... reflections from the subtle physical. Now it is for you to correct me. Have you a clear feeling of the subtle body as separate from the outer body or of the mental and vital and subtle physical sheaths which comprise the subtle body? If not how can you say which is of the subtle body and which is of the physical? The influence and action of the Mother's Force is felt so tangibly... rushing of Force into the subtle body which the physical records and feels the effect. When Force descends into the head it means that it has come down into the mind, when it is felt in the heart it means it has entered into the emotional vital, when it is in the Muladhara and below it means it is acting on the physical consciousness. The centres are all in the subtle body although there are corresponding... doubt about it. Any reflection or outflowing from the subtle body into the physical would also be felt as tangible. For instance, when the Force is in the outer physical it is sometimes felt as a great mountain entering my external body. But the same thing would be felt if it was acting massively in the subtle body. When the Force and Peace descend into my body ...
... dropped off, it does not follow that no body is left. Man goes on existing after death in his Dream-State and moves & acts with his subtle body; it is this dream-state in the subtle body to which the name soul or spirit is popularly given. Even the disintegration of the subtle body and the return of the Dream-State into the Sleep-State from which it was projected, would not imply a release from all restrictions... lives in and uses its corresponding medium of matter and out of that matter shapes for itself its own body or material case. He has therefore a causal body for his Sleep-State or causal self, a subtle body for his Dream-State or psychical self and a gross body for his Waking-State or physical self. When he dies, what happens is simply the disintegration of the physical body and the return of the Waking... of supra-intelligence on developed mind evolves reason. Mind & Supra-intelligence with reason as an intermediate link are, spiritually, the DreamState and operate absolutely and directly in the subtle body but indirectly, under limitations and as a governing and directing force in the gross body. Page 235 So far spirit and soul only have been evolved; the evolution of the Will has not ...
... etc., we are using a figure. The Muladhara from which the Kundalini rises is not in the physical body, but in the subtle body (the subtle body is that in which the being goes out in deep trance or more radically, at the time of death); so also are all the centres. But as the subtle body penetrates and is interfused with the gross body, there is a certain correspondence between these chakras and certain... Below navel—lower vital. (7) Muladhara—physical. All these centres are in the middle of the body; they are supposed to be attached to the spinal cord; but in fact all these things are in the subtle body, sūkṣma deha , though one has the feeling of their activities as if in the physical body when the consciousness is awake. Chakras The thousand-petalled (head) lotus—Chakra or centre of... reference to Yoga. In ordinary people the chakras are not open, it is only when they do sadhana that they open. For the chakras are the centres of the inner consciousness and belong organically to the subtle body. So much as is active in ordinary people is very little—for in them it is the outer consciousness that is active. The centres of consciousness [ are meant by the term "centres" ], the chakras ...
... was, in fact, the 'subtle body' of the exiting soul. I saw this body tied to the physical body with a silvery thread. This subtle body was as if floating in the air just above the head of the dying man who was all the time lying on his sick bed. Next, I saw a strong current of bright electricity flowing in between the head of the dying man and the legs of the floating subtle body which was upright in... (1) "The chamber in which a man dies"; (2) "The Way the subtle body is formed"; (3) "The process of exit of the subtle body"; (4) "The Ways along which the soul travels"; (5) "The Way of the Fathers" and "The Way of the gods"; (6) "The role of the nāḍis in determining the post-mortem course of the departing spirit"; (7) "The subtle body and the causal body"; (8) "The pañca-kośas or the Five Envelopes... that the vital being of 'A' was still hovering in his deserted room and searching for his clothes. (2)After leaving his body 'B' came to the Mother's chamber Page 43 in his subtle body and sat there in quiet repose. But as soon as his mortal remains were placed on the pyre for the purpose of fiery cremation, his vital being shuddered and vanished. (3)'C', a very senior Ashramite ...
... etc., we are using a figure. The Muladhara from which the Kundalini rises is not in the physical body, but in the subtle body—(the subtle body is that in which the being goes out in deep trance or more radically, at the time of death); so also are all the centres. But as the subtle body penetrates and is interfused with the gross body, there is a certain correspondence between these chakras and certain... worlds of being... that the most important centre of all enables us to obtain divine consciousness of the highest order." 191 Nothing new in that—except that it ignores the part played by the subtle body and packs all into the gross physical. But that too has been done before. "The most important of these centres is the pineal gland... It is the seat of the spirit-entity in man." 192 ... physical proper. So figuratively we speak of the Purusha in this or that centre of the body. Owing to this correspondence, again, when the Ananda or anything else comes down into the being, it is the subtle body that it pervades, but it communicates itself through it to the gross body and its consciousness, so that it is felt as if pervading the body. But all that is very different from saying that the spirit ...
... centres of inner consciousness located in the middle of the subtle body and are attached to the spinal cord. The chakras are normally knotted, it is the awakened Kundalini that unknots each of them as she rises from centre to centre. Kundalini ascends through the spinal column. A chakra is also called lotus (padma). "But as the subtle body penetrates and is interfused with the gross body, there is... we almost forgot the language used and the real meaning of the words—later on other Indian Yoga systems continued their inner explorations. The Tantra in particular made a thorough study of the subtle body. It also defined the worlds from which we get our emotions and feelings and sensations: our higher and lower moral qualities (vritti) —courage, selflessness, generosity, hope endeavour, and so on... Serpent Fire, is the Shakti lying coiled three and a half times round the Linga of the Muladhara. She is then at rest or asleep. Muladhara, at the base of the spine, is the physical centre. In our subtle body we have centres of consciousness which are normally quiescent. Through certain yogic processes formulated in the Tantra, the sleeping Kundalini 1 can be awakened. Then she rises up and carries the ...
... the physical life: it would be sufficiently evolved to subsist in the subtle body which we know to be the characteristic case or sheath and the proper subtle-physical support of the inner being. It is the soul-person, the psychic being, that survives and carries mind and life with it on its journey, and it is in the subtle body that it passes out of its material lodging; both then must be sufficiently... limitations of material Nature. But such a survival could only persist in the subtle body; the being would still have to discard its physical form, pass to other worlds and in its return put on a new body. The awakened mental Purusha and vital Purusha, preserving the mind sheath and the life sheath of the subtle body which are usually discarded, would return with them into a new birth and keep a... Karma. The cause of birth in this world, of Karma, of the soul's passage to other-world existence and its return here is, throughout, the soul's own consciousness, will and desire.) he goes in his subtle body to wherever his mind cleaves, then, coming to the end of his Karma, even of whatsoever action he does here, he returns from that world to this world for Karma. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. (IV. ...
... rushing of Force into the subtle body which the physical records and feels the effect. When Force descends into the head it means that it has come down into the mind, when it is felt in the heart it means it has entered into the emotional vital, when it is in the Muladhara and below it means it is acting on the physical consciousness. The centres are all in the subtle body although there are corresponding... in the physical body may be actually taking place only in the subtle body. Whether in a particular case it is that or a direct experience in the physical body also, is a matter to be Page 496 seen in each case. One must distinguish for oneself which it is. Any reflection or outflowing [ of the Force ] from the subtle body into the physical would also be felt as tangible. Why... be no premature attempt to do it or decide it with the Mind, before the Descent is an accomplished reality—for that would only retard the Descent and perhaps spoil the body. Experiences in the Subtle Body and the Physical Body It [ the higher consciousness ] can come into the physical consciousness direct in the sense that the rest can remain passive, but it must pass through the subtle to reach ...
... last. Had it not played a very decisive role in everyday life, this subtle body might not have particularly interested Mirra, for after all, may the “dead” rest in peace and what good are journeys in the subtle physical if they do not improve our journey right here? We may not all be fortunate enough (?) to see our subtle body, but it is there nevertheless, and without it we would be just a more... there, as if by someone who knows all and sees all—and who is perhaps ourselves without the partitioning of a little mental shell. Then we shall realize that we are naturally universal. The Subtle Body But first, there was that immediate frontier of Matter one was not sure whether it was still Matter or something else, perhaps another type of Matter, or real Matter itself? But that She saw... wise, had discovered here or there, under every latitude and over thousands of years, but which is veiled to us by our too heavily materialistic look—the sukshma sharira of Indian tradition, the "subtle body,” which is going to play an important role in our story, as we shall see. This body She had been seeing for a long time, ever since She was very young: The higher understanding of the intellectual ...
... centralised below the Manas and Chitta in the subtle body and connected with the navel in the Sthula Deha" [ p. 1388 ]. What is that subtle body? Also, I don't understand Page 81 the phrase "connected with the navel in the Sthula Deha". How is it you do not know these elementary things? Man has not a gross ( sthūla ) visible body only, but a subtle body ( sūkṣma deha ) in which he goes out of... of the sthūla deha at his death. The navel is the vital center in the physical body—but the native seat of the vital is in the vital sheath of the subtle body, which sheath it pervades, but for action through the gross body its action is centred at the navel and below it. 16 September 1933 The Yoga and Its Objects, Yogic Sadhan and The Synthesis of Yoga Sri Aurobindo is the author of... supraphysical levels. 10 April 1934 I have always believed that there was an existence after death akin to our existence in this world minus the physical body. The soul goes out in a subtle body. On the strength of certain phenomena that did not appear to me to be capable of being summarily dismissed, I further believed that after a period of confusion immediately following death, the ...
... science on which it is founded, they can use it as a help to go forward in search of higher truths. Hatha Yoga gives us a key to discover the subtle body behind the gross body. It also gives us the knowledge and experience of the centres of the subtle body, each one of which connects a certain level of consciousness and energy with its corresponding universal plane of consciousness and energy. ... great flexibility of the body but it is also meant to alter the relation of the physical energy in the body to the earth energy. Consequently, the body tends to get something of the qualities of the subtle body. It is freed from its usual inertia and acquires a marvellous lightness. Page 579 Here is how Yogi Swatmarama describes certain asanas and their effects: Asanas: ... and channelize the energy, the Hatha Yogin becomes able to direct the Prana anywhere. And this is of momentous importance. According to an ancient Indian science, the life-force circulates in the subtle body through a series of channels (nadis gathered up in six centres called lotuses or chakras (circles) which rise in an ascending line to a summit, the "thousand petalled lotus " from where all vital ...
... etc, we are using a figure. The Muladhara from which the Kundalini rises is not in the physical body, but in the subtle body (the subtle body is that in which the being goes out in deep trance, or more radically, at the time of death); so also are all the centres. But as the subtle body penetrates and is. interfused with the gross body, there is a certain correspondence between these Chakras and... does not mean that they are entirely isolated from the soul. The soul is in the body in the same way as the mind or vital— but the body it occupies is not this gross physical frame only, but the subtle body also. When the gross sheath falls away, the vital and mental sheaths of the body still remain as the soul's vehicle till these too dissolve. "10 " The soul of a plant or an animal is not ... lower vital. 7. Muladhara—the physical. All these centres are in the middle of the body; they are supposed to be attached to the spinal chord; but in fact all these things are in the subtle body, ' Sukshma Deha ', though one has the feeling of their activities as if in the physical body when the consciousness is awake. "³ * * * In the process of our yoga the centres have each ...
... condition of bliss in the subtle body, Narak the condition of misery in the subtle body, Brahmalok the condition of being near to Hiranyagarbha in the causal body. Just as the Jivatman like a dreamer sees the Earth & all its features when it is in the condition of mortality, and regards itself as in a particular place, so when it is in a condition of complete tamas in the subtle body, it believes itself... but is more permanently & coherently liberated from the gross body at or after death. This wider consciousness is called the Dream Condition and the body or upadhi in which it works is called the Subtle Body. The Dream Consciousness may be said to surround the waking consciousness and its body as a robe surrounds its wearer, for it is wider & less trammelled in its nature & range; it is the selecting ...
... next to Prana, the nervous or vital element in man which is centralised below the Manas and Chitta in the subtle body and connected with the navel in the Sthula Deha. Here I must distinguish between the Sukshma Prana and the Sthula Prana, the former moving in the nervous system of the subtle body as described in the Yogic books, the latter in the nervous system of the gross body. The two are closely... of communication with the Manas. We may call this organ the understanding. Knowledge, reason and understanding are the Page 1372 three parts of the brain. These functions are in the subtle body, but they are connected with the corresponding portions of the material brain. In the chest just above the heart is the Manas, that is, the organ of sensation with its five subordinate Indriyas... little foreign to my purpose. Nevertheless a few words are necessary. The principle upon which this Yoga I am explaining to you stands, is that the gross body is merely the shadow or creation of the subtle. Body is a mould into which mind pours itself, but the mould itself has been prepared by the mind and can be changed by the mind. A mind purified, liberated and perfected (siddha) can do whatever it likes ...
... also the subtle body, then the vital and finally the mental too. The reason why one does not remember the past lives is this that one leaves behind the instrument of memory – the brain mind – with one's death. One does not carryover with the psychic being the other parts that constitute the terrestrial life. They are dispersed and dissolved in their respective cosmic spheres. The subtle body gives up... the psychic being is highly developed and has organised around itself as its instrument of self-expression any of these elements. In that case, as much of the terrestrial parts – namely, of the subtle body and life and mind – as have come into direct contact with the psychic and have allowed themselves to be moved and moulded by its consciousness, will alone persist and share in the immortality of... ugly dirty clothing that has to be cast off so that one may go straight to the enjoyment of the beatitude of Paradise; on the contrary, it is, as it were, an armour, a steel-frame that protects the subtle body against the attacks or harsh and cruel touches of other worlds and their beings. Once outside the body, there is every danger for the individual to go astray and be hurt, unless he is guided and ...
... es around oneself and handles, a subtle body starts forming itself: a mental body, a body of consciousness, of energy, one could say, formed of all our agglomerated vibrations and in which one travels. It is the oldest story in the world. It was in this subtle body that Mother met Sri Aurobindo without even knowing him, in Paris in 1903. It was in this subtle body, as I have related it, that I travelled... and weaves mental, vital or psychic forces as others spin out layers of calcium. And a “body” is formed. But with Mother, it is not at all a question of that type of body, nothing to do with a “subtle” body: it is a material body, made by material but conscious cells. Only it is not Matter, or the degree of fossilized Matter that we are familiar with. It is the primary Matter. It is the cells alone ...
... perfection is of the surface, whether the surface be of Nature or Supernature. The gross body, sthula sarira — to employ an Upanishadic description — of the poetic movement is made soul-active, the subtle body, suksma sarira , is still not called into play, much less the causal or archetypal body, karana & sarira , which is the inmost and highest truth to be manifested in the incarnative dynamism... third foot achieving appropriate emphasis and poignancy: As long | as love | kisses | the lips | of death. This pentameter may well exemplify in one kind what we have termed the subtle body of poetic incarnativeness, which can be achieved only after the transmissive mode of prose literature has been made sovereignly available in the poet's consciousness during the act of creation. Ideas... itself is seen and heard and the experience of it merged with the sensation-quality, the emotion-aspect, of language. If we wish to exemplify at more length the incarnative-ness through the subtle body, we cannot do better than start with the sestet of a sonnet of Rupert Brooke's, which when detached from the much inferior octave can stand as an independent piece at once of Nature-evocation and ...
... the subtle body; Narak, Hell, the condition of misery in the subtle body; Brahmalok the condition of abiding with God in the causal body. Just as the Jivatman like a dreamer sees the Earth and all it contains when it is in the condition of mortality and regards itself as in a particular region with hills, trees, rivers, plains, so when it is in a condition of complete tamas in the subtle body, it... not continue; rites & ceremonies need not continue; the life of the householder need not continue. But work continues so long as the body gross or subtle continues; for both the gross body and the subtle body, both the physical case & the soul-case are always part of Prakriti, and whatever is Prakriti, must do work. The Gita says this plainly न हि कश्चित्क्षणमपि जातु तिष्ठत्यकर्मकृत् । कार्यते ह्यवशः ...
... Mother Questions and Answers (1950 - 1951): 27 January 1951 All illnesses pass through the nervous or vital-physical sheath of the subtle consciousness and subtle body before they enter the physical. If one is conscious of the subtle body or with the subtle consciousness, one can stop an illness on its way and prevent it from entering the physical body. But it may have come without one’s noticing... merely mental or vital way. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Physical Consciousness The physical nerves are part of the material body, but they are extended into subtle nerves in the subtle body and there is a connection between the two. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Physical Consciousness The vital physical on the other hand is the vehicle of the nervous responses of... surrounds the physical body with a kind of envelope which has almost the same density as the vibrations of heat observable when the day is very hot. And it is this which is the intermediary between the subtle body and the most material vital body. It is this which protects the body from all contagion, fatigue, exhaustion and even from accidents. Therefore if this envelope is wholly intact, it protects you ...
... and listening to the kirtan . Was it the subtle body? What significance? Why funny? Quite natural. Why the deuce do all you people ask always what significance? If you walked out of your house in boots, leaving your slippers or sandals behind, that would be a fact, but with no significance except that you had boots. You went out in your subtle body and listened to the kirtan of the vital plane... the atoms (?) into the wideness of the Divine—that is to say one feels the very cells sharing in that peace and wideness. This is possible even if the material body is ill. In most cases it is the subtle body that feels like that, but as the subtle penetrates everywhere the gross physical, the physical body also feels like that. But then it does not feel disturbed by the pains or motions of the illness—they... plane in Ardhendu's room, leaving your body to snore (or not) in yours. Quite a common affair, only shows that you have become aware of the boots, i.e. of your subtle body and its exits. November 28, 1936 Boil again inside the right nostril! But perhaps you will ask me to imagine being a Spaniard, German, Jew, the Japanese-German pact and the Russian inflammation against it etc., etc. All ...
... forms the outer personality of man – its sign and symbol is the material body. Behind this physical person figured in physical body there is the subtle person and it expresses itself in a subtle body. The subtle body, because it is subtle, does not mean that it is formless. This too has a form which has not the rigidity of the material body, is not bound like the physical body in a contour of fixed ... as also towards the good and the beneficent. It is difficult for this person to make the choice. In the physical body such a choice is made by the mental will, in the Page 392 subtle body the mental will if it remains intact is one among many forces of equal strength. But the saving grace lies in the third person which is the Divine Person, man's true person and real identity.... in us normally behind the veil almost inoperative acting or influencing only indirectly and can be and has to be brought forward and put in charge of the other personalities, over the head of the subtle body and the physical body. Then that true person will be the ruler and guide and control and choose and inspire the movements of the subtle personality and allow only the right and proper activities ...
... spheres. The subtle body gives up its elements to the subtle physical plane, the vital elements are taken up into the vital world and the mental elements go into the mental world,—unless the psychic being is highly developed and has organised around itself as its instrument of self-expression any of these elements. In thatmuch of the terrestrial parts—namely, of the subtle body and life and... next the rest. The passage means the gradual shedding of all the other sheaths or envelopes that surround the psychic being and form its earthly frame. With the physical body has to go also the subtle body, then the vital and finally the mental too. The reason why one does not remember the past lives is this that one leaves behind the instrument of memory—the brain mind—with one's death. One does not... ugly dirty clothing that has to be cast off so that one may go straight to the enjoyment of the beatitude of Paradise; on the contrary, it is, as it were, an armour, a steel-frame that protects the subtle body against the attacks or harsh and cruel touches of other worlds and their beings. Once outside the body, there is every danger for the individual to go astray and be hurt, unless he is guided and ...
... physical brain and feel it going on in the subtle body. If we can feel ourselves thinking no longer with the brain but from above and outside the head in the subtle body, that is a sure physical sign of a release from the limitations of the physical mind, and though this will not be complete at once nor of itself bring the supramental action, for the subtle body is mental and not supramental, still it ...
... body. The Physical Nerves and the Subtle Nerves The physical nerves are part of the material body, but they are extended into subtle nerves in the subtle body and there is a connection between the two. Yes, there are nerves in the subtle body. The physical nerves have many centres or plexuses. The nervous being proper is part of the physical—and it starts from the physical centre, the... and infer the touch of the Divine. But if we are awake in the inward physical, we shall feel the light, power or Ananda flowing through the body, the limbs, nerves, blood, breath and, through the subtle body, affecting the most material cells and making them conscious and blissful and we shall sense directly the Divine Power and Presence. These are Page 205 only two instances out of a thousand ...
... and body are very good results. They do not usually become permanent at once—it is sufficient if they are frequently or ordinarily there. (2) Chest and head rising higher are sensations of the subtle body—it means that the mind and heart consciousness (thinking mental and emotional) are rising to meet the spiritual consciousness plane above the head. (3) The sound is a sign of the opening of the... correct. The body is not connected ordinarily with the higher consciousness, it only receives what it can from the mind. It is being prepared for the direct connection by the ascent of the inner or subtle body into that plane and the descent from it of the higher Light. No, the body itself cannot go up—how could it? The body is meant for keeping the consciousness linked to the physical world. ... outside the body consciousness. Page 436 This sometimes happens by the vital being rising up above the head or, more rarely, by its projecting itself into its own sheath (part of the subtle body) out of the physical attachment. But it also comes by a sudden even if momentary liberation from the identification with the body consciousness, and this liberation may become frequent and prolonged ...
... some of his disciples but it then passed out of this time-space and entered into the eternal Reality. I would suggest that the gross body of Jesus which was laid in the tomb was transformed into a subtle body, in which he appeared to his disciples but was not bound by the ordinary laws of space and time - it appeared and disappeared. Then at the Ascension it became a 'spiritual body' that is a body wholly... is my belief that in the Resurrection of Jesus the matter of his body was transformed by the Spirit; the actual cells were trans- Page 203 formed, appearing first as a 'subtle' body, then at the ascension as a 'spiritual' body no longer subject to the laws of space, time and causality. I admit that the Virgin Birth does not stand at the same level as the Resurrection... that the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection were in space and time, though his body did not obey the normal laws of Page 208 causality. That is why I spoke of a subtle body. It was only after the ascension that it became a spiritual body beyond time and space. But this again depends on how you conceive the whole 'mystery' of the resurrection, which is essentially ...
... up the ladder—or in other words, a human being who, through his occult knowledge, goes out of one of his 'bodies' (they are called sheaths in English) and enters into a more subtle body—in order to ACT in a more subtle body—and so forth, twelve times (you make each body come out Page 218 from a more material body, leaving the more material body in its corresponding zone, and then go off... make one come out of the other, successively. For there is a whole hierarchy of increasing subtleties—or decreasing, depending upon the direction—and the occult process consists in making a more subtle body come out from a denser body, and so forth, right to the most ethereal regions. You go out through successive exteriorizations into more and more subtle bodies or worlds. Each time it is rather like ...
... and feel it going on in the subtle body. Sri Aurobindo states: "If we can feel ourselves thinking no longer with the brain but from above and outside the head in the subtle body, that is a sure physical sign of a release from the limitations of the physical mind, and though this will not be complete at once nor of itself bring a supramental action, for the subtle body is mental and not supramental ...
... Buddhists. The Sufis too sometimes make a distinction between what they call nafs-i-j ā ri or a 'wandering body' and nafs-i-muqīm or a 'stationary body'. Their jism-i-latīf i.e., a fine subtle body and jism-i-kas ī f, i.e., a dense or gross body fall in the same category as the ā tiv ā hika and ādhibhautika śarīras of Vedantic classification and the khecara-citta or sūkṣma-deha... own. Indeed, the goal set before the aspirant is that he should seek to 'loosen' "the soul, ātivāhika deha, sūtkṣma-śarīra,jñāna-deha, nirmāṇa-kāya, nafs-i-jāri, nafs-i-latīf,jism-i-misāl, subtle body...from the physical body, sthūla-śarīra, ādhibhautika deha,jaḍa-deha, jism-i-kasif jism-i-shahāḍa, nafs-i-muquīm, gross or dense body, body of flesh, by regulated fasts and vigils, physical... physical and psychical disciplines, and various subtle introspective processes,...under the guidance of a wise teacher...who has himself passed through the experience and achieved 'freedom' of subtle body from gross body." 1 The spiritual destiny for the individual soul is, of course, attained when it can effectuate its permanent release from this gross terrestrial body and depart to a desired supra ...
... the waking state, however, the action induced a certain emptiness or voidness in my being, right down to the body. I am unable to say whether it was in the subtle body or the outer that the density was felt. It must be in the subtle body, for it is that one feels in trance or sleep - besides, if it were the physical body, the density would usually last for some time after waking. ... Page 179 ignorant methods of understanding what is beyond its range. Let me describe my experience. After half an hour of feeling Mother's touch, even my subtle body was falling slowly into silence. Then such a complete peace and silence possessed my mind and body that one may call it a conscious samadhi. In place of my outer self I experienced a solid peace ...
... physical body and makes that the basis of his practices, he does not view it with the eye of the anatomist or physiologist, but describes and explains it in language which always looks back to the subtle body behind the physical system. In fact the whole aim of the Hathayogin may be summarised from our point of view, though he would not himself put it in that language, as an attempt by fixed scientific... which the overcoming of fatigue is the first sign and the phenomenon of utthāpana or partial levitation the last, is one result. The gross body begins to acquire something of the nature of the subtle body and to possess something of its relations with the life-energy; that becomes a greater force more powerfully felt and yet capable of a lighter and freer and more resolvable physical action, powers... the more important matter of the psychical and spiritual effects to which they can be turned. This depends on the connection between the body and the mind and spirit and between the gross and the subtle body on which the system of Hathayoga takes its stand. Here it comes into line with Rajayoga, and a point is reached at which a transition from the one to the other can be made. Page 535 ...
... One shouldn't do these things except under guidance or in the presence of a Master. After some more talk the Mother departed for the general meditation. SRI AUROBINDO (resuming) : When the subtle body goes out, there is a thin thread that maintains the connection with the physical body. If that thread is snapped somehow, the man dies. NIRODBARAN: I have heard that the Mother had such an accident... miracles. When P. Mitter was asked how Goswami could fly, he said, "He could glide like that!" (Sri Aurobindo showed this by a movement of his hand.) Of course all those things were done in the subtle body. SATYENDRA: What about the miracles in the life of Haranath? Once on his way back from Kashmir, it is said, he fell seriously ill and was unconscious for two or three hours. When he regained ... the outer circumstances as they are but goes within and writes from there. He is a Unanimist and believes that there is one soul in all. In a novel of his, he describes a wife meeting in her subtle body her husband sitting in a chair on a ship. As soon as he saw the impressions left on the chair he got frightened and thought he was going too much against God's laws. That is the European mentality ...
... What, why are you looking like that, phou ! ( gesture ) Mother, is there a difference between Your subtle body and Your physical body? Seems to be. For the human eyes, it seems there is a difference. But… Mother, once X saw You in a dream, in a luminous body… Maybe X saw my subtle body which is transformed. The mental, the vital and also the subtle physical do not take so long to be tr... transform the physical when You want. I do my work and I am not anxious about the results of the transformation. It will come when He wants. But something is in the making, it is advancing, the subtle body and even the physical. Yes, the work continues. It is not necessary that I announce it. ...
... continues, as if She had built a way of communication for all times. And they say that She is dead. Or they say that She is in a “subtle body.” But that body is more concrete and more living and more physical than all their movements of ghosts! If it is a “subtle” body, then subtlety is decidedly more solid that all their empty gourds. But the fact was that She was devoured. And as always (it... reaches the small pure cell: the direct body. Then that which was all the way out there is all very much here. When we feel that is so very much out there, we say: Oh! It’s a “subtle” world, it’s a “subtle” body, it’s a “vision,” a dream.… And when it is come here … well, it’s fully physical! it is one and only one physical separated by walls of consciousness and layers of filth. In the pure little cell ...
... śupreme. brahmānda (Brahmanda): Cosmos, universe. caitya purusa (Chaitya Purusha): Psychic being. cakra (Chakra): Centre, nodus, plexus; the seven psychological centres in the subtle body. cakra ājnā: Centre between the eye-brows. —anāhata: Centre in the heart. —hrdpadma: Heart-lotus; same as anāhata. Page 58 —manipura: Centre at the navel... Full of the quality of sattva, the principleof light and harmony. siddhi: Realisation, fulfilment; also, an occult powergained by Yoga. sūksma śarīra (Sukshma Sharira): The subtle body. sv ā dhisth ā na: See cakra. tamos: One of the three gunas, fundamental qualities or modes of Nature; the principle of obscurity and inertia in Nature. tantra: A path of spiritual ...
... told you", they pull a long face! And they don't understand any longer. Illnesses enter through the subtle body, don't they? How can they be stopped? Page 267 Ah! Here we are.... If one is very sensitive, very sensitive—one must be very sensitive—the moment they touch the subtle body and try to pass through, one feels it. It is not like something touching the body, it is a sort of feeling ...
... subtle bodies. The form of the third question lends itself to misconception. Obviously the method for an ordinary man to develop his subtle body into that of a saint, is to cease to be an ordinary man and to become a saint. There can be no other means. The subtle body is the mental case and reflects the changes of the mentality which is housed in it or the influence exercised on it by the activities ...
... Vital and Mental Planes Subtle Physical Experiences Is it [ a strong and rapid heartbeat that shakes the whole body ] the physical nerves and heart—or in the subtle body? Often one feels a shaking and vibration of the subtle body and can feel as if heartbeats there, but if not experienced, it impresses as if it were a material phenomenon. It is evidently in a subtle world, not the physical ...
... miraculous absoluteness! It is my experience and the Mother's that all illnesses pass through the nervous or vitalphysical sheath of the subtle consciousness and subtle body before they enter the physical. If one is conscious of the subtle body or with the subtle consciousness, one can stop an illness on its way and prevent it from entering the physical body. But it may have come without one's noticing ...
... consciousness are always due to the pressure or descent of a Force to which the body is not accustomed but feels strongly. Here it was not the physical body that was being directly pressed, but the subtle body, the sūkṣma śarīra in which the inner being more intimately dwells and in which it goes out in sleep or trance or in the moment of death. But the physical body in these vivid experiences feels... When there is the descent of consciousness into the body one becomes aware of a subtle physical consciousness and that can remain in samadhi—one seems to be aware of the body, but it is really the subtle body and not the outward physical. But also one can go deep within and yet be aware of the physical body also and of working upon it, but not of outward things. Finally one can be absorbed in a deep ...
... centre thought now predominates and gathers round it at its own level all other thinking, but sometimes descends to give its own character to thought manifested in the lower levels or regions of the subtle body. At night renewed action of coherence and ideality in the dream state. Page 1129 19 July 1919 Rf. [Reference] "Which I must act, briefness and fortune, work", of the approaching... freedom. Definite rasas are coming with increasing ease and variety. Gandha is for the present obstructed. An old siddhi, sparsha at a distance, sukshma or sukshma-sthula in incidence, felt by the subtle body and conveyed by it in the same moment to the physical sense: there is however no division, it is felt as one touch by the united sukshma and sthula sense. Rupa has developed a few instances outside ...
... times from July to October. Mirra’s unusual capacities made her a student who quickly equalled her teachers. Like Alma she was able to leave her gross material body, then the subtle body, then the next still more subtle body, and so on — twelve times one after the other, because each successive body consisted of the ever subtler substance of the twelve worlds gradually ascending from our material world ...
... on the same sheet of paper she inscribed these promising words: It will be realised by the Supreme's Power and Love That night I had a wonderful vision. I went out of my body. My subtle body was now soaring up and up in an enormous space. There were the moon and stars. The atmosphere was very light, cool and soothing. I felt free like a bird. I did not realise how far I went up but now... Suns added glory to the breathtaking beauty of the marvellous scene which was spread out like a panorama before my eyes. I was now floating a little above the lake. Its coolness enveloped my subtle body. Here the Divine Mother had strewn lavishly her exquisite Beauty and Wonder and Quietude. The divine vibrations were overwhelming. I was engulfed by the new consciousness. I reached the Suns. ...
... life-span. Some time after the departure of Pavitra (Philippe Barbier St.-Hilaire) the Mother said to a sadhak: "Amrita and Pavitra are both within me, but time and again Amrita comes out in his subtle body and sits in front of me along with whoever is having an interview with me whereas Pavitra remains inside and keeps looking out half-amusedly." Right up to the time of his death, Amrita was... road and turned him to carry out what he willed. Nolini also used at that time the term "mahapurusha" ("great being") for him. Purani had some occult powers and could go out in his super-forceful subtle body and act effectively. Once Vaun McPheeters, who with his wife Janet (renamed "Shantimayi" by the Mother) was the first American to settle in the Ashram, spoke a trifle lightly of India during a somewhat ...
... life-span. Some time after the departure of Pavitra (Philippe Barbier St.-Hilaire) the Mother said to a sadhak: "Amrita and Pavitra are both within me, but time and again Amrita comes out in his subtle body and sits in front of me along with whoever is having an interview with me whereas Pavitra remains inside and keeps looking out half- amusedly." Right up to the time of his death, Amrita was a... road and turned him to carry out what he willed. Nolini also used at that time the term "mahapurusha" ("great being") for him. Purani had some occult powers and could go out in his super-forceful subtle body and act effectively. Once Vaun McPheeters, who with his wife Janet (renamed "Shantimayi" by the Mother) was the first American to settle in the Ashram, spoke a trifle lightly of India during a somewhat ...
... she read my prayer, and on the same sheet of paper she wrote: It will be realised by the Supreme Power and Love. That night I had a wonderful vision. I went out of my body. My subtle body was now soaring up and up in an enormous space. There were the moon and stars. The atmosphere was very light, cool and soothing. I felt free like a bird. I did not realise how far I went up but now... Suns added glory to the breathtaking beauty of the marvellous scene which was spread out like a panorama before my eyes. I was now floating a little above the lake. Its coolness enveloped my subtle body. Here the Divine had strewn lavishly her exquisite Beauty and Wonder and Quietude. The divine vibrations were overwhelming. I was engulfed by the new consciousness. I reached the Suns ...
... it; but the return is always possible." (22-12-1943) * * * (You know that for many years I have been in the habit of leaving my physical body and making exploratory tours in my subtle body. I leave the physical from the region of the waist. Slipping out into the other planes while I am living in Bombay, I find that I mostly get into planes that are not of a very high nature. Sometimes... the highest while everything in those planes moves with endless variations in a fixed type having its own perfection and pleasure, however evil and perverse. Once I found myself to be not a full subtle body but a sort of pigmy with a semi-idiotic consciousness, a funny squeak and an irresponsible hurried movement. We seem to have odd beings within ourselves. Last night I was glared at by some people ...
... pranayama and asanas clearly indicate how the physical and spiritual are interrelated, and in India we have elaborate science of the relationship between the gross body and the subtle body as also of the centres or charkas of subtle body, the opening of which is essential for the fullness or perfection of the body, life and mind as also of spiritual realisation and manifestation. The recent discoveries of ...
... etc. — Consisting respectively of Anna (matter), Prana (force), Manas (mind), Vijnana (knowledge) and Ananda (bliss), The first comprises this body of ours, the next three make up the subtle body (suksma Sarira), and the last the causal body (Karana-Sarira). The Atman referred to in this sloka is beyond them all. Page 174 charming splendour, shines like the sun aloft, m... and am free from the clutches of transmigration; I am the Essence of Eternal Bliss, I am Infinite — all through thy mercy! I am unattached, I am disembodied, 9 I am free from the subtle body, and undecaying. I am serene, I am taintless, and eternal. 1. Sa nnyasins — Lit. Those who struggle after realisation. 2. serene — Refers to the control of the mind. 3. restrained ...
... limitations of material Nature. But such a survival could only persist in the subtle body; the being would still have to discard its physical form, pass to other worlds and in its return put on a new body. The awakened mental Purusha and vital Purusha, preserving the mind sheath and the life sheath of the subtle body which are usually discarded, would return with them into a new birth and keep a ...
... dress. The moment they touched it their pain vanished and a tranquil joy filled their being. We all have another body besides the physical one, we may call it the subtle body. When you sleep at night, the Mother visits you in her subtle body to bring you peace and light, health and wisdom - according to your need. If you are conscious, you may realise this, sometimes even you may yourselves go to her ...
... will not be overtaken by this kind of usurpation of identity. As for the nature of the occult discipline, one has to learn "to go out of one's body consciously and to enter into another more subtle body; to use one's will to go where one wants to go, never to fear and sometimes to face unexpected and even terrible things; to remain calm, to develop the mind's visual sense .... " 21 Again, the... Mother said: Her powers were quite exceptional; she had received an extremely complete and rigorous training and she could exteriorise herself, that is, bring out of her material body a subtle body, in full consciousness, and do it twelve times in succession. That is, she could pass consciously from one state of being to another, live there as consciously as in her physical body, and then ...
... the soul's rest before being reborn with a new subtle body as well as a new gross one. Sri Aurobindo, at the hour of his physical withdrawal, was in a position to do much more than be the cosmic and transcendent Purusha that his supramental Yoga had made his incarnate personality. He could actually be that Purusha active in an indissoluble subtle body at once divine and human, in a far more direct ...
... it must be to a subtler sense in us and only derivatively to the outward physical sense. This derivative objectivisation is certainly possible; if there is an association of the action of the subtle body and its sense-organisation with the action of the material body and its physical organs, then the supraphysical can become outwardly sensible to us. This is what happens, for example, with the... communicate. Synthesis of Yoga, p. 531 Page 198 × Sūkṣma indriya, subtle organs, existing in the subtle body (sūkṣma deha), and the means of subtle vision and experience (sūkṣma dṛṣṭi) ...
... move in is not quite the same as the physical: the furniture is arranged somewhat differently. My conclusion is that I move in a subtle body in a subtle plane; but is that always unavoidable? Does one's subtle body never move in the very physical plane? In my latest experience I went to the pier, but the street through which I ran to reach the ...
... the work she read my prayer, and on the same sheet of paper she wrote: It will be realised by the Supreme Power and Love . That night I had a wonderful vision: I went out of my body. My subtle body was now soaring up and up in an enormous space. There were the moon and stars. The atmosphere was very light, cool and soothing. I felt free like a bird. I did not realise how far I went up but now... Suns added glory to the breathtaking beauty of the marvellous scene which was spread out like a panorama before my eyes. I was now floating a little above the lake. Its coolness enveloped my subtle body. Here the Divine had strewn lavishly her exquisite Beauty and Wonder and Quietude. The divine vibrations were overwhelming. I was engulfed by the new consciousness. I reached the Suns. Their Force ...
... entity. But that does not mean that they are entirely isolated from the soul. The soul is in the body in the same way as the mind or vital—but the body is not this gross physical body only, but the subtle body also. When the gross body falls away, the vital and mental sheaths of the body still remain as the soul's vehicle till these too dissolve. The soul of a plant or an animal is not dormant—only... they are Page 116 entirely isolated from the soul. The soul is in the body in the same way as the mind or vital—but the body it occupies is not this gross physical frame only, but the subtle body also. When the gross sheath falls away, the vital and mental sheaths of the body still remain as the soul's vehicle till these too dissolve. The soul of a plant or an animal is not altogether ...
... lly or psychologically, I mean occultly. Are you conscious in your exteriorisation, do you do it at will? Do you know how to leave your body and live in a more subtle body, and then again leave that body and live in another more subtle body and so on? Do you know how to do all that? Have you ever done it? No. Then we shall speak about it again another day. It happens in dreams, Mother. In dreams ...
... of the soul's rest before beingreborn with a new subtle body as well as a new gross one. Sri Aurobindo, at the hour of his physical withdrawal, was in a position to do much more than be the cosmic and transcendent Purusha that his supramental Yoga had made his incarnate personality. He could actually be that Purusha active in an indissoluble subtle body at once divine and human, in a far more direct ...
... and expansion in joints and tissues of the Page 418 body. By helping the children to internalise the senses we open access to all the richness of the child's inner world and to their subtle body. We work the vital being through games and exercises that help to differentiate and control energy, and, with older groups, through exploration of emotions and attitudes. We approach the... exercises that open fields of exploration to several aspects of life, or several aspects of the being simultaneously. Examples of themes are: breathing, balance, relaxation, physical structure, subtle body, concentration, and sensory awareness. Examples of activities are Structures setting, Plates, Sticks, Flying clothes, Games, Form and Space. There is a constant flow and interaction between all. ...
... Always the same rigid mind that turns everything into a statement of miraculous absoluteness! It is my experience and.the Mother's that all illnesses pass through the subtle consciousness and subtle body before they enter the physical. If one is conscious, one can stop it entering the physical, one can develop the power to do so. We have done that millions of times. But that does not mean that... somehow either above or outside the body consciousness. This sometimes happens by the vital being rising up above the head or, more rarely, by its projecting itself into its own sheath (part of the subtle body) out of the physical attachment. But it also comes by a sudden even if momentary liberation from the identification with the body consciousness, and this liberation may become frequent and prolonged ...
... possess too a subtle one. While the gross body gets disintegrated on death, the subtle body or its seed persists and becomes the occasion for the sprouting of a new gross body and thus is maintained the continuity of the play in the Ignorance. Now, according to the traditional spiritual vision, our subtle body as well as the gross one is a product of avidyā. On the attainment of liberation ...
... body very soon after it has become clinically nonfunctional. In olden times people used to recite sacred mantras or adopt some other occult rituals in order to hasten the separation of the subtle body from the 'dead' gross physical body. Even after this separation the vital being of the dead person may continue for some days to move around his accustomed room or house or the place of his work... will shed ample light on this tricky issue. Sri Aurobindo says that what is actually "contacted" may be, depending on the case, "1. An actual contact with the soul of a human being in its subtle body ... 2.A mental formation stamped by the thoughts and feelings of a departed human being... 3.A being of the lower vital planes who has assumed the discarded vital sheath of a departed human ...
... and asanas clearly indicate how the physical and spiritual are interrelated, and in India we have elaborate science of the relationship between the gross body and the subtle body as also of the centers or charkas of subtle body, the opening of which is essential for the fullness or perfection of the body, life and mind as also of spiritual realisation and manifestation. The recent discoveries ...
... the caterpillar of the butterfly. Saul keeps St. Paul cocooned in himself. We have to see - and how can we, unless we develop the inner sight and the intuitive vision? - also its sūksma or subtle body, and the kārana or causal. It goes without saying that all of us do not possess this vision. It is only the intuitive vision, by inner identity, of the causal body that can reveal the truth... either outside the jail or in it before. On our enquiring as to where he had learnt these secret Yogic practices, he said that a Mahapurusha (a great spiritual personality) had visited him in his subtle body and taught him those things. When we asked him about the result of the police case against him, he said: 'I shall be acquitted.' " Sri Aurobindo himself has given us a brief but illuminating ...
... entered your subtle body already?” The Mother changed the topic and started speaking about something else. If this is not the sweet maya of the Mother then what is? In Notes on the Way , the Mother has given such detailed descriptions of the transformation of each envelope of the body, but it is beyond our capacity to understand that She is describing the transformation of Her subtle body. How we used ...
... snake and the jackal, the tiger and the lion are all our old relatives. Man’s kinship with the snake is indeed very close. Behind the body of all creatures lies the subtle body of the great creative Energy in seed form. That subtle body becomes veiled upon taking this gross body. The ideas and beliefs of the Hindus were not false. We have now to regain that Vision. Because of our present state of ignorance ...
... actually a kind of dimension of time, or the spread of our consciousness proportionate to the quantity of experiences we have lived through time, as though we constantly grew within another, more subtle body—a body of experience—and fashioned an ever vaster and more encompassing expanse of being. Some fashion a little garden with a single flower, some fashion a park, and others embrace seas and rivers... to me, nothing made me happier; all my daytime activities seemed dull and gray—devoid of real life— compared to this night-time activity, which was the true life for me. 17 But that more subtle body—perhaps the body of the world's sorrows—seemed to spread not only over one city or in one particular direction; it sometimes seemed immense. At times, also, it did not have the same color or the ...
... training, and she was capable of exteriorizing herself, that is, to draw out a subtle body from her material body, totally consciously, and twelve times in a row. In other words, she could shift consciously from one state of being to another, live there as consciously as in her physical body, then again put that more subtle body into trance, exteriorize herself from it, and so on, twelve times in a ...
... everywhere in the subtle body but she found it of a very secondary interest. Our attention must be fixed on the earth because our work is here. Besides, the earth is a concentration of all the other worlds and one can touch them by touching something corresponding in the earth-atmosphere." But evidently great precaution should be taken to guard the material body while the subtle body or the spirit ...
... the four physical siddhis, laghima, anima, garima, mahima. By perfect laghima man can rise into the air and tread the winds as his natural element; by perfect anima he can bring the nature of the subtle body into the gross body, which the fire will no longer burn, nor weapons wound, nor Page 504 want of air stifle, nor the waters drown; by perfect garima he can develop an adamantine steadiness ...
... it is the truth of the essence of the form, it is the likeness of the soul to itself, the reproduction of the subtle embodiment which is the basis of the physical embodiment, the purer and finer subtle body of an object which is the very expression of its own essential nature, svabhāva . The means by which this effect is produced is characteristic of the inward vision of the Indian mind. It is done ...
... Aurobindo The Life Divine - II: The Order of the Worlds × Sūkṣma indriya, subtle organs, existing in the subtle body (sūkṣma deha), and the means of subtle vision and experience (sūkṣma dṛṣṭi). ...
... A discipline much more difficult than the discipline of yoga! It is an occult discipline. First of all, one must learn to go out of one's body consciously and to enter into another more subtle body; to use one's will to go where one wants to go, never to fear and sometimes to face unexpected and even terrible things; to remain calm, to develop the mind's visual sense, to accustom one's mind ...
... urge would proceed to a change of the organs themselves in their material working and use and diminish greatly the need of their instrumentation and even of their existence. The centres in the subtle body , sūkṣma śarīra, of which one would become conscious and aware of all going on in it would pour their energies into material nerve and plexus and tissue and radiate them through the whole material ...
... physical as in the vital ]—but is felt materially in the material substance, concretely in the physical mind and nervous being, as well as psychologically in the mind and vital or subtly in the subtle body. I presume that [ feeling peace concretely between the lobes of the brain ] would mean that the peace had become or was becoming very material and solid and physically tangible—"peace in the ...
... sheaths and enters into rest on the psychic plane till the time comes for rebirth. Page 530 At the time of death the being goes out of the body through the head; it goes out in the subtle body and goes to different planes of existence for a short time until it has gone through certain experiences which are the result of its earthly existence. Afterwards it reaches the psychic world where ...
... He might mistake a first mental realisation for the deeper spiritual one or think the descent was in his physical when it was in his mental influencing the body through the mental sheath of the subtle body—but those who have no mental knowledge can also make these mistakes. The disadvantage of the one who does not know mentally is that he gets the experience without understanding it and this may be ...
... in them all a Presence, a Being, a Divine Person; for the Divine is Krishna, is Shiva, is the Supreme Mother. But through the Ananda you can perceive the Anandamaya Krishna; for the Ananda is the subtle body and being of Krishna; through the Peace you can perceive the Shantimaya Shiva; in the Light, in the delivering Knowledge, the Love, the fulfilling and uplifting Power you can meet the presence of ...
... urge would proceed to a change of the organs themselves in their material working and use and diminish greatly the need of their instrumentation and even of their existence. The centres in the subtle body, sūkṣma śarīra , of which one would become conscious and aware of all going on in it, would pour their energies into material nerve and plexus and tissue and radiate them through the whole material ...
... would mean physical immortality. Not as they are. 2 What remains and to what degree depends on the development in each case. Of course the centres themselves remain—for they are in the subtle body and it is from there that they act on the corresponding physical centres. No, the subconscient is an instrument for the physical life and disappears [ after death ]. It is too incoherent ...
... number of distinct phenomena which have no necessary connection with each other. To name a few only— Page 569 (1) An actual contact with the soul of a departed human being housed in its subtle body and transcribed to our mind by the appearance of an image or the hearing of a voice. (2) A mental formation stamped by the thoughts and feelings of a departed human being on the atmosphere of ...
... experience while going to the lawyers was an opening to the Force from above which, if sudden, is often attended by this kind of loud sound and the sensation of the opening of the head—it is in the subtle body that this opening of the head takes place though the sensation is felt as if physical. The Force came down and went up presided over by the Mother's forms of Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati and made ...
... atoms (?) 2 into the wideness of the Divine—that is to say one feels the very cells sharing in that peace and wideness. This is possible even if the material body is ill. In most cases it is the subtle body that feels like that, but as the subtle penetrates everywhere the gross physical, the physical body also feels like that. But then it does not feel disturbed by the pains or motions of the illness—they ...
... body for a time. The feeling or vision of oneself in the form of an egg is frequent in such cases. It is not always so, for many go out in an individualised consciousness with an awareness of a subtle body, subtle thought, subtle sensation etc. and move about in the vital or even in the physical world till they come back to the body. But when one begins, the vital body is at first a little vague and ...
... due to the pressure or descent of a Force to Page 129 which the body is not accustomed, but feels strongly. Here it was not the physical body that was being directly pressed, but the subtle body, the sūkṣma śarīra in which the inner being more intimately dwells and in which it goes out in sleep or trance or in the moment of death. But the physical body in these vivid experiences feels ...
... recognises besides the status of our physical and vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind sheath or mental vehicle, 5 a third, supreme and divine status of supra-mental being, termed the causal body and composed of a fourth and a fifth vehicle 6 which ...
... of the law of the body. For behind the gross physical sheath of this materially visible and sensible frame there is subliminally supporting it and discoverable by a finer subtle consciousness a subtle body of the mental being and a spiritual or causal body of the gnostic and bliss soul in which all the perfection of a spiritual embodiment is to be found, a yet unmanifested divine law of the body. Most ...
... forms of its body and the powers of its life. For mind in its own plane is not limited by life and obstructed by matter as it is here in the earth-process. This mental soul lives in a mental or subtle body which enjoys capacities of knowledge, perception, sympathy and interpenetration with other beings hardly imaginable by us and a free, delicate and extensive mentalised sense-faculty not limited by ...
... completeness of the science. Page 541 These powers and experiences belong, first, to the vital and mental planes above this physical in which we live, and are natural to the soul in the subtle body; as the dependence on the physical body decreases, these abnormal activities become possible and even manifest themselves without being sought for. They can be acquired and fixed by processes which ...
... Chandra's song Bande Mataram describes this aspect very beautifully. Thirty-three crores of people live on this land with their joys and sorrows, their good and bad desires: they are all part of its subtle body. Then there are aspects of the country which may undergo changes in the course of time, yet always remain in the body, in seed-state, as permanent as the atom; they Page 812 are always ...
... Imperfect recovery of vijnana. There is a varying between intuitive mentality, intuitive and inspired ideality and the highest ideality with much of the old mixture. Attack of roga, violent in the subtle body. There is an intense struggle between roga and physical health, the latter supported by the tendency to arogya. The occasion is the exposure to damp cold air at night; the old bodily tendency wishes ...
... intensive study of Wordsworth's collection of poems that "She" as referring to the spirit had been used by Wordsworth in some lines. Therefore the poem expresses an experience of Wordsworth's own subtle body making a diurnal round in a state of trance, an authentic mystic experience. The other poem, one of Blake's most powerful lyrics, is The Tyger - Tyger! Tyger! burning bright ...
... And so he was really surprised that he could be out of his body like that, free from physicality and still perfectly conscious... not dreaming. He could voluntarily do things. And he had a subtle body with all the needed parts. All of a sudden a doubt rose in him. He asked himself how he could ever be like that. It looked impossible. When he attempted to analyse his condition, Sethna ...
... Significance of Chakras 1 “There are in the human system certain key centres of consciousness. They run along the spinal column, but not in the physical body. They are located in the subtle body though their areas of operation are in the physical. Each centre is a focus for a particular form of consciousness and the action of its power. The configuration of these vortices of energies resembles ...
... range of them in detail in his epic poem Savitri, a revelation with a lasting place in the occult and spiritual world literature. For him and for the Mother it was not difficult to visit in their subtle body the planets of our own solar system, and they have done so. But it soon became clear to them that those planetary worlds were of secondary importance to their work when compared to Earth and its ...
... correspond to the cosmic gradations, the human being is rightly called a “microcosm.” The gradations are concretely expressed in what yogic experience has called the “chakras,” lined up in the subtle body along the backbone. Through the chakras, the human being is tuned to the universal forces, even though unaware of it. “All the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it ...
... later, three times, I felt a strong force paralyzing me and trying to plunge me into unconsciousness. I struggled hard against it because I felt it as an adverse force which wanted to take away my subtle body. The third time, with one eye open I saw part of the dark blue robe of a tall person who was waiting to take me away; it seemed as if an emanation of X was at his side. How is it that after ...
... Page 124 That's why something must be found for it to be independent of everybody's influence. At night, for instance, the body is taller, and it's active, it does things (it's this subtle body that does things, is active and has an existence of which it is wholly conscious), and it's different from this ( Mother touches the skin of her hands ), but in the subtle physical it's a PHYSICAL ...
... all kinds of details, and extremely precise. So it's beginning to be interesting. The body participates, you see; I could say that it's the body which dreams, it's not an inner being: it's the subtle body that dreams. It has a very concrete character, with a very SIMPLE symbolism, simple but so clear! It's interesting. ( silence ) Then, the contact with people... I have made it a rule not to ...
... outermost to reflect the innermost and to echo the uppermost or rather to feel Page 142 something of its own archetype - the innermost's and the uppermost's outermost, so to speak: the "subtle body" and the "causal body" inherently belonging to them and waiting to manifest along with the subliminal self and the self that is superconscient. I know that the archetypal-physical is beyond our capacity ...
... well-known to Indian Yoga. But here the process is a little different. The Power or Shakti of the Divine - Kundalini - sleeping coiled like a serpent in the chakra or lotuslike circle in the subtle body - sukshma sharira - at a place corresponding to the base of the spine in the gross physical body is here awakened not directly from below by Yogic concentration and special breath-exercise ...
... fantastic actions which yet proved triumphant. He used to come to Hitler clad in a silver cuirass and with a silver helmet from which a plume-like flame shot forth. Taking the same form in her subtle body and exteriorising her consciousness, the Mother went to the Fuhrer Page 169 and commanded him to launch on the most fantastic-seeming action of all: an attack on Stalin's ...
... perturbed. I gave the cat some drips of Coramine. It crawled under my bed and after half an hour died. The Mother confirmed the next day that she had severed the connecting "cord" between the subtle body and the gross. Sehra was very cut up by the loss of Miel. The Mother, however, soothed her with the words: "You were attached to Miel, but it was not attached to anybody. It had a free ...
... it also in the vision of the threefold embodiment of the Divine Being: sthula sharira, the gross body of vitalised and mentalised matter that is the surface o reality - sukshma sharira, the subtle body of matter, life and mind as they are in reality's depths - karana sharira, the causal Page 304 body of the original and ideal materiality, vitality and mentality that are on reality's ...
... least expected, I felt a tremendous crash on my back: I felt as if my whole spine had been broken to bits. I didn't know what to do; naturally with a shock like that I woke up and the subtle body rushed back to the fortress of the physical, but I was sick — sick in a way that seemed incurable. What could I do? Should I call a doctor? The doctor would come and thump my chest and hear the sounds ...
... can't give sufficient time to it. I work upon it only in the first part of the ¹. Bulletin, November 1965, p. 87. Page 66 night. In the second part I go about [in the subtle body] visiting people and things. Otherwise they go wrong. When the work in the cells will have been finished, there won't be any further difficulty".¹ The Mind of Light in an increased aspect ...
... recognises besides the status of our physical and vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food-sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind-sheath or mental vehicle 6 , a third, supreme and divine status of supra-mental being, termed Page 259 the causal body and composed of a fourth ...
... archetypal form of man, the divine original "truth-body", known to the ancient Vedanta as the k ā ra ṇ a ś ar ī ra, "the causal body", secretly underlying the s ū k ṣ ma ś ar ī ra, "the subtle body" as well as the sthula ś ar ī ra, "the gross body". Just as the doctrine, in Paradise Lost, of God's literal and substantial omnipresence has broad affinities to the Vedantic multi-aspected ...
... imagine making pranam to Mother and Sri Aurobindo and I feel myself at his lotus feet and receive his blessings. Is this entirely imagination? It is true; because you do it with the inner being and subtle body and the exterior consciousness shares the experience. 12.4.1933 Sri Aurobindo ...
... consciousness are always due to the pressure or descent of a Force to which the body is not accustomed but feels strongly. Here it was not the physical body that was being directly pressed, but the subtle body, the sūksma śarīra in which the inner being more intimately dwells and in which it goes out in sleep or trance or in the moment of death. But the physical body in these vivid experiences feels ...
... amrtānām. It is to these ageless immortals to whom he refers.26 His question in not regarding the survival f man after death, for that which survives after death, the supraphysical composition of the subtle body, life and mind, dissolves in due course of time. Nachiketas is keen to learn if those who have been declared to be ageless Immortals, as to how they had become ageless, how they had become Immortals ...
... ed lotus, sahasrāra. When the shakti opens up the thousand-petalled lotus, she attains her union with the Supreme Lord. In this process, Tantra utilizes the system of the operations of the subtle body and subtle elements of consciousness; here the Tantra aims at purification of the operations and at the unification of these operations by the processes of meditation and concentration by the utilization ...
... which the soul bears witness. What is repeated is the truth of the essence of the form, the reproduction of the subtle embodiment which is the basis of the physical embodiment, the purer and finer subtle body of an object which expresses its own essential nature, swabhava. This is brought out very clearly in the paintings of Ajanta and of Bagh and other frescos. We find here the pure and strong outline ...
... distractions and unsteadiness of the waking mind. "...It is quite possible indeed to be aware in the dream-trance of the outer physical world through the subtle senses which belong to the subtle body;.... "The experiences of the dream-state are infinitely various. ...it is able to establish connection with all the worlds to which it has natural access or to which it chooses to acquire access ...
... matter of the psychical and spiritual effects. According to Hathayoga, there is an intimate connection between the body and the mind and spirit and also between the gross and the page - 48 subtle body. It is at this point that Hathayoga admits the methods of Rajayoga, and a point is reached at which a transition from Hathayoga to Rajayoga can be made. Hathayoga, thus, combined with Rajayoga, leads ...
... psychical and spiritual effects to which that base can be turned. At this stage, Hathayoga takes its stand on the connection between the body and the mind and the spirit and between the gross and the subtle body, and it comes into the line with Rajayoga. A point is then reached at which a transition from the one to the other can be made. And Rajayoga, with its psycho-physical science taking account of the ...
... the memory comes.' Ibid., p. 434 We may also refer to some more statements from Sri Aurobindo: At the time of death the being goes out of the body through the head; it goes out in the subtle 'body and goes to different planes of existence for a short time until it has gone through certain experiences which are the result of its earthly existence. Afterwards it reaches the psychic world where ...
... Excellence of the Human Body Part VIII Body reaching out Beyond Itself An 18th century Indian depiction of the network of centres (chakras) in the subtle body Body reaching out Beyond Itself Introduction The growing popularity of Hatha Yoga all over the world does not necessarily mean that its real purpose is well known or understood. In ...
... the physical adhara; etc. Another possible application of the power of concentrated consciousness is in connection with the opening of the different psychic Centres or Chakras in the subtle body. These Centres or Chakras are generally considered to be six or seven in number and have each one a fixed psychological use and specific function. Now the sadhaka can meditate with his ...
... Class VIII Science and Values Surprising mysteries of the human body as revealed by science. Value-oriented concept of the body: The body as the temple of the spirit. The subtle body and its functions. The concept of chakras (centres of vibrations) and their functions. The concept of kundalini: how it can be awakened in different ways. Yogic concept of ...
... Science and Values 1. Surprising mysteries of the human body as revealed by science. 2. Value-oriented concept of the body: (a) The body as the temple of the spirit. (b) The subtle body and its functions. (c) The concept of chakras (centres of vibrations) and their functions. (d) the concept of kundalini: how it can be awakened in different ways. 3. Yogic ...
... Lane and Harrison Road, one could not but feel a little uneasy. And when Birendrachandra Sen, of Sylhet, while he was physically present at Baniachung, at his father's place, became visible in his subtle body to the occult vision of the C.I.D. at the Garden and Scott's Lane - of which Scott's Lane Birendra knew nothing, as was proved conclusively in the written evidence - the doubts could not but deepen ...
... love this body. Yes, it is true, but this body (Her body) is not yet what I want, it is not transformed, not entirely conscious like Page 158 the other body, the subtle body which is not confined in a physical cage like this — it is not yet plastic. This body is not fully conscious, not luminous enough, not yet... how to say it... that which can be everywhere at the ...
... the frenzied agitation of the nerves, the grapple of opposing forces; but more particularly her gaze pursues the "birth of thought". Does thought take shape in the brain? Does it issue from the subtle body? Does it come from outside, from somewhere in the unmapped cosmos? Does it well up from the heart or does it crystallise in the soul? As she views the field of thought and ponders over thought's ...
... turn of the body to become individualised, personalised, that is to say, when it takes up the disposition and configuration of the psychic person and individual. The first stage is that of a subtle body individualised, a radiant form of etherealised elements consisting of the concentrated light particles of the divine consciousness of the Psyche. This too is an immortalisation of the personal identity ...
... a strong and beautiful body, even so by the inner discipline, by controlling your passions and impulsions you build an inner body strong and beautiful. Yes, even like a physical body you have a subtle body, a body as it were within this material frame. It is not, however, for that reason, something vague and imprecise, on the contrary, Page 43 it is very concrete and has a definite ...
... still endures. You have within you the rare thing hardly found elsewhere, the spark of the spirit of which I was speaking—it is a particle of the Mother's own consciousness, her own life and her own subtle body-consciousness. You have imbibed it in you with your breath and are still imbibing it. Page 69 It is there; you have to be conscious of it and realise the full benefit of it. You ...
... happened at all. But surely meditation should visit us once a fortnight? Sometimes I feel a pull on the head upwards. SRI AUROBINDO: Of course, it isn't the physical head. It is a happening in the subtle body, the mind trying to ascend towards the higher consciousness. NIRODBARAN: One sees things like hills or seas in dreams or visions. What is their significance? SRI AUROBINDO: They are symbols: ...
... truth in the demand for an erect position in meditation? People here assume all sorts of postures. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, the erect posture helps in the meditation. Whatever one receives in the subtle body is easy to transmit both physical through that posture. There are so many Asanas and one can get the right position, then the body doesn't move. NIRODBARAN: The Mother's body also stoops down ...
... AUROBINDO: They do come in quietly but then you make a row. If your physical body or head were being split, you could object; but you ought to know by now that all these Yogic experiences are in the subtle body. NIRODBARAN: I also once or twice had such a fear as the lady speaks of—the fear of a Presence. As soon as I sat to meditate before going to bed at about midnight, I felt everything so still and ...
... voice, Sir. (Laughter) NIRODBARAN: Like Gandhi's? DR. MANILAL: Is not meat injurious to the body, Sir? SRI AUROBINDO: Depends on the person. Of course it makes the body heavy, I mean the subtle body. The other objection to a meat diet is the taking of conscious life. DR. MANILAL: Isn't it tamasic? But Vivekananda used to recommend it. SRI AUROBINDO: He said it is rajasic. NIRODBARAN: ...
... EVENING DR. MANILAL: They speak of a golden lid, Sir, above the head which covers the face of the Sun. Is it a matter of experience? SRI AUROBINDO: Of course. DR. MANILAL: Is it in the subtle body that one feels these things? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, one feels a sense of boring, drilling, hammering—so many things. Never had any such an experience? DR. MANILAL: Yes, Sir. I had it, but long ...
... difference. For our sleep is a heavy plunge into inconscience where we forget everything, whereas a Yogi sleeps awake. There is also a state in which the physical body is apparently asleep, while the subtle body goes out visiting various persons in their sleep. The Mother has said that she does most of the subtle work in this way at night. Sri Aurobindo wrote to me, "In former days when she was spending ...
... a strong and beautiful body, even so by the inner discipline, by controlling your passions and impulsions you build an inner body strong and beautiful. Yes, even like a physical body you have a subtle body, a body as it were within this material frame. It is Page 63 not, however, for that reason, something vague and imprecise, on the contrary, it is very concrete and ...
... her body still endures. You have within you the rare thing hardly found elsewhere, the spark of which I was speaking – it is a particle of the Mother's own consciousness, her own life and her own subtle body-consciousness. You have imbibed it in you with your breath and are still imbibing. ¹ A talk to young children given on 12 August 1974 . Page 98 ...
... question whether the Mother had established a direct connection with Mars or any other far-off planet. The answer was that, although "a long time ago" the Mother used to go everywhere in the subtle body, she found it after all of a "very secondary interest". Then came Sri Aurobindo's own view of the matter: Page 773 Our attention must be fixed on the earth because our work is here ...
... organic functions. The second fact¹which supports our theory of physical transformation, is the existence of the subtle or etheric body, just behind the gross body. Through the medium of this subtle body, the soul or the mind can, if it knows how to do it, influence and change the gross body to an unimaginable extent. It can purify or enlighten it, fill its nerves and tissues and veins with a ...
... experience at least once in a fortnight. Disciple : Sometimes I feel a pull on the head upwards. What is it due to? Sri Aurobindo : Of course, it is not in the physical head but in the subtle body, the Mind trying to ascend towards the Higher Consciousness. Disciple : If one dreams or sees visions of seas, hills, etc., – what do they mean? Sri Aurobindo : These are symbols; ...
... quietly but you make a row! If your head or physical body is being split then you could object to it. You ought to know by now that Page 202 all these experiences are in the subtle body. Disciple : I had also once or twice such fear of presence as the lady speaks of. I sat to meditate before going to bed and I felt everything still and then as if there was some presence ...
... "astral" body "and the nervous form of the individual and figure before you. But that would not prove that it is that man. You can even take its photograph perhaps. But that is not the astral or the subtle body. It is the • body just behind the physical that you see. But Europeans are mere children in these things. They take the laws of this plane and try to apply them to the subtle planes. Col. Wedgewood ...
... a vague abstraction of his own intellect. The Indian idea of nationality ought to be truer and deeper. The philosophy of our forefathers looked through the gross body of things and discovered a subtle body within, looked through that and found yet another more deeply hidden, and within the third body discovered the Source of life and form, seated for ever, unchanging and imperishable. What is true ...
... attention, more pervasive from above, more naturally intense, affecting the sthula without being established in it or possessing it, but not yet organised nor having a firm close hold even of the subtle body. It is at once more continuous and less intimately continuous. All the old asiddhis are suggested, including the dependence on posture. The struggle has not yet been determined in the sense of the ...
... able to work whatever he chose, mass of force or delicacy of grace, a static dignity or a mighty strength or a restrained violence of movement or whatever served or helped his meaning. A divine and subtle body was his ideal; and to a taste and imagination too blunt or realistic to conceive the truth and beauty of his idea, the ideal itself may well be a stumbling-block, a thing of offence. But the triumphs ...
... diminished or depreciated, of the Aryan past. Page 28 × Sūkṣma indriya , subtle organs, existing in the subtle body ( sūkṣma deha ), and the means of subtle vision and experience ( sūkṣma dṛṣṭi ). × The Vedantic ...
... Mother 28 March 1944 Mother, You know that for many years I have been in the habit of leaving my physical body and making exploratory tours in my subtle body. ( Here several experiences are described. ) I wonder whether I should keep up my practice of going out of the body. It is extremely fascinating, but is it a necessary part of Yogic development ...
... Muladhara — physical Page 406 "All these centres are in the middle of the body; they are supposed to be attached to the spinal cord; but in fact all these things are in the subtle body, sūkṣma deha, though one has the feeling of their activities as if in the physical body when the consciousness is awake." — Sri Aurobindo "In the process of our yoga the centres ...
... surrounds the physical body with a kind of envelope which has almost the same density as the vibrations of heat observable when the day is very hot. And it is this which is the intermediary between the subtle body and the most material vital body. It is this which protects the body from all contagion, fatigue, exhaustion and even from accidents. Therefore if this envelope is wholly intact, it protects you ...
... of the body “with great dexterity… I could halt on any plane, do what I had to do there, move around freely, see, observe, and then speak about what I had seen.” Once, having left behind the most subtle body sheath, she passed “beyond all possible forms, even all thought forms,” in a domain where one experienced total unity – unity in “something that was the essence of Love.” Quite unexpected, and to ...
... somewhat abstract or “occult”, the direct effects of the gradations of being on our body and life are very concrete. Firstly, there are the chakras (literally “wheels”), the energy centres in our subtle body which are the gates, as it were, to the universal gradations and forces of being. Normally these centres are almost fully closed, thus protecting us from the inrush of the stupendous cosmic powers ...
... have no influence on this [the gross physical body]. There is still something that has to be found …’ 9 April 1969: ‘During the night the body is tall and active, it does things. It is the subtle body that is doing things, that is active, that has an existence that is fully conscious. And it is different from this [the Mother touches the skin of her hands]. But it is a body that is physical ...
... wanted something, his voice seemed to come from a distant cave; rarely would we find him plunged within, with his eyes closed.’ 20 This is how Sri Aurobindo did his Work; this is how, in his subtle body, he moved in this world and in many worlds; this is how he fought the good fight. In the Battle is the title of a sonnet from the remarkable series written by Sri Aurobindo in the year after ...
... ‘Her powers were quite exceptional,’ related the Mother. ‘She had received an extremely complete and rigorous training and she could exteriorize herself, that is, bring out of her material body a subtle body, in full consciousness, and do that twelve times in succession. This means that she could pass consciously from one state of being to another, live there as consciously as in her physical body, and ...
... the inner centres is in the head just as the deepest is the heart; but the centre which opens directly to the Self is above the head, altogether outside the physical body, in what is called the subtle body, sūksma śarira. This Self has two aspects and the results of realising it correspond to these two aspects. One is static, a condition of wide peace, freedom, silence: the silent Self is unaffected ...
... Presence, a Being, a Divine Person; for the Divine is Krishna, is Shiva, is the Supreme Mother. But through the Ananda you can perceive the ā nandamaya [all-blissful] Krishna; for the Ananda is the subtle body and being of Krishna; through the Peace you can perceive the śantimaya [all-peaceful] Shiva; in the Light, in the delivering Knowledge, the Love, the fulfilling and uplifting Power you can meet ...
... as oneness with the supreme Person. There are a number of sheaths of the human body and these have to be abandoned before that state is reached. Behind the gross physical form, sthula , is the subtle body, sukshma , and then is the causal body, karana . When the evolutionary soul merges into the Eternal these forms have to go away and it is this fact which Jnaneshwar must have intended in the use ...
... many places at once. His would be a multifarious omnipresence, and such would be a fact not only in terms of wide-spread infinite consciousness but also in terms of a concentrated focal point - a subtle body setting forward Sri Aurobindo just as he had been set forward in the years of his physical embodiment. I recollect a talk with the Mother on this aspect of Sri Aurobindo's existence after ...
... collectivity had been ready it would have naturally led to the transformation of Her most external being. Before She left Her body the Mother told us that She had already lived for a while in a new subtle body (sexless, etc.). Whether it was a supramental body or a body in transition She did not clarify, but since its origin was not human it might as well have been the supramental. She had also told us ...
... manage to run my apartment. I will certainly be lonely. What should I do?" My eyes glazed with sudden tears. She drifted into a trance. On waking she spoke soothingly: Last night I went out in my subtle body. I took your consciousness from Golconde and brought it into your new apartment. It was so quiet and packed with a peaceful atmosphere. I sat on a divan in your sitting room as I had sat in reality ...
... Playground. Before the Translation Class, she called me and said enthusiastically: Child, I really like your house. It is so peaceful and quiet. I will come to your apartment every night in my subtle body. With a smile she added: When Yogis and Saints are disturbed, they at once meditate and find peace again. But there is also a special Grace: then you have concrete peace and nothing can affect ...
... subtler sense in us and only derivatively to the out ward physical sense. This derivative objectivisation is certainly Page 802 possible; if there is an association of the action of the subtle body and its sense-organisation with the action of the material body and its physical organs, then the supraphysical can become outwardly sensible to us. This is what happens, for example, with the faculty ...
... 778 entered a human body at all; the soul in us may have evolved in lower life-shapes before man was created. In that case, our personality has previously inhabited animal forms, and the subtle body would be a plastic formation carried from birth to birth but adapting itself to whatever physical shape the soul inhabits. Or the evolving Life may be able to build a personality capable of survival ...
... functionings as its instruments of perfection and realisation; its concern is with the gross body. Rajayoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power; it concentrates on the subtle body. The triple Path of Works, of Love and of Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth ...
... and there was no life, if told that there would soon be life on earth embodied in matter, he would have cried out, "What is that? It is impossible, it cannot be done. Life is possible only in a subtle body. It has never been and never will be embodied in gross matter. What, this mass of electrons, gases, chemical elements, this heap of mud and water and stones and inert metals, how are you going to ...
... enters into relations with us. That is done through other sheaths of our being,—so they are termed in the Upanishads,—other bodies, as they are called in a later terminology, the mental sheath or subtle body in which our true mental being lives and the life sheath or vital body which is more closely connected with the physical or food-sheath and forms with it the gross body of our complex existence. ...
... inherent knowledge is the central principle. The gnostic ( vijñānamaya ) being is in its character a truth-consciousness, a centre and circumference of the truth-vision of things, a massed movement or subtle body of gnosis. Its action is a self-fulfilling and radiating action of the truth-power of things according to the inner law of their deepest truest self and nature. This truth of things at which we must ...
... sights, sounds etc. of the outer world upon the physical organs. It is quite possible indeed to be aware in the dream-trance of the outer physical world through the subtle senses which belong to the subtle body; one may be aware of them just so far as one chooses and on a much wider scale than in the waking condition: for the subtle senses have a far more powerful range than the gross physical organs, a ...
... Physical Ananda makes progress. Kamananda (as indicated first by a reference) became strong & spontaneous in the evening & so continued with a slight break till sleep. Tivra inflicted on another subtle body was communicated to this physical body in the waking state. This usual[ly] happens only in Samadhi. Subjective Ananda is now ready to possess the physical prana. Dream coherent, but chiefly ...
... works and afflicting to oneself and to others, or if it is of the nature of self-torture and hurts the mental, vital and physical elements or violates the God within us who is seated in the inner subtle body, then too it is an unwise, an Asuric, a rajasic or rajaso-tamasic tapasya. Sattwic tapasya is that which is done with a highest enlightened faith, as a duty deeply accepted or for some ethical ...
... which allows the forces to invade, drawing back from them and losing ground instead of facing and destroying them. Flying When you find yourself flying it is always the vital being in the subtle body in the vital world that is doing it. Flying during sleep over houses, streets, etc. simply means that the consciousness in the vital sheaths has gone out and is moving over places in the vital ...
... inner dwelling on the essence of the Idea. Centres for Concentration The nature of the meditation depends on the part of the being in which one is centred at the time. In the body (rather the subtle body than the physical, but connected with the corresponding parts in the gross physical body also) there are centres proper to each level of the being. There is a centre at the top of the head and above ...
... in the head, just as the deepest is the heart; but the centre which opens directly to the Self is above the head, altogether outside the physical body, Page 325 in what is called the subtle body, sūkṣma śarīra . This Self has two aspects and the results of realising it correspond to these two aspects. One is static, a condition of wide peace, freedom, silence: the silent Self is unaffected ...
... when one rests in the Divine. The perfumes you felt were true perfumes but not of the physical world. This body of flesh and blood is not the whole of ourselves; there is unseen by the eyes a subtle body also and one becomes aware of it when the inner consciousness opens. It was from deep within there that the perfumes came, perfumes of purity, of love and surrender (rose) etc. It is there deep within ...
... does not mean that they are entirely isolated from the soul. The soul is in the body in the same way as the mind or vital—but the body it occupies is not this gross physical frame only, but the subtle body also. When the gross sheath falls away, the vital and mental sheaths of the body still remain as the soul's vehicle till these too dissolve. The soul of a plant or an animal is not altogether ...
... the Mother has been able to establish a direct connection with Mars or any other far-off planet which is probably habitable and inhabited. A long time ago Mother was going everywhere in the subtle body but she found it of a very secondary interest. Our attention must be fixed on the earth because our work is here. Besides, the earth is a concentration of all the other worlds and one can touch them ...
... physical body, touch another layer of the being that surrounds and protects it. This subtler layer is called in different teachings by various names,—the etheric body, the nervous envelope. It is a subtle body and yet almost visible. In density something like the vibrations that you see around a very hot and steaming object, it emanates from the physical body and closely covers it. All communications with ...
... the inner centres is in the head, just as the deepest is the heart; but the centre which opens directly to the Self is above the head, altogether outside the physical body, in what is called the subtle body, s ū ksma ś arira. This Self has two aspects and the results of realising it correspond to these two aspects. One is static, a condition of wide peace, freedom, silence: the silent Self is unaffected ...
... fully developed and organised mind, an absolutely surrendered and collaborating vital and an obedient, docile and supple physical being. This physical being, as it is fully developed, will have a subtle body—what Sri Aurobindo calls the "true physical"—which will infinitely surpass the limits of its body and have enough suppleness, plasticity, balance to be able to adhere to the inner parts of the being ...
... mediumistic qualities. Her powers were quite exceptional; she had received an extremely complete and rigorous training and she could exteriorise herself, that is, bring out of her material body a subtle body, in full consciousness, and do it twelve times in succession. That is, she could pass consciously from one state of being to another, live there as consciously as in her physical body, and then again ...
... entity. But that does not mean that they are entirely isolated from the soul. The soul is in the body in the same way as the mind or vital—but the body is not this gross physical body only, but the subtle body also. When the gross body falls away, the vital and mental sheaths of the body still remain as the soul’s vehicle till these too dissolve. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Psychic Being ...
... that is, you fall back into the old way. 6 October 1962 Page 144 × Centers of Consciousness in the subtle body. ...
... in the peace and the calm that the Divine Force expresses itself and acts. You know that for many years I have been in the habit of leaving my physical body and making exploratory tours in my subtle body. [Here the sadhak describes various experiences.] I wonder whether I should keep up my practice of getting out of the body. It is extremely fascinating, but is it a necessary part of Yogic development ...
... movements of transformation of the earth. There are landmarks of that kind.... I had told you, you remember, how that great Asura (who in fact was the first born; it's for him that I had built a subtle body) had said he was going to China and that China's revolution (a long time ago!) would signal the beginning of the work of transformation of the earth. 1 Those things are like milestones on a road ...
... child, This onslaught of doubts 1 you are referring to is part of the general work. It is a very direct way of acting on the atmosphere. You ask me if I see you. You do not come to me in a subtle body, but I am with you very concretely, so concretely that I see through your eyes and speak through your mouth. In this way, you made me meet people whom I don't know at all physically and have strange ...
... is probably habitable and inhabited." Someone put this question to Sri Aurobindo. So now that people have landed on the moon... A. "A long time ago Mother was going everywhere in the subtle body but she found it of a very secondary interest. Our attention must be fixed on the earth because our work is here. Besides, the earth is a concentration of all the other worlds and one can touch them ...
... to go. Page 138 ( very long silence ) Do you have any indication?... But it's mental, no? The body is quite incapable of saying anything. The impression I have is that this subtle body, which is already supramental or supramentalized, could materialize by using... But how? That's the question—how? By using the material body as a support. ( Mother remains silent for ...
... contrast, which should reassure you if you are in any doubt about the better values prevailing on the subcontinent. And part of a letter from Laurens van der Post. So you see your information in the subtle body was so far correct. The comb? That too is a strange if trivial detail. I had broken my ivory comb many years ago and had seen one exactly like it, which I had asked my daughter to enquire about for ...
... ess the entire rhythm of man's existence. The kârana sharira, the causal body whose stuff is God's infallible and incorruptible light, is sought to be made one with the sukshma sharira, the subtle body of our psychological activity, and finally with the sthula sharira, the gross body that is our physical life. This oneness is the authentic next step of evolution fulfilling the urge towards perfection ...
... theme, still as a concentrated individualisation of the wide and the high, an organised being in whom the Supramental karana sarira or causal divine body has descended into the suksma sarira or subtle body built of mind-stuff, life-stuff and even what we may term subtle-physical as distinguished from gross-material stuff, he stands close to earth with his sacrificed corporeal substance as a firm i ...
... Goswami. Recalling it later, Sri Ramakrishna said: "Once at Syambazar, they arranged a kirtan at Natvar Goswami's house. There I had a vision of Krishna and the gopis of Brindavan. I felt that my subtle body was walking at Krishna's heels." Concerning another incident, Sri Ramakrishna said: "Once at Sihore, I fed the cowherd boys. I put sweetmeats into their hands. I saw that these boys were actually ...
... soul, making her understand more clearly than with any spoken word that, at last, she was going to meet her beloved. According to the ancient Indian science of yoga and its knowledge of the subtle body, the centre of the will is located between the eyebrows. It is interesting to note that Damayanti is said to have a birth sign between the two eyebrows. Could this physical sign be a symbol of D ...
... SRI AUROBINDO (laughing) : Yes, I suppose you are thinking of your own case? DR. BECHARLAL: How then is one to get rid of it? SRI AUROBINDO: As I said, you have first to be conscious of the subtle body before you can do it. CHAMPAKLAL: X told me once how she used to have a headache which remained just above the head and it was very severe. We used to laugh at her because we couldn't believe ...
... years after death? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, if the spirit has not gone far away from the earth. Generally up to three years it remains near the earth, they say. The Guru's power can materialise the subtle body more easily. Sometimes another force can take up a vital form. 1 Sri Aurobindo has often emphasised the Isha Upanishad's parallel passage: The face of the truth is covered with the brlliant golden ...
... this account errs on many counts. The physical eye belonging to the physical body is meant only for a limited range of physical sight. But we have bodies other than the physical one: the subtle body {suksma satire) and the causal body (kārana sarìra), and these bodies have their corresponding "eyes". Our total being is not constituted of the gross material sheath (annamaya kosa) alone ...
... and Values: 1. Surprising mysteries of the human body as revealed by science. 2. Value-oriented concept of the body: (a) The body as the temple of the spirit. (b) The subtle body and its functions. (c) The concept of chakras (centres of vibrations) and their functions. (d) The concept of kundalini: how it can be awakened in different ways. 3. Yogic ...
... Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body Part II Health and Nutrition The Indian tradition: A depiction of the "subtle body", with its network of wheels (chakras) and fibres (nadis). In this holistic view, the question of health is not restricted to the gross body". It looks upon the human being as a whole consisting of body, mind and spirit ...
... postures of the body and those of breathing and breath-control by which the movements pervading all the nervous system are controlled. The gross body begins to acquire something of the nature of the subtle body and possess something of its relations with the life-energy. Life ceases to be entirely dependent on the action of the physical organs and functionings, such as the heart-beats and breathing. Hatha ...
... which the soul bears witness. What is repeated is the truth of the essence of the form, the reproduction of the subtle embodiment which is the basis of the physical embodiment, the purer and finer subtle body of an object which expresses its own essential nature, swabhdva. This is brought out very clearly in the paintings of Ajanta and of Bagh and other frescos. We find here the pure and strong outline ...
... postures of the body and those of breathing and breath- control by which the movements pervading all the nervous system are controlled. The gross body begins to acquire something of the nature of the subtle body and possess something of its relations with the life-energy. Life ceases to be entirely dependent on the action of the physical organs and functionings, such as the heartbeats and breathing. Hatha ...
... centre) , not being disturbed by the exterior, discovering regions of happiness where the divine sweetness reigns. Layer after layer, one discovers planes of consciousness and one leaves behind one subtle body after another, passing from one plane to another till there is no resistance and the soul is before us without intermediary and without outside support. And one discovers the soul in its plenitude ...
... his aspiration, his development, his possibility, all, all that governs his life, I know in an instant, in a flash of time. For me this does not take time because his soul and his aura with his subtle body unfold and spread the consciousness wide open in front of me, so that I may see them as clearly as possible. I do not examine them but on his own he tells me everything that I want to know about ...
... protection also to the human being in earthly life and blocks the way against any attacks from outside. It is a protective fort, so to say. After death when this material sheath is not there, the subtle body is helpless against such attacks, is exposed as it were to impacts from elsewhere. So both of them now crossed the river, resumed their journey. All on a sudden just in front of them rose a huge ...
... especially the opening up of the nervous centers and the passage through them of the awakened Shakti on her way to her union with the Brahman. It also includes in its system the operations of the subtle body and subtle elements of consciousness, and purifies them and leads them by the processes of meditation and concentration by the methods of Raja Yoga to their highest point available in the state of ...
... greater possibility of charlatanism and falsehood. In many cases it is not the true soul of a dead person that comes; what comes is some portion of him, some fragments of his mind, life or subtle body that may have survived in the corresponding worlds or in some other worlds. By animating these parts and using them as vehicles some other being or entity or force may come, as if a representative ...
... urge would proceed to a change of the organs, themselves in their material working and use and diminish greatly the need of their instrumentation and even of their existence. The centres in the subtle body, suksma sarira, of which one would become conscious and aware of all going on in it would pour their energies into material nerve and plexus and tissue and radiate them through the whole material ...
... of charlatanism and falsehood. In many cases it is not the true soul of a dead person that comes; what comes is some portion of him, some fragments Page 38 of his mind, life or subtle body that may have survived in the corresponding worlds or in some other worlds. By animating these parts and using them as vehicles, some other being or entity or force may come, as if a representative ...
... have senses subtler than those Page 170 possessed by man today. It seems as if it were a world where "matter and soul in conscious union meet". After the death of the gross body, the subtle body of man persists which, in fact, existed before the gross was created. On the level of the subtle material being there is a perfection of form and a perfection of expression. On the lower level, this ...
... things except under guidance or in the presence of a Master. 25 Some years later, when Sethna wrote about his experiences on leaving his physical body and making explorations in his subtle body, the Mother wrote firmly: It is much better to stop the experiences altogether. They seem to take you into levels which are undesirable and most unsafe; they are not at all necessary ...
... faculties. Her powers were of an exceptional order. She had received an extremely thorough and rigorous training, and could exteriorize, that is to say, from her material body she could go out in a subtle body, in full consciousness, and do this twelve times in a row, up to the extreme limit of the world of forms —on which I shall speak to you later when you can better understand Page 118 ...
... it carefully. Earlier, the report of his sickness was going to Mother in the usual course and Mother had made some observations. "When he came on his last birthday I had seen that his subtle body had already separated and there was only a small link with the gross body." "What is the use of keeping this body unless he wants to do supramental Yoga?" "Yes, food is necessary to live ...
... slumber in the depths of our physical being, and what potentialities are involved in its relation with the subtle and the causal body. All spiritual experience testifies to the existence of a subtle body behind our gross physical frame; and a causal body behind the subtle. This causal body is made of the very substance of light and bliss, and contains all the principles of perfection which our ...
... and there was no life, if told that there would soon be life on earth embodied in matter, he would have cried out, “What is that? It is impossible, it cannot be done. Life is possible only in a subtle body. It has never been and will never be embodied in gross matter. What, this mass of electrons, gases, chemical elements, this heap of mud and water and stones and inert metals, how are you going to ...
... history, as was President J. F. Kennedy's assassination. "There are landmarks of that kind. ... I told you, you remember, how that great Asura —who in fact was the first born, and for whom I built a subtle body —had said he was going to China and that China's revolution —a long time ago! —would signal the beginning of the work of terrestrial transformation. Those things are like milestones on a road, and ...
... the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so... denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at... at the center—it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest—and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ...
... and of iron?" The golden chain is in your soul and the iron one is in your body. The body, your body, is also bound to the Mother, to her Presence and Influence. "Body" means not only the material body, but the subtle physical body, the inner body. Now, the imprint of the Mother's Presence you carry in this subtle physical body. You may not always be aware of it, but this makes no difference, none at ...
... was going to happen after this next war and whether the world would be better. He replied as follows: 'Yes, great sages like Sri Aurobindo who are wandering now in their subtle bodies will appear. Some sages may take the physical body of political leaders in the West. It will be the end of ignorant atomic machines and the beginning of a new age with great sages leading the world.' So it seems that X's... to be chief disciple in my tradition. When the time comes, you will understand Page 313 what I mean. With you I have full connection, not only connection in my mind, but in my blood and body.' On another occasion, he said to me, 'I am ALWAYS taking care of you.' And when I asked him why he was taking such trouble for me, he replied, 'Because I have orders.' This attention that comes ...
... fascinating work of Savitri . The Mother and I began Canto 3 of Book One. For picture two she said: Child, there are actually twelve bodies in human beings. You see, I go out of these bodies one after another successively, consciously, and enter into the subtle worlds. I can stop on any plane, do what I have to do over there. I move around freely, and observe the secret of the realms. In... worlds where numerous beings were submerged in the subconscient. I saved them. But it was a most difficult and dangerous task. I am aware of all the details of my subtle bodies. Then finally I return and enter gradually in my physical body—in the world of Matter. Moving on, I had to show Aswapathy receiving the Light from above: that is to say, from the blue stars and the blue square. I did the ...
... written by Mother in French regarding a crucial experience to which She will later refer a number of times. First penetration of the supramental force into the body. Sri Aurobindo alive in a concrete and permanent subtle physical body. Page 325 ...
... being had detached itself from me. I did not feel anything, or see anything. Oh, my child, it happens often and I constantly see beings, consciousnesses, concentrated parts of the being, subtle bodies, all kinds of elements and movements — aspirations, desires, complaints, and all sorts of things around me — someone who comes asking me for help, others for relief, for protection, for Grace,... Sweet Mother The Subtle Worlds Eh, Eh! (in a teasing tone) I thought you had evaporated as you were not here a moment ago. Yet, I saw you when I passed by maybe ten minutes back. Mother, I went downstairs for some work. But I thought you had disappeared, melted... gone. I could not see you, but I felt that you were somewhere in the room ...
... e. take up his body again, – after death. It is essential to know what is death if you want to conquer it. That shows that the ancients foresaw the need for the knowledge and also that of transformation of the physical. It is curious how some people can easily separate their subtle bodies from the physical, say in three or four days even. They go out of the body and see their body lying in front... it is perfectly easy to prevent diseases and to cure them if you have the knowledge of these planes. There is what is called "the nervous envelope", which is an intermediary between the subtle and the gross body. It is that which acts as a sheath protecting you against all attacks of diseases. If the nervous envelope is intact no disease can come to you. In most people, with aging, this envelope wears... you think they are all true? Sri Aurobindo : I have no personal knowledge of them. But I believe most of the miracles attributed to Bijoy Goswami are more possible with the subtle than with the physical body. Sri Aurobindo then recounted the story of how Mother was once on the point of death in Algeria when she was practicing the yoga with Theon and his wife both of them great occultists ...
... how to go there. 13 August 1964 ( During sleep a sadhak had a vision of Sri Aurobindo in his subtle physical body living in the subtle physical world. He sent a report of his vision to Mother, who replied: ) Sri Aurobindo shows himself according to the need of each one and in the subtle physical the things are not as fixed as they are here. Attach more importance to the feeling produced... concrete (in the subtle physical), was sitting over the whole compound during the meditation. 28 August 1962 Last night, we (you and I and some others) were together for quite a long time in the permanent dwelling-place of Sri Aurobindo which exists in the subtle physical (what Sri Aurobindo called the true physical). 1 February 1963 Sri Aurobindo is in the subtle physical, you can... contrary, it is quite correct, he has never been so alive as now! 5 December 1967 Sri Aurobindo is constantly in the subtle physical, very active there. I see him almost daily, and last night I spent many hours with him. If you become conscious in the subtle physical you will surely meet him, it is what he called the true physical—it has nothing to do with the psychic. 21 December ...
... the most material domain. One needs special capacities and a special development to be conscious in that domain, for it escapes our ordinary senses. We have subtle senses; even as we have a physical body, we have other more subtle bodies which also have senses, and Page 38 much more refined senses, much more precise and much more powerful than our physical senses. But naturally, as it... little of this occult science. I taught him how to go out of his body e., and the controls, all that. And I told him that, above all, the first thing was not to have any fear. Then, one day he came to tell me that he had had a dream the night before. But it was not a dream, for, as I have told you, he knew a bit about how to go out of his body, and he had gone out consciously. And once he had gone out he... mentioned here only as a matter of information. It is to enter into the domain of death deliberately and consciously while one is still alive, and then to return from this region and re-enter the physical body, resuming the course of material existence with full knowledge. But for that one must be an initiate." What do you want to say? You have not understood what I meant?... I am not surprised! Has anyone ...
... passage from Savitri: "A vision came of higher realms than ours, A consciousness of brighter fields and skies, Of beings less circumscribed than brief-lived men And subtler bodies than these passing frames, Objects too fine for our material grasp, Acts vibrant with a superhuman light..." (28) (B) Sight in the Spiritual Mind Planes : To ... Yoga, p. 291) (italics author's) This sight or drsti is to the spirit what the eyes are to the physical mind and, Sri Aurobindo emphasises, "one has the sense of having passed through a subtly analogous process." (Ibid., p. 803) The ancient sages of India highly valued this power of internal spiritual vision; for only this can make a man a Rishi or a Kavi, a Seer, and no longer... In the wide cosmic perception of the Overmind, "Ideas are phalanxed like a group of sums; Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard; Page 61 All Time is one body, Space a single book: There is the Godhead's universal gaze And there the boundaries of immortal Mind..." (660) In the Overmind "all inner individual sight or intelligence of things ...
... assurance through the Mother that he would remain as a personal presence in "the earth's atmosphere" - that is, the subtle-physical plane, which is the plane closest to the earth - until the work he had undertaken is fulfilled. According to the Mother, he is there in a subtle-physical body very much like the form he had before but now perfect, "with the light of immortality upon it". At present the Mother... the earth's evolutionary career is always with it. For us this Glorious Whole wears the august face of Sri Aurobindo or else bears the sweet features of the Mother. And since our Gurus have subtle-physical bodies we should be able to have with that Glorious Whole a more concrete and intimate sense of relationship than would otherwise be legitimate to assume. Of course, we can think of Page 95... space-laws. But, wherever we may feel it to be, we should be justified in believing that its essential eternity and infinity possess a concentration of them in a subtle-physical form in close rapport with us. You may say: "The subtle-physical has still a distance from us and is not as Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were at one time." True, but I may remind you that even at that time they were ...
... take it up, one must possess special senses, for the domain in which it moves lies beyond our ordinary senses. These special senses are latent in men. Just as we have a physical body, so too we have other more subtle bodies with their own senses; these senses are much more refined and precise, much more powerful than our physical senses. But of course, as education does not usually deal with this domain... speaking, perhaps the greatest obstacle in the way of man's progress is fear, a fear that is many-sided, multiform, self-contradictory, illogical, unreasoning and often unreasonable. Of all fears the most subtle and the most tenacious is the fear of death. It is deeply rooted in the subconscient and it is not easy to dislodge. It is obviously made up of several interwoven elements: the spirit of conservatism... kind of intuitive knowledge that death is nothing but a bad habit; they seem to be born with the resolution to conquer it. But this conquest entails a desperate combat against an army of fierce and subtle assailants, a combat that has to be fought constantly, almost at every minute. Only one who has an indomitable spirit should attempt it. The battle has many fronts; it is waged on several planes that ...
... was explaining to us about going out of one's body. "You see your body, don't you, and wonder, 'But what's it doing there in Page 238 that ridiculous position?' And you rush back inside." A condition is however attached to this 'seeing' when you are out of your body: you have to have the visual organ of your subtle physical body well developed. Mirra had seen to it when she was... there with my good dinner lying on my stomach, when suddenly 1 felt uneasy. I said to my companion, 'We must get out at once.' Once outside- it was the Trocadero Square- 1 fell in a dead faint. 1 saw my body there and 1 found it so ridiculous that 1 rushed back into it and scolded it roundly. I told it, 'You shouldn't play such tricks on me!'" Mother often referred to a certain conference to which... one to have noticed it. At that time 1 knew nothing about India, but when he uttered the word OM . . ." Mother brought her arms down in a swift gesture. "It came — a Force like this —my whole, entire body, everything vibrated in an extraordinary way! It was like a revelation-all, but all started vibrating. Then I said, 'At last, here's the true sound!' Yet I knew nothing, but nothing, nor even what that ...
... Mother's body was not meant to give us, to make a gift to us of a transformed human body, for our contemplation, our delectation. It had a more serious purpose. It was to furnish the material stuff for the manifestation, the incarnation of the subtle Divine body preparing behind. . Humanity in its present embodied manifestation cannot be immediately changed, transmuted into the supramental body. That... That body must descend or reveal itself or clothe itself with a new material substance. That new material substance was being prepared in the Mother's body which was the workshop, as it were, for the Divine body. She has been building in this way not only a personal body of her own, the new Divine body, but also a 'generic' body for humanity at large out of which other personal bodies may be precipitated... indivisible act. The body that is being divinised can never suffer deterioration, neither in respect of its substance nor of its functionings. Page 33 There can only be a re-orientation or transforming of the cells and of their functions. Medicine in Mother's body is not for changing the body - helping its metabolism, but for the body to change the medicines so that ...
... around her. But she felt the subtle physical body a burden. "Earth stood aloof, yet near". Then gradually the true Being in her freed itself from the earth atmosphere, and "into a deep and unfamiliar air" "they seemed to enlarge away"—away from the control of earth. It seemed as if Satyavan and Death would escape now. Then her "spirit soared at Satyavan" flaming from her body's nest—like "a fierce she-eagle... she-eagle." Her spirit separated itself from the body and the physical body fell into a trance. Now she Page 335 was not human Savitri; there was no Sun or earth, "All was the violent ocean of a will" "Where lived.. .her aim, joy, origin, Satyavan alone". He was thus imprisoned in her heart, "a treasure saved from the collapse of space." Savitri surged around him nameless and in- finite... "omnipotent", "calm, immobile, mute". All trace of humanity in Savitri was, as it were, slain by Death. "The young divinity in her...filled with celestial strength her mortal part". She calmly laid the body of Satyavan and "sole she rose" Page 334 "to meet the dreadful god". It was, as it were, to resume her work begun long ago in the past that she found herself there in the presence of ...
... together ‘to carry out things.’ And as he no longer had to work in a physical body, he could move freely everywhere in the world and in all worlds, in many subtle bodies simultaneously. ‘He is as it were multiplied.’ But this encounter was special, completely new. It happened because the supramental Power had entered her body. The supramental world where Sri Aurobindo has his home was very near to the... The Mother said from her very first bodily meeting with the supramental world that she found herself to be in the ‘subtle physical’. The more she became familiar with that world, the more she described it as concrete — ‘that subtle physical is very concrete’ — till she would find the subtle physical more concrete and more material than our world of gross matter and call it ‘a world much more concrete... her story of the supramental ship. This, however, was an experience of the body, the supramental Power had taken possession of her body, the result of which was that the Mother got access to the supramental world by means of the body consciousness. There she found Sri Aurobindo present in a supramental body — in the body that during his lifetime he had built up with his supramentalized consciousness ...
... You." ( Mother goes into a contemplation ) The subtle physical seems to be more and more transformed. There is still a mystery between the two. A mystery. They are coexistent (the physical and the subtle physical bodies), and yet ... ( gesture of a lack of connection ), the subtle physical doesn't appear to have an influence on this ( the body ). Something ... Something to be found ... something... hour, as the Power comes back ... You remember, I once said it had gone completely, 1 and that was true, it had gone completely in order to leave the body absolutely to itself, for its conversion, we could say; but once there had been in this body consciousness the same aspiration and the same ardour of consciousness (with a far greater steadiness than in any other part of the being; there are no... Otherwise, the slow underground labour, invisible, almost imperceptible, continues. ( silence ) Page 248 The interesting point is that this body spontaneously, immediately and effortlessly—spontaneously—tries to find in itself, in the body's cells (it's a whole WORLD! A whole world), the cells try to find in themselves, "Oh, where is my incapacity? Where is my helplessness? Where is ... even ...
... Page 378 The Riddle of This World 254 TheRishi 99 The Secret of the Veda 302 Urvasie 2,60,74,218,289 St. John of the Cross 126 subtle-physical body 116 plane 209 Sufi 70 sukshma sharira 116 Sun of Truth 38,86 Supermind 51,58 Supernature 12,128,208,273,315 Swinburne 42,127 T Tagore, Rabindranath... Goddess of Light 94 Gods 85 in bliss 3 laws of 177 Light submerged in 5 moods of 65 multiplicities of 6 Satyavan and 159 soul and 79,116,255,257 subtle dimensions of 182 Night and Dawn 94,302 Nirodbaran 204,266,279,287,321, 330,352,357 Nirvana 51,265 Nolini 277,298,331,351,352 O Oneness 3 One Self 235 overhead ...
... shall see further on) did not want to write otherwise. Page 254 A consciousness of brighter fields and skies, Of beings less circumscribed than brief-lived men And subtler bodies than these passing frames, Objects too fine for our material grasp, Acts vibrant with a superhuman light. 9 Sight in the Spiritual Mind Planes To recapitulate: Once we... psycho-analysis of cosmic Self Was traced, its secrets hunted down, and read The unknown pathology of the Unique. 35 "They" are the world-creators, here called by Sri Aurobindo "a subtle archangel race", and called by the Mother in her Entretiens "demiurges" or "intermediary creators" who shape and concretise the manifestation on the levels between "the Unique" and the Inconscient... principle of global knowledge. In the wide cosmic perception of the Overmind, Ideas are phalanxed like a group of sums; Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard; All Time is one body, Space a single book: There is the Godhead's universal gaze And there the boundaries of immortal Mind. 27 In the Overmind "all inner individual sight or intelligence of things is ...
... powerful draw towards the Lord is independently active, taking you irresistibly into the aura of the Divine Presence. On that inward plane you are not a defective body with a struggling soul but a sheer soul with its own subtle responsive body free of all embarrassments of the material life. The dream begins on this plane, then shifts to the other where you need help, but even the help is a sufficient... superhuman farness within until all my heartbeats seem to count the star-thrilled moments of an endless inexpressible Mystery. Preceding the Yoga of night is the evening's Yoga evoked by the subtle universal Power of which again Wordsworth speaks, the Presence who is interfused with all things but whose interfusion is brought home to us most profoundly by Page 165 the poet when... 15 You have asked me: "How to reach my heart-centre? Any practical method for concentration, etc.?" I have rarely concentrated on any point in the body. There is the advice to concentrate in the middle of the chest or the middle of the brows or on the top of the head. I have known Yogic work carried on inside my head but 1 have had no awareness of ...
... authentic translation of the supraphysical Reality into a sense-delight directly within the body and separate from any preparation to be taken in from outside. I have used the epithet "material" for the sweet secretion, but truly speaking the tongue reflects, as it were, a sensation in the subtle-physical body which is ours behind the gross-physical. Were the saliva with the Soma-taste to be chemically... All in vain -nothing resulted. Draupadi was really at a loss. Then she cried out in a final intensity: "O You who are hiding deep in my own heart, come!" At once Sri Krishna appeared before her subtle vision with his hand gesturing abhaya - "Have no fear." The clothing went on unwinding endlessly. Draupadi could not be stripped at all. Later she chided Sri Krishna: "Why did you take so... figure that you saw as the Saving Grace. (18.5.1988) I have commented quite often on your dreams of Nolini which seem to be stepping-stones towards your own Nolini-esque future - subtle contacts which are occasions for lighting up your consciousness with his own Mother-ward being. The adjective "Mother-ward" is of great importance, for we must not let the helpful friend of our heart ...
... into the normal experience, powers, mental status of the waking life. The subtle mind which is normally eclipsed by the insistence of the physical being, Page 217 becomes powerful even in the waking state, until even there the enlarging man is able to live in his several subtle bodies as well as in his physical body, to be aware of them and in them, to use their senses, faculties, powers... a consciousness corresponding to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane behind, which to us, even when we get intimations of them, have not the same concrete reality as the things of the physical existence. The sleep-state is a consciousness corresponding to the supramental plane proper to the gnosis, which is beyond our experience because our causal body or envelope of gnosis is not developed... dreams. In its operations in subtle matter the form and consciousness assumed were freer and more rapid, but more volatile, elastic and swiftly mutable, as are the motions and acts of a man in a dreaming state compared to the activities of his waking condition. To consciousness working on gross matter they gave the name of the Waking-State, to consciousness acting on subtle matter the name of the ...
... written: ) Page 140 Night of July 24-25, '59 : first penetration of the supramental force into the body. Sri Aurobindo alive in a concrete and permanent subtle physical body. I told you about that experience of meeting Sri Aurobindo (the true Sri Aurobindo) in the subtle physical. This is the exact date—early that morning I jotted it down on this paper. And it gives me the approximate... in the subtle physical] came a few weeks later. You say there was a whole group organized around that asuric being—people, ceremonies.... Ceremonies? You can take that out—it's not that sort of thing; it was a whole ORGANIZATION. But what I would like to ask is whether those people exist in the subtle physical or in our physical world.... No, no—my visions are in the subtle physical... well, that's what I meant by a promise. And I came back towards this body to do it. I said on April 3 the body was the battlefield, that the battle was being waged IN this body. And then in that experience [of April 13 ] I was sent back into the body, because the thing—that last creative gust—had to be realized through this body. ( silence ) The experiences are going on.... Page 144 ...
... physical body the Darshan Days - 21 February, 24 April, 15 August, 24 November - which, according to you, were reserved by her to shower special grace, do not have the same old obligatory and indispensable character. You add: "Now, rather all round the year and throughout each day we should keep ourselves constantly open and endeavour to advance on Her way with the help of Her more subtle but still... cannot but be a little discontented with what goes on in the absence of the Mother's embodiment. Indeed a great deal of positive life goes on and, as she once told me, one could feel her subtle-physical body with great concreteness if one were sufficiently sensitive; yet one can't be so receptive as a rule. Naturally then for people like me the Mother's withdrawal is a heavy loss. And even for... even in her absence and it has become increasingly a centre for the earth's peoples to flock to and inwardly profit there from the Divine Presence she has subtly established, a Presence most effectively radiating from the Samadhi where her body and Sri Aurobindo's have been enshrined. But I cannot say that the intensity of the spiritual life has actually increased on the whole as a result of the Mother's ...
... transformation they may have gone through is quite irrelevant to the aim of the supramentalisation of the body. Their new body was either a non-physical or subtle physical body not adapted for life on the earth. If it were not so, they would not have disappeared. The object of supramentalisation is a body fitted to embody and express the physical consciousness on earth so long as one remains in the physical... As for sainthood itself or the siddhis of Yoga including a siddha body, that too is not what I mean by transformation—it is a radical change of consciousness and nature itself that I envisage. I do not know also that these things were sought by the process of descent—the Tamil Shaiva saints for instance sought for the siddha body by tremendous austerities; the siddhis they sought were all there in... of Divine Consciousness static and dynamic into all these parts and the entire replacement of the present consciousness by that. This we find unveiled and unmixed above mind, life and body and not in mind, life and body. It is a matter of the undeniable experience of many that this can descend and it is my experience that nothing short of its full descent can thoroughly remove the veil and mixture ...
... the consciousness is always alert and it answers. One is limited by time and space only materially.’ 29 ‘I am constantly seeing some beings, consciousnesses, concentrated parts [of beings], subtle bodies around me, all kinds of elements and movements — aspirations, desires, complaints, and all sorts of things … But I am not always hearing miserable or unpleasant stories. No, there are beautiful... when I was that Pulsation of Love [in the night of 12 April 1962] and it was decided that I take up my body again, that I return into my body …’ (7 August 1963) ‘You must have come back [into your body]. You cannot have the authority over your body without having left it. When your body is no longer yourself, not at all — it is something that has been added and stuck onto yourself — when that... consciousness of her body became fully identified with the material substance of the Earth, she said — and not only with the material substance but also with that from which matter originated and in which it still has its roots: the subconscious With its caves and pools, with its vermin and obscurity. ‘It is as if the whole Earth is the body’ 6 — her body that was no longer her body. More and more ...
... 438. 8 The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 938. Page 154 A consciousness of brighter fields and skies, Of beings less circumscribed than brief-lived men And subtler bodies than these passing frames, Objects too fine for our material grasp, Acts vibrant with a superhuman light. 9 Sight in the Spiritual Mind Planes To recapitulate: Once... inherent tendency to clothe itself with images, images not surely gross and physical in all cases; but however subtle and sublime and elevated these images may be, they stand as a bar to the ungarbed vision of the truth. Hence a point is reached when the vision in its aspiration after the bare body of the truth seeks to distance itself from the pursuit of the imaged sight: Here vision fled back... visible and sensible. In Sri Aurobindo's words: "Form may be said to be the innate body, the inevitable self-revelation of the formless, and this is true not only of external shapes, but of the unseen formations of mind and life which we seize only by our thought and those sensible forms of which only the subtle grasp of the inner consciousness can become aware." 123 But still there has to be ...
... leaving its old body. If it did so, its next incarnation would perforce be a mere duplication or repetition of its previous personality. This popular notion does not square with the fact of the soul's post-mortem journeying in the different worlds described in the religious books of India. What actually happens is that after death the soul continues to live in the subtle-physical body for some time—the... enjoyment. It may enter the body of a pig or a dog or any other animal. But his soul or central being can never take an animal body. Such projection of a part being into non-human birth can be but a temporary episode in the life of the man for the exhaustion of his abnormal animal appetites. Another thing that happens sometimes is that a certain formation, mental, vital or subtle-physical, of a dead... them towards the Divine, to learn, in a word, what these things can teach. So the soul took the body of a king (or a queen). When it had the necessary experience, learnt what it had to learn, it gave up the body, no longer useful. It is at that moment when it decides to leave the body but is still in the body that the soul makes the choice of the next experience. The choice very often takes a course of ...
... around his body. She saw Sri Aurobindo exactly as she had seen him in her vision. Before Sri Aurobindo came to Pondicherry he did Tapasya and, while he was in the Alipore jail, he had the first instruction from Swami Vivekananda as to the direction for the later Tapasya. Eighteen years later, in 1926, he got the Siddhi of his Tapasya when Sri Krishna entered in his subtle physical body. That... the body, Sri Aurobindo said that it was he who would leave his body for the sake of the work and that the Mother was to stay back to accomplish their work of Transformation. He said that the Mother's body was better suited and fitted for the work. So, it was a kind of a prophetic destiny, just as "Satyavan must die." There was almost a necessity of Sri Aurobindo having to leave his body. ... level of human consciousness, she works it out in Satyavan, her alter-body. Satyavan is the visible sign of her invisible work upon herself: to conquer death in Satyavan is to conquer it in herself, and to conquer it in herself is to gain a victory over death itself, for her body is the representation of all earth-bound bodies. However, in the period of her inner preparation, Savitri comes ...
... may have gone through is quite irrelevant to the aim of the supramentalisation of the body. Their new body was either a non-physical or subtle physical body not adapted for life on the earth. If it were not so, they would not have disappeared..." Another letter 21 says: "The idea of a transformation of the body occurs in different traditions, but I have never been quite sure that it meant the change... actual physical substance and shape. The Taoist "immortal body" and the Tibetan "diamond body" are also inner subtle realities which, it is hoped, will produce a marvellous exterior effect at some future period of the Divine Manifestation, like the Resurrection looked forward to by St. Paul as the taking on of Page 48 a "spiritual body". Nowhere is any evidence of an already established... overshoot the mark: all that can be read is a subtle occult form of light experienced within the gross and felt as infiltrating it: Shiva's "golden body", his "form of eternal bliss", is then realised as the devotee's own inner body-sense — possibly leading now and again to some extraordinary functioning in the natural organism. This is no exclusive or utterly new realisation of Rama-lingam's. ...
... may have gone through is quite irrelevant to the aim of the supramentalisation of the body. Their new body was either a non-physical or subtle physical body not adapted for life on the earth. If it were not so, they would not have disappeared..." Another letter 21 says: "The idea of a transformation of the body occurs in different traditions, but I have never been quite sure that it meant the change... physical substance and shape. The Taoist "immortal body" and the Tibetan "diamond body" are also inner subtle realities which, it is hoped, will produce a marvellous exterior effect Page 8 at some future period of the Divine Manifestation, like the Resurrection looked forward to by St. Paul as the taking on of a "spiritual body". Nowhere is any evidence of an already established... overshoot the mark: all that can be read is a subtle occult form of light experienced within the gross and felt as infiltrating it: Shiva's "golden body", his "form of eternal bliss", is then realised as the devotee's own inner body-sense - possibly leading now and again to some extraordinary functioning in the natural organism. This is no exclusive or utterly new realisation of Ramalingam's ...
... life also, there is an outer vital personality and an inner vital being, you can say, a subliminal vital being. There is a subtle physical body behind this gross physical body. Desire-soul is the projection of the psychic being in this world of ignorance—in the mind, life and body. When it withdraws the desire-soul and comes to the surface then it can open to universal delight; then each impact of the... the human body ? A. The body also is a field for expression of the higher Reality. Therefore, perfection of body is not to be kept out from the scheme of spiritual perfection. The body has to participate in the scheme of perfection. Only one should not give Page 222 too much importance to the body and stop with the body. But the body is not to be neglected. The body, nervous... Page 214 self of man, not mind, life or body. The mental being in man is not his true being. Mind is his instrument. The true human being is- not the life-being or the vital-being in man. The true human being is not the body or force at work in the physical being. The true human being is a psychic being which uses mind, life and body as its instruments and is itself a projection of the ...
... Aurobindo as well. For example: A vision came of higher realms than ours, A consciousness of brighter fields and skies, Of beings less circumscribed than brief-lived men And subtler bodies than these passing frames, Objects too fine for our material grasp, Acts vibrant with a superhuman light And movements pushed by a superconscient force, And joys that never... to an Ingres or a Delacroix, Sri Aurobindo would be seen as similar to a Chinese master: one is bold, grand, having large ideas, heroic concepts, with a method full of vigour; while the other is subtle, mystic, wonderfully soft, having hidden depths of music. One needs the punctilious artistry of a craftsman to achieve an effect which the other attains by a single significant stroke. There is,... lines by their end-stopped character can give a rare mantric quality due to their inevitability, precision and their tuning themselves to the highest possible intensity. It needs a greater ear for subtler Overhead rhythms and a consummateness of technique that can endure the strain of their high inspiration. Further, such lines have a double character. They are both lyrical and epical. They ...
... cosmic principle in our individual composition is. double: we have two bodies, two lives, two minds and two souls. They are derived from the involutionary and evolutionary movements of Spirit. We have a gross physical body, annamaya śarīra, and a subtle physical body, s ū kṣma or linga, śarīra; a life-force working in our gross body and conditioned by its past evolution in Matter, and a s ū kṣma... the evolution of its nature. Death is only a signal, may be an abrupt and violent signal in a majority of cases, for a shift of scenes, and nothing more. When the gross physical body drops, the being passes into the subtle physical, and from there into the vital world. It exhausts its vital Karma in the vital world, and then passes on into the mental. When the mental formations are dissolved, like... and assumes again, first, a mental sheath, that is to say, a mental body cornposed of those mental elements which it attracts towards itself by the characteristic force of its personality for the work of its next incarnation. Then it descends to the vital plane and, assuming an appropriate vital sheath, comes down through the subtle-physical into human birth. This is the general process, but it admits ...
... coiled up and asleep at the base of the spine. When it awakes, it rises up like the intertwined serpents in the caduceus 92 through the chakras or energy centres of the body and awakens them. (This happens in the subtle, vital body.) When fully unfolded, the kundalini touches the ‘thousand petalled lotus’ on top of the head, with the effect of a sudden resplendent sun. This extremely important step... ‘The union with the Divine for my body.’ On the path Mirra was discovering, and in contrast to all other paths, the material body played a very important role. The goal of this path was not the quickest possible escape from our material incarnation into some heaven, liberation or nirvana, but a realization of a divine life, of the corps glorieux upon Earth. Mirra’s body had become extremely refined and... every yogic siddhi (permanent realization) exerts an influence on the material body, and on the other hand because of her occult mastery of the various sheaths of the adhara. A yogic discipline for the material body, in other words for the Earth, is possible only when the yogi masters each part of that material body as well as of the other constituents of his person, and brings it under the direct ...
... the transformation is possible. There are several levels in the incarnated consciousness. The Upanishads speak of five Purushas bound to the five Koshas.* *The five envelopes or five subtle bodies which constitute man. In the case in which the soul succeeds in escaping from the world of forms and entering into Nirvana, in sinking into the silence, is this fusion and loss of individuality... centre, but I feel as if a force was expanding in the physical itself. It seems to me quite distinct from the vital. You say it expands? ... I would rather say it permeates the subtle physical part of the body. But I am not perfectly sure of it. Let us wait and see. Behind the chest centre, which is always very active, I feel the presence of something and from there my aspiration goes... That is a mistake. My body feels the effects of the heat. These days I was tired. Also, I did my meditation lying down. Is there any objection to that ? You can meditate in any position whatever. I meditate often whilst walking. You spoke about going out "in the vital body" and "in the mental body". What does the latter phrase mean? When the vital body leaves the physical, the ...
... sight. In Tantra the subtle centres - the chakras - are sought to be activated by the rising up of the coiled "Serpent Power", the Kundalini, at the base of the subtle-physical body's spine, to which the tail-end of our gross material body's spinal cord corresponds. The Shakti. the Mother-Force, in its course towards the top of the head, activates the chakras. The body, both subtle and gross, is the... called Aswatthama." Yudhisthira has not only uttered a verbal truth: he has expressed the true sense as well, though in a whisper which Drona is too distraught to hear. The Mahabharata has brought out a subtle shade in the falsehood which converts what would otherwise be a direct lie into that delicate hoverer between straight truth and straight falsehood: equivocation - and a special one too with a slight... great admiration and fascination the three earlier volumes. Some other members of the Ashram have also shared your ecstasies and agonies. I am glad that the increase of years has sensitised you more to subtle presences and who knows you may come to feel them in themselves in addition to feeling them as transfigured tree and house and star as hinted in the two lines of your verse I quoted some months ...
... greater appositeness than to Nishikanto, for the poetic vein of speech is for him more like a natural function of his psychological constitution than a cultivated art and the sense for rhythm and subtle sound-body of words which comprise the essence of the poetic faculty is native to his temperament. It would seem that the poet, in his inner being, is in direct contact with some far-away Land of Felicity... surmount altogether the need of knowing the metrical technique by sheer force of his inborn and intimate sense of the spirit of rhythm and subtle word-music; the invisible Spirit of Word-Beauty with which he is in direct contact would itself provide him with its intrinsic body-forms, its shapes and structures of visible embodiment. But what made Nishikanto write in English when he had not much command over... understood who those beings were as he could feel the fragrance of their subtle presence and he embraced Nishikanto and said: “Do you know whom you have seen? They were none other than Lord Chaitanya and Nitai! When I saw you for the very first time I understood that your eyes were rare. You could catch glimpses of the subtle world.” Years later the Mother would remark about Nishikanto: “He has the ...
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