... the discord of many different inner possibilities of our being and even of different personalities on each level in us which are behind the intermixed disposition and differing tendencies of our surface nature. But while on the surface their action is mixed together, confused and conflicting, here in our depths they can be seen and worked upon in their independent and separate nature and action and a... works not by knowledge by identity, but by a knowledge through direct contact and this is also a separative knowledge, though more intimate even in separation than anything that is commanded by our surface nature. But the mixed capacity of the inner mental and vital nature for a greater ignorance as well as a greater knowledge can be cured by going still deeper behind it to the psychic entity which supports... enters into the cosmic consciousness. The subliminal is separated from the cosmic through a limitation by the subtler sheaths of our being, its mental, vital, subtle-physical sheaths, just as the surface nature is separated from universal Nature by the gross physical sheath, the body; but the circumscribing wall around it is more transparent, is indeed less a wall than a fence. The subliminal has besides ...
... in Nature and, if that can be glimpsed or experienced, Page 316 its status and operations beyond what we know as Nature. It is not enough to observe and know the movements of our surface nature and the superficial nature of other living creatures just as it [is] not enough for Science to observe and know as electricity only the movements of lightning in the clouds or for the astronomer... support and supply it but to which it has no visible access. All that is our self, our being,—what we see at the top is only our ego and its visible nature. Even the movements of this little surface nature cannot be understood nor its true law discovered until we know all that is below or behind and supplies it—and know too all that is around it and above. For below this conscient nature is the ...
... it shall not touch me". If this separate being within can be felt, then half the trouble is over— provided there is a will there not only to separate but to get rid of the imperfection from the surface nature also." 110 The following points may be noted in the passages just quoted: At first, one must become simply a Witness who observes but neither accepts nor, for the moment, interferes... state of inner freedom in which one is free from the three Gunas or modes of Nature and inwardly Page 136 unaffected by them while they still continue to operate in one's outer surface nature. The soul is inwardly separated and free from the lower Prakriti, not involved in its coils, indifferent and glad above it. Nature continues to act in the triple round of her ancient ha ...
... operations in Nature and, if that can be glimpsed or experienced, its status and operations beyond what we know as Nature. It is not enough to observe and know the movements of our surface nature and the superficial nature of other living creatures just as it [is] not enough for Science to observe and know as electricity only the movements of lightning in the clouds or for the astronomer... supply it but to which it has no visible access. All that is our self, our being, — what we see at the top is only our ego and its visible nature. Even the movements of this little surface nature cannot be understood nor its true law discovered until we know all that is below or behind and supplies it — and know too all that is around it and above. 9 The yogic view that regards ...
... impersonal unaffected by the mutations of Nature, which it observes but with which it does not identify itself, admits of no possible doubt; but what about his outer personality, that part of his surface nature which is rivetted to the sense-bound separative "I" ? There is nothing definite and conclusive in the Upanishads to prove that Janaka's outer nature too was as much liberated as his soul, and... promise.” To conclude. The Mother teaches a dynamic and integral surrender to the Divine through Yogic action, which is the most effective means of purifying and transforming the active surface nature of man, especially the vital-physical. Since the aim of her Yoga is no mere purification but a radical transfiguration of the integral being of man, she insists on detailed surrender, surrender ...
... it to deviate and stumble or stains it with the impurity, small-ness and error of mind and life and body. After it reaches the surface, thus alloyed and diminished, it is taken hold of by the surface nature in an obscure reception and ignorant formation, and there is or can be by this cause a still further deviation and mixture. A twist is given, a wrong direction is imparted, a wrong application ...
... part of the being which is related to cognitive elements and functions, such as ideas and thoughts, intelligence, thinking and reasoning. He distinguishes mind from the other two elements of the surface nature, namely, the vital and the body-consciousness, which are mixed up with mind on the surface. The vital is the Life-Nature made up of sensations, energies of action, instincts, impulses, desires ...
... Master -slowly because the whole habit of the ego and the play of the lower forces is against that." 8 One recommendation for the discovery of the true being and its liberation from the surface nature is "the practice of the separation of the Prakriti and the Purusha, the conscious Being standing back detached from all the movements of Nature and observing them as witness and knower and finally ...
... supreme and final word of the Gita for the Yogin is that he should leave all conventional formulas of belief and action, all fixed and external rules of conduct, all constructions of the outward surface Nature, Dharmas, and take refuge in the Divine alone,” he will write in The Synthesis of Yoga . 3 “A partial realization, something mixed and inconclusive, does not meet the demand I make on life ...
... psychic experience. You found this clear division in you curious, but it will no longer seem curious once you know the perfectly normal divisibility of the different parts of the being. In the outer surface nature, mind, psychic, vital, physical are all jumbled together and it needs a strong power of introspection, self-analysis, close observation and disentanglement of the threads of thought, feeling and ...
... cannot prevent the final realisation; still, it may have to wait till the obstructions are removed or at least so much cleared out as to admit an unimpeded working of the Divine Power on the surface nature. Till then, there may be periods of inner ease and some light in the mind, periods also of the feeling of bhakti or of peace, periods of the joy of self-consecration in works and service; for ...
... evolution differs from the past process of the evolutionary Energy in two respects: it is conducted by a conscious effort of the human mind, and it is not confined to a conscious progression of the surface nature, but is accompanied by an attempt to break the walls of the Ignorance and extend ourselves inward into the secret principle of our present being and outward into cosmic being Page 750 ...
... complexity is brought in by the power of the consciousness to live in more than one status at a time; especially, a difficulty is created by the division of our being into an inner and an outer or surface nature and the farther intricacy of a secret circumconscient or environmental consciousness in which are determined our unseen connections with the world outside us. In the spiritual opening, it is the ...
... share something of the infinity, complexity, free variation of the Self we see manifested in the world. Or at least he has it in possibility even if there be as yet no sign of it in his organised surface nature. There is here no principle of a mere shapeless fluidity; it is the tendency to enrich himself with the largest possible material constantly brought in, constantly assimilated and changed by the ...
... causes it to deviate and stumble or stains it with the impurity, smallness and error of mind and life and body. After it reaches the surface, thus alloyed and diminished, it is taken hold of by the surface nature in an obscure reception and ignorant formation, and there is or can be by this cause a still further deviation and mixture. A twist is given, a wrong direction is imparted, a wrong application ...
... much that is undeveloped; there are not the clear, certain and vivid forms which I found in the others.. What I see are certain things behind that have not yet their full representation in the surface nature. There is a strong psychic, a strong pranic being associated with the nature, a mental which is very active but has not found its means of self expression in the mind. The difficulty is in some ...
... that cannot prevent the final realisation; still, it may have to wait till the obstructions are removed or at least so much cleared out as to admit an unimpeded working of the Divine Power on the surface nature. Till then, there may be periods of inner ease and some light in the mind, periods also of the feeling of bhakti or of peace, periods of the joy of self-consecration in works and service; for these ...
... its own demands, agreeing neither with itself nor with the others. Speaking of the "perfectly normal divisibility of the different parts of the being", Sri Aurobindo states: "In the outer surface nature, mind, psychic, vital, physical are all jumbled together and it needs a strong power of introspection, self-analysis, close observation and disentanglement of the threads of thought, feeling and ...
... being. All other knowledge may be an apprehension of things but not comprehension. In the former, the knower stands apart from the object and so can envisage only the outskirts, the contour, the surface nature; the mind is capable of this alone. But comprehension means an embracing and penetration which is possible when the knower identifies himself with the object. And when we are so identified we not ...
... deviate and stumble or stains it with the impurity, smallness and error of mind and life and body. "After it reaches the surface, thus alloyed and diminished, it is taken hold of by the surface nature in an obscure reception and ignorant formation, and there is or can be by this cause a still further deviation and mixture. "A twist is given, a wrong direction is imparted, a wrong a ...
... comprehensive realisation, such a fourfold perfection of divine union. There have been many cases of transcendent union, necessitating a deliberate or automatic diminution of the activities of the surface nature, or, more usually, a temporary abrogation or suspension of the active physical self. Light has often been wooed and won, but at the expense of Life, which has gone either pale or grey with neglect ...
... and transformation of our nature are to be complete. The Gitâ's way of the renunciation of all desire and attachment is the right way, and a very effective method of purification, so far as the surface nature is concerned and the regions just below the surface, but it hardly touches the murky depths where the animal appetites and passions, and the inertia and falsehood and obscurity of our material ...
... man realises that he is not merely "A death bound littleness.... "There is an immortal Self in man awaiting discovery, there are widenesses and depths possible to man's consciousness of which his surface nature has no knowledge. These powers are there even when man is not conscious of them. There is in him the imperishable Light, Divine splendour, immutable Ecstasy. Man, though outwardly small and in ...
... cit-tapas, and our body from the sat or the eternal divine Substance. In the beginning of our terrestrial evolution, this soul or psychic entity remains veiled behind the turbid working of our surface nature. It exerts its influence from behind and prepares its instruments of manifestation. It is the one thing in us that is imperishable, and "nothing that enters into our experience can pollute its ...
... any ascetic severity. It must be full of joy and buoyancy, and a profound, inviolable placidity. Samatā is equality. The prāna must not be swayed by the fickle likes and dislikes of the surface nature, but remain serene and unperturbed in the face of all experiences. Freedom from all desire is the surest means of establishing samatā in the prāna . An equal prāna will accept whatever ...
... existence of a spiritual being in us which is other than our surface mental personality. But at first this consciousness may confine itself to a status of being separate from the action of our ignorant surface nature, observing it, limiting itself to knowledge, to a seeing of things with a spiritual sense and vision of existence. For action it may still depend upon the mental, vital, bodily instruments, or ...
... succeed; it is by rejection and by inner experience and growth that it is done. You say that all these things were hidden within you. No; they were not deep within, they were in the outer or surface nature, only you were not sufficiently conscious of them because the other true consciousness had not opened and grown within you. Now by the experiences you have had the psychic has been growing and ...
... so long as the psychic is veiled and the consciousness is in the Ignorance. As to the change of nature, the first step is to become conscious Page 97 and separate from the old surface nature. For this rajasic vital nature is a surface creation of Prakriti, it is not the true being; however persistent it seems, it is only a temporary combination of vital movements. Behind is the true ...
... the superficial nature. This the ordinary man does not know, but the Yogi becomes aware of it as he progresses in his sadhana. As the consciousness of this inner being increases by sadhana, the surface nature and its responses are pushed out and can be got rid of altogether. But the ignorant universal Nature does not want to let go and throws the old movements on the sadhak and tries to get them inside ...
... psychic experience. You found this clear division in you curious, but it will no longer seem curious once you know the perfectly normal divisibility of the different parts of the being. In the outer surface nature mind, psychic, vital, physical are all jumbled together and it needs a strong power of introspection, self-analysis, close observation and disentanglement of the threads of thought, feeling and ...
... it shall not touch me." If this separate being within can be felt, then half the trouble is over—provided there is a will there not only to separate but to get rid of the imperfection from the surface nature also. The difficulties of the character persist so long as one yields to them in action when they rise. One has to make a strict rule not to act according to the impulses of anger, ego or ...
... there is depression. It is not the soul but the vital or rather something in it that takes pleasure in groaning and weeping and in fact in sorrow and suffering of all kinds. The surface nature does not enjoy [ groaning and weeping ]—but something within enjoys the līlā of "laughter and tears", joy and grief, pleasure and pain, in a word the play of the ignorance. Page 178 ...
... human parts into divine members, not self-torture, but a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda. There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real ...
... turns towards a concentration on our own inner spiritual growth and perfection, on our own individual being and inner living; or it turns towards a concentration on an individual development of our surface nature, on the perfection of our thought and outer dynamic or practical action on the world, on some idealism of our personal relation with the world around us; or it turns rather towards a concentration ...
... supreme and final word of the Gita for the Yogin is that he should leave all conventional formulas of belief and action, all fixed and external rules of conduct, all constructions of the outward or surface Nature, dharmas , and take refuge in the Divine alone. Free from desire and attachment, one with all beings, living in the infinite Truth and Purity and acting out of the profoundest deeps of his inner ...
... it but to which it has no visible access. All that is our self, our being; what we see at the top is only our ego and its visible nature. Page 16 "Even the movements of this little surface nature cannot be understood nor its true law discovered until we know all that is below or behind and supplies it -and know too all that is around it and above." 18 It is, of course, not the first ...
... woman's self-description comes a voice, the voice of "the sense-shackled human mind," — the cry of an ignorant energy that "cannot see God's mighty whole." Human being has access only to the surface-nature of Reality and cannot commune "with the throbbing heart of things." Though, not infrequently inspired by the Unknown and visited by intuitions from beyond, he finds security only in reason and ...
... of one of the most important attitudes for mental health as well as for yoga, namely, the attitude of being a detached, uninvolved and non-identified witness of the movements of one's ordinary, surface nature. As Sri Aurobindo states: "Very often when this witness attitude has not been taken but there is a successful calling in of the Force to act in one, one of the first things the Force does ...
... The Life Divine, p. 221 The subliminal is separated from the cosmic through a limitation by the subtler sheaths of our being, its mental, vital, subtle-physical sheaths, just as the surface nature is separated from universal Nature by the gross physical sheath, the body; but the circumscribing wall around it is more transparent, is indeed less a wall than a fence. The subliminal has besides ...
... discord of many different inner possibilities of our being and even of different personalities on each level in us which are behind the intermixed disposition and differing tendencies of our surface nature. But while on the surface their action is mixed together, confused and conflicting, here in our depths they can be seen and worked upon in their independent Page 26 and separate ...
... and influence. In the process of this inner exploration yoga discovers many capacities for knowledge, action and enjoyment which are not known to "empirical" psychology, for that deals with the surface nature of man. True, there is depth psychology but yoga avers that its depth is not deep enough, and that there is or should be a "height" psychology and a "breadth" psychology as well. For yoga includes ...
... anything that happens, it regards the surface turmoil as something not belonging to itself. If the peace extends in the same way to the external parts also, then the whole being becomes free and the surface nature is felt only as something moving about in the atmosphere, trying to enter but unable to do so. But this of course happens only when the descents of Peace have turned into a massive stability of ...
... And yet these first slumberous traces prepare the next evolutionary groove. Something awakens in him, like another being in the depths of a bottomless cave, slowly, slowly wending its way to the surface. Nature slowly cleanses the layers and lets the centuries flow on while waiting for the next emergence: the meeting of mental “heaven" and earth in a new hominid creation. This cleansing of the intermediary ...
... misled by the outer vital or clouded by the physical nature. I have already told 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. ...
... with the cosmic Truth. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The True Being and the True Consciousness There is behind all the vital nature in man his true vital being concealed and immobile which is quite different from the surface vital nature. The surface vital is narrow, ignorant, limited, full of obscure desires, passions, cravings, revolts, pleasures and pains, transient joys and griefs,... these are manifest, then you are aware of a double existence in you; that behind is always calm and strong, that on the surface alone is troubled and obscure. But if the true being behind remains stable and you live in it, then the trouble and obscurity remain only on the surface; in this condition the exterior parts can be dealt with more potently and they also made free and perfect. Sri Aurobindo... Purushas or beings in us, psychic, mental, vital, physical, are projections of the Atman, but that gets its full truth only when we get into our inner being and know the inner truth of ourselves. On the surface in the Ignorance, it is the mental, vital, physical Prakriti that acts and the Purusha is disfigured, as it were, in the action of Prakriti. It is not our true mental being, our true vital being, our ...
... know himself and the world completely he must go behind his own and its exterior, he must dive deep below his own mental surface and the physical surface of Nature. This he can only do by knowing his inner mental, vital, physical and psychic being and its Page 342 powers and movements and the universal laws and processes of the occult Mind and Life which stand behind the material front of... four necessities of man's self-expansion if he is not to remain this being of the surface ignorance seeking obscurely after the truth of things and collecting and systematising fragments and sections of knowledge, the small limited and half-competent creature of the cosmic Force which he now is in his phenomenal nature. He must know himself and discover and utilise all his potentialities: but to know... 1958 1958 June Questions and Answers (1957-1958) 18 June 1958 " There are four main lines which Nature has followed in her attempt to open up the inner being,—religion, occultism, spiritual thought and an inner spiritual realisation and experience: the three first are approaches, the last is the decisive avenue ...
... sides, at each stage, forms of the new property or principle of existence that has come into evidence. These multiple forms may appear anywhere and everywhere; they are strewn about on the entire surface of Nature. These are, however, the branchings of the evolutionary nisus which has a central line of advance running through the .entire gradation of emergents; it is, as it were, the central pillar round... the perverse and purblind. It is this, that at each crucial step Nature undergoes a sudden and total change, brings forth a new element which was not there before and which could not be foreseen or foretold by any process of deduction from the actual factors in play. At the very outset of the evolutionary march, when material Nature meant only a mass or masses of incandescent gaseous elements, the... SriAurobindo Page 59 speaks of the Overmind and the Supermind, as farther steps of the evolutionary progress coming after Mind. He says that Mind closes the interior hemisphere of man's nature and consciousness; with Overmind man enters into the higher sphere of the Spirit. In this view, the religious feeling or perception or conduct would be but an intermediary stage between Mind and Overmind ...
... sides, at each stage, forms of the new property or principle of existence that has come into evidence. These multiple forms may appear anywhere and everywhere; they are strewn about on the entire surface of Nature. These are, however, the branchings of the evolutionary nisus which has a central line of advance running through the entire gradation of emergents; it is, as it were, the central pillar round... the perverse and purblind. It is this, that at each crucial step Nature undergoes a sudden and total change, brings forth a new element which was not there before and which could not be foreseen or foretold by any process of deduction from the actual factors in play. At the very outset of the evolutionary march, when material Nature meant only a mass or masses of incandescent gaseous elements,... emergence. In fact, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the Overmind and the Supermind, as farther steps of the evolutionary progress coming after Mind. He says that Mind closes the inferior hemisphere of man's nature and consciousness; with Overmind man enters into the higher sphere of the Spirit. In this view, the religious feeling or perception or conduct would be but an intermediary stage between Mind and Overmind ...
... reign of Ignorance in his nature. The Subconscient is above the Inconscient and just below our surface physical consciousness, below the threshold, as it is called. It is, to quote Sri Aurobindo, "the extreme border of our inner existence where it meets the Inconscient; it is a degree of our being in which the Inconscient struggles into a half-consciousness; the surface physical consciousness... general predisposition to suffering, fears, passions and restless desires are the normal constituents of the surface human nature, and all this is derived from the Subconscient and the Inconscient. The Mother's main work is a complete transformation of this subterranean base of human nature, so that a divine race of supermen may reveal God's glory and fulfil His Will in the material world. The... Subconscient and the Inconscient will ¹Prayers and Meditations of the Mother; February 9, 1914, Page 182 mean the conquest of material life and nature, and the conversion of human nature into divine nature. The Mother says that the majority of beings, even of human beings, live constantly in the Subconscient, "few, emerge from it,” and she affirms that "this is the conquest ...
... communications: Neighbours of Heaven are Nature's altitudes. To these high-peaked dominions sealed to our search Too far from surface Nature's postal routes, Too lofty for our mortal lives to breathe, Deep in us a forgottens kinship points. 29 How wonderfully appropriate and apt this figure of postal routes is! For surface Nature's lines of communication are all restricted... should rule. 90 An insect hedonism fluttered and crawled And basked in the sunlit Nature's surface thrills, And dragon raptures, python agonies Crawled in the marsh and mire and licked the sun. 91 This is a wonderful series of figures drawn from insect and animal life in Nature. Here we may remind ourselves of another image from the same world, already quoted: Thought's... mind becomes a nursery in which Nature and soul carry on their play: A blindfold search and wrestle and fumbling clasp Of a half-seen Nature and a hidden Soul, A game of hide and seek in twilit rooms, A play of love and hate and fear and hope Continues in the nursery of mind Its hard and heavy romp of self-bom twins. 151 Nature and soul play on their game of ...
... in human nature and the difficulty of getting them out. The difficulty is natural, for they have been there for thousands of lives and are the very nature of man's vital and mental ignorance. It is not surprising that they should have a power to stick and take time to disappear. But there is a true being and a true consciousness that is there in us hidden by these surface formations of nature and which... By taking the right attitude of selfless devotion within and persisting in it in spite of the surface nature's troublesome self-repetitions one enables this inner being and consciousness to emerge and with the Mother's Force working in it deliver the being from all return of the movements of the old nature. Why do you indulge in these exaggerated feelings of remorse and despair when these things... difficult to eliminate what comes. Such returns of an old nature that is long expelled from the conscious parts of the being always happen in sadhana. It does not at all mean that the nature is unchangeable. Try to recover the inner quietude, draw back from these movements and look at them calmly, reducing them to their true proportions. Your true nature is that in which you have peace and ananda and the ...
... consciousness into the divine consciousness of the Supermind, and bring the Light and Force of the latter for the transformation and divinisation of the whole nature of man, including even his surface Page 66 physical nature and its movements. I shall consider the conditions of this ascent and its implications and results when I come to dwell upon the details of the Integral Yoga... essential unity, but as distinct units and divided fragments. This is a false seeing and a false feeling. We do not see the truth, because we do not see the whole of things. The discords of the surface elements disturb or depress us, because we do not perceive the underlying harmony. And when we travel beyond the triple separative consciousness, we enter by trance into a state of absorbed immersion... and all-harmonising unity of the creative Super- mind. It is not by trance or an exclusive awakening in the depths or on the heights of the being, accompanied by a partial or complete sleep of the surface parts and a temporary suspension of their natural movements, that it ascends towards its goal; its process is rather one of inclusion and synthesis, and a raising of the integrated being of man ...
... above the earth-consciousness and the material plane to which the earth belongs. * Page 12 There is behind all the vital nature in man his true vital being concealed and immobile which is quite different from the surface vital nature. The surface vital is narrow, ignorant, limited, full of obscure desires, passions, cravings, revolts, pleasures and pains, transient joys and griefs,... element transfused into it; the vital is the Life-nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reactions of the desire-soul in man and of all that play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, fear, greed, lust, etc., that belong to this field of the nature. Mind and vital are mixed up on the surface of the consciousness, but they are quite separate... perception and understanding that they know or feel them; therefore they do not understand their own states and actions, or, if at all, then only on the surface. It is part of the foundation of Yoga to become conscious of the great complexity of our nature, see the different forces that move it and get over it a control of directing knowledge. We are composed of many parts each of which contributes something ...
... that responds to desire and is the instrument of the life-forces. The True Vital Being and Consciousness There is behind all the vital nature in man his true vital being concealed and immobile which is quite different from the surface vital nature. The surface vital is narrow, ignorant, limited, full of obscure desires, passions, cravings, revolts, pleasures and pains, transient joys and griefs,... which is instrumental for the present play of Prakriti in the surface personality. When the change comes, the true vital rejects what is out of tune with its own truth from the external and makes it a true instrument for its expression, a means of expression of its inner will, not a thing of responses to the suggestions of the lower Nature. The strong distinction between the two practically disappears... these are manifest, then you are aware of a double existence in you; that behind is always calm and strong, that on the surface alone is troubled and obscure. But if the true being behind remains stable and you live in it, then the trouble and obscurity remain only on the surface; in this condition the exterior parts can be dealt Page 185 with more potently and they also made free and perfect ...
... projection of the delight of Satchidananda. You find a dichotomy even in his psychic being : there is a surface self, working as the desire-soul in mind, life and body. Each instrument of nature has a conscious part which is on the surface and a part that is subliminal, behind the veil. Mind has a surface consciousness, and a subliminal consciousness. Life is two-fold, body is two-fold and this being also... experience when it retires and identifies itself with the psychic being. One can bring about a change in the desire-soul by going back into the psychic being that is behind. Soul can come to the surface of nature—and then one experiences through mind, through life and through body equal and all-embracing delight. Sometimes man gets it even when he is not consciously in contact with the psychic being, but... that all knowledge he has is of partial self, an incomplete knowledge of self. That is to say, he is only living on surface consciousness. He knows only his surface consciousness and is unconscious of his own subconscious and subliminal being which are not the same. Below the surface is the subconscious and behind the veil the subliminal. That is one difficulty why man is not able intelligently and ...
... know himself and the world completely he must go behind his own and its exterior, he must dive deep below his own mental surface and the physical surface of Nature. This he can only do by knowing his inner mental, vital, physical and psychic being and its powers and movements and the universal laws and processes of the occult Mind and Life which stand behind the material front of the universe: that is... four necessities of man's self-expansion if he is not to remain this being of the surface ignorance seeking obscurely after the truth of things and collecting and systematising fragments and sections of knowledge, the small limited and half-competent creature of the cosmic Force which he now is in his phenomenal nature. He must know himself and discover and utilise all his potentialities: but to know... can ever have more than one nature." 16 Sri Aurobindo was acutely aware of this and addresses the issue at some length in The Life Divine. Central to the metaphysical issue is the difference in the concepts of the Absolute in Sri Sankara and Sri Aurobindo. In Sri Sankara the Absolute is a mere and perfect Spirit, kevala atman , which is in its essential nature acosmic. Not only is the ...
... distinction between the psychic and the vital; the vital being is not what is known as the Atma. The vital as the desire-soul and desire-nature controls the consciousness to a large extent in most men because men are governed by desire. But even in the surface human nature the proper ruler of the consciousness is the mental being, the manomayaḥ puruṣaḥ prāṇa-śarīra-netā of the Upanishad. The psychic ... movements of our external consciousness, and to know it we need not go deep behind our surface or external nature. Category means here another class of psychological factors, tattva-vibhāga . The psychic belongs to one class or category—supermind, mind, life, psychic, physical—which covers both the inner and the outer nature. Chitta belongs to quite another class or category—buddhi, manas, chitta, prana... first to influence and then govern the actions of the instrumental nature that man begins to overcome vital desire and grow towards a greater divine nature. We are concerned with the growth of the soul out of the Ignorance, not its plunge into it. The lower nature is the nature of the Ignorance, what we seek is to grow into the nature of the Truth. How do you make out that when the soul has looked ...
... there is a failure of our struggling nature, an impotence to achieve what we instinctively see to be divine and desirable. If we penetrate to the cause of the fall or the failure, we shall find that all proceeds from the one primal fact that our being, consciousness, force, experience of things represent—not in their very self, but in their surface pragmatic nature—a principle or an effective phenomenon... which division itself cannot divide. This fundamental world-fact of ego and apparent division and their separative workings in the world existence is no denial of the Divine Nature of unity and indivisible being; they are the surface results of an infinite multiplicity which is a power of the infinite Oneness. There is then no real division or limitation of being, no fundamental contradiction of the... If we need any personal and inner witness to this indivisible all consciousness behind the ignorance,—all Nature is its external proof,—we can get it with any completeness only in our deeper inner being or larger and higher spiritual state when we draw back behind the veil of our own surface ignorance and come into contact with the divine Idea and Will behind it. Then we see clearly enough that what ...
... himself and discover and utilise all his potentialities: but to know himself and the world completely he must go behind his own and its exterior, he must dive deep below his own mental surface and the physical surface of Nature. This he can only do by knowing his inner mental, vital, physical and psychic being and its powers and movements and the universal laws and processes of the occult Mind and Life which... of life and nature, but only completes it by pointing out that the true foundation is above while the branchings are downward, ū rdhavudhna n ī c ī na- śā kha (Rig-Veda), ū rdham ū lo'v ā k ś a-kha (Gita), so that to know the essential truth of things as distinguished from their phenomenal appearances, one has to probe upward and inward instead of remaining content with only surface scrutiny. Ordinarily... something it is there to express. There is no fundamental significance in things if you miss the Divine Reality; for you remain embedded in a huge surface crust of manageable and utilisable appearance." 41 Now, to help us to come out of this narrow surface crust and sound the depths and heights of inner and higher spiritual realities and bring their riches into active manifestation in our life, is ...
... others, especially those who are or were near, and stand on the Truth alone is very difficult; some reaction of the old nature can easily come across; but if one remains calm and firm within, these surface reactions quickly disappear and their rejection helps the remnants of the old nature to disappear. If you look closely, you will see that all these things—the rudeness of one, the anger of another—are... the most elementary necessities if one wants to enter into the true spirit of Yoga. The proper thing is to see all with an unmoved calm, both the "good" and "bad", but as a movement of Nature on the surface. But to do this truly without error or egoism or wrong reactions needs a consciousness and knowledge that is not personal and limited. If you want to have knowledge or see all as brothers... 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 covered by the surface waking mind. When one gets into a certain Yogic consciousness, one becomes very much ...
... itself and behind the works of a surface external Nature, still she has been most careful to organise a surface Mind dealing with surface and external things and an organisation of personality which is superficial and not the whole of ourselves, a wave only of the ocean of our hidden being, our secret reality. To build an ego which will deal with material life and nature as its user but also as its subject... state, a latent godhead that already is and always was our true being. Supermanhood is for us a self-exceeding because man, pragmatically and to his own surface awareness, is a small, confused, limited, still ignorant formation of evolutionary Nature,—if supermanhood is intended, then either he has himself to become superman or, if he cannot or will not achieve it, he must make way for some creature... to the vital physical operation of Nature. There is a physical mind plane proper to a mental physical operation of Nature. There is a physical supermind plane proper to the supramental physical operation of Nature. There is too a plane of physical spirit power or infinite physical Being-Consciousness-Force-Bliss proper to the spiritual physical operations of Nature. It is only when we have discovered ...
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