... that problem: who was the one standing there?’ 2 August 1967: ‘The subtle physical seems to be transformed more and more. There is still a mystery between the two [between the gross physical and the subtle physical body]. A mystery. They are coexistent and yet … [gesture as of a link which is missing] the subtle physical seems to have no influence on this [the gross physical body]. There is still... long time before I can overcome this uneasiness.’ 12 These words cannot be interpreted in any other way than that the Mother already had a new subtle-physical body in 1954 besides and apart from her visible, gross material body. It was in this subtle-physical body that many saw her in their dreams and visions. ‘They see me like I really am,’ she said. The above quoted statements of May and September... when I see myself, I am very tall. What has happened? … It is the new being … When is this going to express itself physically? I don’t know. It is a being from the subtle physical. It is not a vital being, it is a being from the subtle physical. And I am tall and strong … It has no age, it is neither young nor old … it is completely different. And tall, strong … A day will come that it will be visible ...
... may lead to a passive concentration in which one is open to all sorts of things and cannot choose the right ones. Subtle Physical Visions All that can be seen with closed eyes can be seen with open eyes also; it is sufficient that the inner sight should extend to the subtle physical consciousness for that to happen. One can see [ visions ] either with open or closed eyes or both. It is a... symbolism, it is not necessary in other planes. This figure [ of Vaidyuta Agni, mentioned in the preceding letter ] may have belonged to the subtle physical plane. (1) It [ the vision of a flower ] was seen through the physical eyes but by the subtle physical consciousness; in other words there was an imposition of one consciousness upon another. After a certain stage of development, this capacity... it would not then have so vivid an appearance—unless you are Page 109 able to bring out something of the light of the subtle physical plane to surround it and give it its natural medium. If seen with the eyes shut, it would be no longer a subtle physical form, but an object or formation of the vital, mental or other plane. Unless, indeed, the inner consciousness had progressed so far ...
... Aurobindo is speaking of. But isn't this the subtle physical? It surrounds the subtle physical. First there is the subtle physical and then the circumconscient? Yes; the subtle physical is visible—visible. You have seen heat vibrations when it's very hot, haven't you? That's the subtle physical—one form of it. The subtle physical is right here ( gesture on the surface of the skin... Perhaps I should bring you the passage where he speaks about it. Yes, because I don't quite understand. You see, the subtle physical extends a long way beyond the body. Page 302 Then comes what Theon called the 'nervous sub-level,' which lies between this subtle physical and the vital. And it acts as a protection: if it is stable, harmonious and strong, it protects you—it protects you even... detail. In several places, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the 'circumconscient' or 'environmental consciousness' through which we enter into contact with the external world. Is this the same as the 'subtle physical,' the subtle envelope? What is this circumconscient? It's the encircling consciousness. Isn't it called the 'milieu' in French? No, the milieu isn't personal. Does he speak of it as ...
... between the subtle physical and the material physical, is taking place all the time—day and night and day and night. You might almost say that there is an attempt to substitute one for the other. There’s a sort of ... not exactly fusion, but a permeation (it really is a permeation), which doesn’t drive away the other, but ... at length, it will probably transform it. This subtle physical is working... suspended there, looking right in front of her, towards Sri Aurobindo’s tomb. It was as if that subtle physical world wanted to ENTER into this one (and there is indeed a great power in it), but I don’t know how to explain as if it wanted to force its way into this world. — “An invasion of the subtle physical?”— Yes, that’s what seems to want to happen 130 The supramental invasion. But the... that Mother had her experiences). But it was in 1962 that the phenomenon began to become a bit clear for Her—fifty-six years after her first experience! The two [the ordinary physical and the subtle physical] seem to be fusing more and more. Instead of SHIFTING from one to the other, it’s as if one were permeated by the other and you can almost feel both simultaneously. It’s one of the results of ...
... taking place. 24:12:1994 Yesterday morning during my meditation there was a command. I was told that now the work will be in the subtle-physical and that I should be conscious in the subtle-physical. "Be conscious in the subtle-physical." Yes, that is what I was told. In the evening, at the Samadhi, the work was going on for a long time, almost for twenty minutes. The work... time that it must have come. But about the departure of the previous experience and the coming of the Being of Ananda,—about that I do not know anything more. The entire body up to the subtle-physical was very still, it was very still all the while. Possibly this itself was the result of the descent of Ananda; it might have been due to the descent of Ananda, though Ananda cannot descend without... anything happening. But it must be still going on. That is certain. I feel now great energy flowing in my limbs. It is very tangible; it is almost a physical sensation. Of course, it must be in the subtle-physical; but it is felt by the outer body too. There is energy and there is Power. The Mother has descended and the work must be going on. But about the next step,—I have no idea, I know nothing ...
... fathers and finally to the lunar paradise. The Brahmasutra deduces from this that the soul takes with it all the elements, even those of the subtle physical, which will be needed in the next incarnation." So a question: "Is this correct? Is the subtle physical sufficiently conscious in that case?" We shall keep aside the questions; I am continuing: "Then the Upanishads add: after having... it necessary to follow this uncertain and hazardous process? Does not the soul directly animate the body with all the mental, vital and subtle physical elements organised around it and necessary for the next life? Does it take up the elements of the subtle physical world? If so, how do they harmonise with the hereditary Page 333 characteristics? Above all, must it pass through the body... look at the problem in some detail, and sometimes one makes interesting discoveries. The question is like this: "When an especially developed soul leaves the body, does it take with it the subtle physical sheath? When it reincarnates, how does it introduce this into the new body?" Even to answer this, as I have told you, it would be necessary to write volumes or to speak for hours. For, to tell ...
... outlines for us there is not only a subtle physical force but a subtle physical Matter intervening between life and gross Matter and to create in this subtle physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible. It should be possible and it is believed to be possible Page 128 for an object formed in this subtle physical substance to make a transit from... possible. What do you want to know? Whether this has already been done? Yes. Not as far as the most material plane; as far as the perceptible subtle physical—perceptible by the intermediary senses, between the physical senses and those of the subtle physical; for instance, like a breath felt as a gentle breeze, like certain perceptions of smell, like subtle perfumes. Naturally, those who have an inner... it was of matter, for there was sight, touch, hearing. But hearing doesn't need to be very material: the sounds of the subtle physical life, its vibrations can be heard very well; and quite strangely, it is hearing and smell which seem to be the most permanent in the subtle physical world, more so than the perception of form—and also a certain sense of contact which is very, very concrete. Only, this ...
... 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 meet... 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 by... 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 1969 ...
... results of certain actions; that is some part of the inner being, sometimes the inner mental, sometimes the inner vital, sometimes, it may be, the inner or subtle physical Purusha. The inner being — inner mind, inner vital, inner or subtle physical — knows much that is unknown to the outer mind, the outer vital, the outer physical, for it is in a more direct contact with the secret forces of Nature... inner vital, subtle physical being subliminal in us and are not at all direct operations of the psyche. Even such phenomena as materialisation and dematerialisation are included, though, if established, they evidently are not soul-action and would not shed any light upon the nature or existence of the psychic entity, but would rather be an abnormal action of an occult subtle physical energy intervening... universality and transcendence, it is yet its deputy in the forms of Nature, the individual soul, caitya puruṣa, supporting mind, life and body, standing behind the mental, the vital, the subtle-physical being in us and watching and profiting by their development and experience. These other person-powers in man, these beings of his being, are also veiled in their true entity, but they put forward ...
... since sufficient interaction had pulsed between the subtle-physical glory of Grace and the gross-physical labour of Love, to enable the Mother to carry on earth-work in the future without continuing an outer existence. The gross-physical form could give up the struggle it had so long made to merge with the subtle-physical shape, because the subtle-physical shape had now won by the gross-physical form's... the matter of the body refined and rendered receptive to the supramental substance and form which had already been brought into action down to what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have called "the subtle-physical plane" immediately behind the gross-material on which we live. The process by which the habitually functioning organism could fuse with that substance and form was the one we could glimpse through... Death her servitor? On the one hand, as we know from "Notes on the Way" over several years, there was the growing infusion of her cells with the light of the Supramental Body already poised on the subtle-physical plane and then the short yet decisive experience of the exteriorised Supermind. On the other, as we learn from her attendants, there was infirm old age but also an ever-resisting youthfulness of ...
... intermediary—it doesn't seem to come from the man's subconscient. 1 Or else he had seen it in the subtle physical and his subconscient knew—but then why did it present him with such an image? I don't know. Perhaps something in his subconscient knew, because the accident already existed in the subtle physical. Before it occurred here, the accident—"the law of the accident"—existed. Of course, in every... depending on the plane of one's vision, one can judge approximately how much time it will take to be realized. Immediate things are already realized, they are self-existent and can be seen in the subtle physical—they already exist there, and the reflection (not even transcription) or projection of this image is what will take place in the material world the next day or a few hours later. In this case you... the precision and power of your vision: if your vision is objective and sincere, you will see the thing as it is; if you add personal sentiments or impressions, it gets colored. Accuracy in the subtle physical depends exclusively on the instrument, the one who sees. But as soon as you move into a subtler realm, like the vital (and the mental even more so), there is a narrow margin of possibilities ...
... static Peace and the Force are sometimes felt in the outer body directly, and not merely as 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... commented that it was impossible to experience peace or anything spiritual in the body itself at such an early stage of the sadhana. According to them, a strong peace descending into the inner or subtle physical gives only an illusion of reaching the outer gross physical. What is the truth of the matter? All experiences that penetrate the centres are recorded in the body and seem to be the body's... although there are corresponding parts in the gross physical. I understand from your answers that all experiences felt in the physical body are reflections of experiences of the subtle physical. What progress is needed to bring the experiences directly into the outer physical? I spoke only of the fact that what one feels recorded in the physical body may be actually taking [place] ...
... dge outlines for us there is not only a subtle physical force but a subtle physical Matter intervening between life and gross Matter and to create in this subtle physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible. It should be possible and it is believed to be possible for an object formed in this subtle physical substance to make a transit from its subtlety... action or creation not known or possessed by the common mind of the race. Occultism means rightly the use of the higher powers of our nature, soul, mind, life-force and the faculties of the subtle physical consciousness to bring about results on their own or on the the material plane by some pressure of their own secret law and its potentialities, for manifestation and result in human or earthly... instrumentation or procedure of Nature in this matter of propagation or the renewal of the physical life-force in human or animal beings; but the resort to occult means and the intervention of subtle physical processes, if it could be made possible, would be a greater way which could avoid the limitations, degradations, incompleteness and heavy imperfection of the means and results solely available ...
... Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother (1953), p. 358. Page 47 scale was brought about in the subtle-physical layer of the earth. (This layer, which the earth possesses just as it possesses a vital and mental layer, must be demarcated from the subtle-physical plane as such, although the two have a connection. That plane, being typal, exactly like the independent vital and mental... entire and perfect chrysolite. At the beginning of 1969 - that is, about thirteen years after the subtle-physical manifestation of the Supermind - the Mother announced that the force to realise the Intermediate Race had come in its own right to the earth - evidently from the subtle-physical. She distinguished the occasion as the advent of the Superman Consciousness and mentioned some of its o... body-substance anywhere: it was a presence in the body inasmuch as it had settled within his embodied mental and vital and even subtle-physical being. His letters testify to individual "perfection" or "transformation" having been sufficiently achieved up to the subtle-physical level,² but they repeatedly admit that the Supermind had not entered Matter.³ In one letter he says that it was on the point ...
... which is difficult to find and not very much worth knowing even if it is found. Other dreams are either simply happenings of the mental, vital or subtle physical worlds or else belong to the wider mental, vital Page 240 or subtle physical planes and have a meaning which the figures of the dream are trying to communicate. Letters on Yoga, p. 1491 It is a very small number of... Or else, it may be, the part of our mind which still remains active in the sleep of the body has entered into the inner domains of our being, the subliminal mental, the subliminal vital, the subtle-physical, and is there lost to all active connection with the surface parts of us. If we are still in the nearer depths of these regions, the surface subconscient which is our sleep-wakefulness records... only of a certain limited field and action of your nature. In sleep you can become vividly aware of things beyond this field — a larger mental or vital nature behind the waking state or else a subtle physical or a subconscient nature which contains much that is there in you but not distinguishably active in the waking state. Letters on Yoga, p. 1487 Page 236 ...it is a well-known ...
... if we regard the vital or the subtle physical plane, we see great ranges of it (most of it) existing in themselves, without any relation with the material world and with no movement to affect or influence it, still less to precipitate a corresponding manifestation in the physical formula. At most we can say that the existence of anything in the vital, subtle physical or any other plane creates a p... yet something else, a triumphant new self-discovery of the Divine in conditions that are not elsewhere. No doubt, the subtle physical is closest to the physical, and most like it. But yet the conditions are different and the thing too different. For instance, the subtle physical has a freedom, Page 131 plasticity, intensity, power, colour, wide and manifold play (there are thousands of... figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul's home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are situated in the consciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into connection ...
... it may remain first, as a transitional stage, in some region of subtle-physical experience whose surroundings may seem to it a prolongation of the circumstances of physical life, but in freer conditions proper to a subtler medium and in some kind of happy perfection of mind or life or a finer bodily existence. Beyond these subtle-physical planes of experience and the life-worlds there are also mental... detaining attachment to the physical plane and 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... life and prepare its future. Ordinarily, the normally developed human being, who has risen to a sufficient power of mentality, might be expected to pass successively through all these planes, subtle-physical, vital and mental, on his way to his psychic habitation. At each stage he would exhaust and get rid of the fractions of formed personality structure, temporary and superficial, that belonged to ...
... 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 date of the other vision: that... other experience [of Sri Aurobindo 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... no—my visions are in the subtle physical, but those people exist here on earth, although I don't know who they are.... As I said, I knew only one of them. But it's certain that a physical organization corresponding to these visions does exist. I don't know the details—they just haven't been given to me. But it corresponds to a group of PHYSICAL people. Powerful? I don't know. I don't know them ...
... that except for occasional outbreaks the poetry of the subtle physical plane is condemned to lack elemental energy and must fall short of dazzling glory. But we should be off the mark very much indeed in believing so. For, among poets of this plane, we have no less a figure than Homer. Homer has shown to what heights the poetry of the subtle physical can rise. Like Chaucer he too is preoccupied with external... You can't deny that I have risen and I shall try to rise also to the occasion of our present theme: the planes of poetry. I shall begin at the beginning, the foot of the "World-stair": the subtle physical plane. Here it is the outer activities of man and Nature that pass through the poetic imagination and acquire an inwardness which reveals the psychological or even superhuman powers at work in... The lines, apart from illustrating the work of genius as against the work of artificial labour, illustrate also a plane different from the creative intelligence as well as from Chaucer's subtle physical: Page 370 the Vital plane, the plane of the Life Force. A vibrant vigour is here which is missing in Chaucer no less than in Dryden. Poetically Chaucer has in his passage something ...
... yours, then she will speak. I don't know if it's a "question," but... I don't very well understand the working of the subtle physical, or the relationship between the subtle physical and the material physical. For instance, you say that Sri Aurobindo is in the subtle physical, working to prepare the new world... Yes. ...and that we too, at night, through a part of our being, often work there... it didn't suffer anymore. But that was because the work was over. Yes, nothing took place in the physical because you stopped the thing in the subtle physical. Quite possible. But it's... Never, never have I lived so totally in the subtle physical, fully conscious, WITHOUT SLEEPING (I was lying Page 150 on my bed), and it lasted for two hours. Things were as real, as precise as they... other words, whether I am in this subtle physical or in the material physical, it's the same will, the same psychic will that acts—the SAME, exactly in the same way. Which means that... I don't know what the difference is. There's a difference... it's thin, you don't feel it's something thick or heavy: it's thin. That union between the two, between the subtle physical and the material physical, is taking ...
... ess or unconsciousness. We could say that the subtle physical is the world of conscious Matter, and ultimately the world of true Matter, the one that truly exists, in which the walking digestive tracts have no place, in which the liars have no place. All the little fakers of consciousness: gone, made unreal. But we are right in that subtle physical world, we are already in it, everything that is... the cremation ground], and then its fire in the mouth—FULLY conscious. I have lived this in recent days. I have seen it Last night or the night before, I spent at least two hours in a world—the subtle physical world—where the living mingle with the dead with no sense of difference, it makes absolutely no difference there. For instance, when X was in her body I used to see her at night maybe once a year... sides, as if each one were looking at the same phenomenon atop a ladder of a different height). Whereas here, at the cellular level, in that world Sri Aurobindo and Mother at first called the "subtle physical," then the "true physical," then "true Matter," as their experience became more precise, it would seem that every possible "other side," every possible plane and illumination and revelation and ...
... dge outlines for us there is not only a subtle physical force but a subtle physical Matter intervening between life and gross Matter and to create in this subtle physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible. It should be possible and it is believed to be possible for an object formed in this subtle physical substance to make a transit from its subtlety... progressive evolution to a totally transformed existence both of life and form in a divinised earth-nature." These words hold out the prospect that Sri Aurobindo who has already a divinised subtle physical sheath may employ the supramental mode of manifestation for the purpose of presiding in the domain of Matter itself over the new humanity which the Mother will initiate. In that dawn of God's gold ...
... conscious powers. This means that he exists in a supramentalised vital and mental body somewhere in a corresponding supramental world. The Mother often referred to “Sri Aurobindo’s abode” in “the subtle physical”, i.e. in a supramental world 57 where she and many of the followers still among the living went to visit him, and where some of the disciples who had left their body stayed with him, in his... on darshan days), and his advice or decisions, his interventions in world situations. “I see now”, she said in 1970, “I see how his departure and his work so vast, yes, and so constant in the subtle physical, how much, how much it has helped! How much it has helped to prepare things, to change the physical structure.” 59 And two years later: “He himself has more action, more power for action, now... in the way one sees oneself. And there was a kind of veil that I had put on, like this, to cover myself. It was not surprising to me: it was a natural way of being. It must be like that in the subtle physical.” 61 Without going into details, let us consider the following. A transitional body, generated as all bodies are now, is not sexless. As the body the Mother saw was sexless, it must have ...
... Education - and this she did even when envisaging the possibility of her own departure, as can be seen from a passage in her Collected Works. (3)The Supramental Manifestation was in the subtle-physical of the earth, in what the Mother called "the earth's atmosphere". Surely the aim of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was not just the establishment of the Supermind there? They aimed at its manifestation... n in the gross-physical. Not to realise this is to mis-see their mission, or rather to see it Page 306 in its incipience and not in its completion. (4) Even in the subtle-physical of the earth the whole Supermind did not manifest. Only the Light, the Consciousness and the Force came. The Mother said that the Supramental Ananda had not come. Without the Supramental Ananda... principle, using the organising principle -Supermind or Overmind - to put forth, or give birth to, a cosmos. As far as I can gather, the Supramental Ananda has not manifested up to now even in the subtle-physical. Besides, the very elements that have manifested there were said by the Mother to have been swallowed up by "dark blue waves of the Inconscient" - all the entrenched darkness of the ages - so that ...
... 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... 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 not always... into 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 ...
... develops a soul personality, a distinct psychic being to represent it. This psychic being remains still behind the veil in our subliminal part, like the true mental, the true vital or the true or subtle physical being within us: but, like them, it acts on the surface life by the influences and intimations it throws up upon that surface; these form part of the surface aggregate which is the conglomerate... does not remain distinct in its purity; if it did, we would be able to distinguish clearly the soul element in us and follow consciously and fully its dictates. An occult mental and vital and subtle-physical action intervenes, mixes with it, tries to use it and turn it to its own profit, dwarfs its divinity, distorts or diminishes its self-expression, even causes it to deviate and stumble or stains... wraith or ghost of the personality. This ghost, which is mistakenly called the spirit, is sometimes a vital formation reproducing the man's characteristics, his surface life-mannerisms, sometimes a subtle-physical prolongation of the surface form of the mind-shell: at best it is a sheath of the life personality which still remains in the front for some time after the departure from the body. Apart from these ...
... you can develop those bodies. But this subtle physical, how do you develop it, how do you consciously make contact with it? ( after a long silence ) As for me, I didn't do it on purpose, so I don't know! In fact, I rather FOLLOWED Sri Aurobindo there, because before he left his body, I don't remember having had much contact with this subtle physical—I may have had some, but it didn't strike... we, for instance, we human beings, do we have a body corresponding to that world? Some have a body in the subtle physical, oh yes!... Oh, yes. But not everyone? For some it's... fluid, that is, uncertain, but some do have a body.... I think people develop their subtle physical in the course of life. Yes, and I'd like to know how it can be done, in fact. How its done? That's what... hand, both hands parallel with a space between them ), and then between the two, it's... it's not yet. So then, what's going to happen between the two?... This ( the right hand, above ) is the subtle physical, and this ( the left hand, below ) is the material physical, and then, between the two, there is a confusion... or something that's not ready or... ( long silence ) Did you have anything ...
... dge outlines for us there is not only a subtle physical force but a subtle physical Matter intervening between life and gross Matter and to create in this subtle physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible. It should be possible and it is believed to be possible for an object formed in this subtle physical substance to make a transit from its subtlety... progressive evolution to a totally transformed existence both of life and form in a divinised earth-nature." These words hold out the prospect that Sri Aurobindo who has already a divinised subtle physical sheath may employ the supramental mode of manifestation for the purpose of presiding in Page 132 the domain of Matter itself over the new humanity which the Mother will initiate ...
... stomach. All that was slim. I didn't pay any special attention, you see, because I was it felt perfectly natural to me.... But this form is in the subtle physical, isn’t it? It must be already like that in the subtle physical. But how will it pass into the physical? That's the question I don't know.... I don't know. I don't know. Also, clearly, there was none of... conversation with Satprem _________________________________ ¹ Mother’s Agenda, Vol. 11, 25.2.1970. ² Ibid., 18.4.1970. Page 206 on 9th May, 1970, Mother saw in her subtle physical her new body, how it would be! It was a body not very different but extremely refined, and it had an orange colour. The body was vibrant, and it had a kind of luminosity. The skin was 'efflorescent'... the mirror. And I had a sort of veil, which I wore to cover myself. It was my way of being (there was nothing surprising in it), my natural way of being. That must be how it is in the subtle physical. But what's mysterious is the transition from one to the other. Yes—how? But it's the same mystery as the transition from chimpanzee to man. Oh, no, Mother! It's more colossal ...
... the other worlds. The very first region he enters into is an unpleasant one which the Mother has named "domaine de la Mort", "the domain of death". This region lies on the border between the subtle physical plane and the lower vital world. The Mother has spoken extensively about this "Death-domain" in two of her evening conversations, those of March 10, 1954 and December 29,1954. Readers are advised... physical Page 82 being, vital being, mental being and others. Also, he has not only his gross physical body, visible and sensible to us, but has other bodies too; such as, a subtle physical body, a vital body, a mental body and others. His total being is constituted of five "Koshas" or sheaths and envelopes, such as, "Annamaya Kosha" (material envelope), "Prạnamaya Kosha" (vital envelope)... Second Line of Inquiry. - Continuing to remain all the time oblivious of the presence of the psychic being even in the "postmortem" supraphysical worlds, what do the ego-being and the subtle physical-vital-mental constituents of a departed person do and where do they travel to? Third Line of Inquiry. - What happens to the discarded residues of the "envelopes" of the "dead" man, of ...
... is, the veil is wearing down — not in our head: in our body. So when this body’s consciousness is very heavy and slurred, all is very-very-far-away, forming planes and planes, “subtle” physical here, “subtle” physical there — then one fine day everything becomes “subtle” or is no longer subtle at all: it is all here, quite simply. The supramental “invasion” is our layer of Homo sapiens becoming... (Satprem :)?. . .. It was around three o’clock in the morning. I have seen you very often in visions, symbolic visions in the mental realm, but that’s not what it was. It was in the subtle physical, this close (same gesture) ; you came deliberately, and you looked at me. “Oh,” I told you, “how nice!” I had a dream about you, but I felt the subconscient made it up. No, it must be... received my letter and these gentlemen must be ... I don’t know what. Well. After lunch, I lay down as usual and I slept — it has not happened for years. I slept a deep sleep for an hour, in the subtle physical. There were all sorts of things which I don’t remember clearly, except that I was on the ground floor of a dark building and I gave Counouma and a number of ghosts around him a good thrashing ...
... the fishbowl is obviously a "dream.” Perhaps we are the dream of fish. Or whose dream are we? To find out, we must get out of the bowl. To make things clearer, I could give an example of that subtle physical; it is a personal example, but after all, what good is the most extraordinary knowledge in the world if it is to remain in libraries? A person very close to me committed suicide in France while... not surprising. But the window with its landscape was exactly as I had seen it. He was found lying on the threshold of the room. I had seen what his last look saw. This is a journey in the subtle physical, with the subtle body. I wonder if our telescopes would have seen the lines on the floor through the walls, from Pondicherry all the way to the French Atlantic coast. One can only wonder how... 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 or less chubby ...
... question I'd like to ask you regarding the subtle physical. I understand the mind centers, which correspond to a particular world, the vital centers, which receive all sorts of influences, but which center corresponds to the subtle physical, and what are the influences coming from the subtle physical? Is there a center that corresponds to the subtle physical? Where do you situate the center for the... Page 35 Well, for the subtle physical it goes from the navel down to the last center, 1 that whole region. And what are the influences that come from the subtle physical? Generally they are of a far higher quality than material influences. I have noticed (I don't know whether it's a personal or a general thing) that the subtle physical I see is always of a somewhat higher... In most cases it's like that. The subtle physical has the character of a realm where things are more fluid and harmonious than physical things, but with the same concrete quality; its nature is not like that of vital things, which have vibrations of power but again not that very concrete and objective quality characteristic of material things. In the subtle physical, things are very concrete. For instance ...
... the physical. In the physical, there are several distinguishable elements: the gross physical, the subtle physical, the physical mind and the cellular mind. The gross physical is what we see with our physical eyes and what we touch with our skin and perceive with our physical senses. The subtle physical is ________________ ¹ Ibid., pp. 327-9. Page 132 what lies behind our gross... One of the important processes of physical transformation that Mother spoke of was that of the fusion of the subtle physical and the ordinary physical. Mother spoke of this process as follows: That's one thing that's happening. The two [the ordinary physical and the subtle physical] seem to be fusing more and more. I have already explained this to you on several occasions: instead of SHIFTING... to her movement and more richness, more possibilities to her play. And suddenly, as if resounding from every corner of the earth, I heard these great notes which are sometimes heard in the subtle physical—rather like those of Beethoven's Concerto in D—which come at moments of great progress, as though fifty orchestras were bursting forth all at once without a single discordant note, to sound the ...
... Sri Aurobindo calls the subtle physical . This knowledge is as ancient as the world and not unique to Sri Aurobindo's yoga, but it is part of our integral development, preparing us for the day when we leave our body for a longer period in what men ignorantly call "death." To make it clearer, let us listen to a young disciple describe his experience in the subtle physical, when he left his body for... sometimes unformed and then they are given shape somewhere in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or a refusal to these thought waves (as also vital waves, subtle physical energy waves) or this giving a personal-mental form to thought-stuff (or vital movements) from the environing Nature-Force. It was my great debt to Lele that he showed me this. "Sit in meditation... These sundry I's express a fraction of reality, the reality seen by the naked eye, but immense realms stretch beyond them. We have already mentioned a universal Mind, a universal Vital, and a subtle Physical behind this physical shell; now we must try to recover our entire universal reality. There are three methods or stages for achieving this. The first, available to everyone, is sleep. The second ...
... that man's poetry usually comes from the subtle-physical mind or the vital mind or the intellectual mind. The last is the mind proper, the first two are the mind functioning as what we may broadly term "sense" and "heart" in distinction from "thought". The subtle-physical, the vital and the mental planes to which... intelli-gence. Most poetry is either of the subtle-physical, the vital or the mental plane - and most poetry, by the very turn of the human psychological constitution, has a prevalent plane, a single determinant matrix, that is mental or vital or subtle-physical. Consequently, a poet is Classical or Romantic, or ... The most common among the many dissimilar levels or depths of the self, serving as intervening psychological instruments, are named by Sri Aurobindo the subtle-physical, the vital and the mental planes. Beyond these are the rarely exploited planes where the inwardness necessary to all poetry plunges or rises to the directly ...
... Vital but from the subtle physical. As we know, what she called the subtle physical in those years was not a more refined substance than the physical, it was the Supramental. For of that subtle physical she said ‘It is not material and yet more concrete than Matter.’ Towards the end of 1962, she noticed one night that she was very young, physically. ‘It was the subtle physical, of course, but I was... attention for I was like that, everything was quite natural. It was the first time, and it was in the night, the day before yesterday.’ When asked whether it was in the subtle physical, she answered: ‘It must be like that in the subtle physical. Also, it was clear that there would not be any longer a complicated digestion as it is now nor the elimination as it is now. It was not like that … I didn’t look... should not fix or kill the inner spontaneity, and that what surfaced without could only be the expression of what was within. She asserted once again that the City of Dawn was there in the ‘subtle physical,’ fully ready to be worked out on the material plane. ‘The night before last I spent more than three hours with Sri Aurobindo,’ she said on 31 May 1969, ‘and I was showing him all that was going ...
... some meaning which is difficult to find and not very much worth knowing even if it is found. Other dreams are either simply happenings of the mental, vital or subtle physical worlds or else belong to the wider mental, vital or subtle physical plane and have a meaning which the figures of the dream are trying to communicate. It often happens that when something is thrown out of the waking con... all have not a casual, incoherent or subconscious building. Many are records or transcripts of experiences on the vital plane into which one enters in sleep, some are scenes or events of the subtle physical plane. There one often undergoes happenings or carries on actions that resemble those of the physical life with the same surroundings and the same people, though usually there is in arrangement... inferior dream-stuff will get clear. It is the subconscient that is active in ordinary dreams. But in the dreams in which one goes out into other planes of consciousness, mental, vital, subtle physical, it is part of the inner being, inner mental or vital or physical that is usually active. Page 456 A dream, when it is not from the subconscient, is either symbolic or else an ...
... here. And there, you know it well, you come to visit me every Sunday, and it is a direct contact with the soul. January 19, 1967 VISION IN THE SUBTLE PHYSICAL … Well, it is what I see when I see people. I see all in the subtle physical … sometimes it is in perpetual movement, that is the truth that nothing is inert or fixed or stable. It is always in continuous movement. Each thing, even... varied experiences. I am not talking about that: but when with open eyes one enters into the subtle physical one passes in front of the screen and nothing exists any longer. I am talking about that…. You know, when I see people, this is exactly what happens. I do not see them as they are in the subtle physical with their faults and their good qualities. No one can hide anything in front of me. I see... all that they are capable of, their state of consciousness and their aspirations. I see their soul and with that the possibilities of their aspiration. It is, moreover, a direct contact with the subtle physical and all that is around them. It is this that I usually see, I do not see his appearance or how he is dressed. I see what he embodies, his soul and the progress he is capable of. In one glance I ...
... and instincts of our subtle physical being which is an unrecognised but very important element and agent in our nature. Health and strength are the first conditions for the natural perfection of the body, not only muscular strength and the solid strength of the limbs and physical stamina, but the finer, alert and plastic and adaptable force which our nervous and subtle physical parts can put into the... movement, discipline are needed and for that our physical exercises can make one ready; in others a developed individual will, skill of mind and quick perception, forcefulness of life-energy and subtle physical impulsion are more prominently needed and may even be the one sufficient trainer. All must be included in our conception of the natural powers of the body and its capacity and instrumental fitness... fulfils the description of the Upanishad, a mental being, Purusha, leader of the life and the body. If the mind can take up and control the instincts and automatisms of the life-energy and the subtle physical consciousness and the body, if it can enter into them, consciously use and, as we may say, fully mentalise their instinctive or spontaneous action, the perfection of these energies, their action ...
... occultists and in the gradation of the ranges and planes of our being which Yoga-knowledge outlines for us there is not only a subtle physical force but a subtle physical Matter intervening between life [i .e., the vital plane] and gross Matter and to create in this subtle physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible." Sri Aurobindo's Yogic... , we may suppose that God's will made Jesus create a replica of his third-heaven body in the substance which Sri Aurobindo puts between the vital plane and the gross-physical: that is, in the subtle-physical matter. A precipitation of Jesus' divine form into this substance could be thought of as producing just the right degree of materialisation for God's chosen and specially attuned beings to witness ...
... Aurobindo, the ship from the New World, the living and the dead existing together – all that was located in what the Mother called ‘the subtle physical.’ At this point it is necessary to explain that she started using this term in a special sense. Normally the subtle physical is a layer of existence on the verge of our perception, containing everything that is to pass into the gross physical (which is why... far apart. The Mother discovered to her surprise the place where the living and the dead consciously co-exist. ‘Last night or the night before I spent at least two hours in a world which is the subtle physical, where the living and the dead intermingle without being aware of any difference. It doesn’t make any difference. There is no difference, there. There were those we call the living and those whom... why specially gifted persons can have a prevision of it). The Mother once compared it to the vapours emanating from hot sand or from a hot road. But the Mother will more and more use the term ‘subtle physical’ for ‘the real physical,’ which is the same as the Supramental, which became accessible to her physical person because it was being supramentalized to an even greater extent. No doubt, all this ...
... movements in us too. Right down to their subtle-physical there was transformation and naturally this had its radiant result in their gross-physical but not to the extent aimed at by the Integral Yoga. So we may opine that now when Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are not with us gross-physically, that power is operating on us from their achieved perfection in the subtle-physical counterpart of the earth. And, along... of the Supermind established in the earth-nature. The establishment was done on February 29, 1956 in an initial though definite manner. But the Mother made it clear that it was achieved in the subtle-physical layer of the earth, what she termed the earth's atmosphere, and not in the gross-physical. Once this was done the mission of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother could be said to have been Page 225... 225 fulfilled so far as the evolution of man as a race was concerned .'The supramental principle was made a part of the earth's future history. Not with full strength even in the subtle-physical but with a gradual potency would the new entrant in the cosmic field operate, for, as the Mother said, the agelong entrenched agencies of darkness arose in revolt to overwhelm it. Through their siege ...
... the objection holds no longer. The mystic subjective vision admits a consciousness in physical things and gives them a subtle physical life which is not that of the material existence. If a consciousness is felt in the stars and if that consciousness expresses itself in subtle physical images to the vision of the poet, there can be no impossibility of a star being নত আপনহারা—such expressions attribute... whichever may be the thing to be conveyed by the poem. Mystic poetry can be written from any plane, provided the writer gets an inspiration from the inner consciousness whether mind, vital or subtle physical. 20 October 1936 The Aim of the Mystic Poet There are truths and there are transcriptions of truths; the transcriptions may be accurate or may be free and imaginative. The truth behind... and feeling which disregards the mind's positive view of things and its logical sequences; the centre or centres it knocks at are not the brain-mind, not even the poetic intelligence but the subtle physical, the nervous, the vital or the psychic centre. The poem he quotes from Blake is certainly not nonsense, but it has no positive and exact meaning for the intellect or the surface mind; it expresses ...
... if we regard the vital or the subtle physical plane, We See great ranges of it, (most of it),existing in themselves, Without any relation with the material world and with no movement to affect or influence it, still less to precipitate a corresponding manifestation in the physical formula. At most we can say that the existence of anything in the vital, subtle physical or any other plane creates a ... else, a triumphant new self-discovery of the Divine in conditions that are not elsewhere. No doubt, the subtle physical is closest to the physical, and most like it. But yet the conditions are different and the thing too different. For instance, the Subtle physical has a freedom, plasticity, intensity, power, colour, wide and manifold play (there are thousands of things there that are ...
... beyond the body; we have seen that even the subtle physical which is yet material pared with the vital being and in certain conditions almost visible, extends at times considerably beyond the visible limits of the physical body. This subtle physical is constituted of active vibrations which enter into contact or mingle with the vibrations of the subtle physical of others, and this reciprocal contact gives... there are different vibrations in the air of one country and in the air of another, in the air of one place and in the air of another. If indeed you are accustomed to have this perception of the subtle physical, you can say immediately, “Ah! This air is as in France” or “This is the air of Japan.” It is something indefinable like taste or smell. But in this instance it is not that, it is a perception ...
... "sleep" and no more "passing" into another state, from the ordinary physical to the subtle physical, because everything seemed to have become or was becoming one and the same continuous Matter. The true Matter, probably. ) That's one thing that's happening. The two [the ordinary physical and the subtle physical] seem to be fusing more and more. I have already explained this to you on several... that resists penetration: it is becoming porous, and thus can be penetrated. Several times, in fact, I've had the experience of one vibration quite naturally changing the quality of the other—the subtle physical vibration was bringing about a sort of... almost a transformation, or in any case a noticeable change in the purely physical vibration. Page 320 That seems to be the process, or at... vibrations, and of the physical vibration almost becoming porous. It seems to be the process, or certainly one important process, for the physical transformation. ( silence ) You see, the subtle physical seems to DOSE OUT its power and light and capacity of consciousness according to the amount of receptivity in the purely physical vibration. That's why the effects stretch over a long period of ...
... and instincts of our subtle physical being which is an unrecognized but very important element and agent in our nature. Health and strength are the first conditions for the natural perfection of the body, not only muscular strength and the solid strength of the limbs and physical stamina, but the finer, alert and plastic and adaptable force which our nervous and subtle physical parts can put into the... movement, discipline are need ed and for that our physical exercises can make one ready; in others a developed individual, will, skill of mind and quick perception, force fullness of life-energy and subtle physical impulsion are more prominently needed and may even be the one sufficient trainer. All must be Page 706 included in our conception of the natural powers of the body and its capacity... fulfils the description of the Upanishad, a mental being, Purusha, leader of the life and the body. If the mind can take up and control the instincts and automatisms of the life-energy and the subtle physical conscious ness and the body, if it can enter into them, consciously use and, as we may say, fully mentalise their instinctive or spontaneous action, the perfection of these energies, their action ...
... (First supramental manifesta- tion), 111 1958 (Withdrawal to her room),130 Leaders of the way, difficulties of, 69 1959 (Discovery of Sri Aurobindo in his abode in the subtle physical), 131 Lele, 8-9 1961(Junction of body consciousness with the supreme consciousness), 134-44 Letters of Sri Aurobindo, 87 1962 (Manifestation of the supreme... 76 1969 (Consciousness of superman), 182 Life and yoga, 70 1970 (Sri Aurobindo's work is done), 191-7 Light, golden, 233 1970 (New body in the subtle physical), 206-7 Love supreme, 144-5, 149 1970 (Fight with death), 207 1972 (Second vision of the new body), 216-8 Mantra, 117-8, 132-4 1973 (Cataleptic trance... 253,254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260,261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267,268, 269, 270, 271, 272 Supramental transformation, 3, 76, 81 Sri Aurobindo's abode in the subtle physical, discovery of, 131-2 Supramental world, 119 Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2, 74, 87-8 Supramental yoga, 68 Sri Aurobindo, Nobel Prize to, 109 Supreme, 75, 103-4, 137, ...
... and instincts of our subtle physical being which is an unrecognised but very important element and agent in our nature. Health and strength are the first conditions for the natural perfection of the body, not only muscular strength and the solid strength of the limbs and physical stamina, but the finer, alert and plastic and adaptable force which bur nervous and subtle physical parts can put into the... movement, discipline are needed and for that our physical exercises can make one ready; in others a developed individual will, skill of mind and quick perception, forcefulness of life energy and subtle physical impulsion are more prominently needed and may even be the one sufficient trainer. All must be included in our conception of the natural powers of the body and its capacity and instrumental fitness... fulfils the description of the Upanishad, a mental being, Purusha, leader of the life and the body. If the mind can take up and control the instincts and automatisms of the life-energy and the subtle physical consciousness and the body, if it can enter into them, consciously use and, as we may say, fully mentalise their instinctive or spontaneous action, the perfection of these energies, their action ...
... 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 or subliminal life, which is larger and more flexible... 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 those of the vital, the... 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 of many variations, some of which we may glance at in this essay. The process seems to be simple enough, but unless we know the ...
... own subconscient. Or it might be that his subconscient was aware and had seen in the subtle physical that this was going to happen. But why did his subconscient give him an image like that? I do not know. Perhaps something in the subconscient knew, because it was already there, it was already in the subtle physical. The accident already existed before it happened—the law of the accident. Obviously... according to the plane on which one has seen, one can more or less judge the time that the vision will take to be fulfilled. And the immediate things are already realised, they already exist in the subtle physical and they can be seen there—they simply are, they exist there. They are only the reflection—not even a transcription—the reflection or projection of the image in the material world which will appear... vision. If you have a power of vision that is objective and sincere, you see the thing accurately; if you add your own feelings and impressions to it, it is coloured by them. So accuracy in the subtle physical depends exclusively on the instrument, that is to say, on the one who sees. But as soon as you enter a more subtle region, such as the vital—and even more so in the mental, but already in the ...
... dge outlines for us there is not only a subtle physical force but a subtle physical Matter intervening between life and gross Matter, and to create in this subtle physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible. It should be possible and it is believed to be possible for an object formed in this subtle physical substance to make a transit from its subtlety... of action or creation not known or possessed by the common mind of the race. Occultism means rightly the use of the higher powers of our nature, soul, mind, life-force and the faculties of the subtle physical consciousness to bring about results on their own or on the material plane by some pressure of their own secret law and its potentialities, for manifestation and result in human or earthly mind... instrumentation or procedure of Nature in this matter of propagation or the renewal of the physical life-force in human or animal beings; but the resort to occult means and the intervention of subtle physical processes, if it could be made possible, would be a greater way which could avoid the limitations, degradations, incompleteness and heavy imperfection of the means and results solely available ...
... 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 than... Mother has used the term ‘subtle physical’ for this supramental world too because this imperceptible world was so near to the for us perceptible one that she only had to make ‘a step backwards,’ in a movement of the consciousness of the cells, to pass from the one into the other, just as she had always crossed with her higher consciousness from our world into the subtle physical ones. The Mother... than the physical world’, ‘a physical which seems to me more complete.’ Once again we must beware of mixing up our terms and keep the following definitions in mind: The term ‘subtle physical’, as commonly used before the last mentioned experience from 1959, is the intermediary level of existence between gross matter and the vital which has to be traversed by everything that appears and happens ...
... within and seeing these things at their source that we can get out of this obscurity and tangle. For a larger mental being is there within us, a larger inner vital being, even a larger inner subtle-physical being other than our surface body-consciousness, and by entering into this or becoming it, identifying ourselves with it, we can observe the springs of our thoughts and feelings, the sources and... personality. For we discover and can know the inner being that secretly thinks and perceives in us, the vital being that secretly Page 552 feels and acts upon life through us, the subtle-physical being that secretly receives and responds to the contacts of things through our body and its organs. Our surface thought, feeling, emotion is a complexity and confusion of impulsions from within... studied under the name of psychic phenomena,—although they have ordinarily nothing to do with the psyche , the soul, the inmost entity in us, but only with the inner mind, the inner vital, the subtle-physical parts Page 556 of our subliminal being; but the results cannot be conclusive or sufficiently ample because they are sought for by methods of inquiry and experiment and standards of ...
... times, their mystical poetry itself would have grandly expressed occult realities with the inspiration of nothing else than the subtle physical plane, though certainly in a style different from Chaucer's or Homer's. Just as mysticism can throb out from the subtle physical, so too it can erupt from the next plane, the vital. One of the literary prodigies of our Ashram, Nishikanta, is in his Bengali... Talks on Poetry TALK FORTY-ONE 1 In talking of poetry from the subtle physical plane we took care to point out that the apparent lowest position of this plane in the hierarchy of worlds did not preclude its producing the greatest poetry. The excellence of poetry as such does not depend on the position of a plane: it depends on the intensity of vision... true meaning only to the initiate. But, mark you, the symbols are such that the most external objects seem to attract the Rishis — objects that would bulk in the mind of a poet writing from the subtle physical plane. If there had been less externality in the symbolism, Sayana's interpretation would have been impossible. In a letter to me, dated 20th October 1936, Sri Aurobindo wrote: "The Vedic times ...
... not within you!... What goes out is sometimes the subtle physical.... But usually it is the vital which goes out and still more often, the mental being." 19 The more important problem, however, is for the temporarily vacated body to be insulated from outside interference till the wandering Page 18 entity - be it the subtle physical, the vital or the mental being - returns to its tenement:... became aware that there was between the subtle-physical and the most material vital a small region, very small, which was not sufficiently developed to serve as a conscious link between the two activities. So what took place in the consciousness of the most material vital did not get translated exactly in the consciousness of the most subtle physical. Some of it got lost on the way because it... very quiet, very silent. *· I lay on the grass, like this, flat on my stomach, my elbows in the grass, and then suddenly all the life of that Nature, all the life of that region between the subtle-physical and the most material vital, which is very living in plants and in Nature, all that region became all at once, suddenly, without any transition, absolutely living, intense, conscious, marvellous ...
... theory of the occultists and in the gradation of the ranges and planes of our being which Yoga-knowledge outlines for us there is not only a subtle physical force but a subtle physical Matter intervening between life and gross Matter, and to create this subtle physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible … “A soul wishing to enter into a body or form... destined for the supramental life. These people, or at least part of their being, had already undergone a supramental transformation, for the ship itself and everything on board was neither material, subtle-physical, vital or mental: [everything consisted of] a supramental substance. This substance was of the most material supramental, the supramental substance nearest to the physical world, the first to manifest... × “Occultism means rightly the use of the higher powers of our nature, soul, mind, life-force and the faculties of the subtle physical consciousness to bring about results on their own or on the material plane by some pressure of their own secret law and its potentialities, for manifestation and results in human or earthly mind ...
... consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution. There is in it an inner mind, an inner vital being of ourselves, an inner or subtle-physical being larger than our outer being and nature. This inner existence is the concealed origin of almost all in our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient World-Energy or... the mind's documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of Page 74 entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards... experiences cease when we enter this superconscience. The Life Divine, pp. 425-27 Page 75 ...the subliminal self... is in full possession of a mind, a life-force, a clear subtle-physical sense of things. It has the same capacities as our waking being, a subtle sense and perception, a comprehensive extended memory and an intensive selecting intelligence, will, self-consciousness; ...
... mechanization of latent forces,—mental and vital — in a restricted and specialized sense. Occultism: Science of the Subliminal Consciousness Occultism is essentially the science of the subtle physical, vital and mental realities that pervade a large part of the inner being of subjective existence" and a large part of the universe in its aspects of objective vital and mental existence. According... the subliminal consciousness, higher consciousness, and the subconsciousness. The inner or subliminal consciousness, which is the central domain of occultism, consists of the awareness of the subtle physical being, inner vital being and inner mental being, as also the awareness of what is cognized by these inner beings. It is recognized that it is always difficult for surface consciousness to open... sensibility and even of conceptions. According to occult knowledge, there is in the inner realms of consciousness, a larger inner mental being, a larger inner vital being, even a larger inner subtle physical being distinguishable from surface body consciousness. Occultists in different traditions have developed varieties of methods by which one can enter into inner consciousness. If one succeeds in ...
... Future Poetry". The Future Poetry would not be written from the usual sources of the world's literature—the levels of consciousness which, according to Sri Aurobindo, may be classified: subtle-physical mind (as in Homer and Chaucer, where the inner imaginative response is mostly to external gesture, movement and action); vital mind (as in Kalidasa and Shakespeare, where the vibrant play, delicate... overhead verse, he ascribes to this verse a special virtue: "Mystic poetry can be Written from any plane, provided the writer gets an inspiration from the inner consciousness whether mind, vital or subtle physical. Naturally, the lower planes cannot express the Spirit with its full and native voice as the higher planes do unless something comes down into them from the higher planes." To this we may add from... Aurobindo often terms "the creative intelligence". Again, the same poetry draws into itself something of the Inner Mind, that many-dimensioned realm of a deeper look than the normal vision of the subtle-physical, vital or intellectual mentality. There are glimpses too of the "occult", snatches of a poetry communicating from the inner consciousness a pattern of delicately suggestive or dynamically piercing ...
... an immense potency for the earth-life. Again behind our mind, our life, our conscious physical there is a larger subliminal consciousness, — there are inner mental, inner vital, inner more subtle physical reaches supported by an inmost psychic existence which is the connecting soul of all the rest; and in these hidden reaches too lie a mass of numerous pre-existent personalities which supply the... rest of existence is thin and easily broken; there we can feel at once — not merely infer from their results, but feel directly the action of the secret world-forces, mind-forces, life-forces, subtle physical forces that constitute universal and individual existence; we shall even be able, if we will but train ourselves to it, to lay our hands on these world-forces that throw themselves on us or surround... the body: this is his normal type of personality, but it is crossed, however feebly, with influences by which he can proceed, if they are developed, to a higher human evolution. If the inner subtle-physical Purusha insists, he can arrive at the idea of a finer, more beautiful and perfect physical life and hope or attempt to realise it in his own or in the collective or group existence. In others ...
... limited by the body and the habits of the external nature, to go within, to enter the inner mental depths, the inner vital, the inner (subtle) physical, the psychic, to become conscious of its inmost psychic self or its inner mental, vital and subtle physical being and, it may be, to move and live in the domains, the planes, the worlds that correspond to these parts of the nature. This is what happened... I think that what happened was simply this—that, just as before your inner vital and inner mental came to the front in the inward-going consciousness, so this time it was the inner (subtle) physical being that manifested itself. The outer body was numb, the inner body able to move; the breathing with the name flowing in it was the breathing of this inner physical being. Mark that all three ...
... plane, they are there in a latent state, something like a piece of music that is recorded without being played. When I need to know with my physical consciousness, I make the contact with the subtle physical plane and the disc begins to turn. Then I see how things are, their development in time, the actual result.’ 31 What is an emanation of the Mother? Sri Aurobindo explained: ‘The Emanation... anyone. But she does not care to do that on a general scale.’ 38 The Mother once said with a smile that time after time sadhaks who wanted to hide something from her came to her in the subtle physical telling her themselves what they were not going to tell her! And she spoke the following words, so limpid in their simplicity: ‘Do not try to appear virtuous. See how much you are united, one,... the Mother would go into a trance. In the course of her trance her arms would stretch forward over the soup-cauldron. For a minute they would remain there as if she were pouring something of her subtle-physical spirituality into the liquid … Then the Mother would open her eyes and Champaklal would remove the cauldron to one side and give her a big spoon. Each of us in turn would go and kneel before her ...
... become not just a general influence: he has taken his station in the subtle-physical plane and will remain there until his work is completed. The Mother too is surely poised on the same plane to work along with the Master towards the fulfilment of their mission. Besides, we have had the Supermind partially manifested in the subtle-physical layer of the earth since 29 February 1956 and pressing gradually... I 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 ...
... devotees of Sri Aurobindo would go to the subtle-physical plane where, according to the Mother, the Master after he had passed away would remain until his work was done. The Mother used the words "earth's atmosphere" for the subtle-physical plane. You may remember that she employed the same words in speaking of the Supramental Manifestation on earth. The subtle-physical plane is the earth's inner counterpart ...
... 'No! It is finished— I want life, I want nothing else.' And then things are getting better since." From Questions and Answers of 1956, 3 the year of the Supermind's Manifestation in the subtle-physical, we may cull: "What Sri Aurobindo promised and what naturally interests us, we who are here now, is that the time has come when some beings among the elite of humanity, who fulfil the conditions... of matter in her own body and added: "This transformed bodily mind has survived the death of her body." It is the last phrase which is revelatory. Not only the transformed vital being and the subtle-physical have survived her body's death and been assimilated into her new mode of existence and accompany her supramental form: even the bodily mind, by being transformed to a considerable degree, has been... Aurobindo and she had made. But, just as Sri Aurobindo found that he could work for the goal better by leaving his body and concentrating everything in the Mother's, and himself acting from the subtle-physical plane, so too she found that she could fulfil his Yoga of Supramental Descent and Transformation better by taking up into her supramental body the greatest victory of this Yoga—sufficient if not ...
... immediate programme of a physical transformation is postponed — not cancelled. But what we have been given is not less of a miracle. Mother has prepared for us her new body in the inner world, in the subtle physical which is as living and tangible as her physical body even though not as concrete. In one of her last Notes [ Notes on the Way ] she refers to this new transformed body and she describes it as presented... and around us in the world, incessantly, towards the final consummation of its material embodiment.’ From this text the following points can be filtered: 1. the Mother had a new body in the subtle physical; as Nolini refers to the Notes on the Way, in the previous chapter, he can only mean her supramental body, and when he writes ‘not as concrete,’ he intends to say: to us not as concrete as... the other, the real one. The two bodies were existing at the same time, she said, in two still separate worlds. ‘It is as if the physical had become double,’ and we know that she experienced the subtle physical as much more real than the gross physical. Her visible body was like an empty shell, she said, with that enormous Power inside. ‘It is as if a superhuman Power wants to manifest through millennia ...
... passage describing Aswapati's progress through the subtle physical, vital and mental worlds towards the Overmind which is far yet from being either complete or au point . It was only a brief interlude of a few lines formerly, but I had been lengthening it out afterwards with much difficulty in getting it right. I have now got the subtle physical and lower vital worlds into some kind of order, but... and feeling which disregards the mind's positive view of things and its logical sequences; the centre or centres it knocks at are not the brain-mind, not even the poetic intelligence but the subtle physical, the nervous, the vital or the psychic centre. The poem he quotes from Blake is certainly not nonsense, but it has no positive and exact meaning for the intellect or the surface mind; it expresses ...
... Or else, it may be, the part of our mind which still remains active in the sleep of the body has entered into the inner domains of our being, the subliminal mental, the subliminal vital, the subtle-physical, and is there lost to all active connection with the surface parts of us. If we are still in the nearer depths of these regions, the surface subconscient which is our sleep-wakefulness records... consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution. There is in it an inner mind, an inner vital being of ourselves, an inner or subtle-physical being larger than our outer being and nature. This inner existence is the concealed origin of almost all in our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient World-Energy or... convey forms of objects for the mind's documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution ...
... inner vital, subtle physical being subliminal in us and are not at all direct operations of the psyche. Even such phenomena as materialisation and dematerialisation are included, though, if established, they evidently are not soul-action and would not shed any light upon the nature or existence of the psychic entity, but would rather be an abnormal action of an occult subtle physical energy intervening... transcendence, it is yet its deputy in the forms of Nature, the individual soul, Page 238 caitya puruṣa , supporting mind, life and body, standing behind . the mental, the vital, the subtle-physical being in us and watching and profiting by their development and experience. These other person-powers in man, these beings of his being, are also veiled in their true entity, but they put forward ...
... or spiritual beings who surround you and live upon your experiences and enjoyments" [ p. 1377 ]. What are these "spiritual beings"? They are powers, forces or beings of the mental, vital or subtle physical worlds. There are some that simply want to utilise, there are others that want to possess, oppose or destroy and are known by us as "the hostile forces". 14 April 1936 What does the author... write in The Riddle of This World: "Very readily they come to think that they are in the full cosmic consciousness when it is only some front or small part of it or some larger Mind, Life-Power or subtle physical ranges with which they have entered into dynamic connection" [p. 37]. What is meant here by "larger Mind"? It means simply larger than the limited personal mind. It is a play of some combination... knowledge, all Ananda" [p. 13]. Does this imply that the true vital belongs to the cosmic or supracosmic consciousness? If not, how can it have such qualities? The true being mental, vital or subtle physical has always the greater qualities of its plane—it is the Purusha and like the psychic, though in another way, the projection of the Divine, therefore in connection with the Higher Consciousness ...
... beyond the body; we have seen that even the subtle physical which is yet material compared with the vital being and in certain conditions almost visible, extends at times considerably beyond the visible limits of the physical body. This subtle physical is constituted of active vibrations which enter into contact or mingle with the vibrations of the subtle physical of others, and this reciprocal contact ...
... aware that there was between the subtle-physical and the most material vital a small region, very small, which was not sufficiently developed to serve as a conscious link between the two activities. So what took place in the Page 186 consciousness of the most material vital did not get translated exactly in the consciousness of the most subtle physical. Some of it got lost on the way because... place, very quiet, very silent. I lay on the grass, like this, flat on my stomach, my elbows in the grass, and then suddenly all the life of that Nature, all the life of that region between the subtle-physical and the most material vital, which is very living in plants and in Nature, all that region became all at once, suddenly, without any transition, absolutely living, intense, conscious, marvellous; ...
... but of an immense potency for the earth-life. Again behind our mind, our life, our conscious physical there is a larger subliminal consciousness,—there are inner mental, inner vital, inner more subtle physical reaches supported by an inmost psychic existence which is the animating soul of all the rest; and in these hidden reaches too lie a mass of numerous pre-existent personalities which supply the... the rest of existence is thin and easily broken; there we can feel at once—not merely infer from their results, but feel directly—the action of the secret world-forces, mind-forces, life-forces, subtle physical forces that constitute universal and individual existence; we shall even be able, if we will but train ourselves to it, to lay our hands on these world-forces that throw themselves on us or surround... habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives ...
... inner vital, subtle physical being subliminal in us and are not at all direct operations of the psyche. Even such phenomena as materialisation and dematerialisation are included, though, if established, they evidently are not soul-action and would not shed any light upon the nature or existence of the psychic entity, but would rather be an abnormal action of an occult subtle physical energy intervening... its universality and transcendence, it is yet its deputy in the forms of Nature, the individual soul, caitya puruṣa , supporting mind, life and body, standing behind the mental, the vital, the subtle-physical being in us and watching and profiting by their development and experience. These other person-powers in man, these beings of his being, are also veiled in their true entity, but they put forward ...
... s. I've known some downright stupid girls who could exteriorize remarkably well and be fully conscious of their experiences in the subtle physical or the mind or the material vital (when one is undeveloped it's more often in the material vital than the subtle physical). And they would tell you all about what they saw. But incapable of yoga. Nature's fancies, I tell you. Too bad she has no such... or bacteria. They are frequently classified as "mental illnesses," "nervous disorders," etc., and they result from that inner discrepancy. ( Then Satprem reads a passage relating to the "subtle physical" and exteriorization; among other things, he cites the experience of D., who, when he exteriorized for the first time, was unable to get back into his body because he tried to reenter through the ...
... the same place? There are many different places, many. It may be in the subtle physical, for all of you live in my physical atmosphere and so it is in the subtle physical that you see me most often. And there you feel that what you see is almost material, but with a slight distortion. Because it is the subtle physical, you can quite easily remember what you have Page 329 seen. Very ...
... cremation ground], and then it's fire in the mouth—FULLY conscious. I have lived this in recent days. I have seen it. Last night or the night before, I spent at least two hours in a world—the subtle physical world—where the living mingle with the dead with no sense of difference, it makes absolutely no difference there. For instance, when Mridu 1 was in her body I used to see her at night maybe... were about to explode. So I said, "All right now, let's go see Sri Aurobindo and ask him what to do." Immediately everything became utterly calm... and I woke up in Sri Aurobindo's house in the subtle physical—a very material sensation, with everything Page 378 quite concrete. So I arrived, or rather not I but the body-consciousness arrived 2 and started explaining to Sri Aurobindo what... is it really.... Page 379 It depends on us! Personally, you know, I have come to feel Him everywhere, all the time, all the time, to the point of actual physical contact (it's subtle physical, but physical): in things, in the air, in people, in... like this ( Mother presses her hands against her face ). So I don't have far to go! I just have to do this ( Mother turns her hands slightly ...
... would need to have a lot of patience!... ( silence ) What do you have to ask, or to say?... There is no need to "ask"—tell me something. How can one make conscious contact with this subtle physical? That, mon petit, I have no idea, because I never did it deliberately! ( Mother laughs ) It came on its own. Now, very strangely, there are times when both are there, and then... A good... I'll see one landscape or another, and it all changes and moves about... with a net between me and the landscapes, like that.... The net seems to be... (how can I explain?) what separates this subtle physical from the ordinary physical. But what does this net represent? I don't know... You see, there is no mentalization, there are no explanations, there's no thought, no reasoning, all that is clearly... themselves when the dual vision is there. ( silence ) Nights are very peculiar. And precisely because all that isn't mentalized, it's hardly possible to describe or explain.... But this subtle physical very concretely has the sense or feeling or perception (I don't know) of the divine Presence—the divine Presence in all things, everywhere. So then, this body is... one might say, partly this way ...
... consciousness, — all of which are above the physical, subtle-physical, vital and mental domains of existence. In strict terms, the field which makes yoga distinctive is its field of psychic consciousness, spiritual consciousness and supramental consciousness. It is true, however, that yogic quest is often prefaced by an entry into the fields of subtle-physical, inner vital and inner mental, — even as, yogic... of the human intelligence. But what is distinctly called occultism, in the present stage of development of knowledge, is related to the phenomena and realities of supra-physical ranges of the subtle-physical, subliminal vital and subliminal mental, as they are found in human psychology or in worlds that are supra— physical but which have their own organisations and complex formations of existence and ...
... dreadful pain — it was as if my whole body were being torn apart …and it was always Sri Aurobindo who was there to guide me. Since He left His body so many years ago, He has been working in the subtle physical to prepare the descent of the Supramental world. He has arranged everything so that this work of transformation is accomplished upon earth. And now I realise that without His help, how miserably... unknown realisations. And a single decision: that the work for hastening the descent of the Supramental world would be done faster if He left the body in order to work more effectively in the subtle physical. And at once He left His body behind and launched Himself to conquer this domain of the subtle world which still resisted. It was not the perception of the unreality of life that made Him leave... 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 transformed; but the physical, the material body takes a long time. It persists in following its habits and it is very difficult to get rid of them. But Mother, if ...
... Chattopadhyaya. Both these predictions have become facts today. One can see beforehand things that happen in the physical. One can see them on the vital plane or on the subtle physical, — but the subtle physical foreseeing is usually more exact and sure. The Mother's Force has started working in my ears! Often it closes them as if with some physical substance. Then I feel... smell also accompanied me. Once you wrote to me that each person has a special subtle smell different from others'. Was the experience something of the kind? It is simply that the subtle physical sense has been developed and you feel H near although he is not physically present — with that comes the smell. I had just closed my eyes — but was not asleep. Suddenly I saw a ...
... the other parts that constitute the terrestrial life. They are Page 62 dispersed and dissolved in their respective cosmic 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... about to germinate. The psychic being is a packet of gathered power, a charged battery, as it were; when it comes down upon earth, it calls round itself elements of mind and vital and even subtle physical needed for the purpose of the particular life experience, and even those that would go to constitute the physical body. The psychic Page 69 being usually picks up these elements... gods in the Overmind. Thence or simultaneously there is the line of deformation, that of the false gods and godheads, the Asuras and Titans. These too extend in a series of emanations down to the subtle physical; except when they themselves incarnate on the earth in an earthly body. Man, the soul, we said, comes direct from the Divine and is thrown and almost stuck into the earth as a spark, as ...
... what the difference is. There's a difference ... it's thin, you don't feel it's something thick or heavy: it's thin. It was really remarkable, one would have been unable to say, “This is the subtle physical [the other state], and that, is the material physical.” It was ... it was surprisingly ONE WITHIN THE OTHER. You don't get the impression of TWO things and yet it's very different — it seems to... experience progressed over the years, that “other” world was no longer “other” at all: it was our very own, with our eyes wide open, but seen and lived differently. After having called it the “subtle physical,” Mother slipped into another terminology, then another, and she called it the true physical, true matter — the other state in matter.... But it was simply tomorrows earth, as land might be to... widened and became more and more natural. In 1962: 62.1210 People are quick to say: “They're dead!...” I lived that over the last few days. I spent at least two hours in a world which is the subtle physical [always this changing vocabulary], where the living mingle with the dead with no sense of difference! It makes no difference. There were the living, there were the ... what we call the “living” ...
... being within them because the dwelling-place is not ready. What goes out is sometimes the subtle physical, this is when one sees one's body stretched out—for the physical vision to remain conscious, it must be a very material part of the being which goes out; one must go out very materially in the subtle physical body or in the most material vital. But usually it is the vital which goes out and still... it and I gave it a good scolding, saying, "You must not play such tricks with me!" Many people faint like this and see themselves. There is one condition for this: the organ of sight in the subtle physical body or in the most material vital must be developed. I must tell you that this kind of capacity may come spontaneously, without effort—one may be a born clairvoyant. They are not necessarily... material, have an independent consciousness. Hence when you go to sleep dead tired, when your physical body needs rest absolutely, your physical consciousness sleeps, while the consciousness of your subtle physical body or your vital or of your mind does not sleep, it continues its activity; but your physical consciousness is separated from the body, it is asleep in a state of unconsciousness, and then the ...
... and instincts of our subtle physical being which is an unrecognised but very important element and agent in our nature. Health and strength are the first condi- tions for the natural perfection of the body, not only muscular strength and the solid strength of the limbs and physical stamina, but the 6ner, alert and plastic and adaptable force which our nervous and subtle physical parts can put into the... movement, discipline are needed and for that our physical exercises can make one ready; in others a developed individual will, skill of mind and quick perception, forcefulness of life-energy and subtle physical impulsion are more prominently needed and may even be the one suScient trainer. All must be included in our conception of the natural powers of the body and its capacity and instrumental fitness... fulfils the description of the Upanishad, a mental being, Purusha, leader of the life and the body. If the mind can take up and control the instincts and automatisms of the life-energy and the subtle physical consciousness and the body, if it can enter into them, consciously use and, as we may say, fully mentalise their instinctive or spontaneous action, the perfection of these energies, their action ...
... and this removes a very fundamental obstacle from the sadhana. The Gross Physical and the Subtle Physical By the gross physical is meant the earthly and bodily physical Page 210 —as experienced by the outward sense mind and senses. But that is not the whole of Matter. There is a subtle physical also with a subtler consciousness in it which can (for instance) go to a distance from the... can feel the adverse forces trying to break through it and can interfere, stop them or reinforce the nervous envelope. Or we can feel the symptoms of illness, fever or cold for instance, in the subtle physical sheath before they are manifest in the gross body and destroy them there, preventing them from manifesting in the body. Take now the call for the Divine Power, Light, Ananda. If we live only in... not merely mental or vital way. As for mind and vital they are everywhere—there is an obscure mind and life even in the cells of the body, the stones or in molecules and atoms. It [ the subtle physical ] is difficult to realise without definite experience, e.g. as when light or ananda or force come into the body and one feels it working as if in the cells, yet with a little attention it becomes ...
... formations, mental, vital, subtle physical, and whatever one forms or is formed by the forces of these worlds in us becomes for the sadhak for a time the truth—unless he is guided and listens to his guide. Afterwards if he gets through he discovers what it was and passes on into the subtle truth of things. It is a borderland where all the worlds meet, mental, vital, subtle physical, pseudo-spiritual—but... Page 297 realisation. Very readily they come to think that they are in the full cosmic consciousness when it is only some front or small part of it or some larger Mind, Life-Power or subtle physical ranges with which they have entered into dynamic connection. Or they feel themselves to be in an entirely illumined consciousness, while in reality they are receiving imperfectly things from above... whole action of the cosmic consciousness, but one can at first have only an indirect connection with it; things come down from it through intermediate ranges into a larger mind-plane, life-plane, subtle physical plane and come very much changed and diminished in the transmission, without anything like the full power and truth they have in the Overmind itself on its native levels. Most of the movements ...
... details (but interesting from the standpoint of action, you understand, of what is done, how it is done). Is it in the subtle physical, that place where the living and the dead are together? Yes. But are things to go in the direction of a materialisation of the subtle physical? No. That can't be materialized, it would be impossible!... I think it's a means of action, that is to say, it responds... of consciousness? Page 210 Maybe, yes.... What's trying to take place is a stronger and more direct influence on purely material circumstances.... Yes, this is it: action on this subtle physical has an effect according to the laws of the material world in the material world. You see, amidst many other things (it lasted a long time and was a very complex thing), but as one example amidst... him as if he were present, not as if he had left. ( long silence ) Do you have anything to ask? I was wondering about something. The other day, I asked you how to gain access to this subtle physical. But from what you've now said, do we gain access to this world through work activities, as it were?... Is it a world for work, as it were? 1 THIS ONE, yes.... I'd have to see several different ...
... change radically. When both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had left their bodies, I could still feel their presence. Perhaps because their subtle physical was said to have extended a number of miles beyond their bodies. I remember being told that their subtle physical auras extended up to the Lake Estate, several miles away. So it may be said that they hold us close to them even at a great distance. ... death and decay was the last victory of the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother for the earth and it is from the subtle physical plane that this work continues until it is completed. [1] Amal said that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have a “home”, an actual “abode”, on the subtle physical plane. Many ashramites have “visited” this plane and have seen them there. After this discussion silence fell ...
... He has a permanent home in the subtle physical—(the region closest to the earth—physical) where all those who wish to see Him can go and see Him. What form has He got? There in the subtle physical, His form is similar to the one He had upon earth, but with the splendid peace of immortality. What sort of world is the subtle physical? This subtle physical or true physical) is a world where ...
... Agenda 1967 December 6, 1967 I saw you last night. Oh, yes? Do you remember? ... No. We were in the subtle physical. I saw lots of people: Purani ( a departed disciple ) and so on, people who are no longer on earth. It was in Sri Aurobindo's ... not his house, but his domain. I saw and did lots of things. There... people who are no longer on earth: they were all together. And at the end (for many details Sri Aurobindo was there, then he left), at the end I looked at all that, and for the first time in the subtle physical, I said, "Oh, how insipid and useless and without zest your life is, when you don't think of the Divine." The experience was so acute! So acute. Then I said (among the people there, there was... without this intensity of aspiration, of the NEED to be divine. It's the first time. In the past, when I went to all those regions, there were always very interesting things; and in the subtle physical, as a rule I was always with Sri Aurobindo—I was with Sri Aurobindo, but he withdrew to a part of his domain and I remained with all the others: they had an easy life, you know, carefree, and all ...
... goes on perfecting itself, if each passing year represents a step in progress, then you can continue indefinitely...." After the Supramental Manifestation on 29 February 1956 in the subtle-physical layer of the earth her hopes took a still more concrete shape. No doubt, she did not envisage a quick change in general world-conditions and said on 5 September of the same year: "Before the... a subtle perfection of shape — "sexless ... very white... very slim... pretty... truly a harmonious form".¹ She exclaims: "If that were to materialise..." Apparently, all was ready on the subtle-physical plane to precipitate itself in the gross; but the mode of precipitation, the technique for materialising the new body, was unknown. Feeling acutely the disparity between the waiting future ... Mother's. Although the Supermind had been already present in the body by 1938 Page 223 in the sense that it had descended into the embodied complex of mental, vital and subtle-physical beings, it descended in 1938 into the outer physical being for the first time. What could not be done then was to fix it there. In 1950 Sri Aurobindo gave up his body in a strategic self-sacrifice ...
... necessity of one of them abandoning the body and Sri Aurobindo chose to withdraw from his physical sheath on December 5, he began to operate from behind the scene as a power of manifestation from the subtle-physical plane where he had established himself and as a power of evolution from the Inconscient where he had thrust the antennae of his consciousness through the dissolution of his semi-illuminated gr... is this fulfilment to be now conceived?" There are only two modes of conceiving it. One is with reference to the "new body" which the Mother spoke of on several occasions as existing in the subtle-physical plane and acting upon the body in the gross-physical with a view to emerge into it and materially manifest a corps glorieux, "a body of glory", a divinely radiant form. The gross-physical, in... Page 148 insight into the transformation she was undergoing. On the one side the transformation was meant to render the gross-physical form increasingly subtle by the action of the subtle-physical Supramental Shape, so that it might be fit to house the latter. On the other side the transformation was meant to render this Shape increasingly dense by the reaction on it of the gross-physical ...
... eyes to see the passage to heaven: for he that thinks that this world is and there is no other, comes again and again into Death's thraldom" 28 . According to the yogic science, there exist the subtle physical world and the vital world and the mental world and even higher worlds, the world of the Overmind, the world of the Supermind, and still the worlds of Sachchidananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss)... contacts which our surface-being maintains with the universe with the sense-mind and the senses. As Sri Aurobindo explains: "The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution... scope, it can no longer see truth even as in a dream, but passes into blank incomprehension and non-reception of slumber. Subliminal consciousness opens itself up to larger worlds of the subtle-physical, vital and mental worlds, but the experiences of these worlds are similar to the experiences which come under the scope of our ordinary physical, vital, Page 40 mental consciousness ...
... According to Sri Aurobindo, the individual soul, after the death of the body, travels along with its subtle physical, vital and mental sheaths into different worlds which are other than the world of physical existence; after this intermediary travel, having shed the subtle physical sheath in the subtle physical world, vital sheath in the vital world, and mental sheath in the mental world and rest in its own... inherent life and is able to conduct a journey. When the psychic being leaves the body on the death of the body, it carries three elements with it, namely, the mental being, the vital being and the subtle physical being which were developed in the body during its life. The departing soul at the time of death chooses what it will work out in the next birth and determines the character and condition of the ...
... AUROBINDO IN THE SUBTLE PHYSICAL Bonjour! Bonjour, Douce Mère. (Mother asks for my notebook) Your notebook … ( She reads and then says: ) … this is a thing that is happening constantly. Each day there are thousands who die and many others who are born. This is a thing that happens constantly and Sri Aurobindo is occupied with all this. He is in the subtle physical and constantly people... people who die come to Him and also He decides who will come back. It is something common…. It is a thing that goes on constantly in the subtle physical. He is preparing souls who shall reincarnate…. But, Mother, is it that Sri Aurobindo wants to reincarnate? No, my child, not so soon. He has already said that He will come back only with the first Supramental body. The first Supramental body... reincarnation…. (Mother writes:) Comme Sri Aurobindo est dans le physique subtil tout le temps il s’occupe de gens qui s’en vont et de ceux qui reviennent. [As Sri Aurobindo is in the subtle physical all the time He takes care of people who go away and those who come back.] Good … what is it? Mother, write something here (showing the facing page). You want me to write my blessings here ...
... direct, continuous communication with all the parts of your being, you would remember all your dreams. But very few parts of the being are in communication. For example, you have a dream in the subtle physical, that is to say, quite close to the physical. Generally, these dreams occur in the early hours of the morning, that is between four and five o'clock, at the end of the sleep. If you do not make... make a sudden movement when you wake up, if you remain very quiet, very still and a little attentive—quietly attentive—and concentrated, you will remember them, for the communication between the subtle physical and the physical is established—very rarely is there no communication. Now, dreams are mostly forgotten because you have a dream while in a certain state and then pass into another. For instance... taken a good stroll, needs to rest also, and so it goes into repose and quietness, quite tired at the end of all kinds of adventures. Then something else wakes up. Let us suppose that it is the subtle physical that goes for a walk. It starts moving and begins wandering, seeing the rooms and... why, this thing that was there, but it has come here and that other thing which was in that room is now in this ...
... physical or subtle physical, and he has said that they co-exist with the ordinary mind, vital and physical, and that in certain conditions one may enter into contact with them, and then one becomes aware of the difference between what really is and the appearances of things. Well, for a developed consciousness, the Supermind is already realised somewhere in a domain of the subtle physical, it already... with it. It is possible that those who are conscious of their dreams may have dreams of a new kind which put them into contact Page 291 with that world, for it is accessible to the subtle physical of all those who have the corresponding organs in themselves. And there is necessarily a subtle influence of this physical on outer matter, if one is ready to receive impressions from it and admit ...
... It was the first time and it was in the night, the day before yesterday. And last night I saw nothing—that was the first and only time till now. But it was so in the subtle physical? It must have been so in the subtle physical. But how will that pass into the physical? Page 302 There! I do not know... I do not know. I do not know. Also, it was clear that there should not be... sees oneself. And there was a kind of veil that I had put on just to cover myself. It was a mode of being, not surprising to me, it was a natural mode of being. It must be like that in the subtle physical. No, what seems mysterious is the transit from one to the other. Yes, how? But it is the same mystery as the passage from the chimpanzee to a man. Oh no! It is much more tremendous ...
... Experiences on the Inner Planes Letters on Yoga - III Chapter I Experiences on the Subtle Physical, 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... different arrangement of things, by such details as the third arm and the book marker removed yet there; but they show also that it is a subtle world very near to the physical; it is either a subtle physical world or a very material vital domain. In all the subtle domains the physical is reproduced with a change, the change growing freer and more elastic as one gets farther away. Such details as the ...
... Future Poetry". The Future Poetry would not be written from the usual sources of the world's literature—the levels of consciousness which, according to Sri Aurobindo, may be classified: subtle-physical mind (as in Homer and Chaucer, where the inner imaginative response is mostly to external gesture, movement and action); vital mind (as in Kalidasa and Shakespeare, where the vibrant play, delicate... overhead verse, he ascribes to this verse a special virtue: "Mystic poetry can be written from any plane, provided the writer gets an inspiration from the inner consciousness whether mind, vital or subtle physical. Naturally, the lower planes cannot express the Spirit with its full and native voice as the higher planes do unless something comes down into them from the higher planes." To this we may add from... Aurobindo often terms "the creative intelligence". Again, the same poetry draws into itself something of the Inner Mind, that many-dimensioned realm of a deeper look than the normal vision of the subtle-physical, vital or intellectual mentality. There are glimpses too of the "occult", snatches of a poetry communicating from the inner consciousness a pattern of delicately suggestive or dynamically piercing ...
... and space they are essentially of the same kind. All subtle bodies go beyond the temporal and spatial conditions under which the gross body operates. Even the bodies which Sri Aurobindo calls subtle-physical, vital, mental and which many Yogis have brought into action exceed our laws of time and space. But all of them can act under our conditions and manifest in relation to the gross body. Indeed they... him in bodily shape, like a dove." 80 The very terms chosen by Luke 1:35 in the angel Gabriel's prediction of how Mary would conceive Jesus virginally seem in that particular context to bear subtle-physical male-ish overtones: as Brown's version in The Virginal Conception (p. 29 and fn. 35) has it, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you... and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow... Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss And mad'st it pregnant.... Milton is writing in consonance with the early Christians' imaginative tendency to give a supernatural power a subtle-physical form and a personal-looking function. This tendency the early Christians continued from both their Jewish and their Hellenistic backgrounds and it is specially active in the Jews' outlook ...
... one of my legs? She had added that only the Supermind's power would be able to effect the cure, which meant my waiting for the Supramental descent into her outermost substance. Right down to the subtle-physical which lies behind this substance the new Consciousness had made its appearance. In a letter of August 1936, after affirming that "perfection on the physical plane is indeed part of the ideal of... mention of the manifestation of Page 104 the Supermind's Consciousness, Light and Force, though not yet its "Ananda", in the earth's atmosphere, meaning by the last expression the subtle-physical layer of the earth. This declaration gave us to understand that now the Supermind had taken the first fundamental step to become an organic part of the earth's evolution and would eventually manifest... at last. The obedience which had been noted was not to her attendants but to her own transcendent Self. We may be certain that the decision was sealed also by the Will of Sri Aurobindo from the subtle-physical plane where, according to a message of hers to us in the wake of his departure, he had established himself to help the aspiring world reach the golden future he had prophesied for it. If ever ...
... powerful and more disorderly than the corresponding poetry in other countries. Sri Aurobindo 13 speaks of the poetry of the life-spirit as "the pure and genuine romanticism". The poetry of the subtle-physical plane or of the creative Intelligence may contain a Romantic strain and, of course, all poetry of the life-motive (to quote another term of Sri Aurobindo's) is not necessarily Romantic any more... The poetic work done in the beginning of the nineteenth century and usually called Romantic is entitled to that name because of complex factors at play which are lacking in the creations of the subtle-physical or of the Classically mental plane and Sri Aurobindo does refer to it as "Romanticism of the modern type"; 14 yet for him the speci- Page 49 fically Romantic remains a certain... the source and, not only the point of reference, but the utility of all else" . 17 This element can, of course, find articulation on various planes, colouring each with its own genius. On the subtle-physical, it would create a poetry teeming with an externality of observation, like Chau-cer's. On the mental, its creation, unlike what was done through Milton in the main, would not be "a clear, measured ...
... (those I always see, who are always there), I was there with them when that black man, or that black BEING... There was no roof; it was a small place with walls, but without a roof (it was in the subtle physical). So that black being came, ripped off a huge piece of wall (the wall was built with big bricks), a huge piece of wall, and from above (he was above me), he threw it at my stomach.... I felt it... I don't think so. You don't know... I saw a flash of lightning outside before going to sleep, so I thought maybe... But I am not sure; the thunderclap too may have taken place in the subtle physical.... It fell like this ( Mother strikes her stomach ). I felt it fall ( Mother smiles ), I smiled and said, "He can't!" ( Mother laughs ) And it didn't hurt me in the Page 365 least... long story This morning I still remembered; now I don't. But it was interesting. It's the first time such a thing has happened to me; it's the first time someone has managed to harm me in the subtle physical—he didn't harm me, but he pulled off his attack. ( silence ) But it's odd.... For instance, when the body received the thing (there was a shock), not for a minute did it have... (fear, there's ...
... time it happened, it was the night before last; but last night I didn't see anything. That was the first and the last time so far. But this form is in the subtle physical, isn't it? It must be already like that in the subtle physical. But how will it pass into the physical? That's the question I don't know.... I don't know. I don't know. Also, clearly there was none of the complex... in the mirror. And I had a sort of veil, which I wore to cover myself. It was my way of being (there was nothing surprising in it), my natural way of being. That must be how it is in the subtle physical. But what's mysterious is the transition from one to the other. Yes—how? But it's the same mystery as the transition from chimpanzee to man. Oh, no, Mother! It's more colossal than ...
... The Rainbow Sri Aurobindo's Home in the Subtle-Physical A LETTER TO THE MOTHER WITH THE MOTHER'S REPLY The Letter Last night Amal told me that you had spoken of "a permanent home of Sri Aurobindo in the subtle-physical". At once my mind went back to a dream in last September. This is how... With its aureate roof and mosaic floors In a great world bare and bright. 27.2.1963 SEHRA The Mother's Reply It is certainly part of His permanent home in the subtle-physical — a part of it only. Once, surely, you will meet Him there. Page 203 ...
... s from the diverse planes are to be brought under a general heading, the common factor in them must be considered their essence and this factor can only be a many-moded aesthesis. It is subtle-physical aesthesis that makes Homeric poetry, vital aesthesis that makes the poetry of Shakespeare, mental aesthesis that makes the poetry which is Miltonic and Overmind aesthesis that makes the ... particular plane cannot help entering into all its expression does not give to the expression which is poetical on this plane any other essence than aesthesis. Neither the mental nor vital nor subtle-physical plane is solely concerned with aesthesis: they have their own typical dealings which enter into their poetry, even as those of the Overmind enter into its — and yet it is not these typical... relation to poetical quality? If poetry's essence is some kind or other of aesthesis, is the Overmind poetry superior, qua poetry, to the creations of the Muse from the mental, vital or subtle- physical planes? The epithets used by you would seem at the first blush to imply superiority for it. But I believe that they refer to the spiritually greater, wider and deeper nature of the plane ...
... have a dream in the subtle physical, that is to say, quite close to the physical. Generally, these dreams occur in the early hours of the morning, that is between four and five o'clock, at the end of the sleep. If you do not make a sudden movement when you wake up, if you remain very quiet... and concentrated, you will remember them, for the communication between the subtle physical and the physical is... it. You must not move brusquely... then you remember. After a time, the vital having taken a good stroll ... goes into repose.... Then, something else wakes up. Let us suppose that it is the subtle physical that goes for a walk. It starts moving and begins wandering... But this has pushed away far to the back of the consciousness all the stories of the vital. They are forgotten and so you cannot recollect ...
... not many heads and arms—this is a vital symbolism, it is not necessary in other planes. This figure may have belonged to the subtle physical plane. The many-headed or many-armed figures belong usually to the vital plane.... The world you see is in some subtle physical plane where men see the gods according to their own idea and images of them. It is the vital plane—probably the vital physical... when the subtle vision is well developed that the precise and full seeing lasts for a long-time. It is not, usually, the object that vanishes; it is the consciousness that changes.... This subtle physical vision comes easiest in the moment between light sleep and waking. When the colours begin to take definite shapes in the visions, it is a sign of some dynamic work of formation in the consciousness; ...
... very tall—what has happened?... It is the new being. I tell you, since the 12th [of April] there is.... When is it going to manifest in the physical? I don't know. It is a subtle-physical being—not a vital but a subtle-physical being, and I am tall and strong. Tell her she's not the only one who sees me this way—many do. When I see myself at night, that's how I see myself. Perhaps... well, this... her body ) would have to yield. But when? I don't know. Ageless—something neither young nor old nor... something totally different. And tall, strong. That's how I see myself. And it is subtle-physical. You can tell her. "It's peculiar," she says, "since March I have been seeing Mother taller." Yes, something has come and wants to manifest here, so I am being prepared, I see plainly that ...
... with a start ) This isn't 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 ...
... Laughing ) They do useless things with great seriousness! ( silence ) Oh, what a beautiful forest, mon petit! They must be the forests of... It's between the subtle physical and the vital, as if joining the two—the subtle physical to the vital. Trees as I have only seen in Japan; trees rising straight like columns, planted in rows—magnificent! With light-colored grass, very light, pale green... in another wave of suggestion: everything is charming; you are in another wave: everything is magnificent. Like that. It's odd. Like worlds that exist through suggestion. And it's between the subtle physical and the material vital, like this ( Mother presses her right hand against her left one ), as close as can be. I have an idea that there also exists a world of medicines which is like that! Because ...
... of me, and stays for at least five minutes like that [absorbing energies]... like a sponge. ( silence ) Do you have anything to say? Last time, you spoke about the subtle physical—about sleep and the subtle physical.... Yes. Then you told me... Yes, yes, I haven't forgotten! I must be dense because... So then? Well, yes, I am dense! ( after a long silence ) ... long process and one has to be patient. Yes, yes. ( silence ) There's a new phenomenon during the night. One phenomenon was there before, but has grown more precise: it's a place in the subtle physical where those with a body and those without a body are mingled without difference. They have the same reality, the same density and the same conscious, independent existence. There I see... Last ...
... July 12, 1969 The nights are beginning to be interesting! Very interesting, because I have a vision—I don't know where it is, whether it's in the subtle physical (probably so)—a symbolic vision, but active (it's an action), a vision of what's happening, but then... ( Mother smiles ) AS IT Is, not as people see it! Things here are always cloaked in a... laughs ). Next time, we'll see the papers, it'll be fun! ( silence ) I remember having seen you not very long ago (I'll have to see Page 240 that), and it must have been in the subtle physical. So if that's where you want to become conscious, it's easier for me. It's very interesting, you know! Very interesting... Life stripped of its false appearance! There are still forms, but... were still going in the mind at night, in that higher region above (it's just above the mind), and I no longer go there: I go... ( gesture all the way up ). But I constantly work there, in this subtle physical. And it's becoming increasingly conscious and clear. So I'll try. Sri Aurobindo is there—he can be seen all the time; he is all the time doing one thing or another, he is VERY active, very ...
... and is organised round the divine centre. But the true mental, the true vital and even the true subtle-physical persist: it is that which keeps all the impressions received in earthly life and builds the chain of Karma. Now, wouldn't this answer by the Mother mean; "Our true beings - subtle-physical, vital, mental - remain the same for us from life to life down the ages. They, no less than our... our psychic being, have continuous survival. And the psychic being picks them up while acquiring new subtle-physical, vital and mental sheaths to accompany the physical body into which it is born."? When I turn to Sri Aurobindo I don't get quite the same picture. He 2 1. Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 134. 2.Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol. 22, p. 434. Page 290 ...
... freedom from disease, ageing and death, was rendered impossible at the present stage of mankind. (3)Since the Supermind began to manifest on a universal scale on 29 February 1956 in the subtle-physical layer of the earth, the ultimate evolution of a new race at a future time when the Supermind would emerge into the earth's gross-physical stuff is a certainty. This future evolutionary certainty... had been working for the supramentalisation of their individual bodies and not just for the manifestation of a general supramental consciousness, light, force, etc. and that too in the earth's subtle-physical layer. Could she have felt or intuited that the full individual work would not be accomplished by her in this life of hers? Your reply, in spite of all that I have already urged, will be that,... Evolutionary supramentalisation in the course of thousands of years, with the help of the supramental manifestation that has already laid its base in the earth's history through the earth's subtle-physical layer on 29 February 1956, seems now to be the only thing possible. I say "now", meaning a point of time with an extensive vista ahead, in a distant part of which the Mother will make ...
... the Purusha. I believe the Purusha is called in the Aurobindonian terminology our true mental, our true vital, our true subtle-physical. It is wide and calm and clear, unlike our superficial individuality. I believe it is the terminus of our inner mind, vital and subtle-physical. Your final question is on quite a different plane: "In the spiritual map of India Burma is included. When and how... penetrate far enough. All meditation is inward-going but there are in general two stages beyond this preliminary penetration. The first stage takes one to the inner mind, the inner vital, the inner subtle-physical. The second stage is the- innermost soul, the psychic being. Usually to go deep within is in our Yoga to reach this direct emanation of the Personal Divine. In a special sense we may speak of a ...
... creating life out of inert matter?... I haven't heard of it. Some claim to have done so. Bah! ( silence ) So then, that would be the difference between the subtle physical and the physical—immortality in the subtle physical is even perfectly obvious: it's not only easy to imagine, it's a fact; but the PASSAGE?... The passage, which for most people is like passing from the waking consciousness... consciousness.... The most concrete experience I have had was like taking a step here and then taking a step there—there is still a step; there is still this-that ( gesture of reversal ). But this subtle physical is very, very concrete, in the sense that you find things again in the same place and in the same way: YEARS LATER, I found again some places where I had been, with certain little "inner" differences ...
... those that take place in the subtle physical with Sri Aurobindo and all the people here, have suddenly become concerned with food! But in a very different form. It's always to give me indications about people, about things. The night before last, there was an amusing incident. You know that Mridu, the fat woman who used to cook for Sri Aurobindo, is in the subtle physical. When she died, Sri Aurobindo... I saw it was Mridu, and I ran after Sri Aurobindo to ask him, "What on earth does this mean?!" Then everything vanished. The next day, I was told she was dead. And she lives like that, in the subtle physical, and I see her very, very often, very often (she is a little better than Page 188 she was physically, but not much more intelligent!). But the other night, she brought me big prunes ...
... physical appearances, that is, I didn't stir from here. So WHO was it, who did all that? I don't know. Could it be some exteriorization in the subtle physical? Page 465 Not at all! The memory of an exteriorization in the subtle physical is VERY different. I have a lot of experience of it, you know! I have been familiar with the phenomenon for something like sixty years—it's completely... nights are very interesting! I have had... some rather strange things have been happening. I don't know whether you understand the difference between the memory of an inner experience (from the subtle physical, the subconscient, all the inner regions) and the memory of a physical fact. There is a very great difference in quality, the same difference that exists between inner vision and physical vision ...
... of her trance her arms would stretch forward over the soup-cauldron. For a minute they would remain there as if she were pouring something of her subtle-physical spirituality into the liquid. The idea must have been to give her own luminous subtle-physical substance and energy — a most concrete transference of spirituality into physical stuff. Then the Mother would open her eyes and Champaklal would... she would open her eyes and smile in a little shy or embarrassed way. After filling the cup she would take a sip from it. You see, that was the further and final touch of the transference of her subtle-physical force to something we could materially take into ourselves. The Soup Ceremony was a very solemn one; but I am afraid the fundamental thing that was required of us was not fulfilled: ...
... The Mother - Past-Present-Future Sri Aurobindo's Home in the Subtle-Physical* A LETTER TO THE MOTHER, WITH THE MOTHER 'S The Letter 27.2.1963 Last night Amal told me that you had spoken of "a permanent home of Sri Aurobindo in the subtle-physical". At once my mind went back to a dream in last September. This is how it ran: I enter the Ashram... carved in silver light With its aureate roof and mosaic floors In a great world bare and bright. SEHRA The Mother's Reply It is certainly part of His permanent home in the subtle-physical—a part of it only. Once, surely, you will meet Him there. Page 175 ...
... from a vaster more creative and effective subliminal image-building power of consciousness. A mind with immeasurably wider and more subtle perceptions, a life-energy with a greater dynamism, a subtle-physical substance with a larger and finer receptivity are building out of themselves our surface evolution. A psychic entity is there behind these occult Page 20 activities which is the... and seeing these things at their source that we can get out of this obscurity and tangle. For a larger mental being is there within us, a larger inner vital being, even a larger inner subtle-physical being other than our surface body-consciousness, and by entering into this or becoming it, identifying ourselves with it, we can observe the springs of our thoughts and feelings, the sources... build up our surface personality. For we discover and can know the inner being that secretly thinks and perceives in us, the vital being that secretly feels and acts upon life through us, the subtle-physical being that secretly receives and responds to the contacts of things through our body and its organs. Our surface thought, feeling, emotion is a complexity and confusion of impulsions from within ...
... Sri Aurobindo whether a subtle physical object could be seen in a dark room with Open eyes, the latter replied to the surprise of the disciple: "... a subtle physical object [such as a flower] (... quite substantial and material in its own plane)... could be sensed even in a dark room [if one is] able to bring out something of the light of the subtle physical plane to surround it and ...
... the surface, and there is sleep. It is this subconscient that becomes active in ordinary dreams. But in profounder dreams in which one goes out into other planes of consciousness, mental, vital, subtle physical, it is part of our subliminal inner being — inner mental, inner vital or subliminal physical - that is usually active. (What we mean by the subconscient, subliminal, circumconscient and s... behind the veil but is not at all of the obscure subconscious [character as depicted in the preceding paragraph. Rather, it is in possession of a brilliant mind, a limpid life-force and a clear subtle physical sense of things. Now about what we have termed the 'superconscient'. A whole line of beyond-mental spiritual experiences testifies to the exist-Type of a range of being superconscient... state one is conscious only of a certain limited field and action of one's nature. In sleep one can become vividly aware of things beyond this field — a larger mental or vital nature, or else a subtle physical or a subconscrient nature which contains much that is there in one but not distinguishably active in the waking state. Some dreams are manifestations of the erratic activities of certain ...
... parts of one's being then one would remember all his dreams. But it is only with a few parts of your being that you remain in conscious contact in sleep. For example, you have a dream in the subtle physical, that is to say, in the domain very near the physical. This generally happens towards the end of the night, in the early hours of the morning just before you get up (say between four and five)... remain very quiet, without making any movement and concentrate a little, you will be able to remember the dreams that you had immediately before: the communication between the physical and the subtle physical being close, you would be able to remember easily enough. Now if you begin from the beginning what happens is something like this. As you fall into sleep, the body becomes quiet and the vital... waking. Now the vital too after having been sufficiently active gets tired and goes to rest. Yet another part of the being now replaces the vital and comes forward. It may be the turn of the subtle physical to enter the arena. The vital is pushed back and you lose contact with it. To become conscious of all the various movements of your nights, to recover them in your memory, some sort of ...
... 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 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... about to germinate. The psychic being is a packet of gathered power, a charged battery, as it were; when it comes down upon earth, it calls round itself elements of mind and vital and even subtle physical needed for the purpose of the particular life experience, and Page 204 even those that would go to constitute the physical body. The psychic being usually picks up these elements... gods in the Overmind. Thence or simultaneously there is the line of deformation, that of the false gods and godheads, the Asuras and Titans. These too extend in a series of emanations down to the subtle physical; except when they themselves incarnate on the earth in an earthly body. Man, the soul, we said, comes direct from the Divine and is thrown and almost stuck into the earth as a spark, as a point ...
... the parts of one's being then one would remember all his dreams. But it is only with a few parts of your being that you remain in conscious contact in sleep. For example, you have a dream in the subtle physical, that is to say, in the domain very near the physical. This generally happens towards the end of the night, in the early hours of the morning just before you get up (say between four and five)... remain very quiet, without making any movement and concentrate a little, you will be able to remember the dreams that you had immediately before: the communication between the physical and the subtle physical being close, you would be able to re-member easily enough. Now if you begin from the beginning what happens is something like this. As you fall into sleep, the body becomes quiet and the vital... waking. Now the vital too after having been sufficiently active gets tired and goes to rest. Yet another part of the being now re-places the vital and comes forward. It may be the turn of the subtle physical to enter the arena. The vital is pushed back and you lose contact with it. To become conscious of all the various movements of your nights, to recover them in your memory, some sort of training ...
... emanations turned Asuras. Initiated in India, he studied Sanskrit and the Vedas. - Jul-Aug Experiences, in a friend* garden in Courseulles, Normandy, 'all the life of that region between the subtle physical and the most material vital' - two planes of her inner consciousness which had seemed unbridgeable. She had worked on this problem for more than six months. 1906 Jul 14-Oct 15 First visit... marvellous harmony, the promised land, the new earth.' 1957 'In Pondicherry, you cannot breathe without breathing my consciousness. It saturates the atmosphere almost materially, in the subtle physical, and extends... 10 kms from here.... In a general way my/ Force is there constantly at work.... But that apart, there is a special personal tie... between all who have turned to the teaching of... saw myself, my body - I do not know whether it is the supramental body or... a body in transition.... Truly a harmonious form... I had become like that.' Next day adds, 'It must have been in the subtle physical.' - Mar 30 Says, in one of her conversations, 'For 58 years I have been working... for the body to be as transparent and as immaterial as possible, in other words, not to be an obstruction ...
... hours together in the subtle physical world "where the material life gets reorganised". It was a strange, yet coherent world; was it the creation of her memory of earthly forms, or was it "really like that"? For there were both correspondences and differences. Earlier, during her visits to the Overmind world of the Gods, she had felt similar uncertainties. The subtle physical was a curious place, she... the prototype or the principle of the earthly ones: "It is the essence or the principle of the thing that is translated in the memory by a similarity." And when it came to one's actions in the subtle physical world what was striking was that one has not the sense of time, it is not the same sense - it is the content of the action that matters... and I am at many places at the same time! And ...
... image” ... I don't mean the sort of memory one has of a vision, but the memory of something one has DONE. 61 So I asked: “It’s not an exteriorization in the subtle physical?”— Not at all! The memory of an exteriorization in the subtle physical is very different. I have a lot of experience of it, you know, for something like sixty years. I know this phenomenon. But this is entirely the type of experience... faced with an incomprehensible problem. Some rather strange things have been happening. I don't know whether you understand the difference between the memory of an inner experience (from the subtle physical, the Subconscient, all the inner regions) and the memory of a physical fact? There is a very great difference in quality, the same difference that exists between inner vision and physical vision ...
... no longer in a physical form? Now one has to concentrate more inwardly to find them. Sometimes it is possible to come almost physically into contact with them. I see them sometimes on the subtle physical planes. One year, sometime in the 1990s, I saw Mother sitting and smiling in the Ashram theatre. During the 50 th anniversary celebration of the playground, I was going to Sri Aurobindo’s room... August 1995 Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, one of the Ashram photographers had taken a photo of Mother’s balcony and it shows Mother standing there, in kitty cap, in a subtle physical form! So you see, she is still with us and continues to show us that she is there in our midst, from time to time. Sometimes I even smell Mother’s perfume. It is not an actual fragrance, but comes ...
... consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution. There is in it an inner mind, an inner vital being of ourselves, an inner or subtle-physical being larger than our outer being and nature. ... There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being... convey forms of objects for the mind's documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution ...
... movements, more amplitude, more possibilities to her game. ‘And suddenly I heard, as if coming from the four corners of the Earth, the great musical sounds which one sometimes hears in the subtle physical, somewhat alike to those of Beethoven’s [violin] concerto in D minor, as if fifty orchestras burst out together without one single discordant note, to tell the joy of this new communion of Nature... life. These people (or at least a part of their being) had already undergone a supramental transformation, for the substance of the ship itself and of everything on board was neither material nor subtle-physical, vital or mental: it was a supramental substance. ‘This substance consisted of the most material supramental, the supramental substance nearest to the physical world and the first that will ...
... likely to get the true helpful experiences and avoid the wrong ones. If one seeks mainly after experiences, his Yoga may become a mere self-indulgence in the lesser things of the mental, vital and subtle physical worlds or in spiritual secondaries, or it may bring down a turmoil or maelstrom of the mixed and the whole or half-pseudo and stand between the soul and the Divine. That is a very sound rule of... waking hours. This is different from the dream experiences that one has on the vital or mental plane which are themselves not ordinary dreams but actual experiences on the mental, vital, psychic or subtle physical planes. You have had several dreams which were vital dream experiences, those in which you met the Mother and recently you had one such contact on the mental plane which, for those who understand ...
... strong and young was how disciples saw her who had an inner contact or experience with her. ‘They see me as I am and they say so.’ As early as 1962 she said that the new body was a body of the subtle physical, which in her case means the supramental. It happened that, in her new body, she went down from her room into the Ashram and did certain things, the results of which were materially there when... in French … It runs as follows in English: ‘“Last night we (you and myself and some others) were together for quite a long time in the permanent dwelling of Sri Aurobindo which exists in the subtle physical (what Sri Aurobindo used to call the true physical). All that happened there (much too long and complicated to be told) was, so to say, organized in order to express concretely the rapid movement ...
... wait until she came out of it. When the time was rather long she gave a faint apologetic smile. The occult truth behind the ceremony was that she was putting something of her own spiritualised subtle-physical substance into the soup in our cups. This was naturally a strain on her which could be compensated only if something in our being went out to her in return. Unfortunately the yogic traffic was... the New World in the realisation of which one may aspire to participate? As the Mother established the Supramental Light, Consciousness and Force on a universal scale in the earth's subtle-physical layer in 1956, the evolution of the New World in the future by the Supermind's entrance into the gross-material is certain. But evolution is a slow, zigzag, back-and-forth, up-and-down process ...
... quite a lot of psychological "dirt" would get into her and affect her body. There was also the classical case of her falling ill because of the Soup Distribution. She used to put something of her subtle-physical substance into the soup when she sipped it before giving the cup to the disciple who was kneeling in front of her. The cumulative strain was so great that she fell seriously ill. That was the end... for a follower of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The Mother has also said in connection with February 29,1956, marking the manifestation of the supramental Light, Consciousness and Force in the subtle-physical layer of the earth that the age-old reign of the Gods is over. We do not rule out their further activity in the world; but it is by a push from the past and not by a pull from the future. For those ...
... in the subtle-physical and, in spite of them, the gross-physical remains unchanged. Neither Sri Aurobindo nor the Mother achieved physical supramentalisation though it can be inferred from certain statements of theirs that if their yoga had been an isolated one they would have finished it long ago. After the supramental manifestation on February 29, 1956 in the earth's subtle-physical layer ...
... necessary to realise in order to be worthy of your affectionate praise. Suddenly my mind went back to a greater challenge in a somewhat different way. When the Supramental Manifestation in the subtle-physical layer of the earth, which the Mother named the earth's "atmosphere", took place on February 29, 1956, there were two effects. On the one side all that was turned towards the Sun of Truth sprang... had emerged. The Mother proved me wrong but declared: "Now the emergence of the involved Supenrtind is certain. It is only a matter of time." Perhaps this too will take place first in the subtle-physical layer of the earth? And when it does, the manifested Supermind will triumphantly appear in the gross-physical along with the involved supramental consciousness emerging there. Then shall be seen ...
... all the insets of human drama they carry! The system itself of other worlds unfolding in the Divine Comedy has little counterpart in Savitri . Where in it is the hierarchy of planes — subtle-physical, vital, mental, psychic, "overhead", and lastly "the radiant world of the Everlasting Truth"? Except for the common factor of exploring the ultra-terrestrial and for some correspondences here and... sions. Nor can we say that Sri Aurobindo's hierarchy can be divided and distributed into three general sections covered by Dante's labels: "Inferno", "Purgatorio", "Paradiso". The subtle-physical and vital planes have their own hells and heavens: neither these hells nor these heavens can be lumped together to make a Dantesque picture. It is not possible also to ignore these heavens and ...
... writes not at all out of his own external human mind but by inspiration, as the mouthpiece of the Gods. "The originating source may be anywhere; the poetry may arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative 1 The expression—"the vital"—in this sentence is a special term of Sri Aurobindo's and must not be... and feeling which disregards the mind's positive view of things and its logical sequences; the centre or centres it knocks at are not the brain-mind, not even the poetic intelligence but the subtle physical, the nervous, the vital or the psychic centre. The poem he quotes from Blake is certainly not nonsense, but it has no positive and exact meaning for the intellect or the surface mind; it expresses ...
... something intangible but apparently invincible still resists—it is the material vital with so much of the rest as it can influence by its resistance. I don't know about subtle vital. One says subtle physical to distinguish from gross material physical—because to our normal experience all physical is gross, sthūla . But the vital is in its nature non-material, so the adjective is superfluous. By material... discords through which harmony of a precarious and wounded kind has to be struggled for at each step: for the Divine Principle is there within. Each plane therefore has its heavens; there are the subtle physical heavens, the vital heavens, the mental heavens. If Powers of disharmony got in, they would cease to be heavens. Page 199 × ...
... its centres of action; for there the task that the surface mind could not achieve begins to be more possible. The inner mind, the inner life-consciousness and life-mind, the subtle-physical consciousness and its subtle-physical mentality, once liberated into action, create a larger, finer, greater mediating awareness able to communicate with the universal and with what is above them, able also to bring ...
... them. 20 October 1936 Homer and Chaucer are poets of the physical consciousness—I have pointed that out in The Future Poetry . 31 May 1937 You can't drive a sharp line between the subtle physical and the physical like that in these matters. If a poet writes from the outward physical only his work is likely to be more photographic than poetic. 1937 Page 14 Poetry of the Vital... and what that forms is either flat or ludicrous. Moreover, this was seen between sleep and waking—and things so seen are not dreams, but experiences from other planes—either mental or vital or subtle physical or more rarely psychic or higher plane experiences. Page 15 In this case it is very possible that she got into some kind of connection with the actual world of Krishna and the Gopis—through ...
... accepted and felt by people to be thoughts of their own mind. When one practises Yoga and observes the thoughts, one sees that they come from outside, from universal Nature, from the mental, vital or subtle physical worlds etc. The proper thing is then to stand back from these thoughts, voices or suggestions, to reject them or else control them, to make the mind free and quiet and open only to the divine light... sometimes unformed and then they are given shape somewhere in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or refusal to these thought-waves (as also vital waves, subtle physical energy waves) or this giving a personal-mental form to thought-stuff (or vital movements) from the environing NatureForce. It was my great debt to Lele that he showed me this. "Sit in meditation ...
... to cure or each progress one wants to make―if all that is thrown into the fire, it burns with a new intensity. And this is not an image, it is a fact in the subtle physical. One can feel the warmth of the flame, one can see in the subtle physical the light of the flame. And when there is something in the nature which prevents one from advancing and one throws it into this fire, it begins to burn and ...
... vital and physical nature. Behind them are adverse powers of the mental, vital and subtle physical worlds. These can be dealt with only after the mind and heart have become one-pointed and concentrated in the single aspiration to the Divine." So?... Sweet Mother, what are the adverse powers of the subtle physical? What are the adverse forces? There are as many of them as there are elements ...
... not the mind, the vital. For short distances one can go out from his body with the subtle physical, and in these cases one sees things materially as they are. But one can't go long distances. There are practical reasons, but above all there is the reason of safety; because if one goes too far with the subtle physical, the body is not only in a trance, it is in a cataleptic state, and then, unless it ...
... results of certain actions; that is some part of the inner being, sometimes the inner mental, sometimes the inner vital, sometimes, it may be, the inner or subtle physical Purusha. The inner being — inner mind, inner vital, inner or subtle physical — knows much that is unknown to the outer mind, the outer vital, the outer physical, for it is in a more direct contact with the secret forces of Nature. ...
... ss as the supreme realisation. Very readily they come to think that they are in the full cosmic consciousness when it is only some front or small part of it or some larger Mind, Life-Power or subtle physical ranges with which they have entered into dynamic connection. Or they feel themselves to be in an entirely illumine consciousness, while in reality they are receiving imperfectly things from above... whole action If the cosmic consciousness, but one can at first have only an indirect connection with it; things come do.wn from it through intermediate ranges into a larger mind-plane, life-plane, subtle physical plane and come very much changed and diminished in the transmission, without anything like the full power and truth they have in the Overmind itself on its native levels. Most of the movements ...
... results of certain actions; that is some part of the inner being, sometimes the inner mental, sometimes the inner vital, sometimes, it may be, the inner or subtle physical Purusha. The inner being—inner mind, inner vital, inner or subtle physical—knows much that is unknown to the outer mind, the outer vital, the outer physical, for it is in a more direct contact with the secret forces of Nature. The ...
... soon as it is no longer altogether material… It’s because you have a skin that you don’t enter into one another like that; otherwise even the subtle physical, you see… like a kind of almost perceptible vapour which goes out from bodies, which is the subtle physical, it intermingles terribly, and it produces all kinds of reactions, constantly, of one person upon another. One may without knowing why, ...
... develops a soul-personality, a distinct psychic being to represent it. This psychic being remains still behind the veil in our subliminal part, like the true mental, the true vital or the true or subtle physical being within us: but, like them, it acts on the surface life by the influences and intimations it throws up upon that surface; these form part of the surface aggregate which is the conglomerate... does not remain distinct in its purity; if it did, we would be able to distinguish clearly the soul element in us and follow consciously and fully its dictates. An occult mental and vital and subtle-physical action intervenes, mixes with it, tries to use it and turn it to its own profit, dwarfs its divinity, distorts or diminishes its self-expression, even causes it to deviate and stumble or stains ...
... supreme consciousness down to my most physical consciousness. Here, in Pondicherry, you cannot breathe without breathing my consciousness. It saturates the atmosphere almost materially, in the subtle physical, and extends to the Lake, ten kilometres from here. Farther, my consciousness can be felt in the material vital, then on the mental plane and the other higher planes, everywhere. When I came here... plane, they are there in a latent state, something like a piece of music that is recorded without being played, and when I need to know with my physical consciousness, I make contact with this subtle physical plane and the disc begins to turn. Then I see how things are, their development in time, the actual result. And if for some reason you write to me asking for my help and I answer "I am with ...
... made to introduce a very good possibility into the atmosphere. I never see on the purely physical plane, you know (it's always on the subtle physical, the plane of possibilities—that's more real to me; the purely physical generally eludes me, but I see the subtle physical clearly), and I was seeing... I don't know, it was like something higher, from above, trying to make someone enter the field of po ...
... 1951-1960 Undated 1958 For me, the subtle physical is far more real than this distorted world, but to see it you have to be conscious there, whereas people want to get effects which give them the impression of the marvelous and the miraculous and they want the subtle physical to become visible in the material world IN SPITE OF the falsehood. What makes the ...
... entire study going on in the subconscient on the cause of illnesses. I am not seeing very pleasant things.... There is a whole zone in the most material vital which penetrates, as it were, the subtle physical—that's where illnesses are formed. You see swarms of completely crooked formations—a lack of sincerity. And it expresses itself in images: I see all kinds of people and do all kinds of things... isn't a pleasant realm. It's the realm that's just like this ( Mother places one hand over the other ), immediately beyond... (how can I put it? It's neither higher nor deeper inside) beyond the subtle physical, and it's the realm in which formations of illness MATERIALIZE. I spent more than three hours of the night in it. It's a kind of study... a useful one, maybe. And I noticed, I remember having ...
... themselves, but very instructive. And it goes on all the time, twenty-four hours a day, night and day (at night it's on other planes), but all this takes place in the physical, a more or less subtle physical. This morning, there was a very amusing story. I was rinsing my eyes and mouth; I do it before daybreak, that is, with electric light. And in my bathroom there is an emergency light. It's one... the sufficient state of consciousness. There, we've wasted all our time! But how is the transition made? The transition that materializes? What is the secret of the passage from that very subtle physical to the physical proper? How is the passage made from one side to the other? Mon petit, I don't know what comparison I should use, but I am certain there are some things that are invisible this ...
... myself bent forward and smiling, pointing to the left, and he said, "Yes." And I could see—I saw lots of people. Because it's a strange thing, the eyesight is absolutely different (it's in the subtle physical), the sight is absolutely different from physical sight: you see thousands of miles away and very near at the same time, and distance is implied only by a given place in the atmosphere (I don't... action is just as concrete and close, but it is as though differently placed ( Mother shows different levels in the atmosphere ).... I never gave it a thought, but probably in that activity of the subtle physical we are physically much taller, I think; yet the proportions remain the same; but things are smaller [than Mother or Sri Aurobindo]. It's the same for going up or down, it doesn't have the meaning ...
... they started from the vital and went Page 198 up higher and higher, but below the vital, there was nothing. And now, it's a continual vision of the subtle physical—constant, I see both together: the physical and the subtle physical. Only, the physical, purely physical vision is much disturbed by the other vision. You understand, it's more a CONSCIOUSNESS of things than purely and merely a ...
... saying, "See how interesting it is!" And awake, I don't know what it is.... There would seem to be a whole LIFE like that—a whole life, a whole activity going on, yes, very near, probably in the subtle physical, but very near. Very, very concrete, not at all the impression of a dream. Thoroughly concrete, with sensations. And a continuity: even when I am not conscious of it, it continues, and when I become... clear, very clear, and sharp, you know: sharp perceptions. And the body quite has the impression of being educated, of learning things—"learning" not things: learning everything. It [this subtle physical world] is like a lining, but a lining that would be more conscious. The light is very clear, the shapes very precise. ( silence ) Three or four days ago, after lunch (I rest before going ...
... say it's big children having fun!" ( Mother laughs ) It would have thrown cold water on them! Page 252 ( silence ) And what news do you have? Well, I have gone once to that subtle physical. Aah! You must have called me. So then? Then it's all a bit chaotic, but anyway I saw Sri Aurobindo. I saw an image of him in which he told me (he was speaking in French, by the... people do? According to what Sri Aurobindo told me, with those people he is preparing what will take place on the earth. Last night (that was the first time), I was in a place (again in this subtle physical), a place as if atop a rather barren mountain, but where people met—there were even kinds of seats. And I was there to see... I don't know who (now I forget), but they were "wise" and "well-known" ...
... his likeness), I found him in the subtle physical. There he has a dwelling, he is settled and stays permanently (which doesn't prevent him from being at many other places and...), but there is a Sri Aurobindo Page 183 there whom I see almost every night, who looks after the whole work, sees people, and who is almost constantly with me. In the subtle physical, it's a specific place, and very ...
... interest in them, look after them (supposing they have the means to do so)? A case such as Sri Aurobindo's is quite different: it's as if he had been multiplied. He has a constant presence in the subtle physical: he goes about, visits a number of people, and he is conscious of a lot of things, he intervenes in a lot of things, but a considerable number—it has multiplied his action. But that's exceptional... quite natural—but CROWDS of people! Last night, I noticed Nolini there—he was there, he was used to being there—and we arranged things, organized, made decisions.... It seems to me to be in the subtle physical. I remember that in both cases, yesterday and today, when I got up, I thought, "Well! I told this and that person that I didn't use to see them at night, but I see them regularly!" And to one ...
... the words), "But when You want to transform the IMAGE into Your likeness, what happens?" 1 Page 182 Something like that. And I got the answer last night!... Two activities of the subtle physical. Oh, I'll tell the first ( laughing ): I killed someone point-blank!... Oh! The second vision was more personal. Then I understood: it's because the very body, the very consciousness... Truth is that things would change HERE...."— I challenged [him], yes! And I had that answer. Two... what we might call two "dreams," but I don't dream anymore. Those were two activities of the subtle physical ( laughing ), extraordinary! But whom did you kill? I don't know, it was... it was someone I liked very much! I liked him very much ( Mother laughs )! I don't even know whether I knew who ...
... it was in Sri Aurobindo? I SAW him like that—I didn't touch him. He was luminous and the impression was one of plasticity. Only, he isn't physical, so in the subtle physical that's the way it is; but in the subtle physical there are no bones. The transition between this and that is what's difficult. ( long silence ) Basically, it's having a permanence without fixity. Until a new ...
... nt. At least one of the Gurus will have to return to carry further the project of evolving man into superman. Indeed, with the Supramental Manifestation on 29 February 1956 in the earth's subtle-physical layer a fact, the advent of supramentalisation of even the gross physical is certain — but in a long process of evolution. The immediate victory the Mother had toiled for in her own body and wished... psychic being from beyond with the psychic being in a grown-up body that is somehow ready on earth or else she may by an occult action project a form of herself directly into our space-time form the subtle-physical plane. Since her work has to be completed she must and will choose to be a part of earth-life again. Let us do our utmost to prepare ourselves for the mighty event instead of indulging in grandiose ...
... ess, because it is behind the threshold of our outer consciousness. It includes the large action of the inner mind, inner Intelligence and inner sense-mind, of an inner vital, and of an inner subtle-physical being which upholds and embraces our waking consciousness but which is not brought to the front. Our subliminal being is not, like our surface being, an outcome of the energy of the Inconscient... convey forms of objects for the mind's documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution ...
... This represents the subliminal condition of our conscious existence, the large luminous realm of interior consciousness, that corresponds to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane and even a subtle physical plane of our being. Indeed, behind our outer existence, our outer mind and life and body, Our larger being sits behind cryptic walls: There are greatnesses hidden in our unseen parts... psychic entity supporting them all. It is of the nature of a secret intraconscient and circumconscient awareness in full possession of a brilliant mind power, a limpid life-force and an unclouded subtle-physical sense of things. It is in this subliminal realm of our interior existence, the realm of subtle subjective supraphysical experiences and of dreams and visions and heavenly intimations ...
... planes, from the supreme consciousness down to the most physical. Here, at Pondicherry, you cannot breathe without breathing my consciousness. It saturates the atmosphere almost materially, in the subtle physical and extends to the Lake, 10 kilometres from here. Farther, my consciousness can be felt in the material vital, then on the mental plane and other higher planes, everywhere. When I came here for... plane, they are there in a latent state, something like a piece of music that is recorded without being played. When I need to know with my physical consciousness, I make the contact with the subtle physical plane and the disc begins to turn. Then I see how things are, their development in time, the actual result. And if for some reason or other, you write to me asking for my help and I answer "I ...
... vital consciousness were merged in the Mother, while the (subtle) physical has begun to feel itself on the lap of the Mother. Yes. When X went to the Mother for Pranam and she put her hand on his head I too felt the touch of her hand on my own head. How did this happen? It shows that the subtle physical is growing conscious and felt the touch and blessing ...
... sadhak told me he saw his own psychic being as a woman. The soul is not limited by any form, but the psychic being puts out a form for its expression, just as the mental, vital and subtle physical Purushas do — that is to say, one can see or another person can see one's psychic being in such and Page 196 such a form. But this seeing is of two kinds — there is the standing... psychic being. The soul is the same always, the psychic being is what it develops in the evolution. When you say that the psychic being puts out a form, do you imply that it has a subtle-physical form so that one can see it as an embodied personality — just like a human body? Yes, but it is not limited by the form as the physical consciousness. After death ...
... into the psycho-vital or physico-vital or even the subtle physical plane. This New Creation is the creation of the Divine Love – the Mother's Love. Morning Star – Venus, Goddess of Love – embodying New Creation. Amber colour representing a particular plane of consciousness. Yellow + red + a touch of brown – physico-vital or even subtle physical plane – the New Creation come down on that plane ...
... to some extent the nature of the domain of subliminal consciousness. It includes the large action of the inner mind, inner intelligence and inner sense mind, of an inner vital, and of an inner subtle physical being. Our subliminal being is not, like our surface being, an Page 36 outcome of the energy of the Inconscient. It is a meeting-place of the consciousness that emerges from below by... convey forms of objects for the mind's documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution ...
... ess, because it is behind the threshold of our outer consciousness. It includes the large action of the inner mind, inner Intelligence and inner sense-mind, of an inner vital, and of an inner subtle-physical being which upholds and embraces our waking consciousness but is not brought to the front. Our subliminal being is not, like our surface being, an outcome of the energy of the Inconscient... convey forms of objects for the mind's documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution ...
... being of small desires and greed etc. — the vital-physical is the nervous being; they are closely connected together."9 * * * " I do not know about subtle vital. One says subtle physical to distinguish from gross material physical, because to our normal experience all physical is gross, sthula. But the vital is in its nature non-material, so that the adjective is superfluous... habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body-consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organised but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives ...
... 66 studies Hindu scriptures 15-6, 32, 82, 192 occultism sleight-of-hand 17 going out of her body 18, 23, 136, 148, 152, 402, 773 makes nights conscious 20 in the region between subtle-physical and the material vital 20-1, 139 (cf 750) joins the Cosmic Movement 21, 46 with the Théons in Tlemcen 21ff, 834-6 quells the storm 23 crossing boulevard St Michel 25 plays a game... January 1966 740 experiences 'consciousness of dead on earth' 741 direct perception of inner reality of people 741 cells becoming conscious 749 the T: not within, not above 750 in the subtle-physical world 750 vision of earth's effort 752 effect on her children 752-3, 805 (cf525, 636) Terrace Darshan: 24 November 1967 753 concrete experience of the cells 766 the 'creation of ...
... the subtle physical - a body sexless, youthful, white, slim, pretty and harmonious - which she had seen clearly that morning. The new body was there, - but how was her old body going to be united with the new body? Where was the link? What was the principle and process of fusion and transfiguration? As yet - she did not know. On 17 November, she left her old body to remain in the subtle physical, close ...
... 12 September 1959 * * * Sweet Mother, What is meant by “a subtle physical prolongation of the superficial form of the mental envelope”?* It means that the ghost one sees and wrongly takes for the departed being itself, is only an image of it, an imprint (like a photographic imprint) left in the subtle physical by the superficial mental form, an image that can become visible under certain ...
... The Mother added orally : This badge is given for the subtle physical. It is a garland around your heart. In your heart there is a star with twelve rays and beneath it there is a dove. It is the badge of the order of integral peace. It means there is a possibility that you have been chosen to bring peace to the world. In the subtle physical it is a fact, but now you have to manifest it. This is ...
... as it is no longer altogether material... It's because you have a skin that you don't enter into one another like that; otherwise even the subtle physical, you see... like a kind of almost perceptible vapour which goes out from bodies, which is the subtle physical, it intermingles terribly, and it produces all kinds of reactions, constantly, of one person upon another. One may without knowing why ...
... develops a soul personality, a distinct psychic being to represent it. This psychic being remains still behind the veil in our subliminal part, like the true mental, the true vital or the true or subtle physical being within us: but, like them, it acts on the surface life by the influences and intimations it throws up upon that surface; these form part of the surface aggregate which is the conglomerate... does not remain distinct in its purity; if it did, we would be able to distinguish clearly the soul element in us and follow consciously and fully its dictates. An occult mental and vital and subtle-physical action intervenes, mixes with it, tries to use it and turn it to its own profit, dwarfs its divinity, distorts or diminishes its self-expression, even causes it to deviate and stumble or stains ...
... and recognise later on in ordinary life? There are many possibilities. But most often, it is that a communication has been established either on the mental or the vital plane or even on the subtle physical plane and it is this communication which brings about the meeting later—your dream is not only a premonition but also a condition; there is an inner relation close enough to enable you to come... are not capable of knowing in your outer consciousness.... There is a very interesting fact, it is that somewhere in the terrestrial mind, somewhere in the terrestrial vital, somewhere in the subtle physical, one can find an exact, perfect, automatic recording of everything that happens. It is the most formidable memory one could imagine, which misses nothing, forgets nothing, records all. And if you ...
... .. So many things... Man has made a terrible tragedy out of death. These last few days, I have seen this, because last night or the night before I spent at least two hours in a world which is subtle physical, where the living and the dead intermingle without feeling any difference—it doesn't make any difference. There, there is no difference. The living were there—those whom we call the "living" and... all one is calling to something far away. Is that right? Or is it really... That depends on us! Now I can feel Him everywhere, all the time, all the time... even a physical contact—it is subtle physical, but physical—in things, in the air, in people, in... like this. ( Mother presses her hands to her face. ) And then, it is not far to go, all I have to do is this ( Mother turns her hands slightly ...
... purity and authenticity and power with which it transcribes an intense Page 25 vision and inspiration from whatever source. Shakespeare is a poet of the vital inspiration, Homer of the subtle physical, but there are no greater poets in any literature. No doubt, if one could get a continuous inspiration from the overmind, that would mean a greater, sustained height of perfection and spiritual... larger and deeper ranges but the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, the inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality. It would bring in the concreteness, the authentic image, the inmost soul of identity and the heart of meaning of these things, so that it could never lack in beauty. If this ...
... certain subtler instruments can show to us. Occult Forces [ Occult forces: ] The forces that can only be known by going behind the veil of apparent phenomena—especially the forces of the subtle physical and supraphysical planes. Nature-forces are conscious forces—they can very well combine all that is necessary for an action or a purpose and when one means fails, take another. They... of individuals who make serious contact or are able in one way or another to cross the border. They [ mediums and clairvoyants ] are most of them in contact with the vital-physical or subtle physical worlds and do not receive anything higher at all. Not much confidence can be placed in all that [ communications from spirit guides on other planes ]. If examined closely it will be seen ...
... longer limited by the body and the habits of the external nature, to go within, to enter the inner mental depths, the inner vital, the inner (subtle) physical, the psychic, to become aware of its inmost psychic self or its inner mental, vital and subtle physical being and, it may be, to move and live in the domains, the planes, the worlds that correspond to these parts of the nature. It is the repeated ...
... whole being, the inner outflowing into the outer, not in the outer being to the exclusion of the inner. In the physical consciousness the descent is the most important. Something of the subtle physical can always go up—but the external physical consciousness can only do it when the force from above comes down and fills it. There is then a sort of unification made when the higher consciousness... system and by the opening one escapes from the limitations of the surface consciousness bound to the gross body, and great ranges of experience proper to the larger subliminal self, mental, vital, subtle-physical, are shown to the sadhaka. When the Kundalini meets the higher consciousness, as it ascends through the summit of the head, there is an opening to the higher superconscient reaches above the normal ...
... it and once the connection is there holds on for some time at least. This is the physical vital and subtle physical action—for if it is the gross physical that dominates, there is no choice—any Page 486 woman will serve the fun. The sensation you feel is physical vital + subtle physical, that is why it is so concrete. Naturally these sensations do not stop by enjoyment—they are recurrent ...
... samadhi and many sorts of experience in each kind. What happens when one goes in is that one enters into the inner planes of consciousness, it may be the subconscient, it may be the mental, vital or subtle physical plane. From there one goes into the corresponding worlds or else one rises up into higher planes superconscious to us—to the ranges above our mind or to the spiritual mental plane in which one... 251 It [ the kind of samadhi one has ] depends on the nature of the physical consciousness you keep. 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 ...
... being only, but fully on the vital also—that is a great progress. The desires you refer to are those of the vital-physical in the subtle physical consciousness—impulse to talk, essential hunger, thirst, etc. Peace and quietude full in the vital-physical and subtle physical and down even in the lowest levels are necessary for the whole change to be made. The heat of which you speak is that of this subtle ...
... but of an immense potency for the earth-life. Again behind our mind, our life, our conscious physical there is a larger subliminal consciousness,—there are inner mental, inner vital, inner more subtle physical reaches supported by an inmost psychic existence which is the animating soul of all the rest; and in these hidden reaches too lie a mass of numerous pre-existent personalities which supply the... the rest of existence is thin and easily broken; there we can feel at once—not merely infer from their results, but feel directly—the action of the secret world-forces, mind-forces, life-forces, subtle physical forces that constitute universal and individual existence; we shall even be able, if we will but train ourselves to it, to lay our hands on these world-forces that throw themselves on us or surround ...
... what the inspiration has formed with the vital substance and impetus without being mixed or altered. The inspiration itself can hail from any one of the following planes: 1)The Subtle Physical. 2)The Vital. 3) The Creative or Poetic Intelligence. 4)The Inner Mind, with its four domains: a)The inner Mind Intelligence. b)The Intuitive Intelligence. c)The Mystic... they have no organised centre in the human system. The Psychic is also not exactly a part of the gradation below the head: it is our inmost, our deepmost being and stands behind the planes of the subtle physical, the vital and the mental, even the inner mental: its station is at the back of the centre, represented by the heart, where the vital and the mental interplay as emotion. It can open more easily ...
... quarter to ten, I was sitting here at the table in a total silence. And then... I can't say Sri Aurobindo came, for he is always here, but he manifested in a special way.... Concretely, in the subtle physical, he became so tall that, sitting cross-legged as they do here, he covered the whole compound—even extended a bit beyond it! He was literally sitting upon the compound; so to the extent that the... the people meditating were not closed, they were all inside him. He was sitting like that (not on their heads!), and I could feel (I was here, you see) the FRICTION of his presence in the subtle physical—an utterly physical friction! And I saw him (as Page 315 you well know, I am not shut up in here [the body]), I saw him sitting there, very tall and perfectly proportioned; and then he started ...
... formations, mental, vital, subtle physical, and whatever one forms or is formed by the forces of these worlds in us becomes for the sadhak for a time the truth -unless he is guided and listens to his guide. Afterwards if he gets through he discovers what it was and passes on into the subtle truth of things. It is a borderland where all the worlds meet, mental, vital, subtle physical, pseudo-spiritual - ...
... Mother has filled a void created in me in 1973 when she left her body by allowing me to see her presence in the subtle physical world that she shows to me now and then. On the days when I sincerely want to see her, she appears to me vividly. She allows my travel in the subtle physical regions on various levels. I also see and feel Sri Aurobindo more vividly since 1973 than ever before. The other world ...
... body can't but be happy. The physical arms are taking to a 'voiceless supreme delight' by themselves, the body has a separate identity of its own. Probably this is happening in the subtle physical. Everything happens there first before manifesting in the external physical. This is not a transformation but a change in the outer nature including the 'gunas'. You are correct in... (holding both hands in front as if holding a ball) I could hold between the hands as it were, just for a moment when it seems to be absolutely immobile. Ananda is its natural state. This subtle physical probably has a shape, some sort of shape, but it is not at all rigid, not at all like the outer physical. Page 199 There is no attempt on my part to be cheerful ...
... forms into oneself – say, in the heart; that can have an immediate effect or initiate a period of spiritual growth. There is also the seeing outside oneself in a more or less objective and subtle-physical or physical way. As for milan, the abiding union is within and that can be there at all times; the outer milan or contact is not usually abiding. There are some who often or almost... Subjective visions can be as real as objective sight – the only difference is that one is of real things in material space, while the others are of real things belonging to other planes down to the subtle physical; even symbolic visions are real in so far as they are symbols of realities. Even dreams can have a reality in the subtle domain. Visions are unreal only when these are merely imaginative mental ...
... ss as the supreme realization. Very readily they come to think that they are in the full cosmic consciousness when it is only some front or small part of it or some larger Mind, Life-Power or subtle physical ranges with which they have entered into dynamic connection. Or they feel themselves to be an entirely illumined consciousness, while in reality they are receiving imperfectly things from above... behind the whole action of the cosmi consciousness, but one can at first have only an indirect connection with it; things come down from it through intermediate ranges into a larger mind-plane, subtle physical plane and come very much changed and diminished in the transmission, without anything like the full power and truth they have in the Overmind itself on its native level. Most of the movements come ...
... strength to her movement, a greater amplitude, more possibilities to her play. ‘And suddenly I heard, as if they came from the four corners of the earth, the great notes one sometimes hears in the subtle physical. They resemble somewhat those of Beethoven’s [Violin] Concerto in D-major and come at the time of a great [evolutionary] step forward, as if fifty orchestras burst out together without a single... destined for the supramental life. These people, or at least part of their being, had already undergone a supramental transformation, for the ship itself and everything on board was neither material, subtle-physical, vital, or mental: [everything consisted of] a supramental substance. This substance was of the most material supramental, the supramental substance nearest to the physical world, the first to ...
... fundamental disparity between the recording surface subconscient left in the sleeping body and the deeper realms of our consciousness. Thus when we enter in sleep our subliminal mental, vital or subtle-physical, the experiences therein are for all practical purposes lost to our waking consciousness because of the absence of any active connection with the surface parts of us. "If we are still in the... consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution.... [Thus] the subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards ...
... origin. The other day, didn't I tell you the story of those entities working for me?... (It wasn't you? I'd had a vision.) In fact, I very often see entities like Nature spirits when I enter the subtle physical and work there (usually for people here and the Ashram, and for the world at large), I very, very often have them with me, or else I meet them in the course of my work. They are forces, generally... ideas and laws, their own volition, and when vexed they can do unpleasant things. Yet they are not hostile beings, nor are they vital beings: they are personified forces of physical Nature, in the subtle physical. A world of things could be said.... ( silence ) No, I don't know if it's wise to publish this Talk; if too incomplete, it looks like ignorant chatter. And I have always deliberately refused ...
... realisation. 12 September 1959 Sweet Mother, What is meant by "a subtle physical prolongation of the superficial form of the mental envelope"? It means that the ghost one sees and wrongly takes for the departed being itself, is only an image of it, an imprint (like a photographic imprint) left in the subtle physical by the superficial mental form, an image that can become visible under ...
... has ever been done, never, so at each moment everything has to be invented. Of course, things are now going better, especially since Sri Aurobindo became established in the subtle physical, an almost material subtle physical. 2 But there are still plenty of question marks ... The body understands once, and then it forgets. The Enemy's opposition is nothing, for I can see clearly that it comes from ...
... answer by him to your Page 163 ardent prayer before going to bed shows how close he is to you. The meeting started, you say, on the ground floor of the house. This indicates the subtle-physical plane. Then the contact moves to a place where the sensations are naturally intenser - the first floor, the vital-emotional with the psychic being adjoining it. The intimacy increases and culminates... 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 analysed, I don't think a special sugary element would be detected. All the same, "the honey of ...
... be there but by and large it is an experience on an inner plane with a psychic light playing on it. If you found no trace at all of your physical disability, the plane could not be merely the subtle-physical. There, in the midst of a substantial change, some sign however faint of our physical condition is usually present. You were certainly meeting our Gurus and your soul was full of gratitude: that... lifetime - but only by a process of spiritual evolution through life after life. It is postponed and not cancelled, because the Supramental Light, Consciousness and Force manifested in the subtle-physical layer of the earth on February 29, 1956 and became secretly an active evolutionary factor in earth's history. With their manifestation the Mother has assured humanity's future supramentalisation ...
... consciousness" which manifested are a part of the earth's future history and from their subtle-physical presence as of today they will become more and more directly physical in the course of time, helped by the action of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother who have taken their station as concrete beings on the subtle-physical plane for their divine work to continue on earth. As for acceptance by them of people ...
... the insets of human drama they carry! The system itself of other worlds unfolding in the Divine Comedy has little counterpart in Savitri. Where in it is the hierarchy of planes - subtle-physical, vital, mental, psychic, "overhead", and lastly "the radiant world of the Everlasting Truth"? Except for the common factor of exploring the ultra-terrestrial and for some correspondences here... dissimilar dimensions. Nor can we say that Sri Aurobindo's hierarchy can be divided and distributed into three general sections covered by Dante's labels: "Inferno", "Purgatorio", "Paradiso". The subtle-physical and vital planes have their own hells and heavens: neither these hells nor these heavens can be lumped together to make a Dantesque picture. It is not possible also to ignore these heavens and ...
... see physical things at a distance, but I have never seen anything of the sort." Page 50 I have seen things in the subtle physical (very close to the physical, with a very small difference), but that wasn't a physical vision: it was a vision in the subtle physical. Some time ago I said to myself, "That's odd, physically I have no special capacities, I have never observed interesting phenomena ...
... particular detail, which I now understand, of the auras becoming visible and acting as clothing; in other words, the auras are the clothing. It must be in a subtle physical, maybe a true physical. Sri Aurobindo said that the subtle physical was a much truer physical than ours. Things are like that there, with a very clear symbol. And those birds (they were birds that weren't birds, but they looked ...
... weren't conscious? ?... It was around three o'clock in the morning. I have seen you very often in visions, symbolic visions in the mental realm, but that's not what it was. It was in the subtle physical, this close ( same gesture ); you came deliberately, and you looked at me. "Oh," I told you, "how nice!" I had a dream about you, but I felt the subconscient made it up. No, it must be... axis. × Looking at it now (1979), this "dream" doesn't seem to be from the subconscient but actually from the subtle physical, with that whole crowd of people relentlessly assailing Mother and exhausting her (and pushing Satprem away, besides). But DESPITE the crowd, Satprem crossed through and came up "very close" to ...
... a part of the earth's future and creating the possibility of an earthly heaven. The last allusion was to the Supramental Manifestation that had occurred on February 29, 1956 in the earth's subtle-physical layer. But I was rather Page 10 disturbed by the word "transitory", I wrote to the Mother that it suggested that her present body would pass away from our midst. I added:... Udar once reported to me that she had told him of her body's tendency to dizziness at a height and a spontaneous aversion to the proximity of fire. Possibly the latter characteristic was the subtle-physical being's "carry-over" of the intense experience of burning at the stake to which Joan of Arc had been condemned: the Mother is believed to have been in one of her past births the Maid of Orleans ...
... Even to read about them brings a sparkling smile to my thought. I was specially interested in your experiment with a flower. I The ugly things you see at times belong to the vital or the subtle-physical plane. I have marked many such scenes and figures - more deformed, more desiccated than anything on earth, just as on the opposite side there are beauties far transcending anything in our world... the beginning of the Prayer whose ending served, with an appropriate change of the tenses, as the Mother's Message soon after the Supramental Manifestation on February 29, 1956, in the earth's subtle-physical layer, what she called the earth's "atmosphere". Lord, Thou hast willed, and I execute, A new light breaks upon the earth, A new world is born. The things that were promised are ...
... come and He released the Force. But the Inconscient has covered it up. It can be felt in the subtle-physical, but in the physical there is hardly anything yet. The manifestation is only a little more than two months old and it will show itself gradually. I can definitely feel it in the subtle-physical, but my sensitiveness is perhaps a little unusual. . . Two disciples here in the Ashram and three ...
... and what that forms is either flat or ludicrous. Moreover, this was seen between sleep and waking—and things so seen are not dreams, but experiences from other planes—either mental or vital or subtle physical or more rarely psychic or higher plane experiences. In this case it is very possible that she got into some kind of connection with the actual world of Krishna and the Gopis—through the vital... where there are all the types and forms of things that happen here, and having its own region or province there. One is constantly going into these planes (and others also mental and psychic and subtle physical also as well as vital) and seeing and doing things there. Very often what one does and experiences there is a symbol of things in the nature, tendencies, achievements, difficulties, things hidden ...
... Jnaneshwari is along the traditional lines, recommending the ascetic method of meditation and awakening the Kundalini Shakti, the occult-vital energy lying asleep at the base of the spine in the subtle-physical. To briefly paraphrase Jnaneshwari : The seeker of the Self should first select a quiet and lonely place proper for meditation. It should inspire in him feelings of detachment from the things... the opportunity of the Gita’s brief mention of the Yoga of Meditation to elaborate in considerable detail the process of awakening the Kundalini Shakti lying otherwise asleep at the base of the subtle-physical. These few shlokas of the Scripture are taken up by him and expanded into a description of some two hundred owis . He himself says that it would not have been possible, quite obviously, for the ...
... (CWM, Vol. 3, pp. 145-46) "The outer form only dissolves; unless that too is made conscious and is organised round the divine centre. But the true mental, the true vital and even the true subtle physical persist: it is that which keeps all the impressions received in earthly life and builds Page 150 the chain of Karma." (CWM, Vol. 15, p. 134) (Q. 5): Does the old personality... psychic repose, where it would draw all back into itself and await its new stage in the evolution." (The Life Divine, p. 803) "This would mean a passage of the soul progressively through subtle-physical, vital and mental worlds to the psychic dwelling-place from which it would return to its terrestrial pilgrimage." (Ibid., pp. 802-03) "The terrestrial gathering up and development of the ...
... the objection holds no longer. The mystic subjective vision admits a consciousness in physical things and gives them a subtle physical life which is not that of the material existence. If a consciousness is felt in the stars and if that consciousness expresses itself in subtle physical images to the vision of the poet, there can be no impossibility of a star being নত আপন হারা 218 —such expressions attribute ...
... the psycho-vital or physico-vital or even the subtle physical plane. This New Creation is the creation of the Divine Love - the Mother's Love. Morning Star - Venus, Goddess of Love - embodying New Creation. Amber colour representing a particular plane of consciousness. Yellow+red+a touch of brown - physico-vital or even subtle physical plane - the New Creation come down on that plane ...
... making them conscious, I found that between the subtle-physical level and the most material vital there was a small region, very small indeed, that was not developed well enough to serve as a conscious link between the two. So what happened in the most material vital was not being accurately translated into the consciousness of the most subtle physical. Something was lost in the passage which was however ...
... 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 all. Page 86 Here I may refer to something pertinent ...
... one needs Him. Everywhere, everywhere. He is united with me and at the same time he is in different places. He is not limited, it is only the physical body that is limited, but not the subtle physical. The subtle physical penetrates everything and can go everywhere. It is not limited by the body. It is this ( the body ) that limits. It is the mind that cannot grasp. It is not with your mind that you can ...
... Mother: Not... Interviewer: No? Mother: I saw X ... today and I was telling him that the whole organisation in respect of art and sports and food and all others were ready in the subtle physical - ready to come down and take body - and I told him: "What is needed is just a handful of earth Page 109 (gesture indicating the hollow of the palm), a handful... handful of earth to let it grow..." The only difference in my case is this - that I don't remember at all the conversation that I am supposed to have had with Sri Aurobindo in the subtle physical. But I believe that, one day, things will improve, I'll be able to recount to you, if God permits, verbatim, some conversation I had with Him, or you'll be able to delight us by telling us of your ...
... making them conscious, I found that between the subtle physical level and the most material vital there was a small region, very small indeed, that was not developed well enough to serve as a conscious link between the two. So what happened in the most material vital was not being accurately translated into the consciousness of the most subtle physical. Something was lost in the passage which was however ...
... 24 In answer to questions about Sri Aurobindo, the Mother wrote: Sri Aurobindo is a permanent Avatar of the Lord - (as Krishna is). ... Sri Aurobindo... has a permanent home in the subtle physical - (the region closest to the earth physical) where all those who wish to see Him can go and see Him. 25 Page 712 Another question from Huta elicited from the Mother the disarming answer:... evolution". 30 Was the position any different after 29 February 1956? The Mother's own view in 1963 was that, while the transmutation of the human body into the divine was perceptible in the subtle physical, it had not become concrete in the outer physical. There were thus two possibilities; either the gradual transmutation of the present human into the supramental divine body, or the outright new ...
... you "dream" in the vital or mental, there is little chance that you will meet me there. If your dreams are in the subtle physical, there you could meet me because I often work there in the night. 7.12.1969 Is it possible to dream at will in the subtle physical in order to meet you there? All is possible. It is only a question of inner development and of the necessary discipline ...
... hands and holding them over the soup-cauldron, Amal writes: For a minute they would remain there as if she was pouring something of her subtle-physical spirituality into the liquid. The idea must have been to give her own luminous subtle-physical substance and energy - a most concrete transference of spirituality into the physical stuff. 21 And, as Nirodbaran recalls it, the Mother ...
... consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution. There is in it an inner mind, an inner vital being of ourselves, an inner or subtle-physical being larger than our outer being and nature. This inner existence is the concealed origin of almost all in our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient world-energy or... on its senses for its knowledge, they only give a form to Page 189 its direct experience of objects...The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world, it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards ...
... 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 time varies in each case—till the latter is dissolved. The soul then continues to live in the vital sheath, prāṇamaya koṣa, having experiences in the vital world. The... 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 man may remain in the earth atmosphere and enter into a suitable living person for its own satisfaction. "... When I speak of a formation entering into a living person, the formation ...
... Mother could go from sheath 1 to sheath till she arrived at the threshold of the Formless? She had learned to do that from the Théons in Algeria. The sheath next to the body is called the subtle physical sheath. Is that what the Theosophists call the 'aura' ? It is a sort of consciousness surrounding the body, but individual, through which we are in contact with the cosmic forces and with other... other beings. In spite of the closeness to the physical and resembling it somewhat, there are marked differences between the two. "For instance," Sri Aurobindo spelled out, "the subtle physical has a freedom, plasticity, intensity, power, colour, wide and manifold play (there are thousands of things there that are not here) of which, as yet, we have no possibility on earth." But earth has other qualities ...
... tested. Kama Ananda today was continuous for some minutes, though not of the greater intensity already achieved. Sukshma sparsha is increasing in force & keenness, but is still usually only a subtle physical sensation, except in touches of water, fire or electric atoms which have now a great sthula reality & linger on the body both in the solid sensation & in its physical-nervous effects. Other touches ...
... should not change: it cannot be more pleasurable and profitable than by a continution of the same disciple-teacher relationship. For, indeed they have assured us of their nearness to us in a subtle-physical form until their mighty work is accomplished. To concentrate on them as we knew them and open ourselves to their ever-flowing Grace by an adoring devotion is the best mode of progress. ...
... 1955 Mother, MP has sent me the following letter: Dear Sir, I shall be thankful if you will get clarification from the Mother on the following three points: 1. On the subtle-physical plane, was there any creation before or is a new one being created by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother with new types of beings or for the souls that are developed and transformed on earth? 2 ...
... according to the plane on which one has seen, one can more or less judge the time that the vision will take to be fulfilled. And the immediate things are already realised, they already exist in the subtle physical and they can be seen there.... They are only the reflection or projection of the image in the material world which will appear on the next day or in a few hours. There are all kinds of premonitory ...
... form was in which Jesus appeared after death. Drawing upon Sri Aurobindo's pronouncements, he identifies this as a subliminal reality, apprehended by the inner vision of mystics like Paul, of a subtle physical substance, a causal body, descending from Paul's "third heaven" (the ideal or spiritual plane, beyond the vital and the mental). It is a remarkable conclusion, unprecedented and calling for serious ...
... Supramental in the physical, and the whole effort of the Master and the Mother is to emanate into our outer material world the Supermind's Truth-luminosity which is theirs in this world's inner subtle-physical background where they have now joined their forces. Page 133 ...
... vital plane some of which may have truth, while others are false and misleading, or they may be a sort of artistry of that plane. Visions do not come from the spiritual plane—they come from the subtle physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic or from the planes above the Mind. What comes from the spiritual plane are experiences of the Divine, e.g. the experience of self everywhere, of the Divine in ...
... the impression that now the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have taken complete charge of him so that henceforth they and not he would do everything in the future. “What we can guess is that the subtle physical is now completely one with the psychic being and rests securely in the hands of our two divine gurus who have shown through the varied phases of the experience the possibility of the human realising ...
... itself in the earth-consciousness this cannot happen. Asuras are helpless against it. That was the truth seen by Sri Aurobindo and he worked towards it and firmly established it in the earth's subtle-physical. Things now will happen in the dynamism of the Truth-consciousness itself. In one of the Vedic Riks we have the description of Agastya digging into the darkness of the Night, khanan as ...
... its larger and deeper ranges but the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality." 12 Inconscience, subconscience, all the planes of consciousness beyond the mind, even the transcendental Truth-Consciousness, the Supermind, go to form the vast poetic canvas ...
... 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 was the merging of the Overmental consciousness of Sri Krishna in the body of Sri Aurobindo. It was the eighteen years of his Tapasya that had brought down the Truth, like the eighteen ...
... he enters into a wide range of experiences which are not the limited solid physical truth of things and not yet either the spiritual truth of things. It is a zone of formations, mental, vital, subtle physical, and whatever one forms or is formed by the forces of these worlds in us becomes for the sadhak for a time the truth—unless he is guided and listens to his guide. Afterwards if he gets though ...
... of God; Dryden's is genuine night full of idiocy and ignorance. soham ,̣ om,̣ ham,̣ yam,̣ ram,̣ vam,̣ lam ̣are the seven sounds that come from the seven Chakras, from above below, in the subtle-physical. The seven musical notes sā, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, nī or do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, have their origin in these centres rising from below above. Page 40 Canto Thirty-Nine ...
... The painting was done by Pramode Kumar Chatterjee in February 1956 in Calcutta after a visionary experience. At that time he knew nothing about the supramental manifestation in the subtle-physical of the earth which, as declared by the Mother, occurred on the last day of that month. When he showed the painting to the Mother in 1958 she wrote the caption on its lower margin. She also ...
... cinmaya —consisting of pure consciousness; transcendental. Circumconscient — the subliminal has a formation of consciousness which projects itself beyond the mental, vital, subtle physical and gross physical sheaths and forms a circumconscient, an environing part of itself, through which it receives the contacts of the world outside us. cittākāś a — mental ether. ...
... of immense potency for the earth-life. Again behind our mind, our life, our conscious physical there is a large subliminal consciousness, — there are inner mental, inner vital, inner more subtle physical reaches supported by an inmost psychic existence which is the connecting soul of all the rest.... Yet again above our human mind are still greater reaches superconscient to it and from there ...
... and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of the subtle-physical and its energies, — all that Nature has not put into visible operation on the surface; it pursues also Page 195 the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as ...
... studied under the name of psychic phenomena, — although they have ordinarily nothing to do with the psyche, the soul, the inmost entity in us, but only with the inner mind, the inner vital, the subtle-physical parts of our subliminal being;... The Life Divine, pp. 535-37 Page 249 × See the definition of ...
... remarkable spiritual achievements to his credit. I may quote here a poem of his, marking the intuition he had, much before the event of 29 February 1956, of the supramental manifestation in the subtle-physical of the earth: Standing on the last horizon I saw a golden gate opening. It had no bolts, no hinges— Only a huge lid that looked like a sun. Amazed I watched ...
... the Active Brahman. In him now a greater being sees a greater world. To him crowding come the gifts of the spirit. Mind, life, body have wakened to their true reality. Sheath after sheath of the subtle physical experience the entry of thehigher powersin it. A world unseen unknown by outward mind appears in the silent spaces of the soul. And what does Aswapati see in it, in that world invisible to our ...
... answered: ‘The supreme Lord.’ In between her other external and internal work, the Mother gave a lot of attention to Auroville. The occult task consisted in bringing the city, which existed in the subtle physical, down into terrestrial materiality. When asked where the city should be located, she asked for a map, closed her eyes and planted her finger on a spot some fifteen kilometers to the north of P ...
... chapter. And so the Mother could say, looking back in 1970 on the past twenty years: ‘And I see now, I see how much his departure and his work — so … so enormous, you know, and persistent in the subtle physical — how much, how much it has helped! How much he has helped to prepare everything, to change the structure of the physical.’ 32 In 1972 she said: ‘There is a difference in the power of action ...
... sometimes unformed and then they are given shape some where in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or refusal to these thought-waves (as also vital waves, subtle physical energy waves) or this giving a personal-mental form to thought-stuff (or vital movements) from the environing Nature Force. It was my great debt to Lele that he showed me this. "Sit in meditation ...
... Rajput queen liberated by a sort of salokya mukti and living with Krishna in Goloka or a divine Brindavan and able to accompany in any manifestation he chose to make of himself through the subtle physical to any of us in the human world. That, I think, would be a satisfactory occult explanation of all that has been happening recently and would agree with the phenomenon of the inspiration ...
... ten nautical miles out on the sea. And about herself she said: ‘Here, in Pondicherry, you cannot breathe without breathing my consciousness. It saturates the atmosphere almost materially, in the subtle physical, and extends to the Lake, ten kilometres from here.’ 65 In his last years, Sri Aurobindo had some exceptional meetings in his room. One was with Sir C.R. Reddy who came to offer him, on ...
... to a global conflict in 1957, for she was expecting a great spiritual event in 1956 — the event which proved to be the manifestation of the Supermind's light, force and consciousness in the subtle-physical layer of the earth. In the wake of such a tremendous outburst of the Divine the possibility of a World War would be extremely meagre, if not even nil. * While in relation ...
... question the possibility of such a war. The most dangerous time, according to the Mother, for a world-wide conflagration was before what she has called the Supramental Manifestation in the earth's subtle-physical layer came about on the 29th February 1956. After this manifestation the history of the world underwent a change and the direction was set for a grand progression towards the evolution of the Superman ...
... illumining both mind and heart and opening an inner eye to strange glorious scenes or to a play of forces seeming to affect the very body although actually the occult or spiritual phenomena have the subtle-physical part of us as their field and the gross-physical form experiences no more than a mirror-effect. The mirror-effect can be productive of happy results in our nerves and even organs but essentially ...
... that in their next life they will be spiritually oriented?" Ordinarily it would be difficult to chart out a course. But when we know that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are residing in the earth's subtle-physical layer in an embodied form in order to carry on their work, the future of dead sadhaks would lie entirely in the hands of our Gurus and I believe that they would be helped to pursue their sadhana ...
... occasionally we do meet them in the early period after their departure. Since departed sadhaks and sadhikas live with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and since the latter two are established on the subtle-physical plane our dead friends are also there. But I conceive that they are absorbed in being with the dual Divine and do not bother to be concerned. Page 58 with earth-affairs. Only rarely ...
... larger and deeper ranges but the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, the inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality. It would bring in the concreteness, the authentic image, the inmost soul of identity and the heart of meaning of these things, so that it could never lack in beauty. If this ...
... reprinted 1992, p. 143. Page xxiii In the history of the Ashram, 29 February 1956 marks "the long awaited manifestation of the Superrnind as a universal force in the earth's subtle physical atmosphere." According to the reported remark of the Mother: "Only five people knew what took place - two in the Ashram and three outside." When Sethna wrote to the Mother about his experience ...
... speaking, we can say that our inner being is composed of three parts: first, a luminous subliminal being behind each aspect of our surface personality - the inner mind, the inner vital and the subtle physical; second, an inmost psychic being or soul behind these inner parts; third, the higher planes of the spiritual consciousness posited in Yogic psychology above the mind-level. Most of the spiritual ...
... Supermind and the Superman Consciousness start operating directly in the forefront of universal evolution. In the meanwhile the Mother's new creation, already a multiform splendour in the subtle-physical, is trying to break forth into the gross-material, with her own body of glory in the van of the fight outward. By withdrawing from her earthly sheath she has not abandoned her mission nor has she ...
... its exalted agony was needed no more to enable the Supramental Body to manifest. Perhaps that Body, having assimilated the achievement of the other and thereby gained sufficient density for its subtle-physical substance, can now materialise itself on its own in a not too distant future. Whatever be the case, most certainly we have not seen the end of the Mother's earthly mission. A gigantic labourer ...
... realisation Page 352 Very readily they come to think that they are in the full cosmic consciousness when it is only some front or small part of it or some larger Mind, Life-Power or subtle physical ranges with which they have entered into dynamic connection. There are worse dangers in this intermediate zone of experience. For the planes to which the sadhak12 has now opened his consciousness ...
... from the different arrangement of things, but such details as the third arm and the book-marker removed yet there show that it is a subtle world very near to the physical; it is either a subtle-physical world or a very material vital domain. In all the subtle domains the physical is reproduced with a change, the change growing freer and more elastic as one gets farther away. Such details ...
... penetrated ‘suddenly became a sun world.’ ‘The sun is sallow and pale and cold and almost black compared with it,’ 32 she said. She observed how much Sri Aurobindo had been working in the ‘subtle physical’ since his departure to change the structure of gross matter. Would this mean that Mendeleyev’s table of the elements would not remain the table of the law? ‘It is indeed possible that at present ...
... March 11, 1932 Q. What is meant by occult forces of nature? A. The forces that can only be known by going behind the veil of apparent phenomena—especially the forces of the subtle physical and supraphysical planes. Sri Aurobindo ...
... being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of the subtle-physical and its energies,—all that Nature has not put into visible operation on the surface; it pursues also the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the ...
... always, the psychic being is what it develops in the evolution. The soul is not limited by any form, but the psychic being puts out a form for its expression, just as the mental, vital and subtle physical Purushas do—that is to say, one can see or another person can see one's psychic being in such and such a form. But Page 119 this seeing is of two kinds—there is the standing characteristic ...
... necessary to assign any single plane to this manifestation—in fact there can be a reflection or possession of it or of its conditions on any plane of consciousness—the mental, vital or even the subtle physical plane. The explanation of it which you mention is not therefore excluded, it is quite feasible. (6) It is not possible to situate Nirvana as a world or plane, for the Nirvana push is to a withdrawal ...
... in dumb automatic necessities of our obscurest parts of nature. But the subliminal self has not at all this subconscious character: it is in full possession of a mind, a life-force, a clear subtle-physical sense of things. It has the same capacities as our waking being, a subtle sense and perception, a comprehensive extended memory and an intensive selecting intelligence, will, self-consciousness; ...
... a fit object for psychic research, though these things have nothing whatever to do with the psyche. Again much in Yoga itself that is merely occult, phenomena of the unseen vital or mental or subtle physical planes, visions, symbols, all that mixed, often perturbed, often shadowy, often illusory range of experiences which belong to this intervening country between the soul and its superficial instruments ...
... at all out of his own external human mind, but by inspiration, as the mouthpiece of the Gods. Page 5 The originating source may be anywhere; the poetry may arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative intelligence, from the plane of dynamic vision, from the psychic, from the illumined mind or Intuition,—even, though this ...
... his forms into oneself,—say, in the heart,—that can have an immediate effect or initiate a period of spiritual growth. There is also the seeing outside oneself in a more or less objective and subtle physical or physical way. As for milana , the abiding union is within and that can be there at all times; the outer milana or contact is not usually abiding. There are some who often or almost invariably ...
... 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 or subtle physical world (even sometimes the material); it is always in the vital sheath that one flies like that. The ascending movement is different—in that it is the consciousness that goes high up to other ...
... habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or illorganised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something ...
... your seclusion for once; you were tall, quite young, but very dark. I began to wonder if this was Sri Aurobindo of former years! Page 518 No. It is not likely. It is probably some subtle physical form—the one corresponding to the Shiva element in me. I have seen myself like that sometimes and it was always the Shiva formation. 11 December 1934 Help in Dreams X had a dream of you ...
... photograph was a very fine and true experience. The Mother's presence can be felt through the photograph by one who regards it with devotion towards her. It was her true presence that was there, her subtle physical presence and all you felt was true. It shows that your physical mind is opening to the true consciousness. It is quite sure that this will grow and the remnants of the old movements are bound to ...
... has an aura—but in most it is weak and not very luminous, in the Mother's aura there is the full play Page 269 of lights and powers.) People do not see it usually because it is a subtle physical and not a gross material phenomenon. They can see only on two conditions, first if they develop sufficient subtle sight, secondly if the aura itself begins to become so strong that it affects the ...
... a fit object for psychic research, though these things have nothing whatever to do with the psychic. Again much in Yoga itself that is merely occult, phenomena of the unseen vital or mental or subtle physical planes, visions, symbols, all that mixed, often perturbed, often shadowy, often illusory range of experiences which belong to this intervening country between the soul and its superficial instruments ...
... Chaitanya or Ramalingam, whatever physical 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 ...
... waking hours. This is different from the dream experiences that one has on the vital or mental plane which are themselves not ordinary dreams but actual experiences on the mental, vital, psychic or subtle physical planes. You have had several dreams which were vital dream experiences, those in which you met the Mother, and recently you had one such contact on the mental plane which, for those who understand ...
... was seeing truly existed, and it was only when I saw these landscapes physically that I realised in fact that I had seen something which existed, but I had seen it with inner eyes (it was the subtle-physical) before seeing it physically. Everyone has certain very small indications, but for that one must be very, very methodical, very scrupulous, very careful in one's observation and not neglect the ...
... Physical Consciousness By the gross physical is meant the earthly and bodily physical—as experienced by the outward sense mind and senses. But that is not the whole of Matter. There is a subtle physical also with a subtler consciousness in it which can (for instance) go to a distance from the body and yet feel and be aware of things in a not merely mental or vital way. Sri Aurobindo Letters ...
... t and the Integral Yoga Sweet Mother, what does “the subliminal being” mean, exactly? Well, it is what he says, you know. It’s what is behind. I think it is what could be called the subtle physical, the subtle vital, the subtle mind. It is something that’s behind what is manifested. One can imagine that what is manifested is like a layer or like a crust or a bark; it is that which we see ...
... habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives ...
... of Yoga - I: Self-Consecration × Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III: Experiences on the Subtle Physical, Vital and Mental Planes ...
... habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body-consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives ...
... instance, among musicians. There are pianists who have individualised their hands and made them so wonderfully conscious that these hands are not decomposed—not the physical hands: the hands of the subtle physical and vital—they are not deposed, do not dissolve at the time of death. They remain as instruments to play the piano and always try to incarnate in the hands of someone playing the piano. I have ...
... in, and above all, as I say, it depends on whether one knows how to use this contact properly. Don't you see, if one is inwardly open, if one is receptive, one receives right down into the subtle physical all that is necessary for one's integral progress. And in the order of things, the outer contact should come only as a crowning and an aid so that the body—the material physical consciousness and ...
... because probably this appears more practical to it! I don't know. That's all. But on the other planes, even in the terrestrial world, the more subtle planes of the terrestrial world, even in the subtle physical and the vital and mental, there are beings divided in two like this, but also beings which are neither male nor female. They exist. For instance, in the vital world, it is extremely rare Page ...
... no better than that. There! Sweet Mother, what does "the subliminal being" mean, exactly? Well, it is what he says, you know. It's what is behind. I think it is what could be called the subtle physical, the subtle vital, the subtle mind. It is something that's behind what is manifested. One can imagine that what is manifested is like a layer or like a crust or a bark; it is that which we see ...
... bad will and is capable of acting upon it, there is a ninety-nine per cent chance of not finding the true and complete remedy. The microbe is a very material expression of something living in a subtle physical world and that is why these very microbes (as I have said there 2 ) that are always around you, within you, for years together do not make you ill and then suddenly they make you fall ill. ...
... in the morning they are completely dazed and have lost all that they had gained the previous day; and that's because their sleep is unconscious and they go out in the vital or the mind or the subtle physical; they go to undesirable places or else fall into the inconscience and lose in this inconscience all Page 65 they had gained before... It is something very necessary, but it can't be ...
... there is usually no memory of the outward events and circumstances of past lives—for this memory there must be a strong development towards unbroken continuance of the mind, the vital, even the subtle physical; for though it all remains in a kind of seed memory, it does not ordinarily emerge. What was the divine element in the magnanimity of the warrior, that which expressed itself in his loyalty, nobility ...
... silent. It is the mental, vital, physical ego that we take for our being until we get knowledge. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Psychic Being The true being mental, vital or subtle physical has always the greater qualities of its plane—it is the Purusha and like the psychic, though in another way, the projection of the Divine, therefore in connection with the Higher Consciousness ...
... strength to her movement, a greater amplitude, more possibilities to her play. And suddenly I heard, as if they came from all the corners of the earth, those great notes one sometimes hears in the subtle physical, a little like those of Beethoven's Concerto in D-major, which come in moments of great progress, as though fifty orchestras had burst forth all in unison, without a single false note, to express ...
... Heaven and Hell exist? Heaven and Hell are at once real and unreal. They both exist and do not exist. Human thought is creative; it gives more or less lasting forms to mental, vital and even subtle physical substance. These forms are appearances rather than realities; but for those whose thoughts they are, and still more for those who believe in them, they have a concrete enough existence to give ...
... longer physical. And at the same time, they must have this suppleness, this lack of fixity which enables them to widen indefinitely. ( Silence ) The experience of the boat took place in the subtle physical. And the people who had dark patches and who had to be taken back were always the ones who lacked the suppleness needed for these two movements, but especially the movement of widening, more than ...
... and temporary successes Nature advances. As Sri Aurobindo has predicted, things are moving fast, and the situation of humanity has changed much since Sri Aurobindo began to work in the subtle physical: the idea of human unity has made great headway and is more widely understood. 12 February 1970 ...
... case when someone came to him with an acute pain somewhere: "Oh, it hurts here! Oh, it hurts! Oh!..." He said nothing, he remained calm, he looked at the person, and I saw, I saw something like a subtle physical hand which came and took hold of the little point dancing about in disorder and confusion, and he took it like this ( same gesture ) and there, everything had gone. "Oh, oh! Look my pain has ...
... represent and bring with them in their vibration.... I mean it would be quite inaccurate to say, "Only these Words are helpful," no, not that. But they provide an accompaniment, an accompaniment of subtle, physical vibrations, which has built up a certain state or experience, a sort of association between the presence of those words and this movement of eternal Life, that undulating vibration. Obviously ...
... and puts me in contact with things I usually don't deal with. And as it's a difficult time for the body now.... As I told you in our last conversations, the physical is being penetrated by the subtle physical. The body obviously doesn't need any more difficulties than it already has. ( long silence ) It's a strange sensation, a bizarre perception of both the true functioning and the functioning ...
... all nations. And I was witness to the whole thing. I remember it being a very conscious and rather long and detailed vision with a more intense reality than physical things have (it was in the subtle physical). And after it was over and I had done what needed to be done (I am not saying what because I don't remember all the details, and without accuracy it loses its value), when I came out of it I could ...
... differences in taste or color or intensity, perhaps differences in force as well—essentially, of course, they are differences in quality. I've been observing all this in a neuro-physical realm, subtle-physical, that is—but it's still physical—and in a complete mental silence where all judgments (you know, "judgments") have disappeared, along with a certain way of observing things. That's why I can't ...
... nothing—truly? Are you one hundred percent spontaneously sincere? Nothing at all?..." It's impossible to find a thing. Impossible. For all the states of being, the mental, the vital, and even the subtle physical, that sense of separation has long been gone. But Page 312 now I am speaking of the body. I say "I," of course—but what says "I" is... it's something as vast as the universe. And it ...
... change the consequences of the past (that is obvious and functions all the time)—it wasn't that; it was the power to change the circumstances themselves (circumstances not quite material but of the subtle physical, with a predominantly psychological content). And since the will was there, from the standpoint of consciousness it actually happened—that is, instead of circumstances developing in one direction ...
... has the form, the appearance of the person's body. If one person dreams of another, it means that both have met at night, most often in the vital region, but it can also happen elsewhere, in the subtle physical or the mental. There are any number of different possibilities in dreams. Blessings. 1 August 1969 Sweet Mother, Why is the night darker just before dawn—from the scientific as ...
... on the occult—extraordinary! He never noted it down. But that vital being who was given a body—did it live on earth for any length of time? No, never. Never? He stopped at the subtle physical—he refused to go any farther. It was Satan, the Asura 1 of Light who, in cutting himself off from the Supreme, fell into Unconsciousness and Darkness (I've told the story many times). But ...
... accustomed to going out of his body, he didn't know! He even used to make experiments—he would go out, circle around in his room, see his body from outside, observe the difference between the subtle physical and the material physical, etc. So he didn't know. And it's only when they burned his body... I tried to delay the moment, but he was in the hospital, so it was difficult. I was in my room when ...
... to her movement and more richness, more possibilities to her play. And suddenly, as if resounding from every corner of the earth, I heard these great notes which are sometimes heard in the subtle physical—rather like those of Beethoven's Concerto in D—which come at moments of great progress, as though fifty orchestras were bursting forth all at once without a single discordant note, to sound the ...
... anything to get out of that state. A little later: While you were in hospital, I had a sort of... I can't say it was a "vision" because it was very... it was lived. It was lived in the subtle physical world, which is symbolic of Reality (the forms are symbolic of Reality, they express Reality, and at the same time they are self-existent). Almost every night I spend some time with Sri Aurobindo ...
... there is any truth in it and how we should prepare for it. Last night, we (you and I and a few others) were together for quite a long time in Sri Aurobindo's permanent dwelling-place in the subtle physical (what Sri Aurobindo called the true physical). Everything that took place there (far too long and complicated to relate) was organised, so to say, to express concretely the rapidity of the present ...
... the earthly evolution until the Supramental is well-established in it. This is absolutely evident. What is meant by "waiting at our gates"? Does it mean that it has come down up to the subtle physical plane? I did not specify what gates they are. "Waiting at our gates for our call, to come down upon earth..."—does this mean that it will not come down upon earth until it is called? ...
... comes, but on the purity and authenticity and power with which it transcribes an intense vision and inspiration from whatever source. Shakespeare is a poet of the vital inspiration, Homer of the subtle physical, but there are no greater poets in any literature. No doubt, if we can get a continuous inspiration from the Overmind, that would mean a greater, sustained height of perfection and spiritual ...
... noticing them! You have all this here ( gesture above Satprem's head ), it's full of revelations, mon petit! And there you are, trying to see with the eyes of the vital, to have experiences in the subtle physical, all kinds of things, which cannot even come because you are here ( gesture above ), and that is the sediment. ( silence ) But I don't know, it's clear that the Lord is particularly interested ...
... busy and "talking" when all of a sudden, he leaped to his feet.... You know, he never wears any clothes, so to speak; when I saw him the first time in his house (his supramental house), in the subtle physical, he was without clothes; but it's a kind of vibrant matter: it's very material, very concrete, and it has a sort of color that isn't a color, which is a bit golden and radiant—it doesn't send out ...
... Yes, it's terrible. The whole work for a long, long time has been to heal that—to change it, change it. And usually my nightly activities are never in the material, they are always in the subtle physical, its densest part, if I may say so. Maybe I haven't even had in my life half a dozen visions with the material reality as it is: I saw the room as it is and heard the sound of Champaklal's voice ...
... the Lord wills—you shall do what He wills. And beware! you shall do what He wills." ( Mother laughs ) It makes me laugh, but it must be having some effect! It is very material, it's in the subtle physical. And it always takes that form; it doesn't say, "You should do this" or "You should do that," or "You shouldn't do this"...—nothing like that: "You SHALL do what the Lord wills," just like that ...
... night before, I spent a long time, almost two hours of our time here, with Sri Aurobindo. I have told you he has something that translates as an "abode" (it's magnificent, magnificent!) in the subtle physical. It's always immense, so clear, well-defined, yet fully open. And I get a sense of... ( Mother takes a Page 245 deep breath) phew! open, luminous—always, in every case. He is there ...
... (but that was organized), and to some extent in the vital, especially at night, but anyway... The vision was highly developed, very clear and precise, but physically ("physically," I mean in the subtle physical and physically), I had never seen with open eyes: I always saw the stark reality as it is, never anything else, and I had always complained about it. Until suddenly it came: one day I started seeing ...
... him (I see him almost every night, but for a few days I hadn't seen him, then I met him at night ... because he is always there ( Mother makes a gesture enveloping her ), but at night, in that subtle physical world, I see him objectively, as if I were meeting him), and I said to him, " I didn't see you for a few days ," like that, in jest. Then he put on his most serious air, but with all his irony ...
... 1963 ( Regarding a dream, or rather an experience of Sujata, the notation of which unfortunately was not kept. ) She went to Sri Aurobindo's home in the subtle physical—the thing is true, real, concrete, as concrete as here. As soon as I got her letter, I saw: that's where she went. Besides, I knew she had gone there. Plenty of people go there and are unaware ...
... Chaitanya of Ramalingam, whatever physical 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..." Another letter 21 says: "The idea of a transformation of the body occurs in different traditions ...
... principles, etc.: there's no mental translation), the perception of what, in the work, demands or depends on the bodily presence (I am purposely not saying "physical presence," because there's a subtle physical presence that's independent of the body), the bodily presence. And then, at the same time, such a clear, precise, detailed vision of the relationship each one has with this body (a relationship ...
... August 30, 1967 The last few nights, I have spent almost the whole night, several hours of it, in a place which must certainly belong to the subtle physical and where material life is being reorganized. It's immense—immense—and the crowd innumerable; but they are individualities, not a crowd, which means that I deal with each one of them. And there ...
... invisible: to appear just when there's a reason for them to, and to disappear when they no longer need to be there.... It opens up magnificent horizons! Yes, but it's already like that in the subtle physical. Yes-yes, but... Basically, it's the screen between life and what people call "death" that must... disappear. Because when I say that those beings "draw back within," well, to us they become ...
... half hours. I don't sleep at all, but I am active, absolutely active in the... ( Mother tries to situate the zone )—what's being prepared to manifest on earth, I don't know if we should call it "subtle physical" or... It's the creative zone of the physical, it's there. And as I can't run from one place to another, what I do is linked through figures, like that—living figures. Living figures: I organize ...
... meets people, he does all sorts of things. What work does he do? He meets people, talks, but he's here, he hasn't left the earth's atmosphere. Amrita left to rest; Pavitra is here, in the subtle physical—that's where Sri Aurobindo is and it's a physical that has a strong tendency to materialize. We'll see.... Page 240 × ...
... planes from which poetry hails. All the planes are capable of transmitting genuine poetry, but while there is a certain equality of inspired art in the midst of the diversity of expressive plane - subtle-physical, vital, mental, "overhead"' - there is a widening of the possibility of revealing the hidden Soul or Spirit in its authentic accent. Perhaps one may best suggest this in a few words with the point ...
... Chaitanya or Ramalingam, whatever physical 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..." Another letter 21 says: "The idea of a transformation of the body occurs in different traditions ...
... 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 irremovable base and centre in the Inconscience for spreading there his immortal ...
... The Supermind manifests below itself a hierarchy of "planes" disclosing the reality in various partial ways. At the lower end of the ladder there are the realms of Universal Mind, Life-Force and Subtle-Physical Substance, each organised into a set of interacting individual features. A realm of Soul-principle — a plane of World-Soul — exists at the back of them and is related to the universe we commonly ...
... surface of our being. Otherwise, it is not at all of the subconscious character as depicted a little before. Rather, it is in full possession of a brilliant mind, a limpid life-force and a clear subtle-physical sense of things. It has "a consciousness much wider, more luminous, more in possession of itself and things than that which wakes upon our surface and is the percipient of our daily hours." ...
... What a pity. Now the English version: Last night we (you and I and some others) were together for quite a long time in the permanent dwelling of Sri Aurobindo which exists in the subtle physical (what Sri Aurobindo used to 152Sisir Kumar Mitra, historian and headmaster of the Ashram school. 153Arindam Basu, eminent professor of philosophy. Page 101 ...
... precise! SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, he is getting remarkable guidance from his Asura. Sometimes the Asuras have an extraordinary foresight that comes true with perfect precision both on the vital and subtle-physical planes, just like that which is possible on the spiritual planes. Of course they are not always infallible. But Hitler committed only one mistake: when attacking Poland he thought that the Allies ...
... the higher; while integration means taking up and absorbing utilisable elements of the lower into the higher. This double process goes on on all the levels, on the mental, on the vital, on the subtle physical and even on the physical level. At a certain stage or in a concentrated process of alchemy the process of rejection may demand a mode of reshuffling and redisposition which physically appears like ...
... -s and eight 'dikpala'-s of ancient Indian tradition. But that is not all. Apart from these principal supraphysical beings, there are numerous types of elemental beings swarming in the subtle-physical and the lower vital planes bordering the atmosphere of the earth itself. The list of their names is quite a long one: gnomes, sylphs, nymphs, undines, dryads, salamanders, brownies, elves, imps ...
... concurrently two visions of the same object: "When you look at a person physically, there is the complexion, the features, the expression; at the same moment, if you see this face in the subtle physical, you suddenly notice that one part of the face is one colours, another part another colours; that in the eyes there is an expression and a kind of light which were not at all visible; and that ...
... not remain distinct in its purity; if it did, we would be able to distinguish clearly the soul element in us an4 follow consciously and fully its dictates. An occult mental and vital and subtle-physical action intervenes, mixes with it, tries to use it and rum it to its own profit, dwarfs its divinity, distorts or diminishes its self-expression, even causes it to deviate and stumble or stains ...
... view. This vision of the "seer" is bound to vary widely and naturally with the change in the quality and grade of the "seeing" consciousness. Thus there may possibly be a gross physical seeing, a subtle physical seeing, an ordinary vital seeing, an inner subliminal vital seeing, a common mental seeing, an inner mental seeing, a psychic seeing, a spiritual mental seeing with many variations in it, an overmental ...
... The intraconscient represents the subliminal part of our existence, the large luminous realm of interior consciousness, that corresponds to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane and even subtle physical plane of our being. Indeed, behind our outer existence, our outer mind and life and body, "Our larger being sits behind cryptic walls: There are greatnesses hidden in our unseen parts ...
... of consciousness. Page 265 The subliminal, on the contrary, is a field of what are called the inner sheaths or koshas. There is, according to the Yogic knowledge, a sheath of the subtle physical behind our gross body. Similarly, behind the complex of our desires, emotions and superficial or deep-seated longings and attractions and repulsions, in short, what we may call the superficial ...
... can begin to live and experience what lies behind the surface waking consciousness. One comes to discover the astonishing phenomena of the subliminal consciousness in which complexities of the subtle physical consciousness, inner vital consciousness and inner mental consciousness can be experienced and studied. One even comes to acknowledge that there are inner treasures of knowledge, will and feelings ...
... top of the head (called crown of the head) which is supposed to be the part at which things ordinarily come in from above and go out. E.g. it is through this that the being in the sukshma deha (subtle physical) goes out at the time of death and also it is the passage of connec- Page 253 tion (previous to opening) between the higher and the lower consciousness. There ...
... just by looking at one's face. He used to say that it is written on the forehead. I do not know. I have never heard of that. Maybe he had some visions and he could see the vital or the subtle physical.... Mother, this bump over here (the Mount of Venus at the base of the thumb) — what does it represent? Ah! this is a very good thing. A real help for the yoga. ...
... as the psychic being in the course of the evolution. THE PSYCHIC BEING AFTER DEATH After death, what happens to the adhar — I mean mind, vital and subtle physical— when the psychic being returns to the psychic plane for rest? It is dropped off—unless the being has become strongly individualised on the mental plane or both on the mental and vital ...
... hostile forces in every plane of our being? The main strength of the hostile forces is in the vital — but there are some in the lower ranges of mind and smaller beings and forces in the subtle physical also. Why are certain forces called hostile and why have they worked against the Divine? Because they wanted their own way which is the way of the Ignorance. ...
... Heaven in their physical body – Yudhishthira with his dog (who was not really a dog but Dharma metamorphosed) was one; Narada, Bibhishana, Ashwatthama and Hanuman – these went up only in their subtle physical body, they had to give up the gross material form (immortal, cirañjivi). Then thinking of Virgil he moved along the bank of the river that separates now Purgatory from Heaven. The river is ...
... programme of a physical transformation is postponed – not cancelled. But what we have been given is not less of a miracle. Mother has prepared for us her new body in the inner world, in the subtle physical which is as living and tangible as her physical body even though not as concrete. In one of her last Notes2 she refers to this new transformed body and she describes it as presented to her vision ...
... forms and forces upon an inferior and grosser sphere. And the higher or subtler the plane from which the new force descends – the plane can be anything between the one nearest to the material, the subtle physical or ethereal, and the one nearest to the other extreme, the spiritual – the greater will be the change in nature, quality and extent in the lower order. Such miracles, interventions, providential ...
... a recognisable one. Each one has special eyes, nose, ears, so this inner personality also has recognisable features. If you know, you can even name them ― it is this person, that person. The subtle physical is more concrete. Only the physical form, the Page 47 material form does not change much. It changes, yes, according to your age, slowly but for sometime you are the same ...
... action in the physical world. The physical extends and expands into more and more subtle modes of activity and all the more, not less, effective for that very reason. Behind the physical lies the subtle physical, behind which again is the vital physical and then the various grades of the vital. Indeed the vital or life energy as a whole is the real dynamism of all our physical activities and if it usually ...
... to the object vitally; it means an exteriorisation that leaves the body at least three-fourths in trance. And if you want to see things physically you will have to go out in your most material subtle physical; that leaves the body in an entirely cataleptic condition. These things cannot be done without there being someone by your side who has the right knowledge and who can protect you. But the mental ...
... in the physical world. The physical extends and expands into more and more subtle modes of activity and all the more, not less, effective for that very reason. Behind the physical lies the subtle physical, behind which again is the vital physical and then the various grades of the vital. Indeed the vital or life energy as a whole is the real dynamism of all our physical activities and if it usually ...
... Supraphysical beings do exist. But the supraphysical world is not of a single piece. There are worlds upon worlds in a regular series, from the most gross to the most subtle; above the physical is the subtle-physical, above that is life, and above life mind, the Page 395 series continues above mind also; and in each of these there are several layers or planes. Any of the beings from any ...
... the future of the creation is a new divine dawn; it is ready, absolutely ready for manifesting in the material; it is waiting, its advent is inevitable, no force can bar it. It is waiting in the subtle physical for the clearance of the earth stage. The age-long dream of the eternal dawn of which the ancients sang will be realised: Oh, the Supreme Light of lights is come. Rig Veda 1.113.1 ...
... Perhaps the difference between the new race and the present man will be even greater. In fact, this race is ready to appear on earth: it is preparing the ground for itself; it is there on the subtle physical plane and is acting upon the earth to prepare for its own materialisation. It is acting at the same time on man, and all those who are fit and open to its influence are being illumined by it. Anyway ...
... l beings do exist. But the supraphysical world is not of a single piece. There are worlds upon worlds in a regular series, from the most gross to the most subtle; above the physical is the subtle-physical, above that is life, and above life mind, the series continues above mind also; and in each of these there are several layers or planes. Any of the beings from any of these worlds or planes can ...
... and so on, and the subliminal Page 215 self. In the 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 ...
... "forces" than "beings". It is these that the Theosophists call the "Elementals". They are not individualised beings like the Asura and the Rakshasas, they are ignorant forces working oh the subtle physical plane. Disciple : What is the word for them in Sanskrit;? Sri Aurobindo : What are called bhūtas seem most nearly to correspond to them. Disciple : The term "Elemental" means ...
... 23 face difficulties, sufferings, reverses of all sorts in a calm and unflinching spirit." 45 When one dares into the occult or hidden regions of Nature, the forces of the subtle physical and supraphysical planes are seen to be active—sometimes to help, sometimes to hinder; and hence the need for faith, calm, patience and fearlessness. Yoga, after all, is the razor's edge. Its first ...
... for a short while. After some time thoughts began again to disturb the mind. I just inform the Mother what I had felt on that grand day. Sri Aurobindo immense and very concrete (in the subtle physical) was sitting over the whole compound during all the meditation. 28 August 1962 × Sri Aurobindo’s birthday ...
... was a very determined and sincere man, who wanted to complete his work. He wanted it almost desperately. I knew him long, long ago. The part of his being that comes to me is his vital and his subtle physical. They wanted to finish the work he started. One of his beings, the vital, was not satisfied so it wandered in these earthly regions in order to find a medium and finish his work. Mona: So, Mother ...
... flat on her stomach, with her elbows on the ground. One day, all on a sudden, she had an incandescent experience: ...all the life of that Nature, all the life of that region between the subtle-physical and the most material vital, which is very living in plants and in Nature, all that region became all at once, suddenly, without any transition. absolutely living, intense, conscious, marvellous ...
... learning, learning its lesson - all bodies, all bodies. Of course the battle was being fought still, but the Mother could see how, since his departure, Sri Aurobindo had been helping her in the subtle physical to change the physical structure. Many details had still to be Page 783 worked out, but the main breakthrough had come about at last: it was established that the physical was capable ...
... established here in Matter for a general realisation in humanity. All that could be achieved, all that was intended to be achieved, was the realisation of some of the marvellous possibilities of the subtle physical in the gross body; and the ultimate aim of these yogas being the renunciation of the material life, no further perfection of the body was thought either necessary or possible. But the Integral ...
... vital Being clothed in a body," Satprem brought Mother back to his earlier question, "did he live on earth for any length of time?" "No, never." "Never?" "He stopped at the subtle physical —he himself refused to go any further." She now disclosed his identity. "It was Satan, the Asura of Light, who, in cutting himself off from the Supreme, fell into Unconsciousness and Darkness —I ...
... November 1971 * * * Sweet Mother, What do the flowers and gardens in our dreams signify? Sometimes in dreams one sees flowers which do not exist. This probably takes place in the subtle physical. But it may also be that these flowers exist physically on earth in a place you do not know. Blessings. 6 November 1971 * * * Sweet Mother, Mother, this is not what I wanted to ...
... impression upon some brain centre? After travelling long in a boat I had once or twice the swaying sense of it after coming off it, as if the land about me was tossing like the boat—of course a subtle physical impression, but vivid enough. 4 April 1935 Maharashtrian Cooking I was just invited by the Dewas Maharaja for tea. I hope he will give me good cakes! I hope it did not turn out like ...
... felt something being taken away. But when I woke up, I did not know if it was a good or bad thing Mother took away. What was it? It was certainly a true dream of the lower vital or perhaps subtle physical plane, where the laziness, indifference, frivolity of the sadhaks is a fact and the chief obstacle to the supramental descent into Matter. Because in your inner physical you were sincere and aspiring ...
... something true to that... but anyway, it's... Seen from below. I was telling her that the whole organization of the arts and sports, even of food and all the rest, was ready in the subtle physical — ready to come down and be embodied — and I told her, "What is needed is just a handful of earth (gesture of cupping the hands), a handful of earth where one could grow the plant... Isaid ...
... vital, and this is already an exteriorisation which leaves the body at least more than three-fourths in trance. And if you want to see things physically, you must go out in your most material subtle physical and then here you leave your body in a cataleptic state; and these things are not to be done without someone being with you who understands them and can guard you. But the mental exteriorisation ...
... from the waking consciousness... Yes, and so "Why?" ( Laughter ) How is it different? But you have never noticed that it is different? For example, your physical consciousness or your subtle physical consciousness, your vital consciousness or the consciousness of your higher or lower vital, your psychic consciousness, your mental consciousness, each one is completely different! So when you ...
... always. And so? You are asking what it is? It can be many, many things. It can be simply that, your physical eyes being closed, your inner eyes open and begin to see in their domain or in the subtle physical or the most material vital, it may be that. It can be a projection of your own thoughts, that is, when you begin reflecting on something, certain images pass before you, like that; they pass ...
... Opening". Sweet Mother, when we see you in a dream, is it always a symbolic dream? No, not necessarily. It can be a fact. This means that instead of seeing physically, one sees in the subtle physical or the vital or the mind. But one sees something of me: for instance, if I send out a force or a thought or a movement, an action to someone, in his atmosphere this takes my form, in his mental ...
... November 1935 Yesterday you said that the Supermind descent into Matter is what is being attempted. If that is so, has the Supermind already conquered the mental plane, the vital plane and the subtle physical plane? There can be no conquest of the other planes by the supermind, but only an influence, so long as the physical is not ready. Besides the Supermind did not attempt—it is we who are attempting ...
... to interfere with the images rising in you. It does not matter whether they are mental or psychic. One must have experience not only of the true psychic but of the inner mental, inner vital and subtle physical worlds or planes of consciousness. The occurrence of the images is a sign that these are opening and to inhibit them would mean to inhibit the expansion of consciousness and experience without ...
... not in a current through the Brahmic hole. 13 February 1936 The experience of a concrete presence of the Mother in the photograph and the immediate effect on the health are things of the subtle physical acting on the physical mind and body—such things can happen only when the physical consciousness has begun to open—that is why I said it was a sign. Of course the full effects of the spiritual ...
... sometimes unformed and then they are given shape somewhere in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or refusal to these thought-waves (as also vital waves, subtle physical energy waves) or this giving a personal-mental form to Page 243 thought-stuff (or vital movements) from the environing Nature-Force. It was my great debt to Lele that he showed me this ...
... morning Pranam, when X went for darshan and the Mother pressed her hand on his head, at the same time I felt her hand on my head as a concrete touch. How does this happen? It shows that the subtle physical is growing conscious and felt the touch and blessings of the Mother which is always there. 20 March 1935 Someone ignorant might ask how one can realise the value of pranam in the half-a-minute ...
... all Ananda". (P. 13) Does this imply that the true vital belongs to the cosmic or supracosmic consciousness? If not, how can it have such qualities? The true being mental, vital or subtle physical has always the greater qualities of its plane - it is the Purusha and like the psychic though in another way a projection of the Divine, - therefore in connection with the higher consciousness ...
... Life through the Eye of the Yogin The Hidden Forces of Life Forces in Human Interchange There is a constant mental, vital, subtle-physical interchange going on between all who meet or live together, of which they are themselves unaware except in so far as its impacts and interpenetrations touch them as sensible results of speech and action and outer contact: ...
... figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul‘s home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are situated in the consciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into connection ...
... what exists now on earth. Not... No? I saw X... today and I was telling him that the whole organisation of the arts and sports and food and all the rest was ready in the subtle physical—ready to come down and embody itself—and I told him: "It only needs a handful of earth, (Mother cups her hands) a handful of earth to grow the plant... We must find a handful of earth for it ...
... is something else. The re-entry into the body causes a kind of friction, for what goes out has to be something very material if it is to bring about death, something even more material than the subtle physical, and this friction is extremely painful. Otherwise one may be externally unconscious, but one is not dead for all that. It is only when something extremely material goes out of the body and all ...
... there are different vibrations in the air of one country and in the air of another, in the air of one place and in the air of another. If indeed you are accustomed to have this perception of the subtle physical, you can say immediately, "Ah! This air is as in France" or "This is the air of Japan." It is something indefinable like taste or smell. But in this instance it is not that, it is a perception ...
... protective envelope of which I spoke from a physical point of view can serve also from a moral, a psychological point of view? It is not the same envelope, it is another domain. A man may have this subtle-physical envelope Page 323 quite intact and it may work marvellously to protect him from all illnesses and accidents, and yet at the same time he may be full of desires, because desires belong ...
... supramental life are trained. These people—or at least a part of their being—had already undergone a supramental transformation, for the boat itself and everything on board was neither material nor subtle-physical nor vital nor mental—it was a supramental substance. This substance was of the most material supramental, the supramental substance which is closest to the physical world, the first to manifest ...
... there is usually no memory of the outward events and circumstances of past lives - for this memory there must be a strong development towards unbroken continuance of the mind, the vital, even the subtle physical; for though it all remains in a kind of seed memory, it does not ordinarily emerge. What was the divine element in the magnanimity of the warrior, that which expressed itself in his loyalty, nobility ...
... Each time I have been conscious of the Power, the experience has been similar. The Will from above is translated into a vibration which certainly takes on some vital force but which acts in a subtle physical domain. One perceives a certain quality of vibration which is difficult to describe, but which gives the impression of something coagulated, not fragmented, something which seems to be denser than ...
... now upon earth. Page 174 Not... No? I saw X today and I was telling him that the whole organisation of the arts and sports, even of food and all the rest, was ready in the subtle physical—ready to come down and embody itself—and I told him, "What is needed is just a handful of earth ( gesture of cupping the hands ), a handful of earth where one could grow the plant.... One must ...
... turned to the Light and Truth. The forces that stand in the way of sadhana are the forces of the lower mental, vital and physical nature. Behind them are adverse powers of the mental, vital and subtle physical worlds. These can be dealt with only after the mind and heart have become one-pointed and concentrated in the single aspiration to the Divine. If the peace or silence is once absolutely ...
... different kinds of beings. The fact of being prior to the evolution does not make them undifferentiated. The world of the Asuras is prior to the evolution, so are the worlds of the mental, vital or subtle physical Devas—but these beings are all different from each other. The great Gods belong to the Overmind plane; in the Supermind they are unified as aspects of the Divine, in the Overmind they appear as ...
... - III Chapter III Inner Experience and Outer Life Subjective Experience and the Objective Existence Experiences on the mental and vital and subtle physical planes or thought formations and vital formations are often represented as if they were concrete external happenings; true experiences are in the same way distorted by mental and vital accretions ...
... likely to get the true helpful experiences and avoid the wrong ones. If one seeks mainly after experiences, his Yoga may become a mere self-indulgence in the lesser things of the mental, vital and subtle physical worlds or in spiritual secondaries, or it may bring down a turmoil or maelstrom of the mixed and the whole or halfpseudo and stand between the soul and the Divine. That is a very sound rule of ...
... are thousands of different kinds of experience. Visions are a special kind of experience in which the inner eye is active. Visions do not come from the spiritual plane—they come from the subtle physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic or from planes above the Mind. What comes from the spiritual planes are experiences of the Divine, e.g. the experience of self Page 87 everywhere ...
... of Truth in it that the mental intuition at its best even has not. Yes, 1 but it does not necessarily come from the original source—the plane of Intuition. There are mental, vital, subtle physical intuitions as well as intuitions from the higher and the illumined Mind. Powers of the Intuitive Consciousness Revelation is a part of the intuitive consciousness. Page 163 ...
... which presides unseen over the existence and of which the psychic being is the representative in the manifested nature. It is what is called the Jivatman. The true being mental, vital or subtle physical has always the greater qualities of its plane—it is the Purusha and like the psychic, though in another way, the projection of the Divine, therefore in connection with the Higher Consciousness ...
... and wrong mental habits. The Cerebellum Yes, it [ the cerebellum ] has some connection with the subconscient. The Ear, Nose, Face and Throat It cannot be anything physical but only a subtle physical sensation. The ear is the passage of communion between the inner mind centre and the thought-forces or thought-waves of the universal Nature. It sounds like a sensation of opening and enlarging ...
... this physical being which has developed an external mind and vital. The inner mind and vital are on the contrary in direct contact with the universal mental and vital and their forces; the inner subtle physical can also be in direct touch with the cosmic forces of the physical universe. But the exterior being is not in direct touch with the universal or cosmic—only through the outer mind and senses. ...
... its rather clumsy relations with the happenings in material space. What is space after all but an extension of conscious being in which Consciousness-Force builds its own surroundings? In the subtle physical plane there Page 401 are not one, but many layers of consciousness and each moves in its own being, that is to say, in its own space. I have said that each subtle plane is a conglomeration ...
... to establish direct contact with the Divine above and bring down the divine consciousness from above into all the centres. Occult powers belonging to the Page 573 mental, vital and subtle physical planes are not our object. One can have contact with various Divine Forms and Personalities on the way, but there is no need to establish them in the centres, though sometimes that happens aut ...
... beings, what the Theosophists call the elementals. They are not strongly individualised beings like the Rakshasas and Asuras, but ignorant and obscure forces Page 467 working in the subtle physical plane. What we in Sanskrit call the Bhutas mostly come under this class. But there are two kinds of elementals, the one mischievous and the other not. There are no Asuras on the higher planes ...
... oneself, even at a distance, has long been developing,—mostly behind the veil with manifestations in front—and is now Page 988 thinking of universalising itself. The sense is sometimes subtle physical, sometimes sthula. Lipi confirms fluency in legible stability, but its free manifestation is forcefully obstructed. Successful samadhi. Lipi in sushupti often coherent; otherwise ...
... different experiences which from your account would seem to have happened together. (1) An exteriorisation of the consciousness out of the body. Part of the consciousness, mental, vital or subtle physical or all together rises out of the body, leaving it in a strongly internalised condition, sleep or trance and can move about above on other planes or in the room and outside on the earth plane. In ...
... cosmic Personalities of the Divine and both like Brahma have their original plane in the Overmind, although they take different forms to the human consciousness in the mental, vital and subtle physical planes. Lakshmi is usually golden, not white. Saraswati is white. The snake is simply a symbol of Energy or Power. Narayana in your dream is clearly Vishnu as is shown by the presence of ...
... normal limits,—but in either way, safe or unsafe, the thing can be done. What we discover within this secret part of ourselves is an inner being, a soul, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner subtle-physical entity which is much larger in its potentialities, more plastic, more powerful, more capable of a manifold knowledge and dynamism than our surface mind, life or body; especially, it is capable ...
... still more potent and much more valuable element in the constitution of our being. It includes the large action of an inner intelligence and inner sense-mind, of an inner vital, even of an inner subtle-physical being which upholds and embraces our waking consciousness, which is not brought to the front, which is subliminal, in the modern phrase. But when we can enter and explore this hidden self, we find ...
... from a vaster more creative and effective subliminal image-building power of consciousness. A mind with immeasurably wider and more subtle perceptions, a life-energy with a greater dynamism, a subtle-physical substance with a larger and finer receptivity are building out of themselves our surface evolution. A psychic entity is there behind these occult activities which is the true support of our in ...
... human life and body to a science. They had discovered six nervous centres of life in the dense body corresponding to six centres of life and mind faculty in the subtle, and they had found out subtle physical exercises by which these centres, now closed, could be opened up, the higher psychical life proper to our subtle existence entered into by man, and even the physical and vital obstructions to the ...
... we may picture a Sri Aurobindo whose luminous substance grows, develops, and when the time is ready, there would only be a transition to be made. That may be. At any rate, that he is in the subtle physical is certain. He is there all the time. But this body knows very well that it isn't endowed with exceptional capacities.... It doesn't delude itself. All it has is a faith Page 264 ...
... the work, you understand; he has never left me, never left the work. The amount of supramental force he had accumulated in his body he passed on to me—and I received it. The rest went into the subtle physical, where he has done the whole work. And he said, "I will take on a body again only when it is a supramental body." Page 310 ( silence ) It was... monstrous, you understand.... I didn't ...
... Vedanta - a paradox at first 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 ...
... of establishing the Supermind in mind, life and matter on the earth. For, surely the Supramental World has not yet been brought down. Some Light, Force and Consciousness of it manifested in the subtle-physical on February 29, 1956 and the Supermind was at work in both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, but there was no substantial establishment of it in the stuff of their bodies. The process of transforming ...
... got the hint that something wonderful had happened. I came back as soon as I could. What had happened was the long-awaited Manifestation of the Supermind as a universal Force in the earth's subtle-physical atmosphere. And it had happened on the 29th of February, late in the evening, during the collective meditation with the Mother, in the spacious playground of the Ashram. Word got round ...
... part of our composite psychology that happens to be habitually dominant in us. The more these parts are near and awake to the subliminal soul-mind, the more intuitive the utterance within our subtle-physical or our vital or our intellectual consciousness. And the more the secrecy that is the transmitting agent breaks open outward, the greater the body of the supramental sight and rhythm in our utterance ...
... away from man. An art of masterly naivete is here, making us see and feel tragically how things are in their immediate outward reality. The poet has written memorably but from no more than a "subtle-physical" inwardness of imagination and with an easy adequate limpidity that deeply moves us without directly shaking up our sensations as Shakespeare does and tearing like him at our emotional roots. ...
... December 1912). All parts of the sadhana were given attention. We find one passage in which Sri Aurobindo speaks first of applied yogic knowledge and force, trikāladṛṣṭi and tapas , then the subtle physical power of levitation and then, in the next sentence, the condition of his teeth. This is followed, without a pause, by a note on the intensity of ̄ ananda (delight) then being felt in his body ...
... and partially succeeding, but it is a variety of imperfect forms. Spontaneous manifestation out of the chidakash is beginning entirely to replace development by mental-physical pressure in the subtle physical ether. In this development lies the surety of a perfect siddhi 15 May 1918 The programme for the second week of May has been fulfilled in all its parts; but in the vishaya it is only a beginning ...
... is so prophetic! It was so much the vision of the True Thing! So prophetic! ( silence ) Now I see, I see how his departure and his work so... so immense, you know, and constant in this subtle physical, how much, how much it has helped! How much he has ( Mother gestures as if kneading Matter )... how much he has helped prepare things, change the structure of the physical. All the experiences ...
... recognize Mother but Mother took me in Her Lap with immense Love..." ( after a long silence ) This woman, did he see her with open or closed eyes? With wide open eyes. Then it's in the subtle physical. Did she look like someone he knows? I don't know. ( Mother goes into a long contemplation ) I'll see.... We'll try.... In a few days, ask him to come and see you to tell you how ...
... can't even be spoken about because they're too personal—personal in that they appear to involve this body. Last night (ah, by the way, I remember noticing I was physically young—it was in the subtle physical, of course, and I was quite young)... but what a life I led, with so many... oh, revolutions, battles; I was involved in everything, there was tremendous activity. But I was being personally harassed ...
... then when it was arranged (the sheets weren't covered all over with words: in places only), she put the sheet in front of you. It lasted a long time. A Muse... It was a being from the subtle physical, she didn't seem human at all. And there were no letters: the words were ready-made, she took them and arranged them; then when there was a certain number of them on the paper, she would put ...
... sort of chaise longue) and I was supposed to bring him something to eat (not at all like physical food, it's something else... I don't know what it is... it's rather different in that world—the subtle physical), and it was expressed to me... (there were no words in my consciousness; I don't know why, no words), he told me something which I understood perfectly, not only understood but it made me very ...
... writes not at all out of his own external human mind but by inspiration, as the mouthpiece of the Gods. "The originating source may be anywhere; the poetry may arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative intelligence, from the plane of dynamic vision, from the psychic, from the illumined mind or Intuition,—even, though ...
... the mind's positive view of things and its logical sequences; the centre or centres it knocks at are not Page 82 the brain-mind, not even the poetic intelligence but the subtle physical, the nervous, the vital or the psychic centre. The poem he quotes from Blake is certainly not nonsense, but it has no positive and exact meaning for the intellect or the surface mind; it expresses ...
... are being trained. These people (or at least a part of their being) had already undergone a supramental transformation because the ship itself and all that was aboard was neither material nor subtle-physical, neither vital nor mental: it was a supramental substance. This substance itself was of the most material supramental, the supramental substance nearest the physical world, the first to manifest ...
... on every plane, from the supreme consciousness to my most physical consciousness. Here, in Pondicherry, you cannot breathe without breathing my consciousness. It permeates the atmosphere in the subtle physical almost materially and extends right to the lake, seven miles away from here. Beyond, my consciousness can be felt in the material vital, and then on the mental and the other higher planes everywhere ...
... dreams, but it was only a very partial phenomenon. To go out of your body means that you must gradually pass through ALL the states of being, if you are to do it systematically. But already in the subtle physical it was almost non-individualized, and as soon as he went a bit further, there was no longer anything! It was unformed, nonexistent. So they sit down (they are told to interiorize, to go within ...
... you cross the threshold, and there you are on the other side—and then you come back. Have I told you about the experience I had the day I suddenly found myself in Sri Aurobindo's home in the subtle physical? 7 Page 237 Well, it's as if I took a step and entered a far more concrete world than the physical—more concrete because things contain more truth. I spent a good while there with ...
... Supramental action will be multiple, infinitely varied, not forced to follow one precise line and the same line for all.. 1 The Supermind is already realised somewhere in the domain of the subtle physical, it is already existent and visible and concrete, already expressing itself in forms and in activities... And inevitably there is a subtle influence of that phy sicality on external matter if one ...
... estimating their quality, Sethna makes a judicious use of Sri Aurobindo's profound concept of poetic inspiration which, according to him, can hail from one of the following planes: (1) The Subtle Physical, (2) The Vital, (3) The Creative Intelligence, (4) The Inner Mind, (5) The Psychic, (6) The Higher Mind, (7) The Illumined Mind, (8) The Intuitive Mind, (9) The Overmind. For example, quoting ...
... The Secret Splendour (These lines were written in Bombay on 31 March 1956, when nobody yet knew of the Supramental Manifestation in the earth's subtle-physical layer, that had taken place in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram on February 29, 1956 in the late evening. The first stanza intuits what took place. The second goes beyond to a final stage still secret in the ...
... Before handing each cup back she would again withdraw inward with eyes half shut and take a sip … The occult truth behind the ceremony was that she was putting something of her own spiritualised subtle-physical substance into the soup in our cups.’ 43 Be it noted that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have never really been in ‘trance’, though Sri Aurobindo uses this word in a previous quotation. To ...
... and wrote about it to the Mother. She answered: ‘Last night we (you and myself and some others) were together for quite a long time in the permanent dwelling of Sri Aurobindo which exists in the subtle physical (what Sri Aurobindo used to call the true physical). All that happened there (much too long and complicated to be told) was, so to say, organised in order to express concretely the rapid movement ...
... destined for the supramental life. These people, or at least part of their being, had already undergone a supramental transformation, for the ship itself and everything on board was neither material, subtle-physical, vital or mental: everything consisted of a supramental substance … “The light was a mixture of gold and red, forming a uniform substance of a luminous orange. Everything was like that. The ...
... now upon earth. Not... Page 275 No? I saw X today and I was telling him that the whole organisation of the arts and sports, even of food and all the rest, was ready in the subtle physical―ready to come down and embody itself―and I told him, "What is needed is just a handful of earth ( gesture of cupping the hands ), a handful of earth where one could grow the plant.... One must ...
... be allowed to manifest through you. 12 April 1934 Dear little child, The paintings are fine, they are like Japanese ones. As for the "plane" from which they come, it is surely the subtle physical, where the memory of all the conceptions and works of art realised on earth is stored. Very affectionately yours. 16 April 1934 Mother, I do not want a life without energy. ...
... these forefathers? But surely this supramental consciousness is something to be found in the body? 8 Page 384 When one has these experiences, like the ones I've had in the subtle physical, for example, the body is certainly in trance—but the part having the experience doesn't AT ALL feel deprived or lacking in anything. The experience comes with a fullness of life, consciousness ...
... several fragments of his manuscript on Sri Aurobindo. ) You have brought me a very strange experience. The first time you read your manuscript, I called Sri Aurobindo to hear it. He was in the subtle physical and he listened. Yesterday when I sat down to listen, I thought, 'It would be much better if he entered my brain because that way....' In fact, I called him; he Page 346 entered my ...
... capacity for indefinite expansion of consciousness on all planes, including the material; and two, limitless plasticity in order to follow the movement of the Becoming. It was taking place in the subtle physical. The people who had patches on their bodies and had to be sent back were always the ones who lacked the plasticity those two movements required. But the main thing was the movement of expansion; ...
... to myself, 'All right, you must be peaceful, let's see what happens,' so then I brought down the Peace, and immediately I was able to pass into a 'second of unconsciousness—and I woke up in the subtle physical, in Sri Aurobindo's abode. 4 There he was. And then I spent some time with him, explaining the problem. But that was really an experience, a decisive experience (it was many months ago, ...
... dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through it all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised. Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to ...
... doing the sadhana for a long time, and I can say that not a day has passed that I have not done the Divine's Will. But I didn't know what it was! I was living in all the inner realms, from the subtle physical to the highest regions, yet I didn't know what it was ... I always had to listen, to refer things, to pay attention. Now, no more—bliss! There are no more problems, and everything is done in such ...
... each time the attack came, I went like this ( gestures over the arms, to drive away the attack ) and my arms were not affected at all. When it was over, I consciously entered the most material subtle physical, just beyond the body. I was sitting in 'my room' there (an immense, cubic room) reading or writing something, when I heard the door open and close, but I was busy and didn't pay attention, presuming ...
... 30 August 1967 For the last several nights I have been passing almost the whole night, many hours, in a place which must certainly belong to the subtle physical and where the material life gets reorganised. It is vast—vast—the crowd is innumerable, but these are individualities, not a crowd; that is to say, I have to deal with each one of them. And then ...
... now, is so prophetic! It was so much the vision of the True Thing. So prophetic. ( Silence ) And I see now, I see how his departure and his work so... so vast, yes, and so constant, in the subtle physical, how much, how much it has helped! How much it has ( Mother makes a gesture of kneading Matter ) helped to prepare things, to change the physical structure. All the experiences that others have ...
... sheaths? Page 123 The outer form only dissolves, unless that too is made conscious and is organised round the divine centre. But the true mental, the true vital and even the true subtle physical persist: it is that which keeps all the impressions received in earthly life and builds the chain of Karma. If we go a little way within ourselves, we shall discover that there is in each of ...
... NAMO BHAGAVATEH ... OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH ... all, all the time, all the time, all the time. That is the normal state. It creates an atmosphere of an intensity almost more material than the subtle physical; it's like ... almost like the phosphorescent radiations from a medium. And it has a great action, a very great action: it can prevent an accident. And it accompanies you all the time, all the ...
... speaking of that, I am speaking impersonally, as it were. We know nothing. We believe we know, but as soon as it is a question of that ( the body ), we know nothing. As soon as we are in the subtle physical, we know everything, we live in bliss—but here, we know nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing. Page 186 ...
... 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 ...
... material things? Completely. ( Mother reflects a moment ) Well, completely material, no—only through me. He is conscious of material things through me, not directly. He is very conscious in the subtle physical, but that's not quite the same, not quite ( Mother makes a vague gesture ), there is a difference. To give a rather curious example, there was a kind of spell of illness over the Ashram, stemming ...
... habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body-consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organized, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives ...
... 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 body, and it's already something permanent, in the sense that you REMAIN the same, you find things again as you left them (they exist permanently, though they aren't visible with ...
... Mother’s Agenda 1968 July 13, 1968 ( Mother looks very tired. ) What else? I'd have liked to ask you a question on that vision of the subtle Page 199 physical—that material vision which you have with open eyes. I'd like to know what it corresponds to: does it correspond to a supramental vision, or is it the vision a skilled clairvoyant, for ...
... no need of a material intervention: it can be done (that's known, there have been fully recognized cases), the physical intervention wasn't necessary, it was replaced by an intervention in the subtle physical, which was sufficient. All that in every detail, with every explanation and everything.... Then, when it was thoroughly done, it was over, the chapter was closed. But it was really unexpected, ...
... Page 352 of the cards I wrote what he said), the vision you will have will be the vision of the Truth-Consciousness. It's the supreme vision, the true vision. (One may have visions in the subtle physical, in the vital, many in the mind, but ... none of that is satisfying, one always gets a sense of a not quite accurate transcription.) But the true vision is the vision of the Consciousness, the ...
... reactions), it's very visible; even sometimes on the physical level: something suddenly disappears—as we had the experience when Sri Aurobindo would remove a pain ( Mother shows a hand of the subtle physical coming and taking away the pain ), we would wonder... "Ah!" Gone, vanished, like that. But it's not constant, not general, it's only to show it can be like that through the fact that it happens ...
... activity these last four days, one morning between two and four, that I spent absolutely conscious and active with Sri Aurobindo, who had made "changes" in his activities and his organization of the subtle physical; he had made changes and wanted to show them to me, to let me know about them. And he showed it Page 101 all to me for two hours. But that was the only thing, and as for the rest—everything ...
... Divine is trying to achieve: separation—an existing fact—and the state of consciousness of Oneness. ( silence ) Now, at any rate, I know.... The work in the other states (even, even in a subtle physical) is relatively child's play. The difficulty is here. ( silence ) So one may conceive of an improvement, even a considerable improvement, a state far more harmonious than the existing one ...
... There's something true there.... But anyway, it's... It's seen from below. So I told her that the whole artistic, athletic, even culinary organizations, and all others, are ready in the subtle physical—ready to descend and incarnate-and I said, "All that is needed is a little soil Page 203 ( gesture in the hollow of the hand ), a little soil to let the plant grow...." I said that ...
... we had passed into a domain beyond the body's hold. Properly speaking, I should say "the physical body", for there is an embodiment on all the planes, but the stuff is not physical. Even on the subtle-physical plane something of the earth's characteristics linger. There I may not be tottering, yet I would limp a little. Though no sticks might be necessary I would still have a halting gait. We must have ...
... cigars" go by, in single file, exactly the same color as those she had seen. But in their case, they saw it with their physical eyes. So that seems interesting. It was clearly a phenomenon of a subtle physical order (in its origin) or material vital (in its origin), but which manifested physically, and which may very well have come from other planets that are a little more subtle than the earth. There ...
... meet daily. And it goes on, and every night it's different people. So it makes hundreds and hundreds of people with whom I work. It's very concrete: concrete like physical life (it's in the subtle physical). Concrete in the sense that when you eat, you have the taste of it; when you touch, you have the feel of it; you have the smell. And what stories! Stories... fantastic inventions! I don't note ...
... certain state of vision as a result of which I read—I read written things; now that I no longer read physically, I read at night. Which means that all this inner development of the physical and subtle physical is still a whole unknown world to be learned. I don't know its laws, I am only a spectator. And it obeys a will of an absolutely different order from the will at work in the physical world. ...
... October 27, 1965 I have something interesting to tell you.... Sri Aurobindo has come out of meditation and has started "playing." I arrived where I always go to find him, in the subtle physical, last night around 2: 30, and what a crowd there was! Thousands of people. When I arrived there, before going in I met someone, who must have been one of the former politicians, from the time of ...
... January 22, 1966 I saw Purani last night. It's the first time I have seen him since he went out of his body. 1 There were other people too. I saw him in a subtle physical world and he was all light blue and pink, and everything around him was pink and luminous ( Mother makes a dancing gesture ). He was pleased, oh, so pleased, he said, "Now I am happy!" ( silence ...
... here? Every time I have been conscious of the Power, the experience has been similar. The Will from above is expressed by a vibration, which certainly gets clothed in vital power but acts in a subtle physical. There is a perception of a certain quality of vibration, which is difficult to describe but gives a sense of something coagulated (not broken up), something that feels denser than air, extremely ...
... other end, and there I found the person who doesn't have a body, watching intensely through those glass walls, like that, quite tense (which would tend to prove that it is also taking place in the subtle physical, or even in the most material vital). Oh, no one can ever imagine that.... There, I watched for a while, then I left to go back to the place where I was resting (with a slight inner work, saying ...
... "Haven't you got beyond that!" And I let myself flow into the thing. Then I had a series of nights with Sri Aurobindo... so marvelous! You understand, I see him constantly and I go into that subtle physical world where he has his abode; the contact is almost permanent (at any rate, that's how I spend all my nights: he shows me the work, everything), but still, after this translation of Savitri he ...
... the big fun ! And they don't in the least see that they are puppets. Not last night but the night before, I again spent the whole night with Sri Aurobindo, at least four hours in that subtle physical world. He has quite a beautiful abode there! It's magnificent— Page 267 magnificent. And it's not fluid: it's very concrete, yet at the same time not fixed! It has a suppleness that ...
... 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, Ra ...
... Page 162 victory. Do we not know that for five days after the certified clinical death his body was charged, as the Mother declared, with the Supramental Light as an overflow from the subtle-physical plane? We have also the Mother's statement that the moment Sri Aurobindo left his body the Mind of Light was realised in her - the consciousness which she has defined as the physical mind receiving ...
... transcendent. And this you may have felt as your subtle "guide", a special grace from Sri Aurobindo. The dream-vision you have recounted seems to me a very concrete contact between us on the subtle-physical plane, the one immediately behind our world. Some of our physical characteristics tend to continue there. My slight "limping" is a sure sign of our meeting on that plane. And to meet there is to ...
... interfere with the images rising in you. It does not matter whether they are mental or psychic. One must have experiences not only of the true psychic but of the inner mental, the inner vital and subtle physical worlds or planes of consciousness. The occurrence of images is a sign that these are opening and to inhibit them would mean to inhibit the expansion of consciousness and experience without which ...
... sometimes unformed and then they are given shape somewhere in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or a refusal to these thought-waves (as also vital waves, subtle physical energy waves) or this giving a personal-mental form to thought-stuff (or vital movements) from the environing Nature-Force. 145 ... the real truth is that all these thoughts and activities ...
... that the divine pace could be hastened in the earth consciousness. It was an occult imperative, an aspect of yogic action itself. The result was the manifestation of Supermind in the earth's subtle-physical on 29 February 1956. Thus in a bid to get things done in a most definitive way Sri Aurobindo left his body and completed the supreme or Param Yoga. The Tale Sri Aurobindo left ...
... larger and deeper ranges but the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, the inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty 63 Ibid., p. 804. 64 Ibid., p. 802. 65 Ibid., pp. 813-14. Page 303 and reality... It might even enter into the domain of the infinite and inexhaustible ...
... and deeper ranges hut the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, the inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality. It would bring in the concreteness, the authentic image, the inmost soul of identity and the heart of meaning of these things, so that it could never lack in beauty. If ...
... feel the adverse forces trying to break through it and can interfere, stop them or reinforce the nervous envelope. Or we can feel the symptoms of illness, fever or cold, for instance, in the subtle physical sheath before they are manifest in the gross body and destroy them there, preventing them from manifesting in the body. 17 Environmental Consciousness (The Circumconscient) ...
... sometimes unformed and then they are given shape somewhere in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or a refusal to these thought-waves (as also vital waves, subtle physical energy waves) or this giving a personal-mental form to thought-stuff (or vital movements) from the environing Nature-Force." (Sri Aurobindo, Litters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol.24.pp.1257.1258). ...
... Aurobindo but it had not transformed his body. To put it precisely, he did not have a supramentalised body and that is why he could undergo death. The Supramental Force was there up to the subtle-physical, and when he left his body this Force made a halo of light around it, visible for some days. 1970 *Mother India, December 1974. Page 173 ...
... comes, but on the purity and authenticity and power with which it transcribes an intense vision and inspiration from whatever source. Shakespeare is a poet of the vital inspiration, Homer of the subtle physical, but there are no greater poets in any literature. No doubt, if we can get a continuous inspiration from the Overmind, that Page 114 would mean a greater, sustained height ...
... time (here would be joking among us or with the Mother.” ( Light and Laughter by K.D. Sethna 1974, pp. 65-67). Through the Soup, says Amal, Mother gave to all participants, “her own luminous subtle-physical substance and energy—a most concrete transference of spirituality into physical stuff.” The Mother had to stop the games and the soup, along with several other activities in October 1931. (See ...
... this preparatory groundwork the Kundalini soon gets awakened. You experience the rising of the occult life-force or pranic energy from the base-centre, muladhara, and it pervading the entire subtle-physical, sukshma deha . It surges upward and, passing through the centre of subtle vision, ajna chakra , reaches the thousand-petalled lotus above the head. With it you acquire very many sharp and keen ...
... there is usually no memory of the outward events and circumstances of past lives—for this memory there must be a strong development towards unbroken continuance of the mind, the vital, even the subtle physical; for though it all remains in a kind of seed memory, it does not ordinarily emerge. What was the divine element in the magnanimity of Hector, that which expressed itself in his loyalty, nobility ...
... Socrates, the inner light or inner voice Page 34 of the mystic... It is the individual soul, caitya purusa, supporting mind, life and body, standing behind the mental, the vital, the subtle-physical being in us and watching and profiting by their development and experience... It is this secret psychic entity which is the true original Conscience in us deeper than the constructed and conventional ...
... his book. Strictly speaking, experiences of automatic writing or mediumistic trance are experiences related to the subliminal consciousness consisting of the inner mind, inner vital force and subtle physical consciousness. Spiritual experiences relate to the realm of super-consciousness or of psychic consciousness which is the consciousness of the inmost being which governs body, life and mind and ...
... Aurobindo and the Mother: "The forces that stand in the way of sadhana are the forces of the lower mind, vital and physical nature. Behind them are adverse powers of the mental, vital and subtle physical worlds." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, Cent. Ed., p. 635) "... there are all the difficulties of ignorance of the different states of being, to which are added the endless malice and ...
... so prophetic! It was so much the vision of the True Thing. So prophetic! (silence) And now I see, I see how his departure and his work so... so immense, indeed, so constant, in this subtle physical, how much, how much it has helped! How much he has (Mother makes a gesture of triturating matter), how much he has helped to prepare things, to change the structure of the physical. All ...
... break asunder the wall separating our subliminal self from our present surface existence, leave the surface consciousness and live entirely in the realm of our inner mind, inner life, inner subtle-physical and finally in the inmost soul of our being. This inmost soul or the psychic being is the Purusha in the secret heart, hṛdye. guhāyām, a portion of the Divine Self supporting the individual ...
... Vol. I.) It runs as follows in English: "Last night we (you and myself and some others) were together for quite a long time in the permanent dwelling of Sri Aurobindo which exists in the subtle physical (what Sri Aurobindo used to call the true physical). All that happened there (much too long and complicated to be told) was, so to say, organised in order to express concretely the Page 114 ...
... far a few minutes, when I opened them and looked at the moon, I saw around it a rainbow-coloured circle which again was surrounded by a clouded darkness. Any meaning? It is a certain kind of subtle physical vision which sees these things. It is not quite easy to say when they have significance or are only things seen. If it had any, it would mean spiritual light with a circle of manifold powers around ...
... obscurity and also shows the right movements in place of the habitual wrong ones. For example, while passing by a woman, the usual reaction was an automatic sex imagination and sensation in my subtle physical. But under the present cooperation the higher asks the lower, "What is the use of all such stupid sensations, you get nothing out of them. Instead, if you open yourself to the Mother you get her ...
... had come out of your seclusion for once,; you were tall, quite young, but very dark. I began to wonder if this was Sri Aurobindo of former years! No. It is not likely. It is probably some subtle physical form—the one corresponding to the Shiva element in me. I have seen myself like that sometimes and it was always the Shiva formation. The dream ended, but recurred soon after when I saw that ...
... which you live and move and have your being. Your sleep-world is full of many worlds, rising tier upon tier like hills in a mountain range. Quite at the bottom is an almost physical, a subtle physical world and at the top is the world of the spiritual or psychic being or consciousness. Page 55 You range through all of them in some way or other but you remember only partially ...
... higher; while integration means taking up and absorbing utilisable elements of the lower into the higher. This double process goes on on all the levels, on the mental, on the vital, on the subtle physical and even on the physical level. At a certain stage or in a concentrated process of alchemy the process of rejection may demand a mode of reshuffling and redisposition which physically appears like ...
... Each one has special Page 18 eyes, nose, ears, so this inner personality also has recognisable features. If you know, you can even name them — it is this person, that person. The subtle physical is more concrete. Only the physical form, the material form does not change much. It changes, yes, according to your age, slowly but for sometime you are the same. These inner forms are changeful; ...
... immediate programme of a physical transformation is postponed—not cancelled. But what we have been given is not less of a miracle. Mother has prepared for us her new body in the inner world, in the subtle physical, which is as living and tangible as her physical body, even though not as concrete. In one of her last "Notes on the Way" she refers to this new transformed body and she describes it as presented ...
... spirituality; in other words, it seeks to express and execute, bring down to the material life the powers and principles of the Spirit through the agency of the subtler forces of mind and life and the subtle physical. Occultism is naturally shunned by those who worship, who seek to experience the transcendent Spirit, God in Heaven, but it is an indispensable instrument for those who endeavour to manifest the ...
... to the object vitally; it means an exteriorisation that leaves the body at least three-fourths in trance. And if you want to see things physically, you will have to go out in your most material subtle physical; that leaves the body in an entirely catalyptic condition. These things cannot be done without someone by your side who has the right knowledge and who can protect you. But the mental e ...
... lowest 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 ...
... Page 330 Disciple : Do you mean the lower or the higher gods ? Sri Aurobindo : I mean the gods, and not the vital gods nor the mental gods. Disciple : But if the subtle physical accepts the higher Truth ? Sri Aurobindo : It may have accepted in my case but that proves nothing. It does not mean that it is established in the universal or that it is fundamentally ...
... has allowed the man to change the result foreseen. Sri Aurobindo : There is a vital image which is a possibility and it can be prevented ; secondly there is the image of the event on the subtle physical plane which, if it is fixed, can't be avoided. Disciple : Are there events absolutely fixed which cannot be changed ? Sri Aurobindo : Yes, there are. If you want to change then ...
... are added to it from elsewhere either temporarily or even permanently. The soul can put out derivative or ancillary emanations, parts of its being and consciousness, a mental or vital or even a subtle physical movement or formation which can take a body creating a temporary, a transient personality or enter into another's body and another personality in order to go through a necessary experience and ...
... spirituality; in other words, it seeks to express and execute, bring down to the material life the powers and principles of the Spirit through the agency of the subtler forces of mind and life and the subtle physical. Page 192 Occultism is naturally shunned by those who worship, who seek to experience the transcendent Spirit, God in Heaven, but it is an indispensable instrument for those ...
... cauldron of soup. Thereafter, each one would go to the Mother with his cup into which she would pour some soup. In this way, writes K.D. Sethna, Mother gave to each participant "her own luminous subtle-physical substance and energy — a most concrete transference of spirituality into the physical stuff". In Madras, while Amma had never shirked her duties, she felt more attuned when attending ...
... there are many things which happen and one has the tendency to take them as a response coming from the inner support, from the psychic. But, truly speaking, the inner mind, the inner vital, the subtle physical which are inside us and which give us the intimations which warn us in advance, the intuition of the things which are to come, guard us against the results of certain actions which could overwhelm ...
... habitually not to blink enough. April 4, 1951 * April 1950 Mother, Explain to me what you wanted to tell me about getting hurt. The aura of the most material vital and of the subtle physical acts as a protection for the body — that which changes it the most is an excessive fatigue, physical or mental overwork, worries, tension and depression. An altered aura no longer protects ...
... there are many kinds of voices owing to the forces on different planes and it is extremely difficult to distinguish which is right, the true inner voice. There may be voices from mental, vital and subtle-physical planes. Moreover, in the same man the voices may differ. SRI AUROBINDO: Quite true. A friend of Hitler's said about him that what Hitler said today he contradicted the next day. I also heard ...
... reality in which you live and move and have your being. your sleep-world is full of many worlds, rising tier upon tier like hills in a mountain range. Quite at the bottom is an almost physical, a subtle physical world and at the top is the world of the spiritual or psychic being or consciousness. You range through all of them in some way or other but you remember only partially and in snippets and you ...
... beings came in their subtle bodies to offer their pranams at his feet. My hypothesis is not altogether a fiction, for we have now learnt from the Mother that Sri Aurobindo has built a home in the subtle-physical plane and many of us visit him at night in our subtle bodies. She has also told us that we visit her or she visits us during our sleep. In the morning she has often asked, "Do you know anything ...
... larger and deeper ranges but the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, the inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality. ... It might even enter into the domain of the infinite and inexhaustible, catch some word of the Ineffable, show us Page 679 revealing images which bring us ...
... sexless - neither woman nor man - and very white and very slim and pretty: "Truly a harmonious form." Continuing her revelation the next day, the Mother said that it was possibly a formation in the subtle physical, but there were shoulders, arms, legs, an outline of the human figure in fact, young and slim and harmonious. The being had transcended the needs and capacity for ordinary food and the possibility ...
... Nature". It was an incandescently transfiguring moment for the Mother: And suddenly I heard, as if they came from all the corners of the earth, those great notes one sometimes hears in the subtle physical, a little like those of Beethoven's Concerto in D-major, which come in moments of great progress, as though fifty orchestras had burst forth all in unison, without a single false note, to express ...
... lines of the city's future development. When the disciple referred to the depressing actual conditions upon the earth, she remarked that the remedial organisation was already formed in the subtle physical, and was waiting to come down; in other words, the actuality of darkness and the potentiality of Light were there together. Now the disciple mentioned Mao Tse-tung's dictum ''Power springs from ...
... first her aura ... and, secondly, the forces of Light that pour out from her when she concentrates, as she always does on the roof for instance .... People do not see it usually because it is a subtle physical and not a gross material phenomenon. 18 The sadhaks and disciples who had developed this subtle sight - and those that had the higher psychic sensitivity - were able to see the aura, ...
... was put to Sri Aurobindo whether the Asuras can have the power of vision. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, they have. Vision is not only on the spiritual level. It can be on the vital and on the subtle physical level, and can be very accurate. Page 268 The question was whether the Asura can see his own end. Sri Aurobindo : No. Disciple : It is like the astrologers ...
... Such is Fate.³ 16-1-1936 After travelling long in a boat I had once or twice the swaying sense of it after coming off it, as if the land about me was tossing like the boat – of course a subtle physical impression, but vivid enough.4 4-4-1935 Dreams of this kind can last for years and years after the waking consciousness has ceased to interest itself in things of that kind. The subconscient ...
... the Light and Truth." "The forces that stand in the way of sadhana are the forces of the lower mental, vital and physical nature. Behind them are adverse powers of the mental, vital and subtle physical worlds. These can be dealth with only after the mind and heart have become one-pointed and concentrated in the single aspiration to the Divine" Bases of Yoga. Drive away, my friend, from your mind ...
... to the forces on different planes. I believe it is extremely difficult to distinguish between the right or the true inner voice and false one. There may be voices either from the mental or the subtle physical planes. Moreover, in the same person the voices may differ. Sri Aurobindo : Quite true. Hitler's f’iend said about him that what Hitler said today he contradicted tomorrow. I also heard ...
... that modern advanced thought does not deny its existence, Page 264 of its own fire, freedom and flexibility. Most of the physical attacks in the form of diseases come through the subtle physical and can be stopped there before they get at the gross, body, if one has the knowledge and perception of the operations of that sheath. Faith cure, cure by hypnotic suggestion, etc., even after ...
... truth and tenor of her whole spiritual life have been consistently characterized by an unfailing, downright practicality. Her ascent is an ascent of her whole integrated being, including the subtle physical— it is only the outer physical body that remains below; and the lengthening of her robe and the touching of it by those who implored her help and consolation—as we shall see presently - are as ...
... silences beyond". At first Savitri moved in a blind tangled wood and she seemed to move on earth but on its top, with thick obstacles of boughs of trees and leaves 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 ...
... really changed in the world That was the work Sri Aurobindo had given me. Now I understand. Now I see, I see how his departure and his work so ... so immense, you know, and so constant in this subtle physical, how much it has helped! How much he has helped prepare things, change the structure of the physical. Truly, it is not as it was, NO LONGER as it was. And all, all circumstances are as catastrophic ...
... for instance. (Everybody has an aura — but in most it is weak and not very luminous, in the Mother’s aura there is the full play of lights and powers.) People do not see usually because it is a subtle physical and not a gross material phenomenon. They can see only in two conditions, first if they develop sufficient subtle sight, secondly if the aura itself begins to become so strong that it affects the ...
... you that while the psychic is the inmost part of the being, there is also standing between it and the external surface nature a triple inner being, the inner mental, the inner vital, the inner (subtle) physical, and that these too had in their turn to come to the front. This is what is now beginning to happen in you. The being of man is composed of these elements, the psychic behind supporting all ...
... 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 confined to bed for five months in Rue Lemercier. "It happened to me once in Paris," she said. "1 was given a good dinner, then 1 went ...
... the external mind and senses, one begins to see things about them with a subtler physical mind and sense—e.g. seeing intuitively what is to be done, how to do it, what the object (even so-called inanimate objects) wants or needs, what is likely to happen next (or sometimes sure to happen), what forces are at play on the physical plane etc. etc. Even the body becomes intuitively conscious in this way... progress. There is only one sadhana for all parts, not a separate mental sadhana, vital sadhana or physical sadhana—but the action of the sadhana is applied sometimes separately to each part; sometimes on the contrary the action is on the mental and vital together, or vital and physical together, or all three together. But it is the same sadhana always. Page 10 ... condition, is ready to serve it without reserve or refusal. It is the psychic being also that can at once feel and reject all imitations of the Truth, all shows, all pretences. In the West the physical mind is too dominant, so that the psychic does not so easily get a chance—except of course in exceptional people. Page 8 It is the thoughts of the outer mind that have to be refused ...
... working through any part of man's nature. The outward-going body-conscious Page 110 mind of Homer describes Apollo's descent from Olympus with an intense atmosphere of the god's subtle physicality of power. Shakespeare passes a sudden voice from spiritual heights through the life-force's peculiar thrill and colour and we get the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on... beauty and appears real, even though its reality be remote from our ordinary perspectives. Nor is it necessary for a poet to pass completely through the inner experiences recorded by him of subtle realities. A mystic surge may convey to us a thrill of God's presence or a superb spiritual phenomenon like The lonely waters of eternal ease with such a strong mood-atmosphere that... capricious fanciful play or a dry intellectual interference. So long as there is a moved precision in language, an assured lift of rhythm, a masterful harmony in the whole, a poem is a genuine echo to some subtle reality behind the poet's imagination. It remains a revelation of the real, though its author may have experienced nothing — nothing except the joy of the creative labour, which gives him mostly a ...
... of Truth. We shall only be cheating ourselves by such preconceived notions. Our heart must become calm and firm like a rock which is not affected by anything. It will be enough if we make our subtle and physical organs worthy enough to experience the supreme Truth, accept what is experienced, and manifest it in life. In course of time, we shall realise,—according to our state of preparation,—what is ...
... our desires on our physical being and life-environment; a great sense of power and ease in manipulating and directing the vital energy of which we now become vividly conscious, for its action is felt by us concretely, subtly physical in relation to the body, sensible in a sort of subtle density as an energy used by the mind; an awareness of the life-plane in us above the physical and knowledge and contact... thought-forces, struggle of subtle powers behind all happenings, which the ordinary man is ignorant of or can only obscurely infer from the physical happening, but which we can now see and feel directly before there is any physical sign or even vital intimation of their working. We acquire too the knowledge and sense of the mind-action of other beings whether on the physical plane or on those above it;... derive from the vital and mental planes of being, to lean more for support upon these hidden planes, be less absorbed by the physical and to govern and modify the original nature of the physical being by greater vital forces and powers from the desire-world and greater and subtler mental forces and powers from the psychical and intellectual planes. By this development we are able to rise to higher altitudes ...
... —attended by an emptiness of the gross body and retirement into the subtle physicality,—renewing its selfconfirmation. The old habit of relapse is not yet excluded even in this first siddhi of the physical system. It is restored to a slightly Page 1126 obstructed continuity, but has not full possession of the physical system. There is a strong attempt to restore asamata attended by a... Sparsha is now abundant in the three things formerly gained by the sadhana, touch of subtle water and fire, touch of light things, eg insects, thread, wind,—both of these strong, vivid, materialised, effective on the physical body, and other touches not materialised, but having a certain physical result of sensation; subtle in intent, sthula in result, but not with the full density. Some of these sparshas... in swapna, a deeper is in sushupti of some kind, for the most part swapnamaya sushupti. Sometimes the outer world is experienced by the subtle sense with a fringe of waking physical sense. At times there is a division of the consciousness between the outer physical and the inner dream mind, the latter withdrawn into swapna and sleep, the Page 1133 former still aware physically on the outskirts ...
... could not have been the mental being on a visit, for then the soul would have projected itself more calmly, more ethereally. Nor could it have been the subtle-physical's France-ward sweep, for then some of the marked characteristics of the gross-physical would have lingered. I would have at least slightly limped and there would have been a soupcon of a small occasional impediment in speech. ... essential sense. For, though that prolonged smile was the only unusual gesture towards little me of his endless grace on the physical plane, I have had clear indications of his caring to stoop from his superb Himalayan height to show the same intimacy in various ways from the subtle world closest to the earth, where, according to the Mother and also some dream-glimpses by her disciples, he has taken... Realisation, according to Sri Aurobindo's insight into India's most ancient scripture? Some semblance of this Dawn appears to have called Sri Aurobindo's "Amal Kiran" ("The Clear Ray") to rush subtly to his dear friend's room far away at 5.30 a.m. to share in the birth of daylight. (10.9.1991) Page 238 Your sincere poignant letter has deeply moved me. I can see that Sri ...
... but no effusion. The arogya tapas prevailed over the roga which for the most part lived only in suggestions in the subtle physicality which could not materialise in but only affected the sthula. There was some physical sense or initiation of all the symptoms, but not their physical actuality. Samadhi overpowered by nidra in the afternoon, free, but still attacked by defects in the early morning... the most obscure physical being brought up into the light and penetrated and possessed by the light of the ideality. During these two days it gained successively all but the most physical flesh layer. The disease was left with a strong tendency to disappearance, but a remnant of persistence in its one last symptom maintained by action of the Roga consciousness on this purely physical layer. Page... abeyance. K.A acting, but oblivious tamas attending absorption insistent, not strongly attacked by gnostic tapas. Physical siddhi otherwise in abeyance or small isolated action or limited to simple maintenance of the present status. The relapse has been chiefly effective in the physical siddhi. 28 July 1919 The ideality is working still at the transformation. T² is now acting normally in the ...
... This vital soul lives in a vital body composed of a substance much subtler than physical matter; it is a substance surcharged with conscious energy, capable of much more powerful perceptions, capacities, sense-activities than any that the gross atomic elements of earth-matter can offer. Man too has in himself behind his physical being, subliminal to it, unseen and unknown, but very close to it and... 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 the grosser conditions of the life nature or the physical nature. Man too has in himself, subliminal, unknown and unseen,... Spirit poised in gnosis, vijñānamaya puruṣa , and puts on the nature of its infinite truth and power, if he lives in the knowledge-sheath, the causal body as well as in these subtle mental, interlinking vital and grosser physical sheaths or bodies, then, but then only he will be able to draw down entirely into his terrestrial existence the fullness of the infinite spiritual consciousness; only then will ...
... the magic of her words a marvellous tapestry of the dream-condition: how one kind of dream follows another and yet another - first the mind's fantasies, then the vital's adventures, then the subtle physical's wanderings. Within a few hours - within an hour perhaps - how many occult worlds haven't been traversed! But the connections between them are not easy to build. No wonder no two dreams are... It is a revolution, Mother! It is a revolution? That what one sees depends on who sees? Ah! Well... What one measures depends upon the physical universe, from the point of view of the physical sciences. Physical sciences, yes. For measuring the universe, each one measures it in his own way. But, then, complementary to that, it has been found that behind... be needed to effect this kind of radical physical transformation, the Mother doesn't think it too long to wait. In the meantime, the utmost that can be hoped for is to be able to prolong life at will, and "not to leave the body until one wants to". In a talk on 27 May, the theme is music, the divers sources - psychic, higher vital, vital, physical - of its inspiration, the difference between ...
... owing to the depressed state of the physical shakti. Chitra and fragmentary vishaya but no definite progress. Roga has been strong in the subtle sharira (feverish symptoms), but little manifestation in the body except depression and a sensation of weakness combated by the pranic tapas. Arogya force is changing to the ideal tapas, but not yet visibly in the physical body. Roga conquered in the evening... hampered by the physical obstruction. The golden but not the fiery blaze is gaining the lesser movements, including the remnants of the mechanical intuivity. Kavya for a while worked in the revelation, but was soon clouded by the obscurity of the intellectual effort. Arogya is steadily gaining in force, but with a slow pressure. The fragmentary rogas encircle dully in the subtle pranic atmosphere... s to a lower level, but this habit of the physical being is now being attacked; it is not yet overcome, but the force of the habit is diminished. Roga also recurred at night, but this time it was attacked with great force by the gnostic tapas and overcome;—cough and sensation though not actuality of catarrh. These things however still besiege in the subtle molecular body. 8 July 1919 The action ...
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