vitalphysical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher Consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual or divine) Consciousness to descend ...
... move with sure knowledge in the vast field of spiritual phenomena. That is the only way to test spiritual experience. I have myself tried the other method and I have found it absolutely incapable and inapplicable. On the other hand, if you are not prepared to go through all that yourself, — as few can do except those of extraordinary spiritual stature — you have to accept the leading of a... silencing of all thought — there was, first, what might be called a spiritually substantial or concrete consciousness of stillness and silence, then the awareness of some sole and supreme Reality in whose presence things existed only as forms but forms not at all substantial or real or concrete; but this was all apparent to a spiritual perception and essential and impersonal sense and there was not... any specific spiritual discipline. But what precisely do we mean by the word Yoga? It is used here in the most general sense possible as a convenient name including all processes or results of processes that lead to the unveiling of a greater and inner knowledge, consciousness, experience. Any psychic discipline by which we can pass partly or wholly into a spiritual state of consciousness ...
... about spiritual life?... Do you have a particular question? You mean you have started the meditations, Mother? Yes!... And giving you explanations on what I read. We have even begun, in the small class, to meditate on the disciplines which are necessary to lead a spiritual life. And when I took up the reading of the Dhammapada, we read many things leading to the knowledge of spiritual life.... to obtain only the first words of a teaching, then this teaching, this spiritual help becomes something very precious, like everything that is difficult to obtain, and you make a great effort to deserve it. Most of you came here when you were very small, at an age when there can be no question of the spiritual life or spiritual teaching—it would be altogether premature. You have indeed lived in this... ) 13 August 1958 Sweet Mother, in July 1953 you told us that after five years you would give us lessons on spiritual life. 1 I have brought what you said, Sweet Mother. Really! That is interesting! ( Mother reads the text given by the child ) Has it been printed? No, Mother. Oh! I like the last ...
... Mind displays a broad steady light of thought born of a spiritual and not intellectual consciousness: the reflective terms do not exist in their own right but as immediate formations of That which, in the language of the Upanishads, does not think by the mind but by which the mind is thought. The Illumined Mind has a greater intensity of spiritual light and comes forth with a direct vision of fundamental... realities rather than with reflective terms. It discloses the very colours and contours, as it were, of Truth. The Intuition has keen flashes of an intimate sense of things: it deepens spiritual sight into spiritual insight, the luminosity goes straight and bare to its target with little need of image or interpretation. Truth's body is touched and explored. The Overmind not only brings the closest... consisting of a pertinently enlightening passage from Sri Aurobindo's epic, Savitri, concludes the book. The disciple was aspiring to write systematically—with the help of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual influence, critical guidance and sometimes personal example—what the Master has called "Overhead Poetry" and distinguished as the most important element of what he has designated in general "The Future ...
... difiiculty; but in what figure shall we conceive the perfection of the body? In the past the body has been regarded by spiritual seekers rather as an obstacle, as something to be overcome and discarded than as an instrument of spiritual perfection and a field of the spiritual change. It has been condemned as a grossness of Matter, as an insuperable impediment and the limitations of the body as something... of a spiritual consciousness and with new forms and powers. It must be the same with the perfection of the body. The taking up of life and Matter into what is essentially a spiritual seeking, instead of the rejection and ultimate exclusion of them which was the attitude of a spirituality that shunned or turned away from life in the world, involves certain developments which a spiritual institution... can start at either end of our range of being and we have then to use, initially at least, the. means and processes proper to our choice. In Yoga the process is spiritual and psychic; even its vital and physical processes are given a spiritual or psychic turn and raised to a higher motion than belongs properly to the ordinary life and Matter, as for instance in the Hathayogic and Raja yogic use of the ...
... and this question can best be answered only when the psychic and spiritual domains are explored and when one is enabled to develop psychic and spiritual faculties of knowledge; and (c) the contemporary crisis of humanity has arisen because of the disbalancement between the material advancement on the one hand and inadequate spiritual progression, on the other. If, therefore, Page 145 this... distinction between psychic consciousness and spiritual consciousness, as there is a distinction between spiritual consciousness and supramental consciousness. As the Mother pointed out: Page 146 ...the psychic life is immortal life, endless time, limitless space, ever-progressive change, unbroken continuity in the universe of forms. The spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, means... material world. After centuries of experiments, materialism is gradually giving way to the pressures of new discoveries, which require exploration of the psychical and spiritual domains. Similarly, centuries of experiments in the spiritual fields have shown that the Page 141 neglect of material life and neglect of collective welfare result in poverty or bankruptcy and even in economic and ...
... is moulded according to a definite pattern, forming a closed circle; on the other hand, Asia basing herself upon the spiritual and the Page 148 other world has in quite a different way fashioned an altogether different culture-complex. One cannot take some spiritual element out of Asiatic culture and mix it with some profane element extracted from European culture, serving the product... Anselm and Paracelsus and the long line 'Of Christian savants and sages. The Middle Age had its own spiritual discoveries and achievements founded Page 150 on the Cult of the Christ; to these it added what it could draw and assimilate from the mystic and spiritual traditions of the Gr æ co-Latin world. The esoteric discipline of the Jewish Kabala also was not without... in fact and life how to embody it integrally. Europe's spiritual soul itself in the last analysis will be found to be only a derivative of Asia's own self. For all the Mysteries and Occult Disciplines – the Christian, the Platonic, the Eleusinian and Orphic, the Kabalistic, the Druidic – which lay imbedded in Europe's spiritual and religious genius, when traced further up to the very source ...
... intelligence, sinks to the depths Page 13 of darkness and inertia? First one must have all sorts of partial experience on the mental level, flooding the mind with spiritual delight and illuminating it with spiritual light; afterwards one climbs upwards. Unless one makes this upward climb, this climb to the supramental level, it is not possible to know the ultimate secret of world-existence;... Guru of the world indicated my path to me completely, its full theory... The defect of the old yoga was that, knowing the mind and reason and knowing the Spirit, it remained satisfied with spiritual experience in the mind. But the mind can grasp only the fragmentary; it cannot completely seize the infinite, the undivided. The mind's way to seize it is through the trance of samadhi, the liberation... or unify the Spirit and life; it dismissed the world as an illusion or a transient play of God. The result has been a diminution of the power of life and the decline of India. ... What kind of spiritual perfection is it if a few ascetics, renunciates, holy-men and realised beings attain liberation, if a few devotees dance in a frenzy of love, god-intoxication and bliss, and an entire race, devoid ...
... 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... 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 ... 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 ...
... the solution, who can clear our doubts and confusions? Only a spiritual person, a Yogi, can do that. But any and every spiritual person cannot do that. We have to approach someone who is not only highly advanced in the acquisition of suprahuman spiritual piety and love but is at the same time possessed of supramental spiritual knowledge. This Yogi should come to us not with his personal... neither the time nor the patience to refer to the extensive original sources. We fervently hope that some clarity will dawn on our readers' minds after they become acquainted with the occult-spiritual answers provided by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. We shall not mind if some hypercritical negatively disposed readers find nothing worthwhile in this book. The author himself has derived ...
... He said: "The Mother and I were both extremely well-impressed by Bosanquet's photograph which shows a remarkable personality and great spiritual possibilities. If he come here, we shall be glad Page 132 to give him help in his spiritual aspiration." (13-12-1938) Seldom have the Master and the Mother given so positive an estimate and evinced such a glad and even eager... he had so bright a future in the realm of spiritual attainment? It is, therefore, with profound pleasure that I put his name on record as one of the worthiest aspirants to the Integral Yoga. All the more fitting is it to associate him with the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother rather than with any Page 133 other spiritual discipline, because what Sri Aurobindo says... assistant. The delusion played havoc with him and he had to leave the Ashram. A wit coined a spiritual epitaph for him: "Undermined by Overmind." Yes, Indians too are liable to fall or go astray on the Yogic path. Yet, by and large, they have a more pervasive sense of the genuine and the spurious in spiritual experience: a long historic background charged with realisation on realisation by numerous ...
... been wrapped in complacent admiration of the spiritual vacuum that we have created, a Tropical African spirit in music and dancing and statuary has made an unholy alliance with a pseudo-Byzantine spirit in painting and bas-relief, and has entered in to dwell in a house which is found swept and garnished. The decline is not technical in its origin but spiritual." " Our abandonment of our traditional... traditional artistic technique is manifestly the consequence of some kind of spiritual breakdown in our Western civilization," ...
... in the earlier system of communication, and they swept through the highest minds of the nation and fertilised the soil of Indian 'culture for a constant and ever-increasing growth of spiritual consciousness and spiritual experience. And even when this turn was still evident, chiefly among the Kshatriyas and Brahmins, we find too among those who attained to the knowledge men like Janashruti, the wealthy... destruction of principle, but by a gradual fading of the prominent Vedic forms and the substitution by others. The psychic and spiritual endeavour of the Vedic hymns disappeared into intense luminosity, but there grew up at the same time more wide and rich and complex psycho-spiritual inner life of Puranic and Tantric religions and Yoga. III It has been said that Puranas existed in ancient times... Puranas, the cosmogony which is expressed sometimes in terms proper to the physical universe has a spiritual and psychological meaning and basis. The rich and endless profusion of Puranic stories have produced enormous effect in training the mass mind to respond to a psycho- religious and psycho-spiritual appeal that prepared a capacity for highest things. Not all the Puranas contain high substance uniformly ...
... beyond Mind. This is the great spiritual Odvssey that man has now to undertake consciously.If material science lays open before man a wide—practically unlimited- field of adventure, research and experience in the outer interstellar space, the supramental, is not without its own attractive elements. The Life Divine is a call " to spiritual adventure, to a spiritual exploration; it initiates a vision... supposed, that he had retired into some height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interests in the world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his yoga is not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the... and ____________________ 7 The Life Divine, P. 817 Page 9 give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was happening in the world and in India and actively intervened whenever necessary but solely with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action for it is a part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that besides ...
... itself the one considerable document that remains to us from the early period of human thought of which the historic Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries were the failing remnants when the spiritual and psychological knowledge of the race was concealed, for reasons now difficult to determine, in a veil of concrete and material figures and symbols which protected the sense from... existence of an outer worship, effective but imperfect, for the profane, an inner discipline for the initiate, and clothed their language in words and images which had, equally, a spiritual sense for the elect, a concrete sense for the mass of ordinary worshippers... 28 The central conception of the Veda is the conquest of the Truth out of the darkness of Ignorance... Brihadaranyaka— Lead me from the unreal to the real! Lead me from darkness to light! Lead me from death to immortality! splendorously crystallises this inner spiritual drama of conflict, pursuit and victory. Yet it is not always possible, it is not always wise, for average humanity to plunge straight into the conflict; the full blaze of the Truth may sometimes have ...
... its well-ordered division of economic function; its true originality and permanent value was in the ethical and spiritual content which the thinkers and builders of the society poured into these forms. This inner content started with the idea that the intellectual, ethical and spiritual growth of the individual is the central need of the race. Society itself is only the necessary framework for this... indispensable factor a grounding in the Vedic formula of spiritual knowledge. In these earlier days this training was given in suitable surroundings far away from the life of cities and the teacher was one who had himself passed through the round of this circle of living and, very usually, even, one who had arrived at some remarkable realisation of spiritual knowledge. But subsequently education became more... young around him or receiving the inquirer and seeker, he could leave his knowledge to the new rising generation as an educator or a spiritual teacher. In the last stage of life he was free to throw off every remaining tie and to wander over the world in an extreme spiritual detachment from all the forms of social life, satisfying only the barest necessities, communing with the universal spirit, making ...
... the guidance is determined by spiritual reasons which are of a flexible character and look only at what in each case are the spiritual conditions, results, possibilities. There is no other consideration, no rule. Music, painting, poetry and many other activities which are of the mind and vital can be used as part of spiritual development or of the work and for a spiritual purpose—"it depends on the spirit... that is no more the object of our work than the "spiritual communism" which Motilal put into it. To allow that to pass as the economic gospel of this Yoga would not do at all. In the Gita I only explain the spiritual sense of the cāturvarṇya ; I do not put that forward as my own economic or social teaching. Our aim is to rise to a higher spiritual consciousness and to create from there—to drag in... life proper to the Asram or the Yoga. 10 November 1938 No Politics in the Ashram It is supposed that all who come here come for the spiritual life and aspire to realise the Divine Truth, leaving all else behind them. If you have come here for the spiritual life, you have nothing to do with what others may be doing in the political field which you have left behind you. It is no part of your dharma ...
... serious lack of response to spiritual poetry. He, of course, protests that he cannot be considered totally unsympathetic to poetry of a spiritual order. "I can read", he says, "the Divine Comedy with pleasure , St. John of the Cross is a marvellous poet, poems of Kabir and Chandidas are exquisite, T. S. Eliot 's Ash- Wednesday is an excellent poem of spiritual tension, confusion and resolution... resolution in Ash- Wednesday are not spiritual in the true sense and they are more misty than mystic. Not that a state of mind is not infused into us by them but they give Page 64 us neither the concreteness nor the intensity of spiritual vision and mystic experience. Mr. Lal's ignorance of this fact proves that he has no clear idea of spiritual poetry. St. John of the Cross... oneness: Idea rotated symphonies of sight, Sight was a flame-throw from identity. All this is pure spiritual vision which seems to have made little impression on Mr. Lal during his reading of Savitri. But Savitri is spiritual philosophy as well as spiritual vision, and Mr. Lal is equally at sea with a poetry that fuses the philosophical mind with mystic symbolism and revelation ...
... all the diseases and to reinforce with their spiritual light the life-power of the body, more easily when one had faith but often even without conscious co-operation by the patient. They believed that the spiritual consciousness could achieve all kinds of undreamt-of results and that there were interconnections between physical events and spiritual movements. But they also had a poised scientific... Wordsworthianly into the heart of things and felt the whole universe as a Divine Being, charging even the most ordinary physical objects like the tables and chairs of my room with a wonderful spiritual presence. Towards nightfall I read several parts of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. In the middle of the night during a state of calm in-drawn-ness lines of poetry started to get composed in front of... supposed obedience to his orders. I used to send to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother every day the two or three poems that flowed out spontaneously with a strange burden of occult symbol and spiritual sight. I would also send bulletins of my progress in health and told them of the absolutely shocking unmedical behaviour of mine which still kept me improving. I stressed my utter faith in their ...
... improper. The Asram or the spiritual life is not a stage in which some are to be prominent or take a leading part or a field of competition in which one has a claim or can rightly consider himself superior to others. These things are the inventions of the ordinary human attitude to the world and the tendency is to carry it over into the life of sadhana, but that is not the spiritual truth of things. The... does she give these criticisms any value. It is only when the sadhaks see the futility of all these things from the spiritual level that there can be any hope that they will cease. In all these things there is nothing that ought to drive a man Page 398 from the spiritual life or make him go away from his Guru. It seems to me that it is only the Guru who can decide whether one is fit or... her go forward quietly with your work and sadhana until the time when the sadhaks are sufficiently awakened and changed to feel the need of greater harmony and union with each other. Let only your spiritual change and progress matter for you and for that trust wholly in the Mother's force and her grace which is with you—do not let things or people disturb you,—for compared with the truth within and the ...
... been gone into in the recent and past history of mankind that they do not need any re-iteration here. If adherence to moral and spiritual values constitutes civilisation, then admittedly we are not living now in a civilised world. This deterioration of moral and spiritual values applies equally to individuals and nations of the whole world as we know it at present. There is hardly any exception. No... of the Ego. A new orient tation of our life from the ignorant mental to spiritual and supramental consciousness is the call of the Spirit in us and to ignore this call is to invite certain defeat, death and disaster both for men and nations. It is the heightening, widening and deepening of the ignorant mental to the spiritual and supramental or truth consciousness that is the need of the hour. The... opposed to faked civilisation barring some hundreds, nay, even thousands of individuals to be found amongst the various nations who constitute the world community to-day. What are these moral and spiritual values which are the core of civilisation ? They are certainly truth, honesty, sincerity, uprightness, kindness, love, compassion and right and just dealings between individuals and between nations ...
... bodies of highly developed spiritual persons, even extending to the emission of an enveloping aura and there has been recorded an initial phenomenon of this kind in the life of so great a spiritual personality as Ramakrishna. But these things have been either conceptual only or rare and occasional and for the most part the body has not been regarded as possessed of spiritual possibility or capable of... 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, incapable... been found especially harmful by the spiritual aspirant and weighed considerably in favour of an ascetic rejection of the body. Sex and sexuality and all that springs from sex and testifies to its existence had to be banned and discarded from the spiritual life, and this, though difficult, is not at all impossible and can be made a cardinal condition for the spiritual seeker. This is natural and unescapable ...
... you can move with a secure knowledge in the vast field of spiritual phenomena. That is the only way to test spiritual experience. I have myself tried the other method and found it absolutely incapable and inapplicable. On the other hand if you are not prepared to go through all that yourself—as few can do except those of extraordinary spiritual stature—you have to accept the leading of a Master, as in... automatically happen by other processes—for instance, by the descent from above of a great spiritual stillness imposing silence on the mind and heart, on the life stimuli, on the physical reflexes. A sudden descent of this kind or a series of descents accumulative in force and efficacy is a well-known phenomenon of spiritual experience. Or again one may start a mental process of one kind or another for the... not or can there not be a higher than that highest, parātparam ? That is not a question of logic, it is a question of spiritual fact, of a supreme and complete experience. The solution of the matter must rest not upon logic, but upon a growing, ever heightening, widening spiritual experience—an experience which must Page 248 of course include or have passed through that of Nirvana and Maya ...
... and hate .and condemn and criticise others. Mere physical contact with the spiritual guide and preceptor is of no avail if the seeker does not foster the growth of truth, courage and love in his being. Where truth and courage and love are lacking, there is not only no spirituality but even the very foundation of spiritual life has hardly been laid. This is an elementary lesson which all seekers of... 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 90 ...
... consciousness. Spiritual reality was the central theme of his poetic creation: only and naturally he viewed it in a special way and endowed it with a special grace. We know of another God-intoxicated man, the Jewish philosopher Spinoza, who saw things sub specie aeternitatis, under the figure or mode of eternity. Well, Tagore can be said to see things, in their essential spiritual reality, under... -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 Tagore is sometimes called a Neo-Vaishnava... inner experience. A worshipper of beauty, unless he rises to the Upanishadic norm, is prone to become sensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even Shelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these poets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part of his intellectual equipment, no doubt, but nothing much more than that. In the other two it comes in as strange ...
... myself or others who have taken up the spiritual life had not enjoyed life and that it is therefore that the Mother was able to speak of a joyous sacrifice to the Divine as the true spirit of spiritual sacrifice? Or do you think we spent the preliminary stages in longings for the lost fleshpots of Egypt and that it was only later on we felt the joy of the spiritual sacrifice? Of course we did not; we ...
... Introduction Our Many Selves 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 i... psychic as its centre and governing principle. The aim of spiritual quest in the past has generally been to obtain liberation from the bondage to suffering caused by the illusory sense of a separate self, the ego, and thereby escape from the perpetual cycle of birth and death. According to Sri Aurobindo, the farther goal of spiritual evolution beyond liberation consists in the transformation of ...
... choose is a heart that will die. You take up the spiritual path only when you feel you cannot do otherwise. 27 October 1952 When the path is known it is easy to tread upon it. 19 August 1954 To follow the path to the end, one must be armed with a very patient endurance. 4 September 1954 Page 29 On the spiritual path each step forward is a conquest and the result... September 1954 The road to the Divine: always long, often dry in appearance, but always abundant in its results. Ascension: stage by stage one climbs towards the Consciousness. Spiritual ascension: fearless, regular, uninterrupted. One will pass through as many stages as it is necessary to take, but one will arrive. The intellectual attitude comes first and practice... little. What is very important is to maintain very alert the will to live and to be what one knows to be the truth. Then it is impossible to stop and even more to fall back. All human beings have a spiritual destiny which is near or far depending on each one's determination. One must will in all sincerity. 11 April 1965 All depends upon the choice of the force that you allow to make use ...
... centre of life. It is then the most hieratic side of a hieratic art that remains to us. These sacred buildings are the signs, the architectural self-expression of an ancient spiritual and religious culture. Ignore the spiritual suggestion, the religious significance, the meaning of the symbols and indications, look only with the rational and secular aesthetic mind, and it is vain to expect that we shall... ion and fails to open itself to the great things here meant by a kindred close response to some touch of the cosmic consciousness, some revelation of the greater spiritual self, some suggestion of the Infinite. These things, the spiritual self, the cosmic spirit, the Infinite, are not rational, but suprarational, eternal presences, but to the intellect only words, and visible, sensible, Page 273... a tremendous unity is revealed. Reinterpret intimately what this representation means in the terms of our own spiritual self-existence and cosmic being, and we have what these great builders saw in themselves and reared in stone. All objections, once we have got at this identity in spiritual experience, fall away and show themselves to be what Page 277 they really are, the utterance and ...
... the total transformation of our existence, it is not all that is needed for the largest spiritual change. In the first place, since this is the individual soul in Nature, it can open to the hidden diviner ranges of our being and receive and reflect their light and power and experience, but another, a spiritual transformation from above is needed for us to possess our self in its universality and t... bigger than a man's thumb, it can by the spiritual influx enlarge itself and embrace the whole world with the heart and mind in an intimate communion or oneness. Or it may become aware of its eternal Companion and elect to live for ever in His presence, in an imperishable union and oneness as the eternal lover with the eternal Beloved, which of all spiritual experiences is the most intense in beauty... beauty and rapture. All these are great and splendid achievements of our spiritual self-finding, but they are not necessarily the last end and entire consummation; more is possible. For these are achievements of the spiritual mind in man; they are movements of that mind passing beyond itself, but on Page 241 its own plane, into the splendours of the Spirit. Mind, even at its highest stages ...
... in terms of the spiritual awakening, jāgara ṇ a, but in terms of nidrā or the profundity of sleep attained in jagad-bhāva. Thus we find in Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha Rāmāyaṇa, a well-known treatise on Advaita Vedanta, that the great sage Vasishtha has delineated an ascending sequence of seven statuses of consciousness (saptadhā jñānabhūmi), beginning with that of a spiritual seeker who has... have termed the Universal Sleep; (ii)no conquest over this physical state of sleep is ever feasible unless and until the psycho-spiritual somnambulism is cancelled and replaced by a luminous wakefulness; (iii)So long as lasts the psycho-spiritual slumber, the body's sleep is, or can be, when enlightened and transformed, the only available means of escaping, even if for brief periods... day of true being, knowledge and power." (Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, p. 140) A psychological self-investigation far transcending its present artificial bounds, an occult-spiritual exploration of the total field of our being, reveals to us, as we have had occasion to point out before (Part Two, Chapter III), the truth that "we are not only what we know of ourselves but an ...
... will be a greater man of action or a greater creator. One may rise to spiritual planes of inspiration undreamed of by Shakespeare and yet not be as great a poetic creator as Shakespeare. "Greatness" is not the object of spiritual realisation any more than fame or success in the world—how are these things the standard of spiritual realisation? Of course you can [ do Yoga without being great ]—there... Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge The Avatar and the Vibhuti Letters on Yoga - I Chapter III Human Greatness Greatness Why should the Divine not care for the outer greatness? He cares for everything in the universe. All greatness is the Vibhuti of the Divine, says the Gita. Obviously outer ...
... mind or vital. The right vibrations I speak of are those that come from the psychic or from the spiritual above or take place in the mind or vital under the influence of the psychic or spiritual. If one aspires sincerely and rejects what has to be rejected, as far as one can, then the psychic and spiritual influences will more and more work, bring more and more true discrimination, support, stimulate... the uglinesses of the lower nature on the ground that they exist—if that is what is meant by realism. Our object is not to accept or enjoy these things but to get rid of them and create a life of spiritual beauty and perfection. So long as we accept these things, that cannot be done. To observe that these things are there and reject them, refusing to allow them to touch you, is one thing; to accept... method the Mother and I advise to all. Rejection is a principle element in this sadhana. But what I say is that one can reject best by bringing in the positive psychic Page 64 and spiritual forces through the pursuit of positive things like brahmacharya and the rest. I do not know what you mean by dissolution [ of desires ]. The principle of the Yoga is rejection—throwing out ...
... understanding the Master, for that ho imposition of one's own understanding on others is called for. As one progresses on the spiritual way, his understanding also becomes more and more clear till he is ready for realisation of the truth. After all, it is realisation that counts in spiritual life. A high development of mere intellect is not the aim of yoga. All knowledge is within ourselves ; only it has to... observation to make in his own unique and masterly way. From the inconscient beginning of man to his superconscient destiny, there is nothing in the whole process of evolution, material as well as spiritual, which has escaped his pen. Then, his writings are meant for all classes of men, from the struggling neophyte to those who are far advanced intellectually. There is nothing hazy or obscure in what... abstract as through the concrete realities of life. He reaches all either through the intellect or the heart. His letters Page 79 meant for practical guidance of the disciples in their spiritual endeavour are as simple, clear and lucid as possible. Those therefore that in the pride of their intellect think that they will be able to convey the message of Sri Aurobindo to others by their ...
... to a religious or ethical formula are not spiritual achievement and experience. These things are of considerable value to mind and life, they are of value 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... evolving spirit in humanity, and lives by the principle which it embodies. India is the Bharat Shakti, the living energy of a great spiritual conception and fidelity to it is the very principle of her existence. "² It was the feeling and living out this great spiritual truth, the feeling of a living spirit of India, Bharat Shakti that enabled the small band of Nationalist leaden to fire the imagination... in the centre of all human activities. Sri Aurobindo sees the course of Indian history as a, gradual and chequered growth towards a complete spiritual; living. " It is her founding of life upon this exalted conception and her urge towards the spiritual and Eternal that constitute the distinct value of her civilisation. And it is her fidelity, with whatever short-comings, to this highest ideal' ...
... The Spiritual Genius of India WHAT is it that we precisely mean when we say that India is spiritual? For, that is how we are accustomed to express India's special genius – her backbone, as Vivekananda puts it – the fundamental note of her cultute and nature, which distinguishes her from the rest of the world. What then are the distinguishing marks of spirituality? How does a spiritual co... and in the being. Keeping this difference in view, we may at once point out that Europe, when she is non-materialist, is primarily religious and only secondarily spiritual, but India is always primarily spiritual and only secondarily religious. The vein of real spirituality in European culture runs underground and follows narrow and circuitous by-paths; rarely does it appear on the top... the disposition of their psychic elements that we refer, to the tone and temper of the soul they possess and to a constant nearness of latent spiritual possibilities, that may at any time materialise, and the consequent possibilities of a spiritual impulse, that may at any time awaken. Other peoples have other and more concrete virtues to be proud of; but the Indian has his soul ...
... twenty-eight chapters: Vol I: 'Omnipresent Reality and the Universe' Vol II: 'The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution' Part I: "The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance' Part II: 'The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution. The argument, reduced to fundamentals, is simplicity itself. In the first volume, Sri Aurobindo describes the... not draw (as Sri Aurobindo's system does) from a fount of personal spiritual experience. There is, says D.S. Savage, a deadness, a lack of a living intuition at the root of Page 34 Gurdjieff's Gnosis, whereas Sri Aurobindo's vision of the Supermind is an integral unity of apprehension, "a primary spiritual intuition which is only afterwards elaborated by the reasoning mind... influenced by Nietzsche.. .The only two books that have influ- enced me are the Gita and the Upanishads. What I wrote was the work of intuition and inspiration working on the basis of my spiritual experience...Experience and formulation of experience I consider as the true aim of philosophy. The rest is merely intellectual work and may be interesting but nothing more. 58 ...
... according to a religious or ethical formula are not spiritual achievement and experience. These things are of considerable value to mind and life; they are of value 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... on these things and, very simply, to start on your way to be born into the spiritual life. When this happens to you, almost all the questions you ask yourself or ask me will be solved. And anyway, your attitude to life will be so different that you will understand what is meant when one speaks of living spiritually. And at that moment you will also understand a great thing, a very great thing:... perception and an instinctive urge or seeking without any acquired experience or clear knowledge. Even the formations which are the first effects of the perception or urge or the first indices of a spiritual evolution, must inevitably be of this incomplete and tentative nature. But the error so created comes very much in the way of a true understanding, and it must therefore be emphasised that spirituality ...
... of your spiritual reality. Vivekananda spoke and roused the Atman in man. Vivekananda spoke to the Atman in man, he spoke to the Atman of the world, and he spoke specially to the Atman of India. India had a large place in Vivekananda's consciousness: for the future of humanity and the world is wedded to India's future. India has a great mission, it has a spiritual, rather the spiritual work to... style and manner and atmosphere: it is catching, even or precisely when he refers, for example, to these passages in the Vedas and the Upanishads, magnificent in their poetic beauty, sublime in their spiritual truth, nee plus ultra, one can say, in the grand style supreme: Yasyaite himavanto mahitva He whose greatness these snowy ranges declare or , Na tatra suryo... Page 125 can carry you off your feet and make you do brave things. But that is a lower degree of character and nature, ephemeral and superficial, that is touched in you thereby. The spiritual leader, the Guide, goes straight to the spirit in you—it is the call of the deep unto the deep. That was what Vivekananda meant when he said that Brahman is asleep in you, awaken it, you are the Brahman ...
... your spiritual reality. Vivekananda spoke and roused the Atman in man. Vivekananda spoke to the Atman in man, he spoke to the Atman of the world, and he spoke specially to the Atman of India. India had a large place in Vivekananda's consciousness: for the future of humanity and the world is wedded to India's future. India has a great mission, it has a spiritual, rather the spiritual work... style and manner and atmosphere: it is catching, even or precisely when he refers, for example, to these passages in the Vedas and the Upanishads, magnificent in their poetic beauty, sublime in their spiritual truth, nec plus ultra, one can say, in the grand style supreme: Yasyaite himavanto mahitvā He whose greatness these snowy ranges declare or, Na tatra sūryo... Page 104 can carry you off your feet and make you do brave things. But that is a lower degree of character and nature, ephemeral and superficial, that is touched in you thereby. The spiritual leader, the Guide, goes straight to the spirit in you – it is the call of the deep unto the deep. That was what Vivekananda meant when he said that Brahman is asleep in you, awaken it, you are the ...
... not doing; no other punishment can be more real or more concrete. All this is immensely significant and valuable from the standpoint of spiritual growth, much more than things produced by external regulation and pressure. What is exactly a spiritual experience? It is something which puts you in contact with a consciousness higher than that you have ordinarily. You live in a certain... people usually understand fasting, bearing biting cold or burning heat, lying on a bed of sharp nails, that is to say, torturing the body in some way or other. That gives you only self-importance or spiritual egoism, nothing more. You acquire no true control or mastery in this way. People do it because it is so simple and easy, because it satisfies their vanity. You make a show of your ascetic virtues... you do it when it pleases you and you don't do when it does not please you; you take things quite easily. Of course there are some who do make the effort spontaneously. And that from the spiritual point of view has an infinitely greater value. You make the progress, because you feel within you the need to do so, because it is an impulse that wells up from your depths, not because you are ...
... spent entirely in the practice of Yoga, his inner spiritual life was pressing upon him for an exclusive concentration. So in April, 1910, he sailed for Pondicherry in French India. Sri Aurobindo had left Bengal with some intention of returning to the political field under more favourable circumstances ; but very soon the magnitude of the spiritual work he took up appeared to him and he saw that it... a complete retirement. Page 8 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... Spiritual bouquets to a friend Life of Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872. At the age of seven, he was taken with his two elder brothers to England for education, and he lived there for fourteen years. In 1890 he passed the open competition for the Indian Civil Service, but as he had no intention of accepting ...
... individuality xvi Soul (psychic) personality xv- xvi, 1,8,81,104 Spirit 83 Spiritual and psychic 22-25, 23 Spiritual change see Transformation, spiritual Supermind (the supramental) 100, 104, 107 tapasyā 95, 109 Transformation xxxi-xxxii, 84 spiritual 99, 100, 101, 102, Page 134 103, 107,... xix-xxii, 28, 30- 41,36, 79 pre-natal 39-40,71 opening of see above emergence of the psychic and orientation of life 37-38 See also Psychic being Psychic and spiritual 22-23, 23, 24 Psychic being XVI, 9, 12, 14, 19 choice of birth environment 74-75 discovery of 43 and the Divine 15,22,86 essential conditions 79 function ...
... You have written: "If the soul having reached the spiritual state wills to pass out of the terrestrial manifestation, it may indeed do so — but there is also possible a higher manifestation in the Knowledge and not in the Ignorance." I don't understand how the soul can be in Ignorance after it has reached the spiritual state. Is not the spiritual consciousness and all beyond it All Knowledge? ... every plane or everything below the Supermind influenced more or less by the Ignorance? I gather that the planes from the Higher Mind to the Over-mind are also of the spiritual consciousness. The planes below are of the spiritual consciousness, but when there is a dynamic action from them, it is always a mixed action, not an action of pure knowledge but of knowledge subduing itself to the rule ...
... we have used six illustrations of flowers under which their special spiritual significance is mentioned. The spiritual significance of these flowers was identified by The Mother. She said, "Flowers speak to us when we know how to listen to them. It is a subtle and fragrant language." The names of these flowers and their spiritual significance are as follows: Canna Xgeneralis (Physical Centre), D ...
... that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience―or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-Consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us that is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the constructions, repre... idea you have, an impression, it is not something true which carries its truth in itself. Sweet Mother, what is this "imperious law", this "spiritual and supramental law"? It is the truth of each being. Each being carries in himself his own spiritual law, his supramental law. It is not the same for everyone, it is not one single identical law. For each one it is the truth of his being, that... of his being. " Inadequate too is the very frequent attempt at a misalliance between the vital and the spiritual, a mystic experience within with an aestheticised intellectual and sensuous Paganism or exalted hedonism outside leaning upon it and satisfying itself in the glow of a spiritual sanction. " The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 128 What does Sri Aurobindo mean by "an aestheticised Paganism" ...
... 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 easier to do than the supramental. Also nobody can have the supramental realisation who has not had the spiritual. So far your opponent is right. ... field has been prepared by a certain amount of psycho-spiritual-occult experience) is drawn upwards above the Brahmarandhra to ranges above belonging to the spiritual consciousness proper and instead of merely receiving from there has to live there and from there change the lower consciousness altogether. For there is a dynamism proper to the spiritual consciousness whose nature is Light, Power, Ananda... centres and takes up more and more of the global consciousness till it becomes an established force there. 29 July 1933 The spiritual work of Krishna, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and others achieved nothing permanent. Whose work? So far as bringing in spiritual forces goes, I suppose their work was fairly successful. I am not aware that Ramakrishna or any other of those you speak of wanted ...
... translucidity of light and vision, feeling passes beyond itself into sheer spiritual ecstasy and the word rarefies into a pure voice out of the silence. The sight will determine the lyrical form and discover the identities of an inevitable rhythm and no lesser standard prevail against the purity of this spiritual principle. A spiritual change must equally come over the intention and form of the drama when... unending in its suggestion; not our identity in sight and spiritual emotion with the limited subconscient intention of life, but rather a oneness with something in it at once superconscient, immanent and comprehensive of which that is only a blind index will be the moving power of a greater utterance. And until we have found, whether by spiritual experience or poetic insight, this identity and its revelations... llectually all-conscious. It is no doubt this truth of a spiritually just and natural creation that some of the present ideas and tendencies are trying to adumbrate, but not as yet as understandingly as one could desire. The decisive revealing lyrical outburst must come when the poet has learnt to live creatively only in the inmost spiritual sight and identity of his own self with the self of his objects ...
... Savitri - Part 1 The Drama of Integral Self-Realisation The Spiritual Message of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is an epic poem of high spiritual challenge in the Yoga or Divine Union or Goal of Self-Realization it presents. Its spiritual conception is so all-encompassing, so integral that it gives birth to a power which transforms ... poet describes the universal harmonies, sympathies and wisdom of this Cosmic Consciousness, home of souls in spiritual sleep between lives on earth. We learn how souls plan there in this "fashioning chamber of the worlds" the adventures of their new lives. The watching eye of this spiritual traveller sees there his own soul and now, soul-conscious, becomes aware of the "Two-in-One", the Cosmic F... pleased and grant him a child to uphold his kingdom. After eighteen years the Goddess Savitri, wife of the Divine Creator, issues forth from the sacrificial flames and promises the king a radiantly spiritual daughter to spring from her own being. The child is bom and is named Savitri. She grows up like unto the Goddess of Beauty herself in embodied form and is blessed with godlike qualities. ...
... 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 suggestion but not lost in individuality. Its aim is not to express the ideal physical or emotional beauty, but the utmost spiritual beauty or the significance... in movement; but still the soul-motive is constitutive of the whole atmosphere. This is true even where the subject is not spiritual or religious but secular. Ldvanya in Indian painting is again a charm and beauty of that which is subtle, of that which is psychic and spiritual. Physical beauty is not the only beauty in the world; this truth is vividly illustrated in the Indian painting. The deeper... of the awakening mind of the child, the coming of younger humanity, to that in which already the soul of the mother had learned to find and fix its spiritual joy. The eyes, brows, lips, face, poise of the head of the woman are filled with this spiritual emotion which is a continued memory and possession of the psychical release, the steady settled calm of the heart's experience filled with an ineffable ...
... mind a mental idealism—these two things are the great fosterers of illusion. The spiritual path needs a certain amount of realism—one has to see the real value of the things that are—which is very little, except as steps in evolution. Then one can either follow the spiritual static path of rest and release or the spiritual dynamic path of a greater truth to be brought down into life. But otherwise— ... helping to serve your country, etc. etc. The man who turns to the spiritual life, has to leave all that behind him often and he is reproached by lots of people for his Adharma. But if he does not do this Adharma, he is bound for ever to the lower life—for there is always some duty there to be done—and cannot take up the spiritual dharma or can do it only when he is old and his faculties impaired.... and child are there too perhaps, so it is easy to praise his spiritual greatness and courage—but for living people with living relatives a similar action is monstrous. They ought to be satisfied with praising Buddha and take care not to follow his example. The tendency you speak of, to leave the family and social life for the spiritual life, has been traditional in India for the last 2000 years ...
... their spiritual progress. I have made the arrangement not for any temporary purpose but because it is the one way (considering what she is and her power—provided always the disciple is open and receives) that is true and effective. Page 390 [3] [August-September 1927] I do not think it necessary to answer the personal question you put me or announce who I am on the spiritual plane... about the work I have undertaken, as for instance when you imagine that I am working by spiritual means to bring about a worldwide conflagration and war between the white and the coloured races. This is a sheer error. The Mother has indeed told you that I do not believe in crude and violent external means for a spiritual work. As for the division of the human race according to their colour, it is in my... that she had seen that I was an incarnation of Shiva and discovered by intuition that I was working by my spiritual forces to bring about a war between the white and the coloured races next spring. This is all the foundation she has for her statement. There is no connection between my spiritual work and politics. Not only so but those like Anilbaran Ray who were political workers or leaders outside ...
... regarded as not possessed of any great spiritual possibility. It is rather an obstacle, a heavy weight holding the soul to earthly nature, and thus preventing its ascent either to spiritual fulfilment in the Supreme or to the spiritual dissolution of its individual being. But why is this universal distrust and denial of the body? Is the spiritual disability of man's physical organisation... who have in their spiritual venture sought to grow and rise in consciousness and transcend the obscurations of the unregenerate earth-nature, have found to their discomfiture that bodily existence, in general, and the body in particular are 'the soul's great difficulty, its continual stumbling-block and rock of offence'. Therefore it is that "the eager seeker of spiritual fulfilment has hurled... and have made the refusal or the resigned temporary endurance of the physical life the test of religious truth and of spirituality". 3 The traditional spiritual seeker has found the earth a rather impossible place for any spiritual being; earth-nature appears to him 1 2 Letters on Yoga, p. 24. 3 The Life Divine, p. 232. Page 9 in Vivekananda's simile ...
... will be felt not so much in understanding the meaning of individual words or phrases as in grasping in a living manner the insight that is uttered. The difficulty grows when imaged spiritual poetry is written - and spiritual poetry has to be imaged and symbolic if the veiled opulence of mystical realisation is to be caught in speech. To suit that opulence and be faithful to the atmosphere and light and... provided that that tense "in-tone" is present. The suggestion of true mystical and spiritual states is in such lines as Wordsworth's The silence that is in the starry sky. The sleep that is among the lonely hills or The light that never was on sea or land. In directly imaged verse, a rare mystical and spiritual atmosphere is reached in his The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep... raised. The Regret About "Preciousness" There was the English professor who, though giving high praise, regretted "the tendency to be precious and not simple enough". But can mystical and spiritual poetry that is deeply dyed in the unknown be ever simple? No matter how bare and straightforward the style and ordinary and current the words, will not a certain lack of simplicity result from the ...
... knowledge and virtue and peace to the eternal calm of the self and the spiritual ecstasy of the divine oneness. That spiritual joy is no longer the sattwic happiness, sukham , but the absolute Ananda. Ananda is the secret delight from which all things are born, by which all is sustained in existence and to which all can rise in the spiritual culmination. Only then can it be possessed when the liberated man... end, not physically by abstention, by immobility, by inertia, but spiritually to the Master of our being by whose power alone can any action be accomplished. There has to be a renunciation of the false idea of ourselves as the doer; for in reality it is the universal Shakti that works through our personality and our ego. The spiritual transference of all our works to the Master and his Shakti is the... know, live and enact the Truth that we have seen is the principal factor, the indispensable force behind a self-developing action, most of all behind the growth of the soul by works into its full spiritual stature. But there are also the mental powers, the instruments and the conditions which help to constitute the momentum, direction and character of the activity and are therefore of importance for ...
... 22 the environmental consciousness, but even this is liberation, not transformation. Spiritual liberation means to be free from ego and from the imprisonment in the mind and vital and physical nature and to be conscious of the spiritual Self and live in that consciousness. Spiritual perfection and fulfilment means that the nature should be spiritualised, new-formed in the consciousness... has to seek is the full opening to the Divine, the psychic change of his consciousness, the spiritual change. Of that change of consciousness, selflessness, desirelessness, humility, bhakti, surrender, calm, equality, peace, quiet, sincerity are necessary constituents. Until he has the psychic and spiritual change, to think of being supramental is an absurdity and an arrogant absurdity. All these... merely with the idea of being a superman would be an act of vital egoism which would defeat its own object. Those who put this object in the front of their preoccupations invariably come to grief, spiritually and otherwise. The aim of this Yoga is, first, to enter into the divine consciousness by merging into it the separative ego (incidentally, in doing so one finds one's true individual self which is ...
... between the Divine Truth and the manifest creation which is the starting-point of most spiritual experience. " Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 110 I don't understand the meaning. Why is this opposition the starting-point of spiritual experience? What is ordinarily called a spiritual experience is the intense need for something other than the life one lives, and... for a better state. It is this that is generally at the root of spiritual experiences: it is something negative. The positive need to know the Divine and unite with Him usually comes much later. I say usually; there are exceptions, but usually it is at first a flight from the miseries of life which pushes you towards the spiritual life. Very few people, if they were in a state of perfect inner and... departure from the world and its activities, a supreme release and quietude were the sole aim of the seeker, the three great fundamental realisations 1 would be sufficient for the fulfilment of his spiritual life: concentrated in them alone he could suffer all other divine or mundane knowledge to fall away from him and himself disencumbered depart into the eternal silence. But he has to take account of ...
... 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 is necessary for the overcoming of the ego and the mental preferences and the... respective places freedom and discipline should occupy in the ordering of our Ashram community. It is necessary to remember at the very outset that any attempt at a large-scale collective spiritual life is always liable to be vitiated by the imperfections of the individual seekers, also by the intrusion of the unregenerate mental, vital and physical consciousness into the higher truth that is... self-discipline and hence become a destabilising factor for the whole collectivity? There should no doubt be in the Ashram for all its members total freedom to grow in consciousness and realise their spiritual destiny in their own way. But that does not mean that there should Page 62 be licence for any member to injure the interests of the group, to disturb others in their effort at self- ...
... difficulty; but in what figure shall we conceive the perfection of the body? In the past the body has been regarded by spiritual seekers rather as an obstacle, as something to be overcome and discarded than as an instrument of spiritual perfection and a field of the spiritual change. It has been condemned as a grossness of Matter, as an insuperable impediment and the limitations of the body as something... n of a spiritual consciousness and with new forms and powers. It must be the same with the perfection of the body. The taking up of life and Matter into what is essentially a spiritual seeking, instead of the rejection and ultimate exclusion of them which was the attitude of a spirituality that shunned or turned away from life in the world, involves certain developments which a spiritual institution... can start at either end of our range of being and we have then to use, initially at least, the means and processes proper to our choice. In Yoga the process is spiritual and psychic; even its vital and physical processes are given a spiritual or psychic turn and raised to a higher motion Page 523 than belongs properly to the ordinary life and Matter, as for instance in the Hathayogic and ...
... difficulty; but in what figure shall we conceive the perfection of the body? In the past the body has been regarded by spiritual seekers rather as an obstacle, as something to be overcome and discarded than as an instrument of spiritual perfection and a field of the spiritual change. It has been condemned as a Page 127 grossness of Matter, as an insuperable impediment and the limitations... of a spiritual consciousness and with new forms and powers. It must be the same with the perfection of the body. The taking up of life and Matter into what is essentially a spiritual seeking, instead of the rejection and ultimate exclusion of them which was the attitude of a spirituality that shunned or turned away from life in the world, involves certain developments which a spiritual institution... can start at either end of our range of being and we have then to use, initially at least, the means and processes proper to our choice. In Yoga the process is spiritual and psychic; even its vital and physical processes are given a spiritual or psychic turn and raised to a higher motion than belongs properly to the ordinary life and Matter, as for instance in the Hathayogic and Rajayogic use of the ...
... Shankara, he is second to none in acknowledging the truth of the spiritual experiences on which these philosophies were based and the great contributions made to spirituality by Buddha and Shankara. Similarly, although he does not favour asceticism, he pays high tribute to asceticism and recognise the value of the spiritual experience supporting it. 4 Page 258 ... his theory verifiable? Sri Aurobindo has explained several times how spiritual truths require verification of a kind other than what is feasible in physical sciences. In A Defence of Indian Culture, he refers to experience, experimental analysis and synthesis, reason and intuition as the tests which are valid for spiritual truths as they are for scientific truths. This is also explained in... society whose end is man, not the production of objects. This Marx sounds almost like a resident of Auroville or of some such spiritually oriented community because his primary concern for self-realization is, what I would call, basically spiritual. In some places in the Manuscripts he seems to suggest that some primordial act of alienation has taken place in human development which ...
... moment; (iv) quietening and purification of the mind and heart and the vital of the sadhaka; (v) opening of all the parts of the lower nature towards the spiritual consciousness reigning above; (vi) mixing of sweetness to the dry rigours of spiritual discipline; (vii) being able to recognise the undesirable impulses of the lower nature not as one 's own but alien influence s invading from outside.... The Practice of the Integral Yoga XX On the psychic Awakening The path of spiritual sadhana has been compared to a razor 's edge, ksurasya dhārā; it is very very difficult to tread. At every turn of the way there is the possibility of an ambush; at every moment of the journey there arises the dilemma of how to choose the right course of action. Besides... of the Way that leads to the complete Siddhi of the Integral Yoga. The three following passages from Sri Aurobindo' s writings will make the position clear: Page 258 (1) "In the spiritual knowledge of self there are three steps of its self-achievement which are at the same time three parts of the one knowledge. "The first is the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought ...
... 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 inevitably from it. In the Upanishads, which preceded the Darshanas, the spiritual realisations were not yet mentally systematised or... Evolution and the Earthly Destiny Darshana and Philosophy THERE is a mental approach to spiritual truths and there is a direct and immediate approach or rather contact. The mind sees as though through a mist, a darkling glass, a more or less opaque veil, and the thing envisaged presents a blurred and not unoften a deformed appearance. The mind has its... below it and strains to look at what is above and beyond. On the other hand, if the consciousness is stationed above the mind, that is to say, if it has direct access or contact with the truth, the spiritual reality, in that case, mind need not act as a veil, it too can be made transparent, and suffused with the higher light, it too can translate faithfully, present and embody the reality beyond somewhat ...
... 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 inevitably from it. In the Upanishads, which preceded the Darshanas, the spiritual realisations were not yet mentally systematised or... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Darshana and Philosophy THERE is a mental approach to spiritual truths and there is a direct and immediate approach or rather contact. The mind sees as though through a mist, a darkling glass, a more or less opaque veil, and the thing envisaged presents a blurred and not unoften a deformed appearance. The mind... below it and strains to look at what is above and beyond. On the other hand, if the consciousness is stationed above the mind, that is to say, if it has direct access or contact with the truth, the spiritual reality, in that case, mind need not act as a veil, it too can be made transparent, and sufflused with the higher light, it too can translate faithfully, present and embody the reality beyond somewhat ...
... behind these inner parts; third, the higher planes of the spiritual consciousness posited in Yogic psychology above the mind-level. Most of the spiritual poetry so far has drawn its inspiration either from the luminous subliminal regions or from the psychic. Except in very rare cases there hardly exists any poetry derived from the spiritual planes above the mind. Poetry drawing its inspiration... symbol of the spiritual silence which precedes the fullness of divine revelation: The darkness is a miracle of death Into mysterious God-life brimming high With dewy singlehood of earth and sky. Page 244 To understand Mr. Sethna's poetry we must go beyond mere intellectual judgment. We must receive its impact inwardly, by spiritual feeling... he picked out the attempt to cast off the more externalised forms of poetic expression and to seek for a pure and authentic intuitive language, to bring forth the living truths of the inmost spiritual being, to reveal its light and vision, not in the inadequate speech of the surface mind but in the inspired and revelatory accent of Spirit itself. This attempt has not always been successful ...
... While referring to the supramental planes lately, I did not mean the supermind, but simply the spiritual planes above the human mind. To separate mind, vital and physical from each other, is there no need of the higher spiritual planes? Spiritual and supramental are not the same thing. The spiritual planes from higher mind to overmind are accessible to the old sadhanas so there is no difficulty... during such long periods in trance, since his goal is not so high? Do? Why should he want to do anything if he was in the eternal peace or Ananda or union with the Divine? If a man is spiritual and has gone beyond the vital and mind, he does not need to be always "doing" something. The self or spirit has the joy of its own existence. It is free to do nothing and free to do everything — but... Highest, the Infinite and Eternal is not anything worth doing or recommending to anybody — is "not a very difficult stage"! Nothing new! Why should there be anything new? The object of spiritual seeking is to find out, what is eternally true, not what is new in Time. From where did you get this singular attitude towards the old Yogas and Yogis? Is the wisdom of the Vedanta ...
... - 1931 Questions and Answers (1929-1931) True Humility - Supramental Plasticity - Spiritual Rebirth As I have often been questioned about it, I shall touch briefly on the meaning of true humility, supramental plasticity and spiritual rebirth. Humility is that state of consciousness in which, whatever the realisation, you know the infinite is still in front... evident fact to each and all, a permanent proof of the transformation which will convince even the most sceptical. The bodily transformation will be the supreme spiritual rebirth—an utter casting away of all the ordinary past. For spiritual rebirth means the constant throwing away of our previous associations and circumstances and proceeding to live as if at each virgin moment we were starting life... true soul in us which is always surrendered to the Divine, all bondage ceases. Then incessantly life begins afresh, then the past no longer cleaves to us. To give you an idea of the final height of spiritual rebirth, I may say that there can be a constant experience of the whole universe actually disappearing at every instant and being at every instant newly created! Page 177 ...
... But the condition of human life remained almost the same. Page 13 The human civilization is waiting for the fourth and final revolution that is the spiritual revolution. The Divine Consciousness with the spiritual power will continue to work silently and universally. Divine Power — Divya Shakti — moves in mankind from mind to mind and creates a revolution — Deva Manmani Sancaranti... condition in man, in society, in States, the like of which we have not seen before. This condition prevailed for a long time. Such involution and revolution continued. Now begins an Evolution - a silent spiritual Evolution. This Revolution and Evolution sometimes go separately sometimes go together side by side. Sri Aurobindo has said that mankind in the past history has experienced many kinds of revolutions... world's highest wisdom, with the greatest tapasya, with the supernal light. People are coming there from different parts of the world, they are seeing and realising the living example of the future spiritual life of mankind. They are going back, imbibing the new life of the future. One day gradually they themselves will change the whole society. Sri Aurobindo's Relics are now going to different parts ...
... Page 10 each line of spiritual experience to its farthest point, and chose to look from that farthest point at all existence, so as to see what truth or power such a view could give it. It tried to know the whole of divine nature and to see too as high as it could beyond nature and into whatever there might be of supradivine. When it formulated a spiritual atheism, it followed that to its... assert a divinity in the people and could cry to the monarch at the height of his power, "O king, what art thou but the head servant of the demos?" Its idea of the golden age was a free spiritual anarchism. Its spiritual extremism could not prevent it from fathoming through a long era the life of the senses and its enjoyments, and there too it sought the utmost Page 11 richness of sensuous... 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, constant, always recurrent; it is the support of all the rest. The first age of India's greatness was a spiritual age when she sought passionately for ...
... spirituality is fundamentally a search of the knowledge that liberates (sa vidya ya vimuktaye). As it is declared, true knowledge is not intellectual knowledge but spiritual knowledge. Both the moral and the spiritual are to be distinguished from what is called "religious" when we speak of religious instruction. Religion, which can be called sampradaya has the following distinguishing... going beyond into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in itself, but only as an expression of a complex of certain qualities, which are, for the time being, for the given individual, necessary and useful in an upward journey. For the spiritual consciousness, what is commonly called vice has, too, behind it a complex of certain... things, which are not spiritual or sacred. In the Indian context, however, secularism means comprehensiveness in which all religions receive equal protection, treatment and respect, and in which there is place for every one whether he belongs to one religion or another or to no religion. Again, Indian secularism encourages us to approach everything, whether material or spiritual, with a sense of sacredness ...
... experience; this means that there are thousands of different things which can be called spiritual experiences. Should we aspire to have a spiritual experience? I think it is wiser to aspire to make progress or to be more conscious or to be better or do better than aspire for a spiritual experience; because that might open the door to more or less imaginary and falsified experiences, to movements... try, but they try spontaneously. Of course from the spiritual point of view this is infinitely more valuable. The progress you will make because you feel within yourself the need to make it, because it is an impulsion that pushes you forward spontaneously, and not because it is something imposed on you like a rule—this progress, from the spiritual point of view, is infinitely greater. All in you that... ease, and this is indeed the most concrete punishment he has. And so, all these movements, from the point of view of the inner spiritual growth, have Page 431 an infinitely greater value than when they are the result of an outer rule. You speak of spiritual experience. What is an experience and how can one have it? It is something which puts you in contact with a consciousness higher ...
... sources. But intuition and inspiration are not only spiritual in their essence, they are the characteristic means of all spiritual vision and utterance; they are rays from a greater and intenser Light than the tempered clarity of our intellectual understanding. Ordinarily these powers are turned in human action and creation to a use which is not spiritual and not perhaps their last or most intrinsic purpose... or another the spiritual faculties of intuitive hearing and seeing must climb at last to the expression of things spiritual and eternal and their power and working in temporal things. Poetry will yet find in that supreme interpretation its own richest account, its largest and Page 101 most satisfied possible action, its purest zenith of native force. An ideal and spiritual poetry revealing... carried beyond themselves by the sudden emergence of some half-mystical Celtic turn of the national mind into supra-intellectual sources of inspiration. Insufficiently supported by any adequate spiritual knowledge, unable to find except rarely the right and native word of their own meaning, these greater tendencies faded away or were lost by the premature end of the poets who might, had they lived ...
... of Beauty and creative joy of the deepest possible aesthetic experience and expression. When we come to the field of moral and spiritual values, the situation is rather difficult and complex. Is there, we may ask, any valid distinction between moral and spiritual values? In answer, it may be said that much depends upon what we intend to include in our definition of the word "morality" or in the... and spiritual values can be practised irrespective of whether one believes in one religion or another or whether one believes in no religion. Both morality and spirituality can be independent of rituals and ceremonies and of any acts specifically prescribed by any particular religion. And both of them are independent of any authority except that of one's own free judgement and direct spiritual experience... growth of the deepest aspirations of the collectivity and of the individuals that constitute the collectivity. Dharma can be regarded as an ordered system of moral and spiritual values. Values that we seek in the moral and spiritual domain are those of sincerity, faithfulness, obedience to whatever one Page 15 conceives to be the highest, gratitude, selflessness, freedom from egoism ...
... dictate its spiritual course, and, in spite of the Guru's leading and the soul's experiences, it strives to force its consciousness and nature into a preconceived mould and pattern. This stress and domination of the mental ego spells an arrest of the spiritual evolution, though it may rig out an ethical Joseph and make him masquerade as a spiritual Paul. What is most needed in spiritual life is... packed with suggestions, the Mother has embodied three invaluable instructions which every spiritual seeker would do well to lay to heart and practise. The first is that the external circumstances have not much intrinsic importance. Their value lies in the idea we form and the use we make of them. In spiritual life it is always the inner condition, the trend and drift of the psychological elements... and converting them altogether ? The last question raises an important issue. Spiritual victory has two aspects, the inner and the outer; and a complete victory must comprise both. Self-mastery and world-mastery, swarājya-siddhi and sāmrājya-siddhi have been the highest ideal of the most dynamic spiritual cultures of the remote past. But self-mastery or swarājya-siddhi is the first i ...
... the preparation of "man’s mind, life and bodily existence for the spiritual consciousness to take it up; it has to lead him to that point where the inner spiritual light begins fully to emerge.”² If religion is to accomplish its real mission, it must start with a double movement of revival and reform. It must re- vive its spiritual core and purify its forms of all dross and distortion. Forms are... and it is believed that a devout following of their injunctions in the growing light of one's intelligence is the sanest and safest method of spiritual progress. An ethical eclecticism has thus come to be regarded by some as the high water-mark of spiritual culture, because it is rational, practical and attractively catholic, and there is an instinctive dread and distrust of all that is mystic or esoteric... pattern, everybody is to be made uniformly and faultlessly the same. It is because morality is of this rigid unreal nature that it is in its principle and its working the contrary of the spiritual life. The spiritual life reveals the one essence in all, but reveals too its infinite diversity; it works for diversity in oneness and for perfection in that diversity. Morality lifts up one artificial standard ...
... steadfast intensity, and no other spiritual- achievement, however high it may be, can fully satisfy those who have once had a glimpse of the unimaginable- glory of this consummation. The aspiration of the individuals who have been inspired by this vision must needs,. therefore, be different from the aspiration of those who. have been following the traditional spiritual urge;—it must be an original, pioneer... unity. There is something revolutionary in the very grain of this call and aspiration, .a bold departure from the beaten track, and the germinal idea of an unprecedented spiritual fulfilment. Born of an assimilation of the highest spiritual aspirations of the past, this call embodies the Time-Spirit of the present, and heralds the great Advent of which the seers have seen visions, and the poets sung in... ion,. on the other. Much of the criticism and suspicion to which religious or spiritual life is often exposed derives its justification from this want of calm and collected poise in its followers. A calm and confident strength, entirely reliant" upon the divine Grace, is the best condition for progress. in the spiritual life. Equality and calm go hand in hand, helping each other., The Gitâ, following ...
... work any spiritual value? No present value spiritually—it may have a mental value. It is the same with the work—it has a value of moral training, discipline, obedience, acceptance of work for the Mother. The spiritual value and result come afterwards when the consciousness in the vital opens upward. So with the mental work. It is a preparation. If you cannot yet do it with the true spiritual consciousness... for it. May 4, 1934 I seem to be contented with myself, in peace and bliss and have nothing to pray for. Is this not tamasic peace in a sattwic garb? It is far more favourable to spiritual progress than being miserable and depressed or in vital revolt and agitation and disturbance. I have ceased even to aspire, believing that you will give me inspiration. I simply refuse to make... the Divine. One who has realised as the Mother had realised in the midst of terrible sufferings & difficulties that even these came from the Divine and were preparing her for her work can make a spiritual use of such an attitude. For others it may lead to wrong conclusions. May 14, 1934 In some cases you don't seem to like people to be engrossed in literary work. Can it be taken as a general ...
... the religious approach to the spiritual; for it is the spiritual approach that is the genius of India; in fact, one might even say that it is the very purpose of India's existence. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "Afterwards the work for the Divine will become more possible and it may be well that the dream, if it is a dream, of leading the world towards the spiritual light, may even become a reality... problem will make it easier for world unity to take shape. This can only be done by making spirituality the basis of unity; in other words, by going beyond the religious approach into the spiritual approach. The spiritual framework assures unity on the basis of diversity. We divide this part of the book into four parts. 1. The first part deals with the inevitability of... study the aspects that unite the different parts of the subcontinent. We shall study and analyse all the elements that make for unity — the geographical, the economic, the cultural and the religio-spiritual aspects. We will try to show that in all these areas, there is a deep underlying core of unity. These elements have to be highlighted and brought to the forefront and firmed up to establish a lasting ...
... rather than Page 175 used for the intended psychic and spiritual purpose. 7 March 1936 You write, "Certainly very few seem to realise what a possibility has been given them here." What precisely do you mean by "possibility"—possibility of what? I was not speaking of any particular thing—but the whole spiritual possibility due to the Mother's presence here. Very few realise what... Letters on the Mother Letters on the Mother The Mother's Presence The Mother with Letters on the Mother Spiritual Possibility due to the Mother's Presence How much freedom is given to every sadhak here! But how many of us know what is meant by a Guru and how to respect him and treat him? Certainly very few seem to realise what a possibility has been ...
... action without attachment is possible, action without ego is possible. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga p. 684) Many are the spiritual seekers who would feel skeptic about the feasibility of the high goal of our spiritual endeavour which is no less than the dynamic divinisation of our total existence even to the dark dungeon of the subconscient. What the Yoga of Transformation... actions (sarva ṁ karma parityajya)." 1 It is thus that actions are supposed to fall off from the life of a traditional spiritual seeker as he advances on the way of Illumination. Sri Ramakrishna expresses this supposedly indubitable fact of all true spiritual life in the following two parables: "In the Kirtan the devotee first sings 'Nitāi āmar mātā hāti' ('My Nitai dances like... the world to its foundation through the strength of his intellectual and spiritual powers. I have prayed that the Divine Mother may keep this realisation of the Absolute veiled from Naren. There is much work to be done by him." 1 We have made a brief survey of some of the main grounds upon which most spiritual seekers would seek to contest the possibility of any divine transformation ...
... impulsion, its spiritual choice. But in the Way of Works another prospect opens; for travelling on that path, we can enter into liberation and perfection by becoming of one law and power of nature with the Eternal; we are identified with him in our will and dynamic self as much as in our spiritual status; a divine way of works is the natural outcome of this union, a divine living in a spiritual freedom the... soul; it must come to him or out of him as a natural result of his spiritual union with the Divine and not be formed by an edifying construction of the mental thought and will, the practical reason or the social sense. In the ordinary life a personal, social or traditional constructed rule, standard or ideal is the guide; once the spiritual journey has begun, this must be replaced by an inner and outer... we follow or enjoined by the spiritual guide and master, the Guru, or else dictated by a Guide within us. But in the last state of the soul's infinity and freedom all outward standards are replaced or laid aside and there is left only a spontaneous and integral obedience to the Divine with whom we are in union and an action spontaneously fulfilling the integral spiritual truth of our being and nature ...
... of the spiritual ideal, degrees of spiritual advancement. It is from the basis of this truth, which I shall try to explain in subsequent letters, that things regarding spirituality and its seekers must be judged, if they are to be judged with knowledge.... It is only by so understanding it that one can understand it truly, enter in its past or in its future or put in their place the spiritual men of... their own place,—in the past; but I do not see why we should merely repeat them and not go farther. In the spiritual development of the consciousness upon earth the great past ought to be followed by a greater future." He further elaborated in a letter (December 1935) to Dadaji: "The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule; it is a vast... her physical and spiritual welfare, helping Dadaji to mould his disciple, claiming that she in turn would be of great help to Dadaji in his own sadhana— a prophecy that was fulfilled beyond all expectations. Indira Devi developed supernormal consciousness. She had visions of Sant Mirabai and dictated songs heard in her samadhi. Gurudev Sri Aurobindo authenticated these spiritual experiences (vide ...
... character and be moribund or even dead as a spiritual organisation. But surely that type of fiasco the Mother and Sri Aurobindo did not visualise for the destiny of their Page 17 Ashram. Here are Sri Aurobindo's own words: "I have no intention of giving my sanction to a new edition of the old fiasco, a partial or transient spiritual opening within with no true and radical change... for a moment that the real worth and importance of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram is not in its opulent eye-catching faÇade but in its inner spiritual character and we the Mother's children, the inmates of the Ashram, should see to it that it does not forfeit its spiritual life-force and turn into something stale and of alien character. But is there really any possibility that our Ashram may meet with... in in the Ashram in a Page 14 rather generalised way. Are they in the nature of a passing catharsis? Or pathological symptoms of the forthcoming decay and decline of our group as a spiritual institution? Only the Mother and Sri Aurobindo know the answer. But on our part we have to be on our guard so that the apparent lowering of values may not lead to an irreversible degeneration of the ...
... consciousness. Spiritual reality was the central theme of his poetic creation: only and naturally he viewed it in a special way and endowed it with a special grace. We know of another God-intoxicated man, the Jewish philosopher Spinoza, who saw things sub specie aeternitatis, under the figure or mode of eternity. Well, Tagore can be said to see things, in their essential spiritual reality, under... 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 which Tagore is sometimes called a Neo-Vaishnava... inner experience. A worshipper of beauty, unless he rises to the Upanishadic norm, is prone to become sensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even Shelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these poets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part of his intellectual equipment, no doubt, but nothing much more than that. In the other two it comes in as strange flashes ...
... of a force that could not be commanded for some time to come. But he also knew that even that force could not succeed without a great spiritual and moral strength behind its action and informing its aspirations. It was this strength he sought to create. The spiritual force he created by the promulgation of the mighty and uplifting ideas which pervade his writings and of which Young Italy was the organ... human life but without purchasing Italy's freedom in the French market by the bribe of Savoy and Nice and with such a divine output of spiritual and moral force as would have sustained his country for centuries and fulfilled his grandiose dream of an Italy spiritually, intellectually and politically leading Europe. The work was given to Cavour precisely because he was a lesser man. Mazzini saw in... to scorn ideas of impossibility and improbability and to fling life, goods and happiness away on the cast of dice already clogged against one by adverse Fortune and unfavourable circumstance. The spiritual force within not only creates the future but creates the materials for the future. It is not limited to the existing materials either in their nature or in their quantity. It can transform bad material ...
... Aryans over the subhuman Chandalas. The poet Stefan George, who “appointed himself custodian of Germany’s spiritual and cultural future”, assembled around him an elite circle of young men who had not only to be esoteric initiates but also mystic warriors, “soldiers of the spirit engaged in a spiritual crusade. In this respect, they were heir to the knights in his poem entitled ‘Templars’, although George... historical and cultural fancies, and the aversion to everything “modernity” stood for. In the end the perverted fancies gained the upper hand, which was tragic when one considers the high cultural and spiritual values in Germany’s past which were also there in the decades of its ordeal, but which were stifled by forces which we have seen darkening and which we still have to identify. In his book Hitler:... raise the Volk above its temporal restrictions. They were determined to liberate it from the shackles of a materialistic civilization imposed by a state that callously disregarded the essentially spiritual needs of the Volk. The postwar era thrust the ‘third-way’ alternative again into the foreground … Everywhere in Europe, Fascism was based upon the urge toward a ‘third way’, and völkisch thought here ...
... had any part in his own spiritual unfolding. Higher powers in him had taken up the reins of his destiny; out of Aurobindo A. Ghose was growing Sri Aurobindo. After his arrival in Pondicherry, Sri Krishna sketched out for him the lines of his further growth, ‘the map of my spiritual progress’. Between 1912 and 1920 Sri Aurobindo kept a detailed diary of his sadhana (spiritual discipline). He noted... 3 Everyday reality had become a spiritual reality for him wherever and whenever, whether he sat in concentration, ate, wrote, moved among the people, or gave a speech at a political meeting — something he had to do quite often as he had become the top leader of the extremists. In Pondicherry, he was able to devote his full attention to his spiritual life. He had thought his withdrawal there... are no easy reading matter. The Record of Yoga, as these writings have been named, ‘provides a first-hand account of the day-to-day growth of the spiritual faculties of an advanced yogi.’ 8 These experiences would lead him to his great spiritual discoveries, which afterwards he found confirmed in the Vedas and the Upanishads , and which would change the destiny of the world. What had started ...
... kings and princes. But even more important and interesting is the view he underlines that the true person is a spiritual being, that is to say, it is quite other than the empirical ego that man normally is-"not this that one worships" as the Upanishads too declare. Further, in his spiritual being man, the individual, is not simply a portion or a fraction; he is, on the contrary, an integer, a complete... Vol. 2 Nicholas Berdyaev : God Made Human NICHOLAS Berdyaev is an ardent worker, as a Russian is naturally expected to be, in the cause of the spiritual rehabilitation of mankind. He is a Christian, a neo-Christian: some of his conclusions are old-world truths and bear repetition and insistence; others are of a more limited, conditional and even doubtful... individual is a microcosm yet holding in it and imaging the macrocosm. Only perhaps greater stress is laid upon the aspect of creativity or activism. An Eastern sage, a Vedantin, would look for the true spiritual reality behind the flux of forces: Prakriti or Energy is only the executive will of the Purusha, the Conscious .Being. The personality in Nature is a formulation and emanation of the transcendent ...
... active life of spiritual men. By service of the Divine the Mother means the constant and conscious offering of each movement of one's nature- physical, vital, psychic, mental and spiritual—to the Divine and to none and nothing but the Divine. All actions of life are accepted and turned towards the Divine except those which are tainted with desire or clearly detrimental to spiritual growth. This wholesale... always been the disgust and despair of even the greatest of spiritual men. Hathayoga, rightly practised, gives considerable control over the physical 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... achievement, and all that he gains by personal effort or by divine Grace must have a full and perfect expression in his life, whether the gain is physical, vital, mental or spiritual; and if any acquisition, however highly spiritual it may be, fails to manifest itself in his life, it means that it is still a potentiality and has to be realised in terms of the material existence. If the Upanishadic dictum ...
... always been the disgust and despair of even the greatest of spiritual men. Hathayoga, righty practised, gives considerable control over the physical 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... Page 24 he gains by personal effort or by divine Grace must have a full and perfect expression in his life, whether the gain is physical, vital, mental or spiritual; and if any acquisition, however highly spiritual it may be, fails to manifest itself in his life, it means that it is still a potentiality and has to be realised in terms of the material existence. If the Upanishadic dictum... it philanthropy, humanitarian-ism or altruism which pass by that name and usually constitute the active life of spiritual men. By service of the Divine the Mother means the constant and conscious offering of each movement of one's nature—physical, vital, psychic, mental and spiritual—to the Divine and to none and nothing but the Divine. All actions of life are accepted 1 Prayers and ...
... Indians and Theosophists and mystical thinkers, a disreputable clan. It can understand dogma and speculation about spiritual truth, a priest, a Bible, whether disbelieving them or giving them a conventional acceptance; but profoundest verifiable spiritual truth, firmly ascertainable spiritual values! The idea is foreign to this mentality and sounds to it like jargon. It can understand, even when it dismisses... can Page 108 ask whether the spiritual and religio-philosophical view of life and the government of civilisation by its ideas and motives or the rationalistic and external view of life and the satisfaction of the vital being governed by the intellectual and practical reason give the best lead to mankind. And granting the value and power of a spiritual conception of life, we can ask whether... Indian philosophy, its entire raison d'être , is the knowledge of the spirit, the experience of it and the right way to a spiritual existence; its single aim coincides with the highest significance of religion. Indian religion draws all its characteristic value from the spiritual philosophy which illumines its supreme aspiration and colours even most of what is drawn from an inferior range of religious ...
... mind. Given below are the first two of them along with his answers. - Ed. Srinvantu) Q. One may approach Savitri (1) with a devotee's attitude as the spiritual autobiography of the Master, (2) as a book or storehouse of spiritual wisdom comparable to the Vedas, the Upanishads or the Gita, and (3) as great poetry. Can these approaches merge? What should be the basic approach for a full and... not merely to write good poetry. The poetry has to be good by an ascension in poetic quality to the highest spiritual plane possible: this plane has to be creative in terms of poetic values. Savitri should express poetically the ever-higher peak reached by Sri Aurobindo's progressive spiritual ascension. Therefore we cannot consider it either as sheer poetry or as sheer spirituality. It must help us... directly spiritual communication attempted we undergo an exquisite refinement which can prepare us for it. As a critic has intuitively said, "Poetry may not save souls but it makes souls worth saving." When we come to poetry like Savitri we have this power eminently exercised. Savitri can serve the poetry-lover as a road to sadhana. Here, over and above an account of spiritual states and ...
... symbolism of the struggle between spiritual powers of Light and Darkness, Truth and Falsehood, Knowledge and Ignorance, Death and Immortality, then that is the real sense of the whole Veda. We have concluded that the Angiras Rishis are bringers of the Dawn, rescuers of the Sun out of the darkness, but that this Dawn, Sun, Darkness are figures used with a spiritual significance. The central conception... itself the aspect of spiritual symbol and apologue. Whether they are entirely so or only partly, cannot be decided except by a more detailed examination which is not our present object. Our object is only to see whether there is a prima facie case for the idea with which we started that the Vedic hymns are the symbolic gospel of the ancient Indian mystics and their sense spiritual and psychological.... conception of the Veda is the conquest of the Truth out of the darkness of Ignorance and by the conquest of the Truth the conquest also of Immortality. For the Vedic Ritam is a spiritual as well as a psychological conception. It is the true being, the true consciousness, the true delight of Page 241 existence beyond this earth of body, this mid-region of vital force, this ordinary sky or heaven ...
... of worship began to cloud the true spiritual motive that had been the inspiring force of the Indian vitality. Tendencies of irreligionism, selfishness and battles for small ends began to multiply. As a result, during the 18th century and early 19th century, there came about a collapse of Indian culture, although not any total disintegration. The spiritual lamp continued to burn even in the midst... the one hand, and retrogression in the intellectual, ethical and spiritual abilities, on the other. It further perceives that this crisis has reached a point of climax, and it can be resolved not by increasing development of external paraphernalia but by inward perception of the inmost realities and by releasing the moral and spiritual forces. Finally, the Indian message is that the time has come... In Sanskrit it is called Rashtra Dharma and Swadharma. A subtle and complex relationship between that perennial and these temporal and variable movements has been the secret of the ethical and spiritual content of Indian culture. And it has been the underlying cause of the continuity of that culture, which historians have found to be astonishing and perplexing. Broadly speaking, Indian culture ...
... true when the knowledge sought after was not only pragmatic and intellectual but spiritual. For among all human endeavours, spiritual endeavour is the most difficult, beset with the greatest difficulties. In certain circumstances, the pursuit of spiritual knowledge requires vigilant direction and guidance. Spiritual search is like a search in a virgin forest, and the law of that search exacts from... by the greater energy liberated by nuclear fusions and fissions is only the physical translation of a fundamental spiritual phenomenon which the Vedic seers know quite well. Agni represents that fundamental Page 8 spiritual phenomenon, viz.,the action of the spiritual Fire in Matter. 'Oh Fire', says the Vedic verse, 'other flames are only branches of Thy stock.... Oh Agni, Oh universal... knowledge. The inner Vedic knowledge was a kind of a synthesis of the spiritual and the physical, and this provided a fine balance and a graded ladder connecting the material and spiritual poles of existence. In this scheme, the outer ritual and ceremonies reflected the sunshine of the highest and profundest spiritual knowledge, and thus they were not a mere artifice or a misleading or imprisoning ...
... If we in the Ashram would like to fulfil the God-given task of building a collective life in which spiritually perfect individuals would dwell in a spiritually perfect community, many of the Ashramites, or even the majority of them, would have to sincerely try to grow into a more complete spiritual nature, live in the light of a higher and larger and more integral consciousness, and move and act under... natural consequence of this dampening of spiritual zeal, we in our group-life have been encountering many sorts of unpleasant and undesirable incidents and happenings. Some sadhaks and sadhikas are behaving erratically; some others are manifesting unhealthy trends. But we should not be unduly worried about that nor should we give up hope about the spiritual destiny of our community. For, whatever the... this Ashram but of others." (Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, Volume One, p. 348) Sri Aurobindo elsewhere opines that many of the members of the Ashram are not living in a spiritual consciousness but "in the ordinary egoistic mind and mainly rajasic vital nature". (The Mother, p. 229) Here are two pieces of written dialogue worth noting in this connection; the excerpts are ...
... NIRODBARAN: But didn't it become all-powerful through his aid? SRI AUROBINDO: If kings and emperors had left Buddhism to those people who were really spiritual, it would have been much better for real Buddhism. That is always the case with spiritual things. It was after Constantine embraced Christianity that it began to decline in its substance. The King of Norway, about whom Longfellow wrote a poem... spread his name. SRI AUROBINDO: It is a strange measure of success people adopt in judging a spiritual man by the number of disciples. Who was a greater success-Ramana Maharshi surrounded by all sorts of disciples or Ramana Maharshi doing his sadhana in seclusion for years? Success to be real must be spiritual. Then the talk turned on Ashrams in general and the mismanagement of some while the Guru... dispensation. Buddha was denied. Sons of Light come, the earth denies them, rejects them and afterwards, accepts them in name in order to reject them in substance. Only a small minority grows towards a spiritual birth and it is through them that the divine manifestation takes place. What remains of Buddhism today except a few edicts of Asoka and a few hundred thousand Buddhists? NIRODBARAN: Asoka helped ...
... turned an effective philosophic thought on life and called in the thinkers, the men of profoundest spiritual experience, highest ideas, largest available knowledge, to govern and shape society, to have subjected creed and dogma to the test of the philosophic mind and founded religious belief upon spiritual intuition, philosophical thought and psychological experience, are signs, not of barbarism or of... mind had recognised that the same general laws and powers hold in the spiritual, the psychological and the physical existence. It discovered too the omnipresence of life, affirmed the evolution of the soul in Nature from the vegetable and the animal to the human form, asserted on the basis of philosophic intuition and spiritual and psychological experience many of the truths which modern Science is... religious writings are devoted to the withdrawal from it, but even these are not as a rule contemptuous of its value. If the Indian mind gave the highest importance to a spiritual release,—and whatever the positivist mood may say, a spiritual liberation of some kind is the highest possibility of the human spirit,—it was not interested in that alone. It looked equally at ethics, law, politics, society, the ...
... descent of some perfect counterpart of not only our selfhood but also our instrumental nature. Towards whatever spiritual discipline that would effect this complete change in us we have to move, for the whole many-sidedness of past Hinduism has no meaning if it bars an extension of the spiritual new-birth. Revivalism should never be a magnificent stagnancy. Hinduism and Foreign Cultural Influences... a magnificent marshalling of spiritual truths and of mystical realisations and poetry into a mighty image of the Eternal, "mountain-lined, crowded with deep prophetic grots". Mention of Sri Aurobindo spotlights English as undeniably integral to our growth in greatness. For, if a unique spirituality is the core of India, then the fact that our greatest spiritual figure today creates in the medium... between communities. But a great truth is enshrined in the statement that India is the land of Hinduism. If we forget this truth and seek to create a country with all psychological and metaphysical and spiritual colour of Hinduism wiped off, we shall seriously thwart India's growth and make the nation either a mediocrity or a monstrosity instead of a light to the whole world. Let us, however, hasten ...
... The Spiritual Genius of India WHAT is it that we precisely mean when we say that India is spiritual? For, that is how we are accustomed to express India's special genius-—her backbone, as Vivekananda puts it—the fundamental note of her culture and nature, which distinguishes her from the rest of the world. What then are the distinguishing marks of spirituality? How does a spiritual collectivity... consciousness and in the being. Keeping this difference in view, we may at once point out that Europe, when she is non-materialist, is primarily religious and only secondarily spiritual, but India is always primarily spiritual and only secondarily religious. The vein of real spirituality in European culture runs underground and follows narrow and circuitous by-paths; rarely does it appear on the top... to the disposition of their psychic elements that we refer, to the tone and temper of the soul they possess and to a constant nearness of latent spiritual possibilities: that may at any time materialise, and the consequent possibilities of a spiritual impulse, that may at any time awaken. Other peoples have other and more concrete virtues to be proud of; but the Indian has his soul as his most ...
... Lenin, and beyond Mao, and ordain and carry out a spiritual revolution that may crack the ego, end the malignant fevers of the ages, and bind man and society and humanity into a single brotherhood conscious of its spiritual unity. In the last four chapters of The Human Cycle, Sri Aurobindo considers the question of a truly subjective or spiritual turn to individual and communal life in ampler... but the bold cultivation of spiritual thought and the progressive experience of psychological and spiritual oneness can achieve the conquest of the Kingdom of God and the establishment of the reign of the Spirit over mind and life and body. Freedom and unity - desirable things both and apparently incompatible - can be reconciled only in God or at the level of spiritual consciousness. And so Sri Aurobindo... by their own exertions have won the leadership of the spiritual age, it will not be for themselves alone, but for all; they will take all human life for their province and strive to regenerate the life of humanity as a whole to fit the conditions of the spiritual age. If the number of these spiritual men - these samurai in the service of the Divine, these Rishis and Mahapurushas - is sufficiently ...
... words, should a process which issues in spiritual values and ideals not be referred to a Source which is spiritual? If it be true that the significance of a process of development is not to be found in its beginning but in its outcome, there is much to be said for the method which seeks a 'sufficient reason' of spiritual development in a supreme and spiritual Ground of experience. I think we are... cannot be doubted that man's religious history shows a gradual, though not by any means a continual or uninterrupted, movement from the natural to the spiritual. The God whom the developed culture of the modern world requires must at least be a spiritual and ethical Being: every lower conception of Deity has in the end failed to satisfy the growing human spirit. Man who is an ethical personality can only... religious man himself does not doubt that this is true: his whole spiritual life would become empty and meaningless to him, if he knew that his faith went out only to meet the void. But, it may be asked, does not the religious consciousness affirm something more about the God whom it postulates than that he is an ethical and spiritual Being? In what sense, for example, does the religious mind require ...
... miracle. But to do as you suggest, make it a common or everyday phenomenon, would be hardly practicable and spiritually not useful, as it is not a spiritual force which gives the power but an occult mental-vital force. It would turn the Yoga into a display of occultism, rather than a process of spiritual change. 20 October 1935 You have said that the Mother's materialising herself in Paris while she ...
... May 5, 1951 Page 184 The Spiritual Life and World-Problems: Two Letters to a Seeker The Spiritual Life and World-Renunciation: A Letter to One Attracted by the Cloister The Mystical and the Misty: An Answer to Some Queries about Sri Aurobindo Vivekananda and Our Spiritual Future The Mind and Spirit of Our Age: Dilip Kumar Roy's Interviews ...
... publicly about my spiritual experiences. Until I went to Pondicherry I took no disciples; with those who accompanied me or joined me in Pondicherry I had at first the relation of friends and companions rather than of a guru and disciples; it was on the ground of politics that I had come to know them and not on the spiritual ground. Afterwards only there was a gradual development of spiritual relations until... field of spiritual experience and it ceased as soon as it had finished saying all that it had to say on that subject. Then about my relations with Sister Nivedita—they were purely in the field of politics. Spirituality or spiritual matters did not enter into them and I do not remember anything passing between us on these subjects when I was with her. Once or twice she showed the spiritual side of... together. There is no truth behind the statement that while I was meditating they gathered around me, that I recited the Gita to them and they sang the verses, or that they put questions to me on spiritual Page 97 matters and received instructions from me; the whole description is quite fanciful. Only a few of the prisoners had been known to me before I met them in prison; only a few who ...
... problems of life to their utmost depths and was not .content to deal with them superficially from the standpoint of mere intellect or even of the ordinary spiritual consciousness which found a solution for all the malaise of earth life in a spiritual liberation of the soul alone while its instruments, the body, mind and life remained unchanged and tied to an ignorant separative consciousness which constitutes... quests of human life. Practically hardly any aspect of life is left out of his vast and extensive field of research and finding. But the central theme and the core of all his teaching is Spiritual and it is a spiritual and supramental solution that he always advocates as the only conclusion of his most intimate study of all human problems. For the Spirit underlies everything; it is at the base of life... detained in jail for more than a year in connection with what is now famous as the Alipor Bomb Case. His jail life in the solitary cell was productive of deep and far-reaching experiences of mystic and spiritual character which completely changed him from being at one time an agnostic to a total and confirmed believer in God whose knowledge, power, bliss and oneness we can all share by uniting with Him in ...
... things are the delusions of his own abnormal and exalted state of mind and are not, as he falsely imagines and will try to persuade you, signs of a high spiritual progress. On the contrary, if he persists, in them he will lose altogether such spiritual progress as he had made and may even destroy by want of food and want of sleep his body. To allow him to remain here would be quite disastrous for him... results that might be fatal to him. And the intensity of the spiritual atmosphere... Besides when in this condition he brings about here a state of confusion and perturbation, the one thing to be absolutely avoided in this way of Yoga, which if prolonged would make the Sadhana of my other disciples impossible and would spoil my own spiritual work altogether. His one chance is if he can settle down... to them he explains away or ignores that is the reason why he ignores my orders and puts no value on my telegrams or letters. (5) Also he feels in this condition an abnormal shrinking (not any spiritual detachment) from physical life, from his family, from his friends — for some time he withdrew even from the society of his fellow Sadhakas — and considers anything that comes from them or turns him ...
... or not doing; no other punishment can be more real or more concrete. All this is immensely significant and valuable from the standpoint of spiritual growth, much more than things produced by external regulation and pressure. What is exactly a spiritual experience? It is something which puts you in contact with a consciousness higher than that you have ordinarily. You five Page... people usually understand fasting, bearing biting cold or burning heat, lying on a bed of sharp nails, that is to say, torturing the body in some way or other. That gives you only self-importance or spiritual egoism, nothing more. You acquire no true control or mastery in this way. People do it because it is so simple and easy, because it satisfied your vanity. You make a show of your ascetic virtues and... you do it when it pleases you and you don't do when it does not please you; you take things quite easily. Of course there are some who do make the effort spontaneously. And that from the spiritual point of view has an infinitely greater value. You make the progress, because you feel within you the need to do so, because it is an impulse that wells up from your depths, not because you are driven ...
... path). They are the leaders in our spiritual adventure. They lead us speedily through the different levels of consciousness to the vast ocean of the higher truth The second group of riks: The spiritual delight and to immortal power of life will found themselves in a calm, pill and firmly rooted basis of the entire being. And this immortal delight will lead the spiritual practicant to the Divine Mind... waking consciousness the streams of the Vast, of direct sight and creation beyond mind and intelligence. In the present sukta there are four groups of three riks each, graded according to the spiritual progression. The first group begins with the invocation of the twin Riders. Who are these Riders? According to the narration of the Puranas, the Aswinikumaras are generally known as the twin heavenly... knowledge in all its facets and make them living. In the Vedic literature, very often we get the reference to vak (Word). So it will be no exaggeration on our par to hold that the aim of the Vedic spiritual discipline is to get the significant sound aspect of the truth. And for this the Vedic seers of truth are called the seers of mantras 0 the creators of mantras. Vak is the living image of truth ...
... interesting is the way in which the Mother amplifies and explains in simpler language the great concepts articulated by Sri Aurobindo, which in turn flow from xi his exalted spiritual stature. Spiritual seekers around the world, whether or not they are formally following Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, will find this selection of great value in their quest. I myself have benefited greatly... Aurobindo in particular, with his outstanding intellect, magnificent power of expression and deep yogic attainments, has in his voluminous writings thrown tremendous light upon the whole process of spiritual development. We speak rather loosely of the 'soul', but Sri Aurobindo has clearly explored and articulated for us the various levels or degrees of inner consciousness, and the methodologies... be divine movements. Shri A.S. Dalai has, over the last several years, produced a series of excellent selections from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on a whole variety of spiritual concepts. In this book — Emergence of the Psychic — he has once again produced for us an excellent selection of writings by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on this whole concept of the psychic being ...
... The following is written by Amal Kiran: The Spiritual Flag of India The Mother's Flag "A full-blown lotus in gold with two rows of petals (inside 4, outside 12) exactly in the centre of a square field of silvery blue, the ratio of the side of the square to the diameter of the lotus being 6:2.5—the Mother's flag symbolises the Spiritual Reality at work in Sri Aurobindo's Ashram. Out of... flag was originally intended to be only the flag of the J.S.A.S.A.; but later, on the day when India's liberation was celebrated here (15th August, 1947), it was found that it expressed also the spiritual mission of the whole of India. It is therefore to us the symbolic flag of resurgent, united and victorious India raising itself out of the torpor of centuries and having cast off the shackles of ... flawless organisation. These four are then depicted as putting forth twelve manifesting forces that operate within the periodic time-process. The supreme infinity, the all-containing and all-supporting spiritual Self is the silvery blue background, the foundational mystery from which the Divine's revelation—emblemed by the lotus—stands out in gold suggestive of sovereign Truth-consciousness. The roundness ...
... names the Supermind. But on lesser levels too the spiritual consciousness is dynamic and effective – pragmatic in a way that the ordinary, limited, externally pragmatic consciousness cannot hope to be. Sometimes it is urged that in the worldly affairs we should move according to the worldly procedure, otherwise to import into mundane things spiritual values would merely confuse issues and end in... in failure in both the fields – “fallen from hence, lost from thence". Of course there are spiritual points of view that go ill with the mundane, as indeed there are mundane considerations that do not match with the spiritual. The two categories of view-point have been succinctly and luminously named by Sri Aurobindo as the Materialist Denial and the Ascetic Refusal.* But there are other points of view... Indeed the very definition of Yoga is that it is skill in works. To do works and not to run away from them has always been the true and natural ideal even (and particularly, as we shall see), for the spiritual man: the ideal is as old as the Upanishadic injunction, "Doing verily works in this world one should wish to live a hundred years." The Yogi as a world-shunner was not always the only ideal or the ...
... directly into the body of his patient. And in the case of a spiritual Bhishak, the power can be raised to the nth degree. The healer need not even be present at all physically near the patient; his influence can act very well from any distance. It is quite natural and inevitable that it should be so. For the healing power is in the spiritual consciousness, the inalienable bliss of one's status in the... the entering into the very being and consciousness of another, becoming that other one; it is identification and identity. This again is what spiritual consciousness alone can do. Sympathy leads to philanthropy, empathy is the origin of true charity, the spiritual compassion of a Buddha or a Christ. Philanthropy is human, charity (caritas) is divine. Page 41 ... consciousness itself, in the core of the inner personality. The material conditions serve only to manifest it, maintain or aggravate it, but do not create it—truly they are created by it. That is why the spiritual healers always refer to the bliss of the Spirit as the sole remedy for physical ills even, for disease, misery and death. And the unhappy mortals are always called to turn to the Divine alone in their ...
... matters, but the relation itself, the contact of man's life with God, the conscious interchange. In spiritual matters and in the seeking of spiritual gains, this conscious relation is a great power; it is a much greater power than our own entirely self-reliant straggle and effort and it brings a fuller spiritual growth and experience." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 543) This should be the aspiration... The only reason is that our seeking for the Divine and for spiritual life lacks in genuine commitment and sufficient intensity. It is not supported by any ardent will; it arises out of a tepid wish and an easily dispensable thirst for the attainment. The normal attitude of an average sadhaka takes this regrettable form: 'If the spiritual life comes to me, well and good; but for whatever reason if... a sufficient self-preparation in this life for another existence after death; only a few dare to envisage as their life's goal the leading of a spiritual way of life having for its ultimate consummation the union with the Divine. Amongst these spiritually-minded people we, the sadhakas of the Integral Yoga, are specially distinguished by our bold aim of achieving divine perfection of the human being ...
... build up an ideal spiritual community consisting of spiritual individuals. And they have said that the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry is the first form their work has taken. The question is: Has our utility been over? Were we meant to play the role of a 'pilot project' alone? Cannot our Ashram prove itself worthy of embodying Sri Aurobindo's ideal of a new kind of spiritual consciousness and life... deviate from the Goal that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have set before us, there is no reason why our Ashram cannot realise its God-given destiny. But if we fail to fulfil the conditions for our spiritual awakening, we may be left behind and the Mother and Sri Aurobindo may initiate their work of integral transformation elsewhere at another time in some other collectivity more open to their Light and ...
... experience would be called psychological (surface or occult). "Spiritual" has nothing to do with the Absolute, except that the experience of the Absolute is spiritual. All contacts with self, the higher consciousness, the Divine above are spiritual. There are others that could not be so sharply classified and set off against each other. The spiritual realisation is of primary importance and indispensable... the supramental consciousness-force is not identical with the spiritual. If spiritual and supramental were the same thing, then all the sages and devotees and Yogis and sadhaks throughout the ages would have been supramental beings and all I have written about the supermind would be so much superfluous rubbish. Anybody who had spiritual experiences would then be a supramental being; the Asram 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 and do not come out in this life. Some no doubt can carry on both together, the occult and the spiritual, and make them help each other; ...
... What I Have Learnt From The Mother Organisation On Spiritual Basis To organise on a spiritual basis you must be in constant contact with the Spiritual Consciousness. Do not forget that the quality of work one does depends on the quality of consciousness one lives. Generally people live in a very ordinary consciousness: the consciousness of mind, life ...
... , broadened, made spiritually supple, can receive without being blinded or dazzled by a Truth beyond it. The poetic intelligence is not at all part of that clarified spiritual seeing and thinking—it is only a high activity of the mind and its vision moving on the wings of imagination, but still akin to the intellect proper, though exalted above it. The Higher Mind is a spiritual plane,—this does not... 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 hear... recurring at short intervals in my poetry when I express not spiritual thought but spiritual experience. I knew perfectly well that this recurrence would be objected to as bad technique or an inadmissible technique; but this seems to me a reasoning from the conventions of a past order which cannot apply to a new poetry dealing with spiritual things. A new art of words written from a new consciousness ...
... sure—we must remember also the other condition that a spiritual aspirant is to fulfil, nayamatma balahinena labhyah — but that did Page 32 not immune him to the normal reactions of a normal man; on the contrary, the reactions were especially strong and violent, necessary indeed to bring out the whole implication of a spiritual crisis. Arjuna's doubts and depression, misgivings and... without Page 30 reserve that can best purify the dross of the inferior nature and render one worthy of the Divine Grace. Such was Arjuna's capacity; herein lay his strength, his spiritual superiority. It was because he could be so intimate with the Divine as to call him his friend and companion and playmate and speak to him in familiar and homely terms—even though he felt contrition... with his 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 ...
... power is almost next to nothing. The net result is that days and months and years pass by in our life without our gaining any spiritual benefit worth the name. For it is only the opening and receptivity which can make us ready to gather the treasures of spiritual experiences and realisations. Without these two prerequisites sufficiently developed, all our external efforts at "doing sadhana" will... The Practice of the Integral Yoga VI On Opening and Receptivity When we look around or even study the spiritual history of mankind, we often find that some aspirants are progressing very fast in their sadhana while some others are registering a rather slow progress or, what is worse, even stagnating on the Path, although, apparently, all of them... cherish a hope for the ultimate realisation, not others." Such being the capital importance of the allied virtues of opening and receptivity in the matter of building up a life of sadhana and spiritual fulfilment we have to pay a great attention to the acquisition of these twin aptitudes. For it is a fact that the divine Mother has been incessantly pouring on every sincere sadhaka of the Path her ...
... metaphysical logic which deals in words and ideas, but by a spiritual experience which goes beyond Mind and enters into spiritual realities. Each mind is satisfied with its own reasoning, but for spiritual purposes that satisfaction has no validity, except as an indication of how far and on what line each one is prepared to go in the field of spiritual experience. If your reasoning leads you towards the Shankara... The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths Other Spiritual Paths and the Integral Yoga Letters on Yoga - II Chapter VI The Adwaita of Shankaracharya Shankara's Mayavada If Shankara's conception of the undifferentiated pure Consciousness as the Brahman is your view of it, then it is not the path of this... not or can there not be a higher than that highest, parātparam ? That is not a question of logic, it is a question of spiritual fact, of a supreme and complete experience. 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 through that of Nirvana and Maya, otherwise it would ...
... obstacle to the spiritual life? Because it understands nothing about it. Spiritual life goes beyond it, it is not its domain, and it doesn't understand anything there. It is a very good instrument for all ethics, morality, self-control, but spiritual life goes beyond these things and reason understands nothing of it. But if one truly has reason, then reason has to admit that the spiritual life is higher... necessary to introduce a fourth one in it, the spiritual or suprarational plane", then from this point of view we begin to say, "Reason understands nothing of this, and here it must keep quiet and let the suprarational influence work." But from the viewpoint of the ordinary life, for people who lead the ordinary life, who do not want to do yoga or develop spiritually, reason is certainly an absolute and very... frequent thing. So I always advise people to keep their reason. But there's a point where it must cease having its superior rights—that's to judge spiritual experience, because it cannot judge this, it does not understand it; but it must truly be a spiritual experience, not something which tries to imitate it; here an absolute sincerity is necessary. One must not deceive oneself through ambition, or indeed ...
... spirituality is fundamentally a search of the knowledge that liberates (sa vidydya vimuktaye). As it is declared, true knowledge is not intellectual knowledge but spiritual knowledge. Page 80 • Both the moral and the spiritual are to be distinguished from what is called "religious" Religion, has the following distinguishing features: 1. Specific religious dogma regarding the nature... beyond into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in itself, but only as an expression of a complex of certain qualities, which are, for the time being, for the given individual, necessary and useful in an upward journey. For the spiritual consciousness, what is commonly called vice has, too, behind it a complex of... is complex and that each major element of the personality needs to be integrated with the totality in a harmonious manner. In other words, the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic and spiritual do not stand in juxtaposition, but they have among them a constitutional relationship. The physical and the vital can, to a great extent, be controlled and guided by the mental, and to a certain ...
... 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 suggestion but not lost in individuality. Its aim is not to express the ideal physical or emotional beauty, but the utmost spiritual beauty or the significance... in movement; but still the soul-motive is constitutive of the whole atmosphere. This is true even where the subject is not spiritual or religious but secular. Ldvarxya in Indian painting is again a charm and beauty of that which is subtle, of that which is psychic and spiritual. Physical beauty is not the only beauty in the world; this truth is vividly illustrated in the Indian painting. The deeper... of the awakening mind of the child, the coming of younger humanity, to that in which already the soul of the mother had learned to find and fix its spiritual joy. The eyes, brows, lips, face, poise of the head of the woman are filled with this spiritual emotion which is a continued memory and possession of the psychical release, the steady settled calm of the heart's experience filled with an ineffable ...
... recognition of a law, the high line of a guiding order. To know the law of my moral and spiritual being is at first and last more imperative for me than to learn the ways of steam and electricity, for without these outward advantages I can grow in my inner manhood, but not without some notion of moral and spiritual law. Action is demanded of me and I need a rule for my action: something I am urged inwardly... —but material in the one, in the other a spiritual infinite zero,—but by the more prudent or flexible thinkers simply as an unknowable. The difference is that the unknown of Science is something mechanical to which mechanically we return by physical dissolution or laya , but the unknown of Buddhism is a Permanent beyond the Law to which we return spiritually by an effort of self-suppression, of se... its discouraging grandeur we are by no means compelled to give assent, for it is neither self-evident nor inevitable. It is by no means so certain that a high spiritual negation of what I am is my only possible road to perfection; a high spiritual affirmation and absolute of what I am may be also a feasible way and gate. This nobly glacial or blissfully void idea of a Nirvana, because it is so overwhelmingly ...
... the joy which the universal Soul felt in its great release of energy when it rang out into the rhythmic forms of the universe the spiritual truth, the large interpretative idea, the life, the power, the emotion of things packed into an original creative vision,—such spiritual joy is that which the soul of the poet feels and which, when he can conquer the human difficulties of his task, he succeeds in... the emotions, the vital activities seeking rhythmical and forceful expression, without that greater spiritual excitement embracing them, or if all these are not sufficiently sunk into the soul, steeped in it, fused in it, and the expression does not come out purified and uplifted by a sort of spiritual transmutation, then we fall to lower levels of poetry and get work of a much more doubtful immortality... from the stress of the soul-vision behind the word; it is the spiritual excitement of a rhythmic voyage of self-discovery among the magic islands of form and name in these inner and outer worlds. Page 18 × Ananda, in the language of Indian spiritual experience, is the essential delight which the Infinite feels ...
... and trace the course of his spiritual life with the aid of such external sign-posts—his poems and his letters, for example —as are available: his experience of cosmic silence under Yogi Lele's guidance; his beatific vision of Narayana the Omnipresent God in the Alipore Jail; his experience of the besieging of his fields of trance by the cosmic ignorance; his spiritual association with Madame Richard... wrote to Dilip Kumar Roy that the English language was pitifully ill-equipped to convey spiritual ideas; but Sri Aurobindo could not subscribe to this view: Page 459 ...this seems to me a reasoning from the conventions of a past order which cannot apply to a new poetry dealing with spiritual things. A new art of words written from a new consciousness demands a new... and passing clouds. There is no substitute for utter imaginative identification with the world of Savitri and with the power and personality of Savitri. Indeed, a total surrender to its ambrosial spiritual symbolism is called for, and a surrender also to the Creatrix in her marvellous human incarnation. But these are beyond the purview of literary criticism. Besides, intellectual approaches cannot be ...
... sees with an ideal consciousness, but he has yet in his lower self to make it entirely practical and effective. Otherwise he can only act with a greater or less spiritual effectiveness through an internal communication with others on the spiritual level and on the higher mental level that is most easily affected by it, but the effect is diminished and is retarded by the inferiority or lack of Page... not to the spiritual reason abstract ideas or subtle unsubstantial experiences to which it arrives by a sort of overleaping of limits, but a constant reality and the natural background of all its ideation Page 820 and experience. It does not like the mind arrive at, but discloses directly both the general and total and the particular truths of being and consciousness, of spiritual and other... of objects or limited by their range. It has a spiritual sense and sensation of its own and it takes and relates to that the data too of a sixth sense, the inner mind sense. And it takes also the illuminations and the living symbols and images familiar to the psychic experience and relates these too to the truths of the self and spirit. The spiritual reason takes also the emotions and psychic sensations ...
... but in what figure shall we conceive the perfection of the body? In the past the body has been regarded by spiritual seekers rather as Page 702 an obstacle, as something to be overcome and discarded than as an instrument of spiritual perfection and a field of the spiritual change. It has been condemned as a grossness of Matter, as an insuperable impediment and the limitations of the... of a spiritual consciousness and with new forms and powers. It must be the same with the perfection of the body. The taking up of life and Matter into what is essentially a spiritual seeking, instead of the rejection and ultimate exclusion of them which was the attitude of a spirituality that shunned or turned away from life in the world, involves certain developments which a spiritual institution... can start at either end of our range of being and we have then to use, initially at least, the means and processes proper to our choice. In Yoga the process is spiritual and psychic; even its vital and physical processes are given a spiritual or psychic turn and raised to a higher motion than belongs properly to the ordinary life and Matter, as for instance in the Hathayogic and Rajayogic use of the ...
... supermind) to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral Yoga. People are now taking them up and using them in senses which have nothing to do with the significance which I put into them. Purification of the nature by the "influence" of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change—the word besides has... and on Contemporary Problems Letters on Himself and the Ashram Remarks on Spiritual Figures in India Ramakrishna Paramhansa I would have been surprised to hear that I regard (in agreement with an advanced sadhak) Ramakrishna as a spiritual pigmy, if I had not become past astonishment in these matters. I have said, it seems, so many things that were never... cannot have said anything of the kind, since I have at least some faint sense of spiritual values? The passage you have quoted is my considered estimate of Ramakrishna. 1 3 February 1932 I have heard that if one learns logic or philosophy it can be a great help in the yoga, because it makes the mind wider to spiritual experiences so that once the mind gets beyond the intellect and reaches the ...
... letters to me you wrote: "A Yoga consciousness or spiritual consciousness which has no power or force in it, may not be dead or unreal but it is evidently something inert and without effect or consequence. Equally a man who sets out to be a Yogi or Guru and has no spiritual consciousness or no power in his spiritual consciousness—a Yoga force or spiritual force—is making a false claim and is either a charlatan... more is he so if having no spiritual force he claims to have made a path others can follow. If Yoga is a reality, if spirituality is anything better than a delusion, there must be such a thing as Yoga force or spiritual force." That is a general statement about the inherent power of spirituality. What I was speaking of was a willed use of subtle force (it may be spiritual or mental or vital) to secure... acme by being lifted to the spiritual plane. The force put on the gentleman you speak of at least made it necessary for him to change if he remained here. He had no will in the vital to change and so did not remain here but went to his fate. The rest is for the indefinable future. One day I shall certainly try to explain methodically and by examples what the spiritual force is; how it has worked ...
... internal adoration and for the external worship which replaced sacrifice. In the Vedic hymns, the psychic and spiritual mystic endeavour is clearly perceptible in the esoteric practice; but this disappeared into the less intensely luminous but more wide and rich and complex psycho-spiritual inner life of Puranic and Tantric religion and Yoga. Even then, it must be emphasised that the so- called henotheism... generalised spiritual life. While much could be done during that stage, its progression was arrested because Page 87 of many factors. But it has done much to prepare greater possibility in the future. As India has awakened once again, it is the unaccomplished tasks of the third stage that are to ho taken up and fulfilled. In this stage of reawakening, the recovery of the old spiritual knowledge... mere powers of Physical Nature, even though their descriptions, which were meant for outer religious rituals, appear to give that impression. The gods were, to the Vedic initiates, psychological and spiritual powers, and their reality as living beings, with whom contacts can be made by means of secret words of invocation as also by means of sacrifice through processes of psychological purification, co ...
... inner seizing or a penetrating and enveloping luminous contact of the spiritual consciousness with its object. It is this luminous seizing and contact that is the spiritual vision, dṛṣṭi .... The sense can only give us the superficial image of things and it needs the aim of thought to fill and inform the image, but the spiritual sight is capable of presenting to us the thing in itself and all the... and knowledge by spiritual vision is the second in directness and greatness of the supramental powers. It is something much more near, profound and comprehensive than mental vision, because it derives direct from the knowledge by identity and it has this virtue that we can proceed at once from the vision to the identity, as from the identity to the vision. Thus when the spiritual vision has seen God... or Brahman, the soul can next enter into and become one with the Self, God or Brahman. The supramental vision brings with it' a supplementary and completing experience that might be called a spiritual hearing and touch of the truth,—of its essence and through that of its significance,—that is to say, there is a seizing of its movement, vibration, rhythm and a seizing of its close presence and contact ...
... a lamp reflects and diffuses the luminosity of its indwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its joy of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy. This would be the total perfection of the spiritualised body. Sri Aurobindo The One Thing Essential... action, impel its motives, take hold of its forces and shape their direction and purpose. All touched by it might not be able to embody it fully, but each would give some form to it according to his spiritual temperament, inner capacity, the line of his evolution in Nature: he would reach securely the perfection of which he was immediately capable and he would be on the road to the full possession of... waits as the crowning movement of its long obscure and painful course. Therefore the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being. Even as the animal man has been largely converted into a mentalised and at the top a highly mentalised humanity, so too ...
... political call, he certainly cannot come here. It is better if he exhausts these desires of the ordinary nature, before he takes up the spiritual life. If at any time he feels them fallen away from him and only the spiritual attraction left, he can then take up the spiritual life, though it would still remain to be decided which path was the right one for him. Sri Aurobindo's path of Yoga is a very difficult... wideness, strength, peace, light and Ananda of the spiritual consciousness. Let him write to you from time to time what experiences he gets or what are the difficulties that rise and prevent the experience. 1 30 November 1926 Sri Aurobindo is retired and sees no one. If you have not had even a glimpse of the Truth from any spiritual man, the fault is likely to be yours. Either you have... help to see what kind of nature he has. But there is no need to go out of the way to persuade him; from his letter he does not seem altogether ready for the spiritual life. His idea of life seems to be rather moral and philanthropic than spiritual at present; and behind it is the attachment to the family life. If the impulse to seek the Divine of which he speaks is more than a mental turn suggested by ...
... near her ), it was in an envelope. "One must not confuse a religious teaching and a spiritual teaching. Religious teaching belongs to the past and stops all progress, spiritual teaching is the teaching of the future. It enlightens the consciousness and prepares it for the future realization. "A spiritual teaching is above religions and strives towards a total truth. It teaches us to come into ...
... his terrestrial existence the fullness of the infinite spiritual consciousness; only then will he avail to raise his total being and even his whole manifested, embodied expressive nature into the spiritual kingdom. But this is difficult in the extreme; for the causal body opens itself readily to the consciousness and capacities of the spiritual planes and belongs in its nature to the higher hemisphere... the end his spiritual life predominates, destroys his earthward tendency and breaks its ties and limitations. Spiritualised, he places his real existence beyond in other worlds, in the heavens of the vital or mental plane; he begins to regard life on earth as a painful or troublesome incident or passage in which he can never arrive at any full enjoyment of his inner ideal self, his spiritual essence.... to rise to a certain spiritual greatness in its own kind. It is open to the vital man to lift himself beyond the conceptions and energies natural to the desire-soul and the 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 ...
... mental and intellectual like the old Graeco-Roman or it might be predominantly spiritual like the still persistent culture of India. Let us see then what the Indian conception of happiness and culture was. The Indian conception What is the central conception that has governed India's spiritual culture? India's central conception is that at the root of all creation there is... evolution develops its lines, enlarges its scope, elevates its levels until there is the increasing manifestation of the sattwic or spiritual portion of the vehicle of mind; this enables the individual mental being in man to finally identify himself with the pure spiritual consciousness that Page 165 exists beyond Mind. This, according to the Indian concept, is the ultimate... religion is an aspiration to the spiritual consciousness and its fruits; her philosophy formulates it; her art and literature have the same upward look; even the Indian social system is built upon this conception; her whole dharma or law of being is founded upon it. This is her conception of progress. To the Indian mind, the true meaning of progress is this spiritual progress, not merely the externally ...
... Aurobindo - Some Comparisons Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo Levels of Spiritual Mind Above the Ordinary Mind Sri Aurobindo speaks of various levels of mental existence above the ordinary mind. In an ascending order these are: Higher Mind: A first plane of spiritual consciousness white one becomes constantly aware of the Self. Whereas the ordinary mind is a th... as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality. 48 Thus, whereas Eckhart regards the consciousness beyond the ordinary mind as a realm of no-mind and a consciousness without thought, Sri Aurobindo distinguishes various superconscient levels of spiritual mind above the ordinary mind and speaks of Higher Thought ... silencing of all thought—there was, first, what might be called a spiritually substantial or concrete consciousness of stillness and silence, then the awareness of some sole and supreme Reality in whose Presence things existed only as forms, but forms not at all substantial or real or concrete; but this was all apparent to a spiritual perception and essential and impersonal sense and there was not the ...
... Darshan. That was a turning point in my spiritual quest. I became less and less interested in Theosophy and more and more drawn to Sri Aurobindo's yoga. Since 1951 I have been an avowed practitioner of Sri Aurobindo's yoga and, though I have found inspiration from several spiritual teachers after Sri Aurobindo, I have felt no strong inclination to study any spiritual teachings other than those of Sri ... the differences rather than the similarities among the various religions. Theosophy also served to introduce me to certain fundamental doctrines of Eastern spiritual philosophy, Page 4 such as karma, rebirth, and spiritual evolution—tenets that were quite alien to my early beliefs about the afterlife. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother seemed to have entered my life at a timely... but for leading a spiritual life, all it offered was basically a path founded on the philosophical concept of the brotherhood of mankind and the ethical ideal of service to humanity. There was a yearning in me, as yet unformulated, for something deeper than the philosophical light and the ethical path I had found in Theosophy. What my inner being seemed to be asking for was a spiritual path leading to ...
... lies the crux; that raises the obstacle [to the spiritual effort]: for because of Matter Life is gross and limited and stricken with death and pain; because of Matter Mind is more than half blind, its wings clipped, its feet tied to a narrow perch and held back from the vastness and freedom above of which it is conscious. Therefore the exclusive spiritual seeker is justified from his viewpoint if, disgusted... the opposition first, entirely, trenchantly, with exaggeration if need be, rather than with diminution, and then look for the issue.” 941 This is the Aurobindonian spiritual revolution. For it may be remembered that any spiritual effort in the course of humanity’s existence has had the liberation from Matter, from this painfully burdensome world, as its aim. Sri Aurobindo, however, accords to Matter... It is significant that Sri Aurobindo often writes Matter with a capital M. In the cosmic “world stair” of the degrees of substance and their corresponding realms, it was Matter on which his spiritual vision as well as his transforming yogic effort was focused. He had the courage to draw the logical conclusion of the Upanishadic statement that all is the Brahman; if so, then “Matter also is the ...
... inner being and grows into her consciousness—those who seek an outer relation only cannot do that. 10 August 1936 The spiritual union must begin from within and spread out from there; it cannot be based on anything exterior—for, if so based, the union cannot be spiritual or real. That is the great mistake which so many make here: they put the whole emphasis on the external vital or physical relation... must be an essentially psychic and spiritual union spreading out to the mind, vital and physical. Even the physical must be able to feel invisibly the Mother's closeness, her concrete presence—then alone can the union be truly based Page 483 and completed and then alone can any physical closeness or contact find its true value and fulfil its spiritual purpose. Till then any physical contact... the Mother gives and relying wholly on her wisdom and solicitude. It ought to be quite evident that a desire which raises revolt, doubt, depression, desperate struggles cannot be a true part of the spiritual movement. If your mind tells you that it is the right thing, then surely you must distrust the mind's suggestions. Concentrate entirely on the one thing needful and put away, if they come, all ideas ...
... veritable community of spiritual seekers, as our Page 26 Ashram yearns to grow into, must reverse the ordinary principle of group-building and base its action in the collective life upon an inner experience and inclusion of others in our own being. An inner sense of oneness should be the binding element in the group-existence. To quote Sri Aurobindo again: "The spiritual individual acts... motived by a fundamental unity of knowledge, actuated by a fundamental unified will and feeling, a life expressing the spiritual Truth would find through them its own natural forms of becoming." (The Life Divine, pp. 1031-32) Thus, unity will be the basis of such a spiritual consciousness, Page 27 mutuality the natural result of its direct awareness of oneness in diversity, and... oneness which gives him immediate and direct perception of the demand of self on other self, the need of the life, the good, the work of love and sympathy that can truly be done. A realisation of spiritual unity, a dynamisation of the intimate consciousness of one-being, of one self in all beings, can alone found and govern by its truth the action of the divine life." (The Life Divine, p. 1030) ...
... variegatedly rich life of the Ashram. The Yoga-Ashram of Sri Aurobindo is not a religious, social, educational or political organisation. It is basically and above everything else a spiritual institution but spiritual with a difference. Sri Aurobindo Ashram has nothing to do with asceticism or retreat from the world. "It includes life in Yoga, and once we admit life we can include anything that we... still keep in view the original and primary goal that inspired the founding of the Ashram in 1926? Do the inmates still seriously engage themselves in their spiritual pursuit? Do they sincerely make an effort to build up in the Ashram a spiritual collectivity harmonised on the basis of the unity of the Spirit in all? Or, who knows, perhaps many of the new Ashramites have for all practical purposes banished... the Ashram. In the last seventy years since its founding the Ashram Page 10 at Pondicherry has grown from an informal grouping of a couple of dozen members into a diversified spiritual community with 1200 regular inmates. There is, besides, a significant number of non-members living in Pondicherry in the Ashram surroundings: they fully participate in Ashram life. Members are of ...
... directly into the body of his patient. And in the case of a spiritual Bhishak, the power can be raised to the nth degree. The healer need not even be present at all physically near the patient; his influence can act very well from any distance. It is quite natural and inevitable that it should be so. For the healing power is in the spiritual consciousness, the inalienable bliss of one's status in... entering into the I very being and consciousness of another, becoming that other one; it is identification and identity. This again is what I spiritual consciousness alone can do. Sympathy leads to! philanthropy, empathy is the origin of true charity, the spiritual I compassion of a Buddha or a Christ. Philanthropy is human, I charity (caritas) is divine. Page 189 ... ss itself, in the core of the inner personality. The material conditions serve only to manifest it, maintain or aggravate it, but do not create it – truly they are created by it. That is why the spiritual healers always refer to the bliss of the Spirit as the sole remedy for physical ills even, for disease, misery and death. And the unhappy mortals are always called to turn to the Divine alone in their ...
... thousand aspects of the cosmic operation. Transcendence, and not its play in the phenomenal world, would still remain the high goal of all these yogic-spiritual endeavours. However, let us proceed with Jnaneshwari , restricting ourselves only to the spiritual approach it is propounding for us. Part C The seeker on the path even as of now is merely fumbling and looking around for his way. No... to do. But then what is really important is that, in order to derive full spiritual gains out of it, he must convert this unavoidable situation or this rare excellent occasion, this very action into an opportunity. He must make it an aspect of soul-prompted and soul-guided endeavour. By making the action a spiritual action he would greatly progress on the path of Karma Yoga. The key to it lies... a greater seeing way, with a greater wisdom and truth than any human teacher, saint or sage can give us. The inner spiritual state to which this supreme Yoga will take us, will be above all that is here and yet comprehensive of all things in this and other worlds, but with a spiritual transformation of all, without limitation, without bondage, sarva-dharman parityajya . The infinite existence, co ...
... prohibition—man's mental will is not strong enough to compel them. When people do sadhana, there is a higher Nature that works within, the psychic and spiritual, and they have to put their nature under the influence of the psychic being and the higher spiritual self or of the Divine. Not only the vital and the body but the mind also has to learn the Divine Truth and obey the divine rule. But because of the... prevent their nature from following the old ways—even when they know or are told from within what to do or what not to do. It is only by persistent sadhana, by getting into the higher spiritual consciousness and spiritual nature that this difficulty Page 251 can be overcome; but even for the strongest and best sadhaks it takes a long time. All the ordinary vital movements are foreign... sadhak must become free from vital desire and spiritually master of the movements of his nature—and for that he must be free from ego and desire and duality. I have always made that quite clear—that indulgence of desire is no more part of this Yoga than it is of Sannyasa. One must be able to use and handle physical things and physical life, but from the spiritual consciousness, not from the level of the ...
... experiences and realizations which have been recorded in the Upanishads and in the Gita. Attainment of the Upanishads The spiritual substance of the Veda appears to have been captured in the Upanishads. The ancient psychological science and art of spiritual living that are to be found in the Veda as a body of inspired knowledge, but yet insufficiently equipped with intellectual and philosophical... that of the double nature of the Soul in manifestation, — the original nature in which it is one with its own true spiritual being, and the derived in which it Page 74 is subject to the confusions of egoism and ignorance. The latter has to be cast away and the spiritual has to be inwardly recovered, fulfilled, made dynamic and active. Through an inner self-fulfilment, the opening of... individuals, have a central role, and that we are here to move inwardly towards a greater consciousness and a supreme existence, not by a total exclusion of our cosmic nature, but by a higher and spiritual fulfillment of all that we now essentially are. There is to be a change from our mortal imperfection to a divine perfection of being. Sri Aurobindo explains the essential foundation of this complex ...
... upon the spiritual life". The impurities to be purged are egoism and ignorance, intemperance and untruthfulness. Translating the surface moral code into the deeper spiritual, the Mother says: "In all truly spiritual teachings, morality as it is mentally conceived is out of place." Balance, moderation, truthfulness, sincerity, honesty- these are certainly necessary for those who aim at spiritual life,... Page 640 Commenting on the 7th and 8th verses about Mara and the way to withstand his assaults, the Mother says that Mara is the symbol of all that opposes the spiritual life; he is indeed the engineer of spiritual death. A gale may fell a tree, but not a rock; likewise, Mara may knock down the man of little or no faith, but not the man anchored in the true faith or faith in "one's own... a struggle or of a sacrifice; on the contrary it is a delightful state which cures all suffering. At that time, the time of the Buddha, to live a spiritual life was a joy, a beatitude.... It is the materialism of modern times that has turned spiritual effort into a hard struggle and a sacrifice, a painful renunciation of all the so-called joys of life. The excessive and still increasing ...
... also a tendency to shut the doors even of those tendencies in religions and in spiritual planes which lie above religions, which, if consciously acknowledged and promoted, would heal the divisions of religions, bring about greater understanding among them, and, eventually enable us to cultivate the scientific body of spiritual knowledge. What we need today is a positive recognition of spirituality as distinct... that there exists a scientific body of spiritual knowledge, and that this needs to be promoted by the state. We may also note that this becomes all the more necessary when we find that the true truths that lie behind democracy and social ism which are underlined in the Indian Constitution can be integrated and expressed effectively only when the ultimate spiritual aims are recognised and promoted. ... funds should not be utilised for the promotion of any religion. In practice, very often, this rule is employed even where there is a question of the promotion, not of any religion, but of ethical and spiritual values. There is a tolerant view of secularism, which aims at equal respect for all religions. Here, again, it has become difficult to create an ethos where equal respect for all religions could be ...
... 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 present worldly existence apparently so incorrigible in its nature as to induce even... strong or weak points, of a particular philosophical formulation, the spiritual experience that it seeks to represent remains in itself eternally valid and can only be integrated in the compass of another experience much more wide and much more lofty. For, as Sri Aurobindo has so forcefully pointed out, "a single decisive spiritual experience may undo a whole edifice of reasonings and conclusions... 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 through that of Nirvana and Maya, otherwise it would not ...
... ineradicable urge of the human consciousness, and its most irrepressible aspiration; and the spiritual endeavour of man cannot cease till this integral perfection is attained and expressed in his life. Life is expression, and a complete perfection in expression is the ultimate object of human living. Any spiritual discipline that draws us away from this rightful expression of our evolving soul defeats... habitual convenience. The real and original sense is beyond the mind, which it uses as a medium, it is "a direct and original activity of the infinite power" of the spiritual consciousness. "The pure action of sense is a spiritual action and pure sense itself is a power of the Spirit." ¹ This pure and original sense is called sanjñāna. Sanjñāna makes us see, hear, touch, smell and taste the... supramental consciousness is not a fixed quantity but a power which passes to higher and higher levels of possibility until it reaches supreme consummations of spiritual existence fulfilling supermind as supermind fulfils the ranges of spiritual consciousness that are pushing towards it from the human or mental level. In this progression the body also may reach a more perfect form and a higher range ...
... change of consciousness was always the major fact, the evolution has always had a spiritual significance and the physical change was only instrumental; but this relation was concealed by the first abnormal balance of the two factors, the body of the external Inconscience outweighing and obscuring in importance the spiritual element, the conscious being. But once the balance has been righted, it is no longer... created new forms of its environment, developed by knowledge and discipline considerable changes in its own mentality. It is not an impossibility that man should aid Nature consciously also in his own spiritual and physical evolution and transformation. The urge to it is already there and partly effective, though still incompletely understood and accepted by the surface mentality; but one day it Page... understand, go deeper within itself and discover the means, the secret energy, the intended operation of the Consciousness-Force within which is the hidden reality of what we call Nature.... " If a spiritual unfolding on earth is the hidden truth of our birth into Matter, if it is fundamentally an evolution of consciousness that has been taking place in Nature, then man as he is cannot be the last term ...
... nature. Again, if philosophy has to play its legitimate role, it has to deal with the field of spiritual experiences and spiritual realities on the basis that is integral. For the varieties of spiritual experiences can easily pose the baffling problem of conflict amongst them. Fortunately, in the spiritual experiences recorded in the Veda and the Upanishads, we have already the statements of supra-mental... demand for physical proof of supra-physical fact is irrational and illogical. For the method of knowledge should be appropriate to the object of knowledge. We have to note that the occult, psychic and spiritual sciences have developed various kinds of evidence of the existence of other planes of being and communication with them. They include objectivisation of the outer sense, subtle-contact, mind-contact ...
... serve for practising a Yoga with which they themselves were never associated." Actually, Sri Aurobindo's central stress is on a new life, a transcendence of the spiritual past as well of the past in any other form, though in that spiritual past there are naturally some helpful hints for the new life. Sri Aurobindo appreciates all true seeking and permits the prolongation of the past when sincere people... up: Can Sri Aurobindo's ideal be realised by means of the past religions and the old Yogas? An answer in the negative, insisting on the newness of the ideal and the consequent need of a new spiritual praxis, is usually given. But a very positive criticism is couched in the following terms which call for our notice by the striking quotations they incorporate from Sri Aurobindo himself and the sweeping... fanaticism" is surely not to go in for a mighty mixture of the world's religions in an impartial acceptance of everything in them exactly as it is. A broad-minded view of the function and utility of all spiritual and religious motives, a willingness to let different human beings accept different creeds and guides and paths according to their natures — this is the obvious intention. Again, look at the ...
... knowledge; its truth goes beyond truth of fact and truth of thought, even the higher thought which is the first spiritual range of the thinker. It has the truth of spiritual thought, spiritual feeling, spiritual sense and at its highest the truth that comes by the most intimate spiritual touch or by identity. Ultimately, truth and beauty come together and coincide, but in between there is a difference... the Overmind, that would mean a greater, sustained height of perfection and spiritual quality in poetry than has yet been achieved; but we are discussing here short passages and lines." "The Overmind is essentially a spiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its stand on a spiritual foundation. It embraces beauty and sublimates it; it has an essential aesthesis ...
... 1966 Mother, I have heard that in 1967 India will become "the spiritual Guru of the world". But how? When we consider the present condition... India ought to be the spiritual leader of the world. Inside she has the capacity, but outside... for the moment there is still much to do for her to become actually the spiritual leader of the world. There is such a wonderful opportunity just now... with alternating red and white lotuses. The red and the white lotuses represent the twin spiritual Consciousness guiding the terrestrial evolution. At the four corners of the pavilion stand four guarding lions symbolising spiritual Powers. It is hoped that the State of Pondicherry will materialise this spiritual vision and become a meeting place of all the cultures of the world with the full con... background ) It is the flag of India's spiritual mission. And in the accomplishment of this mission will India's unity be accomplished. 15 August 1947 It is by being sincere, courageous, enduring and honest that you can best serve your country, make it one and great in the world. October 1948 ( Message for the Society for the Spiritual and Cultural Renaissance of Bharat ) ...
... The Mother My Pilgrimage to the Spirit A Great Spiritual Personality The Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry was indeed Fa great spiritual personality, very profound, most varied and highly creative. Hailing from the West, She settled in India, her "spiritual home" for all her long life, and sought to build up a new spirituality on the long traditions... very fine thing Readings from the Mother, selected for different occasions, individual or collective, are so inspiring and uplifting. Papers written on the Mother will need to reflect the central spiritual truth of her personality, whatever they may otherwise deal with. A purely academic treatment of her orientations on different matters is perfectly possible, but it has its limitations. Of course, ...
... simply a question of the growth of the inner senses. It has no indispensable connection with spiritual progress. There are some very far on the path who have very little of this kind of vision if any—on the other hand sometimes it develops enormously in mere beginners who have as yet had only very elementary spiritual experiences. 1 December 1933 X says that she sees white light streaming out from... Was this a formation of the mind or the vital? Was there a mistake in it? If seeing the Mother's Light is a mistake or a mental or vital formation, then the realisation of the Divine and all spiritual experience can be questioned as a mental or vital formation or mistake and all Yoga becomes impossible. 6 September 1933 While watching the Mother walk on the terrace, I saw a light like moonlight... condition. People see all kinds of lights around the Mother when she walks on the roof. They are all the flowing out of different forces. If it was like the moonlight in appearance it would be the spiritual force. 1 November 1933 What people see around the Mother is first her aura, as it is called nowadays, and secondly the forces of Light that pour out from her when she concentrates, as she always ...
... material and spiritual charge of the Ashram devolved on the Mother. Then she started working along two complementary lines with a dual purpose - individual and collective - in view. In order to understand what this dual purpose meant in actual practice, we have to remember that one of the cardinal points of Sri Aurobindo's teaching is that there are more than one overhead planes of spiritual consciousness... y in 1920 that a serious attempt was made at some sort of a collective organisation. By January 1922, the Ashram - although not yet known as an 'Ashram' - was very much of a reality in its inner spiritual orientation. Yet, in this pre-1926 period, the community of sadhaks had been - in the words of the Mother - no more than "a collection of individuals ... without a collective organisation... One could... activities." (Bulletin, August 1964, p. 96) This was the individual aspect of Sadhana, what every inmate of the Ashram was expected to put into progressive practice for his own march towards spiritual perfection. But there was at the same time a collective aspect to it. Thus the second line along which the Mother worked was to make the collectivity as real and living as the individual aspect and ...
... the Garhastha, if the call to spiritual life comes, whether one keeps to them or not depends partly upon the way of yoga one follows, partly on one’s own spiritual necessity. There are many who pursue inwardly the spiritual life and keep the family duties, not as social duties but as a field for the practice of Karmayoga, others abandon everything to follow the spiritual call or line and they are justified ...
... events in Europe, even when they are outwardly spiritual, have usually an intellectual or social trend & significance, but great events in Asia have even when they are outwardly intellectual, social or political a spiritual significance. Therefore when Asia once more becomes the theatre of the world's chief events, it is a sure sign that some great spiritual revolution, perhaps a great age of spirituality ...
... indicates either a spiritual happening, e.g. the descent of peace, the feeling of the presence of the Mother, or an occult experience, e.g. a going into the other worlds in dream and seeing and doing things there. There are thousands of different kinds of experience. Visions are a special kind of experience in which the inner eye is active. Visions do not come from the spiritual plane—they come... thing as meeting him in person. But the picture on the wall need not be useless for the spiritual life. All one can say is that Page 91 one must not attach oneself too much to this gift and what it shows us, but neither is it necessary to belittle it. It has its value and sometimes a considerable spiritual utility. But, naturally, it is not supreme,—the supreme thing is the realisation, the... sign of great Yogashakti. Apposite and effective visions, those that reveal movements in the occult workings of the nature or help the spiritual growth, are another matter. Page 95 Well, it is difficult to explain [ what kind of visions help one's spiritual growth ]. I might give the example of St. Paul's vision on the way to Damascus as an example of a vision which really meant business ...
... instrument of material energy, the spiritual self-evolution of Yoga can be only a delusion, hallucination, abnormal state of mind or self-hypnosis. In any case it cannot be what it represents itself to be, a discovery of the eternal truth Page 752 of our being and a passing above the limited truth of the mental, vital and physical to the full truth of our spiritual nature. But when we look... getting control of the pranic energy. They heighten too and set free the psychic, mental and spiritual energies which ordinarily depend for their opportunity of action on the pranic force. But the same thing can be done by mental will and practice or by an increasing opening of ourselves to a higher spiritual power of the Shakti. The pranic Shakti can be directed not only upon ourselves, but effectively... The relation between the Purusha and Prakriti which emerges as one advances in the Yoga of self-perfection is the next thing that we have to understand carefully in this part of the Yoga. In the spiritual truth of our being the power which we call Nature is the power of being, consciousness and will and therefore the power of self-expression and self-creation of the self, soul or Purusha. But to our ...
... 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 immanence and the divine effective mastery... peace or bliss of its undifferentiated, its concentrated spiritual experience of itself; we must then transcend by a complete renunciation of Nature and cosmic existence, not conquer by a divine and sovereign possession. But the Spirit, the Divine is not only above Nature; it is master of Nature and cosmos; the soul rising into its spiritual poise must at least be capable of the same mastery by its... harmony with the Divine, and then to be unified with the Infinite, taken into the Divine is its condition of perfect strength and mastery, and this is precisely the very nature of the spiritual life and the spiritual existence. The distinction made in the Gita between the Purusha and the Prakriti gives us the clue to the various attitudes which the Page 431 soul can adopt towards Nature ...
... mystical nomenclature, the sublime entities of spiritual scripture, the metaphysical ultimates of religious hymnody and liturgy are absent and in their place is a super-pragmatism. In reality, of course, Buddha under the Bo Tree or moving amidst his monks or preaching to the populace is enhaloed by a mystical light, fused Page 81 with a spiritual Ineffable, himself an embodiment of a deathless... protean Spirit to a single formula and a solitary revelation. None of them, therefore, can truly satisfy, or gain wholesale acceptance from, the Indian consciousness which wants spiritual life abundant. Life abundant, whether spiritual or secular, cannot exist for long in a one-track scheme. It is also in the instinctive surge of the genuine Indian consciousness towards a complex harmony that we find... much wisdom and also carried a spiritual colour which at the same time infused the highest values into every stratum and rendered different classes equal in essential status by that infusion. Even the sub-Sudras who took up the most servile labour, the work of scavenging, and who in course of time became the outcasts, the untouchables, had their own dignity and spiritual significance and were never debarred ...
... . When we begin to live the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness takes place which is for us the proof that we have entered the spiritual life; well, another reversal of consciousness occurs when one enters the supramental world. Besides, perhaps each time that a new world opens up, there will again be a new reversal of this kind. Thus even our spiritual life—which is such a total reversal... our entire spiritual life were made of silver whereas the supramental is made of gold, as if the whole spiritual life here below were a vibration of silver, not lustreless, but merely a light, a light that goes up to the summit, a light quite pure, pure and intense; but in the other life, the supramental life, there is a richness and a power that makes all the difference. This whole spiritual life of ...
... out of it, then indeed your meditation can be an indication that you are in the spiritual life. There are disciplines such as Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga that one can practise and yet have nothing to do with the spiritual life; the former arrives mostly at body control, the latter at mind control. But to enter the spiritual life means to take a plunge into the Divine, as you would jump into the sea. And... not a sign of spiritual progress or discipline. There are some people who act and seem to feel as Page 20 if their meditation were a debt they have to pay to the Divine; they are like men who go to church once a week and think they have paid what they owe to God. If you need to make an effort to go into meditation, you are still very far from being able to live the spiritual life. When... and for good. That is the plunge you have to take, and unless you do it, you may do Yoga for years and yet know nothing of a true spiritual living. Take the whole and entire plunge and you will be free from this outer confusion and get the true experience of the spiritual life. Page 22 ...
... points,—or in the two or three peoples that have powerfully developed the spiritual force within, the highest with the exception of the spiritual summit. In these few we can best see the inner character and aim of any one line of the movement,—whether it be the line of poetry, the line of art or the line of religious and spiritual endeavour. This general evolution has its own natural periods or ages;... a past self which, being dead, yet lives. Thus, the Indian spirit could seize powerfully the spiritual motive in an age in which the mass of the people lived a strenuous external life and was strongly outward-going and objective in its normal mentality. It succeeded in expressing the supreme spiritual experiences, so difficult to put at all into speech, in forms Page 45 and images proper... Chapter VI The National Evolution of Poetry The work of the poet depends not only on himself and his age, but on the mentality of the nation to which he belongs and the spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic tradition and environment which it creates for him. It is not that he is or need be entirely limited or conditioned by his environment or that he must regard himself as only ...
... between the human representatives of these cults and applied them to the spiritual conflict, just as they employed the other details of their physical life to symbolise the spiritual sacrifice, the spiritual wealth, the spiritual battle and journey. But it is perfectly certain that in the Rig-veda at least it is the spiritual conflict and victory, not the physical battle and plunder of which they are... ward off the stroke" (I.5.10) 12 — Sri Aurobindo, at a time earlier than his Arya-series, The Secret of the Veda, has the note: "The Rishi has already prayed for protection of his spiritual gains against spiritual enemies; he now prays for the safety from human blows on the physical body." 13 Then Sri Aurobindo adds that, though the Sanskrit marta undoubtedly means "mortal" in the Rig-veda, the... actual practical upshot is absolutely definite: we may generalise that the possible conflict does not appear directly at all in the Rig-veda. Everything there is symbol and apologue of the inner spiritual development." However, there is one extremely taxing point. And here some remarks by Sri Aurobindo at an earlier period of his Vedic study gives us pause. Repeatedly in the Rig-veda we come across ...
... Brahman or in Nirvana. And in the nature of things this spiritual evasion and escape must represent 1 The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, pp. 60-61. 2 3 The Life Divine, p. 833. Page 27 the only true end of the cycle of individual existence. Indeed, throughout the ages, whether the spiritual seeker be an uncompromising absolutist who considers... terrestrial interlude, this latter representing no more than a spiritual fall and exile or a place of ordeal where to expiate the sins or at the best a temporary field of development of a single scene of the drama of soul's existence and experiences, his general verdict has been that this earth-life is a rather difficult liability for a spiritual being, full of obstinate and obscure resistances to the... action of "an inconscient Energy which acts automatically by mechanical processes and can have no element of purpose in it." 1 Thus, according to the scientific materialist line of thought, no spiritual significance need be sought in this process of evolutionary elaboration or, for that matter, in the emergence of life in the initially inanimate universe. For, according to the materialist view ...
... worship began to cloud the true spiritual motive that had been the inspiring force of the Indian vitality. Tendencies of irreligionism, selfishness and battles for small ends Page 210 began to multiply. As a result, during the 18th century and early 19th century, there came about a collapse of Indian culture, although not any total disintegration. The spiritual lamp continued to burn even... the one hand, and retrogression in the intellectual, ethical and spiritual abilities, on the other. It further perceives that this crisis has reached a point of climax, and it can be resolved not by increasing development of external paraphernalia but by inward perception of the inmost realities and by releasing the moral and spiritual forces. Finally, the Indian message is that the time has come... . In Sanskrit it is called Rashtra Dharma and Swadharma. A subtle and complex relationship between that perennial and these temporal and variable movements has been the secret of the ethical and spiritual content of Indian culture. And it has been the underlying cause of the continuity of that culture, which historians have found to be astonishing and perplexing. Page 208 II Broadly ...
... it down and establish it on earth and keep it pure. For, there is a gravitational pull downwards. So the spiritual power must be such that it can not only resist but overcome that pull." He was speaking on 18 January 1939. And he threw a challenge. "This is the solution I propose. It is a spiritual solution that aims at changing the whole basis of human nature. But," he cautioned, "it is not a question... Savitri to check the veracity of my statement. 1 Among the Great, 221, 226. Page 310 Another important point to note is that "the old Yogins when they went above the spiritual mind passed into Samadhi, which means that they made no attempt to be conscious in these higher planes...." But Sri Aurobindo always kept his eyes wide open. He mapped for us the geography of the... discoveries he made as the Divine Guide within urged him on. "The interpenetration of the planes," Sri Aurobindo wrote on 14 January 1934, "is indeed for me a capital and fundamental part of spiritual experience without which Yoga as I practice it and its aims could not exist. For that aim is to manifest, reach or embody a higher consciousness upon earth and not to get away from earth into a higher ...
... The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths Other Spiritual Paths and the Integral Yoga Letters on Yoga - II Chapter VII Tantra Tantra and the Integral Yoga Veda and Vedanta are one side of the one Truth; Tantra with its emphasis on Shakti is another. In this Yoga all sides of the Truth are taken up, not... them formerly, but in their essence and carried to the fullest and highest significance. But Vedanta deals more with the principles and essentials of the divine knowledge and therefore much of its spiritual knowledge and experience has been taken bodily into the Arya . Tantra deals more with forms and processes and organised powers—all these could not be taken as they were, for the integral Yoga needs... the higher consciousness above; there is the opening of the centres and of the planes (mental, vital, physical) which these centres command; there is also the descent which is the main key of the spiritual transformation. Therefore there is, I have said, a Tantrik knowledge behind the process of transformation in this Yoga. There is [ in the Integral Yoga ] no willed opening of the chakras, they ...
... deity or spiritual Master? Or, to take the worst case, does meditation' boil down to passing some time in a half-awake and half-asleep state of peaceful torpor? It goes without saying that none of the above descriptions con respond to a real meditation. It is well to remember that the capacity of sitting still in the same position for a very long time is no necessary sign of spiritual advancement... There, my meditation is spoilt! Completely spoilt.'... Naturally this is not a sign of great spiritual progress." (Questions and Answers 1953, M C W, Vol. 5, p. 42) Well, all these are counterfeit 'meditations'. But it cannot be gainsaid that there are genuine meditations of great spiritual value and among people who meditate there are some who know how to meditate. But even in their... a truly advanced spiritual consciousness. Then and then only can we hope to translate that consciousness into the activities of the obiter life. Otherwise, it will be like putting the cart before the horse, which will be not only absurd but wholly bereft of any fruitful result. It is because of this obvious folly shown by many sadhakas in pretending to lead a spiritual life backed only ...
... ordinary Yoga...it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge... earth-nature if we would have a transformed waking existence. Otherwise a static release remains the sole possibility before the spiritual seeker. Unfortunately, the knowledge of the existence of these supernal planes of our being has been almost lost to the spiritual memory of the race with all the adverse consequences attendant upon it. In ancient lore, "in the Upanishad (usually the Taittiriya)... " 1 But this universal Illusionism is not a necessary concomitant of the supreme spiritual experience. If instead of the mind's abrupt Samadhi-plunge into the mystic sleep state of su ṣ upti that is now superconscient and therefore inaccessible to it, one succeeds in acquiring spiritual wakefulness in the supernal states intervening between the Mind and the Spirit, one does not pass ...
... it can only be harmonised with the spiritual condition if all greed of food and desire of the palate disappears. Intellectual or aesthetic delight can also be an obstacle to the spiritual perfection if there is attachment to it, although it is much nearer to the spiritual than a gross untransformed bodily appetite; in fact in order to become part of the spiritual consciousness the intellectual and... comes down from above, personal ambition and pride have to be kept far away from it; for any mixture of the perversion will corrupt the psychic or spiritual action and prevent a true fulfilment. The movement of self-existent psychic or spiritual love general and without a special object can come, but it must be kept free from all taint of sex—otherwise it cannot endure. What is real love... treatment for it. It can only go by a radical psychic rejection or a full spiritual opening with the increasing descent of a consciousness that does not want it and has a truer Ananda. I do not know what you mean by harm, but the harm of sex to a sadhak is that it stands as a strong barrier to the realisation and spiritual progress and in that way it harms not only oneself Page 495 ...
... will always be with you." 30 March 1960 You say that you wish to lead the spiritual life, but for that you should understand that the first point is to overcome all the lower movements, all the attractions, all the attachments, for all these are absolutely contrary to the spiritual life. The spiritual life demands that one is exclusively turned towards the Divine and the Divine alone... whole being. I know that this cannot be done in a day. But the decision that it may be so should be taken in an unshakable manner. It is only on this condition that I can accept you for the spiritual life. 29 July 1960 Much more than any physical condition it is faithfulness to the ideal and consecration to the work that make the true disciple. 25 August 1962 First indispensable ...
... second place, he wished to write a poem that would at the same time be also a Manual of Yoga, embodying stairs and spirals of spiritual aspiration, involving trials and struggles, doubts and difficulties, but culminating in the summits and high-mountain lakes of spiritual victory and realisation; the poem was thus to comprise both the toil and the reward, the human effort to transcend humanity and... or tries to express a total and many-sided vision and experience of all the planes of being and their action upon each other. 87 Savitri is an experiment in mystic poetry, spiritual poetry cast into a symbolic figure...it is really a new attempt and cannot be hampered by old ideas of technique except when they are assimilable...' 88 I was not seeking... claim a sufficient, if not an infinite capacity for painstaking.. .for waiting and listening for the true inspiration and rejecting all that fell short of it... 91 But this (a spiritual vision such as that of the Vedantin arriving beyond the world towards the Ineffable) is not what Savitri has to say or rather it is only a small part of it and, even so, bound up ...
... do so, until they learn to put away the limitations of the outward consciousness and build in themselves their spiritual being, create for it, as it were, a form in their nature. Man, to know himself, must be kṛtātmā , formed and complete in the spiritual mould, enlightened in the spiritual vision. The Yogins who have this eye of knowledge, see the Divine Being we are in their own endless reality, their... of the Divine and finds in the Infinite its highest spiritual truth and meaning. But the Person in the Infinite is not the egoistic, separative, oblivious personality of the lower Prakriti; it is something exalted, universal and transcendent, immortal and divine. That mystery of the supreme Person is the secret of love and devotion. The spiritual person, puruṣa , the eternal soul in us offers itself... turns towards one central thought, and to that it is arriving in all its balancing and reconciliation of the disagreements of various philosophic systems and its careful synthetising of the truths of spiritual experience, lights often conflicting or at least divergent when taken separately and exclusively pursued along their outer arc and curve of radiation, but here brought together into one focus of grouping ...
... me how I can obtain his kṛpā? My spiritual work is limited to a very small field and a particular purpose. Outside that field I never intervene whether for spiritual instructions or worldly matters. This limitation is absolutely necessary otherwise I could not do the work I have to do. All depends on whether the man who comes to me is meant for the spiritual path and its work—if not, then all I... his behalf to your letter. I informed him at the time of all that your wife told me of your difficulties. Sri Aurobindo does not as a rule give any advice in secular affairs, but only spiritual advice and spiritual support and blessings. In this matter the trouble seems to be the result of an education or influences, common enough at the present time, which turn the mind away from all living faith... him (in Bengali) that it is no use putting these matters before Sri Aurobindo, as he makes it a rule not to advise people in their mundane affairs and confines himself only to what is proper to the spiritual life and for the rest to his own path of Yoga. I hope you will help me and send your reply to the following queries: (1) How long will the business partnership last with my partner? ...
... pattern, everybody is to be made uniformly and faultlessly the same. It is because morality is of this rigid unreal nature that it is in its principle and its working the contrary of the spiritual life. The spiritual life reveals the one essence in all, but reveals too its infinite diversity; it works for diversity in oneness and for perfection in that diversity. Morality lifts up one artificial standard... an illustration of the difference between the moral and the spiritual view of things. The ordinary social notions distinguish between two classes of men,—the generous, the avaricious. The avaricious man is despised and blamed, while the generous man is considered unselfish and useful to society and praised for his virtue. But to the spiritual vision, they both stand on the same level; the generosity... is not fulfilment; it is a deprivation, a self-immolation. It is your possibilities that you sacrifice, the possibilities and realisations of your personality from the most material to the highest spiritual range. Sacrifice diminishes your being. If physically you sacrifice your life, your body, you give up all your possibilities on the material plane; you have done with the achievements of your earthly ...
... provide poetic and spiritual connotations for plumbing the depths of this epic. Gems and precious metals become almost a medium for portraying the areas of spiritual experience beyond our ken. They are used as poetic embellishments, as strikingly new images where sound, sight and sense mingle and as parameters of truth, light and beauty. The word, the inspiration and the spiritual vision fuse together... Sri Aurobindo discusses the spiritual value of gold: Gold indicates at its most intense something from the supramental, otherwise overmind truth or intuitive truth deriving ultimately from the supramental Truth-Consciousness. (SABCL, Vol. 23, p. 959) In Savitri gold, as a metaphor, has been used effectively to establish the presence of the spiritual element in earth-consciousness... have deterred critics from judging the shift in Sethna's poetic sensibility. Secondly, Sethna's assertion about his dual identity as poet and as disciple has quite often raised this issue. Was his spiritual training responsible for his poetry or did the poet in him gain access to the great 'Overhead' heights? To this, Sethna (Amal Kiran) would probably reply that his inner progress was of paramount ...
... Supra-mental Force may do miracles. Such being the case, why not then direct one's energies towards spiritual achievements? Certainly the energies should be directed towards spiritual achievement here—other things can only be a corollary or else something developed for the service of the spiritual Force. I suppose he didn't mean born poets like Harindra and Nishikanta but the common herd like... however, a sign of cheerfulness? Not always—moreover the cheerfulness is vital. I do not say that it should not be there, but there is a deeper cheerfulness, an inner সুখহাস্য 16 which is the spiritual condition of cheerfulness. November 7, 1934 My birthday falls on the 17th. Hope my name is there? It is there. On the I 7th after 12. About five minutes before the end of the... cannot agree, for ff Yoga can only raise geniuses to super-geniuses and cannot make crowns out of clay, well— Well, of course the first business of Yoga is not to make geniuses at all, but to make spiritual men—but Yoga can do the other thing also. November 11, 1934 I have four rupees with which I wanted to buy something for you on my birthday. But an impulse has come to offer something ...
... constant, real, imperishable. Amidst these various and conflicting opinions the seeker of the Truth has to decide for himself which shall be for him the Knowledge. But if our aim is a spiritual release or a spiritual fulfilment, then the exceeding of this little mould of ego is imperative. In human egoism and its satisfaction there can be no divine culmination and deliverance. A certain purification... this cosmic self is spiritual in essence and in experience; it must not be confused with the collective existence, with any group soul or the life and body of a human society or even of all mankind. The subordination of the ego to the progress and happiness of the human race is now a governing idea in the world's thought and ethics; but this is a mental and moral and not a spiritual ideal. For that progress... than the individual, but also from something higher than the collective ego. Altruism, philanthropy, the service of mankind are in themselves mental or moral ideals, not laws of the spiritual life. If into the spiritual aim there enters the impulse to deny the personal self or to serve humanity or the world at large, it comes not from the ego nor from the collective sense of the race, but from something ...
... 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... of three lines, tend by themselves to introduce something of the graver, more strongly cut and more marshalled power of epic construction, even when the poised element of spiritual philosophy and the dynamic element of spiritual autobiography are not together directly in front to contribute an epic tone affined to that of Savitri. 1 This line would scan differently if the first foot is truncated... Sri Aurobindo - The Poet 6 Sheer Spiritual Light "Overhead Poetry " Sonnets, Lyrics, Compositions in New Metres Sri Aurobindo's latest work is the most unique he has done, but its deepest characteristic is not its new metre. This characteristic is equally patent in his recent poetry within the general bounds of traditional technique. To evaluate ...
... brasstacks of animal reality. The other aspect of the attack is derived, surprisingly, from just the opposite quarter - the camp not of scientific naturalists but of those who have developed a spiritual world-view and seen the need of an inner Godward growth. Aldous Huxley makes the character who is his own mouthpiece in After Many a Summer tear Robert Browning to shreds for setting up what may... nothing else than the experience of sex on subtle planes of consciousness where the hold of the raw and rigid physical is diminished. The subtle planes have windows opening to the psychic and the spiritual ethers, and through those windows the light of the Divine can steal in and a sense of what is Page 115 intrinsically vast, rapturous and deathless start stirring. The poetic mind... of his romanticism is not altogether an opaque many-hued veil cast for ever upon the face of truth. It is a thinning veil necessary in order to uplift the animal in us by means not too sheerly spiritual - it is an evolutionary device, accustoming the unregenerate part of us gradually to the glow of God. To mysticise about sexual love and not accept it in pure animal-human terms is at the same ...
... for its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other way. That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one... way for the lower (mental, vital, physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual nature) consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what is called in this yoga the spiritual transformation. If one begins with this movement then the Power from above has in its descent to open all the centres (including the lowest centre)... and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - II: Concentration and Meditation The realisation ...
... secret of living a truly spiritual life. And Sri Aurobindo has reminded us that, in practice, this "self-giving... means a change from ego-centricity to God-centricity". (Letters on Yoga, p. 1374) But this 'God-centricity' is not so easy to obtain: it can come only if we truly and integrally love the Divine. Now the question arises whether, as sadhakas of the spiritual Path, we fulfil the... central position in the field of our spiritual effort, it will be difficult for us to receive the bounty of divine Grace in a free and uninterrupted flow nor can we in that case expect to grow in genuine love for the Divine. A Christian mystic of Europe of the Middle Ages has succinctly stated the same truth: "As soon as one begins to seek oneself in one's spiritual life, he ceases to love the Divine... question is addressed to us seeking some clarification: "How do you know that you really love the Divine?", our reply will perhaps be: "Well, we intensely like any discussion about the Divine and spiritual life; we sit in meditation at regular intervals; praying to the Divine is a normal feature of our life; we do not forget to offer flowers before the Images; and, of course, an attentive reading ...
... and enjoyment of union with the Divine in spiritual being, consciousness and delight must always be the first object of the Yoga; its free enjoyment of the cosmic unity of the Divine becomes a second object; but out of that a third appears, the effectuation of the meaning of the divine unity with all being by a sympathy and participation in the spiritual purpose of the Divine in humanity. The individual... Divine in humanity." 87 This out flowering implies a perfection which amounts to the elevation of the mental into the full spiritual and what Sri Aurobindo calls supramental nature. Therefore, the integral yoga of knowledge, love and works is extended into a Yoga of spiritual and supramental perfection. (b) Supermind is the key-word. For supermind is an integral consciousness; it is at once... time, he shows that successive practice of each of them in turn would not be easy in the short span of our human life, even though in an exceptional example of Sri Ramakrishna one sees "a colossal spiritual capacity, first driving straight to the divine realisation, taking, as it were, the kingdom of heaven by violence, and then seizing upon one Yogic method after another and extracting the substance ...
... Page 28 According to Sri Aurobindo, the evolution of the spiritual man has two intentions. The first intention is to awaken the spiritual man to the supreme Reality and release him from his bondage to the complex nature of body, life and mind which are limited, obscure and ignorant; this intention is fulfilled when the spiritual man attains the capacity of a departure from Nature and its Ignorance... Sri Aurobindo points out that the theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with the scientific theory of form-evolution and physical life. The theory of spiritual evolution may accept the scientific account of the physical evolution as a support or an element, but that support is not indispensable. What is common between the theory of spiritual evolution and scientific theory is the account... ocean sends downwards its rivers of the light, truth and bliss even into our physical being. Thus, in the ocean of physical Nature, the Vedic poets sing the hymn of our spiritual ascension. The science and practice of that spiritual ascension is the secret science of the Veda or of the Vedic Yoga, the aim of which is immortality. This science assigns a great importance to Agni, the Mystic Fire, ...
... in its nature, but still it is not that point where pleasure passes into or is rather drowned in the pure spiritual Ananda, the ecstasy of the creative, poetic revelation. That intensity comes where everything else may be present, but all is powerfully carried on the surge of a spiritual vision which has found its inspired and inevitable speech. All or any of the other elements may be there, but... or other beauty of presentation may be added to that essential aim, the first aim of poetic style is to make the thing presented living to the imaginative vision, the responsive inner emotion, the spiritual sense, the soul-feeling and soul-sight. Where the failure is to express at all with any sufficient power, to get home in any way, the distinction becomes palpable enough, and we readily say of such... richest or delicatest play of fancy or with the most beautiful colouring of word or image. It is creative, not of either the actual or the fictitious, but of the more and the most real; it sees the spiritual truth of things,—of this truth too there are many gradations,—which may take either the actual or the ideal for its starting-point. The aim of poetry, as of all true art, is neither a photographic ...
... The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo CHAPTER XXVII THE INTEGRAL TRANSFORMATION PART I WHAT IS TRANSFORMATION? "SPIRITUAL experiences can fix themselves in the inner consciousness and alter it, transform it, if you like; one can realise the Divine everywhere, the Self in all and all in the Self, the universal śakti doing... even if complete, is not the transformation aimed at in the Integral Yoga. "One can realise the Divine everywhere"—a realisation which is almost universally regarded as the summit experience of spiritual life—and yet remain untransformed in his nature. "One can realise the Self in all and all in the Self"; "one can realise the universal śakti doing all things"; "one can feel merged in the cosmic... Self", and yet, paradoxical as it may sound, none of these realisations, not even the sum-total of them, will constitute the transformation Sri Aurobindo holds up before us as the highest object of spiritual discipline. What, then, is transformation? In the case of a saint or a sage, as we know, his central consciousness remains detached from the movements of his nature, whether they are delightful ...
... any intermediate process, but by a direct inner seizing or a penetrating and enveloping luminous contact of the spiritual consciousness with its object. It is this luminous seizing and contact that is the spiritual vision, dṛṣṭi ,—" paśyati ", says the Upanishad continually of the spiritual knowledge, "he sees"; and of the Self conceiving the idea of creation, where we should expect "he thought", it... with the spiritual awareness, thought becomes in fact a diminution of knowledge. For it would be, supposing it to be a supramental thought, only a partial manifestation of a greater knowledge existing in the self but not at the time present to the immediately active consciousness. In the highest ranges of the infinite there need be no thought at all because all would be experienced spiritually, in continuity... at once real and evident, pratyakṣa , so the spiritual sight surpasses the indications or representations of thought and can make the self and truth of all things present to us and directly evident, pratyakṣa . The sense can only give us the superficial image of things and it needs the aid of thought to fill and inform the image; but the spiritual sight is capable of presenting to us the thing ...
... progress of the inner Person;' it must be able to keep pace with the soul in its formation of self expressive personality, its long unfolding of a secret spiritual divinity and the slow transformation of the mental into the divine mental or spiritual existence. This consummation of a triple immortality, immortality of the nature completing the essential immortality of the Spirit and the psychic survival... SRI AUROBINDO on The Riddle of this World It. is not to be denied, no spiritual experience will deny that this is an unideal and unsatisfactory world, strongly marked with the stamp of inadequacy, suffering, evil. Indeed this perception is in a way the starting point of the spiritual urge except for the few to whom the greater experience comes spontaneously without being forced... urge towards a victory here, in a consenting association with the Will behind the world, in a discovery of the spiritual Page 102 gate to perfection which will be at the same time an opening for the entire descent of the Divine Light, Knowledge, Power, Beatitude. All spiritual experience affirms that there is a Permanent above the transience of this manifested world we live in and this ...
... 245). When people learn about a spiritual force acting they believe it must always succeed in the human sense and fulfil man's hopes and desires. The impartiality of observation about anything, including the working of the Spiritual Power that he was using, is a quality which I have never seen in another spiritual person. To a question whether his spiritual force was used only in the Ashram... I p. 237) Another question was : "Is the spiritual Force you speak of concrete ?" He answered: "Concrete ? What do you mean by concrete ? Spiritual force has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a stream, for instance) of which one is aware and send it quite concretely on whatever object one chooses." (ibid p. 239) "If a spiritual force is working then it must always succeed"—wrote... accumulating dry grass all the time. It is hay, it is not solid substantial food which can bring about a change in your system. To bring about a change in your spiritual system some other radical, more nourishing food is to be given, the spiritual food. That is Knowledge by identity,— Knowledge by oneness. Knowledge by identity is the remedy, which means increase or expansion of self-awareness ...
... 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 as it is now is not that ideal, for that all its members would have to live in a spiritual consciousness and not in the ordinary egoistic... to understand his standpoint. It is a rigid mental logic that makes the difficulty but in spiritual matters mental logic easily blunders; intuition, faith, a plastic spiritual reason are here the only guides. Page 174 As for faith, his meaning is clear enough. Faith in the spiritual sense is not a mental belief which can waver and change. It can wear that form in the mind... approve of your departure to Brinda-van in this way – if you were going on a visit or temporary stay to see if you could get there some spiritual experience or for relief from pressure, it would be different; for however I would wish to have you here, your spiritual needs must take first place. The reasons you put forward in your letter seem to me very slight and outward: a dispute with Purani, the ...
... the delight of the motion of the self out into spiritually sensuous joy of beautiful shapes and coloured radiances of existence. VI Painting is naturally the most sensuous of arts, and highest greatness open to the painter is to spiritualise this sensuous appeal by making the most vivid outward beauty a revelation of subtle spiritual emotion so that the soul and the sense are at harmony... artist the true beauty, - Lavanya: the dramatic motive is subordinated and made only a purely secondary element, only so much is given of character and action as will help to bring out the deeper spiritual or psychic feeling or Bhava. The life depicted is the life of the soul and not, except as a form and a helping suggestion, the life of the vital being and the body. For the second more elevated... there the artist arrests it for us and makes moments of the life of the soul reflected in form of man or creature of incident, or scene or Nature full of permanent and opulent significance to our spiritual vision." VIII "It is not that all Indian work realises this ideal; there is plenty no doubt that falls short, is lowered, ineffective or even debased, but it is the best and the most ...
... Amidst these various and conflicting opinions the seeker of Page 126 the Truth has to decide for himself which shall be for him the Knowledge. But if our aim is a spiritual release or a spiritual fulfilment, then the exceeding of this little mould of ego is imperative. In human egoism and its satisfaction there can be no divine culmination and deliverance. A certain purification... self-extinction in the featureless eternity of the Infinite. But there is a deeper secret behind which justifies his individuality and its demand, the secret of the spiritual and eternal individual, the Purusha. It is because of the spiritual Person, the Divinity in the individual, that perfection or liberation, — salvation, as it is called in the West, — has to be individual and not collective;... complete liberation possible; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal portion of the Divine, but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative ...
... The End of the Curve of Reason 276 The Advent and Progress of the Spiritual Age 292 A Vision of Spiritual Society 301 Part V The Turn Towards Unity 310 Unity in Diversity, Law and Liberty 317 The Peril of the World-State 325 The Conditions of a Free World-Union 334 Spiritual Religion of Humanity 344 A Postscript Chapter 347 Part VI ...
... conceive of, and also how it is possible to bring such forces under control. However, the Mother always said that occult knowledge without spiritual discipline is a dangerous instrument, both for the one who uses it and for others, but so sure and strong were her own spiritual foundations that no harm could touch her during these years of study and experiment. I should also emphasise here that for the Mother... a fixed status; the East too is beginning to return from this exaggeration. The West is reawaking to the truth of the Spirit and the spiritual possibilities of life, the East is reawaking to the truth of Life and tends towards a new application to it of its spiritual knowledge.' In Sri Aurobindo's view, the antinomy created between the East and the West is an unreal one. He writes: 'Spirit being... which action can lead us to birth into the Spirit and can be harmonised with the spiritual life. Truth of philosophy is of a merely theoretical value unless it can be lived, and we have therefore tried in the "Synthesis of Yoga" to arrive at a synthetical view of the principles and methods of the various lines of spiritual self-discipline and the way in which they can lead to an integral divine life in ...
... physical existence. In the spiritual domain, which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know... The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution The Life Divine Chapter XV Reality and the Integral Knowledge This Self is to be won by the Truth and by an integral knowledge. Mundaka Upanishad. (III. 1. 5.) Hear how thou... to mind unknowable. This absolutism corresponds to a truth of thought and to a truth of supreme experience in the spiritual consciousness; but by itself it is not the whole of spiritual thought complete and comprehensive and it does not exhaust the possibilities of the supreme spiritual experience. The absolutist view of reality, consciousness and knowledge is founded on one side of the earliest ...
... intuition, idea, discrimination, thinking synthesis; an enlightened life of the mind grasps at all knowledge with a delight of finding and reception and holding, a spiritual enthusiasm, passion, or ecstasy; a power of light full of spiritual force, illumination and purity of working manifests its empire, brahma-tejas, brahma-varcas ; a bottomless steadiness and illimitable calm upholds all the illumination... Asuric or even Rakshasic form it may take, which drives the Prakriti and uses it for its own greater purpose. A still more developed power of the being will bring out the real character of this spiritual presence and it will then be seen as something impersonal and self-existent and self-empowered, a sheer soul-force which is other than the mind-force, life-force, force of intelligence, but drives... the spirit manifested in Nature appears in a sea of infinite quality, Ananta-guna. But the executive or mechanical Prakriti is of the threefold guna, sattwa, rajas, tamas, and the Ananta-guna, the spiritual play of infinite quality, modifies itself in this mechanical nature into the type of these three gunas. And in the soul-force in man this Godhead in Nature represents itself as a fourfold effective ...
... Yoga of knowledge is a philosophy of being put into spiritual practice, a psychological system, this is a science of being, a psycho-physical system. Both produce physical, psychic and spiritual results; but because they stand at different poles of the same truth, to one the psycho-physical results are of small importance, the pure psychic and spiritual alone matter, and even the pure psychic are only... only Page 529 accessories of the spiritual which absorb all the attention; in the other the physical is of immense importance, the psychical a considerable fruit, the spiritual the highest and consummating result, but it seems for a long time a thing postponed and remote, so great and absorbing is the attention which the body demands. It must not be forgotten, however, that both do arrive at... body than to be contained, possessed and used by it,—just as the restless active mind seems to seize on and use irregularly and imperfectly whatever spiritual force comes into it, but the tranquillised mind is held, possessed and used by the spiritual force. The body, thus liberated from itself, purified from many of its disorders and irregularities, becomes, partly by Asana, completely by combined ...
... The demand is for a spiritual fusion and unity. Strange to say, although the Spirit is the true bed-rock of unity – since, at bottom, it means identity – it is on this plane that mankind has not yet been able to really meet and coalesce. India's genius has been precisely working in the line of a perfect solution of this supreme problem. Islam comes with a full-fledged spiritual soul and a mental... does not always enshrine a profundity of being. Nobody is more tolerant and catholic than a dilettante, but an ardent spiritual soul is different. To be loyal to one's line of self-fulfilment, to follow one's self-law, swadharma, wholly and absolutely – without this no spiritual life is possible – and yet not to come into clash with other lines and loyalties, nay more, to be in positive harmony... that gives a permanent meaning and value to the human life, to the existence lodged in this 'sphere of sorrow' here below. Credal paraphernalia were necessary to express or buttress this core of spiritual truth when mankind, in the mass, had not attained a certain level of enlightenment in the mind and a certain degree of development in its life-relations. The modern age is modern precisely because ...
... The demand is for a spiritual fusion and unity. Strange to say, although the Spirit is the true bed-rock of unity—since, at bottom, it means identity—it is on this plane that mankind has not yet been able to really meet and coalesce. India's genius has been precisely working in the line of a perfect Solution of this supreme problem. Islam comes with a full-fledged spiritual soul and a mental and... does not always enshrine a profundity of being. Nobody is more tolerant and catholic than a dilettante, but an ardent spiritual soul is different. To be loyal to one's line of self-fulfilment, to follow one's self-law, swadharma, wholly and absolutely—without this no spiritual life is possible—and yet not to come into clash with other lines and loyalties, nay more, to be in positive harmony with... that gives a permanent meaning and value to the human life, to the existence lodged in this 'sphere of sorrow' here below. Credal paraphernalia were necessary to express or buttress this core of spiritual truth when mankind, in the mass, had not attained a certain level of enlightenment in the mind and a certain degree of development in its life-relations. The modern age is modern precisely because ...
... external being. According to Sri Aurobindo, this view is valid and there can undoubtedly be a spiritual life within, and inner life has a supreme spiritual importance and the outer has a value page - 107 only in so far as it is expressive of the inner status. The Gita, too, states that the man of spiritual realization dwells in the divine and lives and acts and behaves, in all ways of his being... his spiritual activity... And yet the question page - 105 remains over; for the stress on our individual being, the demand on it, the value put on individual perfection and salvation is too great to be dismissed as a device for a minor operation, the coiling and uncoiling of an insignificant spiral amid the vast circlings of the Eternal's becoming in the universe 57 Spiritual Evolution... Aurobindo, this is the first truth and the essence of the matter; but still, from the point of view of spiritual evolution, this would be only an individual liberation and perfection in an unchanged environmental existence. He points out that for a greater dynamic earth-nature itself, a spiritual change of the whole principle and instrumentation of life and action, the appearance of new order of being ...
... The demand is for a spiritual fusion and unity. Strange to say, although the Spirit is the true bed-rock of unity—since, at bottom, it means identity—it is on this plane that mankind has not yet been able to really meet and coalesce. India's genius has been precisely working in the line of a perfect solution of this supreme problem. Islam comes with a full-fledged spiritual soul and a mental and... does not always enshrine a profundity of being. Nobody is more tolerant and catholic than a dilettante, but an ardent spiritual soul is different. To be loyal to one's line of self-fulfilment, to follow one's self-law, swadharma, wholly and absolutely—without this no spiritual life is possible—and yet not to come into clash with other lines and loyalties, nay more, to be in positive harmony... Page 74 meaning and value to the human life, to the existence lodged in this 'sphere of sorrow' here below. Credal paraphernalia were necessary to express or buttress this core of spiritual truth when mankind, in the mass, had not attained a certain level of enlightenment in the mind and a certain degree of development in its life-relations. The modern age is modern precisely because ...
... the welfare of mankind or the vindication of his lofty principles, or, when the spiritual seeker seeks God not for God's own sake, but for the achievement of some spiritual end, unless it is their own soul speaking or seeking in them, it is unmistakably their glorified ego. In many self-justifying religious or spiritual lives one can often trace the subtle working of the sattwic ego. But sattwic or... light of a true knowledge, instead of rushing to grapple with it in the dimness of our half- baked ethical or religious mind, eager to achieve spiritual release by the sheer violence of drastic repressions and renunciations. Nothing is more helpful to a spiritual seeker than a clear and steady light in the consciousness, revealing the goal to be attained and the tangled working of his complex nature with... Page 147 spiritual existence? Does he not now contain all, possess all, enjoy all in his illimitable Self,—all that the world can give and more than all that? Is not an Aristotelian or Platonic eminence but a phosphorescent bubble vis-à-vis his infinite self-existence and its unimaginable splendour? It is only when one looks down at ego from one's spiritual consciousness that it appears ...
... not to be spiritual but to be an occultist, for then you can follow the necessary methods and get the help of the occult powers. But the occult spiritual forces and masteries can be called down or come down without calling only if that is quite secondary to the true thing, the seeking for the Divine, and if it is part of the Divine plan in you. Occult powers can only be for the spiritual man an in... feeds the satisfaction of the ego. In such cases the ego may still remain strong although it feels itself instrumental and not the primary actor. Although there is no ego in the spiritual planes, yet by the spiritual experience the ego on the lower planes may get aggrandised through pride and wrong reception of the experience. Also by entering into the larger mental and vital planes one may aggrandise... inexorable. Purification and Consecration What Krishnaprem writes (I have not read it yet) is perfectly true that purification of the heart is necessary before there can be the spiritual attainment. All ways of spiritual seeking are agreed on that. Purification and consecration are two great necessities of sadhana. It is not a fact that one must be pure in heart before one can have any Yogic experience ...
... second idea is that of the double nature of the Soul in manifestation,—the original nature in which it is one with its own true spiritual being, and the derived in which it is subject to the confusions of egoism and ignorance. The latter has to be cast away and the spiritual has to be inwardly recovered, fulfilled, made dynamic and active. Through an inner self-fulfilment, the opening of a new status... is a final outcome of its own movement of spiritual self-fulfilment. The knowledge of the Purushottama, Page 290 it says in effect, is the perfect knowledge of the Brahman. Those who have resort to Me as their refuge, mām āśritya , their divine light, their deliverer, receiver and harbourer of their souls, those who turn to Me in their spiritual effort towards release from age and death... the action of his higher spiritual Shakti. He displays the divine Being, Consciousness, Will or Power, yayedaṁ dhāryate jagat : that is the Para Prakriti. The self-awareness of the Spirit in this supreme Nature perceives in the light of self-knowledge the dynamic idea, the authentic truth of whatever he separates in his own being and expresses it in the Swabhava, the spiritual nature of the Jiva. The ...
... order was spiritual in character. The entire system emphasised that the intellectual, ethical and spiritual growth of the individual is the central need of the race, and that the individual and social life should be so organised that the work that the individual was expected to do was in consonance with the inmost nature, swabhava, which originated from a certain still deeper spiritual stuff and... according to the law of his being, the truth of his nature, can be turned Godwards and made an effective means of spiritual liberation and perfection. It must not be thought that the fourfold order of the society was peculiar to India, although its cultural, ethical and spiritual character was unique. The fourfold order came to be evolved at a certain stage of social Page 197 evolution... kama under the guidance of dharma and ultimate seeking of spiritual liberation, moksha. Ashram vyavastha was based upon the psychological understanding of the needs of human personality that arise at different stages of life and it provided guidance to each as to how best to meet these needs so that the ultimate ends of spiritual life could be served on a sound foundation of progressive growth ...
... this has nothing to do with spiritual life" [ p. 40 ]. Is what such people say complete humbug? Is there a process other than the spiritual by which one can know all these things? Often it is, but even if it is correct, it has nothing spiritual in it. Many mediums, clairvoyants or people with a special faculty, tell you these things. That faculty is no more spiritual than the capacity to build a... is meant the final emergence of the embodied consciousness on earth from the bondage of the Ignorance. That had to be prepared through the ages by a spiritual evolution. Naturally the work up till now has been a preparation of which the long spiritual effort and experience of the past has been the outcome. It has reached a point at which the decisive effort has become possible. 18 June 1933 ... submission to the Divine increases and greatens the being, that is what is meant. 25 August 1937 It seems difficult to understand when the Mother says that spiritual sacrifice is joyful [ p. 114 ]. She was speaking of the true spiritual sacrifice of self-giving, not the bringing of an unwilling heart to the altar. 17 October 1935 Page 621 ...
... poet's art when there is a substantial change of the constituting spirit and motive. Especially when there is this more subtle spiritual aim, the rhythmical movement becomes of a new importance. Whether as an aid to help out by the subtle meaning of the cadence the total spiritual suggestion of the speech or, more supremely, to bring in out of the depths, as great music does, some surge or outwelling of... which might well be applied to the whole drift and cause of this spiritual principle of rhythm. A. E. is not a great rhythmist, he is too preoccupied with his vision, more of a truth-seer than a truth-hearer of the Spirit, but when the hearing comes, the śruti , somehow or other without any expenditure of device the full spiritual intonation rises up and takes possession of the music,—to give one... building power is other and brings in a spiritual accompaniment which is the real thing we have to listen to, opens at least one line on which we can arrive at that greater hearing whose wave can bring with it the inspiring word of a higher vision. For the musical tone of the older poetry is the simply sensuous, the emotional, the thought or the life tone with the spiritual cadence as the result of some strong ...
... was a spiritual figure and not just a philosopher or a moralist. A philosophy of life as dukkha or unhappiness, a morality insisting on rejection of tanha or egoistic thirst may sickly earth-existence over with their pale cast of pessimism and ascetic inertia; and in fact earth-existence did get sicklied over when Buddhism survived as a philosophy and a morality, with the true spiritual inwardness... not a philanthropist or altruist of the Western model. As such he would never have shaken the Indian world in the past nor would the earthquake of his ecstasy be felt even at this day by every spiritual seismograph from Khatmandu to Colombo! It is necessary to point this out, for the true Indian -view of life is so often watered down to Page 29 suit the Western or the... his vision to the world." Buddha did not sit in thought: he was, according Page 30 to scientific standards, totally unconscious for a night and a day, while, according to spiritual standards, he was in deep trance, one of the chief characteristics of which is an utter suspension of all thought! Intellectual formulation came later; what Buddha sat in was a state of absolute ...
... PART I No ideal produces in the majority of spiritual seekers so great a thrill, such an inspiring sense of exaltation as the ideal of liberation. All rigour of self-discipline, all stress of a sustained, high-uplifting endeavour, and even all harsh austerities seem little enough price for the priceless state of spiritual freedom, if they can but contribute to its attainment. Di... dangers courageously braved by those who are bent upon realising the essential freedom of their soul. What appears even as self-mortification or an extreme self-denial to others, may be, to a spiritual aspirant, a means of awakening his soul's fire, and a step towards the mastery of his lower nature. He does not count the cost when he embarks upon self-discovery. If he fails to achieve his object... barriers that impede our progress. The contrast between the luminous self- existence we perceive within us and the ignorant, shackled life we lead without, becomes increasingly painful and turns us into spiritual revolutionaries. We yearn to "break all chains, to tread upon all crippling conditions, to transcend all limitations and—be free. We yearn to "breathe infinity, to soar in eternity,...escape from ...
... period of philosophical thought and spiritual practice has been marked by a growing and glorified aversion to the body, and even Hathayoga, which concerns itself with the body and its health and longevity, does so with the ulterior motive of the soul's release from the material bondage into the freedom and peace of the pure spiritual existence, and not for any spiritual conquest and perfection of the body... being always an unsuspected disproportion or a wrong stress on the part of the mind or the life forces illegitimately interfering with the natural working of the body. Never has man awakened to the spiritual potentialities of his body and the role it is meant to play in his terrestrial perfection. Never has he faced its defects and difficulties with a searching empathy and a patient, dispassionate courage... body itself. Even the great eight siddhis or supernatural powers are regarded as incidental to a certain line of spiritual advance, and not as an achievement in themselves, so far as the body is concerned. Thanks to the prevailing pragmatism of the modern age, the body has come to claim its rightful place in the hierarchy of our natural instruments and assume, in spite of the materialists, a ...
... evolves its works, enjoys its creations, plans and exults in its immense aims and sequences. Spirit and consciousness and power of the spirit and Ananda are the meaning of existence. Take away this spiritual significance and this world of energy becomes a mechanical fortuity or a blind and rigid Maya. The life of man is a portion of this vast significance, and since it is in him that on this material... fate is fatum , the form of act and creation declared beforehand by a Will within him and the universe as the thing to be done, to be achieved, to be worked out and made the self-expression of his spiritual being. Fate is adṛṣṭa , the unseen thing which the Spirit holds hidden in the plan of its vision, the consequence concealed from the travailing mind absorbed in the work of the moment by the curtained... workings. But since this Eternal and Infinite, our greater Self, is also the universal being, man in the universe is inseparably one with all the rest of existence, not a soul working out its isolated spiritual destiny and nature while all other beings are nothing but his environment and means or obstacles,—that they are indeed, but they are much more to him,—which is the impression cast on the mind by the ...
... ics a power of multifold assimilation arising from a many-sidedness, a globality, in the unique penchant that is the Indian genius. The Indian genius is, of course, best described as spiritual; but it is not spiritual in a narrow way: it is an urge of synthesis of a hundred approaches to the Eternal, the Infinite, the Divine. Not only does it spiritualise everything in the long run: it also spiritualises... the genius of a country which is not only synthetical and assimilative in the extreme but also spiritual to the n th degree; for, a speech with extraordinary potentialities of strangely suggestive effects suits most the magic, the mystery, the depth, the sudden and sublime revelatory reach of the spiritual consciousness. English promises, therefore, to be the expressive body par excellence of our... transforming change it induces: it induces the change by raising all things to their own hidden heights of Supernature, as it were - heights at which they are most authentically themselves by being spiritual, by being facets of the Divine, the Infinite, the Eternal. Wonderfully synthetical and assimilative, it can also embrace and Indianise the quality of any race, the force of any culture; hence it can ...
... subordinates and not his friends, for no man thinks it necessary to keep up appearances before those who work under him. Unfortunately the same rule does not apply to a spiritual leader vis-a-vis his disciples. A great spiritual personality is so often surrounded by a collective ego-wall of mediocre followers that truth-seekers cannot help but hesitate to approach the Master. I often feel that... courage to live for Truth but it requires a much greater courage to discard that truth when it starts betraying cracks. Before I met Dadaji I had often wondered why eminent men, especially spiritual geniuses, were so often surrounded by a crowd of mediocre people. After I had been with Dadaji for some years it dawned on me that it is not true that we are more mediocre than others but that... evolution stops he ceases to live – he just exists. Which is why after a time distance comes between him and the others whose pace is slower than his. This is much more relevant in the case of a spiritual aspirant. Dadaji’s central being has always been that of a Yogi. His Gurudev Sri Aurobindo once wrote to him: ‘You are a born Yogi.’ He has the soul of a Yogi that wants nothing but to give itself ...
... The physical fact cannot in the least stand in the way of the greater psychic and spiritual truth or prevent it from being true. X is perfectly right when he says that this is his true mother; for she has given him a new birth in an inner life and is creating him anew for a diviner existence. The idea of spiritual Motherhood is not an invention of this Asram; it is an eternal truth which has been... physical body of X was no doubt in her lifetime his material mother. But the relation which exists between the Mother here and X (and between the Mother and all who accept her), is a psychic and spiritual motherhood. It is a far greater relation than that of the physical mother to her child; it gives all that human motherhood can give, but in a much higher way, and it contains in itself infinitely... been recognised for ages past both in Europe and in Asia. The distinction I have drawn between the physical relation and the psychic and spiritual relation is also not a new invention; it is an idea known and understood everywhere and found to be perfectly plain and simple by all. It is the present confused state of your own mind which prevents you from understanding what men have found natural and ...
... reversal of consciousness. When we begin living the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness takes place which for us is the proof that we have entered the spiritual life; well, yet another occurs when we enter the supramental world. And probably each time a new world opens up, there will again be a new reversal. This is why even our spiritual life, which is such a total reversal compared to ordinary... values are almost opposite. It can be expressed in this way (but it's quite approximate, more than diminished or deformed): it's as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver, whereas the supramental life is made of gold—as if our entire spiritual life here were a vibration of silver, not gold but simply a light, a light that goes right to the summit, an absolutely pure light, pure and intense;... intense; but in the other, in the supramental world, there is a richness and a power that make all Page 236 the difference. This whole spiritual life of the psychic being and of all our present consciousness that appears so warm, so full, so wonderful, so luminous to the ordinary consciousness, well, all this splendor seems poor in comparison to the splendor of the new world. I can explain ...
... even that of a Scripture. The composition is not exactly a commentary, but it takes the Gita only as a precious occasion to create poetic magnificence in yet another medium. Profound spiritual philosophy based on spiritual experiences are described in the language of a mystic and not that of a metaphysician. Seven hundred shlokas of the Scripture have been rendered into nine-thousand owis in a mood... many-sidedness of sense in which poetry is neither crammed nor allowed to disperse in a facile uncontrolled manner. Though pretty ornate, this poetry is highly reflective and throughout there is a spiritual atmosphere. In its calm arrive mysterious sounds whose source is hidden in the depth of silence that upholds everything. Though not quite mantric, the Word unmistakably carries in its gleaming contents... deprived of this blessedness, but with Jnaneshwari a whole new world of devotional life opened out for them. The first Marathi poet combined in himself the lyrical mysticism of Valmiki and the spiritual classicism of Vyasa to build the foundation of a larger collective social order. The method of the poet is reiterative, emphasising each idea or concept with the help of several examples. It does ...
... for the human nature anywhere to think, feel and act from one centre of true faith, belief or vision. The average Hindu considers the spiritual life the highest, reveres the Sannyasi, is moved by the Bhakta; but if one of the family circle leaves the world for spiritual life, what tears, arguments, remonstrances, lamentations! It is almost worse than if he had died a natural death. It is not conscious... from what he is in the actual fact or in other relations or on another side of his nature. To be absolutely sincere, straightforward, open, is not an easy achievement for human nature. It is only by spiritual endeavour that one can realise it—and to do it needs a severity of introspective self-vision, an unsparing scrutiny of self-observation of which many sadhaks or Yogins even are not capable and it... the highest light one has or to equate the outer with the inner man, then this part is always insincere in all. The only way is to lay stress on the inner being and develop in it the psychic and spiritual consciousness till that comes down in it which pushes out the darkness from the outer man also. It is not sincerity to express only what the adverse forces suggest or what you feel when you ...
... the very fact of their spiritual elevation, these powers have become not exceptional movements, but the ordinary processes of their thought and action. It is by the use of the siddhis that the Siddhas sitting on the mountains help the world out of the heart of their solitude and silence. Jesus Christ made the use of the siddhis a prominent feature of his pure, noble and spiritual life, nor did he hesitate... Essays Divine and Human The Siddhis Some men sneer at the Siddhis because they do not believe in them, others because they think it is noble and spiritual to despise them. Both attitudes proceed from ignorance. It is true that to some natures the rule of omne ignotum pro magnifico holds and everything that is beyond their knowledge is readily accepted... I know by daily experience that they exist. I am concerned rather with their exact nature and utility. And here one is met by the now fashionable habit, among people presuming to be Vedantic and spiritual, of a denunciation and holy horror of the Yogic siddhis. They are, it seems, Tantric, dangerous, immoral, delusive as conjuring tricks, a stumbling block in the path of the soul's liberation. Swami ...
... him works primarily to no other end than their spiritual development. But since Sri Aurobindo's acceptance of the central spiritual aim does not imply a complete and unqualified rejection of life and its values, but rather involves their deliverance from their basic insufficiency and a fulfilment of their secret urge by a thoroughgoing and drastic spiritual transmutation of all their powers, no significant... centre of this creative effort stands Sri Aurobindo whose recent poetical work (only a little of which is as yet published) is a unique, unprecedented and stupendous outburst from the topmost peaks of spiritual vision and inspiration. His work is too great for our normal standards to judge at its proper value, or perhaps too near in point of time for us to appreciate adequately; perhaps even the greatest... everywhere the lines seem highly vibrating to the subtle felicitous music of some distant and lofty planes of the Spirit; everywhere is felt the enchanting impact on our listening of the voice of the spiritual muse singing sometimes in delicate exquisite strains, sometimes in profound massive tones, sometimes in wide-winged, high-soaring rhythms. Nowhere the authentic intuitive inspired utterance gets stied ...
... mental cells, Brushing their fragile fibre as with light Nostalgic breezes: And it's then we sense Remote presentiment of some intensely bright Impending spiritual dawn, of which the pure Immense illumination seems to pour In upon our existence from beyond The edge of knowing. ... Thus his yoga too falls into three stages, and the first stage is the subject-matter of Book I, cantos 3,4 and 5. Page 71 As individual man, Aswapati's first dim spiritual awakening comes when he realises that the body—the material appearance— is not all. Behind the appearance—behind the many layers of appearance-—is the reality. Man is neither the beginning nor the... whole gamut from the worm that was to the God that is to be. Earth and Heaven meet in man, and man partly is and wholly hopes to be. Beyond night and twilight and starlight beckons the dawn of a spiritual day. The mystery, the miracle, of "married Earth and Heaven", the mating of finite self with Infinity, is the drama that is being played, and is yet to be concluded. Now Aswapati "grew ...
... the number of disciples. Who was great – Raman Maharshi who did his Sadhana in seclusion for years or Raman Maharshi surrounded by all sorts of disciples? Success to be real must be spiritual. At times, when some spiritual movement begins to succeed then the real thing begins to be lost. The talk turned to Ramanashram. Sri Aurobindo : (related a story here) Mrs. K. went to see Maharshi and... that when he was innocent?" and yet that was the Divine dispensation. Buddha was denied; sons of Light come, the earth denies them, rejects them in substance. Only a small minority grows towards a spiritual birth. It is through them the Divine manifestation takes place. What remains of Buddhism today except a few decrees of Asoka and a few hundred thousand Buddhists? Disciple : Asoka helped in... Anybody could have done that. Disciple : But it is through his aid that it became all-powerful. Sri Aurobindo : If kings and emperors had left Buddhism to those people who were really spiritual it would have been much better for real Buddhism. It was after Constantine embraced Christianity that it began to decline. The king of Norway, on whom Longfellow wrote a poem, killed all people who ...
... himself as the Self or Spirit. E go is the ignorant a n d separative principle in our lives. In spiritual seeking , it must eliminate its elf order to rise to the Unitarian consciousness of the Spirit. where the ego sees things in division, district Page 11 tion and separation, the spiritual consciousness sees all as the One Self. This oneness is at the core of the creation and mu... multiplicity and diversity of names and forms are only on the surface. Therefore the Yogi or the spiritual man is always equal-visioned and sees all as the One Self. He makes no distinction between a learned Brahmin, a cow, an elephant, a dog and the pariah. This One Self or Soul is pervasive of the whole universe of its own creation, both animate and inanimate, is near and far but is imperceptible... individual or immanent divine, the cosmic or universal divine and the transcendental or supracosmic divine. Faith, sincerity, humility, devotion and surrender are absolutely indispensable for the spiritual seeker to realise the Divine. This faith must not be an egoistic faith in one's own strength and capacity but in the Divine Grace and omniscience which knows better than ourselves what is or is not ...
... forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home ¹: . . . RARELY has a poet – a secular poet, I mean – given utterance to deep spiritual and occult truth with such clarity and felicity. It is, however, quite open to doubt whether Wordsworth himself was fully cognisant of the truth he expressed; the words that were put into his mouth... may be taken as one more illustration of Matthew Arnold's characterisation of Wordsworth's genius at its best, it is then Nature herself that takes up the pen and writes for the poet. The deep spiritual truth we are referring to is the Odyssey of the human soul. And it is also an occult phenomenon happening in the world of the inner reality. The Soul's own home is in God, is God; for it is part and... inhabits a mortal body. Within the body, it no longer occupies its patent frontal position, but withdraws behind a veil, as it were: it takes its stand behind or within the depth of the heart, as spiritual practice experiences it. It hides there, as in a cavern, closed in now by the shades of the prison-house which its own body and life and mind build round it. Yet it is not wholly shut out or completely ...
... Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge Destiny, Karma, Death and Rebirth Letters on Yoga - I Chapter I Fate, Free Will and Prediction Destiny Each follows in the world his own line of destiny which is determined by his own nature and actions—the meaning and necessity of what happens in a particular... their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Page 509 Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One's spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future... subject turns away from the ordinary to the spiritual life. If the turn is very radical the cessation of predictability may be immediate; otherwise certain results may still last on for a time, but there is no longer the same inevitability. This would seem to show that there is or Page 516 can be a higher-power or higher-plane or higher-source spiritual destiny which can, if its hour has come ...
... how is this human mind and body assumed? For they were not created suddenly and all of a piece, but by some kind of evolution, physical or spiritual or both. No doubt, the descent of the Avatar, like the divine birth from the other side, is essentially a spiritual phenomenon, as is shown by the Gita's ātmānaṁ sṛjāmi , it is a soul-birth; but still there is here an attendant physical birth. How then... the external Avatarhood is of no mean importance for this great spiritual manifestation. The consummation in the mental and physical symbol assists the growth of the inner reality; afterwards the inner reality expresses itself with greater power in a more perfect symbolisation of itself through the outer life. Between these two, spiritual reality and mental and physical expression, acting and returning... courage to grow into it. It is also to leave the influence of that manifestation vibrating in the earth-nature and the soul of that manifestation presiding over its upward endeavour. It is to give a spiritual mould of divine manhood into which the seeking soul of the human being can cast itself. It is to give a dharma, a religion,—not a mere creed, but a method of inner and outer living,—a way, a rule ...
... Up till now, spiritual life or discipline usually meant a division—a division between spiritual and unspiritual, between what is a help and forms a base for the higher life and what hinders and takes one away from it. This naturally led one to develop the first and kill the other. But for us there is no such radical division. For us everything in its truth is spiritual. Indeed there are ...
... 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? Where will ye find liberation, Where does it abide? The... say, one who has the direct vision of truth. But the question may be asked: "What is this truth?" One may say, as there is a spiritual truth so there is a mundane truth; there is no hard and fast Page 98 rule that the poet should be the seer of the spiritual truth only. He has an insight into the nature of earthly beings; therefore in this respect he is a seer. If he has realised... creates. In fact, the seer-poet sees nothing save spirituality. We have shown above the difference between the spiritual and the mundane aspect of the truth. But in reality in the eyes of the seer-poet there is no such distinction at all. The divine sees the Self not only in things spiritual but also in things terrestrial. Even when the seer-poet speaks of the gross, the body, he speaks of the truth ...
... and intense spiritual activity has seen the making of "the saint, the devotee, the spiritual sage, the seer, the prophet, the servant of God, the soldier of the spirit". 53 But an even more sustained spiritual effort may be necessary if supramentalisation is to take place in the near or in some foreseeable future. If egoistic mental man is ultimately to change into the spiritual man and Superman... 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 an analytical and differentiative process, though it could also be directed to the tasks of integration and architecture. It is the supreme union of spiritual experience and... ultimate Reality through the intellect, they have assigned only a subordinate status to such mental constructions. On the other hand, "the first rank has always been given to spiritual intuition and illumination and spiritual experience". 3 Without their corroboration - or, rather, unless they are made the base - mere intellectual constructions have been dismissed as no more than exercises. Further ...
... etymologists, by the logicians, a spiritual interpretation. Yaska himself declares that there is a triple knowledge and therefore a triple meaning of the Vedic hymns, a sacrificial or ritualistic knowledge, a knowledge of the gods and finally a spiritual knowledge; but the last is the true sense and when one gets it the others drop or are cut away. It is this spiritual sense that saves and the rest is... extent mystics themselves or drew many of their ideas from the mystics. In India philosophy grew out of the seeking of the mystics and retained and developed their spiritual aims and kept something of their methods in later Indian spiritual discipline and Yoga. The Vedic tradition, the fact of a mystical element in the Veda fits in perfectly with this historical truth and takes its place in the history... exoteric sense need not be merely a mask; the Riks may have been regarded by their authors as words of power, powerful not only for internal but for external things. A purely spiritual scripture would concern itself with only spiritual significances, but the ancient mystics were also what we would call occultists, men who believed that by inner means outer as well as inner results could be produced, that ...
... existence, the true home of the human soul or spirit is beyond the earth in some other spiritually elevated supraterrestrial plane or world and this all too brief earthly life is, in some way or other, only an episode of his immortality or perhaps a deviation and a fall from a pre-existent celestial-spiritual into a sordid material existence. According to the view we choose to take of the matter... truths of existence; for, it arises out of an integral spiritual vision and experience and is not merely the brilliant product of a speculative mind. Now, this integral vision of world-existence and self-existence views "our existence here as a Becoming with the Divine Being for its origin and its object, a progressive manifestation, a spiritual evolution with the supracosmic for its source and support... body, rendered absolutely immune from all attacks of illnesses and disorders, will manifest a spiritual Ananda of its own; the bodily life will free itself from the now universal necessity of physical alimentation gathered from outside; sex and sensuality will depart from the scene and the spiritual aspirant's upsoaring consciousness will not be drugged and dragged down into the mire by the u ...
... awakened) to the spiritual joy of adoration of the Buddha: . ...the motive of the soul-moment the painting interprets is the dedication of the awakening mind of the child, the coming younger humanity, to that in which already the soul of the mother had learned to find and fix its spiritual joy. The eyes, brows, lips, face, poise of the head of the woman are filled with this spiritual emotion which... modern European culture, predominantly mental and intellectual like the old Graeco-Roman or predominantly spiritual like the still persistent culture of India. 3 The present contrast, then, is between the Western science-based materialist civilisation and India's "still persistent" spiritual culture. Before we venture to decide which is the better of the two, we should begin by acknowledging... civilisation. On the other hand, the reform movements of the nineteenth century and the spiritual phenomenon of Page 492 Ramakrishna and his disciple Vivekananda's sensational appearance at Chicago gave the needed break, opened the world's eyes to the persisting vitality of India's spiritual culture, and there was no reason to be apologetic or defeatist as before. Sri Aurobindo thought ...
... followed by a brief but splendid and prophetic outbreak of spiritual light leaving behind it the "day" of ordinary human consciousness in which the prophecy has to be worked out. P. 33 L. S) Ashwapathy's spiritual development consisted of two yogic movements; one a psycho-spiritual transformation and the other, a greater spiritual transformation with an ascent to a supreme power. Ashwapathy's... grow towards, or into, the likeness of his spiritual Self. In this intense aspiration to grow into the likeness of spiritual being "his mind was like a fire assailing heaven". Aswapathy's spiritual growth began by his realising that the external being of man is not the whole of himself. There are hidden "celestial powers" in man, immense spiritual potentialities lie dormant in the human being... beginning of the first Canto is also symbolic. The poet in a letter has written, "The attempt at mystic spiritual poetry of the kind I am at demands above all a spiritual objectivity, an intense psycho-physical concreteness. That darkness itself is described as a quietude which gives it a subjective spiritual character and brings out the thing symbolised, but the double epithet 'inert black'¹ gives it the ...
... here permanently. Page 815 How can sadhaks profit psychically when they live spiritually in close contact with each other? It depends on themselves. If they grow psychically and spiritually and live within and above, instead of in the mind and vital and body, then there can be a psychic and spiritual solidarity created useful for the divine work. At present that does not exist, except... try 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... supramental are matters of a profound and difficult Yoga. These terms ought not to be cheapened by being tacked on to these small superficial things. No doubt all activities can be carried on with a spiritual consciousness, but it is the Yogi alone who can do that. To invite people who have no spirituality in them and are no Yogis to get the psychic being in front and aspire to the supramental has no meaning ...
... Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1 SPIRITUAL GREATNESS AND THE SUPRAMENTAL YOGA There must be several great Yogis in India who are open to the Divine. If the Divine manifested in a human form in their own country, would they not know it? There is no reason why they should. Each has approached the Divine in his own... and prevented him from doing what he intended to do.* He discouraged his disciples because his aim was the realisation of the inner Self and intuition — in other words the fullness of the spiritual Mind —visions and voices belong to the inner occult sense, therefore he did not want them to lay stress on it. I also discourage some from having any dealing with visions and voices because I see... always in the light. So he must be in the Truth-Consciousness. How then could he be mistaken in discouraging his disciples' occult faculties even when they were not misusing them but were making spiritual progress through them? * The incident referred to may be this: Once Sri Raman Maharshi was much displeased with the quarrels among his disciples. He left the Ashram and was ...
... thought deepens into spiritual experience, it arrives readily at the etherial heights, pinnacles, skiey widenesses, it cannot without the aid of the heart fathom the intense and rich abysses and oceanic depths of the divine being and the divine Ananda. The way of Bhakti is supposed often to be necessarily inferior because it proceeds by worship which belongs to that stage of spiritual experience where... the other hand tends to look down on the sawdust dryness of mere knowledge. And it is true that philosophy by itself without the rapture of spiritual experience is something as dry as it is clear and cannot give all the satisfaction we seek, that its spiritual experience even, when it has not left its supports of thought and shot up beyond the mind, lives too much in an abstract delight and that what... the act of union which is the soul's greatest discovery and for which the life of the cosmos is a long preparation. Therefore to approach God by love is to prepare oneself for the greatest possible spiritual fulfilment. Love fulfilled does not exclude knowledge, but itself brings knowledge; and the completer the knowledge, the richer the possibility of love. "By Bhakti" says the Lord in the Gita "shall ...
... through the many forms of suffering that inconscience and ignorance gradually become consciousness and knowledge. Finally, in man there awakens the spiritual urge under the blows of suffering, and it is in the transformation of suffering that the spiritual consciousness finds its growth. Not merely to escape from suffering but to transform it is the real problem and the greater achievement. What the... 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 theirs is. something outside the created universe, beyond manifestation. The Vaishnavas have spoken of a highest spiritual world, go-taka, which is within... and support of the upward urge. Even from the point of view of the individual what appears in a sense a simple negation is in truth a thing of deep- import. Teilhard de Chard in has thus seen a spiritual meaning in the Christian's bearing of the cross; the cross-brings in the end a realisation of eternal life. Sri Aurobindo too has given us a full theory and history of suffering. In one place ...
... Page 169 include in general the Spiritual Mind, the domain of the Cosmic Knowledge, which he described as standing between the Cosmic Ignorance and the Transcendental or Integral Truth - Supermind. But the definition falls short when he distinguishes Mind from Spiritual Mind as well as demarcates the highest grade of the latter - namely, Overmind... want philosophical answers to your questions about the spiritual life you wish now to begin. But I am in a poetic mood and cannot pen you a discourse. All I can write is a sort of birthday letter of the soul and send you my best wishes by giving you in a few flashes what I feel and see from several sides. What is the spiritual life? Every moment a remembrance of God, every moment... be able to consult him at a moment's notice and draw the rays of his seer-wisdom on to a pressing problem is a boon. Nor is Pandit's Dictionary a treasure-trove for just a coterie of spiritual aspirants. The very nature of Sri Aurobindo's personality and authorship breaks through an exclusive utility. This Master of the Via Mystica is at the same time, in a super-Aristotelian sense ...
... Our Spiritual Future WE who live in this day of India's reawakening to the Yogic secrets of her own past cannot but pay homage to the mighty figure of Vivekananda. Together with his guru, Rama-krishna, he was the most potent early shaper of the resurgence of our national genius. His also was a tremendous impact on the mind of the West. And yet, if we are to work for a complete spiritual fulfilment... voice from the Mayavadin past and we shall miss that in him which bears most luminously on the issues of our spiritual future. Perhaps the psychic depths of his mighty nature - a nature keenly conscious of the anomalies of existence and aware of the especially hard lot of a spiritual hero destined to revive a fallen nation's soul - perhaps those depths never found tongue with such perfection... conjectural 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 ...
... first two of them along with his answers. — Ed. Srinvantu) Q. One may approach Savitri (1) with a devotee's attitude as the spiritual autobiography of the Master, (2) as a book or store- house of spiritual wisdom comparable to the Vedas, the Upani- shads or the Gita, and (3) as great poetry. Can these approaches merge? What should be the basic approach... write good poetry. The poetry has to be good by an ascension in poetic quality to the highest spiritual plane possible: this Page 131 plane has to be creative in terms of poetic values. Savitri should express poetically the ever-higher peak reached by Sri Aurobindo's progressive spiritual ascension. Therefore we cannot consider it either as sheer poetry or as sheer spirituality. It... a directly spiritual communication attempted we undergo an exquisite refinement which can prepare us for it. As a critic has intuitively said, "Poetry may not save souls but it makes souls worth saving." When we come to poetry like Savitri we have this power eminently exercised. Savitri can serve the poetry-lover as a road to sadhana. Here, over and above an account of spiritual states and ...
... large spiritual life. At least, the opening out of the spirit in him, the knowledge of his real self and the leading of a genuine spiritual life as distinguished from a religio-ethical life, must be attained before he can go definitively and for ever elsewhere. But even that is not all. Still there is a beyond. For, as the imperfection of man is not the last word of Nature, his spiritual perfection... stop even when the spiritual-mind planes have been possessed. It cannot cease in its ascent before the mental has been replaced by the supramental nature and an embodied supramental being becomes the leader of the terrestrial existence. This then is the rational and philosophical foundation for the phenomenon of rebirth in earthly life, and this is supported by the spiritual Vision-Experience... appeared on the scene as if from nowhere and claimed its inalienable right to end every individual life after some time short or long. But why? In Sri Aurobindo's words: "Birth is the first spiritual mystery of the physical universe, death is the second which gives its double point of perplexity to the mystery of birth; for life... becomes itself a mystery by virtue of these two which seem to ...
... serious lack of response to spiritual poetry. He, of course, protests that he cannot be considered totally unsympathetic to poetry of a spiritual order. "I can read," he says, "the Divine Comedy with pleasure, St. John of the Cross is a marvellous poet, poems of Kabir and Chandidas are exquisite. T. S. Eliot's Ash-Wednesday is an excellent poem of spiritual tension, confusion and resolution... confusion and resolution in Ash-Wednesday are not spiritual in the true sense and they are more misty than mystic. Not that a state of mind is not infused into them but they give us neither the concreteness nor the intensity of spiritual vision and mystic experience. Mr. Lai's ignorance of this fact proves that he has no clear idea of spiritual poetry. St. John of the Cross is a real mystic... symphonies of sight, Sight was a flame-throw from identity... [p. 301] Page 129 All this is pure spiritual vision which seems to have made little impression on Mr. Lai during his reading of Savitri. But Savitri is spiritual philosophy as well as spiritual vision, and Mr. Lai is equally at sea with poetry that fuses the philosophical concept with mystic symbolism and revelation ...
... The ancients regarded this life as an occasion for the development of the rational, the ethical, the aesthetic, the spiritual being. Greece and Rome laid stress on the three first alone, Asia went farther, made these also subordinate and looked upon them as stepping-stones to a spiritual consummation. Greece and Rome were proudest of their art, poetry and philosophy and cherished these things as much... process of life through a first obscure and confused effort of self-finding is the inevitable result of its beginnings; for life has begun from an involution of the spiritual truth of things in what seems to be its opposite. Spiritual experience tells us that there is a Reality which supports and pervades all things as the Cosmic Self and Spirit, can be discovered by the individual even here in the... mind something that is still latent and inchoate. The ultimates of life are spiritual and only in the full light of the liberated self and spirit can it achieve them. That full light is not intellect or reason, but a knowledge by inner unity and identity which is the native self-light of the fully developed spiritual consciousness and, preparing that, on the way to it, a knowledge by intimate inner ...
... and of a tragic feeling of a situation without issue. It is not without some profound import that T.S. Eliot, the 'dry poet', sings of the spiritual deserts of our time. Page 183 In this age of human predicament, in this epoch of spiritual malady, the Heideggerian Angst has taken possession of the minds of men. Modern man is verily in a state of utter alienation. The... more and more complex and subtle development of a supporting structure, the growing exterior metre mould of form which is devised to sustain in matter the rising intonations of the spiritual harmony. The spiritual significance finds us as the notes rise; but not till we get to the summit of the scale can we command the integral meaning of that for which all these first formal measures were made... this evolution is in its essential truth a growing of the Self in material Nature to the conscious possession of its spiritual being. But evolution carries with it, in its intrinsic sense, in the idea at its root, the necessity of a previous involution. For the spiritual process of evolution is a self-creation, not a making of what never was, but a bringing out of what was implicit in the ...
... 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 as it is now is not that ideal.... But, all the same, the Ashram is a first form which... a billion, - what is this Spiritual Flag of India but a revelation, an epiphanic projection, a visual recordation of the deeper reality, the inspiring Truth, of this primordial Asiatic region, the matrix of the stupendous human adventure on the earth, and the destined scene of the next leap forward to the horizons of supermanhood? This flag symbolising the spiritual reality and unity of Greater... shortsighted and faint-hearted Indian leaders of 1947, for the Spiritual Flag of India with the Mother's symbol as the central design and highlighted by the blue background was the Ashram's flag as well. Explaining its significance, Sri Aurobindo said in 1949: The blue of the flag is meant to be the colour of Krishna and so represents the spiritual or divine consciousness which it is her work to establish ...
... Receiving Their Influence There are no conditions for receiving the influence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother 1 except faith, an entire sincerity in following the spiritual path and a will and capacity to open oneself to the influence; but this capacity usually comes as the result of sincerity and faith. It is quite possible to follow the Yoga while remaining outside... also has not time to give free or frequent access to those who are here. You would therefore probably be disappointed if you came here with the idea of a personal contact with us to help you in your spiritual endeavour. The personal touch is there but it is more of an inward closeness with only a few points of physical contact to support it. But this inner contact, inner help can very well be received... became interested in the Yoga. But we have disciples in France and some of these have been able already to establish an inner closeness with us and to become aware of our nearness and help in their spiritual endeavour and experience. We would advise you therefore to try this way where you are rather than face the difficulty and inconveniences of a journey and stay here which, if necessary, could be undertaken ...
... Champaklal Speaks When to take to this Path? A doctor wanted to stay here. He asked Mother if she would advise him to take up the spiritual path. Mother: “You should take up this spiritual path only when you cannot do otherwise, when nothing else matters to you.” ...
... life, culture, social ideals of the Indian people has been the seeking of man for his true spiritual self and the use of life—subject to a necessary evolution first of his lower physical, vital and mental nature—as a frame and means for that discovery and for man's ascent from the ignorant natural into the spiritual existence. This dominant idea India has never quite forgotten even under the stress and... economic and even (though here the attempt broke down earlier than in other spheres) her political rule of life, system, turn of existence, with the adumbration of a spiritual significance behind,—the full attainment of the spiritual life being left as a supreme aim to the effort of the individual—was as far as her ancient system could advance. This much endeavour, however, she did make with persistence... more certain knowledge that shall reconcile life and the spirit, her ancient mission, to found the status and action of the collective being of man on the realisation of the deeper spiritual truth, the yet unrealised spiritual potentialities of our existence and so ensoul the life of her people as to make it the Lila of the greater Self in humanity, a conscious communal soul and body of Virat, the universal ...
... melting into the worlds below, the highest at the heights of the mind-power into the worlds of a more spiritual existence. These highest worlds are therefore supramental; they belong to the principle of supermind, the free, spiritual or divine intelligence 3 or gnosis and to the triple spiritual principle of Sachchidananda. From them the lower worlds derive by a sort of fall of the Purusha into... to speak of different planes of our consciousness and of the spiritual planes of the mental being; for if these did not exist, the liberation of the embodied being would have been impossible here on earth. He would have had to wait and at most to prepare himself for seeking it in other worlds and in a different kind of physical or spiritual embodiment less obstinately sealed in its shell of material... Yoga of knowledge it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and the materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge ...
... in the mind or vital may be spiritual without emptiness being an essential characteristic of the higher consciousness. If it were, there could be no Force, Light or Ananda in the higher consciousness. Emptiness is only a result produced by a certain action of the higher Force on the system in order that the higher consciousness may be able to come into it. It is a spiritual emptiness as opposed to the... the dull and inert emptiness of complete tamas which is not spiritual. If it is the spiritual emptiness then it will not be felt as interfering with the sadhana. If it is real emptiness, one can last in it for years together,—it is because the vital is restless and full of desires (not empty) that it is like that [ difficult to remain empty ]. Also the physical mind is by no means at rest... It is usually the habit of the mind and vital to associate happiness or interest only with activity, but the spiritual consciousness has no such limitations. Voidness can come from anywhere, mind, vital or from above. Voidness may be of different kinds—a certain kind of spiritual voidness or the emptiness that is a preparation for new experience. But an exhaustion of life energy is a very ...
... principal grades or categories of spiritual knowledge: ātmajñāna or knowledge of one's individual soul or self; brahmajñāna or knowledge of the universal and transcendent Self or Spirit, and bhagavatjñāna or knowledge of the Divine, the sole and supreme Being. It is essential to keep this distinction well in mind lest we confound the ultimate values of the spiritual life and fail to appreciate the... a knowledge by identity— as all true spiritual knowledge must needs be—it gives us a dynamic union with the Divine and with all existence. This integral knowledge arms us with the supreme Will and Force of the Divine, not only for our release from ignorance and suffering, but for the transformation of our whole nature into the divine Nature. All other spiritual knowledge, if practised with a sustained... of all kârmic covering and resplendent with its own light. There have been many teachers who have taught nothing Page 375 but the knowledge of the soul as the end and summit of all spiritual attainment. If a man has had an experience of his soul as an immortal entity, independent of mind and life and body, and blissfully free in its immaculate purity, we look upon him as a perfect jñānī ...
... Ananda)—this is the third or supramental transformation. It does not always go in this order, for with many the spiritual descent begins first in an imperfect way before the psychic is in front and in charge, but the psychic development has to be attained before a perfect and unhampered spiritual descent can take place, and the last or supramental change is impossible so long as the two first have not become... 4. The Psychic Being and Sadhana The Psychic Being Three Steps of Self-Realisation and the Triple Transformation In the spiritual knowledge of self there are three steps of its self-achievement which are at the same time three parts of the one knowledge. The first is the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the... instruments, we are aware of a guide within that knows the truth, the good, the true delight and beauty of existence, controls heart and intellect by its luminous law and leads our life and being towards spiritual completeness. Even within the obscure workings of the Ignorance we have then a witness who discerns, a living light that illumines, a will that refuses to be misled and separates the mind's truth ...
... it was written formerly by those who left behind them so much devotional and spiritual poetry in India; it Page 78 does not help if it is written only in the spirit of the Western artist or littérateur . Even works or meditation cannot succeed unless they are done in the right spirit of consecration and spiritual aspiration gathering up the whole being and dominating all else. It is the... wonderfully—when it was not flowing, their language became incorrect and ordinary. If you speak of the expression, the deeper things in these experiences cannot be expressed—except by a great spiritual poet and even then only imperfectly—they can only be realised and remembered. What is expressed is always only a part of what is behind—which remains unexpressed and in the language of the... presence of the Divine, the realisation of the Divine in all things, surrender, devotion, the widening of the consciousness into the cosmic Consciousness, the Self one in all, the psychic and the spiritual transformation of the nature. If these things are neglected and only poetry and mental development and social contacts occupy all the time, then that is not sadhana. Also the poetry must be written ...
... as the ‘Precious Stones Game’ with two sets of cards. One set was the picture of the flower and its spiritual significance. It also had the botanical and common names written underneath but which had no importance for the game. The second set of cards was smaller in size and carried only the spiritual name of the flowers. The small cards were placed in one heap in the centre with the face down. The... corresponding picture card, would take it out from his collection and put it down in the centre. The one who finished all the cards first, would be the winner. This game was meant to teach us the spiritual significance that She gave to the flowers. To begin with, the Mother gave us about 20 cards in which the pictures of flowers had been pasted or painted. Below, in Her own hand, was written the si... quotations to be from Savitri , another favoured quotations from any work of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and the third felt that we should print the book with colour plates of flowers with just their spiritual, botanical and common names, without any quotations at all. I then put this matter before the Mother and asked Her to find a solution. She said that since the quotations were not written sp ...
... Letters of Historical Interest Letters of Historical Interest Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To the Mother and Paul Richard [1] All is always for [the] best, but it is sometimes from the external point of view an awkward best. I had one of my etheric writings, "Build desolated Europe into a... an effective retirement does not seem to be my destiny. I must remain in touch with the world until I have either mastered adverse circumstances or succumbed or carried on the struggle between the spiritual and physical so far as I am destined to carry it on. This is how I have always seen things and still see them. As for failure, difficulty and apparent impossibility I am too much habituated to them... [3] Everything internal is ripe or ripening, but there is a sort of locked struggle in which neither side can make a very appreciable advance (somewhat like the trench warfare in Europe), the spiritual force insisting against the resistance of the physical world, that resistance disputing every inch and making more or less effective counter-attacks.... And if there were not the strength and Ananda ...
... how it is to be described, presents itself differently, in different aspects, one may say, to different people. The Overmind presents the truth of things in all sorts of aspects and mind, even the spiritual mind, fastens on one or the other as the very truth, the one real truth of the matter. It is the mind that makes these differences, but that does not matter, because, through its own way of seeing... much is clear as the first step in the matter. (2) I do not dispute at all the fact that one can realise the Self, the Brahman or the Ishwara without going into the overhead regions, the dynamic spiritual planes, or stationing oneself permanently above the body as happens in this Yoga. Even if it is done through the Sahasrara, well, the Sahasrara extends to the spiritualised mind and can be felt on... without rising beyond the spiritualised mind into a higher Light above. I myself had my experience of Nirvana and silence in the Brahman, etc. long before there was any knowledge of the overhead spiritual planes; it came first simply by an absolute stillness and blotting out as it were of all mental, emotional and other inner activities—the body continued indeed to see, walk, speak and do its other ...
... our country, of the race, of our Page 3 religion that will purify our heart and inspire our action in the struggle. The task we set before ourselves is not mechanical but moral and spiritual. We aim not at the alteration of a form of government but at the building up of a nation. Of that task politics is a part, but only a part. We shall devote ourselves not to politics alone, nor to... entity which we believe to be all-important, the dharma , the national religion which we also believe to be universal. There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is the sanātana dharma , the eternal religion. Under the stress of alien impacts she... the ideal of human life that India rises today; by the yoga she will get the strength to realise her freedom, unity and greatness, by the yoga she will keep the strength to preserve it. It is a spiritual revolution we foresee and the material is only its shadow and reflex. The European sets great store by machinery. He seeks to renovate humanity by schemes of society and systems of government; ...
... that this spiritual figure should be at home in such a number of languages and therefore of literatures. Here was somebody who possessed a Light from beyond our earth and yet saw meaning in earthly endeavour and expression. Such a seer could not but have some meaning for me. However, I was engrossed in my own pursuits and they were not always such as might lead one to the spiritual path. The... caught hold of, asking them for some satisfying revelation. It was in this period of a vague Godward turn that I came across a Theosophist who was also an art-critic. When he saw that I was on a spiritual quest he said: "Nobody except Sri Aurobindo will satisfy you." This was strange, coming from a Theosophist whose world is chockful of occult Masters forming a coterie among themselves and leaving... in general and this phrase in particular joined up with the memorable impression made by the statement that Sri Aurobindo was a multi-linguist. But I still did not realise the exact nature of the spiritual life which he represented. The basic meaning of his Yoga had not yet gone home to me. Then a most amazing coincidence happened. I went to Bombay's well-known Crawford Market to buy a pair of shoes ...
... Towards Overmind My Pilgrimage to the Spirit February 23, 1932 Q. What is the difference between spiritual and Supramental realization? A. Spiritual realization can be had on any plane by contact with the Divine (Who is everywhere) or by the perception of the Self within, which is pure and untouched by the outer movements. The Supermind is something ...
... thought and spiritual seeking have been always loftily individualistic in their aims. An Indian system of thought like the Gita's cannot possibly fail to put first the development of the individual, the highest need of the individual, his claim to discover and exercise his largest spiritual freedom, greatness, splendour, royalty,—his aim to develop into the illumined seer and king in the spiritual sense... the Purushottama as the goal, superior to action yet its inner spiritual cause and object and original will, and the world with all its activities is conquered and possessed in a divine transcendence of the world. It can become instead of a prison-house an opulent kingdom, rājyaṁ samṛddham , which we have conquered for the spiritual life by slaying the limitation of the tyrant ego and overcoming... and far-off spiritual possibility seeks to interpret them, as no more than a philosophical and religious justification of social service, patriotic, cosmopolitan and humanitarian effort and attachment to the hundred eager social schemes and dreams which attract the modern intellect. It is not the rule of a large moral and intellectual altruism which is here announced, but that of a spiritual unity with ...
... Confidence in the Mother Have confidence in the Mother and be sure that the liberation from these things will surely come. What the soul feels is the sign of the spiritual destiny as of the spiritual need. What opposes is a remnant of the nature of the human ignorance. Our help will be there with you fully to overcome it. 27 February 1935 ...
... attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One’s spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future. The only... Spiritual Forces of Help and Succour The Hidden Forces of Life The Divine Grace I should like to say something about the Divine Grace—for you seem to think it should be something like a Divine Reason acting upon lines not very different from those of human intelligence. But it is not that. Also it is not a universal Divine Compassion either, acting impartially... to the righteous also—curing them of their self-righteousness and leading to a purer consciousness beyond these things. It is a power that is superior to any rule, even to the Cosmic Law—for all spiritual seers have distinguished between the Law and Grace. Yet it is not indiscriminate—only it has a discrimination of its own which sees things and persons and the right times and seasons with another ...
... whether they be ancient, modern, new or future.... 2 Page 177 " Mother, excuse me, but why didn't you put "spiritual" instead of "religious"? I am not sure yet. It struck me as strange! Yes, I saw that!... Maybe it's better to put "spiritual." I'll see. "...It is only in experience that there can be knowledge of the Truth. "No one ought to speak of the Divine... sense, but it will always create a confusion. It has taken on such a false meaning. Yes. I'll explain: I did not want to put "spiritual," first because in French, the word spirituel has a different meaning [i.e., witty], and then because people living a "spiritual" life reject Matter, while we do not want to reject Matter. So that would be false. I admit that "religious" isn't a good word... experience of the Divine...." That's the important point. "...Get the experience of the Divine, then alone will you have the right to speak of it.... You understand, we could put "spiritual," but... "...The objective study of religions will be a part of the historical study of the development of human consciousness.... I place religions below, in the mental realm. Well ...
... knowledge; its truth goes beyond truth of fact and truth of thought, even the higher thought which is the first spiritual range of the thinker. It has the truth of spiritual thought, spiritual feeling, spiritual sense and at its highest the truth that comes by the most intimate spiritual touch or by identity. Ultimately, truth and beauty come together and coincide, but in between there is a difference... , broadened, made spiritually supple, can receive without being blinded or dazzled by a Truth beyond it. The poetic intelligence is not at all part of that clarified spiritual seeing and thinking—it is only a high activity of the mind and its vision moving on the wings of imagination, but still akin to the intellect proper, though exalted above it. The Higher Mind is a spiritual plane,—this does not... not necessarily a spiritual feeling. Aesthetics belongs to the mental range and all that depends upon it; it may degenerate into aestheticism or may exaggerate or narrow itself into some version of the theory of "Art for Art's sake". The Overmind is Page 27 essentially a spiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its stand on a spiritual foundation. It embraces ...
... The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution The Life Divine Chapter XVIII The Evolutionary Process - Ascent and Integration As he mounts from peak to peak,... Indra makes him conscious of that goal of his movement. Rig Veda. (I. 10... achieved themselves below or aspired above him; she has pointed man to a yet higher and more difficult Page 749 level, inspired him with the ideal of a spiritual living, begun the evolution in him of a spiritual being. The spiritual man is her supreme supernormal effort of human creation; for, having evolved the mental creator, thinker, sage, prophet of an ideal, the self-controlled, self-... life and body the spiritual principle. For these are her evolutionary figures built out of the surface mentality; to do more she has to use more amply the unseen material hidden below our surface, to dive inwards and bring out the secret soul, the psyche, or to ascend above our normal mental level into planes of intuitive consciousness dense with light derived from the spiritual gnosis, ascending ...
... able to follow Sri Aurobindo in his multifarious original extensions of spiritual thought. The trouble is, I believe, that students of philosophy in India lack somewhat in suppleness of mind and are also under the obsession of India's own great spiritual past which they consider to be unsurpassable even by India's own spiritual present and future. We should be ashamed that while Stanford and Cornell... Without answering that call he could not have even really done for India's independence what was necessary. Political independence without a spiritual new life ready to be drawn upon would hardly be freedom in the genuine Indian sense. Besides, the spiritual power that Sri Aurobindo won was actually the hidden sustaining energy of the nationalist movement; because it was occult the outer eye could... race, - in all countries where men think, there is now in various forms that idea and hope, - and our aim has been to search for the spiritual, religious and other truths which can enlighten and guide the race in this movement and endeavour. The spiritual experience and the general truths on which such an attempt could be based were already present to us, otherwise we should have had no right ...
... as a medium of ethico-spiritual self-expression. Through it one pours out into the; * Based on Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, Page 280 world something of the moral purity, freedom, power, love and compassion which grow in the being as a result of accumulating spiritual realizations. This is a derivative growth or a reflex of the spiritual progress, and not a direct... which have been almost lost to the post-Upanishadic spiritual culture of India. The Nihilism of the Buddhists and the Illusionism of the school of Shankara split the ancient amplitude and harmony and narrowed down the spiritual urge to a few trenchant simplicities. The Vedic and the Upanishadic mystics did not divide life into the spiritual and the secular, but viewed it whole, and endeavoured... THERE are four attitudes possible towards action in spiritual life, and all of them have important bearings on life. The first is an attitude of rejection; the second, of qualified rejection; the third of ethical acceptance, and the fourth, of divine utilization. These are the fundamental attitudes, which not only colour spiritual life in their distinctive ways, but also condition its course ...
... 17 October 1964 Mother, why and how does one lose one's spiritual gain by going outside? One can make a conscious effort and your protection is always there, is it not? To go to one's parents is to return to an influence generally stronger than any 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 16th December will not be allowed to attend classes for the entire school-year. November 1969 Holidays Shall we say ...
... s first, then the vital (mainly from the aesthetic point of view, but a study of sensations as well), then the mind, then spiritual realization. And in between the vital and mental phases came the brief period of occultism, serving both as a transition and a basis for spiritual development. × In fact, Mother met Theon... time an intensive mental development began—from 1908 to 1920, or a little before; but it was especially intense before coming here in 1914. And 1920 marked the beginning of full development. Not spiritual development—that had been going on from the very start— Page 290 but ACTION, the action with Sri Aurobindo. That was clearly from 1920 on; I had met Sri Aurobindo earlier, but it really ...
... ego. To arrive at that point, an enabling sadhana is indispensable. And that is why the Mother has created an environment where things are favourable for a natural evolution of the spiritual being in each one. Spiritual growth and freedom are interacting factors; each promotes the other. Where freedom is curtailed or suppressed in the supposed interests of an organisation, the soul cannot blossom.... she fought for freedom: freedom from tradition, freedom from convention, freedom from habit, freedom from Nature, in fact freedom from everything that constrains the evolution of the soul. Even in spiritual matters which are organised ostensibly for the development of the individual in terms of truth, love, harmony, she was most particular that nothing should be done that could interfere with the freedom ...
... inspiration. But that is not the real thing. If one pours the spiritual power into all these impure forms—the water of the Causal ocean into raw vessels—either the raw vessels will break and the water will be spilt and lost or the spiritual power will evaporate and only the impure form remain. In all fields it is the same. I can give the spiritual power but that power will be expended in making the image... sunk in deep tamas [inertia]—is this the effect of true spirituality? No, we must first attain all the partial experiences possible on the mental level and flood the mind with spiritual delight and illumine it with spiritual light, but afterwards we must rise above. If we cannot rise above, to the supramental level, that is, it is hardly possible to know the world's final secret and the problem it... and thought of Europe. When it comes into the spiritual field, its thought-power can no longer move ahead. There Europe sees everything as riddle—nebulous metaphysics, yogic hallucination. They rub their eyes as in smoke and can see nothing clear. Still, some effort is being made in Europe to surmount even this limitation. We already have the spiritual sense—we owe it to our forefathers—and whoever ...
... expect in the finer spiritual figure of humanity. But this animal element is present in every mother's son of us; it is our legacy, our inheritance from the common earth-mother: and how spiritually do we get this element of our being or incur the burden of this inheritance, if it is not the earning of our own past, the power we have kept from a bygone formative experience? The spiritual law of Karma is... Spirit. A spiritual evolution thus meets our eye in the world which an inner force raises up a certain scale of gradations of its births in form by the unfolding of its own hidden powers to Page 313 the greatness of its complete and highest reality. The word of the ancient Veda stands,—out of all the ocean of inconscience, apraketaṁ salilaṁ sarvam idam , it is that one spiritual Existent... mind, he saw it as his own separate self and, just as before he had made the satisfaction of ego his whole business on earth, so he made the soul's own individual salvation its one all-important spiritual and heavenly transaction. Or he saw the universal and denied the reality of the individual, refusing to them any living unity or coexistent reality, or saw a transcendent Absolute separate from individual ...
... 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 as it is now is not that ideal, for that all its members would have to live in a spiritual consciousness and not in the ordinary egoistic mind... stay on if the Mother allowed them. After all they do not come here on the basis of a social occasion but for Darshan of those whom they regard to be spiritually great or in the case of constant visitors for a share in the life of the Asram and for spiritual advantage and for both of these motives one would expect them to submit willingly to the conditions imposed and not to mind a little inconvenience... on the contrary indiscipline, individualism and strife; that is one reason why India collapsed and entered into servitude. Organisation and order were attempted but failed to endure. Even in the spiritual life India has had not only the free wandering ascetic, a law to himself, but has felt impelled to create orders of Sannyasins with their rules and governing bodies and there have also been monastic ...
... quiet persistence, calls down the Mother's Force, which begins to act on the inconscient and the subconscient for their purification and illumination. Mental knowledge does not count for much in spiritual life; more often than not it proves an impediment in that it bars the being's progress with its unenlightened constructions. It is the psychic conscious- ness that must take the lead, exercise its... suppression." It is a very important and liberating truth of purification which, if practised with intelligence and steadfastness, will certainly obviate much of the wearing struggle and frustration the spiritual seekers have to pass through in their desperate efforts to purify themselves of the lower passions. ¹ On Yoga—II. Page 280 Regarding food, Sri Aurobindo says, "It is the... degradation and deformation of the divine Ananda, and those who seek to realise and express the latter in life must renounce all craving for the former. Sex enjoyment is absolutely incompatible with spiritual life. "...It is when one mixes up sex and spirituality that there is the greatest havoc. Even the attempt to sublimate it by turning it towards the Divine as in the Vaishnava madhura bhāva carries ...
... finishing with the usurpations of theocracy in things spiritual as it has finished with them in things temporal. Even devout Catholics writhe uneasily under the shower of Papal encyclicals and feel what an embarrassment it is to have modern knowledge forbidden by a revenant from the Middle Ages or opinion fixed by a Council of priests no more spiritual, wise or illustrious than the minds they coerce with... profess to be the pioneers of a new kind of Science. Neither, I hope, shall I be inclined to reject or criticise adversely because Theosophy has a foreign origin. There is no law of Nature by which spiritual knowledge is confined to the East or must bear the stamp of an Indian manufacture before it can receive the imprimatur of the All-Wise. He has made man in his own image everywhere, in the image of... admit the Guru and accept the Avatar. But still the Guru is only a vessel of the infinite Knowledge, the Avatar is only a particular manifestation of the Divine Personality. It is shocking to our spiritual notions to find cosmic Demiurges of a vague semi-divine character put between us and the All-Powerful and All-Loving and Kutthumi and Maurya taking the place of God. One sees, finally, a new Theocracy ...
... freedom lost because the body of the nation was not strong enough and the soul of the nation was not pure enough to sustain the tremendous inrush of spiritual force which had suddenly come upon it. Bipin Chandra stands before India as the exponent of the spiritual force of the Page 913 movement, its pure "Indianity", its high devotion to principle; this has been the kernel of his teaching, the... disguised for the moment in a political and Western garb with which the bureaucracy is faced and the weapons which it uses are the weapons of the spirit, the force which makes it formidable is a spiritual force. We have nothing to oppose to the immense material engines of the bureaucracy except the exalted faith, the unflinching courage, the unswerving devotion to principle which has been so strangely... home of Nationalism. The voice of the prophet will once more be free to speak to our hearts, the voice through which God has more than once spoken. We shall remember once more that the movement is a spiritual movement for prophets, martyrs and heroes to inspire, help and lead, not for diplomats and pinchbeck Machiavels; we shall realise that the spirit of India reawakened is the life of the movement and ...
... beauty has to be found. Sethna is not just a religious poet; he has the mystic mind which has often access to the spiritual planes. Sri Aurobindo has characterised the planes, but we are concerned with the overall beauty of Sethna's poems. Mystic or spiritual, great things come out through his pen and a few examples will speak of the presence of the Muse: A white shiver of... light which is destined to spread. His poetry seeks "a new intensity of vision and emotion, a mystic inwardness" that catches alive "the deepest rhythms of the spirit". It really becomes "the spiritual excitement of a rhythmic voyage of self-discovery". What is most interesting is Sethna has his individual style in spite of his being very close to Sri Aurobindo. His companion poet, Nirodbaran... Flies the chill thought of death across my dream.... A white bliss curving through our blinded deeps To give the darkness' mouth a shadowless smile.... Waves of spiritual secrecy broke white Along the heart's shores a rumour of deathless love Afloat like a vast moon upon the deep.... Fuelled with forests I come, an ape on fire, A brown ...
... fact to each and all, a permanent proof of the transformation which will convince even the most sceptical. The bodily transformation will be the supreme spiritual rebirth, an utter casting away of all the ordinary past. For spiritual rebirth means the constant throwing away of our previous associations and circumstances and proceedings to live as if at each virgin moment we were starting life... Signature Of Truth TRUE HUMILITY As I have often been questioned about it, I shall touch briefly on the meaning of true humility, supramental plasticity and spiritual rebirth. Humility is that state of consciousness in which, whatever realisation, you know the infinite is still in front of you. The rare quality of selfless admiration about which I have spoken to... true soul in us which is always surrendered rorhe Divine, all bondage ceases. Then incessantly life begins afresh, then the past no longer cleaves to us. To give you an idea of the final height of spiritual rebirth, I may say that there can be a constant experience of the whole universe actually disappearing at every instant and being at every instant newly created. Page 60 ...
... And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home... Rarely has a poet-a secular poet, I meangiven utterance to a deep spiritual and occult truth with such clarity and felicity. It is, however, quite open to doubt whether Wordsworth himself was fully cognisant of the truth he expressed; the words that were put into his... of Page 114 Matthew Arnold's characterisation of Wordsworth's genius at its best, it is then Nature herself that takes up the pen and writes for the poet. The deep spiritual truth we are referring to is the Odyssey of the human soul. And it is also an occult phenomenon happening in the world of the inner reality. The Soul's own home is in God, is God; for it is part and... Within the body, it no longer occupies itspatent Page 115 frontal position, but withdraws behind a veil, as it were: it takes its stand behind or within the depth of the heart, as spiritual practice experiences it. It hides there, as in a cavern, closed in now by the shades of the prison-house which its own body and life and mind build round it. Yet it is not wholly shut out or completely ...
... "new”.] The western world is often declared to be so engrossed in its new materialism that it cannot listen to any of the old spiritual messages. In a similar way the eastern world seems at times so engrossed in its old spirituality that no spiritual message that is new reaches its mind. There are some good reasons for this unprogressive tendency. First, the spirituality of the... not come to its end. Do you imagine that a spiritual genius like him has to continue for forty years to nearly attain what others have got within half a dozen years or so? Surely it is clear that he is at a mighty unparalleled job: there is an obvious case for considering his goal momentously new. The period of time taken depends, where spiritual geniuses are concerned, on what their goals... help being great. Second, civilisations that are, like India's, very old and have still a living continuity with their past develop an intent look backwards. Third, the accustomed meanings of spiritual terms have got impressed on our minds with such prolonged force that new complexions given them are liable to be overlooked. I was hoping, however, that there would be more than a handful who ...
... suggesting that there will follow many more in the course of spiritually vibrant times. We may call these cantos as brief meditations on Savitri . Therefore they are entirely subjective in character. Any representation of a revelatory creation such as Savitri has to face problems of several kind—literary as well as mystic-spiritual. What I have done here is to allot for myself only just... to the highest realms of supramental spiritual existence, and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence, and metaphysical brilliance.” Where would then in such massiveness and magnificence and metaphysical brilliance this miniature bonsai handiwork park itself off? Perhaps nowhere. Spiritual poetry and Savitri in particular belong... completing the composition, more than thirty years though with some long gaps in between. He also took Savitri as a means of ascension towards a higher and more perfect truth experienced by him spiritually. It is an expression of the realized sovereignty itself and hence becomes most valuable. Even in its outward character it is encyclopaedic. Therefore to think of putting such a work in scarcely ...
... 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... spirit. It would not lose these former veils but they would no longer be veils or imperfect expressions but true manifestations; they would be changed into states of light, powers of spiritual life, vehicles of a spiritual existence. But this again could not be if mind, life and body were not taken up and transformed by a state of being and force of being superior to them, a power of Supermind as much... and 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 ...
... Here is a passage from his The Synthesis of Yoga dealing with the same topic: "The seeker of spiritual perfection has to pass as quickly as possible, if he cannot altogether avoid, this zone of danger, and the safe rule here is to be attached to none of these things, but to make spiritual progress one's sole real objective, and to put no sure confidence in other things until the mind and life... life and soul are purified and the light of the spirit and Supermind or at least of the spiritually illumined mind and soul are shed on these inner ranges of experience." (pp. 843-44) We reproduce below a few of the verses from Savitri which graphically describe the sight in this dark zone of experiences, also indicate how to avoid its lure: (1)"Whose very gaze was a calamity" ...
... application of spiritual force to preserve health or cure physical ailments. I had asked him in my letter, among other things, how far he undersigned Sri Ramakrishna's condemnation of utilisation of spiritual force to keep the body in health. "I might say a word about Sri Ramakrishna's attitude with regard to the body," he wrote. "He seems to have regarded it as a misuse of spiritual force to utilise... the spirit. The spiritual light no doubt comes to some to a certain extent and to a few to a considerable extent in the earlier stages, though that is not the case with all — for some have to wait till they can clear out the obstructing stuff in the mind, vital and physical consciousness, and until then they get only a touch now and then. But even at the best, this earlier spiritual light is never complete... failed to endure. Even in the spiritual life India has had not only the free wandering ascetic, a law to himself, but has felt impelled to create orders to sannyasins with their rules and governing bodies and there have also been monastic institutions with a strict discipline." No one who truly loves India could possibly demur at this, least of all a spiritual seeker because, clarity of vision ...
... . He is now realising himself in the heart and mind, and the divinity of the heart and mind will be his culmination. Eventually he will realise himself in the spirit and the divinity of his true spiritual self will round off his history. Yoga is the realisation of one's capacity of harmony, communion or unity with God. Whatever religious standpoint, creed or philosophy one adopt, Yoga is possible... self with the eye on the antahkaran or heart and mind is the fulfilment of the rajasic or psychic man. The realisation of God in self with the eye on the spirit is the fulfilment of the sattwic or spiritual man. And each fulfils himself by rising beyond himself. When the material man fulfils Page 503 the divinity of the body, he does so by rising into the psychic part and finding his strength... ahankara or psychic principle of egoism. The psychic man fulfils the divinity of the soul by rising into the spirit and finding his strength in the superpsychic Will or Intelligent Force in things. The spiritual man fulfils the divinity of the spirit by rising beyond the human spirit, the Jivatman, and finding his strength in the Parameswara and Parabrahman, the Sa and the Tat, God revealed and unrevealed ...
... Letters of Historical Interest Letters of Historical Interest Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To Daulatram Sharma Pondicherry. 26.3.26. Dear friend, I have shown your letter to A.G. and below I give you his answer to it. 1 Your letter is very interesting, because it shows that you have accurate... not yet ready ". But it was your mind that interfered when you thought it was necessary to sit in meditation with her in order to receive what she has to give. There is no such condition for her spiritual or psychic action and influence. It is true that she was not mixing with the sadhaks at that time, partly because they themselves were not ready to take the right relation and receive her influence... plane. A.G acts directly on the mental and on the vital being through the illumined mind; he represents the Purusha element whose strength is predominantly in illumined (intuitive, supramental or spiritual) knowledge and the power that acts in this knowledge, while the psychic being supports this action and helps to transform the physical and vital plane. Mirra acts directly on the psychic being and ...
... that there is in him one of the highest spiritual forces of the world. Page X A Few Words (About this edition) 'Mahasaraswati is perfection in details' - Sri Aurobindo. Sri Dilipkumar - one of the closest disciples of Sri Aurobindo followed this Maha Vakya in every act of his life which was illumined by spiritual sensitivity. His sadhana towards perfection... Aurobindo the intellectual, revolutionary, dreamer, yogi, philosopher, seer- poet, and lastly in his own words 'The messenger of the Incom- municable'. This edition was hailed by the seekers of spiritual life of all climes. As a result, the third, revised and enlarged edition was published by Jaico in 1969. The chapter, "Poet- maker" was added in this edition. In 1984, 'All India Books' of P... Aurobindo's letters as well as the subject matter. This is particularly evident in the chapters 'Seer Poet', 'The Messenger of the Incommunicable' and 'Sri Krishnaprem vis-a- vis Sri Aurobindo'. The two spiritual giants expressed the same Page XII truth in their own terminology. So, we have desisted from any editing on our part - the chapters and the Appendix are complete in themselves. Any ...
... with reasoning. So there remains the pure spiritual destiny, pure interiorization. That is what I have been trying to do for the last five years, without much success. There are good periods of collaboration, because one part of my being can be happy in any condition. But in a certain way this achievement remains truncated, especially when you base spiritual life on a principle of integrality. And these... seen, very clearly. After the wave of rebelliousness this morning, I was seized by a great sadness, a great bitterness, as though I were being confronted with a profound injustice. There is a spiritual destiny in me, but there are three other destinies so intimately bound up with it that I cannot cut off any one without mutilating something of my living soul—which is why, periodically, these ... adventure is within,' and it might 'work' for a while. But this untamed child in me continues to live all the same, and it is something very valuable in me. I cannot kill it through reasoning, even spiritual reasoning. And if I tell it that everything lies 'within,' not 'without,' it replies, 'Then why was I born, why this manifestation in the outer world?' In the end, it is not a question of reasoning ...
... reputation for its uniqueness, particularly since it is clearly pronounced to be not simply a peace resort, though of course peace dwells here natively, but a place of concentrated endeavour for spiritual perfection in life, aiming not at liberation from phenomenal existence but at constant progression towards realisation and manifestation of the Spirit in the world, a New Vision, a New Future. ... phenomenally. But it is not meant to be only a narrative. It is much more a thematic presentation of the development of the Ashram, with its sustained purpose of preparing the human stuff for a new, a spiritual future. With every thought in the developing sections there are appropriate quotations from the writings of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo which enlighten and guide and inspire. Thus, the monograph... corporate life of the sadhaks in freedom from customary codes, venturing to enter into self-vigilance and inner discipline, the problems of transition from the socio-moral standards of conduct to spiritual self-rule. Consistently the author views such problems in the light of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and offers certain meaningful suggestions including the possible criteria for admission of individuals ...
... became his recurring theme-song. In his speeches, in his writings, he spoke over and over again of the need for India's freedom which was the first condition for India to recover her spiritual freedom. For, on the spiritual life of India depended the world's destiny. "So with India rests the future of the world." No other nation but India had what it takes for the spiritualization of the human race. "India... it simply. "O India, Land of Light and spiritual knowledge, wake up to your true mission in the world. Show the way to harmony and unity." And Sri Aurobindo. "The world waits for the rising of India to receive the divine flood in its fullness." The Reader has certainly understood the reason for this insistence on India. "The grand workshop of spiritual experiment, the laboratory of the soul... This was probably his very first speech after coming out of prison on 8 May. It was here at Uttarpara, on 30 May 1909, that Sri Aurobindo for the first time spoke publicly of his Yoga and his spiritual experiences. The audience was stunned. Their beloved leader did not utter any trenchant or weighty political views as they had expected I The press of people listened to his usual calm, clear and ...
... n with God, all else is nothing but ‘vanity of vanities’ while mankind keeps plodding around in its mental circles. ‘Yoga is not a thing of ideas but of inner spiritual experience. Merely to be attracted to any set of religious or spiritual ideas does not bring with it any realization. Yoga means a change of consciousness; a mere mental activity will not bring a change of consciousness, it can only... least spiritual form of yoga because it exclusively aims at the perfection of the adhara; to touch higher realities, it has to borrow elements from other yogic disciplines. There is also rajayoga, probably the most practised method of yoga in India, which has organically integrated elements of the other yogas into an effective whole and is accessible to the greatest diversity of spiritual aspirants... looking down on others for having beliefs different from those one thinks or sees to be the best or the largest in truth. The spiritual field is many-sided and full of complexities and there is room for an immense variety of experiences. Besides, all mental egoism — and spiritual egoism — has to be surmounted and this sense of superiority should therefore not be cherished.’ 17 In the course of ...
... ... Indeed, none of these seem sufficient to face with any reliable success the magnitude of the task to be done. Only a new spiritual influx, creating in man a new consciousness, can overcome the enormous mass of difficulties barring the way of the workers. A new spiritual light, a manifestation upon earth of some divine force unknown until now, a Thought of God, new for us, descending into this world... of our real, because our highest self and nature. Page 164 However, that self which we are not yet, but have to become, is not the strong vital Will hymned by Nietzsche, but a spiritual self and spiritual nature. For as soon as we speak of supermanhood we must be careful to avoid all confusion with the strong but so superficial and incomplete conception of Nietzsche's superman. Indeed... cannot be called maternity! True maternity begins with the conscious creation of a being, with the willed shaping of a soul coming to develop and utilise a new body. The true domain of women is the spiritual. We forget it but too often. To bear a child and construct his body almost subconsciously is not enough. The work really commences when, by the power of thought and will, we conceive and create ...
... attached to the mental movement, or even fixed in the ranges of the mental plane that are touched by the spiritual lustres. But beyond is the unwalled wideness of a supramental infinite consciousness and there all temporary structures cease. It is not possible to enter utterly into the spiritual truth of the Eternal and Infinite if we have not the faith and courage to trust ourselves into the hands... and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process. In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape... nature and become free and arrive at a first spiritual control over the nature. Ishwara-Shakti stands behind the relation of Purusha-Prakriti and its ignorant action and turns it to an evolutionary purpose. The Ishwara-Shakti realisation can bring participation in a higher dynamism and a divine working and a total unity and harmony of the being in a spiritual nature. ...
... civilisation has become too big for the limited mental capacity and understanding and for the still more' limited Spiritual and moral capacity; it has become a too dangerous servant of the blundering ego and its appetites. At a time when an upward effort towards the ethical and Spiritual perfection is both possible and imperative, just at that time, means have been made available readily to humanity... of mere theological dogma. An impartial study of the Gita will show that it contains a very rich and many-sided thought, it manifests a synthetic grasp of different aspects of the ethical and Spiritual life, and that it takes us to some of the highest possible experiences of which human mind is capable. It can even be said that it contains most of the main clues of the secret of reconciliation of... that the spiritualised ethics, which insists on ahimsa, on non-injuring and non- killing. According to the argument of this answer, the battle, if it is to be fought at all, must be fought on the spiritual plane and by some kind of non-resistance or refusal of participation. It may also advocate participation in the battle by taking recourse to non- violence and to soul resistance. (Non-violence has ...
... height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his yoga is not only to realize the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the spirit and give it a spiritual meaning... with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action. For it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that besides the ordinary forces and activities of mind and life and body in matter there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above. There is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness... This is the great spiritual Odyssey that is now to be consciously undertaken by man. If material science lays open before man a practically unlimited Page 50 field of adventure and research and experience in the outer interstellar Space, the Supramental is not without similar attractions. The Life Divine is a call to a spiritual adventure, to a spiritual exploration. It ...
... Mahabharata War – may be seen as marking the end of the spiritual age of the Vedas to be replaced by the materialistic age in which we live. Its origins go back some 5 000 years. The Mahabharata War stands at the threshold of this transition.” The historic significance of this war was therefore considerable. No less is its significance in the spiritual progress of humanity, as it constitutes the background... were That, that their essence and their meaning must be spiritual, and that therefore the aim of life and yoga could not be an egoistic escape into a Hereafter or a Nirvana, but that the aim of earthly existence had to be the evolutionary recovery of the Divine. As the Mother once said, Sri Aurobindo’s avataric action was “an immense spiritual revolution rehabilitating Matter and the creation.” Sri... human life during the historic cycle of our progress, because morally, socially, spiritually the race was not prepared and the poise of Nature in its evolution would not admit of its being immediately prepared for any such transcendence. … A day may come, must surely come, we will say, when humanity will be ready spiritually, morally, socially for the reign of universal peace; meanwhile the aspect of battle ...
... to us, it is not altogether and in every way unknowable; it is self-evident to itself and, although inexpressible, yet self-evident to a knowledge by identity of which the spiritual being in us must be capable; for that spiritual being is in its essence and its original and intimate reality not other than this Supreme Existence. 8 Sri Aurobindo's philosophy has been rightly described as... is described by Sri Aurobindo as triple, — psychic transformation, spiritual transformation, and supramental transformation. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: ... there must first be the psychic change, the conversion of our whole present nature into a soul-instrumentation; on that or along with that there must be the spiritual change, the descent of a higher Light, Knowledge, Power, Force, Bliss... in his soul." 14 Whether humanity will respond to the need of this new turn will depend upon its increasing perception of the necessity of spiritual transformation. Sri Aurobindo points out that a change from the vital and mental to the spiritual order of life must necessarily be accomplished in the individual and in a greater number of individuals before it can come to have an effective hold ...
... of Nature. And the process of spiritual change of nature must go step by step, till the stair of the ascension is transcended and there is an emergence of the greatest wide-open spaces or a consciousness which is supremely and supramentally luminous and infinite. The psychic and spiritual experiences result in the processes of psychic transformation and spiritual transformation of nature. The... a vast cosmic instrumentation." 50 Overmind and Consummation of Spiritual Transformation According to Sri Aurobindo, the overmind change is the Page 61 final consummating movement of the dynamic spiritual transformation; it is the highest possible status — dynamis of the Spirit in the spiritual-mind plane. The overmind carries the consciousness to the point of a vast... Aims, Methods, Processes and Results PART THREE Spiritual Experiences on the way to the Supermind On the way from the Quiet Mind and Silent Mind or Purified Mind, and while crossing from Higher Mind to the Supermind, several higher and penultimate spiritual experiences are attained. In the specialized systems of yoga these or some of them are felt ...
... coming - but be also kept in the forefront his inner quest, and in fact he was more at home with intellectuals and students of spiritual philosophy than with politicians and electioneering strategists. Soon after his arrival, Richard made inquiries: was there any great spiritual adept at Pondicherry? People shook their heads at first, for in those days Pondicherry was little more than "a dead city ..... for a general renovation of the world by which the present European civilisatio!1 shall be replaced by a spiritual civilisation .... He and Madame Richard are rare examples of European Yogins who have not been led away by Theosophical and other aberrations. I have been in material and spiritual correspondence with them for the last four years. 10 In the same letter Sri Aurobindo described... possible to bring together a sufficient number of spiritually emancipated and illumined men and women, and thereby create conditions for the flowering of a new race of supermen or "Sons of God". IX The last of the questions - Which minds are nearest to me and what is my ideal work among them? - has a practical cast, but with spiritual implications. If inner illumination, integral ...
... them, a turning of the back upon the spiritual destiny. Their difficulties are often in appearance greater than the struggle of those who remain outside because the demand and the pressure are greater; but so also is their opportunity Page 575 greater and the power and influence for development poured upon them and that too which they can spiritually become and will become if they are faithful... at any early date. He is too young and has not developed the necessary experience either of himself or of life or of Yoga. He should try to develop himself outside—develop in his inner spiritual urge and in spiritual experience and in strength and capacity. If he comes here in an unripe state, he is likely to meet not less but more serious difficulties than he has there. He must develop in himself the... way of living based on a spiritual consciousness—it is the preparation of a new foundation of life in which all works have to be done not for the self but for the Divine. 31 December 1934 Humanitarian work of this kind is outside the scope of the Asram; it is not as in Ramakrishna mission. We avoid public work and activities and confine ourselves to the sole spiritual work of the Asram itself ...
... world, the other to the single and eternal verity of things. Speculating and experimenting on these psychical and spiritual relations, the ancient Rishis arrived at what they believed to be the fundamental laws respectively of spiritual, psychical and elemental evolution. Spiritually, the beginning of all things is the Turiya Atman, spirit in its fourth or transcendental state, intellectually unknowable... ess and bliss. Chapter III. Psychical Evolution - Downward to Matter In their enquiry into the spiritual nature of man the ancient thinkers and Yogins discovered that he has not only three spiritual states but three bodies or cases of matter corresponding Page 232 to the spiritual states. This was in accordance with the nature of phenomenal existence as determined by their inquiries... both dissolved into pure and transcendent self-existence. In examining and analysing these spiritual conditions in their respective bodies the Rishis arrived at a theory of psychical evolution contained within and dependent on the spiritual evolution already described. The basis of psychical as of spiritual existence is the pure Self called the Paramatman or Supreme Self when it manifests in the Cosmos ...
... itself? The sadhaks have no doubt come to the Ashram to live the higher spiritual life, but this life is still of the earth, and has to stand the tests of viability and effectivity. The Ashram doesn't treat "spiritual life" as something apart from - much less quite antagonistic to - everyday life. The "spiritual" problem is to open one's consciousness and charge it with the vibrations of the... as early as 1911, he was developing the necessary powers to bring down the spiritual to the material plane (no reference here to the Supermind); (3) he had had some success in influencing by power of the spirit the men around him, and even some who were at some considerable distance; (4) he was experimenting in the spiritual field with a view to finalising his theory and system of Yoga; and (5) his... reality in its inner spiritual orientation and organised outer communal living. Between 1922 and 1926, some more joined the Ashram, there was regular group meditation, there were talks by Sri Aurobindo and evening discussions in which he took an active part, and the Mother gradually took an increasing measure of responsibility for the management of the Ashram household and the spiritual welfare of the sadhaks ...
... but have not the same subtle spiritual appeal; they touch the mind and vital strongly but the other goes home into the soul..... "His remarks about 'immensity' etc, are very interesting to me; for these are the very words, with others like them, that are constantly recurring at short intervals in my poetry when I express not spiritual thought, but spiritual experience. I knew perfectly... English: Dhyani , Sushupti, Turiya etc., and I am sure the languages which the Hindus speak today must be richer in words fitted for spiritual expression than English, in which there are few luminous words that can be used when there is a spiritual emotion to be expressed. I found this difficulty myself of finding a vocabulary though English is the language I heard from my cradle. ... aim is not success and personal fame but to arrive at the expression of spiritual truth and experience of all kinds of poetry, the English tongue is the most wide-spread and is capable of profound turns of mystic expression which makes it admirably fitted for the purpose; if it could be used for the highest spiritual expression, that is worth trying." And then in another letter: ...
... liberation, mokṣa , but rather to show the compatibility of works with the soul's effort towards liberation and of spiritual freedom itself when once attained with continued action in the world, muktasya karma . Incidentally, a synthetic Yoga or psychological method of arriving at spiritual liberation and perfection has been developed and certain metaphysical affirmations have been put forward, certain... as man is governed by the ego, even by the half-enlightened unillumined sattwic ego of the reason and the mental intelligence. For this is a truth of the spirit, this is an action from a spiritual basis. A spiritual, not an intellectual knowledge is the indispensable requisite for this way of works, its sole possible light, medium, incentive. First, therefore, the Teacher points out that all these ideas... does this greater truth modify or how affect the principle of spiritual action? It modifies it to begin with in this fundamental matter that the whole meaning of the relation of Self and soul and Nature gets changed, opens out to a new vision, fills in the blanks that were left, acquires a greater amplitude, assumes a true and spiritually positive, a flawlessly integral significance. The world is no ...
... The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths Other Spiritual Paths and the Integral Yoga Letters on Yoga - II Chapter IX The Teachings of Some Modern Indian Yogis Ramana Maharshi According to Brunton's description of the sadhana he (Brunton) practised under the Maharshi's instructions, 1 it is the Overself... Ananda)—this is the third or supramental transformation. It does not always go in this order, for with many the spiritual descent begins first in an imperfect way before the psychic is in front and in charge, but the psychic development has to be attained before a perfect and unhampered spiritual descent can take place, and the last or supramental change is impossible so long as the two first have not become... exit to or towards the Transcendent it achieves is an ascent accompanied by a descent of the power, light, consciousness that has been achieved and it is by such descents that is to be achieved the spiritual and supramental transformation here. This possibility does not seem to be admitted in the Maharshi's thought,—he considers the Descent as superfluous and logically impossible. "The Divine is here ...
... hand. This often happens in meditation or trance when one has once gone upward into the spiritual infinity. The reason why you did not see the Mother's form was not that the Mother hid herself or anything in you came between, but Page 396 that you were both moving in the formless Infinite as spiritual beings and so it was easier to feel the presence than to see any physical form. Not that... separate like a tree or a house. The tree or house is only a form in the One; the tree is really that One. It is only by feeling all things as one spiritual substance that one can arrive at unity [ of matter, energy and mind ]—unity is in the spiritual consciousness. The material point is only one point among millions of millions—so that is not the base of unity. But once you get the unity in consciousness... The Fundamental Realisations of the Integral Yoga The Fundamental Realisations of the Integral Yoga Spiritual Experiences and Realisations Letters on Yoga - III Chapter I Experiences of the Self, the One and the Infinite Peace, Calm, Silence and the Self That [ state of vast peace and calm ] is the basic experience of the higher consciousness—it is ...
... y lines, and which it holds together in an evolving intermediate psychological form of itself between its pure spiritual status and its expression here. That is to say, midway between the material existence in which life and mind develop because of a hidden Spirit in it and the spiritual existence which contains the ideal realities of all that is gradually worked out here, there is a subtle psychological... inmost soul, hidden behind life and mind, the spontaneously spiritual part of our nature which possesses the dynamic to develop the vision, the faith and the will required for the discovery of our supra-mental Self with its masterful ability to perfect by its highest law our entire earth-life — this indeed is the practical outcome of all spiritual philosophy. It is what Sri Aurobindo calls the Integral... the ultimate nature of the bedrock reality, take into account the two poles of evolutionary history — the material existence from which man is apparently sprung and his look upward from it towards spiritual truth. He is, somehow, always subject to the dual attraction of Matter and Spirit. Living and thinking in a physical body, he cannot neglect the demands and necessities of his material nature, its ...
... 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... explanation 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... 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 ...
... there cannot be any spiritual life unless and until the individual being goes inward, lives within and from within, and transfers the immediate source of his dynamic becoming from out inward. "In men, says the Upanishad, the Self-Existent has cut the doors of consciousness outward, but a few turn the eye inward and it is these who see and know the Spirit and develop the spiritual being." 1 ... into slumber (līyate). Here lies the root-cause of the overwhelming sense of sleepiness, and often of an actual intervention of physical sleep, bogging the attempts at meditation in the case of spiritual novices who have not yet learnt how to get rid of this prejudicial habit of the mind and accustom it to a state of "ingathered wakefulness in which, though immersed in itself, it exercises all its... period of the body's sleep. It is due to its subconscient foundation that sleep brings about this lowering of consciousness. And this is so on the physiological plane and much more so on the psycho-spiritual plane. The change in the activity of the nervous system during sleep manifests itself in the abolition, or at least depression, of what has been termed critical reactivity to external ...
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