... "witnessing Presence") that is separate and detached from the egoic surface self is the first principle. Observing the movements of the surface being as an impartial wiriness is the best way to bring about the separation between the surface being and one's true being within. Page 126 4.There must be a will not only to be detached and separate from the surface... control of the Master, the Ishwara." Mastery comes when one is no longer a mere Witness but also a Sanctioner. Besides the method of standing back as a detached witness of the movements of the surface being, Sri Aurobindo's yoga teaches the method of offering one's egoic movements and surrendering them to the Divine, calling on the Divine for the taking up of one's egoic nature by a Higher Power for... intuitions of a greater luminous knowledge. 137 The state of detachment from and disidentification with Nature brings the profound realization that, as long as one is identified with one's surface being, the motive power and propulsion for all one's activities come from Nature. Then he realises how mistaken was his impression that his mind was the doer of his works; his mind was only a small ...
... which our surface consciousness is so sensitized that our soul can come in direct contact in the surface being with the Spiritual reality. In a sense, it may be said that every system of yoga is sought for by our soul in its attempt to achieve the contact with the spiritual reality in the surface being. The soul may attempt through Jnana yoga, Bhakti yoga, Karma yoga or any other system of yoga, depending... heart and of the thinking mind a consecration of the pragmatic will. It is by combination of all these three approaches that one can create or arrive at a spiritual or psychic condition of the surface being and nature in which there is a larger and more complex openness to the psychic light within us and to the spiritual Self or the Ishwara or to the Reality which is superconscient and now felt above... Aurobindo points out: "A combination of all these three approaches, the approach of the mind, the approach of the will, the approach of the heart, creates a spiritual or psychic condition of the surface being and nature in which there is a larger and more complex openness to the psychic light within us and to the spiritual Self or the Ishwara, to the Reality now felt above and enveloping and penetrating ...
... them; it is not limited by what it manifests, not contained by the incomplete forms of the manifestation, not tarnished by the imperfections and impurities, the defects and depravations of the surface being. It is an ever-pure flame of the divinity in things and nothing that comes to it, nothing that enters into our experience can pollute its purity or extinguish the flame. This spiritual stuff is... us. Each has its own distinct nature, its influence, its action on the whole of us; but on our surface all these influences and all this action, as they come up, mingle and create an aggregate surface being which is a composite, an amalgam of them all, an outer persistent and yet shifting and mobile formation for the purposes of this life and its limited experience. But this aggregate is, because... attempt, however elementary in many, to see and control and in the end more and more perfectly harmonise the manifold components, the different and conflicting tendencies that seem to make up his surface being. He does succeed in setting up a sort of regulated chaos or ordered confusion in him, or at least succeeds in thinking that he is directing himself by his mind and will, even though in fact that ...
... played by both of them in our building that we have to discover. On the surface we know only so much of our self as is formulated there and of even this only a portion; for we see our total surface being in a general vagueness dotted and sectioned by points or figures of precision: even what we discover by a mental introspection is only a sum of sections; the entire figure and sense of our personal... detached observation of the actions of the nature by the Purusha and a great possibility, through this double status of knowledge, of a complete control and understanding. All the movements of the surface being can be seen with a complete detachment, but also with a direct sight in the consciousness by which the self-delusions and mistakes of self of the outer consciousness can be dispelled; there is a... by identity belong to the higher hemisphere of existence: this knowledge by direct contact is the main character of the highest supraphysical mental planes of consciousness, those to which our surface being is closed in by a wall of ignorance; in a diminished and more separative form it is a property of the lesser supraphysical planes of mind; it is or can be an element in all that is supraphysical ...
... A Greater Psychology 3 The Surface Being and the Inner Being The very first step in getting out of the ignorance is to accept the fact that this outer consciousness is not one's soul, not oneself, not the real person, but only a temporary formation on the surface for the purposes of the surface play. The soul, the person is within, not on the surface —... by the intuitive sense of self-existence and misrepresented by the mental, vital, physical ego-sense, its truth has to be experienced in the mind's silence. But also the dynamic parts of our surface being are similarly diminished figures of greater things that are there in the depths of our secret nature. The surface memory itself is a fragmentary and ineffective action pulling out details from... the Spirit. The Foundations of Indian Culture, p. 139 On the surface we know only so much of our self as is formulated there and of even this only a portion; for we see our total surface being in a general vagueness dotted and sectioned by points or figures of precision: even what we discover by a mental introspection is only a sum of sections; the entire figure and sense of our personal ...
... from Matter and Mind, but in reality it is the same in all the stages and always a middle term between Mind and Matter, constituent of the latter and instinct with the former." 15 The Surface Being To return to Sri Aurobindo's fourfold classification of the human constitution, man's surface consciousness, derived from the three universal principles just mentioned, is composed of mind... 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 maintains with the universe through the sense-mind and the senses. There are here inner senses, a subliminal sight, touch, hearing; but these subtle senses are rather channels of the inner being's... by sleep or inward-drawn concentration or by the inner plunge of trance." 29 Page 40 Sri Aurobindo has called the subliminal self the inner being as distinguished from the outer or surface being. Thus he states: "There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life ...
... of a little out of the much that we are, — unless we go behind this and send down our plummet into the subconscient and open ourself to the superconscient so as to know their relation to our surface being. For between these three things our existence moves and finds in them its totality. The Life Divine, p.223 ...he [man] is aware only of a small part of his own being: his surface... us. Each has its own distinct nature, its influence, its action on the whole of us; but on our surface all these influences and all this action, as they come up, mingle and create an aggregate surface being which is a composite, an amalgam of them all, an outer persistent and yet shifting and mobile formation for the purposes of this life and its limited experience. But this aggregate is,... attempt, however elementary in many, to see and control and in the end more and more perfectly harmonise the manifold components, the different and conflicting tendencies that seem to make up his surface being. He does succeed in setting up a sort of regulated chaos or ordered confusion in him, or at least succeeds in thinking that he is directing himself by his mind and will, even though in fact that ...
... and articulated form which our nature demands. Before it could effect any such completeness of direct knowledge in us, it would have to organise itself in our surface being and take possession there of the leading part. But in our surface being it is not the Intuition, it is the Reason which is organised and helps us to order our perceptions, thoughts and actions. Therefore the age of intuitive knowledge ...
... takes part and exercises on them a considerable influence. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains with the universe through the sense-mind and the senses. There are here inner senses, a subliminal sight, touch, hearing; but these subtle senses are rather channels of the inner being's... are for the most part a selection from what we secretly are or can be, an exteriorised and much mutilated and vulgarised edition of our real, our hidden being or an upthrow from its depths. Our surface being has been formed with this subliminal help by an evolution out of the Inconscient for the utility of our present mental and physical life on earth; this that is behind is a formation mediating ...
... Aurobindo's experience of, 376 -77 Non-Being (Asat, Non-Existence), 29, 30, 31, 135, 368, 374, 377 Occultism, 195, 196 Ornstein, Robert E., 316, 322 Outer (frontal, surface) being, 13, 20, 22-27 passim, 41-71, 337, 339-41 Overmind, 142, 153-58, 355-56, 392 and cosmic consciousness, 153 descent of, 153-58 passim Page 423 ... and Overmind, 159 See also Gnosis; Truth-Consciousness Page 425 Suppression, and rejection, 65-66 and objectivity, 175-79, 192-94 Surface being, see Outer being Sushupti ( su ṣ upti), see Sleep-State svapna, see Dream-State Tamas. 108, 39, 110-15 passim, changed into ś ama, 118 Tao, 9 Tart, Charles T ...
... is not, like our surface being, an outcome of the evolutionary energy of the Inconscient. It is a meeting place of the consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution. Hence, there is a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal, unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface-being maintains with the ...
... under their light and by their influence the spiritual sage, seer, prophet, God-lover, Yogin, gnostic, Sufi, mystic. This is man's only way of true self-exceeding: for so long as we live in the surface being or found ourselves wholly on Matter, it is impossible to go higher and vain to expect that there can be any new transition of a radical character in our evolutionary being. The vital man, the mental... experience. The whole concentration of the being will be shifted from below upwards and from without inwards; our higher and inner being now unknown to us will become ourselves, and the outer or surface being which we now take for ourselves will be only an open front or an annexe through which the true being meets the universe. The outer world itself will become inward to the spiritual awareness, a part ...
... being is not, like our surface being, an outcome of the energy of the Inconscient. It is a meeting place of the consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal, unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains ________ ...
... 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 evolution and the consciousness that is radiating from the typal worlds. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal, unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains with the ...
... being is not, like our surface being, an outcome of the energy of the Inconscient. It is a meeting-place of the consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal, unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains with the universe ...
... being marked him out-as a possible instrument but the conditions were not ready. The internal being must be awake and conscious of the connection and the surface-being should not stand in the way – then every thing is all right. But if the surface being is egoistic then there is a crash. The world of the Gods is above the psychic world. When one says an "Amsha" – portion – of the God manifests in a ...
... attempt, however elementary in many, to see and control and in the end more and more perfectly harmonise the manifold components, the different and conflicting tendencies that seem to make up his surface being. He does succeed in setting up a sort of regulated chaos or ordered confusion in him, or at least succeeds in thinking that he is directing himself by his mind and will, even though in fact that ...
... them; it is not limited by what it manifests, not contained by the incomplete forms of the manifestation, not tarnished by the imperfections and impurities, the defects and depravations of the surface being. It is an ever-pure flame of the divinity in things and nothing that comes to it, nothing that enters into our experience can pollute its purity or extinguish the flame. This spiritual stuff is ...
... psychological moods, states and movements, ideas helpful and harmful, depression, exhaustion—the whole gamut. In the ordinary consciousness one is not aware of these things; the effects come into the surface being, but the cause and process remain unknown and unnoticed because the interchange is subtle and covert, it takes place through what is called the subconscient, but is rather a behind-consciousness ...
... entirely sincere self-giving, the psychic usually after a time opens of itself. 108 — Sri Aurobindo * A first condition of the soul's complete emergence is a direct contact in the surface being with the spiritual Reality. Because it comes from that, the psychic element in us turns always towards whatever in phenomenal Nature seems to belong to a higher Reality and can be accepted as its ...
... Introduction Our Many Selves The Outer Being There are three main parts in the outer or surface being: the mind (the mental), the life-nature (the vital) and the body (the physical). Each part has its own distinct type of consciousness, though in our ordinary awareness we are unable to distinguish among the mental, vital and physical constituents of our ...
... hearts and bodies.—Man's difficulties; first, he only knows and governs a part of himself, the greater part of himself is subconscient and it is this greater cosmic part that really governs his surface being. This is what is meant by his being governed by his Nature and by the Lord seated within through the Maya or apparent denial of Sachchidananda by Himself. It is only by becoming one with the Lord ...
... this source. There are three occult sources of our action—the superconscient, the subliminal, the subconscient, but of none of them are we in control or even aware. What we are aware of is the surface being which is only an instrumental arrangement. The source of all is the general Nature,—universal Nature individualising itself in each person; for this general Nature deposits certain habits of movement ...
... inner Purusha no longer identified with the surface Prakriti. Afterwards it will be much easier to change, by the force of the psychic perception and the Peace and Power and Light from above, the surface being. The outward disturbances cannot touch the true being. If one is in the true being, they are not felt as belonging to oneself, but as outside or surface movements which leave one unmoved ...
... develop. But experience in the waking state is more important for this Yoga. Samadhi is a help for reaching the inner depths of the consciousness. One is able to go more easily by it inward below the surface being, to get into direct contact with other supraphysical Page 248 planes of experience, to pass into other worlds and return, to contact happenings distant in space and time, to see what ...
... Dreams All Sleep Full of Dreams Again, about the sleep, it is like that because the ordinary state of sleep is an unconscious condition. One has always dreams throughout the night, but the surface being is then unconscious and records only a few of them that come through and even these it records in an incoherent way. Really one is acting or working on one plane or another throughout sleep except ...
... of knowledge and ignorance, of right and wrong consciousness, inherent in physical Nature: but, fundamentally, all pain and suffering are the result of an insufficient consciousness-force in the surface being which makes it unable to deal rightly with self and Nature or unable to assimilate and to harmonise itself with the contacts of the universal Energy; they would not exist if in us there were an ...
... a selection from what we secretly are or can be, an exteriorised and much Page 763 mutilated and vulgarised edition of our real, our hidden being or an upthrow from its depths. Our surface being has been formed with this subliminal help by an evolution out of the Inconscient for the utility of our present mental and physical life on earth; this that is behind is a formation mediating between ...
... only by the intuitive sense of self-existence and misrepresented by the mental, vital, physical ego-sense, its truth has to be experienced in the mind's silence. But also the dynamic parts of our surface being are similarly diminished figures of greater things that are there in the depths of our secret nature. The surface memory itself is a fragmentary and ineffective action pulling out details from an ...
... before our life can be divine in that inferior sense, the life of the infraspiritual superman, mental demi-god or vital Titan, Deva or Asura. This inner life once created, to convert our whole surface being, our thought, feeling, action in the world, into a perfect power of that inner life, must be our other preoccupation. Only if we live in that deeper and greater way in our dynamic parts, can there ...
... abandonment of that. What is to be abandoned is the multitude of norms that spring up from time to time according to occasions. These norms are called "dharmas of the heart", the promptings of the surface being, the common natural reactions or responses to particular situations, and they depend also on the psychological state of an individual, like the state of Arjuna when he saw the unpleasant work he ...
... psychic, is in rapport with the totally free Jivatman. But even when the projection of the psyche into mind, vitality and matter acts as something involved in Prakriti and is the stumbling surface being of us, the self as ordinarily cognised, then also it carries a touch of freedom with it; for that involvement, that enslavement, is freely made and there remains with us the power to withhold ...
... subconscious or subjacent, an underlying something else akin to consciousness. This is the first sign of a subconscient mind or of a secret consciousness which may even underlie not only our own surface being, but the whole cosmic operation and its apparently inconscient functioning and driven interactions, its purposeless purpose. If it is a life-force that goes on with the works of the life when ...
... deal with. The three parts of the being just mentioned - mental, vital, physical - which yoga aims at changing, constitute what in Sri Aurobindo's yoga psychology is called the outer or surface being which is distinguished from the inner being, composed of the inner mind, the inner vital, the inner physical, with the psychic or the soul as the innermost part of the being supporting all the rest ...
... complex working of mental process behind and beyond our known thoughts, feelings, desires and volitions. This process is usually called "subconscious" or "unconscious", but what is meant is that our surface being is not conscious of it. Nor is the hidden region of the mind merely individual: Jung has noted a common pool of memories and symbols, a depth of racial responses, motives and mythological attitudes ...
... result of this practice, you will find that during this interlude itself a background-consciousness will develop which will be mysteriously you, untouched in the midst of all the excitement in your surface being and leading gradually to less and less frequency of the cry for "sex". Of course, the equanimity to be cultivated is accompanied by a remembrance of the Mother and by a gesture of offering one's ...
... A Greater Psychology 6 The Outer (Surface) Being The outer consciousness is that which usually expresses itself in ordinary life. It is the external mental, vital, physical. It is not connected very much with the inner being except in a few — until one connects them together in the course of the sadhana. Letters on Yoga, p. 311 The outer ...
... the being and its parts". One system is concentric, like "a series of rings or sheaths"; the other is vertical, "like a flight of steps". 5 The concentric system consists of the outer or surface being, the inner being, and supporting both of these, the inmost being or the psychic (Fig.l). The outer being and the inner being have three corresponding parts — mental, vital, physical. Thus "There ...
... Opening to the Divine You are to open yourself to the Divine and receive Him. Usually you open yourself in all directions to everything and everybody in the world. You open your surface being and receive there all sorts of influences from all quarters. So inside you there-comes about what we can call a hotch-potch of all contrary and contradictory movements: and that creates difficulties ...
... become more and more perceptible Page 37 and continuous, and the seeker will feel a separation take place in his being: a silent depth vibrating in the background, and the rather thin surface being where activities, thoughts, gestures, words occur. He will have brought to light the Witness in him, and will allow himself less and less to be taken in by the outside play, which, octopus-like ...
... consciousness. "A combination of all these three approaches, the approach of the mind, the approach of the will, the approach of the heart, creates a spiritual or psychic condition of the surface being and nature in which there is a larger and more complex openness to the psychic light within us and to the spiritual Self or the Ishwara, to the Reality now felt above and enveloping and penetrating ...
... takes part and exercises on them a considerable influence. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal, unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains with the universe through the sense-mind and the senses. There are here inner senses, a subliminal sight, touch, hearing; but these subtle senses are rather channels of the inner being’s ...
... s and different orders of realities that makes ¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, January 31, 1914. Page 301 us rush into any action that appeals to our surface being. An indiscriminate undertaking of the actions preferred by the mind usually leads to a confusion of values and a chaos of consequences. What than should a Yogin do when many ideals appeal to his ...
... being is shut up in a kind of shell or prison and it is that which prevents it from manifesting itself outside and coming into conscious and constant contact with the external consciousness, the surface being. In endeavouring to join with the psychic one feels exactly as if there was a wall in front which one must break through or there is a door which must be forced if one were to enter. If you can ...
... art-experssion. It is pertinent to point out that there is a subjectivity that is true and also one that is false or half true. This false subjectivity is the egoistic personality of the artist, his surface being, the out-ward-turned vital self interested in life and satisfaction of impulses and desires. Art, through Katharsis-purification-, can change this natural ignorant personality and awaken the true ...
... become divine and perfect. It is through Yoga that this means can be found and this emergence become possible. 3 A greater existence and consciousness than what we are now or are in our surface being, to which yet we can by certain means raise ourself and become or enter into that,—this is the postulate of all Yoga. What is this greater consciousness and existence? It is something or someone ...
... great body of our being is submerged or subliminal.—The subliminal self perceives, remembers, understands, uses all that we fail to perceive, remember or use. It provides all the material of our surface being which is only a selection from its wider existence and activity. It is only the physical and vital part of our existence which is, properly speaking, subconscient; the subliminal self is the true ...
... in knowledge and the possession of it in power. There are secret operations in us, in our subconscient and superconscient selves, which precede this action, but of these we are not aware in our surface being and therefore for us they do not exist. If we knew of them, our whole conscious functioning would be changed. As it is what happens is a rapid process by which we sense an image and have of it an ...
... a double consciousness, one on the surface, small, active, ignorant, swayed by thoughts and feelings, grief and joy and all kinds of reactions, the other within calm, vast, equal, observing the surface being with an immovable detachment or indulgence or, it may be, acting upon its agitation to quiet, enlarge, transform it. So too we can rise to a consciousness above and observe the various parts of ...
... "brotherly love". Ideals of fraternity, like those of liberty and equality, are very good, and surely they reflect something of what we may term the Divine Consciousness. But as long as we live in our surface being, however refined and well-intentioned it may be, and as long we do not make a constant methodised effort to go beyond it, we shall see that human society remains full of personal tugs of war, a ...
... nature come up to distort the dream one had of the grand passion. Love yields to self-will, to vanity, to a bitter urge of giving hurt: it becomes also one with a strange hate, a resentment of the surface-being at the profound grip one's lover has on one's soul. It grows often a rhythmless routine, a taking for granted of the heart's desire, without any eagerness to greet with welcoming warmth the least ...
... 42 In Sri Aurobindo's psychological thought, the previously mentioned Sankhya distinction between Purusha and Prakriti is expressed in terms of the inner (or true) being and the outer or surface being. As Sri Aurobindo states: There are always two different consciousnesses in the human being, one outward in which he ordinarily lives, the other inward and concealed of which he knows nothing ...
... spiritual growth. I understood that the upsurge of my interest in religious and philosophical subjects at the age of fifteen marked the beginning of the manifest influence of my inner being on my surface being, because all aspiration for the higher things of life, says Sri Aurobindo, comes from the inner being. As he states, Page 3 Only a little of the inner being escapes through these ...
... subconscient ranges. If one wishes to purify and transform the nature, it is the power of these higher ranges to which one must open and raise to them and change by them both the subliminal and the surface being. Even this should be done with care, not prematurely or rashly, following a higher guidance, keeping always the right attitude; for otherwise the force that is drawn down may be too strong for ...
... the true being is felt in its place. 13 Whereas the apparent self is experienced on the surface of our consciousness, the real Self is experienced either deep within or high above the surface being. Deep within, the real Self is experienced as our individual soul, distinct from and yet one with all other beings. Like the apparent self or the ego, the self within, too, is experienced as ...
... source. There are three occult sources of our action — the superconscient, the subliminal, the subconscient, but of none of them are we in control or even aware. What we are aware of is the surface being which is only an instrumental arrangement. The source of all is the general Nature, — universal Nature individualising itself in each person; for this general Nature deposits certain habits of ...
... or domination. But as long as the true spiritual being remains veiled by body, feelings and mind, one is inevitably more or less identified with the physical, emotional and mental parts of the surface being. Therefore the partial disidentification one may obtain by exercising one's mental discrimination and mental will breaks down easily, causing one to fall back constantly into the common state of ...
... unconscious 41-42 and the subconscient 8 Superconscience (Superconscient), the 30, 31,38-39,40,42-43,45-46 Superego 12,25,28,50,52,66 Supermind 43,62,62fn Surface being see under Being Sutich, Anthony 15 Tamas (inertia) 102-03,130, 133, 141 Titchener, E.B. 17 Transactional Analysis 52-53 Transpersonal Psychology 15-16,45,49 ...
... makes us free of are the ranges of the instrumental mind and life and other subtle go-betweens, whose independent existence is mostly covered up by the mélange, if not melee, of them all in our surface being. Huxley10 himself, for all his claims for drug-mysticism, has hit the truth of the matter in saying: "I am not so foolish as to equate what happens under the influence of mescaline, or any other ...
... its wider range of consciousness; it would move in them with that sense of reality, derivative perhaps but convincing, and it would send up its experience of them as belief and imagination to the surface being. This is a possible account, if we accept Consciousness as the real creative Power or agent and all things as formations of consciousness; but it would not give to the supraphysical planes of being ...
... dynamism also, all dynamism. Purusha, Prakriti and Action It is more difficult for the Prakriti [ to separate itself from outer action than for the Purusha ] as its ordinary play is that of the surface being. It has to divide itself into two to separate from that. The Purusha on the contrary is in its nature silent and separate—so it has only to go back to its original nature. It [ Prakriti ] ...
... subliminal takes part and exercises on them a considerable influence. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains with the universe through the sense-mind and the senses. There are here inner senses, a subliminal sight, touch, hearing; but these subtle senses are rather channels of the inner being's ...
... But this reasoning is not wholly valid because it is looking at perception and action only as they are in our mental cognition of the world and its movement; but that is the experience of our surface being regarding things from its shifting motion in Time, a regard itself superficial, fragmentary and delimited, not total, not plunging into the inner sense of things. In fact we find that action need ...
... translation of a little out of the much that we are,—unless we go behind this and send down our plummet into the subconscient and open ourself to the superconscient so as to know their relation to our surface being. For between these three things our existence moves and finds in them its totality. The superconscient in us is one with the self and soul of the world and is not governed by any phenomenal diversity; ...
... discover to be our highest self, and this too we can set apart as a higher occult province of our nature. But what then is the subconscient and where does it begin and how is it related to our surface being or to the subliminal of which it would seem more properly to be a province? We are aware of our body and know that we have a physical existence, even very largely identify ourselves with it, and ...
... or have ceased to coin or use. Behind, all is known and all is ready for use according to the will of the Self in its dealings with Time and Space and Causality. One might almost say that our surface being is only the deeper eternal Self in us throwing itself out as the adventurer in Time, a gambler and speculator in infinite possibilities, limiting itself to the succession of moments so that it may ...
... subconscient ranges. If one wishes to purify and transform the nature, it is the power of these higher ranges to which one must open and raise to them and change by them both the subliminal and the surface being. Even this should be done with care, not prematurely or rashly, following a higher guidance, keeping always the right attitude; for otherwise the force that is drawn down may be too strong for an ...
... what it manifests, not contained by the incomplete forms of the manifestation, not tarnished by the Page 1 imperfections and impurities, the defects and depravations of the surface being. It is an ever-pure flame of the divinity in things and nothing that comes to it, nothing that enters into our experience can pollute its purity or extinguish the flame. This spiritual stuff is ...
... Ignorance There are three occult sources of our action—the superconscient, the subliminal, the subconscient, but of none of them are we in control or even aware. What we are aware of is the surface being which is only an instrumental arrangement. The source of all is the general Nature,—universal Nature individualising itself in each person; for this general Nature deposits certain habits of movement ...
... life and body—are part of Prakriti. Nirvana —extinction (not necessarily of all being, but of being as we know it, extinction of ego, desire and egoistic action and mentality). outer (surface) being (self) —See under Being . Overmind —see under gradations between mind and Supermind . Paramatma —the supreme Self or Spirit, the Absolute. parārdha — See aparārdha ...
... his taking up of the reins of government that there can take place a real harmonisation of our being and our life. A first condition of the soul's complete emergence is a direct contact in the surface being with the spiritual Reality. Because it comes from that, the psychic element in us turns always towards whatever in phenomenal Nature seems to belong to a higher Reality and can be accepted as ...
... from somewhere what is thrown away from here? There are three sources of our action—the superconscient, the subliminal, the subconscient of which we are not aware. What we are aware of is the surface being which is only an instrumental arrangement. The source of all is the general Nature, but the general Nature deposits certain habits of movement, personality, character, faculties, dispositions, ...
... the action, finds it rather difficult to follow the Purusha. What comes in the way? Page 22 It is more difficult for the Prakriti as its ordinary play is that of the surface being. It has to divide itself into two to separate from that. The Purusha on the contrary is in its nature silent and separate - so it has only to go back to its original nature. How does ...
... the Boulevard St. Michel with it, was almost run over by a streetcar on the way to the Jardin du Luxembourg—heard nothing, saw nothing. She was pushing, pushing against the 'bronze door' of the surface being, pushing more and more with a growing energy. And then suddenly, for no apparent reason—I was neither more concentrated nor anything less—poof! It opened. And with that... It didn't just last ...
... the controlling and mastering power of sight it is Page 37 worth quoting here a passage from Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine (p. 535): "All the movements of the surface being can be seen ... with a direct sight in the consciousness by which the self-delusions and mistakes of self of the outer consciousness can be dispelled; there is a keener mental vision ... of our ...
... Opening to the Divine You are to open yourself to the Divine and receive Him. Usually you open yourself in all directions to everything and everybody in the world. You open your surface being and receive there all influences from all quarters. So inside you there comes about what we can call a hotch-potch of all contrary and contradictory movements: and that creates difficulties without ...
... the yoga in the way you have asked me to. I find it very congenial and profitable Page 43 Aurobindo : You have to continue it. What you know generally as your self is only the surface being and its superficial workings. What man thinks to be "himself" is only a movement in nature, – a movement in the universal mind, universal life and universal Matter. What you have to do is to separate ...
... guidance of the being. A vigilant control of the buddhi over the active sense-mind will minimise, if not obviate, the resurgence of the turbid stuff of the citta, which usually seeks to swamp our surface being and spurts out in sporadic action. But for a complete immunity of the sense-mind from the raids of the nether elements, a more systematic purification of the citta itself is indispensable. ...
... what is in front of his nose, his mind reflects like a looking-glass the surface of existence and never penetrates beyond. Poetry goes beyond the usual knowledge acquired by looking outward or inward. It plunges farther than the objective or subjective surface of being — without really rejecting this surface. It sees the surface as constituting symbols of a hidden reality and, at its intensest, it... it lays a hand however lightly on the body of that reality itself. In various ways it uses the surface of being, objective or subjective, as pointers, peep-holes, glimmerings of a secret Splendour or a magnificent Mystery. It is this activity of poetry that we call its magic. Sometimes the magic is not intense enough and then it can mislead us into thinking that the poet is trying to talk common sense... create "possible merit" by beautiful vibrations in the air. The beautiful vibrations result by virtue of an inner harmony seized by the poet, a special thrill of experience, a special movement of the being in the shape of inner vision and inner emotion: that thrill and movement translates itself, in a successful poem, into the sound-arrangement of words, the powerful yet measured music of verbal rhythm ...
... outward or inward. It plunges farther than the objective or subjective surface of being - without really rejecting this surface. It sees the surface as constituting symbols of a hidden reality and, as its intensest, it lays a hand however lightly on the body of that reality itself. In various ways it uses the surface of being, objective or subjective, as pointers, peep-holes, glimmerings of... gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. Sethna's contention is that though the poet is fundamentally concerned with the activity of the eye, he does not stop with mere sight of the surface of reality as there has to be always something unfathomable about his vision. Combining Shakespeare's conception with Sri Aurobindo's insistence on "the eternity of the vision", Sethna declares... expressed "with a deep intimacy his own spiritual trance of identification with the earth's being". 6 Though the three critics employing their characteristic strategies have tried to establish the greatness of the short poem in different ways, no Western critic can contend without being perverse that the Indian's view has not added a new dimension to the poem. P. MARUDANAYAGAM ...
... Divine, p. 575) We have had occasion to mention more than once that our body's sleep by no means connotes the sleep of our whole being nor the total abeyance of all consciousness. As a matter of fact our inner being is always awake and it is only the surface physical mind's waking activity or its cessation that determines the waking or sleep of common parlance. Thus, in ordinary sleep... realms of our existence. The subliminal in us, as we have mentioned before (Chapter III), is our concealed inner being comprising an inner mind and inner life and inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them all. It "is not, like our surface physical being, an outcome of the energy of the Inconscient; it is a meeting place of the consciousness that emerges from below by evolution... thus remains mostly unknown to our waking consciousness. Although our dreams are very often constructions of our subconscient, when our inner being develops by Sadhana and we live more and more inwardly away from the madding to-and-fro run of our surface existence, a larger and richer and nobler dream-consciousness opens before us and our dreams take on a subliminal character. When the ...
... it either the status of a , masterful universality or of a featureless infinity in the Transcendent; but a divine fulfilment in the terrestrial existence by the transfiguration of even the surface physical being of man, and a conquest and conversion of Matter itself is a consummation which demands something more than these two clear-cut poises of the Mother—- another and more directly and concretely... inner. This is the pearl without price which is proposed for thee to realise."¹ Even so far back as 1915, the Mother knew, not only in the depths of Her being, where She has been fully awake ever since Her early childhood, but in the outer physical being, that "Thy will is that from the heart of this heavy and obscure Matter I must let loose the volcano of Thy Love and Light. It is Thy will that, breaking... ecstasy, depriving me of all freedom to concentrate exclusively on Thee, Thou hast said to me, 'Work as an ordinary man in the midst of ordinary beings; learn to be nothing more than they are in all that is manifesting; associate with the integral way of their being; for, beyond all that they know, all that they are, thou carriest in thyself the torch of the integral splendour which does not waver, and by ...
... imperfect poise of Consciousness and Force in man in his present status of mind and life are principally three. First, he is aware only of a small part of his own being: his surface mentality, his surface life, his surface physical being is all that he knows and he does not know even all of that; below is the occult surge of his subconscious and his subliminal mind, his subconscious and his subliminal... which rather knows and governs him. For, existence and consciousness and force being one, we can only have some real power over so much of our existence as we are identified with by self-awareness; the rest must be governed by its own consciousness which is subliminal to our surface mind and life and body. And yet, the two being one movement and not two separate movements, the larger and more potent part... there the Force is consciousness of being working itself out without ever ceasing to be consciousness and the Consciousness is similarly luminous Force of being eternally aware of itself and of its own Delight and never ceasing to be this power of utter light and self-possession. The second relation is that of material Nature; it is the poise of being in the material universe which is the great denial ...
... the Divine—or the higher consciousness must so descend and occupy everything that the old movements can only at most move on the surface without being able to enter in or touch the inner calm—or the two together, psychic and higher consciousness, must occupy the whole being. These are the three ways in which the Yoga moves. If the concentration in the heart, which Page 795 means the awakening... subconscient and it does not last, it does not at all mean that the progress is not there. We have to deal with all the complexity of the human consciousness in its hidden parts as well as on its surface—and there are layers on layers of the consciousness in which something may lurk of the old reactions, but each conquest makes the control stronger and brings the full purification nearer. You... force acting, there would not be this exact similarity in all the cases. In each case it is the same obscurities thrown on the intelligence, the same subconscious movements of the vital brought to the surface, the same irrational impulses pushing to the same action,—departure, renunciation of the soul's truth, refusal of the Divine Love and the Divine Call. It is the vital crisis, the test, the ordeal ...
... But that is later. It takes a long time. The most important thing is to remain calm and tranquil, transparent like a mirror or a lake without ripples, reflecting all the movements from the surface without being touched, without becoming involved, passive but conscious of all that is happening. Deliberately one remains detached from all this noise, its cause and effect that clash, the actions and reactions... of the psychic being is very subtle, very plastic, as if unexpected and unnoticed; it is as if all the parts of the being merge and dissolve in the beatitude of its presence, in the immutable truth that it represents. And then, in this state, there is no division in the parts of the being: everything obeys a central law, it is that of the psychic being. It is then that the psychic being comes in front... must continue at all cost. The path may become difficult, depending on each person, according to his attitude, his aptitude, his sincerity, his surrender, but it is full of events unperceived on the surface, full of nourishment to satisfy the soul, full of revelations, of divine wisdom, His knowledge, and at each step, a certitude, and more and more a confidence which grows with the blossoming of the ...
... supramentalized in part of their personality, even without their surface consciousness being aware of it. After death we carry with us what we are inwardly. It may be assumed that people who are in part supramentalized are fully mature souls, sufficiently developed to dwell in the supramental world(s), and that the former human beings now with Sri Aurobindo, and ready to come down with him as the first... had a very special definition of sincerity. ‘Sincerity means to lift all the movements of the being to the level of the highest consciousness and realization already attained.’ 18 It means putting all the parts of the being under the influence of the central being, the psychic being. The psychic being is divine; all parts without a connection with the inner divine remain under the influence of... revolution. Much of what was then ‘groovy’ and the ‘in thing’ now seems to have been forgotten or deflated. But the changes initiated in those ten years are still smouldering in the world under the surface; they helped to prepare the new millennium and the greatest Upheaval of all. The Mother had immediately seen their importance and she would say: ‘The whole world seems to be undergoing an action which ...
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